If you’re looking to preserve your privacy online then there are already a host of free tools and services queuing up to offer you a new IP address, so discovering yet another, in the shape of SafeIP, didn’t exactly fill us with excitement.

The program doesn’t stop there, though. It also claims to block cookies, conceal your referrer and browser agent, block ads and prevent you from accessing known dangerous sites. And all for free, no adware or similar catches. Perhaps SafeIP was worth a look, after all.

Google Labs used to be a destination within Google where users could find new and experimental applications the search company was creating. Today, Labs are quietly woven into the Settings menu of several Google properties, including Gmail and Reader.

This is the place where you can find the app's experimental features. Like the old Google Labs, there is no guarantee that any project will succeed -- in fact, it is just as likely to disappear. However, sometimes a feature works well enough, and becomes popular enough, that it "graduates" to become a full-fledged part of the app.

Google has announced that one of its cloud-based services, Apps for Business, will no longer offer a free tier. The Mountain View, Calif.-based search leader now asks customers to pay a yearly fee for the service, which includes Google's popular Gmail, Drive, Docs, and Calendar specially designed for private enterprise deployment.

Citing growing business needs, such as requests for "24/7 customer support and larger inboxes", Google considers the premium Apps for Business version is a better option, and as a result eliminated the free variant from its portfolio.

CyberLink has released PowerProducer 6 Ultra, the latest version of its DVD authoring tool, and while the changes aren’t revolutionary there’s plenty to explore.

The program now includes 14 animated 3D-like menu templates, for instance. Some aren’t so great, but others are very good indeed, and on balance they’re an excellent extension to the program’s abilities.

Japanese manufacturer Sony has announced the release of a beta tool that can be used to restore factory software on a number of Xperia smartphones. The program targets green droid modders that wish to go back to stock, after running custom distributions such as CyanogenMod 10.

Sony says that the beta tool is released at the request of the Android community and currently works for the Xperia S, Xperia arc and Xperia arc S, with plans to increase the number of supported devices. At the moment users only have the ability to restore to a single software variant on each smartphone, but the Japanese manufacturer says it intends to include a wider version selection in the future.

An interactive online map showing the location of bombs dropped on London during World War II proved so popular when first launched earlier today, that the site immediately went down under the barrage of visitors. Like the survivors of that infamous moment in history, the site picked itself up, dusted itself off, kept calm, and carried on once more, but is still going offline periodically.

The Bomb Sight project was created by a team from the University of Portsmouth using London WWII bomb census data (taken between October 1940 and June 1941) supplied by The National Archives, and shows visitors where the bombs fell during the Blitz, and what type they were.

Nearly two months ago HTC teased Android enthusiasts with the J Butterfly, but sadly the handset was only for the Japanese market. On Friday, the Taiwanese manufacturer introduces the global variant, simply dubbed Butterfly, sporting similar specifications.

The Butterfly features a 5.0-inch SuperLCD 3 display with a 1920 x 1080 resolution. Power comes from a 1.5GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor paired with an Adreno 320 video card and 2GB of RAM. On top of the 16GB of internal storage, the Butterfly has a microSD card slot which can extend the capacity by an additional 32GB. HTC is, however, evasive when it comes to the operating system, but it's fair to assume that it ships with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, similar to the Droid DNA and J Butterfly.

Apple’s stunning $1.05 billion victory over Samsung in August might have had the fanboys punching the air in delight, and left the South Korean company reeling, but it was never going to be the end of the matter. While patent battles continue to rage in other countries, all eyes are still on the U.S. courts as the two rivals square up once more for a second round.

Apple was back in court yesterday to defend its billion dollar award and persuade U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh to permanently ban a number of older, infringing Samsung devices. Samsung for its part is trying to get the figure awarded against it reduced, or for the verdict to be dismissed (and a new trial arranged) following alleged juror misconduct. The jury foreman, Velvin Hogan, was sued by his former employer Seagate Technology in 1993, and as Samsung holds a stake in that company, lawyers for the South Korean giant argued Hogan’s failure to disclose the issue brought into serious question his impartiality.

T-Mobile USA's parent company Deutsche Telekom announced on Thursday that T-Mobile has finally entered into an agreement to carry Apple products. The announcement did not say if this agreement covered iPhone or iPad products.

The agreement was tacked onto the end of an investor announcement today which discussed a Deutsche Telecom dividend and growth plans for 2013 through 2015. It said: "In addition, T-Mobile USA has entered into an agreement with Apple to bring products to market together in 2013."

Creating a great music player is a tricky business. You’ll need to provide plenty of features, but also make sure the interface is simple, unobtrusive, lightweight, and never gets in the user’s way. Very few players get this balance right, in our view, but Winyl is one of the exceptions.

The program arrives as a compact download (under 3MB), and installs quickly, with no browser add-ons or other extras to worry about (you won’t even see as much as a “Donate” button, unless you view the Winyl “About” box).

If you want to know what people are talking about on Twitter, you just need to check what’s trending. Twitter automatically generates Trends using an algorithm to identify topics that are breaking, and from today the site is adding 100 new cities from around the world to its regional options, including 12 in the United Kingdom.

The new UK cities are Belfast, Brighton, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Portsmouth and Sheffield (Birmingham, Glasgow, London, and Manchester have been available for a while). Other new global locations include Istanbul, Turkey; Frankfurt, Germany; Guadalajara, Mexico; and Incheon, South Korea.

On Thursday, Google senior vice president Vic Gundotra announced the launch of Google+ Communities, a new feature which allows users to join and create interest groups on Google's social network.

Google+ Communities rolls out today and in typical social networking fashion, it will allow both private and public membership options. Users will be able to plan events, start hangouts and share Web content with fellow community members. Categories have been implemented to improve navigability and searchability.

Media server developer Plex Inc. has announced the immediate availability of Plex for Windows 8 1.0, a dedicated media center app giving users of Windows 8 PCs and Windows RT tablets access to their Plex Media Server collections via a full-screen, touch-friendly app.

Plex for Windows 8, like other Plex mobile applications, isn’t free. It launches with a special $2.99 price, likely to rise to $4.99 in line with its other mobile apps. The release is joined by Plex Media Server 0.9.7.7, a minor maintenance update that primarily resolves issues introduced with the new PlexSync service, which is currently restricted to PlexPass subscription holders only.

If you'd like to keep your wireless network secure, turning on the best possible encryption is usually a very good place to start. There may still be room for problems, though (as I discovered, when my brother accidentally turned off his encryption entirely while trying to set up a TV), so it could be worth using NirSoft’s Wireless Network Watcher to keep a lookout for Wi-Fi intruders.

As usual with NirSoft programs, Wireless Network Watcher is compact in the extreme, a tiny download (even when unpacked it requires less than 700KB drive space) which requires no installation: just unzip it and go.

Google first introduced its Siri-like voice search Google Now in Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean). Functionality was rather limited at first, but the search giant eventually added new "cards" (data feeds on user-selected topics) and even Gmail integration. With the latest iteration released today, users can do a lot more with Google Now, including dictate Google+ posts and show United Airlines boarding passes.

Users can power up Google Now, tap on the microphone icon, say "Post to Google Plus" and then simply add their message. Automatic posting is not enabled, so users can edit and select the circles which will see the message. Another new feature is the ability to scan barcodes, which is triggered by the fairly intuitive command "Scan a barcode". Using the camera, Google Now allows users to take a picture of the item in order to display relevant product information.