According to the latest data from analytics company, StatCounter, Windows 7 has gained more than half of the worldwide operating system market, for the first time ever. Windows 7 had officially surpassed Windows XP as the most popular OS choice globally back in October of 2011, but this is the first time that Windows 7 has passed the 50-percent mark.

StatCounter's data shows that Windows Vista still holds third place, just, with 8.32-percent market share, but Apple's Mac OS X has been making a sprint for third position, sitting at 7.05-percent at the end of June. If Apple continues with this slight jump, they should overtake Windows Vista as the third position by the end of the year.

But, as with all analytical data, there are other sides and companies working at it. Net Applications claims that Windows XP still holds 43.61-percent of the OS market, with their data showing that XP edges out Windows 7 ever so slightly, with Windows 7 sitting at 41.59-percent.

Google's Vice President of Americas Sales, Margo Georgiadis, took to the company's blog to say that the Internet is where business is done and jobs are created. How do you back up such as claim? Well, if you're Google, you can provide $80 billion of economic activity directly to advertisers, website publishers and nonprofit organizations across the US in 2011.

The post highlight that 97-percent of Americans use Internet search to find local goods and services, on both smart devices and computers. Some believe that technology is driving people to shop online versus locally, this isn't always the case.

Boston Consulting Group shows that US citizens who have researched products online throughout 2011 actually went in-store to purchase these goods, and spent around $2,000, rather than online. Google says that's nearly $500 billion in revenue that was spent on local retail. Georgiadis cites a bunch of examples of just how Google and the Internet are helping businesses expand. Citing New England baking company King Arthur Flour, who recently jumped online and has since become an internationally-renowned business.

Microsoft have just announced some upgrade plans for their upcoming Windows 8 operating system, where the company will be selling Windows 8 Pro upgrades online for $39.99. If you prefer to make your Windows 8 upgrade purchase in-store, it'll set you back $69.99.

The offer is open to anyone running any version of Windows XP, Vista or 7, and lasts until January 31, 2013. The deal runs for the same amount of time that the $14.99 upgrade deal does, but this one applies to any version of Windows, not just those who have recently purchased a Windows-based PC in the run up to the Windows 8 launch.

Microsoft have also said that the offer will be open to 131 markets, and that it will release more details on the offer as the launch of the OS gets closer. The Verge reports that the upgrade process is quite simple, where it'll offer an upgrade assistant that will help users migrate files, settings, and apps from Windows 7, files and settings from Vista, and files only from XP. After the upgrade, you can add Windows Media Center for free through the "add features" option.

In another attempt to make a pointless statement towards Washington D.C., a group of websites and privacy organizations have come together to form the Declaration of Internet Freedom. The Declaration of Internet Freedom is the start of something bigger, a movement to uphold and ensure some basic principles, much like the Declaration of Independence was.

"We've seen how the Internet has been under attack from various directions, and we recognize that it's time to make that stop," said TechDirt, a site involved with the new movement. "The Internet is an incredible platform that we want to grow and to thrive, and thus, a very large coalition got together to produce the following document as a starting point, hoping to kick off a much larger discussion which we hope you'll join in."

As it stands currently, the Declaration of Internet Freedom is composed of 5 basic values:

avast! anti-virus invited TweakTown, along with a few other journalists, out to Prague, Czech Republic to meet the staff and check out the headquarters of the world's largest free anti-virus software company. The headquarters is really nondescript as the avast! software team is actually quite tiny considering just how many users they have. The headquarters occupies six floors in a business office shared with other companies. From the outside, all that is visible is the avast! logo on the top.

We were led upstairs to the 8th floor. Into a meeting room we went where we were greeted with refreshments, the CEO of avast!, and Milos Korenko, the Marketing Director at avast!. CEO Vincent Steckler welcomed the 9 of us to Prague and avast!'s headquarters and gave us a brief presentation about the company and some interesting, and quite frankly surprising, statistics about the use of avast!

avast! has had 161 million active and protected computers in the last 30 days. While they have over 200 million registrations, they only count computers who receive updates in a 30 day period in order to be more accurate. Considering there are around 700 million consumer PCs worldwide, avast! protects a large portion of them. Furthermore, avast! basically spends nothing on advertising. The reason they don't is because they don't have the need. Two-thirds of new users come from word-of-mouth referrals.

We know that the legal problems between Samsung and Apple are getting more and more serious, with bans imposed on Samsung selling their GALAXY Tab 10.1 in the US, and on Friday the GALAXY Nexus was also denied from sale. The judge in both of these cases is US District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California.

The Korea Times has reported, which Samsung later confirmed, for the first time that they are now getting help from Google in order to better defend themselves over patents. Samsung spokeswoman Lim Yoon-jeong has said that the two companies have been working closely to created a united front. Another undisclosed Samsung insider has been quoted in the article, where they say:

It's too early to comment on our game plan (with Google) in the legal battle; but we will do our best to get more royalties from Apple, which has benefited from our technology. The fight is becoming more dramatic and the possibility of a truce in the form of a cross-licensing deal seems to be becoming likely.

All around the world, GPS is used by consumers, businesses, and everyone in between. Its used from simple a-to-b navigation from your phone, or car, and for industries like aviation, shipping, and many, many more.

The EU commission has estimated that from these various industries, that over £640 billion of the EU economy is reliant on GPS technology. Knowing this has created financial incentives and funding for alternative GPS technologies, which would be utilised in the event of natural causes such as a solar flare, or man-made causes such as a EMP bomb, war, or similar.

This is where UK defence firm, BAE Systems, has a possible solution: Navsop (Navigation Via Signals of Opportunity). Navsop relies on wireless signals from large comms networks, such as TV, mobile and radio antennas, which then determine locations based on direction and signal strength, with some of the frequencies capable of penetrating walls for indoor use.

If you're one of those lucky people with a Retina-powered Apple MacBook Pro, VLC 2.0.2 is now available providing an enhanced experience on Retina-powered displays.

Another good feature is that annoying font caching requirement has been eliminated in the update, meaning you won't need to wait for the cache to finish before a video starts, finally! "Video output improvements" are present for those on PowerPC Macs with ATI Radeon 7500/9200, NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra, or Intel GMA 950.

There are other improvements and fixes in VLC 2.0.2, but the Windows 64-bit package currently has no official ETA. There is an experimental Windows 64-bit VLC installer, but for those who like that "official" stamp placed on their software, you'll have to wait that little bit longer.

Samsung are quickly out of the gate by announcing that they will be providing upgrades for Jelly Bean "eligible" devices. This is good news, especially considering that Samsung only released their GALAXY S III a few weeks ago.

But, the question remains, what does Samsung consider "eligible", and how many would be eligible for Jelly Bean upgrades? Samsung's flagship GALAXY S III will most likely be the first to receive the Jelly Bean goodness, followed by the S II, Nexus and so forth.

Considering that the GALAXY S II just received its Ice Cream Sandwich update, it might be a little while before we can expect Jelly Bean on the S II. The Note II is coming soon, too, so that might just ship with Jelly Bean out of the box. This is the direct quote from Samsung's announcement:

AMD have finally released a new WHQL-certified driver, 12.6 WHQL. Not only that, but they've released the 12.7 beta, too. Catalyst 12.6 WHQL sports a bunch of stability optimizations, whereas 12.7 beta concentrates on performance optimizations, as well as the stability.

A list of changes and resolved issues with Catalyst 12.6 WHQL:

Performance highlights of Catalyst 12.7 beta: