Google has launched a new consumer service offering up to 16TB (terabytes) of storage for photos and other online content.

Dubbed Google Drive, the service goes head to head with rival cloud services such as Dropbox and Microsoft's SkyDrive.

It offers 5GB (gigabytes) of storage for free. People pay on a rising scale for more space.

Microsoft's next operating system will come in just three different flavours, the company has announced.

For those with Intel-compatible machines, the OS will be available in two versions - Windows 8 and Windows 8 Pro.

And for those with devices, largely tablets, powered by ARM-designed chips there will be a Windows RT version.

Microsoft wants to simplify how it markets Windows 8, which is expected to launch in autumn 2012.

The complex flavours of past Windows - from basic to home, premium to ultimate - have become something of a joke among tech experts.

Facebook releases its own Desktop messenger. You can now chat from your desktop like any other messenger. Like Yahoo! Messenger, MSN Messenger or Google Talk, you can now chat with your friends without having to open your web browser. You just need account on Facebook to avail this great tool.

Ad-Aware is a name that many longtime Windows watchers will recognize, but that's about all that remains from previous versions as it gets a stern-to-stem overhaul.

The formal process of speeding up Hypertext Transfer Protocol is under way with proposals from Google, Microsoft, and others. There are differences -- but common ground, too.

PARIS--Engineers have begun taking the first big steps in overhauling Hypertext Transfer Protocol, a seminal standard at the most foundational level of the Web.

At a meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) here yesterday, the working group overseeing HTTP formally opened a dicussion about how to make the technology faster. That discussion included presentations about four specific proposals for HTTP 2.0, including SPDY, developed at Google and already used in the real world, and HTTP Speed+Mobility, developed at Microsoft and revealed Wednesday.

Frequent VLC user? You're missing out if you haven't memorized these keyboard shortcuts yet.

If you're like me, you enjoy doing things faster. Using keyboard shortcuts can help you spend less time looking for buttons or menus, and more time enjoying music and videos. So take a moment to become a more efficient by reading over these VLC shortcuts:

Google is preparing to open an online store that will sell tablets directly to consumers, according to reports.

The store will sell Google-branded tablets as well as models made by Samsung and Asus, claims the Wall Street Journal.

It is being widely seen as an attempt to win back market share from Apple, which dominates the tablet sector.

Number of domain names

There are two categories of top-level domain names, or TLDs. Generic TLDs (gTLDs), of which there currently are 22, include the globally popular .COM domain as well as less well-used domains such as .ORG, .NET, .INFO, .BIZ, .MOBI, and a handful of others. Country code TLDs (ccTLDs) use the two-letter code developed by the International Organisation for Standardization (ISO) to specify a TLD for each ISO-recognized country and dependent territory worldwide. For example, Canada's ccTLD is .CA while Australia's is .AU.

By the midpoint of 2011, there were slightly more than 214 million domain names registered globally. Of these, nearly 130 million, or 61 per cent, were gTLDs while slightly fewer than 84 million, or 39 per cent, were ccTLDs.

Say goodbye to the Windows start button. Microsoft has gotten rid of it from the latest build of Windows 8.

Hitting the Web over the weekend, screenshots of the new Windows 8 build display the "super bar," but without the start button orb on the left, according to The Verge. Build 8220 will be the final version released before the beta, now known as the Consumer Preview, debuts before the end of the month.

Until its untimely (or timely) death, the Windows 8 start button located in the Metro UI offered access to the search, share, devices, and settings panels. The Windows start button in the desktop simply returned you to the Metro UI.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation's Liz Upton over at the Raspberry Pi site discloses that after some delays, the first production run will be finished in China on February 20 and immediately shipped to the U.K., where it should be available for purchase from the Web site by the end of the month.

Facebook and Google say they have complied with an Indian court directive and removed "objectionable" material.

They are among 21 web firms, including Yahoo and Orkut, facing a civil suit in Delhi accusing them of hosting material that may cause communal unrest.

A criminal case of similar allegations is due to be heard next month.

Judges have threatened to block sites that fail to crack down on offensive content, but many firms say it is impossible to pre-filter material.