Windows: so you just got an iPhone and you're desperately looking for a video? Koyote Free Video Converter is what you need: a free, easy video converter with support for all multimedia portable devices (PSP, Zune, iPod, iPhone...) so that you can enjoy your favorite movies on the go without struggling with a complicated converting tool.

Mac: You may have gotten used to Spotlight and set up your Dock with your favorite apps and folders, but are you still finding it hard to keep your Mac organized? Together quickly and easily stores anything and lets you keep files organized thanks to smart lists, labels, groups and notes. You can drag and drop elements between folders and make use of Spotlight at any time. Use it too much and you might not need the Finder ever again!

Symbian/Java phones: Bored of the same old default ringtones on your mobile phone? Then do something about it by using Create-Ringtone to make your own melodies. The software lets you change any of your WMA, MP3, WAV or Ogg files into a tone for your phone. You can make unlimited ringtones using Create-Ringtone!

Working as software reviewer means that you have to install at least twenty new apps every week and uninstall them again as soon as you're done with your analysis. However we all know how unhealthy this habit is for Windows, so using a virtual environment is almost compulsory. Virtual operating systems provide you with a safe sandbox where you can test as many programs without affecting the host system. What's more, they usually feature an easy way to rid of a slow, app-ridden Windows and get a fresh, brand-new installation in a couple of clicks.

Among the several virtualization apps available today, I've tried VMware Player and VirtualBox. Though I've used the latter only for a few weeks now, I already found some interesting similarities – and its corresponding differences – between both programs that I thought would be worth pointing out.

Both VMware Player and VirtualBox are free apps, which is always a good point for a start. However VMware Player is more limited, because it doesn't allow you to create new images (i.e. virtual operating systems) while VirtualBox does. If you want to create new images for VMware Player, you'll have to upgrade to the more pricey Workstation version.

As for general performance, I find VMware Player to be more stable than VirtualBox. The first one usually runs very smoothly – except for the odd blue screen of death – while the second one has often shown a blank screen on my virtual machine, which means the system is frozen and you need to restart. Besides this stability issue, the truth is that VirtualBox is lighter on resources than VMware Player, making it easier to work with the host and guest systems in parallel. Relating to this, VirtualBox also features a really handy tool you don't find in VMware Player: the possibility to "pause" the virtual machine, so that a good percentage of processor power and memory are released and you can then run heavy apps like Photoshop with no further hassle.

Regarding usability, both programs have their own pros and cons. On the one hand, VMware Player supports shared folders and also lets you directly drag and drop files between both the guest and host systems, while VirtualBox only works with shared folders that you need to configure before running the program. Keyboard and mouse swapping between the guest and host machines is generally more intuitive in VMware Player, whereas VirtualBox requires you to press a hotkey. Also, copying and pasting between the two operating systems works for VMware Player, but not for VirtualBox. On the other hand, VirtualBox enables you to create the so called snapshots, which let you restore the system to a previous state at any time. This comes in really handy when the image is not working properly and you can't bother to create a new one: simply restore it to a previous fully working snapshot and you're done.

In general terms, I'd say VMware Player is more intended to heavy users who need a reliable, powerful virtual environment to test software or try new operating systems, while VirtualBox seems to be more focused on not so techie people, who only want to test new apps in a safe environment without compromising the integrity of their computers. Now it's your turn to try them and make up your mind.

What are the best ways to get your MacBook to run faster? You could always buy extra RAM, but that means spending a few extra bucks and can be a bit hazardous if you don't know how to do it right. There are the obvious tricks of stopping important processes in your Activity Monitor, cleaning the trash and removing unnecessary applications, but those will probably not result in noticeable changes.

GeekMalaya came up with six much more effective ways of improving the performance of your MacBook. You can start out by cleaning up your desktop and placing files where they should be. The more files you have on your desktop, the more things your system has to index and create a thumbnail, wasting time at start up.

Just as we explained a few weeks back, you can also remove start up applications that you do not need. See what programs are opened when you launch your Mac and keep the ones that are only essential.

