Yes, it's that time of the year again. April Fools' is back for good, so you'd better keep your eyes open to avoid any pranks you may fall for. That doesn't necessarily mean that anything you see or read on this day is going to be a joke – Gmail was launched on April 1st, remember? – but a little bit of suspicion is advisable.

For those of you who qualify as the official prankster in your class or at work, there are dozens of apps you can use to have a good laugh at your mates. We collected some of them in this post about prank software, conveniently organized by type: custom error messages, mouse tricks, desktop animations and voice effects. Another handy list is this top 10 geek jokes, which includes tools to create fake blue screens of death, remap the victim's keyboard or create funny photo compositions, among other equally mean ideas.

The Internet is not safe from pranks either. A couple of years ago we wrote another April Fools' roundup with links to the best online pranks we found that day. Things like Virgle (the first permanent human colony on Mars sponsored by Virgin and Google), YouTube's hilarious rickrolling, WoW's alleged version for consoles or the USB Pregnancy Test you could buy on ThinkGeek all caught our attention.

We couldn't finish this post without a special mention to our own April Fools' jokes. Satellite Live (2008), Shouttr (2009) and All2All Converter (2010) have been really fun to create and review. Hope you liked them as well!

File have a nasty habit of getting very messy, very quickly, especially if you are a keen downloader, photographer or music buff. If your folders look like the computer equivalent of a teenage girl's bedroom, take a look at my guide to keeping your files in top condition.

Get rid of the duplicates - this should definitely be step 1 in any re-organization. Duplicate Cleaner is top of my list - it's fast, free and has all, if not more, of the features of its pay-for cousins.

Protect sensitive data - if you want to prevent your info from falling into the wrong hands, erase any secret files that you no longer need with Freeraser. Now create safe folders for the files you do want to keep with My LockBox.

Get rid of unnecessary folders - use Suction. This pint-sized app will suck the files out of your folders, so it's prefect if your folder structure has become messed up over time and you want to start over.

Take care of major renaming - Batch File Rename Utility will help you get your file management back on track. It's perfect for large collections of photos or music and is really flexible, so you'll have no problem finding a quick and easily-accessible naming convention for your files.

Move blocked and locked files - they'll only hinder your spring cleaning, so try using Unlocker Portable to shift them out of the way. If you get too enthusiastic while organizing, Recuva is your best option to recover deleted files.

By now, your files and folders should be model examples. Keep them that way by installing a few apps that will allow you to handle your file management like a pro. Q-Dir is a file explorer that's a step up from Windows Explorer - it gives you considerably more control over your files, and will even let you color-code them, which I find really helpful.

Last but not least, help yourself find all these beautifully managed folders  Google Desktop is a powerful search utility. It's as user-friendly as Google's other products and if you're still struggling with pre-Vista search, it's a revelation.

There are increasing numbers of places for on-demand music on the web, like Spotify, Pandora and Deezer. These all let you listen to streaming music over the net, but are no good if you're disconnected. Illegally downloading music to your library is not difficult, but I want to look at legal ways of downloading free music.

The first thing I have to point out is that you have to have an open mind when it comes to legal free MP3s. You probably won't get complete albums, and your favorite artists probably don't give their songs away for free. However, if you're willing to experiment and trust the judgment of good bloggers, there's a ton of free music out there.

Two great sites for free legal downloads are Last.fm and Spinner.com. If you sign up to Last.fm and install their app, you can get free MP3 recommendations based on your listening habits, which is pretty cool. Check out their free MP3s here. Spinner is more of a magazine, but has tons of MP3s you can browse here.

My favorite resource is The Hype Machine, which sources reputable music blogs that host MP3s. These are often MP3s released to promote new albums or groups. You can listen to music on The Hype Machine site, or go to the source blog and download the MP3. There are tons of great blogs listed in their directory, which gives you a massive source of great free music. After a while you'll find blogs that share your tastes, and have a regular source of great new music.

Everyday when I check my RSS feeds, I come across a dozen articles that I'd like to read in detail, but for which I have no time at that moment. The easy thing to do is to add them to Bookmarks and check them later on. But if you keep on doing this for a long period of time, you'll end up with a huge and messy collection of bookmarks, most of which you won't even remember why you bookmarked them in the first place.

Fixing this problem is easier than you think. There are a few apps that have been especially developed to save web pages to read later - as some sort of temporal bookmarks you'll delete right after reading. Here's a selection of some of them, but don't hesitate to drop us a line in comments in case you know any others.

Read It Later - As its name clearly states, Read It Later allows you to save interesting blog posts and web articles to read them later. It's a Firefox extension that saves web pages with a single click on its bookmarklet. Read It Later stands out for its support for mobile phones, featuring an official iPhone client and an Android client created by one of its users.

Instapaper - Really simple app that lets you save web pages for reading later, with the possibility to organize them in folders and mark them as starred items - like RSS feed readers. Instapaper requires free registration and is compatible with other services such as Google Reader and NetNewsWire, as well as iPhone, Kindle and other devices.

