Amid news of worsening economic turmoil in markets worldwide, rumors persist that Microsoft may be readying the first formal round of layoffs in the company's history. The latest buzz suggests the Redmond-based software giant may eliminate as many as 15,000 jobs -- though cooler heads say the cuts will come more from attrition and expired contracts than from actual pink slips. Whatever the case, look to January 15 for the big announcement, sources say.

News that Microsoft may be tightening its belt certainly comes as no surprise. It's not the only company to do so -- Yahoo trimmed 10 percent of its workforce in December, for example, while IBM is rumored to be planning layoffs of its own. But it's tempting to speculate whether there may be more behind Microsoft's cost-cutting measures than just a response to the current recession, especially in light of reports that core Microsoft products have lost significant market share in recent months.

If you're interested in sharing your PowerPoint presentations as DVDs to be played on a DVD player, this program gives you a simple, no-fuss way to do it. Wondershare PPT2DVD burns a completed presentation to a DVD, and includes all aspects of it, including transitions, music, videos, and so on.

Gestures can say so much without any words, whether you've just been cut off in traffic or you're trying to execute a PC command. Instead of reaching for a menu or even typing a key shortcut, use mouse gestures to activate these commands. You could make a loop to print, a "Z" shape to open the PC World website, slide up-then-down to close a window, and more. Some PCs, especially laptops, are beginning to read these kinds of commands in their mouse drivers. Here's how to add the functionality to any PC.

You have several gesture programs to choose from, including gMote and StrokeIt. I like gMote especially because it doesn't need any deep installation; it's just active when running, like a normal application. By default, you'll hold Ctrl and Shift while making gestures. Match a shape that the application recognizes--or one that you recorded--and it triggers a corresponding function.

Hackman Suite is a programmer's toolkit--make no doubt about it. This set of useful utilities is of little to no use to the average business or home user, but if you're a programmer--especially one who has to work on very low level operations or deal with finding extremely bizarre bugs--this set of utilities may prove very useful.

Twitter is tackling a series of security issues, starting with a hack that hit some well-known celebrity accounts. Someone broke into Twitter accounts belonging to President-elect Barack Obama, CNN anchor Rick Sanchez, and Britney Spears over the weekend. At the same time, a phishing scam is trying to trick regular users into handing over their passwords and compromising their profiles.

Twitter Hack: Celebrity Targets

In sales, DriveClone Pro has been playing second fiddle to Acronis True Image. As of this latest version, though DriveClone Pro is largely on par with its rival feature-wise. It offers both imaging and file backup, incremental backup, and a hidden automatic restore partition. Also, in my book it's also the easiest of all the imaging programs to learn and use--despite some translation errata. Alas, there were enough error messages (non-fatal) that I can't fully recommend it as of this writing.

Steve Jobs may not be coming to Macworld Expo in San Francisco next week, but that hasn't stopped the Apple rumor-rama from charging ahead at full speed.

This year is Apple's last at the storied trade show, and many are hoping the little company from Cupertino will go out with a bang. They always seem to come up with something to satisfy their legions, and this year shouldn't be any different even with Apple Senior V.P. of Worldwide Product Marketing Phil Schiller delivering the keynote address. So as you get ready for Apple's presentation on January 6 we present you with the top 5 most current MacWorld rumors.

Back before Thanksgiving I predicted that Blu-ray sales would suffer during the holiday season due to the high cost of both the player and HDTVs combined with the current economic recession, among other reasons. But after seeing the report from the British Video Association declaring Blu-ray sales have risen almost 400 percent for the 2008 holiday season over the same period of time last year, it is clear that I was wrong.

Across the whole holiday season 3.7 million Blu-ray units were sold in Britain, and that doesn't include sales of Sony's Playstation 3 console, which also plays Blu-ray movies. A large contributing factor to the rise in Blu-ray sales was the release of the movies The Dark Knight and Mama Mia on Blu-ray. The Dark Knight sold almost 300,000 copies in its first few weeks, becoming the fastest selling Blu-ray title to date. Mama Mia was no slouch either selling 5.1 million copies by year-end.

LG Electronics this spring will launch a series of broadband-enabled HDTVs that will stream movies, TV shows, and other high-definition content from Netflix, without the need for an external set-top box, the company has announced. LG and Netflix are demonstrating the new products this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

The LG plasma and LCD sets will include software that allows users to access the Netflix Web site, where they can stream movies and other shows. After selected by a user, a movie will begin playing in as little as 30 seconds, the companies say. Pricing is fuzzy at this time, but some reports indicate that LG's Internet-ready TVs will likely cost $200 to $300 more than comparable sets without Web features. Subscriber fees for Netflix' DVD rental service currently start at $9 a month.

Who wants scads of commercial PC games for free? No, I don't mean the kind you download illicitly, silly. I'm talking about older but as well a few newer games, including the occasional award-winner, that publishers have made available over the years and on the house.

Common dilemma: You come across a cool Web site you want to revisit later, but how will you remember you want to revisit it later? Sure, you can bookmark it, but then it might get lost and/or forgotten amidst your hundreds of other bookmarks.

Enter Toread, a handy little service that sends bookmarks to your inbox. What's the advantage? Simple: The site stays on your radar. Think of it as an e-mail reminder: "Hey, look at me!"

Don Dalton installed Vista's SP1 update, encountered "a multitude of problems," and uninstalled it. Can he safely go on indefinitely without it?

Windows service packs can be the stuff of nightmares. Do you let Microsoft do a major, remote-control overhaul of your operating system that might break something that was working just fine? Or do you ignore a service pack that plugs some serious security holes and is more likely to fix something that's already broken than to break something new?