Piriform has updated its free Windows cleaning tool with the release of CCleaner 4.03. The new build, also available in portable form, concentrates its improvements on the four major browsers: Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Opera.

Version 4.03 also improves cleaning for Office 2013 users, extends support to five new programs (including three Windows 8 apps) and also promises new and improved features for paid-for Pro users too.

Mozilla has released Firefox 22.0 FINAL for Windows, Mac and Linux. The update includes some platform-specific improvements -- Firefox following display scaling options in Windows, and providing download progress indicators in its dock application icon in OS X -- plus a number of other tweaks and improvements.

Other new features include the ability for users to now manage their social API plug-ins via the Add-ons menu (select Services in the left-hand menu to do so), while users can now adjust the playback rate of HTML5 audio and video files (right-click the playback screen and choose Play Speed to do so).

Open-source image editor GIMP 2.8.6 FINAL has been released for Windows and Linux. This popular -- and powerful -- image manipulation tool, which is also available for Mac, is primarily a maintenance release, but does include some interesting feature tweaks, many of which improve the program’s single-window mode that was introduced in version 2.8.

Chief among these changes is the increase in the supported maximum size of clipboard brushes and patterns to 1,024×1,024 pixels. Also improved is how users switch focus back to the canvas screen in single-window mode, with the [Escape] key now used for that task.

While there are plenty of weather monitoring apps around, most of them are, well, just a little dull. They’ll tell you it might be windy later, and that there’s a chance of rain tomorrow, but that’s about as exciting as it gets.

Earth Alerts is different. It can give you details on the locations you define -- current conditions, maps, forecasts and so on -- but what it’s really about is tracking more severe events. Earthquakes alerts, tsunami warnings, forest fires, landslides, cyclones, they’re all detailed here.

Giorgio Tani has revealed PeaZip 5.0, the latest version of his popular and powerful file archive tool, which he says "brings a major code and design cleanup".

In practical terms this means a stack of interface enhancements, making the program even easier to use. A new History menu lists recently used paths and archives, for instance; the Bookmarks section now opens maximized by default, with useful system locations helping you get started right away; and the Settings dialog has been completely reorganized and simplified.

Time-lapse images can be a great way to capture movement in the sky, countryside, cities and more. But if they have a small issue, it’s that your usual viewpoint is always entirely static: the camera is fixed, while the world moves around it.

Panolapse is a free (for personal use) tool which can change all this, by adding motion through custom panning and zoom effects. This isn’t the simple flat movement you might get with a video editor, either: Panolapse uses perspective correction to produce far more realistic results, so that it actually looks as though your camera is moving around within the scene.

Malwarebytes has released the first public beta of Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit, a rebranded and improved version of ZeroVulnerabilityLabs’ ExploitShield. And just as in its previous incarnation, Anti-Exploit is an extremely easy-to-use tool which protects popular applications from zero-day exploits, web-based vulnerability exploits and more.

The full list of shielded apps includes browsers (Firefox, Chrome, IE, Opera), Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), Media Players (Windows Media Player, VLC, Winamp, QuickTime), PDF-related tools (Adobe Reader, Foxit Reader, Adobe Acrobat) and more (Java, Windows Script Host, Windows Help).

Symantec has unveiled the first public betas for Norton AntiVirus 21, Norton Internet Security 21 and Norton 360 21.

As we write the company hasn’t provided any information on new features. A first look shows the core interface remains almost entirely unchanged, though -- with the exception of a revamped and extended Identity Safe -- so if you’re already familiar with the previous editions then navigating the new builds should be straightforward.

Maxthon has released a major new update for its self-titled browser. Maxthon 4.1 and Maxthon Portable 4.1 both aim to provide Windows users with a performance-enhanced browser that retains compatibility with Internet Explorer and Google Chrome.

Version 4.1 continues in this vein, delivering a number of performance-related improvements alongside a handful of new and enhanced features, including the support for customising global blocking rules.

When Windows is misbehaving then a quick look at Task Manager will sometimes help. It might show you a program which is using too much RAM or CPU time, for instance, as well as allowing you to terminate the problem process and restore order.

Most of the time, though, Task Manager just won’t have what it takes to help you troubleshoot your system. You’ll need a more capable third-party tool to take you a little further. And they don’t come much more capable than the portable PowerTool.

If I were a realist I would assume you use BitTorrent to download Game of Thrones episodes and other illegal media, but I am a trusting soul, and so I expect you use the protocol as a way of getting your hands on legitimate content -- and there's honestly plenty of it available. Heck, every Friday the company makes legal media available to users, such as these free concerts.

Now the developer announces that 25 million users are getting their torrents through the mobile app versions of BitTorrent and µTorrent.

Winamp 5.64 and its more fully functional, paid-for sibling, Winamp Pro 5.64 have been released, with a couple of new features joined by a myriad of improvements and bug fixes.

The latest minor update to Nullsoft’s popular lightweight music player for Windows opens with a new option for simplifying the task of restarting Winamp in Safe mode for troubleshooting purposes: users will find this option under Options > Preferences > Plug-ins. The option was already present via the command line (use the /SAFE=1 command switch).

Comodo has announced the public availability of Comodo Internet Security 6.2, Firewall 6.2 and Antivirus 6.2. These are more than just maintenance releases, too -- there are some genuinely significant developments.

Right-click the Comodo icon and choose the new Advanced View, for instance, and the rather basic home screen is replaced with something much more detailed. You’ll be able to view details on your antivirus, update, auto-sandbox, HIPS and firewall status, as well as see which processes are using your network bandwidth, view recently detected threats and intrusions, and more.

The Document Foundation has released LibreOffice 4.0.4 for Windows, Mac and Linux. The latest version of this open-source office suite, which includes a word processor, spreadsheet, presentations tool and database, as well as drawing and math tools, is primarily a bug fix, but also includes various interoperability improvements with proprietary documents.

The release comes as TDF announces plans to step up its road-testing of LibreOffice 4.1, which is scheduled to appear at the end of July. Version 4.1 will include many new features and improvements, some of which are detailed below.

Piriform has released Speccy 1.22, a minor update to its free Windows system information tool. Despite the minor version number, version 1.22 contains a number of notable changes and improvements.

Speccy 1.22 -- also available as a standalone portable build -- opens with support for adding the temperature sensor output to the program’s Taskbar Notification Area icon.