Windows: Are you a Firefox user? If so, you’ll be happy to know your favorite browser has been updated. Firefox 3.5 includes exciting new features such as a private browsing mode, an enhanced Awesome bar, better support for embedded videos, more powerful tools to manage your browsing history and a new engine that makes websites load even faster.

Symbian: There are plenty of applications for taking screen captures on your PC, but what happens if you want to grab an image of your phone’s displa? Well, grab a copy Best Screen Snap and your problems will be solved. Best Screen Snap is specifically designed to take screenshots of applications installed on your phone, which you can then send to your PC.

Mac: Ask anyone who’s used a Mac for a long period of time and they’ll tell you that Cocktail (now updated to version 4.4)  still remains one of the best all round admin tools out there. Cocktail can do all your essential maintenance tasks from clearing your cache to controlling sleep times. There’s nothing new in Cocktail that you can’t do in Terminal but Cocktail makes it so much easier through its GUI.

Switching to a whole new browser is a tough decision, but the launch of updated versions for both Opera, Safari and Firefox may have encouraged you to take the step. In that case, you probably need a way to keep all those precious bookmarks safe in the transition from one browser to another.

Most browsers nowadays include internal tools that let you export bookmarks to a standalone file and then open that from the new browser, or even import all data from the old browser right after installation. But in case none of these solutions work for you, here are a few apps that can help you sync bookmarks across different web browsers.

Xmarks - This excellent bookmarking tool, previously known as Foxmarks, started as Firefox-compatible only but can now be used with Internet Explorer and Safari as well. Xmarks not only enables you to sync and backup bookmarks, but also displays additional information about the websites you browse and enhances your web searches.

AM-DeadLink - Using Opera? Then this is the tool you need. With AM-DeadLink you can manage bookmarks from Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera. The program also does a bit of housecleaning, by removing links to websites that are no longer available and recovering lost favicons.

Transmute - This is probably the most powerful bookmark synchronizer out there. It lets you sync, convert and organize bookmarks from the most popular web browsers, including the ones I mentioned before and also Google Chrome and Flock. it also helps you keep your bookmark collection clean by removing duplicates.

The Web is full of handy software applications that can contribute to make your life a bit easier. Whatever your need is, it’ll probably take you only a few minutes of Googling to find a suitable program for it. But if you look further, you’ll see there are other applications the aim of which is not precisely to be useful and efficient. In fact, there are a quite a few of these useless programs that seem to have been created for no reason at all - or at least, for no sane reason. Here are some examples I found on the Web, though I’m sure you’ll know many more.

Alien Communicator - Believe or not, ‘the truth is out there’. And if you want to find it, you better start contacting aliens right now. When you run this tool, aliens will be able to communicate telepathically with you and leave messages by controlling the number generation capabilities of your PC.

Voice Lie Detector - If you think your partner or your kids are not completely sincere, you need a lie detector. This program uses an old algorithm to detect voice stress, an unmistakable signal that will enable you to discover if you’re being lied to.

Parrot Trainer - So you have a parrot, but can’t be bothered to train it by yourself? Let your PC do the hard work for you! This app repeats the same sound over and over again until your parrot learns them by heart. According to the developer, you can also use to nag your kids, husband, wife… What’s more, it comes with four sound samples recorded by the developer himself. Read the rest of this entry »

Since switching to Mac, I’ve abandoned almost all of the programs that I used on Windows with the exception of Microsoft Word. This is mainly because Word is so widely used by others that I’ve effectively been “forced” to install it even though I hardly use any other application in Microsoft Office. This is annoying for two main reasons: Office is expensive and takes up over 500MB of my hard drive. However, there are a selection of free and highly accomplished alternative word processing applications for Mac, some of which not only handle Word documents, but that you may even find improve on Word itself.

Writer Part of OpenOffice which is a cross platform multilingual Java based office suite that’s designed as a free replacement for Microsoft Office. Writer is the word processing component and allows you to open and edit Word documents (including .docx), export to PDF and even use it as a WYSIWYG editor for creating web pages. Some prefer to install NeoOffice which has taken OpenOffice and customised the interface for Mac.

