Flipboard, the free 'personalized magazine' has been updated and now works on iPhones as well as iPads! For me, Flipboard was the first killer app for iPad so it's great news that it's now universal.

Flipboard is a 'social magazine'. Essentially it collects Twitter, Facebook, partner publishers and RSS feeds together to make a very attractive way of browsing articles on an iOS device.

The new feature for iPhone is 'Cover Stories', which selects the most interesting stories of the moment based on what you most commonly read. You can alter this by muting some authors (or Twitter users, Facebook friends, etc.), and adding other content to Flipboard. I've been using it for a morning, and it's already feeling much more personal. I would like the option to mute whole services for Cover Stories as, for example, tweets are rarely pretty enough.

Once you've personalized Flipboard, you'll get the stories and social media you want collected in Flipboard's excellent interface. Although there is a search, it's not always the easiest application to find your way around. However, it's worth getting used to as it really is a lovely app for reading. Read our review, and download the free universal iOS app here.

Google has finally launched its +1 Chrome extension, that allows you to +1 any page you visit on the web and see how many +1s the page has. It still doesn't let you share a page straight to your Google+ stream - a feature lots of users seem to be desperate for, but it's certainly a step in the right direction.

So far, so good... but what's that I spy on the extension's Chrome Web Store page? Oh, it's a message from Google warning that

"In addition to the practices described in the Google +1 Button Privacy Policy, by installing this extension, all of the pages and URLs you visit  will be sent to Google in order to retrieve +1 information."

Yes, that's right: every page you visit in Chrome gets sent to Google, whether you +1 it or not.

To be fair to Google, the company has obviously learned from previous privacy fumbles. Not only is the above warning displayed fairly clearly on the extension page in the Web Store, Google has also produced a clear guide to what this actually means, entitled 'How the +1 button respects your privacy'.

Google insists that while yes, data is collected "to maintain and debug internal systems", said data "isn't organized by individual profiles, usernames, or URLs" and that any info collected is deleted after "about two weeks". As with other extensions, the +1 button does not run while you're in Incognito mode.

I don't get too worried about privacy topics like this. I'm happy to use my real identity online and I trust Google when it says it's not really interested in what I'm personally doing. If you don't feel so sure, I recommend that you avoid the +1 extension, and stick to Incognito browsing.

If you're still interested, you can get the Google +1 button Chrome extension here. You can download Chrome here for Mac and here for Windows.

If you can't get enough of Google+ at the moment then you'll be pleased to hear one young developer has already developed a desktop app for Macs - well kind of. Google+ for Mac is an unofficial app for Macs that allows you to access Google+ directly from your Dock. Google+ for Mac requires Google Chrome and uses the web interface of Google+ to allow faster and easier access of Google+ from your Mac.

The developer emphasizes that Google+ for Mac is a temporary solution until he can create a native desktop app. Note it is not based on a Google+ API - it is just a ported browser.

Google+ for Mac doesn't therefore do anything revolutionary. It merely puts an icon in your Dock that when clicked, opens your Google+ profile in Chrome.

It is a bit restrictive  - navigating to external sites outside of Google+ doesn't seem to work for example but it's fine just for using Google+.

You can of course achieve much of the same effect as Google+ for Mac with Fluid.app but the developer promises Google+ for Mac will go far beyond what you can achieve with Fluid in the near future. It's likely that Google will eventually release their own desktop app (or at least the API for developers to do so) but until then, Google+ for Mac is a good stop-gap.

Download Google+ for Mac

Ever wished you could call your Facebook contacts for free from within the app rather than send instant messages? Facebook Messenger is a new app by CrispApp that promises exactly that from iPhones or iPod Touch devices to the web.

Voice chat is something notably absent from Facebook and Facebook Messenger fills the void with a simple $2.99 app from the Apple AppStore. Once installed, when you start chatting on your mobile device, you'll also be offered the option to call the person you're chatting with:

If your chat contact is using Facebook on their computer on the web, they will receive a link asking them to accept your call which will transfer them to a separate web page to conduct the call. As long as you have a microphone and speaker, it doesn't matter whether you are using a PC or Mac.