Disabling the Dashboard is also very effective, albeit obviously not something you want to do if you use widgets often. To disable it, open Terminal and type in:

defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES

Then reboot your MacBook or type in the following in your Terminal:

killall Dock

Another sensible thing to do is kill all the system preferences that you don't use. It could be Bluetooth, Modem, Wifi or any other process that shows up in your menu bar.

If you have an Intel MacBook, reboot it and press CMD + Option + P + R until you hear the startup sound three times. This is known as"zapping the PRAM".

For MacBook Pro and Air owners you can clear the Power Management Unit. Turn off your Mac, remove the power adapter and battery, press and hold the power button 5 seconds, release, then reconnect the power sources and restart your Mac. This will kill all 'non-volatile' RAM.

Another very effective trick that was not mentioned is to kill Spotlight, which can slow down your Mac with its continuous indexing of items. Check out our tip to know how to do this.

Try out a few of these tricks, or better still all of them, and you should see a notable increase in the speed of your MacBook.

App launchers are quite popular among computer users and I can understand why: they save you a few keystrokes and/or mouse clicks every time you run a program or open a folder – and if you're anything like me, that means loads of keystrokes and mouse clicks by the end of the day.

But for those of you who prefer not to install extra programs as long as you can avoid it, I've got great news: you can replicate the same functionality of a standard launcher, but using the system's own resources. In other words, we're going to build a DIY app launcher using Windows Run command and program shortcuts.

The trick works as follows: create a new folder and fill it with shortcuts, one for each program you want to include in your custom launcher, and give it a proper name. I'd advise to use short, meaningful names which are quick to type and easy to remember. Then copy all those shortcuts to the C:\WINDOWS\system32 folder. Make sure they're copied to the root folder, not to any subfolder. Once you do that, your launcher is ready.

Open the Run command in the Start menu and write the name of any of the shorcuts you just created: Windows will promptly open whatever app or folder it links to. To make things even easier, you can create a shortcut to the Run command by simply dragging and dropping its icon on the desktop. Another option is creating a new toolbar in the taskbar by right clicking on it, selecting Toolbars > New toolbar and browsing to your shortcut folder. You can use it as an extra Quick launch bar and place anywhere on the desktop.

Ok, so we're still in the middle of summer, so why would I want to talk about research papers? True, it's not the most exciting of topics at this time of the year, but unfortunately it's what many scholars around the world are working on right now. You may have a deadline and the important thing is to reach it with your paper completed.

Although you'll probably find less specialized applications on Mac than on Windows, I've noticed three excellent applications that not only help you handle your references, but also search and organize your papers and journals. These are, in no particular order, Sente, Papers and Reference Tracker. For those of you looking for quality Mac applications to help you out on your research paper, here is a look at each application's notable features:

• Sente - I really like this reference manager. It has an iTunes-like structure to store and organize your papers in smart folders. The search function lets you reach numerous university library catalogs, PubMed and the Web of Knowledge. Sente also lets you download and search PDFs and has a great tool to insert citations into any word processor.
• Papers - Very similar to Sente, in that it offers the same sort of interface and structure. Papers lets you search through dozens of specified search engines for scholars such as ACS Portal or Citeseer. The multi-tabbed interface is great to keep more than one journals open at once and you have quick access to discussion panels from the right of the interface.
• Reference Tracker - Probably not as complete as the other two, Reference Tracker is still a very good program to handle your references.  The app keeps all your citations stored in the Harvard formatted list style and includes ISBN lookup and Amazon search. Handy if you are starting to lose count of all the references for your research paper.

Windows: Do you remember those good old fighting games you used to play in arcades? You can bring back those sweet memories with Little Fighter 2, a fun Street Fighter remake with cute manga-style graphics. Engage in endless battles and use your secret movements to beat all your enemies! You can play against other people or the PC, with support also for online games.

Mac: Are you addicted to keyboard commands? You'll love working with Witch, a window switcher that allows you to move quickly through minimized and foremost windows and call up applications quickly. The program, which essentially is a preference pane item, is simple to customize, just set your own keyboard shortcuts as triggers and decide what actions to call. Simple and efficient.

