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Britain's Girl Guide Association is calling for all Photoshopped and airbrushed images in the media to be clearly labelled.

Girlguiding UK is adamant that girls are increasingly feeling unnecessarily pressured to look like the airbrushed pictures of celebrities that surround them every day.

Head Guide Liz Burnley says that the ubiquitous nature of such Photoshopped pictures in celebrity magazines presents young girls with "unobtainable ideals" and is calling on the government to regulate the use of such pictures with compulsory labelling.

Surgery and weight-loss pressures

A recent Girlguiding poll of 1,109 girls revealed that a shocking 50 per cent of those girls aged 16 to 21 have considered having surgery to enhance their looks, while 42 per cent of 11 to 16-year-olds admitted that they closely watch what they eat.

"We know how profoundly they feel the pressure to conform to a particular body image and how badly they can be affected by these unobtainable ideals," said Ms Burnley.

"We are proud to support the calls of our members who believe that it is time that the prime minister addressed their concerns and acted in the interests of girls and young women across the country."

Susan Ringwood of the eating disorder charity Beat is working with Girlguiding UK on the campaign. Commenting on the influence of airbrushed magazine pictures, Ringwood noted:

"Young people with eating disorders tell us that being surrounded everyday by pictures of unnaturally 'perfect' bodies makes their own recovery so much more difficult to achieve.

"We know the difference it would make to all young people's self-esteem and body confidence if they could be sure which of the images they see are natural and true to life."

Joi Ito wants to revolutionise the internet. His vision is of a world unperturbed by a complicated, costly and outdated copyright system, where everybody can collaborate and share content on the web as they wish.

He doesn't want to get rid of copyright, he just wants you to be able to adapt it to your needs. He wants to build a sharing economy.

Ito is the CEO of Creative Commons, the nonprofit organisation that's creating and overseeing the use of free-of-charge licences and tools to ensure content creators can easily mark how they'd like their works to be used online.

Its collaboration with the World Wide Web Consortium could have a significant impact on how we deal with rights on the web: it could automate the licensing and make it machine-readable. "We work very closely with the W3C to create RDFa, which stands for Resource Description Framework in attributes," Ito explains.

"It allows you to put Creative Commons Rights Expression Language, or ccREL, inside of HTML and XML, so anyone can mark each object with the copyright and other attributes associated with the object directly in the markup. It will help greatly in searching for open content, doing proper attribution, allowing people to copy and paste stuff directly from the web and making it easier for software to keep the rights metadata attached.

"Our hope is that it will be widely adopted by people who make services, tools and content for the web. For web design this is really important. You used to have to put Creative Commons in the comments page, which is really stupid. Now you can wrap each object with the rights, and we'd love it if web designers started using valid RDFa to express the licences."

Already Slideshare is using RDFa to express its Creative Commons licences, as does the Creative Commons License Generator, but Ito stresses that RDFa can be used to express more than just copyright.

And so other key adoptors include Facebook (which uses RDFa for its new Open Graph protocol), Google, Tesco, Drupal and the White House, which has announced plans to make increasing use of RDFa (check out rdfa.info, wiki.creativecommons.org/RDFa and the RDFa primer at www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-rdfa-primer). However, it's still a recommendation and there's no news on when it will be included in the spec for HTML5.

Ben Adida, chair of the RDFa Task Force at the W3C, claims that "for all practical purposes, RDFa is already part of HTML5" and that it "probably doesn't matter" that the theoretical discussion around which spec it's included in, core HTML5 or an add-on, is still up in the air. However, HTML5 editor Ian Hickson recently admitted that RDFa still seems to have "some pretty serious problems".

Be interoperable

Today, about 350million pieces of content are licensed under Creative Commons in more than 50 jurisdictions. The biggest part, over 135million images, is taken up by Flickr. Other high profile users of Creative Commons licences include the White House, Nine Inch Nails and Al-Jazeera, which has put all of its Gaza footage under Attribution only. And last year Wikipedia migrated all its content over to a Share Alike licence.

"Wikipedia existed before Creative Commons," Ito says, "and they were using the GNU Free Documentation licence from the Free Software Foundation, which wasn't perfect for wikis because it's meant for printed books.

"The biggest problem was that it didn't have interoperability, so you couldn't mix it with Creative Commons Share Alike and then relicense it, because both require relicensing under their own licence. So it took about four to five years, and we got the Free Software Foundation to agree a time limited window, where wiki projects could convert from GFDL to Creative Commons. And then there was a board vote, and then a whole community vote at Wikipedia to decide whether they should switch. It took a very long time!"

In the past Ito had to convince people to use Creative Commons licences, but the opposition he previously experienced is waning.

"There are many new businesses using Creative Commons and for some it's a central part of their business model. We're not 'anti-business'. Like the internet, Creative Commons creates interoperability and lowers friction.

"This causes some businesses or business models to become less relevant. This is true for just about any technology and important social advance. I believe that business will overcome its own opposition to Creative Commons or that business will perish."

The biggest challenge now is to get people to use Creative Commons licences correctly. "It's like writing valid HTML – most people can't do it," says Ito. "It's important for us to try to get key players like the White House to use Creative Commons and RDFa in a very valid form.

