Sex and the City has been recently in the news for the world premier in London of the cinematic follow-up to the successful TV series. According to the film’s marketing team, they are creating smallish premieres in Europe, the next one will be in Berlin, in order to create enough suspense for the New York premier which will be ‘enormous’ and will happen just before the film opens worldwide, which is set for May the 30th.

For all the millions of fans of this fantastic series, I’ve found a great screen saver which will bring to your desktop all the allure of the four stylish women and that feeling of friendship, love and disillusion-illusion, that so appealed to so many of us.

Although the screensaver should allow you also to save the images as wallpaper, this function didn’t work when I tried it, so I though of making your life simpler by taking screenshot and zip them in this Sex and the City wallpaper collection, which I’m sure you’ll love.

If you really are a fan of the series, try this Trivia Game at HBO to find out where you rank on the Sex and the City scale. It will be also funny to test yourself to see with which character you have most affinity with: whether you are more like the high maintenance Charlotte, the pragmatic Miranda, the sexy Samantha, the all-in-one Carrie or a mix of them.

If you are a man, it’s still interesting to know which kind of woman you would be if you were one. I’m something in between Carrie and Charlotte. I just don’t live in Manhattan and would have some problems in buying a pair of Manolo Blahnik a week; but that’s just a matter of perspective, isn’t it?

If you’re a Twitter fan then you’ll know that it’s not particularly well integrated with your desktop. However, there are two very simple solutions which can transform the way you use twitter - Twhirl and TwitterFox. Thanks to Adobe Air, you can now integrate twitter with your desktop much more easily courtesy of twhirl? By doing so, you can keep your status constantly updated quicker, improve your communication options and even change the look of twitter. In particular, it makes adding new friends much quicker and easier than in Twitter’s standalone version. In addition, this is a cross platform Twitter extension that works on both Windows and Mac and connects to multiple twitter and Friendfeed accounts. It provides instant desktop notification of new tweets and even allows you to post images to TwitPic. Also useful is the fact that if you’ve been pestered or bothered by either spam twitters or just someone really annoying, the most recent version also allows you to block other users. The tricky part is configuring it though - if it’s not done correctly, you run the risk of being stuck with old tweets every time you log in and being frozen out of twhirl occasionally although there is a very good user forum to seek help in. Keep track of the latest releases and developments on the twhirl blog.

However, the big downside of twhirl is that it requires installation of Adobe Air. In my opinion, it’s worth doing this although if you’re working a low spec machine, then it may be wise to avoid it. If this is your case, then you’d be much better seeking a lightweight solution in the form of TwitterFox. TwitterFox allows you to enjoy similar advantages to twhirl but the difference is that it simply plugs into Firefox. TwitterFox sits on your Firefox status bar for instant access to your friends and status changes. However, you can’t block contacts or post images like you can with twhirl although on the upside, it requires virtually no configuration whatsoever. One other minor criticism is that as you type, TwitterFox counts up to 140 characters rather than counting down which would be much more helpful because you always have to remember not to go over the 140 twitter character limit.

In summary, there’s probably little doubt that twhirl offers you more functionality than TwitterFox. However, it also requires more configuration and you’ll probably experience quite a few teething problems setting it up. If you’re just looking for a little better integration with your desktop and are working on a slow machine, go for TwitterFox. If you’re a serious twitter user, then you should definitely give twhirl a whirl.

If you only use your iPod to listen to music, you’re missing out on loads of extra things you can do with it. There are many utilities out there to help you convert and transform your iPod into an array of tools such as a video player, storage device, news reader and note taker. Of course, if you’re going to fill it with movies then you’ll need to delete all those albums that are hogging space on your iPod’s hard drive but it’s worth doing, considering you can get all of this out of it:

iPod Video Converter For Free - No ads or fees - just convert films to watch on your iPod

PodPlus - Allows you to transfer everything from e-mails to RSS feeds to your iPod

MojoPac - Transform your iPod into a secure USB storage device

todoPod - Use your iPod to compile lists and store your thoughts on the move

iPodifier - Grab TV streams on your PC and watch them later on your iPod

Windows: Security is probably one of our main concerns as computer users. This is why we all should take it seriously and use the necessary security apps to protect our system and personal data. AVG 8 is an excellent choice to avoid virus infections and stay safe while browsing the web. This last version features a totally revamped interface and a new anti-spyware tool.

