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 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.

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.

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.

Upgrading your RAM is one of the best ways to speed up an old laptop. As applications get bigger and the number of programs you install increase, the demands on your RAM also increase. Add to that graphics-heavy online applications such as Google Earth and those exciting Web 2.0 apps and you can see why having enough RAM is essential for smooth functioning of your PC.

Nowadays, if you’re running on anything less than 512MB RAM then God help you - you must be suffering some awfully slow PC usage. However, even 512MB is not really enough nowadays - you’ll need to double it to get the most out of your PC but before you do anything, you’ll need to know exactly what type of RAM your laptop or PC uses. Here is a 5 point plan for upgrading your RAM:

1. Check whether you have any RAM slots free - You should check your manual to find where your expansion slots are - in the case of laptops, they are usually on the bottom of the machine. You should find between two and eight same-sized parallel sockets on the main circuit board.

2. Check whether your RAM is parity or non-parity - Determines whether a random access memory unit stores a parity bit for error detection purposes.

3. Find out the speed of the RAM you currently have (in nanoseconds) - Buying RAM of the wrong speed will conflict with your current RAM and not work.

4. Check what type of modules your PC uses These will be either Single In-Line Memory Modules (SIMM’s) or Dual In-Line Memory Modules (DIMM’s) - There’s only a subtle variation in how they look but buying the wrong one means it simply won’t fit in the slot!

5. Check the number of pins on your motherboard - This should be 30, 72 or 168. Use this motherboard-RAM guide to see which RAM is compatible with your motherboard.

Once you’ve established all this information, it’s time to head to your local PC dealer or buy the RAM chips online. Remember that once opened, it’s very hard to return components such as RAM. If you’re unable to ascertain any of the above data, then it’s better for you to take you laptop to your dealer. However, if you purchase online, usually they will specify the exact RAM you need based on your laptop or PC model so you should have no problems.

Upgrading RAM is one of the most effective and easy ways to speed up your PC and even better, it’s not very expensive. I just checked-out an additional 512MB RAM for my Acer Aspire and it costs less than $30. So what are you waiting for - pump-up your RAM today!

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.

I was nearly stung by a bee yesterday, and the experience has called into question my survival skills. I’ve since realised that I wouldn’t have had a clue what to do had the critter’s attack been a success. As a result, before I venture outside into the nice weather again I’m going to make sure I’m fully prepared for any dangers that may await me by loading up my phone with a selection of essential first aid software.

I started by installing 1st Aid & Emergencies on my Pocket PC, a piece of software that offers advice on how to handle a range of emergency care situations, from a nosebleed or sunburn to a life-threatening heart attack or stroke.

This app doesn’t cover every eventually and you can never be too careful, so I also took the liberty of arming my PPC with Pandemic Flu Survival Guide in case there’s a sudden outbreak of bird flu. And, in my experience, if the birds don’t get you then the insects probably will, so I also stuck a copy of Anti-Mosquito on my mobile phone. This state-of-the art app lets off a sound frequency that repels the blood suckers. Don’t worry though, because it’s virtually inaudible to the human ear.

I also downloaded Blood Pressure Watch and Easy Pulse in order to monitor myself in case the thought of all these terrible things that could happen to me got too much for my poor old heart. What’s more, I’m now keeping a track of my general level of physical fitness using Nokia’s Wellness Diary, which monitors stuff like my weight, eating habits and exercise. Perhaps all this is a bit excessive and I’m being paranoid about suffering an illness or injury. Oh God, here comes that bee again, quick, where’s my mobile?

Recently, I’ve noticed a massive slowdown in the speed of the torrents I’ve been downloading with uTorrent. Despite double checking that my IP address is static and that the router ports are open, my download speeds are back to what they were when I first installed the program on a dynamic IP address with no ports open.

