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According to the latest comScore figures, Bing has increased its search market share for the 10th straight month in March, moving to 11.7 percent, a slight increase from 11.5 percent in February.

Yahoo moved up slightly as well, to 16.9 percent from 16.8 percent in February.

Despite seeing a decrease in March, Google remained the clear leader, at 65.1 percent. The search giant held 65.5 percent in February.

In fourth place was Ask which increased again, to 3.8 percent from 3.7 percent.

Alongside a giant $100 million USD advertising campaign, Microsoft launched Bing last June, revamping its struggling "Live" search engine.

Microsoft has quietly restructured the MS Points system used for purchases in the Xbox Live Marketplace, changing the increments available for sale, making it so users do not have so many leftover points after purchases.

The increments have been changed to 400 from 500. 400 points is $5, 800 points is $10, 1600 points is $20 and 4000 points is $50.

Most items in the marketplace run on a 400 increment basis, so many gamers should be happy by the change. There will of course be situations that leave you with leftover points, but it's a start.

In remarks at a Q&A session for the Council on Foreign Relations, Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg characterized the entire net neutrality debate as a false dilemma invented by software companies to protect them from competition.

He said, "I think people who... fashioned this Net neutrality argument did it for competitive reasons."

Seidenberg continued, "their view was anything that Verizon, or AT&T, or any of the carriers did was an encroachment on the software business. So the best thing is to come up with a strategy that defines "network" and segments it away from software, and therefore you create a whole argument around Net neutrality."

Paramount Pictures and Seagate have teamed up to pre-load certain films on external HDDs, a first of its kind deal.

Buyers of the new FreeAgent Go 500GB HDD will get 21 movies pre-loaded, although only one will be free, the new Star Trek. The other 20 will be loaded, but you cannot watch unless you buy a passcode for anywhere between $10 and $15 USD.

The movies will only work on Windows-compatible computers, adds Seagate.

The popular burning software Nero Burning ROM has been updated to version 10. The new version is now available in a bundle with Nero Vision Xtra and Nero BackItUp & Burn. The software package containing the trio is called Nero Multimedia Suite 10.

The bundle makes the software even more compelling and comprehensive with video editing and authoring software Vision Xtra and backup tool BackItUp & Burn. Nero Multimedia Suite 10 is available for a free 15-day trial from our software section. Currently there is no option for downloading the trial versions of the new programs separately.

Unfortunately Nero hasn't released the changelogs so we don't know what kind of updates or new features the Nero Multimedia Suite 10 offers. However, if you want to try it out click the link below.

Download Nero Multimedia Suite 10

It appears that in the iPhone 4.0 OS Apple has decided to remove references to "Google" in the Safari browser, changing the auto-complete button from "Google" to "Search," despite the fact that it will still use the Google search engine.

The move has started the rumor mill, with some reporting that Apple is set to change over to Bing as a default search engine, as a way to get back at Google for encroaching on Apple's smartphone territory with the launch of Android.

The tech giants are also now competing in the mobile ad market, with Apple starting iAd as a way to rival Google's potential purchase of mobile ad giant AdMob.

Pic via Electronista:

Nokia has announced it has purchased the location services vendor MetaCarta, adding that it will use the company's service "in the area of local search in location and other services."

MetaCarta has Geosearch technology that can find content, data and information about a certain area and then "present it in a single view and its Geotag technology can be used to find geographic references in various types of content, which then can be used in other applications."

BusinessWeek gives an example of the service by saying that the "NewsMap" app searches a news article, extracts the places mentioned in the article and then can overlay that area on a digital map.

Nokia recently purchased Novarra, a mobile browsing company.

GE has launched a new lightbulb this week, one that uses LED technology instead of compact fluorescents and that has a life expectancy of 17 years. The catch? The bulb costs $50 USD.

The new bulb uses only 9 watts and "provides a 77% energy savings" while lasting up to 25 times longer than a current 40-watt CFL (compact fluorescent).

The bulb is dubbed the GE Energy Smart LED Bulb, and will work in any normal incandescent socket.

The U.S. government recently passed new lighting efficiency standards, meaning 100-watt incandescent bulbs will soon be phased out (starting in 2012), with 75-watt bulbs getting phased out in 2013, and 60 and 40-watt bulbs getting the boot in 2014.

Although set for launch next week, it appears Microsoft has jumped the gun and begun selling the 64GB model of the Zune HD early.

