Windows 8 Developer Preview, which has been made available for download today, comes as an ISO file and can be installed and tested with Virtualbox to avoid harming your computer. But if you're too lazy even to try a new operating system in a virtual environment, here's a collection of screenshots we've taken while testing Windows 8 .

Windows 8 Developer Preview, a very early testing version of Windows 8 mainly addressed at software developers, is already available for download. You can choose between the 32-bit, 64-bit and 64-bit with development tools, and test it as much as you like until November 3rd, 2012 - the preview's expiration date. Hardware requirements are the same for the three versions: a 1-GHz processor, 1 GB of RAM memory and 16 GB of free space in your hard drive. Not too much to ask for these days.

The Preview is offered as an ISO file, which you can burn to a DVD or mount as a drive in Virtualbox. Bear in mind though that some machines may have serious hardware compatibility issues - which, on the other hand, will allow you to enjoy the new Windows 8 blue screen of death. Now it's a much more humane error message!

If you manage to install the preview, you'll get a first preview of some of the new features included in Windows 8, including the new Ribbon-ed Windows Manager we mentioned on the blog earlier on, and the Windows Live syncing feature.

The popular microblogging platform Posterous has launched a new service, called Posterous Spaces. This is their new product name, the one that will replace Posterous sites and groups, though the company’s name will still be the same.

So, what’s the difference them? In short, it looks like Posterous is improving their service with social network features. Spaces – just like the Circles in Google+ – allow you to share stuff with the right people at any time, whether it’s a shared project with your classmates or pics from your honeymoon with your family.

Posterous will continue to be the same microblogging platform you know, only that it’ll now let you create separate areas (public or private) where you can control exactly what you share and who you share it with. Each Space can have its own theme and configuration settings. You also choose each Space’s members – that is, who can view its contents and contribute to it.

Together with the launch of Posterous Spaces, the microblogging service has also released a brand new version of their iPhone app, which lets you make the most of the new Spaces feature. Other highlights are a faster, more comfortable reader for the blogs you follow, five new themes and a general improvement in loading speed.

Protecting your private information on your computer is important, especially if you share it with someone else. The best option is to have separate password-protected user accounts on the system, so that each person can only access their own documents and files. But if you share the same account, there are other ways to keep your data safe from prying eyes!

One of them is using Windows' own built-in protection system to block access to certain folders. In Windows XP, all you need to do is right click on the folder you want to protect, select Properties and in the Sharing tab, tick the Make this folder private option. If your Windows account doesn't have a password, the system will automatically ask you to create one.

In Windows 7, go to that same folder menu (Properties) and click the Sharing tab. The options under Advanced Sharing and Password Protection will let you configure exactly how you want to share your data, in terms of who can access what.

Microsoft has unveiled a few interesting details about the future File Explorer in Windows 8. The most outstanding new feature is, undoubtedly, the addition of the ribbon interface.

Explorer in Windows 3.1

Explorer in Windows 8

The decision to apply a ribbon to the Windows default file manager hasn’t been taken lightly. As explained on its blog, Microsoft has done a lot of research about the most commonly used commands in Explorer, and the way users access them. After studying the results of this analysis, ribbon was clearly the best choice for the new interface in Explorer, for several reasons: it lets you display the most important commands in prominent locations while also exposing loads of other minor tools, organizes commands conveniently in handy groups and it follows the design line opened by Office and Microsoft Paint, making it easier for people to get used to the new interface.

If you own an iPhone, chances are you use Instagram, the popular iOS app that lets you apply effects to your photos and share them online in no time. Some of the filters included in Instagram can make your photos look really awesome, to the point that you may want to apply them to the images on your computer. And here's where Daniel Box gets into action.

Being an Instagram fan himself, Daniel was looking for a way to replicate the app's filters in Photoshop. After not finding any satisfying results, he decided to create a set of Photoshop actions that let you apply Instagram filters to the images in your computer. Though he says he didn't get a 100% match, I have to say results are very close to the original Instagram filters. They look great and best of all, can be applied in just one click.