"We're really trying to focus on being an infrastructure player and on making sure that the legal and technical stuff works. Because 99 per cent interoperable is like zero! We need to make sure everything is precise so we spend less time advocating and more time executing. I'd like Creative Commons to become so standard that everybody uses it and we're just the custodian to make sure it doesn't fail."

Ito believes the potential of the non-profit organisation for business, society and the environment is massive.

"Every layer – Ethernet, TCP and World Wide Web – created an explosion of innovation," he enthuses. "It created start-ups and non-profits and all kinds of socially beneficial disruption. I think that Creative Commons will also mark an explosion of innovation that will happen on the content level. As an investor, for instance, I can't invest in many of the music companies because of the risk of copyright litigation. And there are a lot of really interesting sharing business models that just can't happen because Creative Commons isn't widely adopted yet. Once it is, there is a whole bunch of neat things that can happen."

You're inclined to believe Ito. He's one of the most influential people on the web. His LinkedIn page lists no less than 35 jobs and involvements. One of the companies he's most passionate about is music streaming venture thesixtyone.

"It's looking at music from the perspective of the fans and independent musicians, not of the distributor or the record label like most other music sites," Ito says. "This is really a place where the musicians participate and interact with the fans."

Getting funding

For a prolific investor like Ito it must be frustrating having to go around and beg for Creative Commons funding. The organisation still has no real business model.

"We kicked around ideas like citations," says Ito, "which is a big problem for Wikipedia, for instance. People take a picture from Flickr, post it and then the original photographer will change the licence and tell Wikipedia to take it down. Creative Commons licences are perpetual – we don't want people to change the licence. It's important to be able to take a snapshot and say 'This content was available under this licence on this day'.

"Things like that may have value and may be something that we would build a business around, but we're still thinking about it. It would be great to have a revenue stream, because personally going around and doing fundraising every year is a lot of work.

"On the other hand, we always want to make our licences available for free and have the widest adoption possible. There is an inherent difficulty in coming up with a business model when you're trying to give everything away."

Ito continues to travel the world to talk about open innovation. One of Creative Commons' most recent tools, CC0, enables a copyright holder to waive all their rights, including attribution. It's as close to public domain as possible and already having a big effect on how science and education work.

If Ito's vision becomes reality, the culture of sharing made possible by Web 2.0 was just the first step.

Microsoft has extended the deadline for Windows 7 users who want to downgrade to Windows XP until 2020.

The software giant has taken the decision to extend beyond its original date in order to 'maintain consistency' - but essentially it's a move to ease any fears of the 'unprecedented' number of businesses that are looking to Windows 7.

"To support our customers' unprecedented move' to migrate their PC environment to Windows 7, we have decided to extend downgrade rights to Windows XP Professional beyond the previously planned end date at Windows 7 SP1," said Microsoft.

Consistency

"This will help maintain consistency for downgrade rights throughout the Windows 7 lifecycle," the statement added.

"As a result, the OEM versions of Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Ultimate will continue to include downgrade rights to the similar versions of Windows Vista or Windows XP Professional."

Microsoft announced yesterday that the public beta version of Windows 7 SP1 was available.

An email from a Google engineer has revealed that the company is bringing in Chromoting for Chrome OS – essentially a remote desktop so you can use more traditional software programs.

With Chrome OS due to make an appearance before the end of the year, the excitement is building over Google's operating system which is essentially built around a browser.

But fears over programs that simply do not practically run in the cloud may be allayed somewhat by the revelation that Chromoting will allow you to run 'legacy PC applications right within the browser'.

Chromoting the OS

The Register has found an email by Google software engineer Gary Kačmarčík that outlines the Chromoting functionality.

"We're adding new capabilities all the time," the email reads.

"With this functionality, Chrome OS will not only be [a] great platform for running modern web apps, but will also enable you to access legacy PC applications right within the browser."

Google is working hard to iron out the problems with the concept of a browser-led operating system, with simple tasks like printing still causing consternation despite the announcement of Google Print Cloud.

When he joined Microsoft, Microsoft's chief software architect Ray Ozzie got a chance to take a step back and look at the technology industry.

What he saw was that the PC wasn't the centre of the computing universe any more – but like Nvidia's Jen-Hsun Huang, he told the Future in Review conference this week that he doesn't think it's going away any time soon either - he also had words to say about the cloud, online privacy, HTML 5 and Apple.

"The world that I see panning out is one where individuals don't shift from 'I'm using exclusively this one thing called a PC as a Swiss army knife for everything I do' to using a different Swiss army knife. The beauty of what's going on in devices is you can imagine a device.

"Previously you could imagine software and build it but hardware was very hard and took a long time to build. Now you can imagine end-to-end device services.

"So there's probably a screen in the car that federates with the phone when you bring it into the car. Will we have a device with us that's always on? Yes. We call it a phone but it's a multi-purpose device.

"Will we also carry something of a larger form factor that we can quickly type on? For many of us, the answer is yes." And what will it look like? "The clamshell style of device is a very useful thing and I think it will be with us for ever. I think there is a role for the desktop too…"

Apple and HTML 5

The common theme isn't just that these are online services; it's that they're services that bridge online, PC and often mobile access. That fluidity is key to his vision (and it's why he predicts we'll all have multiple devices).

"We're heading to a world where many devices are more appliance-like; you don't have to think about what you're going to lose if you drop it. If you prefer a different form factor or a different colour you can just buy it and start using it without worrying about how I get my stuff here from there."

