GIMP has been one of my favorite image editing tools for years because of its price (free) and powerful feature set. Still, GIMP drew plenty of criticism for having a confusing interface. The developers of GIMP are well aware of these issues and have targeted this issue in the latest release of GIMP. Besides some interface tweaks, GIMP also comes with slew of technical improvements. Let's take a look at some of the major changes in version 2.8 of GIMP.

Hype Machine is a great way to discover new music but what if you want to keep a track for offline listening? Of course you can click through to the website and find a download link from there but there's a simpler way. If you're a Firefox user, there is an extension called The Hype Machine Track Downloader. The self explanatory name means that this extension does one thing and one thing only: downloads songs from Hype Machine.

VLC media player has long been the de-facto media player for just about every audio and video format under the sun. If you downloaded a video file with an odd extension, there's a good chance that VLC can play it without a problem. While VLC is a great media player, which got even better with its 2.0 update, there are other media players that can play as many formats as VLC but with some more improvements. Enter UMPlayer.

UMPlayer stands for Universal Media Player, which is an appropriate name as it is available on Windows, Mac, and Linux. It can also play back every format that VLC can but how does it differentiate itself from the renowned VLC? It's all down to the interface:

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?

I'm going to be controversial here - Chrome is hands-down the best browser around. If you agree, then you'll want to use Google's browser wherever you can. whether at home or in work. If you have a business, or manage a company network, then you'll need Google Chrome for Business, the version of Chrome specifically tailored to networked organizations.

My favorite indie release from last year, VVVVVV just got a big update to version 2.0. Creator Terry Cavanagh has completely rewritten the game in C++, meaning it should run better and faster. Great news for Macbook users, as they should now run a lot cooler while playing the game!

The biggest change is the new level editor, meaning you can now make your own fiendish platform puzzles. It's not the easiest thing in the world to use, but it works well. Best of all, ten new player levels created by other developers have been added. These include a level by the Souleye, composer of VVVVVV's soundtrack and the legendary Notch, creator of Minecraft!

VVVVVV 2.0 is currently being sold as part of the latest Humble Bundle, a collection of indie games that allows customers to pay what they want and choose how their purchase is divided, between developers and charities. It will soon be available to buy again from the game's homepage, for Windows, Mac and Linux . The VVVVVV demo is available on Windows and Mac.

Skype's been in the news recently due to its imminent takeover by Microsoft. Whether this will be a positive or negative move for the VoIP company remains to be seen, but what is certain is that the news has produced plenty of good jokes - and renewed interest in the internet phone app.

If you've ever searched for Skype on Softonic, you'll see that we have a bunch of versions - Skype, Skype for Business, Skype Portable, Skype Gold - not to mention all the versions that exist for different platforms. With so much to choose from, how do you know which Skype is right for you?

The standard Skype app is more than enough for the vast majority of users. Whether you're running it on Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iPhone, Symbian, or Windows Mobile, there's a version for you, and with a relatively fast internet connection, you should have it downloaded and ready to call in minutes.

The Opera browser has a new version in the works, codenamed Swordfish. You can test this new version by downloading the development version of Opera, Opera Next.

Opera Next is a standalone build of Opera, that  you can run alongside the official version (currently 11.10). It's for anyone interested in testing early versions of Opera developments, and by default it auto-updates, so you always have the freshest build to play with. Next features a cool gray logo so you won't get your Operas mixed up.

Today sees the release of Opera 11.5, Swordfish, featuring a major new development with Speed Dial Extensions. As you can see above, the Speed Dial page, which can show you your most visited websites, can now also show extensions, such as the Weather extension and Tagged Photos. These make the Speed Dial page even more useful and customizable, although right now there are only three to play with!

Opera Next is available for Windows, Mac and Linux too.

The selection of available open-source alternatives to Microsoft Office just got wider with the arrival of a new option: LibreOffice.

Just like the well-known OpenOffice, LibreOffice offers a complete, feature-rich open source suite that includes all the tools you may need for your daily tasks, from the classic word processor and spreadsheet to presentation and database utilities. LibreOffice is fully compatible with Microsoft Office formats, and it also supports PDF natively.

The interface in LibreOffice is very similar to that of OpenOffice – not surprising at all, since the suite has been created by a group of developers who had previously worked for OpenOffice and later on decided to launch their own project. It’s quite different to the Ribbon interface that’s currently being used in Microsoft Office, but it won’t take long to come to grips with if you’ve already used productivity suites for a few years.

There are many clear advantages to LibreOffice: it’s free, so there are no license costs or periodic fees; it’s open source, meaning you can customize and hack it without any problems and with the support from a large user and developer community; it’s available in more than 30 languages, with new ones being constantly added; and there are versions for all major operating systems: Windows, Mac and Linux.

While it may be a bit more difficult for companies to switch from Microsoft Office to an open-source productivity suite like LibreOffice, there’s really no reason why you should at least give it a try. I’m sure it’s going to cause such a positive impression that you may consider ditching Microsoft and adopting LibreOffice as your new professional suite at home.

We have to innovate, we enjoy it, so let’s do it!

With the release of Opera 11, I talked to co-founder Jon Von Tetzchner to find out what makes the company behind this innovative browser tick. Back in 2005, Jon had proclaimed he would swim the Atlantic if Opera 8 got a million downloads in four days, so I asked him where he stood with Opera 11.

Do you have any plans to swim the Atlantic again?

When we had this competition thing, it was about getting one million downloads in four days, and now we have that in a single day! So from that perspective I would probably have to swim back and forth to the states multiple times just to cover that. I think I’ve had my swim, it was cold and it  would be even colder now!

