According to new data posted this week from a company called Net Applications, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer appears to be continuing a downward spiral. Over the last ten months, Microsoft has lost five percent of the web browser market while Google’s Chrome has gained about six percent.

The amount of people using Internet Explorer is expected to fall below the 50 percent mark around late May of 2012. One bright point for Microsoft is that usage of its latest version of Internet Explorer, IE9, increased by about two percent from July to August. However, IE9 is limited to usage on Windows Vista and Windows 7. Windows XP users are limited to Internet Explorer 8 until upgrading.

What were you up to 13 years ago? Maybe you were perfecting the ideal AIM screen name. Or you might have been surfing the “WestHollywood” neighborhood of GeoCities.

Chances are, you had been using Yahoo! or AOL as your primary search engines. But Google’s debut on this day in1998 would change the World Wide Web forever.

If only there were a way to keep up to date automatically on vulnerabilities and have Windows apply patches to the important ones. Secunia's Corporate Software Inspector (CSI) 5.0 lets you do that, applying even your 3rd party software updates through Microsoft's WSUS (Windows Software Update Services) and SCCM (System Center Configuration Manager).

I've been complaining for years that Microsoft should open up the Windows Update process to third parties. Secunia has filled in most of this gap with their Personal Software Inspector (PSI) for individuals and CSI for managed networks.

CSI now works the whole vulnerability-remediation lifecycle. It scans computers on your network for the software installed on them. Secunia is well-known in the security community for an immense and comprehensive database of vulnerabilities. Customers can access this database using the new version 3.1 of their VIM (Vulnerability Intelligence Manager) which provides customized alerts on vulnerability events.

Allaying any concerns that you might’ve had after Microsoft showed off an early version of Windows 8 with a distinctly tabletified, tiled,Windows Phone 7-inspired interface, it has now been confirmed that Windows 8 will ship with a touch-first Metro UI interface and the standard Windows interface that can be found on some 90% of the world’s computers.

Speaking on the Building Windows 8 blog, the president of Windows and Windows Live, Steven Sinofsky, has detailed how the tiled Metro interface and the standard Windows Desktop (with a capital D) will peacefully coincide. From the sound of it, you will have complete control over which interface you use — and you can use both at once, if you like. Tablets (and devices missing a keyboard and mouse) will probably boot up in the Metro UI, but it isn’t clear what the default for desktop and laptop PCs will be. It wouldn’t be surprising if Metro is the default for PCs simply because it Microsoft will want to show it off.

The New York Times Company's Research and Development Lab studies novel ways to deliver news to people. Their latest creation is a bathroom mirror that uses Microsoft Kinect to detect motion and deliver a stream of news while you comb your hair or put on your makeup.

Besides news, the technology will let you send emails, shop online or add calendar entries via your mirror. And it uses the Kinect to interact with the user via motion and voice commands. It's an interesting concept, but, really, is the bathroom the best place to use this technology?