Redmond-based software giant has announced the general availability of its Windows Azure Infrastructure Services (IaaS), and promised that it would match Amazon's service in pricing.

Microsoft claims that its IaaS is an all-inclusive hybrid cloud service that offers a blend of all the benefits of the public cloud and existing IT infrastructure.

Bill Hilf, General Manager for Windows Azure Product Management, wrote on the official Azure blog that customers wanted to avail all the benefits of their already made investments while also able to enjoy the flexibility of the cloud.

Intel Corporation has partnered with Chinese search engine Baidu to set up a new joint innovation lab for developing mobile apps for China’s fast-expanding mobile Internet market

The innovation lab is part of a deal signed by the two sides on Thursday this week.

The deal will provide Chinese developers with access to Intel technologies, including personal computers, tablets, and mobile phones, to test & port software for various Baidu and Intel platforms.

Blogging platform Tumblr has just hit a huge milestone by reaching 100 million blogs, the Next Web reported.

On March 2, 2013, Tumblr had nearly 93 million blogs on its network. Thus, the new figure means that the blogging platform added around 7 million blogs in less than a month.

The popular blogging platform's "About" page, which depicts the number of blogs on the site, claims that it has already reached 100.1 million blogs and nearly 44.6 billion blog posts.

In addition, there are nearly 80.2 million Tumblr posts generated each day.

There is a wide difference between fastest and slowest broadband speeds available to households in British cities, a new study by price comparison firm uSwitch. com revealed.

The wide difference leaves many consumers in cities like London, Bristol, Glasgow and Northampton in the slow lane. The biggest gap between the fast and slow broadband is being suffered by Birmingham homes, where the difference is 89 per cent.

Twitter, popular micro-blogging platform that allows users to send and receive tweets (messages) in up to 140 characters, turned 7 years old Thursday.

Co-founded and launched by Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone in the year 2006, Twitter is today one of the biggest social media giants that offers news, gossips, pictures, complaints, sports scores and all that.

YouTube, the biggest video-sharing site of the world, is getting even bigger.

Founded in February 2005 and acquired by Google Inc in 2006, YouTube recently hit one billion monthly unique users.

Announcing the milestone, YouTube team said, "Nearly one out of every two people on the Internet visits YouTube. Our monthly viewership is the equivalent of roughly ten Super Bowl audiences."

The team pointed out that if YouTube were a country, it would be the third biggest in the world after China and India, in terms of population.

Google Inc's video-sharing site YouTube has announced that the number of unique users visiting it every month has cross 1 billion.

Announcing the new milestone, the YouTube team said that nearly half of all Internet users are visiting YouTube every month to watch everything from small clips of cute puppies to depressing scenes of social unrest around the globe.

In other words, 1 in every 7 people on the plant or 14.7 per cent of the whole world population is visiting YouTube every month.

Google, the world's most popular internet search engine, posted a new doodle on its homepage to commemorate the 100th birth anniversary of the renowned archaeologist & anthropologist Mary Leakey.

British archaeologist and anthropologist Mary Leakey, who is widely known for discovering the first fossilized skull of an extinct ape called Proconsul, was born on February 6, 1913.

It may be noted here that extinct ape Proconsul is now believed to be humans' ancestor. The discovery of the robust Zinjanthropus skull at Olduvai Gorge was one of the other big achievements made by Mary.

In a move which marks Facebook’s foray into the Amazon-dominated e-commerce arena, the social network recently announced the launch of its new online gift-giving service - Facebook Gifts.

Launched in collaboration with nearly 100 partners – including Starbucks, 1-800-Flowers, and Magnolia Bakery -, the new Facebook Gifts service will essentially give the over 950 million users of the social network the ability to exchange gifts from their profiles.

On July 15, software giant Microsoft ended its 16-year experiment with MSNBC. com --- the company, in a joint disclosure with NBC Universal, revealed that it was abandoning its msnbc. com/MSNBC cable television partnership with NBC.

With NBC News’ parent NBC Universal having acquired Microsoft’s 50 percent share of MSNBC cable network for an undisclosed amount, the culmination of the Microsoft-NBC association marks the end of the first experiment in networking conventional TV media with the Internet.

According to security experts, the 0401 GMT Monday expiry of the US government’s temporary fix to keep DNS Changer malware-infected computers online, for the past eight months, will likely lead to the loss of Internet access for tens of thousands of people worldwide.

According to reports from a number of news organizations, including Wired. com, the addition of a leap second to the Coordinated Universal Time at midnight Greenwich Mean Time on Saturday triggered a wave of Internet glitches.

As per the Wired report, the technical problems across numerous websites and computing systems were caused by the ‘extra second’ that the world’s official time-keepers added on the clock as June 30 turned into July 1.

Going by an April 13-dated filing by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), a $25,000 fine is being sought from Internet search giant Google for the company’s non-cooperation with an investigation into its collection of personal information over wireless networks.

As per the FCC filing, Google hindered the proceedings by causing delays for months in the completion of the investigation which chiefly pertained to e-mail, text messages, and other personal data that was collected by the company in connection with its Street View location service.

Revealing its standpoint in the ongoing debate over the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), social networking giant Facebook said in a recent blog post that it supports certain aspects of the proposed legislation, and it wants to work with the lawmakers to ensure that the privacy concerns about the bill are duly addressed.

In what apparently was an “administrative error,” an employee at Student Finance England inadvertently risked the security of personal information of over 8,000 students, whose emails were made publicly available earlier this week.

The accidental security blunder, for which the agency has extended an apology, resulted in a mass distribution of the emails of students, who have been contacted by the agency and assured that “no other personal” details have been leaked.