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Microsoft is keeping mum about plans to integrate Skype into its Windows Phone.

There has been mounting speculation that Skype would soon be a feature on Windows Phone since Microsoft announced plans to acquire Skype last year. The company had initially promised the introduction of Skype-equipped Windows phones by the end of last year, and last week the Telegraph reported that Microsoft Rick Osterloh said at the Consumer Electrionics Show in Las Vegas that the feature will be available "soon."

But on Monday, a Microsoft spokesman refused to pin down the specifics of the product launch.

Amazon has offered a free tier to get customers hooked on Amazon Web Services (AWS) for some time, but customers were limited to the Linux Micro Instance. This week, Amazon is throwing in a free usage tier for Windows as well, so that developers can test out AWS with Windows Server. As an added bonus, Amazon has boosted the Elastic Block Storage (EBS) to 30GB and doubled the I/O requests to 2 million.

Specifically, if you want to make use of the free tier you can use one of three Windows AMIs:

Remember last year when questions arose about Microsoft's policies on UEFI secure boot on Windows 8? Microsoft's response, or lack thereof, was that "OEMs are free to choose" how or whether to enable turning off secure boot on systems shipping Windows 8. It appears, however, OEMs may not be as free to choose if they're shipping ARM hardware.

Glyn Moody points out a clause from Microsoft's Hardware Certification Requirements for Windows 8 on page 116, that says "Disabling Secure MUST NOT be possible on ARM systems."

Pop quiz: The Political Action Committee for which of the following companies has given the most in donations to lawmakers who have co-sponsored the Stop Online Piracy Act and its Senate-counterpart, the Protect IP Act: Microsoft, eBay, Google, GoDaddy, Yahoo! or Amazon?

Think carefully: all six have come out in opposition to the bill, which would put tight restrictions on Internet firms in an effort to enforce U.S. copyright laws (although some firms took more convincing stands than others). At least two of the companies, Google and Amazon, have said they may go dark to protest the bill.

If you guessed GoDaddy, which had a public dust up after initially supporting SOPA, you're right. Sort of. GoDaddy's PAC leads in percentage, giving 52.9% of the $38,750 it has given during this election cycle to Representatives that have signed on to co-sponsor SOPA and Senators who are co-sponsoring PIPA.

It may take awhile to figure out if Google has alienated some of its long-term search fans with yesterday's launch of Your World. But if they did, Microsoft's Bing may be poised to pick up some of the castoffs.

Jon Mitchell has details on Your Way, but in a nutshell, the new service better integrates Google+ content into Google search. That could have some looking for more objective ways to search, while also raising the ire of some big Web players.

If you happened to see the movie Star Trek VI (the last one with the original TV cast) when it premiered in theaters in 1991, perhaps there may have been a moment (or a dozen) when something occurred to you: You didn't have to dislike or even fail to appreciate these actors on-screen to realize, yep, there's a reason why this is - and should be - their last performance in this venue.

At this point there's probably nothing in geekdom, no matter how arcane, that hasn't ended up on someone's skin. "In" someone's skin, to be precise. From ASCII art, to xkcd comics, to video games, to binary, to parts of your childhood you just can't leave behind, there are entire sites like Geeky Tattoos now devoted to nerd ink.

Back in 2010 we put together our first list of the 30 best and worst Web tech tattoos. Here's our latest compilation, including an augmented reality tattoo, HTML tags, Javascript and C++, Debian, Wordpress, Google, Microsoft, RFID, QR codes, even Bill Gates' face. If you have work that's better, or worse, show it off in the comments.

The memo has already gone out to the various book editors, news editors and technology analysts: The proper phrase is not "tablet PC" any more. A tablet and a PC are perceived by both consumers and businesses as two separate classes of device. You probably saw the TV ads this season where Santa's elves kicked out the 4G smartphones and tablets, and dispensed with the old gifts nobody wants. "Bye, bye, computer," the elves sang to an old Johnny Mathis tune.

Since its very inception, Microsoft's business model has been about leverage. It uses its established foundation in one popular platform to extend another. The advance of the tablet had been announced further ahead of time than Margaret Thatcher announced the surge on the Falklands. It's not like Microsoft didn't see this coming. But in 20/20 hindsight, it's remarkable to see now how the company appears to have actively worked to thwart that advance, to slow it down, by introducing potential form factors that could deflect interest in tablets - for example, an embedded device that could reveal the weather forecast and present your e-mails, that could be sewn to one's luggage.

Dear Web developers: Microsoft knows how many hours of your life have been wasted trying to troubleshoot designs and functionality for Internet Explorer 6, and they're sorry. They promise they're never going to do that to you again.

To ensure such nightmares are never relived, the company will start rolling out automatic upgrades to Internet Explorer across Windows 7, Vista and XP, the company announced in a blog post today. Rather than relying on users to update the browser themselves or requiring you to trick your parents into updating theirs around the holidays, Windows will update to the latest compatible version of IE on its own.

Personal cloud storage is all the rage these days. Dropbox continues to be one of the most buzzed-about startups and its enterprise-focused counterpart Box is making moves toward the consumer market as well. For music files, Google, Amazon and Apple all offer cloud-based storage lockers and iOS allows syncing of other types of content via iCloud.

iPhone owners not satisfied with the available options now have a new one in Microsoft's SkyDrive, which launched its first iOS app today. The four-year-old service has been available to Windows users on the desktop and Windows Phone platform for some time. Today, it starts to branch out onto other platforms.