Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are all trying to be the better Santa Claus this holiday season, offering free Wi-Fi in a variety of venues.

The motivator in all this gift giving, perhaps, is Microsoft, which in September started giving away free Wi-Fi at hotspots around the United States on one condition: You must use Bing to search the Web at least once. It's not clear where the Bing hotspots are, exactly, but there are reportedly thousands of locations involved. JiWire, a mobile advertising network that's partnering with Microsoft on the deal, told MediaPost that "the campaign has performed well above average and Microsoft plans to continue the promotion."

In a world where computing goes "cloudy," can Firefox survive? What if Chrome OS successfully merges browser with operating system to create a new Google world order?

This is all highly speculative, but on Firefox's fifth birthday, I fear for the browser's future. (I am not alone; Tony Bradley also worries over Firefox).

In New York City last night, chip maker AMD previewed some snappy Windows 7 PCs to be shown in January at CES. Specifically, AMD gave a sneak preview of Dell's Inspiron Zino HD portable home theater, set for official announcement this Thursday, while also displaying an 11.6-inch Acer Ferrari One netbook that might cross the Atlantic to US shores in 2010.

Demon's Souls is hard. Harder than sailing through Nintendo's Punch-Out!! cheat-free. Harder than solving a Rubik's Cube blindfolded. Harder than luring CBS to feature you for ranking "top Guitar Hero III player in the world." Harder than scoring a fabled 3,333,360 points in Pac-Man…

Users who want the Mac OS X experience on a netbook budget have figured out how to hack the Mac OS X operating system to force it to work on netbooks based on the Intel Atom processor. The latest update to the Snow Leopard update removes support for the Atom processor and puts an end to the 'hackintosh'--at least for now.

Why would Apple do such a thing? Is Apple so bent on maintaining draconian control of the Mac OS X software and the hardware platform it runs on that it would risk the customer backlash that might come from breaking hackintosh netbooks? Well, yes and no.

Google's gift of free holiday Internet access at 47 U.S. airports only points out how backward those airports are. Don't they understand Internet access in public places is supposed to be free?

The scale of Google's announcement turned Yahoo's "free Internet in Times Square for a year" promotion, also announced Tuesday, into another example of how out-classed Yahoo has become.

LinkedIn and Twitter announced a partnership on Monday allowing you to push your LinkedIn status updates out to your Twitter account or pull your tweets into your professional profile. Twitter co-founder Biz Stone called it "bringing the peanut butter and the chocolate together to make the perfect combination."

Amazon released a Kindle for PC app, available as a free 5.17MB download for Windows 7, Vista, and XP. Much like the Kindle for iPhone app, Kindle for PC syncs your Amazon e-book downloads and shows them on your computer for convenient reading either when you're away from your svelte e-book reader or if you chose not to buy it in the first place. A Mac version, Amazon says, is "coming soon."

Though not necessarily revolutionary, the Kindle for PC app does the job. Among other benefits, it syncs your last read page with Whispersync, syncs Kindle notes, and promises to utilize Windows 7's touch technology, allowing readers to pinch-zoom, and, in future releases, turn pages with finger swipes. Amazon is reportedly working on the ability to create notes and highlights on your PC and a search function. What you can't do is view blogs, newspapers or magazines -- not a big whoop given you'll be at your computer, but still...

On Monday Apple released an update to its Snow Leopard operating system (10.6.2 ) that fixes flaws, including one that wipes out a users' personal data. But along with fixes, Apple's update also kills support for Intel Atom processors, in a bid to stop users from hacking their netbooks and creating "hackintosh" systems.

The Snow Leopard 10.6.2 update addresses over 100 general fixes, 43 being security related. One of those fixes addresses the highly publicized bug that wipes a users' home folders when logging in with a guest account. This is the second update since Snow Leopard was released at the end of August.

Happy birthday Firefox. Its hard to believe that its been 5 years already. Just surviving 5 years in the tech industry is a fairly significant feat, but Firefox has made its mark as the big fish in the small pond. Being the leading web browser that isn't Internet Explorer is commendable; however Google may knock Firefox off its pedestal with Chrome.

When Mozilla unleashed the first Firefox web browser, it was welcomed with open arms by a web-browsing population that was bored with the lack of innovation in Internet Explorer 6 and increasingly concerned with the massive security issues that plagued Microsoft's web browser. With each successive security flaw discovered in Internet Explorer, more experts jumped on the "switch-to-Firefox-for-better-security" bandwagon.

Call it an early holiday gift from Google to millions of airline passengers. Google said will be offering free Wi-Fi to travelers across the United States starting Tuesday at 47 airports. Google says the Wi-Fi will be available until January 15, 2010. Google says it will also extend the free Wi-Fi offer to Virgin America flights within the continental United States.

For a complete list of participating airports visit Google's dedicated Free Wi-Fi for the Holidays Website.

If you're a hardware geek who absolutely must know every bit of information about your PC and attached hardware, including performance statistics, then Dr. Hardware ($30, 30-day free demo/trial with feature limitations) may well be for you. This program gives you an almost mind-boggling amount of data, including very in-depth and detailed benchmarking of your CPU, memory, video subsystem, hard disk, and more.