A new interesting feature has made it to Gmail Labs: Preview Pane. If you've used desktop email clients like Microsoft Outlook on Windows or Mail on Mac, you already know what we're talking about: a sidebar pane where the content of the selected message is displayed for faster email checking. With the new Preview Pane feature you can now have that functionality in Gmail too. Here's how:

1. Log in to your Gmail account and select Labs from the drop-down menu on the top right corner.

2. Browse down to Preview Pane and click on Enable. Go all the way up or down and press the Save Changes button.

Google+ has only been around for  a couple of months and it's already reached 25 million users. More and more people are thinking about ditching Facebook and adopting Google+ as their main social network - and maybe you're among them! Moving to a new social website can be as much a pain as moving to a new flat, so if you're considering switching to Google+, here are a few tips that can help you with the migration.

Security

First things first. Before starting the process, you need to download all the information on Facebook to your computer, account just in case. If you don't know how to do it, check out my post on how to backup your Facebook account.

Importing photos

There are two ways to import your photos into Google+. One is using the Google Chrome extension Move your Photos, which accesses your Facebook account (after you authorize it, of course) and displays all your Facebook photo albums on a web page. You can then select the ones you want to import to Google+ and let the extension do the hard work for you.

The other way to import your photos to Google+ is using Picasa in combination with the backup copy you created before. Import the Facebook photo albums included in the backup into Picasa, and then enable the Sync to Web feature to upload and sync those images with your Picasa Web Album.

As soon as the images are on Picasa, they'll be available on Google+.

Knowing how fast your PC is or how much RAM it has shouldn't be information that's limited to übergeeks. Having a clear idea about your system hardware specifications is important, and may come in quite handy in different situations: when trying to sell your computer to someone else, buying a new videogame or checking the system requirements of that huge program you're about to download, to name but a few.

While Windows does offer this data, it's not always easy to find. It's scattered all over different system areas, and you usually have to browse quite deep in system menus and submenus in order to find it. Luckily there are some applications that do the hard work for you, digging out the information you need and displaying it in a nice, user-friendly way. Here are some of these system analysis tools you can use to learn more about your computer's capabilities:

• PC Wizard - Though it's perhaps the most complex tool in this list, PC Wizard makes up for it with an outstanding analysis of your system, focusing mainly on hardware. It also shows information about the process0r's activity and offers many benchmarking possibilities to put your computer to test.

• Belarc Advisor - This analysis tool scans your system upon start and displays the results in your default web browser. The list is so detailed that newcomers may find it  a bit off-putting. With a little time however, you'll find tons of interesting and useful information in it, covering hardware, network settings, software versions and more.

• Speccy - Developed by the creators of CCleaner, Speccy features a nicely designed interface and it's probably the simplest of the three. On the downside, it doesn't include as many options as the two previous ones. It does have a useful snapshot function that lets you save system snapshots for future reference.

Although I prefer OS X to Windows I still have to work with Micr0soft's OS everyday. Luckily I use Windows 7, which is a great operating system overall - especially when compared to its predecessor Vista. The only problem is that it has quite high system requirements, and if I try to use it on my virtual machine it gets really sluggish.

If you too are having performance problems with your Windows 7 machine, here's a trick that can help you improve it. The trick implies giving up on some of Windows 7 graphical beauty, but it's a little sacrifice compared to a noticeable improvement in system's responsiveness. Just follow these simple steps:

1. Open the Start menu, right-click on Computer and select Properties.

2. A window with information about your system will open up on the desktop. Click on the Advanced system settings options in the sidebar.

3. In the System Properties window, select the Advanced tab. This will display a list of all the visual effects you can easily turn off to improve Windows 7 performance. These visual effects are not a core part of the system - just eye candy.

There are four ways you can adjust these settings: you can let Windows decide what's best for your computer based on your configuration, select the elements you want to turn off by yourself, or choose between two adjustment templates: one for best appearance and one for best performance. My advice is to either turn all of them off, or manually pick a few essential items. After all, a fast, responsive computer is preferable to one that looks gorgeous but takes ages to open a window!

