The web browser has become one of the most important inventions of all time. It has become ubiquitous in our lives -- hell, for some of us, it has become our lives. Many of us spend hours on the web, navigating around with Safari, Chrome or Internet Explorer to name a few. And so, the browser has actually become a computing platform in itself. Google's Chrome OS and Mozilla's Firefox OS are both built with that philosophy in mind.

Today, the ever-increasingly cool Microsoft announces that it has teamed up with Ubisoft to bring Assassin's Creed: Pirates to Internet Explorer (and other modern browsers too) by embracing HTML5 and other technologies. The results are breathtaking.

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Powerful open source screenshot tool ShareX has been updated to version 9.0 with some significant changes and additions.

Top of the list is new support for screen recording with audio. This makes use of FFmpeg to do the hard work, with ShareX downloading the program if you don’t have it already.

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Cross-platform apps are wonderful. Having the ability to create an app and have it run on multiple operating systems is ideal for developers. After all, it increases the audience for their work. Ultimately, for a paid app, this equates to more money. More money is good, right? Right.

However, it is not typical for the owner of the operating system to help developers move apps to other platforms. Exclusivity of an app can drive sales of the platform. In other words, if all apps ran on all platforms, the platform really would not matter to consumers. With that said, Microsoft does something shocking, as it shows off how easy it is to create one app using WinJS that runs on Windows 8.1, Windows Phone 8.1 and FireFox OS. Are pigs flying?

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Recently we were greeted by Heartbleed, a bug in software used by websites to encrypt data. Now there’s a flaw in Internet Explorer (IE) that allows a malicious website to run any program it desires on your computer. One can debate which is the more serious, but both can be devastating. In light of the risks from the IE bug, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recommended that people not use that browser until it is patched. However, there is a serious problem with that advice: Windows XP is susceptible to the IE vulnerability, and Microsoft discontinued support for that OS version earlier this month.

Because the Heartbleed code was in an Open Source component (that is, a piece of software whose source code is openly available), a fair amount of discussion has focused on whether distributing security-related code as Open Source increases or decreases the risk of such bugs. That's indeed an interesting debate. I happen to come down on the side of it decreasing the risk, but the DHS recommendation reveals a completely different security problem in using programs that are not Open Source.

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Lots of things have been said about OpenSSL bug Heartbleed, including what to do to counter possible exploits (many have advised users to change all their passwords) after it has reached the public's attention. The main focus has been on popular products from top companies such as Apple, Google and Microsoft. However, the actions of other developers (that may actually be inconspicuous in the whole Heartbleed debacle) can have a far-reaching effect as well.

A new report from FireEye notes that 150 million downloads of Android apps "contain OpenSSL libraries vulnerable to Heartbleed". As Google has said, Android itself may not be vulnerable to it, post version 4.2 Jelly Bean at least, but that advantage is lost if app developers expose users to the dangers of Heartbleed.

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Team MediaPortal has released a major update of its open-source media center software for Windows. MediaPortal 1.7.0 FINAL comes with a number of under-the-hood changes that will impact the program going forward, including future plans for a home screen editor within the MediaPortal itself.

The new build also promises enhancements to the TV and video On Screen Displays, a new Wake On LAN feature and support for accessing information about video files automatically.

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You will have heard by now that a major vulnerability in the OpenSSL library was just made public. Called Heartbleed, it affects the security of a huge number of cloud services and sites as well as various products, like operating systems and apps, which have employed it during the past two years. The impact can be devastating, as there is no way of telling if Heartbleed was exploited, or how much data may have been stolen so far.

A number of companies have already announced the patching of their OpenSSL-toting services and products. Google was among the first to do so, yesterday. Evernote, however, just revealed that its users are not affected. Microsoft has also decided to shed light on whether Heartbleed impacts its users, saying that Windows Azure, Microsoft account, and Windows are immune.

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When the story of open source is told, Microsoft is often portrayed as the evil, closed-source antagonist. While I like the open source model, I also understand Bill Gates' belief in paying for software. After all, there is nothing wrong with someone wanting to be financially compensated for their hard work. In other words, closed source ideology is not evil, just different.

While Microsoft's commitment to closed source ideology is not expected to change anytime soon, that doesn't mean the company can't stray a bit. Today, in a shocking and surprising move, the software-giant announces that it is releasing the WinJS source code as an open source project.

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For many, open source is believed to be the future. If you aren't familiar, in basic terms, open source is software that is accompanied by free to distribute source code. By having the source code, users can see the guts of the program they are using. This is in contrast to closed source software, like most of Microsoft's, where the code is hidden to retain intellectual property and make a profit.

Neither school of thought is wrong -- you can't fault a company for trying to make money by going closed source. Bill Gates would not have become the richest man in the world if Microsoft's software portfolio was open. However, not everyone lives for money. Open source allows even the poorest people to potentially access quality software at no charge. Today, Google announces it is looking for college students to work on open source projects for its 10th year of Summer of Code.

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Adobe’s open source code editor Brackets has received an update to Sprint 36, adding some significant new features.

Smart file watchers mean the editor and Project tree now recognize when files are modified outside of Brackets, and update automatically. You’re always looking at the latest state of your project, no manual refresh required.

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Translation services from Google, Bing and others mean it's now very easy to translate plain text, and there are a host of apps and browser extensions available to simplify the process further. Translating text embedded in an image requires a little more work, but Screen Translator is an open source tool which may be able to help.

Installation is trickier than it should be, thanks to a setup program which lists some options in English, others in Cyrillic. It's not the most impressive start, but choose to install everything (which is safe, there's no adware here) and setup proceeds with no other problems.

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If you're browsing the web and find an image you'd like to keep, then the procedure is almost always the same: right-click, select "Save image as", and choose your preferred destination. That's simple enough, too, but if you’re saving lots of pictures in the same session then it can get a little tedious.

SavePictureAs is an open-source tool which speeds up the image saving process (in all the main browsers, and most of the minor ones) by automating most of its steps. All you have to do is move the mouse cursor over a picture, press a customisable hotkey, and watch as the program simulates a right-click, selects "Save image as", points the browser at your favorite folder, and saves the picture with its default file name.

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It seems malware is everywhere these days, and many a user falls prey to it through emails, downloaded files and malicious websites. One trick is to name a bad file after a popular existing app -- Flash is a top target for this sort of thing.

The FileZilla FTP Client seems to be the latest target in this type of attack. Security researchers at Avast discovered this happening with versions 3.7.3 and 3.5.3 of the software. “We have noticed an increased presence of these malware versions of famous open source FTP clients”, the firm announces.

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Converting your favorite photos into a video slideshow can be a great way to share them with others, and there are plenty of free tools to handle the task (Pic View EXESlide, say). But most deliver only very basic results, simply cutting from one static image to another: not exactly interesting.

PhotoFilmStrip takes this idea a little further by making smart use of the Ken Burns effect, where your slideshow smoothly pans and zooms across each image. It produces a much more engrossing and professional video, and is surprisingly easy to set up.

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If you ever work with personal or confidential documents then you’ve probably considered using a shredder, a tool which overwrites your files so they can’t be recovered by others. And there are plenty around: searching for "secure delete" returns lots of capable programs in just the first few hits.

Which file shredder is best for you, though? Most recommendations focus largely on the length of their feature list, but if you’re just looking for something simple, a convenient way to get the job done with the minimum of hassle, then BitKiller could be more interesting.

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