Computerworld, Computerworld staff

True privacy can be hard to come by in the socially enabled online world, but Twitter on Thursday announced that it has joined Firefox maker Mozilla in taking a big step forward for users.

Specifically, the popular microblogging site has signed onto enabling Firefox's Do Not Track feature, making it possible for Firefox users on Twitter to opt out of third-party tracking cookies used for advertising and other purposes.

Executives at AstraZeneca, a global pharmaceutical company, know that it's not enough to provide social collaboration tools for their employees. Those tools need to be highly mobile.

Employees are likely to be happy to get enterprise-level social collaboration tools, but they are just as likely to be frustrated if those tools aren't highly mobile, said Angela Yochem, chief technology officer at AstraZeneca, which has 57,200 employees in the U.S., Europe and Asia.

Leap Day brought with it the chance to download the beta release of the next version of Microsoft's server platform, along with the Windows 8 Consumer Preview and first looks at the next versions of the company's developer software. Then, this morning, Microsoft announced the new features and enhancements that have made it into the server beta, which you can download here .

I've spent some time putting the beta through its paces in my test environment. I used a Dell PowerEdge T300 with a 2.5-Ghz Intel Xeon processor and 24GB of RAM, and tested with both a native installation and as a virtual machine within Windows Server 2008 R2's Hyper-V platform.

Kim Dotcom and the other MegaUpload defendants may have to wait until Wednesday to find out if they can be released on bail.

District Court Judge David McNaughton has reserved his decision until tomorrow or possibly Wednesday. Until then, the defendants will remain in custody at Mount Eden remand center in Albany, New Zealand.

Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom is considered a significant flight risk, New Zealand prosecutors argued on behalf of the U.S. government Monday in a New Zealand court.

The North Shore District Court scheduled a hearing to decide whether Dotcom and three others should be granted bail after four men were arrested in Auckland on Friday on suspicion of large-scale copyright infringement.

The Internet can promote the literacy development of young adults, according to a study by Dr Jen Scott Curwood from the University of Sydney, Australia.

The ongoing study, which interviewed teenagers aged 13 to 17 from Australia, Canada, and the United States, found that the Web -- in moderation -- could be an effective tool in fostering literacy skills among youths.

Google will inject US$300 million as a long-term investment in its Hong Kong datacenter that will go live in early 2013, said the company after the ground breaking ceremony in Tsueng Kwan O Industrial Estate last week.

The US$300 million investment includes the cost of land, construction, and technical equipment, Google representatives noted, adding that it will employ around 25 full-time staffers along with some part-time and full-time contractors in various roles including compute technicians, electrical and mechanical engineers, and catering and security workers.

In April of 1995, Steve Jobs, then head of NeXT Computer, was interviewed as part of the Computerworld Honors Program Oral History project. The wide-ranging interview was conducted by Daniel Morrow, executive director of the awards program.

From his early years -- when he says except for a few key adults 'I would absolutely have ended up in jail' -- to how he felt about Apple in the mid-'90s -- 'The Macintosh will die in another few years [under John Sculley]' -- to his predictions about how the Internet would change the world, this is a rare look at Jobs after his first string of innovations but before he returned to Apple.

Google took another step toward the enterprise this week when executives unveiled the "Chromebook," a notebook PC that could boost both its new operating system and cloud apps.

At its annual Google I/O developers conference in San Francisco, the company unveiled the notebook PCs that run Google 's Chrome operating system.

Finally the white iPhone 4 and iPad 2 have hit Hong Kong.

Hong Kong aside, fans in 27 other markets are able to buy the white device this weekend.

The U.S. government may start issuing terror alerts using Facebook and Twitter , according to a news service report.

The Associated Press reported Thursday that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is working to overhaul the current color-coded terror alert system. The new system, according to the report, would have only two levels of alerts -- elevated and imminent.