Offline this weekend? Catch the stories you missed

The news doesn’t respect weekends and public holidays, and every time you go offline there’s always a backlog of stories worth reading when you return. Find the most interesting and meaningful news and reads from The Next Web and elsewhere in this brief round-up.

In the news

• The big fight begins: Windows XP drops below 40% market share while Windows 8 passes 1%.
• Apple has joined the ranks of businesses around the world to support the World AIDS Day by changing all its retail store logos to red.
• Trim time! Yahoo Messenger will lose public chat rooms, Windows Live Messenger support, Pingbox, and Yahoo Voice Phone In and Phone Out capabilities on December 14.
• Internet in Syria began to be coming back on Saturday, following two days offline.
• Microsoft is going to add music playback capabilities to SkyDrive, perhaps taking Xbox Music to iOS and Android.
• A man is charged $1.5 million for sharing 7 porn flicks on Bittorrent in “the largest file-sharing related damage award in U.S. history.”
• A fresh draft of President Obama’s potential executive order on cybersecurity has been leaked, and widely critiqued.
• “American Banker” has named Square’s Jack Dorsey Innovator of the Year, praising his impact on payments space.
• Following exclusive interview with CNN, John McAfee reportedly has been captured, according to his own blog.
• A slippery slope: UK ISPs have blocked The Promo Bay, a completely legal site separate from The Pirate Bay.

Good reads from our authors

• Did smartphones kill the trivia star? Maybe, but Google-proof quizzes could help beat the cheats.
• What happens after you win a big startup competition? We asked 7 champions from major events.
• A practical guide on accurately scheduling client projects.
• Cloud atlas: A weather forecast on the Chinese cloud industry.
• Five unconventional places to shop for your holiday gifts.
• The life and times of Kim Dotcom.
• How to hire the right developer for your tech startup.
• Meet Elephanti, the loyalty card version of Foursquare designed to bring customers inside the retail store.
• The valley vs. the rest: The state of the venture capital industry.

Good reads from beyond TNW

• Startups, please write better emails! [MHJ.tc]
• Disruptions: Silencing the Voices of Militants on Twitter [The New York Times]
• Dear ITU, please don’t bill Internet use like phone calls [ArsTechnica]
• The product lens [Chris Dixon]
• Breaking Through Cloud Addiction [TechCrunch]
• How script kiddies can hijack your browser to steal your password [ArsTechnica]
• The future of Ubuntu revealed [TechRadar]

Image credit: Paul J. Richards / Getty Images.