The model sells for $349 USD, which is a $50 discount from the comparable iPod Touch model.

Additionally, Microsoft has dropped the price of smaller capacity models, with the 16GB model dropping to an MSRP of $200 and the 32GB model to $270. Of course, Amazon has the players for much cheaper, ($170 for the 16GB for example) but seeing the MSRP drop is a good start for other e-tailers.

Check it here: Zune HD 64GB model

Crackberry has got the rumor mill in full spin today by saying that RIM could possibly be developing a BlackBerry tablet, and is already ordering 8.9-inch displays.

Says the report: "The source (of the rumors) is from a research firm that specializes in component supply chain information - and the company sent out a brief report this week touting "RIMM to Launch Own Tablet in Late 2010" which got the industry insiders buzzing. Three sources have confirmed that RIM has placed an order with supplier Hon Hai for 8.9" displays for use in a tablet."

If true, the move would be a stark contrast from RIM's old position on tablets. Just a few months ago CEO Mike Lazaridis said this about tablets: "I don't see the benefits of a tablet over a notebook... A lot of technology falls in the middle."

The report says the more likely use of the 8.9-inch displays will be for in-car touchscreen systems, especially given the company's recent acquisition of QNX Software, the "leading provider of superior realtime operating system (RTOS) software, development tools, and services for embedded design."

The Mexican government, in an effort to fight crime, has been urging residents to register their mobile phones and identities, however it appears that over 30 million line still have not and those will likely be shut down in the coming weeks.

The law was passed in 2009 "to stop criminals from using cellphones for extortion and to negotiate ransoms in kidnappings," says Reuters.

Critics of the law have called it ineffective, as criminals will now be more likely to pay off poor citizens to register the phones under their names.

America Movil, which controls 70 percent of the Mexican market, will lose about $10 million USD in revenue daily if those 30 million unregisterd lines are shutdown. The company has been trying to get an extension on the deadline for registering.

Microsoft is set to officially reveal their new mobile phone series on April 12th during a media event, introducing the phones that have been developed under the working title "Pink."

The "Pink" phones will feature social networking tools, and will be aimed at teens.

Today, one of the phones, dubbed "Turtle" by the media for its rounded shape, has been "seen in the wild."

The video clip is short and it's hard to see much, but it certainly does look like the MS Turtle mockup that sites have been floating around for months.

Wi-Lan, the Canadian technology licensing company, has sued Apple, HP, Dell and 16 other companies over a patent related to Bluetooth technology used in mobile phones.

The Canadian company says all 19 companies are infringing on their 1996 patent, which calls for a "method for frequency sharing and frequency punchout in frequency hopping communications network."

Wi-Lan is looking for monetary damages as well as "triple damage" for "willful" infringement.

None of the companies sued have commented yet.

There was a rant posted today by Lee Brimelow, a Platform Evangelist at Adobe focusing on the Flash, Flex, and AIR developer communities on The Flash Blog and it's all aimed at Apple.

Reads the blog post:

[Adobe would like me to make it clear that the opinions below are not the official views of the company and are entirely my own.]

By now you have surely heard about the new iPhone 4.0 SDK language that appears to make creating applications in any non-Apple-approved languages a violation of terms. Obviously Adobe is looking into this wording carefully so I will not comment any further until there is an official conclusion.

[Sentence regarding Apple's intentions redacted at request from Adobe]. This has nothing to do whatsoever with bringing the Flash player to Apple’s devices. That is a separate discussion entirely. What they are saying is that they won’t allow applications onto their marketplace solely because of what language was originally used to create them. This is a frightening move that has no rational defense other than wanting tyrannical control over developers and more importantly, wanting to use developers as pawns in their crusade against Adobe. This does not just affect Adobe but also other technologies like Unity3D.

According to Mozilla's official "Metrics" blog, Firefox has seen a gigantic improvement in stability over the past five months, with the launch of v3.6 being a big reason why, especially compared to v3.5.

To get their number, they used the "Crash Reports" data as well as the "Aggregate View of FF Crashes" data, which can be viewed at the end of the article.

Says Ken Kovash: "As mentioned previously, improving Firefox stability was a top level objective of the Mozilla community during the last few months of 2009. That effort was led by a variety of folks across a wide breath of the community… people who saw the many complaints about crashes, collected the data, figured out what was causing the most pain, addressed those issues (sometimes in code, sometimes by working with partners) and saw product improvements."

Well done.