Mark Bridge writes:

There's one tech story that’s dominated the week’s news: Microsoft buying Skype. "Why?" and "Really?" appear to be the top questions; we'll do our best to answer them and provide some more insight in Wednesday's podcast.

WiFi hotspot community Fon says it now has over four million Fon hotspots worldwide, up 30% from the three million hotspots it announced at the beginning of the year.

Martin Varsavsky, Fon CEO and founder of the five-year-old company, said "Four million hotspots is an amazing figure and proof that the Fon model works."

Telefónica Europe has announced its Q1 2011 results, with customer numbers reaching 57 million and income up 6.3%.

The UK part of the business - which trades as O2 - saw an increase in customers to 22.3 million mobile users plus an additional 2.6 million using Tesco Mobile. Smartphones accounted for 82% of total sales and upgrades in Q1, bringing smartphone penetration to 33% for O2 UK.

A report from TNS says the adoption of mobile finance around the world - using a mobile phone to make payments or to access bank account details - has surged in the last 12 months. Many countries saw the number of new mobile banking users increase by over 100%.

Last year in the UK, just 9.7% of people were using mobile phones to access their bank accounts - but the figure's increased to 20.4% for 2011.

Samsung and Google have announced a notebook computer that uses the Chrome operating system. Unlike other notebook and laptop computers, almost all user information is stored online 'in the cloud'.

The Samsung Series 5 Chromebook has a 12.1-inch screen and is just 2cm thick.