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Apple ran its first iPad commercial during the Academy Awards on Sunday night. The 30-second advertisement shows the tablet computer sitting on an unidentified man's lap as he whisks through the features and functions in veteran style.

Windows users in Europe will have a slew of Internet browsers to choose from between now and mid-May after the European Commission forced Microsoft to give European Windows Vista, XP and 7 users a choice. The settlement was reached after decade-long battle between Microsoft and the European Commission after Norwegian browser maker Opera filed a complaint.

Microsoft paid more than $2 billion in antitrust fines and agreed to provide users a choice through a browser ballot. European users launching Windows will be greeted with a screen asking which browser they want to install and use.

Google on Monday announced its latest social-web acquisition: Picnik. A complement to Google's Picasa and a partner with services like Yahoo's Flickr and Photobucket, Picnik lets users edit photos in the browser. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Brian Axe, a product management director at Google, noted the rise in people sharing and storing photos online. In addition to photo-sharing sites, Facebook and MySpace are also driving traffic to online photos within their social-networking communities. In fact, Facebook leads the photo-sharing market in the United States and worldwide.

Everyone loves clouds these days in corporate computing, and the concept will be a big part of the buzz at the CeBIT information-technology trade fair in Germany March 2-6.

Tasks that we used to do with a desktop computer are often being shifted into the "cloud," meaning that some nameless computer, often on another continent, is helping do the job or save the data.

"It's not just big companies like Microsoft and IBM that are going in for this. Quite small companies will be showing cloud products at CeBIT," said trade fair spokesman, Hartwig von Sass.

The bickering between Apple and Adobe over why Apple's iPhone and its new iPad don't run Adobe's Flash software is giving me a headache.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs says Flash is buggy and accuses Adobe of being lazy. Kevin Lynch, Adobe's chief technology officer, denies that and accuses Apple of trying to control what iPhone and iPad users can do with their devices.

Jobs says Flash is on its way out. No way, says Lynch. Enough already. You guys are beginning to remind me of my kids. Can't you find some way to get along?

A research organization that tries to warn computer users about programs that do sneaky things on their computers has spun off from Harvard University.

StopBadware says it will operate as a standalone nonprofit with funding from Google Inc., eBay Inc.'s PayPal and Mozilla, which makes the Firefox Web browser. It was initially set up as part of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

Google has launched a new version of Google Voice for mobile handsets running Palm's webOS and iPhone OS 3.0 and higher. The new browser-based offering is immediately available to owners of compatible iPhones and Palm Pre handsets who also have Google Voice accounts.

Given the craze surrounding the iPhone, Motorola Droid, Palm Pre and Nexus One, it may seem that nearly everyone has a smartphone.

But most consumers in the United States use simpler, much lower-cost phones.

According to data from the Nielsen Co., about 82 percent of cell phones in use in the United States are limited-function phones, the kind that typically sell for less than $50 or are given away with two-year service contracts.

Given the craze surrounding the iPhone, Motorola Droid, Palm Pre and Nexus One, it may seem that nearly everyone has a smartphone.

But most consumers in the United States use simpler, much lower-cost phones.

According to data from the Nielsen Co., about 82 percent of cell phones in use in the United States are limited-function phones, the kind that typically sell for less than $50 or are given away with two-year service contracts.

On Wednesday, Amazon debuted a new Kindle DX with global wireless that aims to drive its stateside e-reader success to nations around the world. The new Kindle DX replaces the Kindle DX with U.S. wireless.

The latest version of the popular Kindle offers a 9.7-inch electronic paper display with 2.5 times more surface area than the regular six-inch display. The Kindle DX's larger electronic-paper display offers 16 shades of gray and more viewing area for graphics-rich content.