Since I’m sure the problem is not at my end, my only conclusion is that my ISP has flagged uTorrent as a bandwidth heavy application and blocked the traffic coming through it. Bandwidth capping is obviously a hard thing to prove because only your ISP really knows what’s going on behind the scenes and of course, they’re not going to reveal to you which applications they’ve flagged. As wikipedia points out, bandwidth capping is the only way ISPs have been able to deal with the huge increase in people using static, rather than dynamic, IP addresses to download torrents and stream other large amounts of data:

Many ISPs engineered their facilities in the 1990s to use dynamic capacity allocation to serve multiple bursty users. Each user is expected to use high speed transmission for only a short time, for example to download a megabyte web page in less than a second. When use is continuous, as for file sharing or Internet radio or streaming video, a few users who use the connection at high rates for hours at a time may seriously impair the service of others.

However, if you approach an ISP expressing concerns that you think your bandwidth may have been capped, you’ll probably be given the same old spiel that AT&T gave the Gizmodo blog:

We have said consistently that AT&T will not allow itself to become a policeman or enforcement agent on the Internet. We have also made clear that there is nothing inherently wrong with P2P applications like BitTorrent, which are advanced, and legal, technologies that are used and welcomed on our network. We do not block or degrade any P2P application to manage network congestion. At the same time, we feel that any company involved with the Internet should be concerned about illegal activity, whether it is identity theft or intellectual property theft.

Some ISPs may venture to admit that they do use some kind of method to control bandwidth across their network. In the case of Comcast for example, Gizmodo did at least manage to get an admission of “delaying” tactics on their part when it comes to controlling traffic:

We have a responsibility to provide all of our customers with a good Internet experience and we use the latest technologies to manage our network so that they can continue to enjoy these applications. During periods of heavy peer-to-peer congestion, which can degrade the experience for all customers, we use several network management technologies that, when necessary, enable us to delay—not block—some peer-to-peer traffic.

However, in the UK some operators have already taken the initiative and introduced capping quite publicly. Virgin were one of the first to do so last year claiming that 5% of users were downloading as much as 3GB of data during peak times which “amounts to 750 music tracks in just a few hours”. With HD and BluRay videos now flooding torrent sites and forums, the demands on bandwidth are going to increase dramatically. However, there’s obviously a limit on how much can be downloaded over a network without it collapsing and bandwidth caps are perfectly understandable until technology and broadband infrastructures advance. However, bringing my uTorrent to a virtual crawl seems a bit excessive and I intend to get put the pressure on my ISP until I get to the bottom of this - watch this space.

As something of a Google Reader addict I was interested to try out the new ‘Notes’ feature within the RSS reader, which sees the service take a Twitter-style twist. The tool is designed to let you quickly add information and web site content into a new ‘Notes’ section within Reader. You can manually enter notes or copy and paste web content into a clipping box accessible from your browser toolbar, before sharing these notes with your friends.

Overall, I’ve been pretty impressed with this new functionality. I like the way that you can quickly add snippets from a web page just by clicking the shortcut button in your browser and the ability to view notes in Expanded or List view, in the same way as you do with feeds. However, there are a couple of things that rankle with me. Firstly, once you’ve added a note it’s impossible to delete it, which means the section soon becomes clogged with information that’s no longer important or relevant.

My second gripe is perhaps a more serious one and indicates the importance Google is now placing on its expanding social networking services. Whenever you enter a new note in Google Reader it will automatically be set to ‘Shared’, so that anyone of your online pals can view it. When adding a web clipping you can simply uncheck a box to get around this problem. However, when entering a note manually, it will be shared by default, so you have to remember to go in and unshare it if it’s data of a sensitive nature. Privacy issues aside, well done to Google on another fine productivity-boosting invention.

Face it: coming up with a new password every time you sign up for something is not that easy anymore. You’ve run out of new ideas and have developed a dangerous tendency to use the same password everywhere. But before you compromise your online security, follow our advice and install one of these password generators. They can all help you to create new passwords based on the options you select and make them easy to remember as well.

• Webmaster Password Generator - create passwords with customizable words
• Phonetic Password Generator - generate easy to pronounce passwords
• Password Pond - generate passwords based on your own word lists
• Extreme Password Generator Pro - create safe passwords that are easy to remember
• lameGen - a simple tool to quickly generate passwords
• Flyingbit Password Generator - Create multiple customizable passwords with one click