AbiWord A better solution than Writer for those working on slower Macs. Like Writer, it allows you to open Word documents, save to .doc format and export to both PDF and HTML. The disadvantage is that it doesn’t support .docx format and may sometimes alter the formatting in Word documents so that they appear a bit messed-up. For those working on older Macs though, it’s an excellent alternative.

Bean Designed specifically for Macs, Bean is based on Cocoa so it looks great. Bean can also open and save in Word format but note that it can’t handle footnotes, images or pre-defined styles and is only partially compatible with Word’s file formats. In addition, it doesn’t work with .docx, hyperlinks are imported as text and exporting of tables doesn’t work well. However, in terms of speed and interface, Bean is excellent.

Google Docs Google’s online office suite is handy replacement for opening and saving Word documents. All you need is a Google account to get started. Google Docs features a clean interface, autosave feature, spell check and it can save your documents either to your account, publish it as a web page or automatically e-mail it as a Word document. You can even invite others to collaborate with you on a document.

ThinkFree Online The ThinkFreeOffice suite isn’t free but it’s online counterpart ThinkFree Online is. It only allows you to open and view any kind of Office document, including .doc and .docx and then embed, convert, share, upload or search them for free. You can perform basic functions for free but you have to sign-up for extra features such as the offline file management “Power Tool”.

If you’ve never performed a backup of your hard drive, then you’re risking potential disaster if it fails or that “on” switch simply doesn’t work one day for some reason. We all come-up with poor excuses for not doing so - our external drive is full, we don’t have time, we simply forgot etc. but CrashPlan is an application that definitely leaves no room for excuses. These are some of the ways you can backup with CrashPlan:

• Online Encrypted and unlimited size hard drive backups online for a modest fee
• PC/Mac Backup your hard drive to another PC or Mac and vice versa
• External Drive Backups performed in real time to USB and Firewire drives
• Friends You can even select a friend over the net to backup your files to

Best of all, not only does it work across platforms and is free but using CrashPlan couldn’t be simpler.  I setup CrashPlan on a Mac and within a minute, a backup of my entire hard drive was being performed to my USB drive. Note that the program is only free for personal use (they’ve got a special CrashPlan Pro for companies) although it is supported by a few ads. Read the rest of this entry »

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past couple of years, you probably know what Twitter is. What’s more, you may have been using it for a while now, to share links, keep in touch with friends and follow the ups and downs of a few celebrities.

But besides its main purpose as microblogging platform, and thanks to the Twitter API, Twitter has become also the ground base for a wide variety of apps and services, created by hundreds of developers worldwide. Thanks to this stream of creativity, Twitter is now much more than just a microblogging service. Here’s a small sample of everything you can do with Twitter - apart from exchanging 140-character long messages:

• TwitPic - Probably one of the most popular Twitter-based apps, TwitPic lets you easily share photos on Twitter. Simply upload the image to the TwitPic site and it’ll be automatically sent to your Twitter account.
• FileTwt - Lets you send files online via Twitter, up to 20 MB in size. Files are shared in either in your public timeline or in a private message addressed to only one person (which requires signing for a free account on the app’s website).
• TwitVid - It’s similar to TwitPic, only that it lets you share videos instead. TwitVid supports multiple video sharing - in playlists - and can also capture the image source from your webcam.
• Twisten - With Twisten you can discover new music everyday. This app searches Twitter for music-related tweets and lets you listen to those songs on the spot. There are also links to download the MP3 from Amazon or iTunes.
• TwtJobs - Believe or not, Twitter can also help you get a job! Twtjobs lets you create and publish your “twitter resume”, or advertise a job post in Twitter. The 140-character limit can be quite challenging though.
• TwitterCal - If you use Google Calendar, you’re going to love this one: TwitterCal lets you create new tasks and appointments by sending direct messages to a specific Twitter account.
• TweetStats -Finally, a little nourishment for your ego: with TweetStats you can quickly generate statistics about your own Twitter account: how many tweets per hour do you send? Who do you retweet most?