While he says he has "tremendous respect" for what Apple is doing he calls it "a very device-focused play and a closed system" and he thinks open systems like HTML 5 will offer more for users and developers.

"It depends on how far you step back and blur your eyes. Everyone has kind of agreed that even though Apple has its API set when you're writing an app, when you step back you're don't find too many people arguing that for client developer HTML ++++, HTML 5, some future HTML that goes further towards storage isn't the way.

"Most people agree that's direction we're headed. But Apple would still rather have you code in different ways for the device and for HTML in the browser." Doesn't that give Google a big advantage?

"Google says HTML is the answer for both the browser and the device and it doesn't really enhance the device story as much." And where does Microsoft stand on the Flash issue? "Adobe has said it will be doing developer tools for that future world," he comments diplomatically.

Office, Docs and better productivity

Ozzie's pet projects at Microsoft include the Azure cloud service and the social computing tools like the Spindex social aggregator, the Outlook Social Connector and Facebook Docs (which all come out of the new Fuse Labs Microsoft site near his home town of Boston).

Hands on: Microsoft Docs review

Office is a good example of that, because it's not just PC software any more. "What Office is, is we're selling productivity. It's not so much the software on one PC; we're selling the notion of productivity.In a world of many devices where my goal is to do productivity, what is therole of the server, of the service, of the mobile, the PC and so on? Each has a very unique role.

"On the PC many people are doing large documents and spreadsheets. It's hard to argue against the use of local memory, local computing and a big screen is the best editing environment you can possibly get. That's why people do interactive games on the PC. You want to take advantage of all that productivity in front of you."

Sharing and location-based services

But that's not enough for documents any more. The PC is a very personal thing but most documents made are for sharing. The internet is about sharing and the browser-based complement to the PC is the most obvious place to share those documents or to co edit them.

"And when you have a mobile phone it can be always on, it can notify you of something, it can notify others of your location…it's got a camera so you can take a photo and add it to the scenario."

So far, he agrees these services are piecemeal rather than seamless and there are still a lot of pieces still needed to make that work. In fact, he suggests the question of privacy is as important as the technology involved.

"Identity and synchronisation and state management and policy management are a collection of services that I think are going to be core. But there are some very tricky things in balancing the federation of that between enterprise and personal or between the different facets of your life.

Privacy and security

"The biggest industry-wide point of controversy right now is how independent of a service that is.There are some very significant privacy issues related to that. At one extreme I think some people would like a service that they can count on but that they know that no one is mining the data in that service for marketing.

"We aren't there yet; the identity systems for enterprise work but they're disconnected from everything else and the consumer services that are out there gaining tractions are increasingly under privacy scrutiny."

Obviously one of those services under scrutiny is Facebook (which Microsoft has an investment in) but he hints at issues for search engines like Google too.

"We as a society have never had to deal with privacy issues at the scale we're dealing with right now. Talking more about search; when you have business models that are fundamentally based on matching intent, on understanding what the user really wants, on understanding the user better than the user understands themselves and matching them with advertisers and making money onthat brokering, it's very difficult to cope with…"

With only a hint of irony, he says "Facebook is doing us all a favour by pushing the edge and causing the conversations to be very broad."

Should Microsoft be moving faster in mobile, in browsers, in the cloud, into this future world? "We're very impatient in the technology industry," Ozzie points out. "We get very enamoured with the next shiny object. Let's get real here. How many years have any of these things actually been out? How many years have we all been using these pocket internet companions?

"It's actually been a relatively small number of years. We haven't even seen the TV get lit up yet as a communication device; we haven't seen all the screens on the wallbeing lit up as devices. Every single one of these is going to get lit up as a similar kind of device."

Adobe's Creative Suite 5 has gone on sale, with the eagerly anticipated design and development software going to set you back at least £1,000.

It's been a miserable week for Adobe, with Apple's Steve Jobs issuing a devastating attack on the company's Flash software, but the arrival of its flagship package of some of the most familiar names in software should gee its employees up.

CS5 has already hit the headlines with its innovative additions to the likes of Photoshop, Flash and InDesig, including the 'content-aware fill' that was so effective in demos that it was labelled a hoax.

Early reaction

"We've seen from early customer reaction that Creative Suite 5 continues to inspire the design and developer world by combining time-saving workflow and productivity features with astonishing new capabilities, such as Content-Aware Fill in Photoshop CS5, that really push the creative envelope," said John Loiacono, senior vice president of Creative Solutions at Adobe.

"Whatever the media, CS5 is ensuring that publishers and creatives can deliver stand-out work and build great businesses around their unique digital assets and content."

But, if you want to take advantage of the new features, you may need to dig deep, it's £1,032 for CS5 Design Standard, £1,509 for Design Premium, £1,429 for CS5 Web Premium, £1,509 for CS5 Production Premium, £1,032 for CS5 Design Standard and £2,303 for Master Collection CS5, although upgrade pricing, volume licensing and education discounts are available.

Steve Ballmer gave students in Brazil a sneak peak of the new Windows Live Messenger service today and while TechRadar didn't exactly have the full Brazilian treatment, we were whisked to Microsoft's offices in London to be given the lowdown on just what to expect from the new Messenger service.

This seems to be one of the biggest overhauls of the messaging service yet and one which roots Messenger firmly in both the cloud and on to PCs.

