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.

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.

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.

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.

The first big revision of Office 2008 for Mac, Service Pack 1 was released by Microsoft this Tuesday. This release carries with it major revisions and improvements, notably regarding security, stability and performance. Microsoft also fixed a weakness in Office 2008 that allowed somebody to overwrite the content of your Mac’s memory with malicious code. The bugs came from submissions in Office 2008 user forums or were collected through the Microsoft Error Report Protocol (MERP).

The biggest news that came with the release of this SP1 is probably the announcement that Microsoft will bring back Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) in the next version of Office for Mac. Contrary to the PC version of Office, where VBA is still around, Office 2008 came without Visual Basic. Obviously Microsoft has had second thoughts and decided to bring it back in future iterations on Mac. This should ensure a bit more flexibility in the office suite notably for filters, menus, toolbars, and customizing the interface.

According to Microsoft, Office 2008 for Mac has been extremely well received by users and sales are nearly three times what they were for the release of Office 2004, even though no official sales number was given by the Redmond company. I quite like Office 2008, although I believe most users will do fine with Apple’s iWork’08, which is much cheaper and much less complex. If you already have Office 2008 though, make sure to get Service Pack 1 to correct bugs from the original release.

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.

Windows: If the standard Windows Explorer is too limited for you, you need an advanced file manager like Q-Dir. Thanks to its multi-pane interface with customizable layouts and file color codes, you can move and copy files or folders in a much easier and faster way. Plus, it doesn’t require installation and can be conveniently run from a USB key.

Mac: The following program is also related to USB keys. Curb lets you clean the trash from your removable media. Drag and drop your key icon onto its interface and it takes care of trashing files for you. You have four different options for secure removal (including 35 pass!) of the files, making this a simple yet secure solution to trash files from USB keys.

Don’t get me wrong, I think the Pocket PC platform is awesome but, like many people, I find it a little cumbersome sometimes and the fact that I have to tap tiny icons. Pointui Home changes all that, skinning the Windows Mobile interface and allowing you to control your device’s basic features using your fingers.

Despite all the turmoil surrounding two rejected bids from Microsoft, Yahoo! keeps expanding and acquiring new services. In February they bought the excellent FoxyTunes Firefox extension, which gives you complete control over your music library straight from your browser.

This time they went for the very good Inquisitor search tool for Safari on Mac. No information relating to the acquisition is available on the Inquisitor page and the blog of David Watanabe, developer of the application is not available anymore, yet clicking on the feedback link in the Inquisitor page takes you to a Yahoo! account page.

When I tested and reviewed Inquisitor, I was really impressed with the speed at which it loads up results and all the little features you have to customize the search engines and displayed results. Inquisitor also has a very sleek interface which fits in very well in Safari.

The Yahoo! Search Team explains that this acquisition will give them more presence in the Mac world. They also see Inquisitor as fairly similar to their own Search Assist technology, which predicts results and can give you fairly detailed suggestions, or concepts, as Yahoo! calls them. One of the first steps taken by Yahoo! has been removing the affiliate ad links, which helped pay for the project when it was still independent. We’ll probably be seeing more changes to the search tool in the future from Yahoo!, although I hope they keep it as efficient and simple as it is now.

The new Dock featured in Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) became a point of debate among Mac fans. Not everybody liked the new bright active-application signal, the depth given to icons and stacks. Frequently using both Panther and Leopard, I can tell I definitely prefer the new Dock. It looks much cleaner and offers more ways to display items in folders.

What Apple was criticised for with the new Dock was the lack of customization. Developers took the matter into their own hands and started developing applications to let you tweak the aspect of the Dock. We’ve rounded up a few of those and summarized what makes them special:

• Dockchanger - Hate the 3D look? Dockchanger brings back the 2D theme for you.
• DockDoctor - Eight cool Dock styles and being able to switch from 3D to 2D make DockDoctor an attractive customizer.
• Dockables - Add little actions for specific actions on your Dock. Only for Dock addicts!
• ClearDock - Change the color of all elements in the Dock and even make it transparent.
• SuperDocker - Not limited to the Dock, this app lets you customize the appearance of many elements in Leopard.
• Quay - Brings hierarchical menus back to your Dock.
• Dockdrop - Adds a little icon in your Dock to transfer files simply by drag and drop.
• Docktop - Supercharge your Dock and tweak the appearance of everything from position to color.

Good news from the Adium blog, the free multi-protocol messaging client will soon let you use the Facebook Chat feature, which was only implemented on April 6. The new feature will display your contacts with their little thumbnail image, status update and an availability icon. You’ll obviously need to have a Facebook account, but the good thing is you won’t have to have the website opened up in your browser to use it.

In my opinion, this goes to show why Adium still remains by far the best messaging client on Mac for personal users. It works with almost all the protocols out there, its interface can be customized and the client is very regularly updated. I also find Adium to be on the whole very stable and enjoy its design.

Facebook Chat is a popular new feature on the social networking website, as you can interact directly with your friends. The question now is, will other messenger client offer support for Facebook Chat? If Adium is GPL, there’s no reason why other GPL clients Psi, Coccinella or Spark couldn’t offer it. But it also all depends on whether Facebook wants to have the Chat feature available everywhere or just on a limited few. Obviously, if you’re using Facebook Chat in Adium, it means you aren’t on the site, downloading applications or clicking on ads.

If you thought it had been a little quiet around here of late, that’s for a very good reason. We’ve all been hard at work implementing and testing a new codebase for Softonic English which makes the site smarter and easier to use, as well as adding some great new features for users.

The homepage, while appearing quite similar to its previous version actually includes numerous changes and enhancements, including a new high-visibility zone for blog posts like this one; much better category listings; dynamic charts which show whether programs have moved up or down since last week and a smoother, cleaner design.

Our program page has also undergone some important changes. Apart from some cosmetic adjustments and enhancements, we’ve also made it much easier to interact with programs, meaning that the tools that let you rate, review, bookmark and track your favourite software are always easily accessible.

But the biggest new feature for the site is our new user profile page. Visitors to the Spanish Softonic will already be familiar with the features available in the new profile page. Now you can pick an avatar, visit other profiles, see your visitors and more. We’ve also got the Soft-O-Meter, a popular feature on the Spanish site which shows your level activity on Softonic.

Finally, we’ve launched Softonic Deluxe - a premium edition of Softonic designed for true fans of software. Deluxe members get access to a special edition of Softonic, free of advertising and with 100% guaranteed high-speed and secure downloads. For more info about Softonic Deluxe or to get a free trial, click here.

We’re always working on more features and already have loads of exciting new stuff in development… but we’ll let you know about that later. For the moment, take a look at the new, improved Softonic. And as always, please let us know if you’ve got an opinion on the site or an idea for making it even better!

So you have your Google account and have gotten accustomed to using Google Docs for writing and saving documents online? Although it’s obviously much more limited then any proper office desktop application like Microsoft Office or iWork, Google Docs provides a great way of accessing and editing documents online. Personally I like using it in case of an emergency, or if I know that I won’t have my MacBook with me and still need to consult some documents.

Surprisingly, Google Docs doesn’t support Apple’s Safari, so, even though you can still open it, you lose out on all the features. One way to activate those features in Safari is by tricking Google Docs into thinking you are using Firefox. As macosxhints explains, you’ll need to activate the Debug Menu in Safari in order to this. Make sure Safari is closed, then open up a Terminal window and type in the following:

% defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu 1

This will activate the Debug Menu in your Safari browse. Then select Develop>User Agent and choose a Firefox entry. Normally Google Docs features will be enabled and you will be able to enjoy them just as much as if you were using it on Firefox.