Its encouraging that Facebook have opened up their API to allow third-party applications to enable voice calling within it and Facebook Messenger will definitely have Skype watching with interest, To see Facebook Messenger in action, check out the demonstration video.

watch?v=Rn5zeUYRbrE

I've had a few good years with Firefox, but I disagree with Nick that we should stick with it. Progress never stops, and it's become impossible to ignore how much Opera, Safari and especially Chrome have improved. It's time to dump Firefox, and here's why:

1: Memory usage

Sure, there are thousands of neat add-ons for Firefox, but install a few and after a while you'll see its memory use rocket. I have often discovered Firefox eating a gigabyte of memory after a few hours at work, which is just unreasonable. I have found Opera and Google are much lighter on resources over a day in the office.

2: Looks

I know there is beauty on the inside, but why not have it outside too? When it comes to your browser, you don't need to compromise with attractiveness. Firefox has been leapfrogged by everyone when it comes to looking great - even the dreaded Internet Explorer is looking better these days.

3: Out-dated features

Have you seen the downloader in Chrome? Firefox will just seem inadequate once you have. Firefox extensions? You have to restart the browser to install. Those are just two of the Mozilla browser's out-of-date features. Try Opera if you want to see a truly modern feature set. What's more, the Firefox interface takes up more room than is necessary - changing browser will give you more browsing real estate to play with.

4: Stability

Firefox crashes every day for me. I discovered that with Chrome, each tab is a separate process and so you can isolate and kill the problem without losing all of your open tabs. That's much better, and minimizes your chances of losing work.

5: Familiarity isn't good

A fact of computing is rapid change - don't let comfortable familiarity keep you from moving with the times or you may find yourself too far behind to catch up.  Just because a feature works differently doesn't mean it doesn't work at all! Familiarity is what keeps IE 6 and 7 in the browser charts. Safari, Chrome and Opera all do things in their own ways, but they are all great browsers and you're missing out if you don't give them a chance!

Got a new Windows 7 PC? Here are our top five free applications that no self respecting PC user should be without!

VLC: If you want to play a video file, this killer application can take almost any format you care to throw at it. As well as being flexible, it's surprisingly powerful, allowing you to use subtitles, re-sync audio tracks and more. If that wasn't enough, VLC is also incredibly lightweight when compared to Windows Media Player or iTunes. Check out our full review here.

Photoscape: Digital photo editing and polishing needn't be as complex as Adobe Photoshop. As Elena says in her review, Photoscape is a really excellent photo editing tool that includes just about everything you need to view, optimize, edit, print and have fun with your photos, all for free. It's a great way to get started with digital image editing.

Chrome: Are you reading this from Internet Explorer? Stop right there and download Google's Chrome. Cleaner, faster, more lightweight and modern, Chrome has become the best all-round browser out there. As it's open source, there are also some great Chrome-based browsers out there, like my personal favorite Rockmelt.

OpenOffice: If you're looking for a free alternative to Microsoft Office, this is it. You'll be able to edit and save files in Microsoft-compatible formats, so there is no need to worry about not being able to open or use documents. With everything you'll need from spreadsheets to word processing, it's one of the most impressive free downloads you'll find.

CCleaner: There's no escaping chores, even on PCs in 2011! Luckily, tiny toolbox CCleaner can make the experience pretty painless. With little set up, you'll be able to clean your browser history, space wasting temporary files and lots of recent file lists.

The latest version of social networking browser Flock has just been released for Mac with some interesting changes. I took it for a test-drive to see how Flock 3.5 performs.

Flock is a web browser which was originally based on Firefox but has been best known for broad integration with a wide range of social networking sites. Flock 3.5 however sees it changed considerably under the hood. Gone is the Firefox base in favor of a Chromium one which is interesting considering the recently released RockMelt has also based itself on Chromium and aims to steal the social networking par excellence crown from Flock. However, Flock beats it in the social networking stakes offering integration with LinkedIn, Flickr, and YouTube compared to just RockMelt's Facebook and Twitter.