During dual briefings in New York and San Francisco, Sony provided a "sneak peek" -- and not much else -- of the two new tablets it plans to launch later this year, emphasizing the handful of ways it's attempting to differentiate its tablets from those that have already hit the market.

Speaking to a gathering of about 15 journalists that included me, Kunimasa Suzuki, a highly placed exec from Sony's Tokyo headquarters who sits at or near the helm of several company units that are working together on the tablets, emphasized four ways the company is trying to make the two tablets, code-named the S1 and S2, are "uniquely Sony":

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Better late than never, as they say.

Despite being one of the last big electronics players to hit the market with a tablet, Sony underscored it's no less serious about one of the hottest tech segments with a pair of concrete announcements about the two tablets Sony intends to deliver sometime this fall.

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One downside of the ever-increasing resolution of digital cameras, as well as mobile phones, is that they produce massive images. They're great for printing or production environments, but not so useful if you just want to email them to friends or upload them to a blog. Oversized images make web pages load slowly without adding anything to the overall experience, while they produce attachments vast in size that take an age to send, and could get you blacklisted by friends and family for tying up their Internet connection and inbox while downloading them.

While you can manually resize images using your image editor, the process of opening, resizing and then resaving can quickly become tedious. Thank goodness, then, for FreeSizer, a free tool that enables you to quickly and easily resize a batch of images quickly and easily without affecting the original files.

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Never fails to amaze us how much effort web browser development teams are investing to bring us the latest and best browser. Where's the end goal? You can understand Google pushing significant resources in to Chrome, as it's part of the new Chrome OS. But why are Opera and Firefox so keen to be seen to develop and release new versions of their browsers more quickly than ever?

This week has seen a plethora of new or updated web browsers from Mozilla and Opera. Earlier this week, Firefox 6 beta was launched to the general public. Firefox Aurora is now 7.0a2, whilst Firefox 8 moved in to the Nightly channel. And there are almost no differences between 7.0a2 and 8.0a1. On top of this, Opera 12 made it's very fist public bow in the form of a pre-alpha. Since when did any developer release an alpha, never mind a pre-alpha, to the general public? It's up there on the Opera website for anyone to download. You can test Opera 12 "Next" alongside the regular Opera 11.50, if you're keen to see the latest developments. Maxthon 3.1.3.1000 was also released this week, which is a browser based on the engine that powers Internet Explorer.

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It's a common human desire to keep up with the Joneses or even to play games of oneupmanship, and it's no truer when applied to PCs. While older kit and software may do the job admirably, there's no ignoring the desire for new shiny toys and the latest in cutting-edge technology.

Windows 8 isn't out yet -- the first beta isn't due to appear for another few months yet -- but that doesn't stop people from wanting it. Windows 8 UX Pack 2.0 gives you the next best thing: it makes Windows 7 look and feel just like Windows 8.

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One of the biggest problems with instant messaging is that not everyone uses the same network. Typically you'll have friends who swear by Windows Live on the one hand, while others refuse to budge from Yahoo Messenger on the other. Throw in the growing popularity of alternative mediums like Facebook and Twitter, and keeping track of your online buddies' movements can be tricky.

Instantbird 1.0 aims to bring together many of these disparate networks and services under one roof, and while not as polished as more established multi-network clients like Trillian and Pidgin, its close links to Mozilla makes us confident the program will evolve into a powerful alternative to these programs in time.

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Yahoo Messenger 11 has finally left beta after seven months and been given a final release by Yahoo. Version 11 sees a number of new features, including support for Facebook, Twitter and other social media networks.

The use of instant messaging programs has declined somewhat due to the growth of social media platforms with larger networks. Yahoo has chosen to embrace this trend by placing social media at the heart of  Yahoo Messenger 11. Not only is it designed to strike up conversations via text or audio/video, but now you can also play collaborative games and interact across your Facebook network too.

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Editor's note: Yesterday, hacker group LulzSec Security released a cache of documents taken from Arizona Dept. of Public Safety servers. The data dump included personal information, such as home address and spouse's name, for cops. Here, a victim from an earlier LulzSec data dump -- 62,000 stolen usernames and passwords, many connected to public services like AOL and Gmail -- has something to say about the group. This commentary is edited together from separate emails. Fearing reprisals, the LulzSec victim requests anonymity, so we can't fully verify the story. But based on email exchanges we're confident it's legit.