Today's digital cameras deliver high quality images that look pristine on the computer screen and also on paper when you print them out. The problem comes when you want to want to share those same pictures online, or send them to your family by email. One 3 MB image is still  manageable, but when you want to share 52 photos from your last vacation things suddenly get difficult... and this is when RIOT comes in handy.

RIOT stands for Radical Image Optimization Tool, and this is precisely what it does: optimizes your images while keeping quality as high as possible. It's a free tool (for personal and non-profit usage) that works with JPG, PNG and GIF images, and that can be used as a plug-in for GIMP, IrfanView and XnView.

Most of us carry a smartphone or laptop everywhere we go: the office, the coffee shop, the library. And more often than not, we don't pay enough attention to our valuable gadgets - or we just leave them unattended for a moment. While keeping an eye on your belongings at all times is the best way to prevent anyone from stealing them, having an extra layer of security is not a bad idea either. There are apps to track stolen laptops and mobile phones with which you can find your missing gadgets, and also erase their content if necessary. Here are some of the most popular ones:

Track stolen laptops.

The most popular tracking app for stolen or misplaced computers is Prey. Prey is an open-source utility that uses WiFi spots and geolocation to find your laptop. All you need to use it is install the client on the computer and create a user account on the Prey website. If your computer disappears, log in to your Prey user account and mark it as "missing". The program will start sending highly detailed reports with loads of information: active apps, network connections and desktop snapshots - you may even catch the burglar's face with the laptop's built-in camera!

I must confess I'm a sucker for wallpapers. I have hundreds of them, both in my office Windows computer and my home Mac, and I like changing them quite often. But sometimes I have so many beautiful images, that it's hard to choose just one. Fortunately there are a couple of ways to fix this problem, so if you're in the same situation as me, read carefully!

The first trick for multiple rotating wallpapers on your desktop with no hassle is using special apps. There are dozens of tools that allow you to select several wallpapers and have them rotating as desktop background images automatically. Some of the most popular ones on Softonic are Adolix Wallpaper Changer, Free Wallpaper Changer and Cyclone Wallpaper Changer, but you can find many more in our Wallpaper Utilities category.

The second trick only applies to Windows 7 users. This operating system lets you choose multiple wallpapers for your desktop, and changes them automatically without any third-party software. To set it up, simply right click on the desktop and select Personalize in the context menu. Then click the Desktop Background link at the bottom of the Window

In the next window, select as many images as you want to use as wallpaper. Remember that to select multiple files you need to hold Ctrl while clicking on the images. When you've selected all your wallpapers, adjust the time interval for image changing at the bottom of the window, and you're done!

Google is on fire: in just a few days they've launched their own social network Google+, announced the rebranding of Picasa and Blogger to Google Photos and Google Blogs respectively, and slightly redesigned a few of of their online services (such as search and calendar). The new design will presumably be slowly rolled out to all Google services in the near future, but you can have a sneak peek - at least in Gmail:

To preview Gmail's new look you have to click the gear icon on the top right corner and select the Mail settings option.

Then click the Themes tab and browse down to the bottom of the page. You'll see two Preview themes: standard and dense.  The first one uses the same space between text lines that Gmail has been using up to now, while the second one leaves more space between lines and makes it all cleaner.

Whatever theme you pick, Gmail will immediately apply the new design. This is how my inbox looked with the standard Preview theme:

I switched to Chrome only a few weeks ago. I didn't consider switching before because Firefox was working fine for me, and I wasn't suffering from any of the speed, stability of memory issues everyone around me was complaining about. But when Firefox 4 launched everything changed, and that was the turning point for me. I downloaded Chrome and I'm not going back. Here's my simple guide to switching without a hitch:

Switching to a new browser makes you anxious. Will it be easy to use? Will I be able to adapt? What about extensions? You spend the very first hours exploring menus and options, learning the new location of options and settings, testing if your old keyboard shortcuts are still working. Luckily, moving from Firefox to Chrome is not that difficult - there are just a few things you need to take into account.