Symbian:  If you need to read documents on your phone then you need to get yourself iSilo, a sophisticated reader for viewing HTML documents and text files on your phone. The best thing about the software is that it uses a little trick to make these files as small as possible, saving you space on your device.

Quicksilver is one of the most beloved apps of Mac users, even though it hasn't been updated in a while. If you know how to use it well, the productivity tool can not only help you find anything in a matter of seconds but also gives you complete control over all your files. Consider it as a really powerful Swiss army knife for your Mac.

People who have mastered it know that it realizes its full potential when it's used to control another program, just like Mac's Automator tool can. Automator is more complicated to work with though, because you actually need to create rules and filters, so that it performs a specific action. Quicksilver is more organic, and while you can not automatize anything, you can use the program as a Dashboard from which you launch and perform actions.

Just as an example of how you can work with Quicksilver and your favorite programs, UsingMac have written a clever post on how to couple Quicksilver with Flickr Uploadr. Select your pictures, open up Quicksilver (Option+Space),  find Flickr Uploadr via the 1st pane, then choose 'Open File' from the second pane. Then press CMD+G to bring the photos to the Flickr application. The photos will load up automatically in the application. Once they're ready, all you need to do is upload them to your Flickr account. It's a shame that you can't actually perform the upload process directly from Quicksilver, unfortunately the application does not have access to this specific function.

I recently installed CCleaner on one of my computers and ran it after months of intensive usage. The results were impressive: CCleaner found and erased almost a GB of junk data! Of course, the only way to avoid such a pile of dirt is to run CCleaner more often, but being honest, I hardly remember to use it as long as my PC works fine. Fortunately, I found a way to make this process automatic, which combines CCleaner's settings and Windows's built-in scheduling tool.

First you have to select what CCleaner tasks you want to run in the program's interface, including the Registry and Cleaner areas. Then go to Options > Advanced and make sure the "Save all settings to INI file" option is checked.

Now open the Start menu in Windows and browse to Accessories > System Tools > Scheduled Tasks. Double click on the "Add Scheduled Task" icon and follow the steps in the wizard. You'll have to select the program (CCleaner), give the task a name, select its periodicity and starting time, among other options. Once the task is finished, right click on its link, select Properties and add "/AUTO" in the Run field.

Your task is now ready to work. CCleaner will launch automatically and run in the background according to your schedule, but you can also test it right away.

Windows: if you usually listen to music while browsing the web, then FoxyTunes is made for you. This handy Firefox extension lets you control any media player from the browser's interface, without having to switch between apps every time you want to pause the music, skip a song or adjust the volume.

Mac: Was your school year marred by lack of organization? It's never too late to learn from your mistakes. Assignment Planner allows you to organize your courses, homework and course books, stay on top of projects and assignments. The application lets you filter by course and includes calculators for your GPA and Finals. Get it before the start of the new school year.

Symbian: Skype is great for making free or cheaper calls from your computer. But what if you're out and about and want to speak to your Skype contacts on the move? Then you need iSkoot. The app lets you make calls to people, chat via IM and even receive Skype calls to your mobile. You can also use iSkoot to make cheaper international calls using the SkypeOut service.

In comparison to my frustrations with Windows Live Hotmail, using Gmail couldn't be a more different and pleasurable experience. From the day I received an invite to use Google's e-mail client, I've never looked back. Threaded conversations are surely one of the greatest innovations in e-mailing making it insanely easy to follow discussions. That's not to mention Gmail's brilliant search tool - what else would you expect from the world's number one search engine. However, as good as Gmail is, there are also several very easy ways that you make it even better with a few add-ons and extensions. If you use Gmail regularly, you'll get even more out of it by using one these.

Better Gmail 2 - Designed by the editor of Lifehacker, this fantastic script adds a host of useful new features to Gmail such as the ability to see how many unread messages you have in a tab, labels to categorise and file-away important e-mails and an array of keyboard commands to cut down on mouse time.

Gmail Drive - Gmail gives you an awesome amount of storage space to work with and it's increasing all the time - approximately 1MB every 11.8 minutes in fact. It's a travesty not to take advantage of this and use it for something more than simply storing a few e-mails which is what Gmail Drive does by adding a virtual drive to your desktop which allows you to save and retrieve files from your Gmail account as if it were a physical drive.

