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Microsoft is apparently set to ask millions of users across Europe whether they want to use a web browser such as Firefox or Chrome instead of their own. Users of their operating system Windows will be offered the choice. A pop up window will prompt users to choose/install one of 12 browsers or just stay with the current option of Internet Explorer. When running the operating system, either XP, Vista or 7 the software will present users with a window that says in bold text “An important choice to make: your browser”. It also asks people to ensure they are connected to the internet. Exact estimates are hard to find but web stats company Net Applications said IE is used by 62% market share. Its closest rival is Firefox at 24%. The browser choice system could confuse people – an example of this has been people confronted with the choice screen have been worried that their machine has been taken over or fallen victim to a virus.

Microsoft have followed up October’s release of Windows Mobile 6.5 with a new mobile phone operating system. Windows Phone 7 series is the new software that has a brand new interface that includes services such as the Xbox Live games and music service Zune.

Introducing this software at the Barcelona Mobile World Congress, Microsoft now hold around 9% of the “Smartphone” market. This means they rank 4^th in the market behind Symbian, Rim (who make Blackberry phones) and Apple iPhone. Microsoft has a lot of competition in this market. For example Apple has gained 15% of the market in just over 2 years and Google’s Android system has gained 5% of the market in just under 2 years. Microsoft will hope their new operating system will give them an advantage in the industry.

The internet company Google has expanded in another direction – as a network provider offering ultra high-speed broadband throughout thousands of homes in the US. They plan to construct a fibre optic network which will provide speeds of up to 1Gbps to around half a million homes. Other network providers will be worried to hear that they also expect to compete with the price of their rates. Google said the trial they are attempting was about promoting “killer apps” that would take advantage of fast speeds. They already have a fibre network which connects its data centres and reduces the cost of streaming video on YouTube. The next stage is to connect that network directly to people’s homes.

Google has revealed that they are rolling out their new social network called “Buzz”. The product is integrated with Gmail so users with these email accounts can use Buzz through these accounts. The service lets users the option to post status updates, share content and like Facebook, comment on friend’s statuses.

Currently 400 million people use Facebook since their launch in 2004. Google will target their 170 million Gmail account holders to start off Buzz and they will go directly up against Twitter and Facebook in offering this service. Yahoo, one of Google’s main rivals currently offers a service that allows you to view updates from Twitter etc on the YMail pages.

Recent research by Leeds University students has found evidence of a link between using the internet to an excessive extent and depression. The British psychologists said that there are a small proportion of internet users who were addicts. They were more likely to be depressed than non-addicted internet users. The research was based around UK social networking sites and data from 1,319 users and how they used the websites.

The Beck Depression Inventory was completed by all users in the study to measure their depression rates. Questions were also asked about how much time they spent on the internet and what they used it for. The study seems to suggest that if you get addicted to the internet you have a higher chance of becoming depressed than if you spend little time online. This only seems to be the case with social media sites so far however.

Google has started to phase out any support for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6. The browser has recently been identified as a weak link and part of the Chinese attack on Google through Google Mail. Earlier this year Google had threatened to leave the Chinese market following the attacks it received from hackers where they accessed email accounts of Chinese rights activists.

This comes as great news to web developers who have long suffered with CSS bugs whilst trying to maintain browser compatibilities across the board. Around 20% of web users still use the nine-year old browser, including many UK government departments.

The browser doesn’t support modern web standards and restricts what web developers can do. Unfortunately though, Microsoft has said that it will continue supporting the browser until 2014!

Many Windows 7 users are finding that the latest security updates are causing problems with the functionality of the operating system. After logging on there is no desktop, task bar, system tray or sidebar. Instead you are left with a totally black screen and a single My Computer Explorer window. This has resulted in many users calling the issue the Black Screen of Death, a reference to the ‘Blue screen of Death’ which appeared when other editions of windows crashed.
The update also affects Windows Vista and XP. Millions of people may have been affected by the problems. Some have resorted to reinstalling their windows software. Software firm Prevx, has identified at least ten different scenarios that will cause the problem.
Microsoft have said that users that have encountered the problem should contact their customer service line.

In a story of preferential treatment, there was anger and disappointment when it was discovered that the boss of  BT, Sir Michael Rake,  has the only broadband in the village of Hambleden. The village is on the board of Oxford and Buckinghamshire. When other residents applied to have broadband, they were told that they were too far from the exchange to make it possible.

Many of the residents are angry at this show of favouritism for the boss of the telecoms company. Some residents are even calling for Michael Rake to resign. BT’s explanation is that they were testing new technology and it was not unusual for staff to trial new technology.

As computers become more powerful,their designers face a problem with the design of the chips. To pack more features on the chip make them interact faster they must become smaller and as the density increases they require more power to move  the electrons which represent the states 1 and 0. The switching also produces a lot of heat which must be removed.

The solution to this problem could be spintronics. Instead of switching using the flow  or absence of electronic charge, the state of the individual gate could be determined by the spin of the electron.

Spin is a intrinsic property of the electron like charge. It is helpful to think  about electron spin being like a  top spinning about its axis. It can spin clockwise or anticlockwise.  Spin in an electron can be characterised as being either spin up or spin down and so we can consider  one spin state to represent a one and the opposing state to  represent zero.

However, in order to measure the states and keep them in the state you left them it is necessary to operate the devices at low temperature. The current research has shown for the first time that the electron spins can be detected and manipulated at room temperature. An additional benefit is that this has been done using existing Silicon technology, which is already used in the fabrication of conventional microchip devices.

It remains unclear whether spintronics can overcome the problem of heating found in conventional electronic devices  as the feature density increases.

F-Secure, the anti virus company has discovered a new malicious worm running on iPhones in the Netherlands. To become infected requires several factors, however you must be:

• using an iphone that has been jailbroken so that it can run unapproved applications.
• using the SSH (secure shell)  application
• using the default password in SSH
• living in the Netherlands, although there is always the possiblity that the virus can spread.

The new virus also allows the phone to be controlled remotely allowing hackers to create a botnet or organised network of phones which may be used for a number of criminal activities including sending spam emails, dennial of service attacks and many other nefirious activities.
Only a few days earlier a proof of concept virus, called ‘ikee’ was released to make people aware of the security issues of running SSH software with the default password. The virus was harmless replacing the phone’s wallpaper with a picture of Rick Astley. It was only a matter of time before the virus was modified by criminals.