6. : IBM plans to buy SPSS, the analytics software specialist, for US$1.2 billion. The companies had announced just last month that IBM will embed SPSS technology into its business intelligence and performance management tools.

7. : Intel was behind the competition in developing chips for mobile devices and so had to speed up its process, which led to development of the successful Atom chip, an Intel executive revealed.

8. : iPhone hacker Charlie Miller showed at the Black Hat conference how to take over one of the smartphones using a series of malicious SMS (short messaging system) messages exploiting an unpatched bug. Although more work would have to be done for a hacker to do anything seriously bad using the flaw, such things seem always to just be a matter of time.

9. : Although etiquette rules for social networking, e-mail and other aspects of Web life would seem to be, more or less, the same as the manners employed apart from cyberspace, those of us who have been assaulted on our Facebook pages by revelations regarding the type of deodorant a "friend" fancies have come to realize that some lessons are called for.

10. : Microsoft's deal with Yahoo wasn't the only news from the software company this week. Microsoft also released details on how people can upgrade to a different version of Windows 7. Users can purchase a package with an upgrade key, which gives them the ability to trade up to the next version of the OS. Upgrading will cost $79.99, $89.99 or $139.99 depending on what version a user selects.