One of the new features included in Microsoft Outlook 2007 is native support for RSS , which comes in quite handy because it allows you to manage email and feeds from one single application. But what happens if you’re still using Outlook 2003 - like me - or even older versions, and still would like to embed RSS feeds in Microsoft’s email client? The answer is RSS Popper: a useful Outlook plug-in developed by Paradisoft with which you can comfortably read your favorite feeds right on Outlook’s interface.

Once RSS Popper is installed, launch or restart Outlook and you’ll see a new toolbar. Click on RSS Popper > Edit Feeds and you’ll open a window where you can start adding your feeds straight away. RSS Popper brings some example feeds by default, but you may as well delete them if they’re not your cup of tea.

The good thing about RSS Popper is that it also features support for importing and exporting, which means you can import your complete feed collection in XML format and embed it directly in Outlook. RSS Popper will organize each feed into different folders - just like your email folders - and display selected items as if they were email messages.

 RSS Popper can be configured to refresh feeds automatically according to a certain period of time, though you can also refresh them manually by clicking the correspondent button on the toolbar.

Although some bloggers are hailing it as a “new” release from Google, Google Quick Search Box was included as part of the Google Codes project earlier this year but it’s now been given an official release by Google with its own webpage. And you can see why Google think the tool is fitting of a major release. Google Quick Search Box is a basically a Spotlight style app that can search for just about anything both on and offline as well as launch apps.

In this way, it’s very similar to Google Desktop except it’s far more discreet and lightweight and there’s no annoying indexing to wait for. Rather, Google Quick Search Box floats on your desktop ready for action whenever you need it. Previously, it only performed basic searches on your hard and online but this official release makes it an altogether more powerful proposition.

Google Quick Search Box can performs more through hard drive and online searches and even launch applications. As you’d expect from a Google product, searches are incredibly detailed and quick and results are displayed clearly. Search for “Firefox” for example and it immediately brings-up the Firefox icon ready for launching. In this way, Google Quick Search Box acts not only as a search tool, but as a launcher as well.

You can even customise Google Quick Search Box to search only those online sites that you choose such as YouTube, Wikipedia, Gmail and Google Docs. To search both your Gmail and Google Docs account, you need to enter your Gmail account credentials in the “Accounts” section in preferences. However, when I tried to search my accounts using Google Quick Search Box, the search seemed to hang for a while and no results were found. Whether this was an error on my side or a bug I’m not sure but it was a little disappointing. Read the rest of this entry »

BlackBerry: If you like puzzle games and own a BlackBerry then be sure to try out Crazysoft Paintball II. Your goal is to join three or more balls of the same colour and ensure they are next to a pipe. Once in place, you select them then splat them with paint using the action key. The balls will then change colour and get sucked into the pipe, leaving more space on the board for you to make your next batch.

Windows: If you’d like to use the extensive iTunes library on your home PC while you’re somewhere else, you can either carry your entire music collection with you or simply use pulpTunes. This easy tool lets you remotely access your iTunes library via a web browser, and listen to your favorite music wherever you are.

Mac: With broadband speeds and processing power increasing all the time, desktop sharing is becoming an increasingly competitive area in the software field. Mikogo has been available on Windows for well over a year but only now has it finally been released for Mac. It’s a free, simple and extremely easy to use application that allows you to switch from host to presenter in a click.

When it comes to troubleshooting friend’s and relatives computers from afar, one of the best remote access applications I’ve ever used is CrossLoop. When I switched to Mac, however, I had to dump it but I’m pleased to see the developers have finally launched a Mac version.

The great thing is that the Mac version supports access of both Windows and Macs so you can help out people on both platforms. In addition, Crossloop now serves as an online marketplace, where you can connect not only to friends, but to online experts who, for an hourly fee, will help you with technical issue.

