On Wednesday afternoon, the Bitcoin bubble appears to have burst. As of this writing, its current value is around $160—down from a high of $260. (It fell as low as $130 today.)

There is no obvious explanation for why the digital currency has fallen so far and so fast, although the market correcting after such a huge rise might be a good explanation. (Update 4:05pm CT: Bitcoin seems to have somewhat recovered and appears to be hovering around $200. Update 6:00pm CT: The exchange rate has fallen back to around $160.)

Some redditors have taken solace in a comment thread entitled "Hold Spartans."

Microsoft Surface sales have been rather modest so far, with recent estimates putting the number at 1.5 million since the device launched in October 2012 -- 400,000 of them for the more expensive Surface Pro unit which launched in February. But the company is already planning an addition to the lineup, according to the Wall Street Journal, in the form of a 7-inch model that’s going into mass production later this year.

The paper’s unnamed sources claim that the company had no plans to add a smaller model initially, but felt it had to respond to the growing popularity of the form factor -- with Apple’s iPad mini, Google’s Nexus 7 and Amazon’s Kindle Fire as prime examples.

Google just launched an "Inactive Account Manager" to help you deal with your data after you die. The tool lets you decide what to do with you data after your account has been inactive for three, six, nine or 12 months. This is Google's death tool.

The Inactive Account Manager is designed to either grant access to your data to others or delete your data after a certain period of inactivity. The Google products included in the service are +1s; Blogger; Contacts and Circles; Drive; Gmail; Google+ Profiles, Pages and Streams; and Picasa Web Albums.

THE END OF EXTENDED SUPPORT for Microsoft's Windows XP operating system (OS) is now exactly one year away.

Microsoft acknowledged the countdown to the end of support for Windows XP and Microsoft Office 2003 almost a year ago, advising back then that it was is a good time for organisations that still have PCs running the software to migrate to a newer version, such as Windows 7.

Today marks the 365-day countdown, so the advice that Microsoft customers must abandon the Windows XP ship is now more relevant than ever.

According to a new report, Microsoft is working to merge Windows and Windows Phone — PC and mobile — under a new product called Windows Blue. This contradicts what we’ve previously heard — that Windows Blue was just a service/feature pack for Windows 8 — but it does make a lot of sense, and it aligns closely with what we believe to be Microsoft’s only chance of survival in the rapidly changing consumer computing market.

The report, emanating from Digitimes (which isn’t always accurate, but often is), says that the merged operating system — dubbed Windows Blue — is being developed by a new, distinct team that is separate from the Windows and Windows Phone teams. According to Digitimes, the amalgamated Windows Blue is intended to compete against Google’s Android and Chrome OSes.