Sofia Elizabella Wyciślik-Wilson

T-Mobile is taking the wraps off the next stage of its "uncarrier" program, revealing that from the end of October anyone on its Simple Choice plans are going to get something for free. Not just any old something. Free text and free unlimited data. It doesn't end there. The free offers work on a global scale, meaning that international data and texts will be free in more than 100 countries.

John Legere, president and CEO of T-Mobile US, Inc. says "Today's phones are designed to work around the world, but we're forced to pay insanely inflated international connectivity fees to actually use them. You can't leave the country without coming home to bill shock. So we're making the world your network -- at no extra cost".

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In the red corner, Bing. In the blue, Google. But which is better? Microsoft launches the Bing It On campaign in the UK to enable web searchers to choose which results are best. Google is such a ubiquitous online tool that it has become a verb and entered the dictionary; it is the search engine that automatically springs to mind for most people when they need to research something.

But this does not mean that there is not room for a little competition, and this is something that Microsoft is keen to exploit with its latest campaign.

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Presentations are loved and loathed in just about equal measure. A great presentation helps to drive a message home; a bad one makes a meeting drag on forever. PowerPoint may be the king of presentations, but the online office tools that are available in Google Drive also have a good following. Now Google has recognized the fact that monitors are almost universally widescreen these days, adding the ability to create widescreen format slides in presentations.

The change in aspect ratio may seem like a minor feature, but it is immensely useful. Be gone foul borders! Presentations can now make use of every pixel of your display, or give a full cinema experience when projected to a larger audience. Widescreen slides have not just been introduced, they have been made the default setting -- and there are 16:9 and 16:10 formats to choose from.

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Microsoft opens up Bing Places to businesses in the UK and Canada, making it possible for business owners to promote themselves online more easily. This is essentially an online directory that enables firms of all sizes to gain an online presence and become more easily discoverable by potential customers. It is something of a quiet launch, but businesses are invited to create their online listing free of charge.

Bing Places -- or Bing Places for Business to give its full title -- is a rebranded version of Bing Business Portal. Business owners can check to see whether there is already a listing for them in the directory, and are given the chance to create a new one if there isn't. To help avoid the problem of fake listings being created, ownership then has to be verified either over the phone or via post.

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Guinness World Records, home to facts and figures such as who is the fattest, tallest, strongest and hairiest person on the planet, confirms that GTA V is the holder of numerous records. We already know that the game franchise is extremely successful, but it is interesting to see just how successful it is.

It is less than a month since the latest installment in the Grand Theft Auto series was released, and it has already grossed over $1 billion -- hardly surprising when you consider that 11.21 million units were sold in the first 24 hours. In all, the game has broken seven world records, and while the first six relate to sales figures, GTA V also has the "most viewed trailer for an action-adventure videogame".

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After what was possibly the shortest-lived leak in history, Samsung announces the Galaxy Round, a smartphone with a curved screen. Just days after LG announced mass production of the first flexible display, images started to leak online that depicted a curved Samsung device.

This was followed almost immediately by a Samsung announcement, complete with the news that the phone will be available in Korea from 10 October.

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Adblock Plus is in its seventh year of clearing out advertisements from web pages, and is now for the first time sharing details about how its whitelisting system works. Known as Acceptable Ads, Adblock Plus recognizes the fact that advertising exists for a reason and is a cornerstone that keeps the internet running.

For this reason, advertisements that meet certain criteria are whitelisted, and Adblock Plus' Ben Williams reveals details of how the process works.

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We have a tendency to take access to the internet for granted, but for people in many countries it is a luxury that is prohibitively expensive. This is something that the Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) wants to change, aiming to drive down the cost of web access worldwide so that it works out to less than 5 percent of monthly income. A4AI is a consortium of tech companies and other organizations which has the backing of Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the web.

Membership includes such names as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook and Intel, and the alliance wants to do something about the fact that around two thirds of the world's population is not online. The coalition cites figures from the International Telecommunication Union that shows that while internet access in developed countries can cost as little as 2 percent of household income, in other parts of the world this can spiral up to around a third.