The key to CrossLoop’s appeal is its simplicity. After installing CrossLoop, you are prompted whether you want to create an account although this is optional. Afterwards you are presented with small panel with two tabs. Select the ‘Join’ tab if you would like to connect and control a friend’s Mac. Select the ‘Host’ tab if you would like someone to access to your Mac i.e. to receive technical help.

This host tab contains an important 12-digit access code that your friend will need to enter to connect to your PC. Obviously, the only requirement is that the other person has CrossLoop installed too to initiate a session. Once done, you’re ready to go. A separate window opens on your desktop with your friend’s desktop and you can tinker with it to your heart’s content.

Obviously, the main concern with such desktop sharing applications is speed and security. As regards speed, you can choose whether to share in low or high quality, the former being faster and recommended for slow internet connections. It’s great that CrossLoop now offers this choice because there’s nothing worse than trying to share over a slow connection.

As far as security is concerned, the developer maintains that all sent information is highly encrypted with a 128-bit algorithm using the randomly generated 12-digit access code mentioned earlier. There’s no need to worry about anyone accessing your PC without permission either – a pop-up requesting permission from you alerts you before any information is exchanged. Most recently, CrossLoop has introduced file sending plus an online marketplace of experts which enables you to find professional Mac specialists who can help with your problems with fees ranging from around$50 an hour.

The only minor drawback of CrossLoop is that it doesn’t support multiple connections, although for most people seeking technical help, this is probably neither desirable or practical either. The bottom line is that CrossLoop really is an excellent application for what it offers i.e. simple and effective remote connections. The fact that it is free only adds to its appeal considering similar programs such as Copilot charge anything up to $5 for just 24 hours of use.

iPhone: What’s the point of spending years of your life training to be a doctor when it’s so easy to practice medicine illegally in backstreets? In Amateur Surgeon Lite you play the role of Alan Probe, a pizza delivery guy who stumbles into the world of backstreet medicine. Your task is to perform surgery on a variety of patients using whatever tools you have to hand, including pizza cutters, salad tongs and staplers. Hilarious fun!

Mac: Just because Macs are normally virus free doesn’t mean you never have to scan yours. Leopard Cache Cleaner (now updated to version 4.0.24) is a solid application to scan and clean your Mac of alls sorts of unwanted files. You’ll easily remove cache, language localization files and other unnecessary data in just a few easy clicks.

Windows: Decorating your house is not always as easy as it seems, but luckily Envisioneer Express (updated to version 5.0) can lend you a hand. This free interior design app lets you create a detailed floor plan of any room or a complete flat and decorate it with lots of detail, in both 2D and 3D rendering.

Last week I wrote a post explaining how to create a First Aid USB kit for computers, and boru left a comment on it asking for help about a very specific issue: he wanted to recover the CD-ROM drive icon that had disappeared from ‘My PC’. While this has never happened to me, I was curious to see if there was any solution to this situation and after a short period of googleing, browsing and reading, I came up with three possible ways to retrieve missing CD-ROM drive icons in Windows:

1. Maybe your CD drive is physically disconnected from the system. Don’t worry, you don’t need to open the computer just to check. Right click on the ‘My PC‘ icon and select Properties. Then click on the Hardware tab and press the Device Manager button. Find the CD/DVD ROM drives item in the list and click on the + sign beside it. At least one entry should appear below it. If nothing shows up, it’s time to open the computer and check that the drive is connected.

2. You may need to update the drivers. Visit your computer’s official website and look for any download area in it, or simply use Google. Also, if your computer is still under guarantee, try calling Customer Support.

3. If the guarantee period of your computer has already expired, you can also try Microsoft Support. A quick search on their website gave some results regarding missing CD-ROM drives, or drives that are not recognized by Windows or by specific applications. This one, for example, helps you fix the problem automatically with a step-by-step wizard, and also explains an alternative Registry tweak in case you want to try to fix it by yourself.