Mac: Do you find you’re having a hard time remembering login info for all your domains? DomainBrain is a smart little app that lets you store all your precious information and easily protect it with a password. You can organize entries in nested folders and view all your information in one go. DomainBrain should ensure you never forget login info again.

Pocket PC: If you can’t afford to hire a personal assistant to take care of your daily schedule then simply install Pocket Informant on your PPC to do the job for you. The application offers a more powerful alternative to the built-in Calendar/Contacts/Tasks applications, to help you better organize your time. What’s more, the program syncs with Outlook, ActiveSync and other sync solutions.

If you haven’t upgraded to Office 2008 yet, then you’ll still be stuck with the templates offered by Office 2007 for your letterheads, envelopes and business cards. However, Microsoft have just released 6 free new professional looking templates for Office 2007 that can spruce up your presentations and business materials. If you haven’t even got Office 2007 yet, the template download page offers a free sample.

Once you’ve downloaded the templates there’s a slightly different installtion procedure depending on which Office application you want to use them in. In Powerpoint, simply click on the “Design” menu and in the Themes group, click the “More” button. From there, you’ve got an option to add custom templates. In Word or Excel you’ll need to use the Page Layout tab and in the Themes group, click Themes and browse to the themes you’ve just downloaded. Note that you may receive the error message “The template cannot correctly be downloaded” when you try to install the templates. This is actually a bug and you’ll find that the templates have installed and are ready for use but Microsoft claim this is a download error that they’re currently working on to resolve.

Widgets are all the rage now enabling users to drag and drop their favourite applications and functions onto their desktop for easy access. However, until now, the widget phenomenon hadn’t caught up with video players (except arguably Joost) but new open source player Chameleo enables users to watch and create visually-rich video applications with interactive widgets.

Chameleo is based on GStreamer and supports just about every codec out there so there are virtually no playback problems. What makes it interesting however is that it offers a variety of widgets which enable you to perform a variety of tasks from taking instant screenshots to blogging about what you are watching. Even more exciting, you can create your own widgets because it takes it’s plug-in architecture from Eclipse to make it easy to extend with a minimum of programming experience. One warming however - it is extremely resource hogging so make sure you’ve got plenty of RAM! You can see Chameleon in action below and follow the latest developments here.

A few weeks ago I showed you how to create your own customized ringtones for the iPhone using a handy software tool called ToneShop. But I recently discovered a very simple trick that enables you to convert your favorite MP3 into an iPhone ringtone right from the iTunes interface, without any third-party apps.

Launch iTunes and choose any MP3 you like. As the maximum ringtone length supported by the iPhone is 30 seconds, you’ll have to trim it a bit (don’t worry, this trimming doesn’t change your original song and can be reverted at any time). Right click on the file, select Get info and click on the Options tab. Insert the file’s start and stop time and click on OK.

Now go back to your Library, right click on your chosen MP3 and select Convert selection to AAC. You’ll get an AAC file with exactly the same name under the highlighted file. Open a File Explorer window and browse to your iTunes music folder (usually C:\Documents and Settings\username\My documents\My music\iTunes\iTunes Music). Locate the song you just converted, which will appear now as an M4A file, and change the extension to M4R. Read the rest of this entry »

Adobe AIR (which used to be know as Apollo, remember?) is slowly becoming a solid software platform for developers, especially those who work on their own and don’t belong to any big company. But what is this AIR thing about? AIR is a runtime coding environment that enables developers to create web software tools, working in between a web-based app and a native desktop utility. AIR apps typically include Internet elements such as HTML, Flash or Ajax, but are launched from your computer as you would normally launch any other program.

How do you install AIR apps? First of all, you need the basic component, Adobe AIR. Then, simply download the AIR tool you’re interested in (usually a file with the .air extension) and double click on it. You’ll start up an installation process similar to this one:

Click on “Install”, select the program’s location on your hard drive and you’re ready to go. When the installation is finished, run your newly AIR app as you would run any program.