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In the CEO's annual letter to shareholders, Steve Ballmer writes how Microsoft has changed the world. The letter, which will be Ballmer's last, has a reflective tone as he looks back over Microsoft's achievements while he was at the helm. He explains the reasoning behind some of the changes that were made at Microsoft over the last year including the restructuring that has taken place, but also looks forward.

The "last shareholder letter I will write as the CEO of the company I love" is studded with personal references, starting off with a heartfelt explanation for why he loves his role: "We have always believed that technology will unleash human potential and that is why I have come to work every day with a heart full of passion for more than 30 years".

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Many people are settling into the idea that a 7 inch screen is the ideal size for a tablet. The extra screen space provided by a 10 inch model sounds great in theory, but it does result in a device that is slightly more cumbersome to take from place to place. Looked at in terms of portability, 7 inches is perfect -- large enough to make most tasks easy, but small enough to easily slip into a bag, if not necessarily a pocket.

The slightly smaller size also makes an important difference to the price tag, and there is a burgeoning market for tablets of this size. It is interesting to see that as the screens of phones gradually get larger and larger, the general trend for the tablet is to shrink -- the two are on a collision course!

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This has been a week with a lot of news about operating systems. As we near the official release OS X Mavericks went GM and was made available to developers, while in the world of Linux Red Hat Enterprise 5.10 was also unveiled. Windows 8.1 was made available for pre-order, but a study of sales figures revealed that Windows 7 continues to grow faster than Windows 8. Ahead of his retirement sometime in the next twelve months, Microsoft's Steve Ballmer was punished for poor performance with a bonus reduction, with first generation Surface sales partly to blame.

Things look better for Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2, with reports of the tablets selling out -- this is perhaps not surprising when Delta Airlines has bought 11,000 of the devices for its pilots. As well as looking forward, Microsoft also came over a little nostalgic, choosing to show off the capabilities of Internet Explorer 11 with a revived version of the classic Windows 95 game Hover.

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In a blog post that looks forwards as well as backwards, Skype lays out details of planned improvements for the desktop and mobile versions of the app. Mark Gillett applauds the technological improvements that have been made over the past year and also gives a glimpse of the changes we can expect to see in the year to come. The post acknowledges that a large proportion of Skype usage is on mobile devices, and a number of mobile-friendly changes are revealed.

One particularly noteworthy feature specific to mobile users is the promise that chat synchronization across devices will be improved. This is something that anyone who used Skype on multiple devices will have noticed can be a problem. Send a large number of text based messages from the desktop version of Skype and when you launch Skype on another computer or a phone, you'll currently find that there can be quite a delay as message history is downloaded. While no details are provided, Gillet says:

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Just two weeks after the release of iOS 7 Apple takes the wraps off the OS X 10.9 Mavericks GM. The latest version of the operating system, which is now only available to developers, is likely due for general release later in the month and it is extremely unlikely there will be any further changes -- barring the discovery of any serious problems, what we see now is what we'll get on release day.

The same build was released earlier to Apple employees and members of AppleSeed, and there are also updates to iPhoto and Xcode to enjoy. Within Mavericks, there are a number of changes from Mountain Lion. First off, iBooks is familiar to iPad and iPhone owners and now the ebook management system is brought to Macs -- of course, everything is kept in sync between devices.

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Just last week, I wrote an article based on a report by Pfeiffer Consulting which suggested that Windows Phone 8 is, in its current state, the least user-friendly mobile operating system available. The article stirred up some feelings, and there were some quite heated exchanges in the comments.

For this follow-up piece, I spoke with Andreas Pfeiffer, the author of the report, to address some of the points, complaints and concerns you raised.

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Yahoo is vastly increasing the bounty bug-hunters can hope to grab if they report a security issue to the company. The internet giant came in for criticism last month after a group of researchers discovered a scripting vulnerability and were rewarded with a Yahoo voucher for $12.50 -- which could only be used to purchase Yahoo merchandise. The company now sees the error of its ways and is increasing the rewards it offers, potentially up to $15,000.

Bugs and security issues are to be expected with all software -- it's an unfortunate reality that problems can and do arise. It is difficult for any developer to test every possible usage scenario, so it is often the users who discover problems with apps and online services. It is not uncommon for big-name companies to offer some form of compensation for helping out. Yahoo has already demonstrated its enthusiasm for improving security with its two-factor authentication features second sign-in and App Password.

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