Owning an iOS device is meant to make it easy to access the music you have stored on your computer -- plug in and synchronize the latest tracks ready for listening to on the move. However, in practice, many of us regularly work with more than one computer, be it an office and home computer, or a laptop and desktop machine. Each of these computers may have a different selection of music on the hard drive. There is a simpler way. SuperSync can be used to centralize your collection and ensure that everything you want is available by providing you with a single, constantly updated music library.

Using the app you can easily compare two iTunes libraries and decide which tracks need to be copied between them -- synchronization is a breeze and beats having to manually transfer tracks individually. This in itself is a useful feature, but SuperSync also provides an all-important backup option.

Continue reading →

German security vendor G Data has released G Data CloudSecurity 1.0, a free browser plug-in for Internet Explorer and Firefox users that adds an extra layer of protection to Windows PCs. It works by blocking access to known phishing and malware-infested websites, throwing up a highly visible prompt warning the user that the site they're about to visit is considered to be dangerous.

G Data CloudSecurity won't rely on regular updates to provide protection against known websites, but utilize data from other users of its security software in the cloud to monitor behavior and spot malicious and fake websites, deploying protection to all of its users.

Continue reading →

The official Twitter app for iOS has been updated with a new Quick Bar that provides easy access to trending topics from the comfort of your timeline. The new feature is exclusive to the iPhone version of the app, but iPad users can also benefit from features and tweaks added to both versions of the app.

The bar appears at the top of the screen, and you can scroll through trending topics by simply swiping left or right. The trending topics feature has also been updated so that trends are displayed based on your current location.

Continue reading →

When Microsoft was developing Windows Vista, the company decided to work on the file copy engine, to optimize it for performance. This wasn't exactly the most successful of moves, though -- soon many users were complaining that file copies were taking longer than ever before. And while Windows 7 has addressed many of these issues, there still seems to be plenty of people who feel that copying is still slower than it ought to be.

If you're also tired of staring at the copy dialog, then there are alternatives. Fast Copy, in particular, claims to be the fastest copying software on Windows. It supports UNICODE and long file pathnames (more than 260 bytes), and, the author says, can achieve read/write performance that's close to the limit of your hardware.

Continue reading →

Piriform has updated its system information tool Speccy to version 1.09. The update adds support for Windows 7 Service Pack 1, plus promises better hardware detection along with a number of minor bug fixes.

Speccy provides detailed system information about the PC it's currently installed on. That means it does more than tell you how much RAM is installed, for example, it'll also tell you how many memory slots have been populated, helping determine the computer's upgrade capabilities.

Continue reading →

If you want to back up a CD, DVD or Blu-ray disc, then the ISO file offers the opportunity to take advantage of all that spare capacity on your backup drive, using that as a storage medium for your backed up discs. ISO files are exact images of discs, which also comes in handy when you, or someone else, wants to distribute a CD without incurring the costs of burning a disc and posting it.

Windows 7 has some limited support for ISO files built-in: you can create an ISO file from a disc, or burn a disc from an ISO file using tools built into the OS, but what if you're using an earlier version of Windows, or you've been handed a disc image in a format other than ISO? The quick, simple and completely free answer is ISO Workshop, a new release from Glorylogic.

Continue reading →

When it comes to desktop image editing, Photoshop is the undoubted king. However, when an iOS version of the popular editing software was released, many users were left a little disappointed. TouchUp for iPad is another image editing tool which not only makes it possible to make subtle adjustments to enhance imperfect pictures, but also to make more creative edits for greater impact.

The app can be used to work with any of the images in your photo library, but it also works in conjunction with Apple's Camera Connection Kit so you can pull images straight from your digital camera.

Continue reading →

Leading Czech antivirus vendor Avast! has updated its free antivirus tool to version 6. Avast! Free AntiVirus 6 claims to deliver even better protection against malware thanks to two new features previously only found in paid-for antivirus programs.

The first feature is AutoSandbox, which automatically identifies suspicious applications and prompts the user to run them in an isolated environment, preventing them from interacting with, and potentially infecting, the computer. Second, WebRep provides reputation-based ratings for websites and search engine results, although this functionality is already available for free in standalone browser add-ons like MyWOT, it's the first time it's been made available as part of a free antivirus product.

