Diagnosing Windows problems on your own PC can be difficult. But understanding what's happening on a friend's system, far away, is a far greater challenge. Especially if they're less than technical, and unable to answer even basic troubleshooting questions without a lot of help.

So what should you do? It's surprisingly easy: just follow Microsoft's lead. The company has developed a Premier Support Reporting Tool that makes it easy to collect a huge amount of data on just about any PC. And if you use it, too, the program will make it much easier to figure out exactly what's going on with a remote computer system.

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The future of computing, so we're told, lies in the cloud. It's already possible to spend practically all your entire computing life in your browser window, using web-based apps like Google Docs and Photoshop Express Editor in place of more traditional desktop apps like OpenOffice and Paint.NET.

The only downside of this approach is keeping all your online apps and accounts together in one neat place. This is where Jolicloud comes in, offering a desktop-like experience in your browser window. But why stop there? Jolicloud has gone one step further and developed an entire operating system, Joli OS, that takes your browser-based desktop and places it right in front of you.

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Users of the free browser add-on LastPass, which offers secure online password and form management, have found themselves forced to change their master password. This follows an announcement by LastPass after it detected an unexplained "anomaly" in one of its machines' network traffic logs.

After failing to adequately explain the cause, LastPass has taken a "worst-case scenario" approach to the anomaly, assumed it represents some form of security breach -- the amount of data transferred was large enough to have contained enough sensitive information to have enabled any hacker to attempt to brute force insecure passwords -- and triggered a mandatory password change for all users.

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Standard images editing tools are not hard to come by -- in fact Mac users are almost spoiled for choice in this field. But when it comes to vector graphics packages, the choices are slightly more limited. If you don't fancy the idea of forking out fortune on an expensive package, Artboard may be of interest. It offers an impressive range of creative tools at a fraction of the price of comparable software.

Whether you're looking for a quick and easy way to create scalable posters, or would like to design your own logos or web graphics, Artboard includes a number of templates to help get you started. The fact that the templates include designs for invitations and fliers as well as business cards and signs gives some indication of the target audience of the app.

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When it comes to burning discs, the likes of Nero and Roxio have their place. However, while it is possible that you will occasionally need the features provided by such suites --if you are creating video discs or photo slideshows, for example -- it is more likely that most of your burning sessions involve little more than copying a few files or folders to disc. This is where a lightweight tool such as Tiny Burner is ideal.

Rather than overwhelming users with endless features, Tiny Burner focuses on the basics of disc burning -- the process of getting files from your computer onto CD, DVD or Blu-ray. There are no fancy extras to be found here, and if you are looking to work on complicated disc projects, this is certainly not the tool for you. However, if you have found the built-in disc burning support offered by Windows to be a little too basic, Tiny Burner may be for you.

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Hard-core players hate to lose games. But what happens when they're the sport -- the object of play? That increasingly is the state of PlayStation Network subscribers, following a hack that swiped personal data. If that's you, there are ways to protect you now and from future data theft anywhere on the Internet. Fun and games don't have to end when someone breaks in.

It all started so innocently. Two weeks ago, PlayStation Network went down. The next day, Sony promised the outage would last for a "day or two" to the despair of the fun-loving millions who use the service to access multiplayer games, movies, music and other downloadable entertainment. At the time, Sony raised the possibility that a hacker instigated the outage, but it took six days and outside help before it was revealed that PSN had indeed been the victim of a hack -- one that compromised the personal data of as many as 77 million customers. Today, new details emerged that, despite denials, Anonymous may have been responsible for the hack and data theft.

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Document metadata can be very useful on your own PC. Tag yourself as the author of a report, say, or enter some relevant details in its description, and the file should be much easier to find later. When you need to share documents online, though, it's a very different story. Without knowing it, you could be giving all kinds of information away to hackers: usernames, network details, email addresses, software information and a whole lot more.

So does any of this apply to you? Manual checking is tedious, and could take a very long time, but, fortunately, it isn't necessary. FOCA Free is a simple tool that automates the process of checking any websites for metadata issues, and it's both quick and easy to use.

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Opera has released an alpha build of Opera Next 11.50. As the name implies, this new release is a separate version of the cross-platform Opera browser. It's designed to allow users to install the latest developmental version of Opera alongside the current stable version, allowing users to road-test the latest new features without risking their current, stable installation.

Aside from introducing the Opera Next browser, which is identified by a silver grey version of the traditional red "O" icon used by Opera, version 11.50 also adds support for Speed Dial extensions, allowing developers to do more with the Speed Dial shortcuts page in Opera itself, such as delivering live news feeds, page updates or animated video in place of the static web page image or site icon.

