The IE8 Click Clever, Click Safe browser offers a number of features aimed at keeping children safe on the internet, as well as advice on what to do about viruses, hacking and problems with mobile browsers.

The re-jigged browser also offers a number of reporting tools that can flag up inappropriate material, for example, or report incidents of online bullying.

Microsoft said that a 'web slice' feature can be added as a bookmark feature to the service, which also will notify the user of any updates to their favourite pages.

"Internet safety advice needs to be at your fingertips and not hidden away. Parents and children should not have to go searching through numerous web pages to find the help they need," said Jim Gamble, chief executive of CEOP.

"The new browser will embed advice, help and report services directly into the toolbar to provide a constant, reassuring presence for families who will be one click away from the support they need.

Microsoft has backed up the release with the news that 64 per cent of under 18s had been contacted online by someone that they did not know, and that over a third had responded. The firm argued that this makes the use of such security and filtering tools much more important.

The launch of the new version of the browser coincides with Safer Internet Day, an EU initiative designed to promote safer and more responsible use of the internet among the young. Some commentators have wisely pointed out, however, that the time and resources spent on such an exercise would be better directed at their elders.

According to reports circulating at the beginning of the week, Jobs used the occasion of a big Apple meeting to have a rant at Google and Adobe, saying his firm does not support Flash "because it is so buggy".

"Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it's because of Flash. No one will be using Flash," he's reported by Wired as saying.

In a later blog posting, Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch sought to play up the near-ubiquity of Flash on the web, its long history and support for all but one (guess which) of the top smartphone manufacturers' devices. He went on to explain why Apple, and therefore the new iPad, does not support Flash.

"We have shown that Flash technology is starting to work on these devices today by enabling standalone applications for the iPhone to be built on Flash," he wrote.

"In fact, some of these apps are already available in the Apple App Store such as FickleBlox and Chroma Circuit. This same solution will work on the iPad as well. We are ready to enable Flash in the browser on these devices if and when Apple chooses to allow that for its users, but to date we have not had the required cooperation from Apple to make this happen."

He went on to defend the technology's security and reliability credentials.

"Regarding crashing, I can tell you that we don't ship Flash with any known crash bugs, and if there was such a widespread problem historically Flash could not have achieved its wide use today," he said.

"We work directly with the major browser teams - including Apple Safari, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft IE, and Google Chrome - and review any emerging issues so we can resolve them together."

Lynch does however admit in his blog that Flash Player on Windows has historically always been faster than the Mac, and adds that Chrome browser users are currently suffering Flash errors.

He goes on to recognise that "there may either be an upswing in incidents or there is a general piling on happening".

Whether Jobs will now come back to hurl more insults at the Flash-maker (or anyone else for that matter) remains to be seen. We kind of hope he does though - at least it makes tech a bit exciting.

The video, which also appears on the blog of Glenn Murphy, User Interface lead at Google for Chrome and ChromeOS, shows a concept tablet device running the operating system. Although only a video creation, the tablet is running a number of applications, appears to have a snap feature similar to Windows 7 that lets you control how and where applications appear on the screen, and offers a virtual keyboard.

To scale, there is a computer generated hand controlling the touch movements, the screen looks huge. This may just be a scaling issue however, and Murphy has already released a psd file of other versions for developers looking to create their own mock ups. Although this has not appeared on an official Google blog, Murphy's role at the firm may suggest that a final version may not be too far behind, nor too different from these concepts.

There are a number of other concept images, all of which make the Google tablet look like a worthy contender for the iPad, particularly its ability to run multiple apps. Plus, with apps on the iPad rumoured to cost more than they do on the iPhone, tablet users may find the Google option easier to swallow.

According to a write up on Wired, Jobs suggested that Google may need to change its mantra from 'don't be evil' to something far less flattering, during a rant about the iPhone. Wired got the skinny from someone attending a big Apple meeting, reporting that Steve said: "They entered the phone business. Make no mistake they want to kill the iPhone. We won't let them. This don't be evil mantra: It's bullshit."

Wow, someone sounds a bit paranoid. Although another Apple'er has popped into the comments to inform us that Jobs actually said that the mantra was 'crap', we think that's just nit picking. The message is the same, whatever the choice of words. 'How dare someone else try and sell a phone'.

Jobs is of course reacting to the release of Google's Nexus One, which has apparently angered him by being fairly cool, and by actually having a decent reception - unlike a cetain iPad.

On the subject of the iPad, one of the criticisms thrown at the device was the fact that it doesn't support Flash, here Jobs once again threw out his toys, along with a couple of insults.

"They (Adobe) have all this potential to do interesting things but they just refuse to do it. They don't do anything with the approaches that Apple is taking, like Carbon. Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy," he is reported as saying. "Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it's because of Flash. No one will be using Flash".

We can be sure that no one will be using it on the iPad, or the iPhone, but it is pretty popular elsewhere Steve. Although this is pretty unpleasant stuff, we thank the Apple workers for passing it on.

Coinciding with this year's event is the plan to switch off the internet as a protest against government plans to, er, switch off the internet. On their web page, confusingly set up to spread the word, the organisers of Internet Blackout Day, write, "The Federal Government is pushing forward with a plan to force Internet Service Providers to censor the internet for all Australians. This plan will waste millions of dollars and won't make anyone safer."

"We stand to join a small club of countries which impose centralised Internet censorship such as China, Iran and Saudi Arabia. The secret blacklist may be limited to 'Refused Classification' content for now, but what might a future Australian Government choose to block?"

Anyone interested in joining the protests is asked to blackout their photo on social networking and other sites, while organisations and other groups have been urged to black out their web sites.