It is also the most socially aware Messenger, with Microsoft hoping you will use it as the main place for all your social-networking needs.

So read on to find out just what will be available in the latest iteration of Messenger which has a UK release date - in beta - this Summer.

1 It will work seamlessly with Windows 7

This is a Messenger very much aimed at users of the latest Windows OS – Windows 7. The new Messenger won't support XP and although it will be Vista compatible, you will find that it works best with Window 7 as it utilises the OS' taskbar.

Messenger will be applied straight to the taskbar, so you will have easy access to the client. You will also be able to instantly access your favourites list from here, making the Messenger icon a thing of the past.

2 Two modes available

If you are a traditionalist, you will be pleased to hear that Microsoft hasn't tinkered with the look of Messenger too much. In fact, at first glance, the layout is very similar as the compact version used today. There is another option, however and that is to see Messenger as a tabbed version (see below). Microsoft is offering up both options so as not to rock the boat too much.

3 Tabbed conversations

We've all been accustomed with tabs – Google uses them to great effect on its Chrome browser. Microsoft has taken this on board and added tabbed conversations to Messenger. This nicely clears up the clutter of windows which happens when you speak to multiple people on IM. We'll have to try it out to see if it's actually as good as it sounds, but this could well be a killer feature for Messenger.

4 More personalisation and sharing

Messenger can now be more personalised than ever. Not only can you share photos and add status updates – which you could do before – you can now add URLs into your update which will show a snippet of the web page you are linking too. You can also add whatever social networks you want into Messenger, so you can cater the landing page to how you want it to look, with what content you want to see. You can also share your status updates with all your social networks.

5 Search integration

This is one of the more intriguing aspects of Messenger. If you are, say, talking about a band then Messenger will add a dynamic link to the name, which means you can click it to see more about the band you are talking about. The link will take you tovBing but you will be able to search within the Messenger window. Nice to see Microsoft utilising its other assets!

6 HD video recording

While Messenger has had video chat for a while, Microsoft has announced that it will be compatible with HD video chat. This does mean you will have to have an HD webcam for it to work, but it's great to see hi-def on board. You will also be able to chat in real time with the video. You can also play games and share games in real time too.

7 Better photo and video sharing

Microsoft wants Messenger to be the place for viewing and sharing photographs. To tempt you away from the likes of Flickr and Facebook, Windows Live Messenger will be able to integrate all your images from Windows Live, Facebook and whichever site you want and will let you share them with those who are on your Messenger list. You can also add YouTube links to the service which will pop up into the Messenger window and you can watch videos together with the person/people you are speaking to.

8 Introducing Messenger Connect

Messenger Connect is essentially an API that allows websites to integrate Messenger, so you can chat and share with your Messenger friends on (potentially) any website. This means friends can from different websites within Messenger so they don't have to be on loads of networks. That's right, Microsoft is letting other sites scale the walls of its garden!

9 Messenger for iPhone and Windows Mobile

It's official, Messenger will be available on the iPhone this summer. It will also be available on Windows Phones and, well, that's it for the moment. It seems that the likes of Android and BlackBerry aren't getting a look-in for the new Messenger app. That doesn't mean that they won't be available in the future though.

Language is a tricky thing. Our word 'free' exists in old English, and means something not in bondage or under control – a freed slave, free speech.

And by 1382 John Wycliffe's English translation of the Bible says: "forsoth where is the spirit of God, there is liberte", showing that we had spotted and stolen 'liber' from Latin, also meaning 'without restraint'.

So, we certainly weren't short of words to describe freedom, and yet things were destined to go wrong.

In the 16th century 'free of cost' collapsed into 'free', making 'free' do the job of two rather important meanings: without cost, and without restraint. So when we talk about free software, what do we mean?

The phrase 'Free Software' is used by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) in its older meaning: it's software that comes with no restrictions for you to modify it and distribute it.

The FSF defines these freedoms as: the freedom to run the program for any purpose, commercial or otherwise; the freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do something else the freedom to redistribute copies; the freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements.

That much makes sense: we share our software and everyone benefits. But it does confuse many people because you are quite within your rights to sell that software if you want it – Free Software can have a non-free price tag.

This is made even more confusing because many people are familiar with the term 'freeware', which means pretty much exactly the opposite of Free Software – you can't modify it or charge for it!

In 1998, with the hope of clearing up this confusion, a group of well-known hackers gathered in Palo Alto, California, to create a new term to describe the release of the Netscape Navigator code.

That term – Open Source – was supposed to remove the ambiguities of 'Free Software', but it actually made things worse: the FSF insists that Open Source does more harm than good by focusing on the mere availability source code rather than important user freedoms.

This makes a great deal of sense: I program for Linux, and I'm not content with simply being able to read your source – if it doesn't come with the four freedoms, I don't want it.

Combining the two

One ugly, but workable, solution is to put the names together. So, Free Software plus Open Source software becomes FOSS: Free/Open Source Software. Other people clarify 'Free' to mean 'liberty' by using the French word 'libre', making Free/Libre/Open Source software, or FLOSS.

Sadly, no one knows what 'FLOSS' actually means, so you end up not just explaining the acronym, but also explaining what Free Software and Open Source is, as well as translating a word from a foreign language.