Gmail and Google Calendar - Along with Gmail, Google Calendar is probably one of my most used Google products and this superb script allows you to integrate Gmail with your Calendar. It embeds Google Calendar into Gmail by adding a hyperlink making it much easy to transfer important dates discussed in your e-mails to your calendar.

GSpace - This is similar to Gmail Drive in that it allows you to save and store files to your Gmail account but it also allows you to stream music and video from your account. It features four different modes - File Mode, Photo Mode, Player Mode and Gmail Drive depending on what you need to do. You can also access it from anywhere without logging into Gmail.

GmailClipseClient - Sometimes you might not be able to access your Gmail for some reason but that's no reason to be without it. GmailClipseClient allows you to access your Gmail account if you don't have access to POP3 or SMTP servers in an office (if you're not allowed to access them for some reason).

If there's one thing that's really annoying about OpenOffice, it's the fact that it's so darn slow at starting and occasionally just simply freezes due to the large amount of system memory its Java code requires. If this single issue could be fixed, I'd definitely use it a lot more although there still remains plenty of work to do on the usability side of things too. The good news however is that it's not hard to tweak and optimize OpenOffice to achieve some significantly better performance results. Here's three simple steps for starters:

1. Disable Java and Increase Memory Use - If you've got more than at least 1GB of RAM, then this is the simplest and easiest way to ensure OpenOffice opens and operates quicker. Simply go to "Tools" and then "Options". In the "Java" tab make sure that you've disabled the Java Runtime Environment option. Then in the "Memory" tab change the values to "Number of steps: 20, Use for OpenOffice: 128, Memory per Object 20, Number of Objects 20".

2. Use the OOo2 Optimiser - This simple script compresses the XML code in OpenOffice for much quicker start-up times. If you're having any problems installing the script, check out the Zenwalk forum

3. Enable QuickStarter - On Windows, you have to double click on the quickstarter.exe file in the OpenOffice program folder. On all other platforms, just go to "Tools" and then "Options" and "Enable systray Quickstarter". Quickstarter loads OpenOffice.org code and data into memory ahead of time, so that when you are ready to open a document, some of the work is already done.

Other than these steps, there's not much more you can do but you should experience noticeably better startup times. Hopefully the OpenOffice developers will one day recognize that this is a major issue for most users and implement these tweaks by default.

If there's one thing I've just about had enough of it's Windows Live Hotmail. I stated my case in no uncertain terms a while back and although I still haven't abandoned it, I have found a way of avoiding it's bloated, unintuitive, RAM sapping, vomit inducing interface. The solution? Use Outlook to access it instead using Microsoft Outlook Connector.

Microsoft Outlook Connector allows you to access any Windows Live Hotmail (and Office Live Mail) account from the far more civilized Microsoft Outlook. With Outlook Connector, you can use Outlook 2003 or Outlook 2007 to access and manage your e-mail messages and contacts for free which is great although rather annoyingly (and typically Microsoft), management of calendar, tasks and notes requires a subscription fee. If you do pay for this, you can synchronize multiple calendars between different Microsoft applications such as Microsoft Outlook and Windows Live Calendar.

This little application also means you benefit from Outlook's spam filter which you can apply to Windows Live Hotmail's incoming mail so no more mails from fake political exiles requesting you to send your account details so they can deposit a million dollars in your account (I get these constantly and am starting to think that being a political exile must be extremely lucrative). If you're an Outlook user, you'll never go back to using Windows Live Hotmail's own interface after trying this.

Have Microsoft finally come up with something worth getting excited about? Microsoft Live Mesh is an interesting new project that enables users to synch all of their mobile and computing devices seamlessly. This even includes Macs although currently, it's only available on Windows platforms but a Mac release is imminent. At the moment it's in pre-release beta stage and only the first 10,000 people who sign-up will be allowed to test it so you'd better hurry up.