But, rather than totally switch off sites webmasters are asked to add a piece of code to the page that will significantly darken it. It will also add a banner for the blackout week, in order to further spread the campaign.

With increasing state enforced censorship of the web and resulting protests happening across the globe, 2010 has the potential to become a watershed year for the internet. The fallout from the hacking of Google and other firms' systems by Chinese ne'erdowells is set to roll on for months and was recently escalated by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's remarks.

Back home, meanwhile, the controversial Clause 17 of the Digitial Economy bill has already drawn fierce criticism from all quarters, not least the ISPs who have branded it unworkable and the privacy protestors who see deep packet inspection as an affront to their civil liberties.

The desperate actions of governments to limit internet freedom of choice are unlikely to last forever, but the battles being fought over the coming year could prove to mark a decisive moment in the evolution of the web.

The Aussie campaign starts today and lasts for a week.

According to the OFT, nearly half of the UK adult population has been targeted by a scam, and more than three million adults - one in 15 people - fall victim to scams, losing a total of £3.5 billion every year. Now not all of this is online-based, but you can bet that a fairly large percentage of it is.

Global IT consultancy Unisys has also taken the opportunity to get involved. It got busy pulling out some of the key findings of its latest biannual Unisys Security Index to compile a top five scams to avoid list.

According to the Index, over 80 per cent of people in the UK are nervous about the misuse of their bank card details and 83 per cent worry about unauthorised access to their personal information - worrying stats for those e-retailers keen to maximise sales and banks looking to cut costs by encouraging use of online banking.

Thus, there are well-versed warnings about using ATM Skimmers and insecure e-commerce sites, placing too much personal information on social networking sites and using unsecured WiFi routers.

All very straightforward advice which if everyone took on board the internet would be a safer place and there would probably be no need for awareness raising campaigns with terrible names like Scamnesty. But then again, that's not very likely, is it?

The second annual Oracle Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) Index used interviews with 800 business decision makers in Europe and North America to assess the quality of their processes and the accuracy of their information.

By some wizardry, the bods at Oracle then formulated each organisation's index rating, and found that as a whole, they have gotten a 38 per cent higher score.

Now what this actually means, says Oracle, is that over the past year these firms have noted improvements in their strategic planning and reporting processes, focused more on customer loyalty to drive growth, and acknowledged the importance of BI as a key reporting tool.

According to Oracle vice president, Frank Buytendijk, the findings show that businesses are now a lot more confident that they can handle "the new reality of today's economy".

"The improved Index doesn't as much signal any material advances, but this rediscovered confidence creates the preconditions for real improvement to take place," he added.

"Comparing it to a rise in consumer confidence preceding a spending increase, this increase in performance confidence will precede new projects and improved ways of working."

So you see, recessions aren't all that bad after all.

The event has been one of the industry's worst kept secrets for months now and rumours have been flying that the event will see the launch of Apple's new tablet device, possibly to be called the iSlate if a web site by that name registered by Apple is anything to go by, which it probably is.

Despite everyone in the industry expecting the event to herald the official unveiling of a tablet device it is likely the announcement will still send ripples of excitement through the tech world and could have spin-off benefits for other companies.

While Apple products are always greeted with fanboy fervour that other companies must secretly envy, for those looking at the tablet market as a growth area the move by Apple would suggest the firm has the confidence that consumers will splash out on such devices, opening up the possibility for other vendors to supply similar lower-cost devices to the market.

However, it should be remembered the above is all speculation, although based on some compelling links of information, and when we asked Apple if they had any more information or statements regarding the event they declined to comment. Nothing new there then.

Now it appears that hackers infiltrated Google's corporate systems through, guess what, a web browser produced by its arch enemy Microsoft.

Now, this shouldn't be very surprising given that Internet Explorer has a market share of around 70 per cent, depending on whose stats you read. But it is a little surprising to think that Google employees have IE running, when their own company produces Chrome - the newest browser on the market, which recently shot up to third in the browser league behind IE and Firefox.

Or perhaps Google is such a forward thinking, liberal, smoothie drinking company that it doesn't mind if its staff use rival products. We think not.

Which raises another tantalising question. Will Microsoft again be bemoaning the much-publicised security issue which riddle its products, or secretly relishing the fact that it has managed to indirectly force its fiercest rival out of potentially the biggest market on the planet?

However, more recently car manufactures have began looking at ways to heighten the technology available to drivers and while there are many benefits to mobile workers there is also the possibility the systems will distract drivers from the road.

Google has brought Local Search and Maps to cars to allow business professionals to send addresses they receive in emails to their car in order to speed up the time taken to get to vital business meetings

In December Google teamed up with Audi A8 to bring Google Earth to drivers and give them 3D satellite imagery and geological information relevant to location.

Yesterday the New York Times quoted Audi's multimedia interface systems engineer, Mathias Halliger, who argued that business users want to find all the information they have in their smartphone in their car.

"We should give them the same or a better experience", said Halliger.

Meanwhile today at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the US division of Ford launched a new IT system for cars called MyFord Touch, which connects the driver with entertainment functions, phones, climate information and navigation systems.

MyFord has Wi-Fi functionality, two USB ports and plug-in keyboard access. Drivers will be able to control much of the system and LCD screens with voice commands.

Although not advised by the car company, MYFord will allow drivers to check their emails, talk on the phone, listen to music, and check the weather, all with their foot on the pedal.

Ford could not immediately respond to requests about when MyFord will be made available to the UK market and it may be that with already tighter restrictions on driver and car security than in the US, it will not enter the UK without certain safeguards being mandated.

Yet still, as car companies are now trying to differentiate themselves with the amount of gadgets they offer the customers, the government needs to keep a watchful eye on the potentially deadly distractions they can also bring.