In short, it's not designed to solve the naming problem, just to pacify folks who spend far too much time arguing over naming. And so, the two fight on. And, sadly, fight they do: someone wrote in to our letters page last issue, saying:

"The 'open source' tag is a determined effort to relegate 'free software' to the back ranks to allow Linux to develop commercially", but I just don't think that's true. Free Software was never designed to stop commercial exploitation of software, as can be seen by the fact that Red Hat posted a revenue rise of 21% this year – that adds up to just under $200,000,000 in 2009.

However, it is true that open source does place a different emphasis on the benefits of our movement. Companies aren't always too interested in giving back to the community, but if you say: "Hey, you can make money from this," you usually get their attention. Of course, the Open Source definition comes with the same rights for modifying the source code – as the Open Source Initiative points out on its website:

"By constraining the licence to require free redistribution, we eliminate the temptation to throw away many long-term gains in order to make a few short-term sales dollars." In short, the Open Source movement takes a pragmatic view towards the freedom to modify software: it's great to have, but there are other things that average users care far more about.

One of the side effects of this is that many Linux users install closed-source drivers (such as for an Nvidia graphics card) or software (eg Adobe Flash Player), without thinking twice about freedom, and that doesn't sit well with the FSF.

Clashing philosophies

"The rhetoric of open source has convinced many businesses and individuals to use, and even develop, free software, which has extended our community – but only at the superficial, practical level… it brings many people into our community, but does not teach them to defend it."

RICHARD STALLMAN: Founder of the GNU project and the FSF, is a strong defender of the four software freedoms

That's from Richard Stallman's essay, Why Open Source misses the point of Free Software, and illustrates one of the downsides of the open source movement: if you want everyone to care about our free community, then couching the core beliefs in a pragmatic message may cause more harm than good.

This is where the real fighting starts. Have you ever met someone who always puts 'GNU/' before 'Linux'? Some people – even RMS himself – actually pronounce the /, giving "Guh-noo Slash Linux." This is a simple, voiced way of saying that the GNU project and all it stands for lie at the very core of Linux.

Not everyone agrees with this. Linux Format, for example, tries to sit in the middle by saying "GNU/Linux is abbreviated to Linux throughout for brevity" – it's right there in the small print on p108. Others, trying to make light of the situation, say they pronounce it "Linux" because the "GNU/" are silent letters. And then there are the truly belligerent among us, who make a point of over-emphasising "GNU Slash" and often adding "X11 Slash Gnome Slash Gimp Slash Frozen Bubble".

No one is denying that the GNU tools are pervasive – where would be without GCC? – but equally it's true that many people just don't care. As far as most people are concerned, the GNU project makes software. Very good software. Free software. But it's still just stuff to run on their computer – they aren't too concerned about the politics behind it all.

You say tomato

Richard Stallman is personally responsible for starting GCC. He also worked on GDB, Emacs and more, as well as putting in thousands of hours encouraging, supporting and building community groups around the world. So, I'm certainly not trying to ignore the past, or what Richard stands for, but I do believe that people shouldn't have to care about software freedom in order to use Linux.

If they see it as just another OS, that's fine with me. There's room enough for everyone in our community. The BSD licence says that everyone can take and use your code, as long as they give credit. The GPL licence says that everyone can take and use your code, as long as they give credit and share their own work under the same licence. Both help us build a free and open community.

You could spend hours arguing whether the BSD licence is 'more free' than the GPL, but it wouldn't change anything – we'd just be spinning our wheels while the real enemy, closed-source software, marches on.

Similarly, I think it's counter-productive to take a hardline view on open source and free software. If you think everyone should respect the founding principles of the FSF, that's awesome. If you want to say GNU Slash Linux, that's fine with me.

The point is that we shouldn't try to force our opinion on other people, because doing so is divisive, destructive and ultimately self-defeating. As George Gershwin put it, whether it's tomayto or tomahto, "if we ever part, then that might break my heart."

What we don't want – in fact, what we must actively avoid – is the formation of a real division in our community caused by arguing about philosophies. Yes, there are some small differences between the open source and free software movements, but we have far more in common than separating us, and the few philosophical differences can easily be put to one side so that we can accomplish our goal of giving freedom back to end users once and for all.

Do they need to understand that freedom? Do they need to want to fight for it? I don't think so, in the same way that not every citizen has to be a soldier to defend democracy.

So, here's the deal: thousands of coders have worked together to produce GPL, LGPL, BSD, MIT, Mozilla and Apache-licenced software, and you get to use as much of it as you want regardless of whether you say open source or free software, Linux or GNU/Linux.

However, I hope you can accept that some people choose to run on top of that some non-free software, because they don't take free software as seriously as you might. If you want to tell them about why Free Software is important, that's fine too – start a website to educate people. But you need to understand that people use their computers to Get Stuff Done.

COMPIZ DESKTOP: With the right hardware and a recent kernel, you can get Compiz desktop effects without a proprietary driver

You can't make them have your principles, and neither can you force your view of the past on them – and you'd better get used to that situation, because it's not going to change.

And if you want Nvidia drivers or like the Adobe Flash plugin, go for it. It's free software – free as in freedom – and I'm not going to presume that my definition of freedom should stomp over yours.

Adobe has finally thrown in the towel in the battle with Apple, with the latter's decision to outlaw the use of a Flash to iPhone app compiler leaving bitterness and resignation.