The feelings that morning as all my accounts were being shut down for no apparent reason was like my experience in Washington, DC on 9/11-- initially confusing. Then as news reports leaked out and I realized that I was a target, the panic ensued. Just [like] we were hearing that our building might possibly be a target of an aircraft on 9/11.

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Finding your way around online as quickly as you can is becoming more and more important. Current net users want to zip from site to site without worrying about remembering addresses or working out where they're stored in bookmarks.

SiteLauncher for Firefox and SiteLauncher for Chrome are browser extensions that provide fast access and keyboard shortcuts to your most popular sites. It's already chock full of useful  bookmarks, but you can add your own and customize all the existing ones too.

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Program bugs, hardware problems, virus attacks, human error -- there are many possible reasons why you might lose valuable data. And so it's a very good idea to have a file recovery tool to hand, ready to call into action just as soon as you notice there's a problem.

Which one, though? That's a tricky question. There's plenty of choice, but if you're a home user then MiniTool's Power Data Recovery Free Edition has more to recommend it than most of the competition.

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iolo has released version 10.5 of System Mechanic, its comprehensive system maintenance and performance tool. Version 10.5 adds two major new tools to System Mechanic's armory: Designated Drivers and SSD Accelerator. You also receive a comprehensive whole-home license, which covers all the PCs in a single household.

System Mechanic 10.5 also promises enhanced and improved versions of existing components, specifically Tune-up Definitions, DriveAccelerator, Memory Mechanic and -- Professional version only -- Secure Online Backup, which now offers 5GB of free online backup space. In addition to these major improvements, version 10.5 includes "hundreds" of minor improvements too.

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Apple's iOS devices may have something of a stranglehold on the mobile market, but for anyone that has tired of the iPhone and iPad's dominance, the ever-increasing range of Android devices is something to be welcomed. Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 brought a new player to the arena and, as is customary with operating systems, there have been endless comparisons between Android, iOS and Windows Phone 7. Launcher 7 is a free utility for Android users who like the way their device works but are taken in by the look of Windows Phone 7.

The app is a combination of a skin and a launcher tool, and it closely mimics the Windows Phone approach with its interface. The app breaks the screen up into a series of tiles that can be used to house all manner of shortcuts. The main screen provides access to common features such as the dialer for your phone, displays information about your inbox and much more. As you would expect, the function and look of each of the tiles can be completely customized.

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If you like your security suites to be feature-rich then Kaspersky's offerings have always been worth a look, as most editions come packed with functionality that you won't find elsewhere. Kaspersky Internet Security 2012 (KIS 2012) is a little quieter than usual, though; its release notes show no big additions this time around, just interface tweaks and various engine optimisations. So what does this mean in real life? We took a closer look.

Tweaks and Tucks

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Last in a series. It would be unfair to identify "Microsoft software licensing: Seven deadly sins" without offering like number of remedies for them. To recap: Software Assurance is an upgrade addition to Microsoft volume licensing announced 10 years ago that generated stiff resistance from customers. The company removed any-time upgrade options, replacing them with annuity programs where customers annually pay 25 percent of a server license's cost, and 29 percent of a desktop (primarily Windows and Office) software license. Customers must choose whether or not to get Software Assurance when acquiring new licenses. Customers get the right to upgrade but not the assurance Microsoft will release new software during the contract period.

Seven Remedies

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Editor's Note: On June 6, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced that iCloud, an online synchronization service, is coming in the Fall. iCloud will replace MobileMe, and Apple isn't waiting around for the new service to launch. MobileMe has stopped taking new subscribers and has extended existing customers' service for free. MobileMe will close on June 30, 2012. But iCloud is a much different service, which has upset many subscribers for what they're losing and for what they paid ($99 or more).

Apple is bringing us a laughably monikered upgrade to MobileMe called iCloud, and when you strip away the hype and Steve Jobs reality distortion field, iCloud is a proprietary, convoluted and highly restrictive sync-backup service.

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