The latest data from market research firm comScore shows Apple holding on to a quarter of the US smartphone market, which grew roughly 18 percent over the last six months. That makes the iPhone the number two smartphone in the US, though it still lags well behind number one RIM. Android-based devices are still growing rapidly in popularity.

Over the last few months, comScore data shows RIM and Apple holding pretty much steady, with RIM at 43 percent and Apple at 25.1 percent. Unsurprisingly, Palm (which includes webOS and PalmOS) devices and Microsoft-powered devices continued to decline. Android-based devices, however, continued to rise sharply, enough to eclipse Palm to take fourth place in the US market.

One complaint commonly leveled against the iPhone is that it can't run multiple apps at the same time. However, sources for AppleInsider say that Apple is finally planning to that will integrate with the established iPhone user interface in the next major revision of iPhone OS, expected to be available this summer.

Like Mac OS X on which it is based, iPhone OS is fully capable of running multiple processes at once. In fact, it does run multiple processes—iPod, Mail, voicemail and phone processes continually run in the background. What it doesn't do is run multiple third-party apps at the same time. Want to listen to Pandora while answering e-mails? Run a GPS tracking app while checking your tweets? Sorry, no can do.

Apple has given a number of reasons for enforcing this limitation. The company claims that multiple apps running simultaneously will run down the battery faster, or could lead to more out-of-memory errors as apps contend for resources of the iPhone. Also, since non-Apple apps can't run in the background, there's virtually zero chance that malware could run without a user noticing. Finally, limiting the iPhone to one app at a time keeps things simple enough for even the most tech-adverse users to understand how it works.

However, the latest rumor says that Apple has a "full-on solution" to the problem coming in iPhone OS 4.0. No specifics were revealed, so there are no details about how Apple has implemented managing multiple running apps. Remember, it took three major versions of iPhone OS before there was , and the interface ended up working extremely well. We expect Apple has likewise put extensive work into making running multiple apps as straightforward as possible while still offering reasonable levels of stability, battery life, security, and ease of use.

Cybertron isn't just the homeworld of the Transformers... it is a Transformer itself. It was the first Transformer. In War for Cybertron you get to explore the Civil War between the Autobots and the Decepticons as they blast their way across the planet. At GDC we were treated to a long demo of the game, and yes, it looks good.

The characters were given all-new designs, and some of them will in fact be made into toys. The game takes place before Optimus gains his "Prime" designation, and shows his early days of gaining the trust of the Autobots; we get to see just how he learned to be a leader on the battleground. On the flip side of things, the game explores how Megatron met Star Scream. "We also explore why Megatron keeps this guy, who is basically a back-stabber, around," we were told. This game is taking the Transformers lore back to basics, and filling in some serious holes.

Green Day: Rock Band has a release date, so you can finally exhale. The game is coming to the PlayStation, Xbox 360, and Nintendo Wii on June 8, for $59.99 on the two high-definition systems and $49.99 on the Nintendo Wii.

The game features 47 Green Day songs, vocal harmonizing for multiple singers, and you'll have the ability to export every song to Rock Band or Rock Band 2 for an additional $10. Joystiq is reporting that if you preorder the game from GameStop, you'll be able to export the songs to your hard drive for free. A $69.99 special edition version of the game will include the ability to export the songs as well, and will include previously released Green Day tracks from the Rock Band Store.

The story mode of the game will take you through Green Day's career, with images to unlock and videos to watch. For the hardcore Green Day fan this should be a day-one purchase. For everyone else? We're just going to have to take a look at how much Green Day we need in our rhythm games.

Harmonix has also announced Rock Band 3 for release this year, but has yet to provide any details.

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Microsoft confirmed on Tuesday a new flaw affecting version 6 and 7 of its Internet Explorer web browser that could allow remote code execution. The security advisory noted that targeted attacks using the flaw were already in the wild.

This information was confirmed by McAfee, reporting that exploitation of the flaw was originating from the domain topix21century dot com over both HTTP and HTTPS. The drive-by attacks install a backdoor which connects to a command-and-control server.

Analysis by Symantec reveals that the exploit works effectively on IE 6. IE 7 tended to crash instead, and IE 8 is, as stated in the Microsoft advisory, immune. The attack loads some malicious code, and then makes repeated changes to the HTML document eventually provoking execution of the malicious code.

The best solution is to upgrade to IE 8, as one of the many improvements found in this browser also seals off the security hole. Failing that, enabling Data Execution Prevention in IE 7 should provide some level of mitigation, as the current exploits do not circumvent DEP (though they could probably be combined with DEP bypass techniques). Removing access to the file iepeers.dll using either of the mechanisms described in Microsoft's advisory prevents Internet Explorer from loading the flawed code, but may also break print and web folder functionality. Finally, disabling of scripting and ActiveX in the Internet and Local Intranet security zones should also provide protection against exploitation.

Microsoft has still made no indication whether this flaw will receive an out-of-band update, but with exploits in the wild and documented analysis of the exploit, clearly this flaw is something that needs fixing, and soon.

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The problem with dreams is that things never work the way you think they should. Try turning on a light... nothing happens. The branches of that tree may turn out to be the legs of a spider. You never feel safe, not exactly, because anything can happen. That feeling of uncertainty and unease is what Playdead had in mind when developing Limbo, a game that's coming to the Xbox Live Arcade, hopefully this summer.