In a blog post by Adobe's Mike Chambers it is made clear that no development time will be spent on the compiler - originally billed as a key feature of CS5 - and urges developers to look to the rival Android phones.

"The primary goal of Flash has always been to enable cross browser, platform and device development," blogs Chambers.

"The cool web game that you build can easily be targeted and deployed to multiple platforms and devices."

Anathema

"However, this is the exact opposite of what Apple wants," he continues. "They want to tie developers down to their platform, and restrict their options to make it difficult for developers to target other platforms."

Chamber believes that the Android platform is worthy of more attention: "Fortunately, the iPhone isn't the only game in town.

"Android based phones have been doing well behind the success of the Motorola Droid and Nexus One, and there are a number ofAndroid based tabletsslated to be released this year.

"We are working closely with Google to bring both Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR 2.0 to these devices, and thus far, the results have been very promising."

It's seems an inevitable stance given the unwillingness of Apple to deal with Flash.

The maker of the iPhone and iPad has made it clear that Flash is not the kind of software they feel will help their devices, but will the hard-line ultimately come back to haunt Apple? Only time will tell.

Security specialists at Symantec are reporting a steep rise in malware attacks on PCs, with a new survey suggesting that there are over 100 attacks a second worldwide.

The great majority of these attacks cause no harm to the PC user. Even so, Symantec does claim that one attack worldwide every 4.5 seconds still causes problems.

Symantec's latest annual report notes that the number of malware samples recorded in 2009 were an alarming 71 per cent higher than those recorded in 2008.

Fake security software

Symantec's report also adds that the most prevalent form of cybercrime is fake security software, with users seeing a message flashing up on screen informing them that they have a virus.

"Virtually everything we see today is fake AV (anti-virus)," Vincent Weafer, a Symantec vice president, told Reuters. "It's such a money-making racket."

Weafer also issued a warning to Mac users working with cloud-based services to store their photos and other data on external servers.

"It's the notion of 'I'm on a Mac.' Yes, you're on a Mac but you're in the cloud," said Weafer. "They've got to be as careful as anybody else."

Worrying trend

Worryingly, Symantec notes that a whopping 51 per cent of all the viruses, trojans and other malicious programs it has ever seen were logged during 2009. Almost 2.9 million items of malicious code.

Tony Osborne, a technology manager for the public sector at Symantec, blames the availability of easy to use toolkits which novice hi-tech criminals are using to create malware.

While some of these are free, Osborne pointed the finger at one particular piece of software called Zeus, which costs around £458. Symnatec saw over 90,000 variants of the Zeus kit in 2009.

Like much malware, Zeus basically sends out email spam to lure unsuspecting victims to websites where they are tricked into installing malicious code, helping cyber-crims to set up networks of botnets or hijacked PCs.

Easy money

"It's easy money and it's very hard to catch people," said Symantec's Tony Osborne. "It's become a day job for a lot of people."

The report notes that Brazil and India were becoming hot spots of cyber crime, as their broadband networks were rapidly improving.

"Those are the places where education and understanding about security are taking a while to catch up," explained Osborne.

Opera is celebrating after hitting the 100 million mark in global users of its browsers.

Opera has been boosted by the Windows ballot screen, which was brought in by Windows following the company's high-profile complains to the European Commission.

And with a 50/50 split between PC users and people who use Opera on mobile devices, the company is celebrating a 30 per cent year-on-year growth for its flagship desktop browser, according to March figures.

On the right track?

"Opera's record growth shows that we are on the right track, and that as user needs grow, we are growing right along with them," said Lars Boilesen, CEO, Opera Software.

"Opera for Desktop delivers the fastest browsing experience on the planet, with a visionary approach to features and a user-friendly design."

Opera's total percentage of the global browser market remains small, although its place in the top six browsers means that it gets a prized place on the first ballot screen from Microsoft.

The company's strong mobile presence and, of course, deals with the likes of Nintendo where Opera is used as the browser on the Wii console, certainly help the company's profile.

Apple has announced that a new version of the hugely popular WebKit is coming that will bring Chrome-like split processes to any browser using the framework.

WebKit, a layout engine that allows browsers to render web pages, is currently at the heart of not only the Safari browser but also Google's Chrome – but one of the latter's key benefits is that it runs each process separately – meaning that it can be more easily isolated

Apple is now looking to integrate this idea into the very heart of the WebKit framework.

Heads-up

"This is a heads-up that we will shortly start landing patches for a new WebKit framework that we at Apple have been working on for a while," said Apple's Anders Carlsson and Sam Weinig.

"We currently call this new framework "WebKit2".

"WebKit2 is designed from the ground up to support a split process model, where the web content (JavaScript, HTML, layout, etc) lives in a separate process.

"This model is similar to what Google Chrome offers, with the major difference being that we have built the process split model directly into the framework, allowing other clients to use it."

Those other clients include the Symbian S60 OS' browser and the Android web browser.

Microsoft's IE9 team have explained the way in which the forthcoming browser will utilise hardware acceleration, and indicated their excitement about the use of HTML5.

In a detailed analysis post on the IE blog, Microsoft's Lead Program Manager for IE Performance Jason Weber showed off IE9's hardware acceleration in relation to the Flying Images feature, and how the browser's use of the graphics processor enabled a much richer experience.

