It's only February, and already we have a contender for game of the year: Mass Effect 3. The PC demo really shows off the drama and action of the game well. We'll have to wait until March to see whether BioWare has created a game that fittingly ends the trilogy, but it certainly starts off well. You can choose to be a male or female Commander Shepard, and also choose the type of gameplay you want.

Nick took a look at a browser add-on called Do Not Track Plus, which allows you to stop websites tracking your behavior and giving you targeted advertising etcetera. If you've ever wondered why you keep seeing that pair of shoes you were looking at in advertising while you are browsing, try this out! Do Not Track Plus is compatible with Mac or PC for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer, which should just about cover all bases!

One of the best security suites around, you can now try out the beta version of avast! 7. Niamh put it through its paces. Read more in her post and see what changes are being introduced, from the new interface to cloud services and remote access. Maybe the biggest change is the avast application market - will it be the iTunes Store of security?

Apple has taken another step forward to transforming OS X into iOS with the developer release of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.

We'll bring you a full review soon but in the meantime, here are some essential points to be aware of before Apple releases it on the App Store late this summer:

WinRAR is already known as a fantastic file compression tool. It can do a lot of other useful things too though, one of which is splitting up large files into several smaller ones.

If you want to share a large file with someone else, its size might make doing so a bit tricky. A great way to work around this is to break up one big file into several files of a smaller size.

WinRAR can split up files quickly and effectively. It's also very easy to do. In fact, it only takes three simple steps!

Apart from releasing a developer preview of OS X 10.8 "Mountain Lion", Apple has also released Messages - the successor to iChat.

If you install Messages, it replaces iChat although Apple has assured that iChat services will continue to work.

Adobe Flash is an essential component to watch video on the web. It's not perfect - it can cause browser crashes and sometimes leave your computer vulnerable to attack but one particularly common problem is with updating it or knowing which version of Flash you are currently running

Here is a simple step-by-step guide to checking which version of Flash you are using and how to update it and change update settings if necessary.

Nero Burning ROM is widely-regarded as the most complete disk burning software around. However, the program is becoming increasingly bloated and given that most normal users won’t use all of its advanced features, it makes sense to try out a free CD/DVD burning application first.

If you just need to quickly burn a disk with data, music or a movie, there are plenty of free solutions that will do the job with no nonsense. Check out the five free alternatives to Nero Burning ROM below, which are all reliable ways to burn disks for free.

As the launch of version 7 of  avast! antivirus comes closer, the developer has released a fully-functional beta version for you to try, test, consider and assess!

Making personal movies is fun and gratifying after you’ve finished taking raw footage and editing it into a personal story.  Windows Live Movie Maker allows you to create movies from footage with a simple interface that is mostly easy to learn.

All movies need a soundtrack and when you import your files, they already have audio recorded. What happens when you just want to mute existing audio to add your own music?

Here’s the simple solution:

Ever wondered how some websites seem to know so much about you as soon as you arrive? Or are you concerned about the amount of tracking that some websites do nowadays?

Until I installed Do Not Track Plus, I had no idea of the extent that sites go to to track you on the internet. Within seconds of logging onto MSN's site for example, it revealed six different companies that wanted to track my profile and surfing habits on the net:

Valentine’s Day tends to be a hit-or-miss holiday for most people. You either go all out or bemoan it as an example of consumerism at its worst. There are ways to acknowledge the holiday without breaking the bank though - PicsArt – Photo Studio is a great way to show people you care in a completely personalized way, and it's entirely free!

The PicsArt app for Android will let you create and edit photos for any occasion, but Valentine’s Day is as good a day as any to give it a try.

Here are three steps to impress friends and family for Valentine’s Day and make the most out of PicsArt - Photo Studio.

Angry Birds is a popular multi-platform game that has already generated over 700 million downloads as a mobile app since it's release in December 2009.

Now you can now play it as an an app on Facebook.

If you're an avid Facebook user, as well as a fan of those famously militant birds and their egg-stealing swine opponents, now you can combine the best of both worlds. In addition, you now get to enjoy the social interaction of Facebook with your Angry Birds gameplay, as well as some really cool new features.

Picasa is a great free program for organizing and editing your photos.The addition of sharing photos to Google+ and tagging Google+ friends is a great way to connect memories with others.

While Picasa may not be a comprehensive editing suite when compared to paid software like Adobe Photoshop, it contains more than enough options to edit and create collages and presentations.

Picasa doesn't have a dedicated delete button, so how do you delete images?

It's easier than you think!

Photoscape is an excellent free alternative to commercial photo editing programs like Photoshop. It includes a wide variety of filters, tools and special effects that help you touch up and edit your digital images.

Blending one image over another to create a combined image is a great way to add an artistic effect to some of your photos. It's also convenient for people who take multiple photos in quick succession and want to add certain objects in one photo to another with a similar backdrop. With Photoscape, this is quite simple to do, once you learn the process...

Even though it's an old app, Google Talk continues to be a really popular app. It's no wonder - it's reliable, easy to use and much simpler than some of the more flashy IMs out there. If you're just getting started with the app, or you have a few doubts, we've answered the top questions about Google Talk below. Take a look...

How to sign up

This couldn't be easier. You need a Google Account, which you can get here. If you have an email address that ends with gmail.com, googlemail.com or you've got a personalized Google domain, then you don't need to do anything - your login details are also your Google Talk login information.

Then, download and install the Google Talk desktop client. The installation process is very easy, and when you see the login screen appear, just enter the login details mentioned above. That's it! As soon as you see the main interface appear, you're free to start chatting!

Copy and paste is one of the most-used functions in Microsoft Word. In Word 2010, though, there’s a function called the Spike that can be even more useful for moving text and pictures around a document.

The Spike is an extended clipboard feature of Word 2010. It allows you to remove two or more items from different parts of a document and reinsert them as a group in a new location in the document.

This can be very handy for editing large documents, piecing together research projects, arranging agendas, compiling reports and more.