There is already a wide range of AIR tools available to download, covering all sorts of areas: from Twitter clients to microblogging tools, including web stats analyzers or even RSS feed readers. But if you want more, take a look at Freshairapps: they have an extensive catalog with all the latest AIR apps out there, together with top rankings, news, tutorials and other AIR resources.

Do you want to know what people say about a web site in terms of security, reliability and privacy? It’s not just a matter of curiosity: having user ratings on websites can save you lots of time and trouble. There are many services you could try to know more about the number of visitors a web site has, the server location, the visitor location, etc. We have found one though that includes all the information you might need to know about a web site: WOT.

This is a Firefox and IE add-on that adds a colored ring near the home page button of your browser. This lets you know easily, by changing color, if a web site is trusted, safe to use and whether the general reputation among end-users is good. You can also add your own rating by clicking the colored ring and give your score on trustworthiness, vendor reliability, privacy and child safety. If you click on the “View scorecard for rating details” option, you’ll be able to write a comment and read what other people have said about that website.

What about all that useful hidden data you wanted to know? In the rating details page, the application displays the references found for a website on other sites. In this page you will also find the ‘Whois’ function which provides interesting information about indexed, registry and server data. You can even find a physical address behind a web site, which can be extremely useful, for example in cases of commercial fraud.

Other services that provide you information about websites are:

WhoIsTheOwner.net - If you want to know the contact address, email and phone number of the website owner, this free service will help.

WhoIsHostingThis.com - Enter the URL of any website and this online service will display that site’s hosting details.

SocialMeter.com - This service helps you determine the popularity of a web page on social sites like Digg, del.icio.us, Google Bookmarks, etc.

Popuri.us is for estimating the relative popularity of a website with ranking data and inbound links from sites like Compete, Quantcast Google, Yahoo!, Windows Live, etc.

OthersOnline is a Firefox and IE add-on that gives you the list of people interested in a particular website and if they are online, you can chat with them and exchange opinions.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll find iTunes to be an essential part of your working day. Whether I’m listening to my favourite podcasts or concentrating with the help of some soothing music, iTunes stays running all through the day. Which is why I started to become pretty worried when a recurring error started to appear recently. Each time I start iTunes, I receive an error warning stating that “The iTunes Library file cannot be saved. An unknown error occurred (-48)“.

It took me a bit of time to work out how to fix this problem, so I thought I’d pass on what I found. This error basically stems from iTunes not being able to write its Library file to your iTunes folder. To fix it, simply find your iTunes folder (located in My Documents > My Music, in my case), right click the folder’s icon and choose ‘Properties‘. From here, click ‘Advanced‘ and make sure that Fast indexing is switched off for the folder. Also, make sure that in the main properties dialog box, ‘Read only‘ is completely unchecked.

This worked for me, but let me know if you’re having further problems with error (-48).

It can be very annoying when you install extensions in Firefox, change themes or alter a configuration file and are then informed that you must restart it for the extension to take effect but are offered no option for doing so. The answer to this problem is - yes that’s right - another extension called QuickRestart.

QuickRestart allows you to instantly restart Firefox via keyboard shortcut “Ctrl+Alt+R” or an option in the file menu “Restart Firefox”. It’s a very useful little extension if you’re an add-on freak like me, although it would have been nice if they’d added a restart button to the extensions dialogue window because after all, that’s where you’ll need it most. Because of this, in the end it’s almost as quick just to close the browser and restart it again although the desktop shortcut speeds things up a little. This extension also has the advantage that there’s no annoying “Are You Sure?” prompt when you restart Firefox although the disadvantage of course is, if you press the desktop shortcut accidentally, you lose all your information.

Note that if you’d rather have a restart button on your Firefox toolbar, then you can use the Toolbar Buttons extension which includes a range of buttons including one to restart the browser.

It was only a matter of time before Google announced the launch their own security product and Google Web Security for Enterprise is their rather long winded but comprehensive security solution aimed at large networks and businesses. The suite, which scans in real-time, stops web-borne spyware and viruses before they infiltrate networks and compromise or disable computers.