"The first thing that you'll notice is that Internet Explorer 9 utilizes the GPU and is able to move the images in real-time at 60fps," comments Weber.

"More importantly, Internet Explorer 9 is able to achieve this real-time performance only using 12% of the total CPU and 15% of the total GPU.

"Using the CPU, Internet Explorer 9 can execute the machine code on each move to quickly determine the next location for the images and then move them through the CSS layout process.

"It then hands off the display of these images to the GPU, which through specialized hardware efficiently updates the screen. Since the CPU and GPU perform execution in parallel, additional computation can be occurring on the CPU while the GPU is updating the screen."

HTML5 excitement

Weber also talked about how excited the team is by the possibilities of HTML5, the next major revision of the markup language of the World Wide Web.

"It's clear that HTML5 will enable a new class of applications that were previously not possible through standards based markup, and these applications can't be limited by the performance of today's browsers," concluded Weber.

"Doing HTML5 right means enabling developers to build web applications that have the performance of desktop applications.

"That's our objective with Internet Explorer 9 and why we're so excited about hardware acceleration."

The first service pack for Microsoft's Windows 7 has leaked, with the first major update for the popular operating system still looking likely to arrive in the coming months.

According to Neowin, a build from March 27 has been spotted on the internet, although major updates like USB 3.0 and enhanced Bluetooth support have not been confirmed.

Build 6.1.7601.16537.amd64fre.win7.100327-0053 is reportedly quick to install, which underlines the fact that major service packs are something that Microsoft is keen to get away from.

Windows Update

With the Windows Update system, many of the minor changes are rolled out to customers in regular update cycles – meaning that the likes of the now legendary updates for Windows XP, which effectively changed the entire OS, are meant to be a thing of the past.

But Service Packs – still useful to computer manufacturers and businesses and still wanted by wary consumers – are still around, and SP1 is on course for beta release in June and full release in September.

Windows 7 has been a phenomenal success for Microsoft, staving off suggestions that the Windows brand has lost its appeal in an increasingly online world.

The operating system has been both critically and popularly acclaimed and has already breezed past 10 per cent share in the computer market.

Microsoft was asked to stop selling its popular word-processing software in the US last August by a Texan court, relating to a patent infringement case by Canadian company i4i.

i4i was claiming that the software giant was guilty of infringing patents - specifically that Microsoft "willingly violated" a 1998 patent regarding methods for reading XML.

Microsoft appealed against the Canadian company's claim, but that appeal has now been turned down by the court.

David beats Goliath

i4i is claiming that its patent "prohibits Microsoft from selling or importing to the United States any Microsoft Word products that have the capability of opening .XML, .DOCX or DOCM files (XML files) containing custom XML".

The latest decision made by the court is as follows: "a panel for the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a revised opinion in i4i v. Microsoft which affirms the 11 August 2009 Final Judgment by The Honorable Judge Leonard Davis that ruled in favour of i4i and found that Microsoft had wilfully infringed i4i's U.S. Patent No. 5,787,449."

Loudon Owen, Chairman of i4i, says of the decision: "The appeals court has again upheld the lower court's decision in its entirety. In addition, it issued a more detailed analysis in concerning the finding of willfulness in this case. The determination that Microsoft willfully infringed i4i's patent stands.""

"Michel Vulpe, founder of i4i and co-inventor, added: "i4i is especially pleased with the court's continued decision to uphold the injunction, an important step in protecting the property rights of inventors. i4i continues to offer custom XML solutions.""

The venerable picture editing software Photoshop turns 20 this week, with celebrations re-uniting the team that designed it, as well as on – of course – Facebook and Twitter.

Photoshop has become the byword for picture editing, and is seemingly ubiquitous in the modern world.

The National Association of Photoshop Professionals in the US will be hosting an anniversary party in San Francisco, with plenty of guests.

Adobe, the company behind the software, will have a broadcast bringing together the team that created Photoshop to discuss and demonstrate their work.

Shantanu Narayen, President and Chief Executive Officer at Adobe, said: "For 20 years Photoshop has played many different roles – it has given creative people the power to deliver amazing images that impact every part of our visual culture and challenged the eye with its ability to transform photographs.

"It's no exaggeration to say that, thanks to millions of creative customers, Photoshop has changed the way the world looks at itself."

500 units a month

In 1987 Thomas Knoll developed a grayscale pixel imaging program that blossomed into a way to process digital image files. Called Photoshop, it was licensed by Adobe, with the first product hitting shelves in 1990. Knoll recalled that originally Adobe expected to sell 500 copies of Photoshop a month.

"We knew we had a groundbreaking technology on our hands, but we never anticipated how much it would impact the images we see all around us," he said. "The ability to seamlessly place someone within an image was just the beginning of Photoshop's magic."

Just remember that the next time you look at pictures of Jordan.

Microsoft has outlined a number of new features in its upcoming Office for Mac 2011 release, including myriad tweaks to how users share and interact with documents.

"You've told us that working together across platforms is a priority to you and that's why we are making Office for Mac 2011 the best, most compatible productivity suite on the Mac," says Eric Wilfrid, MacBU General Manager at Microsoft Corp

The new features are as follows:

Co-authoring tools You and your co-workers now have the ability to work on a file from Word, PowerPoint or Excel from different locations, brainstorm ideas, and stay on the same page regardless of time, geography or platform.

