Latest news

According to the most recent NetMarketShare figures, Windows XP remains relevant in the global market share in the operating system world.

Window 7 remained the leader, at 44.55 percent, followed closely by the ancient Windows XP at 38.99 percent.

Microsoft is killing support for Windows XP SP3 in April, 2014, meaning there will be no more tech support, no more hotfixes and no more security updates. Effectively, after 13 years, Microsoft is killing off the operating system. That should eventually lead to an exodus towards Windows 7 and Windows 8, but for now the OS remains incredibly relevant despite being outdated.

Windows 8 is now up to 2.67 percent share, growing just half a percentage point from January. Windows Vista remains with a 5.17 percent share, and Apple's Mac OS X 10.8 has 2.61 percent share, with older Mac operating systems amounting to another 4 percent.

Seagate has announced today that it will cease production of 7200RPM mobile hard drives later this year.

The company will continue to offer slower 5400RPM drives for "value" notebooks and will also continue creating its solid-state hybrid drives (SSHDs).

"We are going stop building our notebook 7200rpm hard disk drives at the end of 2013," added David Burks, director of marketing and product management at Seagate Technology.

Although the company is ceasing production, the company says there will be sufficient inventory for customers who still require such drives for the time being.

Hulu partners Disney and News Corp. have begun mulling the future the online video streaming service, with the possibility of one company buying the other's stake.

Other ideas being thrown around include selling to outside firms or just keeping their current stakes.

Disney and News Corp. appear to have different views on what to focus on. Disney would like to push the ad-based free service while News Corp., unsurprisingly, would like to focus on the $8 per month Hulu Plus premium package that include back catalogs of nearly all shows.

Combined, the company's own two-thirds of Hulu, with NBCU owning the rest. However, NBCU has no decision-making rights due to regulations put in place after Comcast purchased the content company.

Hulu brought in $700 million in revenue in 2012.

Evernote, the popular multi-platform online note-taking service has announced this weekend that following an attack by hackers they have performed a global password reset for all 50 million account holders.

Reads the company's post:

"Operations & Security team has discovered and blocked suspicious activity on the Evernote network that appears to have been a coordinated attempt to access secure areas of the Evernote Service.

As a precaution to protect your data, we have decided to implement a password reset.

In our security investigation, we have found no evidence that any of the content you store in Evernote was accessed, changed or lost. We also have no evidence that any payment information for Evernote Premium or Evernote Business customers was accessed.

The investigation has shown, however, that the individual(s) responsible were able to gain access to Evernote user information, which includes usernames, email addresses associated with Evernote accounts and encrypted passwords. Even though this information was accessed, the passwords stored by Evernote are protected by one-way encryption. (In technical terms, they are hashed and salted.)"

Next time you log in to Evernote, you will be asked to reset your password.

Netflix has announced this week that it has purchased exclusive rights to stream the blockbuster "The Hunger Games."

The movie will be available in the UK and Ireland beginning today and later in the month in the U.S.

For the time being, Netflix will be the only subscription-based streaming service to offer the film, beating out rivals like Redbox and Amazon.

"We are thrilled to be the exclusive online home for The Hunger Games in the UK and Ireland," noted Ted Sarandos, Netflix Chief Content Officer. "Since launching in the UK and Ireland in January 2012, we have continued to expand our offering of great movies and TV programmes, and we think our members are going to love the latest addition to the service."

Netflix and Amazon have upped their battles in recent months, most notably in the UK, where Amazon owns established rival LoveFilm.

BlackBerry has announced it is rolling out its first firmware update for the new BB10 operating system.

The update will improve usability issues relating to apps, the camera, the calendar, contacts, browser and also battery life.

Since its launch last month, most early adopters have complained about the app performance and its general bugginess. Most of the available apps are ports from Android and they tend to crash regularly.

For the update, BlackBerry has "improved performance for 3rd party applications," which should at least lead to an improvement in lag time.

The camera app was also seeing poor performance in low-light situations, which should be improved moving forward. The browser can now handle video playback better, and the BlackBerry Hub, contact and calenders apps have all been improved to fix outstanding bugs.

Most importantly, BlackBerry Z10 users have been complaining about battery life, which was clocking in at just 7 hours of heavy use. The update should boost that to 9 hours.

Yahoo has announced it will be retiring a number of products as CEO Marissa Mayer moves to streamline the company.

Most of the products being axed are related to their old school online presence.

The full list:

Yahoo! Message Boards website
Yahoo! app for BlackBerry
Yahoo! Avatars
Yahoo! Updates API
Yahoo! Sports IQ
Yahoo! App Search
Yahoo! Clues (beta)
Yahoo! Updates API

Apple must pay patent holding firm VirnetX over $368 million following their lawsuit loss.

This week, a U.S. District Court upheld a previous decision against Apple. Apple was found guilty of infringing patents that related to "networking technology utilized in its FaceTime video chat service."