Windows: Are you a fan of comics? If so, you can’t miss WinComics, a free Windows app that delivers more than 200 fun daily comic strips right to your desktop. Put it in your Start menu and you’ll start your day with a good laugh thanks to Dilbert, Calvin & Hobbes, Garfield and a lot more. Plus you can save the strips to your hard drive!

Java phones: If you’re a fan of international soccer then you should really check out Euro Football, because it offers you the chance to taste European Championship glory while you’re sat on the bus. Euro Football is one of the better mobile-based football games I’ve seen. You can choose from 16 different countries and participate in Friendly, League, or Cup modes

Mac: Music mixing can be both expensive and complicated. Renoise is a modestly-priced and largely community-driven project that takes what the developers call a ‘unique bottom-up’ approach to music making. What they’re referring to is the fact that Renoise uses a vertical timeline and streamlined interface, designed to make music composition easier.

When I first heard about Microsoft Vine a month ago I must say I was pretty surprised. Vine was described as “an instant messaging tool to stay in touch during times of crisis, when standard communications are either broken or not working properly”. That description, together with the fact that the program was released as closed beta – which, you know, always contributes to the hype – caught my attention immediately.

Today I received my invitation to test Microsoft Vine and the truth is I’m a bit disappointed. Maybe it’s because I’m lucky to live in an area where earthquakes, floods, tornadoes and other natural disasters are only seen on TV, or simply because I expected something else after waiting for the invitation for a whole month. The thing is I didn’t find Microsoft Vine that useful at all.

This is Vine’s main interface, which shows up after installing the program and finishing the correspondent system reboot. Microsoft Vine works with your Live ID account, so if you don’t have any yet you’ll need to create one (not right in the middle of a crisis, hopefully).

After that, the desktop client shows up featuring an interactive world map where you can mark the places you care about. The map can be zoomed in to a quite high level of detail, and also switched from plain drawing to satellite imagery and viceversa.

The two other tabs on the program’s main interface lead you to your personal data (Vitals) and your contact list (People). Regarding the first one, you can fill in a form with some personal information (name and address) plus all the possible ways to reach you (e-mail, phone, mobile). These data can be printed on a PDF emergency card which you can crop and put in your wallet or handbag, so that you always have your important information at hand.

The second tab, People,  is where your contact list is stored. The list can be organized in several different groups, which eases the task of sending alerts to several people at the same time. You can also see the message history for each contact.

Generally speaking, Microsoft Vine serves an honorable purpose: helping people to communicate in real time when disaster strikes and there’s nothing else available. It lets you send reports and receive alerts via its desktop client, by e-mail or text messages. It also displays news regarding the places you care about.

But I’m not sure about the real effectiveness of this tool, or whether it would be a useful way to communicate in middle of a crisis. I just can’t picture someone taking the time of starting their computer, logging into the system and starting Vine, while everyone else is simply running for their lives. In a way it reminds me of that hilarious scene in The IT Crowd where Moss, unable to remember the new emergency number, uses e-mail to report a fire: funny to see, but totally senseless.

Pocket PC: Browsing the Web on a mobile phone is traditionally such a painful process that many of us simply don’t bother. Thankfully things are beginning to change though, thanks to apps such as Firefox Mobile, or Fennec as it’s also known. The alpha version is now available to test drive, but you’ll need an HTC Touch Pro, because this is the only device that Fennec is currently compatible with.

Windows: Want to create a presentation with your photos but don’t even know where to start? Muvee Reveal is the app you need. This awesome editor lets you create attractive video presentations in a variety of formats, including your favorite images and short video clips. The program is dead easy to use and includes a bunch of themes and transition effects.

Mac: Ripping a DVD is the process of extracting all the video files from that disk so that you can make copies of it (for your own use of course). However, DVDs can contain hundreds of video, audio, subtitle and menu files that can also be highly encrypted making copying or ripping a real chore. RipIt has been made so that even a beginner to ripping will be able to make their own backups in just a few steps.