Continue reading →

Once you've installed Service Pack 1 for Windows 7, did you know there's around 1GB of setup files cluttering up your hard disk? You'll need these files should you ever want to uninstall SP1, but we'd only recommend doing so if you needed to correct a problem. After a month or so, you should have a pretty good idea if these files will be needed going forward or not, at which point if your system is trouble-free, why not delete them to reclaim a decent amount of space?

Microsoft has thoughtfully integrated the cleaning tool into the Disk Cleanup utility, meaning you no longer need to open a command prompt window and type in a specific command. Once you've ascertained that you'd like to free up the drive space, read on to discover how it's done.

Continue reading →

German software developer ashampoo GmbH & Co. KG has released Ashampoo Photo Commander 9.0 for Windows PCs. Version 9 boasts a large number of new features to give Photo Commander a foothold in the increasingly crowded photo organization and editing market. This is reflected in the download size of the package, which is a third bigger than version 8 at a whopping 135MB.

Standout new features include support for tagging photos, new filters and editing options and improved wizards, plus an extended user interface, which includes a brand new dual-pane view for comparing the effects of editing on the currently selected photo.

Continue reading →

Betanews welcomes reader contributions. Here, Eric Neumann responds to two February 21st posts by Joe Wilcox -- "iPad is not a PC" and "5 reasons Macs will never outsell PCs." If you would like to submit a post, please email joewilcox at gmail dot com.

Being a business IT professional, I have been watching with great interest and excitement the emergence of the iOS model of computing and cloud movements hitting the personal and now commercial computing worlds. However, I must add that initially I have also viewed these big changes with fear; as recently as 2006, my career was purely based on the SME IT status quo of on-premise Microsoft and LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) stacks.

Continue reading →

You know I'm an iPad freak. I was first in line to buy one and I've used it so much my screen is cracked. It is the device that's changed my life more than any other in the past year, which, in a year that Microsoft Kinect shipped, is totally impressive. For the past few days I've had a Motorola XOOM. I accepted a loaner because I wanted to prove that it would suck next to an iPad.

One problem: I'm falling in love with it. With a couple of caveats. First, the caveats:

Continue reading →

Acronis has released a compilation of two of its standalone products under the moniker, Acronis Backup and Security 2011. Boasting a price tag of $69.99, it compromises Acronis True Image Home 2011, the celebrated drive-imaging and backup tool, plus Acronis Internet Security 2011, a complete internet security suite. Also included is Acronis Online Backup, which comes with a complementary 5GB of online storage. Users can upgrade to 250GB storage per year by paying $20 extra for the Premium version of Acronis Backup and Security.

True Image Home 2011 is considered one of the best drive backup and imaging tools on the market, while Acronis Internet Security is actually a rebadged version of BitDefender's Internet Security 2011 product. The 2011 releases see completely redesigned user interfaces, plus integration with Windows 7 and support for USB 3.0.

Continue reading →

Piriform Software has updated its system optimization and cleaning tool, CCleaner, to version 3.04. The latest release adds a number of new features, but most notably also adds support for Windows 7 Service Pack 1, which was made available for download two days ago.

CCleaner is a free tool that cleans out files for both optimization and privacy reasons, covering a wide range of systems, programs and browser settings. It also includes a Registry cleaner, plus tools for managing startup and System Restore points, as well as the Programs and Features Control Panel.

Continue reading →

Do you need an email client? These days, many people see the advantage of accessing their email through the web -- not only does this enable you to check it on any internet-enabled computer, it saves you having to open a separate program each time you want to check your email.

Having said that, you'll need to consider a dedicated email client if you want to access your email offline, or your web-based host's interface leaves something to be desired. You should also consider an upgrade if you're still using Windows Mail (Vista) or Outlook Express (Windows XP or earlier). In this roundup we've sourced five alternative email programs, some free, others not so, and put them through their paces to see which one is best suited for your needs.

Continue reading →