Do you remember Napster? Not the paid streaming music service sold last year to Rhapsody, but the original peer-to-peer music sharing service that was hugely popular from 1999-2001 when it went down in a legal ball of flames over copyright infringement. Well something Napster-like is emerging from Amoeba Music, the huge pre-owned music and video stores in Berkeley, San Francisco and Los Angeles and some musicians and vinyl junkies are up in arms about it, though I can’t understand why.

Napster was a peer-to-peer service that allowed people to share their music collections online. Amoeba's Vinyl Vaults service is similar in that the company rips tracks from old records as they come into the stores then throws them up on a webpage where they can be downloaded, but not for free. Amoeba charges money.

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Nexus devices are largely sold out this holiday season. Supply can't meet demand, particularly the new smartphone. But one Google gadget is missing altogether, pulled before official sales started. I've got Nexus Q, and you should be able to have one, too. The entertainment device is quirky, but I like it. Surely there is stock sitting around in some warehouse somewhere. Sell it out, Google. Give geeks something else to clamor for and recover some of the development and manufacturing costs.

The sphere-shaped device is a remarkable product, and changes fundamental concepts about digitally-delivered entertainment. Users stream music or movies from the cloud, using Android smartphone or tablet as remote control. The approach solves a fundamental end-user problem with digital content: Simple sharing.

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Let’s be frank: most free image editors are dull. They tend to offer the same style of interface, the same basic functionality, with little to distinguish them for the competition. That may be fine for beginners, but if you’re a more experienced user then you might sometimes wish for something more.

There are more interesting alternatives around, though, and Image Analyzer is a particularly good example. It’s far from perfect, but if you’re looking for a photo editor with a little extra features and functionality then the program could keep you busy for a very long time.

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Apple has released the long-awaited iTunes 11 and boy does it look different. The brand new, easier to navigate interface provides a simplified view of your media. The default view shows a grid of albums and you can expand each one to see the songs it contains. There’s a pop-up menu on the left to browse your libraries (Music, Films, TV Programs and Apps) and a button on the right to open the iTunes Store. The Playlists button is located in the bar at the top of the screen. The familiar sidebar on the left is no more.

When you connect an iPhone, iPod or iPad to your computer, a button for it will appear and you can add content to the device by dragging and dropping.

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Newzbin2, a site offering links to pirated content, hit the headlines back in November 2011 when a successful court case brought by the Motion Picture Association led to it being blocked by a number of major ISPs in the UK, including BT, Virgin Media, Sky, and TalkTalk.

The website responded in bullish fashion by rolling out an encrypted software client to circumvent the ban and switching to a Spanish domain to avoid the threat of domain seizure, but the adverse publicity meant that payment providers were unwilling to work with the site, leaving the owners unable to pay the hosting costs. Despite this, Newzbin2 struggled on, offering an increasingly unreliable service, until today when it finally closed for good.

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If you want to download music for free then the Internet isn’t exactly short of options, so discovering that we now had another, in the shape of the new MP3jam, didn’t exactly fill us with excitement.

But then we actually tried the program. And it turned out to be a real surprise.

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You’ve got a speedy, modern PC and a fast internet connection -- so why is it that you can’t watch streaming videos without regular dropouts and interruptions?

These kind of problems can be frustrating, and they’re certainly tricky to diagnose. But the free DPC Latency Checker could help point you in the right direction.

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I have two cats, Charlie and Chloe. Charlie is very talkative, especially when he’s hungry (which is most of the time), and indeed you can often have lengthy conversations with him. So when, in 2009, YouTube user Andrew Grantham (klaatu42) put out a call for clips of talking animals to appear in a new Christmas video, I filmed Charlie requesting more food and uploaded the 30-second snippet. I was very fortunate, because not only was my submission accepted but my cat was used to sing the opening lines to Deck the Halls.

It was a fun video, and clearly found an audience -- as to date over nine million people have watched it. But Charlie’s fleeting fame wasn’t to stop there. A few weeks ago, out of the blue, I received a slew of increasingly frantic messages in my YouTube inbox from the Leo Burnett advertising agency.

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BurnAware 5.5 Free and Home, are now available for Windows. Version 5.5 adds DVD-Video as an option to the file system selection when compiling ISO files, plus adds other minor features and resolves a number of issues and bugs that surfaced after version 5.4 was released 15 days earlier.

The key new feature in BurnAware 5.5 is the new DVD-Video mode option when selecting a file system for ISO compilation, allowing users to create video DVDs. It’s joined by support for BIN image files when creating boot discs.

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Keeping your digital photo collection in order usually requires a great deal of self-discipline and effort. Or, failing that, a heavy-duty image organiser.

If you’re distinctly lacking in all these areas, though, you could just turn to PhotosTree, a tiny (17KB) command-line tool which quickly arranges your JPEGs according to the date they were taken.

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Fourth in a series. A month has passed since the release of Windows 8 and in that time, Windows Store has grown significantly.  Wes Miller, an independent analyst, recently reported that the worldwide app count broke the 20,000 mark, and that about 500 new apps are added to the store each day.

While that is still far from the numbers that Google Play or Apple's Apple Store get, it is an indicator of a healthy store ecosystem. On we go with this week's best apps for Windows 8.

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This time of the year is a great one to pick up some technology bargains and the Downloadcrew Software Store is no exception. In addition to the regular deals, there are some extra-special Black Friday/Cyber Monday offers that run until the end of November.

We open with some great savings from CyberLink. PowerDirector 11 Ultimate, which bundles PowerDirector 11 with 22 NewBlueFX effects, is yours for only $99.99, a saving of 23 percent from MSRP. Better still, you pick up a free bundle worth $59.90 with every order! PowerDirector 11 Ultra is yours for $79.95, a saving of 20 percent from MSRP, also shipping with the free bundle. Media Suite 10 Ultra, which is CyberLink’s 11-in-1 multimedia suite, is yours for $89,95, or 31 percent off MSRP. PowerDVD 12 Ultra, is yours for $50, or 50-percent off MSRP.

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A new report from Ofcom reveals that one in six Internet users in the United Kingdom access films, TV shows, music, or eBooks through illegal means. Published this week, the first results from an ongoing study of Internet users aged 12 and above also reveals that 47 percent are unsure whether the online content they download, stream or share is legal or not.

During the three-month period from May to July 2012, Ofcom found that the levels of infringement varied considerably depending on content type. For example, while 8 percent of users accessed music illegally and 6 percent consumed films that way, just 2 percent downloaded games and software. That said, of all the computer software obtained online, 47 percent of it was acquired illegally.

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I had great hopes for Xbox Music when announced in October. It’s essentially the best of Spotify, iTunes, Amazon, and Google music services all wrapped up into one. But the sheer number of problems with this initial offering leaves myself and others in complete disappointment.

Xbox Music replaces Zune on Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, and the Xbox 360. The service includes the ability to purchase music a la carte, stream or download songs (via Xbox Music Pass subscription for $9.99 per month), sync playlists across devices, access a music locker, and more. Any tunes you purchase from the Xbox Music store, or playlists you create, sync across devices. Well, that's the idea, except, it’s not working for some people.

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There’s nothing more annoying than someone playing on their mobile phone during a movie. Even if you’re sitting a good distance away, the glowing small screen lights up the cinema like a beacon, making it harder to focus on what’s happening on the big screen.

Forthcoming feature-length thriller App is set to turn what is usually seen as socially unacceptable behavior into a highly social act, encouraging everyone to use their iPhones and Android devices to follow a parallel storyline while the film is playing.

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