If you've ever struggled with remembering your Facebook password, or felt uncomfortable using your Google ID to log in to a non-Google Web site, Mozilla has a solution for you -- one it calls Persona.

This first beta of Persona, which used to be called Mozilla's BrowserID project, is designed to compete with Web site login systems like the ones offered by Twitter, Facebook, and Google. Whether this open source alternative can hold its own against those other login heavy-hitters, though, is another story.

Persona essentially aims to give you a cross-platform, cross-browser way to log into a variety of Web sites with a single username and password -- but without compromising your privacy. In its description of Persona, Mozilla describes the service as one that imposes a Chinese wall between the act of logging you in and whatever you do once you've logged in. "The history of what sites you visit is stored only on your own computer," Mozilla writes.

This is a notable difference from social-networking services such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus, which track your navigation after you've logged in. Even when not logged in, social-networking site widgets can report back who has visited a site where the widget is embedded.

Persona ... [Read more]

BlueStacks's technology for running Android apps on Windows fuels a new way for people with AMD-powered computers to get Android apps on their Windows PCs, the two companies announced today.

AMD's new AppZone Player brings more than 500,000 Android apps to AMD-powered computers, and works on Windows 7 and Windows 8 now.

"This will unify the Win 8 and mobile ecosystems," wrote BlueStacks CEO Rosen Sharma in an e-mail to CNET explaining team-up. "Just by virtue of the size of the deal, it's started a giant ball rolling that will be difficult to stop. The question becomes: can others catch up? For example, AppStores like Intel's AppUp will need to begin moving very quickly."

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• Asus to bring Android to Windows with BlueStacks
• BlueStacks ports Android apps to Mac
• BlueStacks goes Metro with Windows 8

BlueStacks and AMD are also discussing pre-installing certain popular apps on the computer that ship with AppZone, although they wouldn't confirm which apps those are. Apps are available in multiple languages including English, German, Korean, Chin... [Read more]

Avira 2013 is nearly identical to last year's version, but there are big changes under the hood.

The competition for the best free Windows security suite just got a lot more intense, as Avira returns to the field with its second major revamp in as many years of its flagship free antivirus and paid upgrades.

Available exclusively from Download.com today, Avira Free Antivirus 2013, along with the paid upgrades Avira Antivirus Premium 2013 and Avira Internet Security 2013, greatly expand the kinds of protection that Avira offers.

Avira wouldn't reveal a precise number of people who use the suite, but Opswat puts them at around 12.1 percent of the worldwide Windows market. Travis Witteveen, Avira's head of marketing, said during a visit to the CNET offices that Opswat's math was "very close" to the actual number of people using Avira. That's a jump of ... [Read more]