The blogosphere is buzzing this week about slides posted on Italian Windows blog Windows 7 that purportedly come from a presentation Microsoft gave to PC makers on the next iteration of its operating system.

Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that the leaked Windows 8 slides really are what they appear to be. Microsoft has declined to comment, but there are an impressive number of slides, they look legitimate, and can you imagine the work that went into them? Someone had to get paid for that.

Users have to be careful about the way they hold their new iPhones lest they lose reception, but that's hardly putting a crimp in the device's blockbuster start. From June 24 -- the day the iPhone 4 hit stores -- to June 26, Apple moved 1.7 million phones.

In a press statement Monday, Steve Jobs called it "the most successful product launch in Apple's history," and he apologized for the fact that the phone is in short supply. Had Apple been able to meet the line-inducing, site-crashing demand, that 1.7 million could have been significantly higher. What Jobs didn't mention is the antenna issue that has been causing a stir among iPhone owners.

As anyone who ones an iPhone can attest, making actual phone calls is not one of the beloved device's strengths. You can blame AT&T's shoddy network, the construction of the phone or the sheer number of iPhone users out there, but dropped calls and poor call quality have long been "features" of Apple's smartphone.

So when Steve Jobs showed off the latest model, which officially launched in the U.S. today, users sounded a note of cautious celebration. The stainless steel band that runs around the phone, explained Jobs, contains its cellular, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth antennas -- a design that was engineered to address those dropped calls and poor reception.

Enterprise IT spending is on the rise and companies are beginning to (conservatively ) hire staff again, right? Not so fast. While there have been encouraging signs and reports, a new study suggests that 2010 is actually looking a lot like 2009.

In May, Gartner estimated that enterprise IT spending will climb 4.1 percent this year after falling 5.6 percent in 2009, echoing expectations for moderate growth voiced by Forrester, IDC and others. And numerous reports have shown optimism among CIOs that they'll be adding employees again this year. Well, research firm Computer Economics' annual IT Staffing and Benchmarks report isn't quite as optimistic.

One in every five apps available in Google's Android Market give third-party applications access to private data, according to a new study from security vendor Smobile Systems.

Smobile, which just happens to offer mobile security software, says it arrived at that conclusion after studying the permissions requested by more than 48,000 applications in the store for Android-based devices.

The news just doesn't get any better for Google as it continues to feel the heat from regulators around the world over the interception of private Wi-Fi data by its Street View cars.

The latest? After an inspection of Wi-Fi data amassed by Google's snooping cars, French data protection agency CNIL says that it included passwords for e-mail and other accounts, extracted e-mail messages, as well as medical and banking information.