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RSS feeds can be used to keep abreast of news headlines and the latest blog posts, and most RSS fans will have a huge number of subscriptions. Whether you have opted to use a dedicate RSS reader or use an online RSS service such as Google Reader, you'll no doubt be aware that it is all too easy to spend a great deal of time wading through endless posts when you are only likely to be interested in posts from a small number of sites. Fresh Feed enables you to keep up to date with your most important feeds so you can focus on the stories that are likely to need your attention.

In a few moments it is possible to configure the app to check some of your most frequently read feeds on a regular basis, and you will receive an audio alert whenever a new post is made. A menu bar popup displays the headlines for your configured feeds and a preview of the associated story can be viewed in a small slide out window -- anything that particularly grabs your attention can be viewed in its entirety with a quick click.

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If you're looking for a way to keep a track of your Google accounts, Gmail Notifier Pro may well be the tool you have been looking for. Although the name of the program may suggest that its sole purpose is to provide notifications about the state of your Gmail inbox, the tool can be used to monitor Google Calendar and Google News.

There are free and paid-for versions of the application available, with the free version including support for up to two Gmail accounts and the Pro version allowing you to add as many accounts as you like. Mail can be checked using IMAP or Atom protocols and the notification area popups that appear when messages are received can be used to mark mail as read as well as composing replies and new emails without the need to visit the Gmail web site.

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Paragon's Hard Disk Manager is a comprehensive collection of hard drive tools that comes in three different flavors. Hard Disk Manager Suite is powerful, but aimed at home users. The Server edition targets corporations, with its ability to optimize Windows Server installations. But the new Hard Disk Manager 11 Professional is perhaps the most interesting. It's packed with features, and Paragon say it's more of a business package, but there's also plenty here to appeal to the more advanced user, whether at home or in the office.

This doesn't make the program difficult to use, though. Hard Disk Manager 11 Professional doesn't have the same front-end menu that you get in the Suite edition, but it's still quite straightforward to locate the functionality you need; just right-click the drive or partition you'd like to work on, or browse the menus, and the feature you need will generally be very obvious. The interface in general is much the same as it has been in previous Paragon software, so if you've ever used any of the previous suites then you'll probably feel at home right away.

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It has been something of a long time coming, but Fluid for OS X has finally been released, providing an easy way to make websites accessible in the same way as any software you have installed. As so many websites, such as Facebook and Twitter, function in much the same way as applications, it makes sense to treat them in this way -- and this is exactly what can be achieved with Fluid.

In a matter of moments it is possible to create shortcuts that can be used to open you favorite website in its own window, as well as giving you the opportunity to create shortcuts that can be placed anywhere, Fluid also makes it easier to cycle through open website "apps" as opposed to scrolling through countless tabs in your browser.

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OneUp Industries, a company launched by the author of such notable Stardock applications as Fences and ObjectDock, has released a public beta of its first software offering. Bins 0.95 is a Windows 7-only application that allows the user to group taskbar icons into convenient folders, or "bins" (hence the title). It's based on a similar feature that's found in Mac OS X, which supports "stacking" of dock icons in a similar way.

Once installed, Bins sits unobtrusively in the background; the user simply drags one icon onto a related icon and places it in the pop-up balloon that appears above the primary icon to group them together. Additional related programs can be grouped in the same way. Icons can be rearranged by dragging and dropping: the left-most icon becomes the primary icon and, until the next beta release, only the primary icon supports jumplists.

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Gathering information online used to mean saving folders full of images or copying and pasting text into a word processing documents, but then web clipping services such as Evernote made it easier than ever to collect together information and organize it however you wanted. Evernote is an undoubtedly powerful tool, but for many people its features may be a little over the top and the interface somewhat overwhelming. Memonic is an alternative tool that keeps things simple and yet retains the most useful note management features.

The service can be used via the Memonics web site, using a Windows program, with browser extensions or by making use of an iOS app. Almost anything you encounter online, from text to images, can be clipped and saved to your notes and organized in a variety of ways in a customisable and searchable database.

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Wuala, the online backup arm of hard-drive manufacturer LaCie, has announced the immediate availability of Wuala for Android, an app for accessing Wuala storage accounts on the Android platform.

Following hot on the heels of Wuala for iPhone and iPad, the Android app allows users to both access files already backed up to their Wuala account, plus upload files to their backup space from the phone. This latter functionality is currently exclusive to the Android app -- iPhone/iPad users can only access existing backups, not add new files from the iOS device.

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