Opera 10 was very innovative, what are the biggest developments in 11?

For Opera 11 we’ve taken a different approach. We’ve looked at what are the most important things for our users. What do they like best that we can improve on? And then we’ve looked at the things people are saying they would like to have.

So, for the first part, speed is important, Opera Turbo is important, and we made a smaller installer. But then we looked at tabs. A typical Opera user has around ten tabs open at any one time, and keeping track of these can become difficult, so a better organization is a benefit and this is why we’ve come up with tab stacking. We did the precursor of tabs back in 1994, with multiple windows inside one window, and we’ve been gradually improving this and I think tab stacking is an important improvement for anyone who has a lot of tabs.

Mouse gestures are a very popular feature in Opera, and we’ve made them easier to use in Opera 11, and more accessible to new users.

Turbo is very popular with people who have slow connections, and we’ve made it more efficient. The most user requested feature we’ve added is extensions.

If you work with PDF documents on a regular basis, then be sure to check out the new Adobe Reader X, which is now available for download. The tenth version of the ubiquitous PDF reader comes with a host of new features to make working with electronic documents more comfortable.

New features of Adobe Reader X include sticky notes and a highlighter tool for sharing ideas and comments about documents. Adobe has also ramped up the amount of content viewable in PDF format, to include drawings, email messages, spreadsheets, video, and more. Document security has been tightened, thanks to a new Protected Mode for safer viewing of PDFs.

Adobe Reader X is available to download for free now, for Windows, Mac, Linux and Android operating systems. Watch this space for a full review of the program.

The closest free image editor to Photoshop is GIMP. However, using GIMP can be awkward for those used to Photoshop's interface and menus and so there have been a few attempts to adapt GIMP to make it closer to Photoshop. One of them is GIMPshop (which I looked at here) and the other is GimPhoto.

GimPhoto may well be the solution for you if you don't like GIMPshop. Like the latter, GimPhoto is a modification of GIMP which makes it feel much closer to Photoshop. It does this because by default, it includes 20 plugins which are available with GIMP.

One of the frequently cited problems with GIMP is that the interface and menu labels are a bit confusing and awkward compared to Photoshop and this is certainly something that GimPhoto has improved upon. GimPhoto looks and feels much closer to Photoshop:

GimPhoto incorporates many of the features of GIMP but with an improved interface, batch processing, online backups, custom brushes and advanced editing options. The menu layouts are much closer to Photoshop meaning Photoshop users will adapt to it much quicker than GIMP or GIMPshop:

However, GimPhoto is still a quite complex package for beginners although there's a very detailed user guide to help you get to grips with it. Obviously, it also lacks some of the most powerful editing features of Photoshop.

GimPhoto is an impressive attempt at making a free version of Photoshop and if you never really adapted to GIMP or GIMPshop, it may well be the image editing package for you. Note that GimShop is only available on Windows (including a portable USB version) and Linux. If you'd like to see it on Mac, or have any comments about the Windows and Linux versions, you can leave suggestions for the developer here.

I've been whipping up lots of recipes I've got off the internet lately. I'm not showing off, but I'm surprised our house hasn't been given a Michelin star by now. My problem, however, is that by the time the dish is digesting I've already forgotten where I got the recipe from.

Luckily for my girlfriend I've just discovered a handy Google Chrome extension called gRecipes. This add-on lets you instantly save internet recipes to Google Docs just by clicking an icon the Chrome address bar. Recipes are stored as text document, with standardized formatting, making it practical to print them out to create your own personalized cookbook, or share them with your buddies using Gmail.

gRecipes currently only works with recipes from Food.com, Epicurious, Food & Wine, and AllRecipes. It's a shame there aren't more supported sites, although the developer claims to be working on this. Here's hoping my current oracle, BBC Good Food, gets added. Man, I'm getting hungry now.

The source code for the forthcoming Diaspora social network has finally been released to developers. The software is due for release in October and will be available for Windows, Mac and Linux. The application aims to solve the well-publicized privacy issues that have blighted Facebook, and will offer a cooler interface for following what your friends are up to.

Diaspora, which will integrate Facebook functionality, will allow users to post status updates and photos privately, and in near real time, with friends, using its 'Aspects' feature. All content posted to the site will be signed and encrypted, according to the developer.

The four New York University students behind the project, Dan Bird, Max Salzberg, Raphael Sofaer and Ilya Zhitomirskiy, have released a few mouth-watering teaser screenshots, showing users what they can expect. They highlight three of the key features.

Seeds - Profiles in Diaspora are called 'Seeds', and this is where updates and photos are displayed to friends.

Aspects -  Aspects are essentially lists of friends that belong to a certain group (e.g. family, friends, colleagues, etc.) This allows you to share certain content only with certain groups.

Photo uploader - Photos can be uploaded to Diaspora using GPG encryption, to ensure they are safe. It appears that the service will also feature a photo editor.

We'll bring you a full review of Diaspora as soon as we get our hands on it!

Paint it Red 2 is an extremely relaxing art game where the objective is simple: paint the screen red!

Guiding a cursor around to spread paint, which is sometimes red, sometimes mixed with other colors, and behaves in many different ways, is both addictive and relaxing. Losing an hour with Paint it Red 2 isn't difficult! Every level works slightly differently, and there are no instructions, you just have to experiment.

Every level has a Red percentage to aim for before you can move on, while your current percentage is displayed. This draws you right into the game, and playing through the many levels on offer is good fun. Paint it Red 2 just requires Flash and your browser.