However it also enables network administrators to control how employees use the Internet so they can create, enforce, and monitor a web policy to “protect you from the legal liabilities of inappropriate content, reduce bandwidth congestion, and improve employee productivity”. You’ll also notice that this is one Google product that isn’t plastered with Google branding however as the software giant has chosen to brand it under the name of developers Postini who have provided much of the infrastructure.

It even protects employees on the move whether they are working at home, in a hotel room or Wi-Fi spot. It enhances the privacy of such employees by automatically encrypting all web traffic when the user connects to a public network and eliminates the need to backhaul traffic over corporate VPN’s. Of course, as you would expect from a Google product too, it’s very easy to use even for novice network administrators.

Looks like bad news for employees surfing those prohibited sites at work then although Google’s classification system for what it considers gambling, dating and news related sites etc may allow for a few exceptions to squeeze through. And this will surely become one of the major targets for hackers and trojans if it becomes widely implemented although probably, no serious enterprise would rely on a Google product to protect their network.

Windows: If you’re tired of listening to music and would like to have a more active role, try mixing it! With Zulu DJ you can take your first steps into the world of music mixers thanks to its ease of use, variety of tools and special effects. The program supports many audio formats and lets you mix songs just by dragging and dropping them onto its interface.

Mac: You might want to have an alternative to iTunes when it comes to managing media on your iPod. Floola lets you see all music, videos, photos and other files stored on your iPod, handle your playlists, and even copy songs to and from most iPod models. It also offers support to Last.fm and podcasts. A must for music fans with iPods.

Pocket PC: We all know how good Google Maps is for finding your way from A to B, but did you know you can also hook up the powerful mapping service with your GPS receiver? Google Navigator provides a quick and easy way of obtaining map and location information using your GPS-enabled Pocket PC.

I’m a big fan of Google products in general. I use Gmail and Google Reader on a daily basis, not to mention my constant queries to the search engine. But due to a natural tendency to lose my bearings anywhere, I have a special predilection for Google Maps.

This awesome world atlas can show you images of just about any location on Earth, sometimes with such a high level of detail that you can perfectly distinguish cars and people walking around. But there are many other ways to use Google Maps than just watching life as it goes on in the antipodes. Thanks to customized maps created by certain companies or by other Google Maps users, you can add new content and tools to your maps and make them even more useful.

Simply load Google Maps on your browser and click on the “My Maps” tab. You’ll be presented with a selection of several map overlays, all ready to use at a single click. If you click on the “Browse the directory” button, you’ll access a larger list featuring all sorts of Google Maps add-ons: tools to calculate distance between two points, check traffic conditions in your city or search for hotels, maps for transportation networks around the world, lists of popular monuments and landmarks all over the world… even a real-time earthquake tracking tool!

Installing these extra features is a piece of cake: browse the collection until you find one that suits your needs and click on the “Add it to Maps” button. Now go back to Google Maps via the top left link and the new information will be displayed right on your map.

Adding large attachments to e-mails is still something that most of us steer clear of if we don’t want to wait half an hour for them to upload or crash your mail server. Most web based services such as Hotmail or Gmail won’t even let you upload large files although I don’t advise even trying it unless you want to hang your e-mail client.

If you’re working on a network and want to share large files with other users, then it’s far better to place them on a shared drive. However, if that’s not an option then try Filemail which allows you to send attachments of up to 2GB in size absolutely free. When you surf into Filemail, it takes you immediately to an e-mail compose screen so there’s no annoying registration procedure to go through - just start composing and off you go. The maximum attachment size is 2GB although you can upload multiple files at once.

However, it doesn’t work quite like a conventional e-mail client. Once the files are uploaded, they are encrypted using 128bit AES algorithm and a small e-mail is delivered to the recipients, containing a short message from you and a hyperlink where the files can be downloaded. After the specified number of days or number of downloads has expired, the files are removed completely from Filemail’s servers. The only downside is that it can be a bit slow when uploading files but this is a far superior solution to trying to send bulky e-mails or sign up for registration only upload sites.