Additionally, Apple will have to pay VirnetX $330,000 per day until the case is settled, meaning Apple will likely seek a royalty settlement in the very near future.

If no agreement is made between the companies, there could be additional damages levied against Apple. Such a royalty agreement must be approved by VirnetX, so they could potentially put a squeeze on Apple moving forward.

All Mac computers, the iPhone 5, the fourth-generation iPad, the iPad Mini and the latest iPod Touch all infringe on the patents.

P2i technology will protect your phone on "a molecular level."

Supposedly, the upcoming Nokia phone uses nano-coating allowing water to be repelled from the internal hardware.

The phone will keep all ports, such as the microUSB, headphone jack and potentially others, giving it a clear advantage over other similar devices that require vacuum caps and lids.

Nokia will partner with P2i for the water-resistant phone for launch later this year, although it is unclear when it will be released.

P2i has worked with Alcatel and Huawei in the past.

Rovio, the company behind the blockbuster 'Angry Birds' franchise, has announced it will be launching a new "Croods" game based on the movie by DreamWorks Animation.

The movie goes into wide release on the 22nd, and Rovio says the game will be released on March 14th.

Available for iOS and Android, the game will also be released with an exclusive short animated clip. The game will feature the Croods "breaking out of the Stone Age with the use of a new r-evolutionary tool: the IDEA!"

Check the game trailer:

Sprint has announced today that it will be the only major U.S. carrier to not offer BlackBerry's flagship Z10 model.

Instead, the carrier will offer the QWERTY keyboard-based Q10.

"We aren't saying there's anything different about our customers," says Mark Elliott, s Sprint spokesperson. "We think our customers will be happy with the qwerty keyboard and touch screen on the Q10."

T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T have all announced they will offer the touchscreen Z10, and BlackBerry itself says they expect the Z10 to outsell the Q10 by a 3-to-1 margin.

So far, the Z10 has sold well where it has been available, such as Canada and the UK. The Z10 will go on sale in March, and the Q10 in April.

Apple has announced today that its iTunes U catalog has seen one billion downloads.

The catalog, full of thousands of free lectures, is available around the globe.

iTunes U is currently available in 30 countries and features lectures from 1200 universities and colleges along with another 1200 k-12 schools.

A few of the other milestones stated by Apple include there being "2,500 public courses in use and "thousands" of private courses with some courses having 250,000 people enrolled in them.

"It's inspiring to see what educators and students of all types are doing with iTunes U," said Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. "With the incredible content offered on iTunes U, students can learn like never before―there are now iTunes U courses with more than 250,000 students enrolled in them, which is a phenomenal shift in the way we teach and learn."

Kickstarter superstar OUYA will begin shipping the console on March 28th to backers.

The company says the "parts are in the factory and assembly lines are buzzing. We'll gradually ramp up production as we make sure things are working."

A full launch is set for June, when the console goes on sale in stores including Target, Best Buy, Amazon and GameStop.

Additionally, the company introduced Kellee Santiago to their team. Says OUYA: "We've been looking for someone to lead our outreach to developers, someone who really "gets" how developers work, someone who can help devs bring their most creative, exciting work to OUYA."

Santiago is the co-founder of thatgamecompany, the developer behind the extremely popular (and beautiful) Flow, Flower and Journey for the PS3.

The UK High Court has ruled today that BSkyB, BT, Virgin Media, EE, Talk Talk and O2 must block access to three large file sharing websites.

Per the ruling, the ISPs must now "take measures to block or at least impede access by their customers" to Kickass Torrents, H33T and Fenopy.

Between the six ISPs, 94 percent of the UK broadband market will be covered, effectively killing the sites in the nations.

The case was brought to the court by the major record labels, and was also supported by the Motion Picture Association (MPA).

Each of the torrent sites are major players, with Kickass ranking in the top 100 most trafficked sites in the world by most counts.

Unlike its Windows 7 devices which are now dead, Microsoft has confirmed that Windows Phone 8 device buyers will be able to upgrade to the next version of the operating system, codename Blue.

Greg Sullivan, a senior marketing manager at Microsoft, confirmed the fact during this week's MWC 2013, in which Microsoft was notably absent. "We're not going to do this thing where we announce the next version [of Windows Phone] months and months before it's available. Over the course of the next several months, I wouldn't be surprised to see some exciting new devices and more interoperability before we start talking about what [opeating system] is next."

Windows Phone 7 owners were not able to upgrade to Windows Phone 8 due to hardware restrictions, and are now stuck on a WP 7.8, a hybrid between Windows 7 and Windows 8's better features.

As the exec says, "Windows Phone 8 can evolve. We have an architecture that enables portability and is fundamentally hardware independent. As the market evolves and customer requirements demand it, we'll evaluate options."