Office Web Apps These make it easy to get your work done virtually anywhere. Gives giving you a simple way to access and share Office documents from any machine with an internet connection.

New user interface new design is an evolution of the Office 2008 Elements Gallery and uses the classic Mac menu and Standard Toolbar giving you the best of both worlds.

Outlook replaces Entourage Outlook for Mac replaces Entourage. It leverages the Exchange Web Services protocol and is being built using Cocoa, allowing for improved integration with the Mac OS. The system now also supports PST files.

Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 has a UK release date of later this year. Pricing is still to be announced.

Let's take a moment to praise task management tools. We use them every day – even if you don't have a calendar application or a to-do list running behind (or in) your browser, you'll have some kind of scheduling system somewhere.

It could be a diary, a smattering of Post-It notes or even a pile of scribbled reminders on scraps of paper. But whether you're already using software to schedule your life or relying on a pocket-full of bus tickets, you can do better. You can start 'Getting Things Done' instead.

Getting Things Done (GTD) is one man's attempt to sort out the glut of stuff people deal with every day. His book of the same name has sold 1.2 million copies, and the phrase is now an official trademark of Allen's company.

But the philosophy has grown beyond the book and into the public domain, with dedicated websites, online services, commercial software and open-source tools. It doesn't just cover business types; the same idea can apply to household chores, saving for the future or even planning some time off.

The core of the philosophy is that stress comes from carrying around unresolved chores in your head. GTD helps you to organise these tasks.

The five stages

To get the full gist of the technique, you'll have to buy the book, although you can get started at David Allen's website www.davidco.com. We recommend the free PDF article 'Five Ways of Mastering Workflow'.

The GTD technique outlines a workflow of five stages: collect, process, organise, review and do. Most task-management software concentrates on one or more of these stages to the detriment of the others.

Online calendars are great for organising and processing tasks, but it's rarely easy to enter (or 'collect') a lot of disparate data quickly. To-do lists are great for collecting data, but often lack the tools to process or categorise things.

By taking a structured approach to arranging your tasks, you're in a better position to work through them. That philosophy is illustrated in the first stage of the workflow, 'collect'. At this stage you simply make an exhaustive list of tasks: everything you have to do and everything you want to do.

They all go into an 'inbox' or 'bucket'. This excludes lots of standard task management tools immediately; many of them require you to enter due dates and categorise items as you add them. In GTD, that's done over the next two stages.

Starting from the top of the list, you categorise your bucketful of tasks into priorities. Some you'll be able to do straight away; others will have to wait. This is also the stage where you will arrange things by 'context'. In GTD lingo, that's where a task is carried out: at your computer, at home, in the office and so on.

'Reviewing' is an important part of the workflow: that means regularly checking your task list to see what needs to be done and adding items that aren't there.

Finally, you actually do what's on your list.

Desktop implementation

Since the book's publication in 2002, several desktop tools have been created, specifically aimed at helping people implement the Getting Things Done philosophy.

MyLife Organized is among our favourites, faithfully translating Allen's workflow into software while prioritising ease of use. As well as enabling you to quickly collect tasks and organise them with priorities and contexts, you can also designate project status to tasks, set due dates and explore your lists in various different ways.

There are three versions. The free download has restrictions: there are no reminders and limited ways to view to-do lists. The Standard version costs $50 and you'll get alerts, infinite contexts and drag-and-drop capability from Outlook. For just $10 more, the Professional edition includes project tracking tools and full Outlook synchronisation.

If £30 seems like too much to spend to sort your life out, stick with the free version of MyLife Organized, try one of the online solutions we've reviewed or give ThinkingRock a go.

THINKING ROCK: ThinkingRock's opening screen is a good illustration of the Getting Things Done workflow

Cross platform and built in Java, it too is inspired by GTD from the ground up. Many in corporate environments won't have the luxury of choosing their own scheduling tools, but one of the beauties of GTD is that you don't need a program specifically tailored to it. A simple spreadsheet could be used for the job.

If you're committed to Outlook, you can follow the process rules laid down in GTD. Just use the Task and Calendar sections to record action items, and you could install the official Getting Things Done Outlook add-in. This threads GTD commands throughout the Outlook interface, changing the way you deal with mail, tasks and events. The add-in costs $80 (about £50).

The online tools we've reviewed here are general scheduling and task management services, but they can all be used to implement a GTD workflow. The more open-ended the tool, the better it is for the GTD approach, enabling you to define your own contexts and projects.

And, if all else fails, there's always that stack of Post-It notes and the wall calendar.

The British voice recognition company SpinVox has been sold to an American rival for the princely sum of £64 million, following a year of PR disasters for the once-feted British tech company.

SpinVox converts its customers' voicemails into text messages that they can read. The company came under fire earlier in 2009 when it was revealed that there was considerably more human input into the voice-to-text service than it had made clear to journalists in demonstrations of the technology.

The company has been bought out by US firm Nuance, which makes a voice recognition program called Dragon NaturallySpeaking.

Growing market

"Around the world, the voice-to-text market has experienced tremendous growth over the last year," said Nuance vice president John Pollard.

"With SpinVox's robust infrastructure, language support and operational experience, we will broaden the reach and capabilities of our platform."

SpinVox had at one time valued itself at £500 million, so the deal is essentially a massive loss for the company.

Shares in the Massachusetts-based Nuance were down around 1%, following the news.