The principle is thus - all of your devices that you include in the Mesh can be synchronised with each other at any time from any location as long as you have an internet connection. So let's say you're sat on the beach and want to make sure your documents on your Macbook are synched with your documents on your PC at home, just hit a button and it's done. The same goes for your mobile device such as an iPhone. In the future, it's expected that it will automatically synchronize your devices with offline applications which will become increasingly important as Web 2.0 takes off.

Refreshingly for a Microsoft product, it's incredibly easy to use and beautifully presented and designed. It makes backing up essential documents, including videos and photos between devices just a matter of a few clicks. And it works perfectly in both IE and Firefox. The question is, how on earth are Microsoft going to sustain this service as it expands? The bandwidth it requires for millions of users synching across the world must be huge. Will we eventually see a distinct decline in synching times or is this a sign that Microsoft can still do something right?

A few months ago I asked the question whether Google Gears is one of those rare Google apps that has actually been a flop. One of the biggest problems I noted was that even a year after its initial release, Google Gears still only supported a handful of applications. However, it seems like Google have finally got their act together and have announced that Google Gears will soon work with two of their most successful applications - Gmail and Google Calendar. With this in mind, here are 5 reasons why should start using Google Gears.

Google Reader - Google Reader is my favourite way of keeping track of blogs, website updates and RSS feeds. Using it with Google Gears means that I can download everything I want to read before disconnecting my laptop from the net and going on the road.

Gmail - Gmail is my e-mail client of choice and I'm looking forward to being able to being able to check my mail offline. Rather than have to rush through all my mail while using a dodgy internet connection or Wifi spot, I can download all pending mails and read them at my leisure. It's also a great way to backup mail.

Google Calendar - No need to rely on having an internet connection to check what appointments, meetings and events I have coming up. Soon I'll be able to check Google Calendar as if it were a desktop tool that's always at my disposal.

Google Docs - Now that it's supported by Google Gears, I can now envisage the day when I won't need Microsoft Office anymore - or any office suite for that matter. I can do all my word processing and spreadsheets (but not presentations yet unfortunately) whether I'm on or offline.

Zoho - If Google Docs doesn't offer all I need in an office suite then Zoho does. Zoho allows me to create absolutely anything from spreadsheets to invoices and even databases. Since it was one of the first apps to support Google Gears, I can work on all of them on or offline.

Let me be honest with you: my goal here is to clearly push you to ditch your PC for a Mac. How am I going to manage this? I will use a series of posts, starting with this one, where I recommend a Mac application for every PC program you might use. And to top it off, I'll prove to you that each and every one of these Mac programs is better than their PC counterpart. In this first post we start off with basic apps, you know, the essential programs you use every day to do things like communicate with friends, work on documents or connect to the internet.

Outlook Express - Apple Mail - Finding Outlook Express excruciatingly slow every morning at startup? Apple Mail always starts up in a flash. Another thing I'm really surprised with Outlook Express is the lack of a truly effective search tool, where Apple Mail makes use of the lightning fast Spotlight. Add to that the great templates in Mail and the wide choice of third party plugins and you have a clear winner in Apple Mail.

Windows Live Messenger - Adium X - Why put up with the advertisement-ridden Live Messenger when you can use the open source and highly customizable Adium? The Mac messaging client lets you connect to almost any IM protocol like AIM, MSN or Jabber and can be customized with all sorts of icons, audio, styles and script. True it doesn't offer voice or video chat yet, but you'll still get encrypted Off The Record messaging.

Microsoft Office - iWork'08 - This one is a no brainer. iWork'08 is cheaper, smoother and creates better looking documents, particularly presentations under Keynote. You'll also be able to work with any Microsoft Office document, whether Word, Excel or PowerPoint.

Internet Explorer - Safari - Apple's homemade browser loads twice as fast as IE and integrates perfectly with Keychain, so your online account data is always safe and sound. The sleek metal view and clear bookmark also contrast with IE's convoluted interface.

Nero - Roxio Toast Titanium - I've always found Nero too bloated a program and draining on PC resources. Roxio Toast Titanium on the other hand is much easier to use and offers a streamlined process so that disc of yours is catalogued, burned and ready to watch in no time. It now lets you watch movies on your iPhone and mix your own sounds.