Stories by: Preston Gralla

Once upon a time, Microsoft would rarely release a product on a competitor's platform. Those days may be over. At the end of last year, Microsoft launched a blizzard of apps for iPhones, iPads and Android phones. That's good news for anyone who cares about the company's future.

With the holiday season in full force, a lot of gift-givers are going to be considering one of the new color e-readers that have been introduced recently: Amazon's Kindle Fire, the Kobo Vox and Barnes & Noble's Nook Tablet.

You know the stereotype: Microsoft is the sworn enemy of openness, unwilling to open its code or hardware to others. It's a monopolist bent on world domination, willing to use its lawyers and market strength to ensure that Windows and Office don't face any serious competition.

Print books may not be dead, but it's not for want of the biggest booksellers trying to kill them. This week, Amazon released the Kindle Fire, with Barnes & Noble following with the Nook Tablet -- while one week ago the lesser-known Kobo Vox went on sale.

Microsoft was built on operating systems: first DOS, and then Windows. But the company's most recent earnings show that Windows is no longer its primary engine for growth. Because of that, it's not clear what kind of company Microsoft will be several years from now.

Microsoft recently released a developer preview of Windows 8 , which Steven Sinofsky, president of Microsoft's Windows division, called a "bold re-imagination." For once, corporate hype is accurate; this new version of Windows is dramatically different from Windows 7 , Vista and XP. Not that different always means better. Enterprises are going to be especially hard-pressed to see improvements in Windows 8. In fact, they might skip the upgrade entirely.

The recent iOS 5 announcement highlighted several interesting additions to Apple's app-focused operating system, such as the new Siri voice command interface, which will be available only on the iPhone 4S. In contrast, Microsoft's new Mango version of Windows Phone 7 (which is actually version 7.5) helps fulfill that platform's promise of helping people focus on the tasks they want to accomplish and the information they want to receive, rather than the apps they run -- especially when it comes to social networking and communications.

Nifty, free Firefox add-on Email this! is great for anyone who wants to share Web page URLs with others via email software. When you're on a Web page whose URL you want to share with someone, click a button, and the add-in launches your default email client--whether it's a desktop mail client, such as Microsoft Outlook, or Web-based one, such as Gmail--creates a new mail message, and inserts the URL into the body of the message, and the title of the page into the subject line. At that point all you need to do is fill in the recipient's address, type in any message you want, and send off your email.

A first hands-on look at the just-released Developer Preview of Windows 8 (which became available last night at the Windows Dev Center site) reveals an operating system poised halfway between yesterday's desktop and tomorrow's touch-screen interface. I installed it on a PC, but the OS seems built more for tablets and mobile devices than traditional computers,

If you're a Google+ user with an Android smartphone or tablet, here's a simple piece of advice: Download the Google+ Android app right now. It's so well-designed, simple and straightforward to use, you would have thought that Google+ was designed to be a mobile service from the beginning.