Taboo - This is another Firefox extension that adds two new icons to the toolbar, next to the browser's address bar. The first one lets you save the current web page to read it later, while the second one displays the list of all the web pages you've saved so far. Taboo shows a handy preview before actually opening the article.

Readbag - Another excellent choice, though unlike the previous ones, it's not free. Readbag features an impeccable minimalist design and has also an iPhone version, which makes it quite handy for reading selected articles and blog posts on the move. Like Read It Later or Instapaper, it creates an RSS feed with the web pages you save.

Quiet Read - Finally, an app for Mac. Quiet Read enables you to save web pages to read later, but the difference is that the program displays them without you having to open the web browser. All saved web pages are stored in a convenient drop-down list you can access from the Mac's menu bar on top of your screen.

[Via: OnSoftware ES]

There are so many video formats out there that it's inevitable that one day, you'll end up stuck with a video file in a format that either won't play or that you can't work with. There's no need to give up though because there are several free and easy solutions on Mac that will convert video into the format of your choice for free.

MPEG Streamclip This is my converter of choice and it has never let me down. It's hard to believe that MPEG Streamclip is free to use, such is its power and range. It can convert just about anything from DV to AIFF and it even handles audio too. There are a lot of preferences for professionals but its straightforward enough for beginners to use too. I find it invaluable when needing to convert footage for editing.

HandBrake This is ideal for ripping and converting DVDs although it only outputs in MP4 and MKV format. HandBrake gives you control over which DVD chapters you want to rip, whether you want to keep subtitles and it even allows you preview video before you start it. Oh, ad it also supports audio AAC, CoreAudio (OS X Only), MP3, Vorbis, AC-3 pass-through and DTS pass-thorugh (MKV only).

ffmpegx If drag and drop is your thing, then ffmpegx is for you. Unlike MPEG Streamclip and HandBrake, ffmpegx doesn't allow you to see or preview video but it does support simple dragging and dropping of files into the interface for conversion. It couldn't be much easier. It is however very complicated if you beyond that and only experts will need many of the preferences it allows you to configure.

Cool application icons are what help to make iPhones look so damn sexy. Install the wrong program though and you could end up destroying your street cred completely. While most developers take special care over the design of their icons, there are some who seem to knock them up in five minutes without really thinking about it. I've scoured the App Store for the biggest icon monstrosities around. Since installing all these apps on my iPhone, my girlfriend's dumped me, all my friends have deserted me, and I feel decidedly queasy every time I look at my phone. Let us know if you've found a worse icon than any of these aberrations

 Gross

Extreme World Records An eye- popping icon that I never want to see on my iPhone

Dark

Stupid Deal of the Day Let's hope Musician's Friend's cheap deals are easier to spot than it's logo is on the icon

Whether you're Irish, Irish-American or just plain happy it's St. Patrick's Day, let me show you some of the meanest, greenest ways to decorate your computer this March 17!

The easiest way is to make sure Firefox is looking its best with Personas. I'm rocking Irish Shamrocks at the moment, and I have to say, it's really cute.

If 'Celticizing' your browser isn't enough, try a theme for your PC. This Images of Ireland Desktop Theme for Windows XP is a great option for all you traditionalists out there, a lovely peaceful theme that includes some of Ireland's most popular sights, all supplied by the national tourist board, so you know you're getting the real deal. At the other end of the theme spectrum, we've got this fun (but slightly mind-boggling) Sponge Bobs Happy St. Patrick's Day theme, so if standing stones and freckled children aren't your thing, you've still got plenty of options.

If you're just after a screensaver or wallpaper, you've got even more options. Luck of The Irish to You includes some really beautiful images of Ireland's scenery, or if you'd prefer to go the more stereotyped route, I'm sure you'll get a laugh out of Drunken Leprechaun 3D Screensaver. Be warned though, this little leprechaun is definitely of the evil kind!

As always, there's some lovely wallpaper around the web. Deviant Art always come up with some good stuff, and St. Patrick's Day is no exception!

If you've been using computers for as long as me, you can probably type quite well without looking at the keyboard. Improving your typing speed and accuracy has become increasingly important in today's world, where computers, smartphones and other keyboard-equipped devices are almost omnipresent.

Typing faster means you can get your work done more quickly, answer your emails in a few minutes and update your blog by the end of the day, all in a much more efficient way. However, there are still people who use just two fingers to type. If you're among them, don't worry: you can count on software utilities, web apps and other tools to help you improve your speed and accuracy when typing. These are some of them:

• RapidTyping - Improve your typing by learning the right hand position and training specific groups of letters. The program then lets you use custom texts for advanced typing training, and keeps detailed statistics about your performance and improvement. There's also a portable version of RapidTyping.

• GS Typing Tutor - Great typing tutor for beginners and advanced users. Learn to type from scratch with basic two-finger lessons, or acquire professional touch typing speed and skills with the program's lessons and games. GS Typong Tutor keeps stats of your progress and focuses on practicing your most problematic letters.

• Bruce's Unusual Typing Wizard - Learn to type and improve your speed and accuracy with this simple, efficient tool. It support multiple users and customizable practicing tests, includes a bunch of lessons with different difficulty levels and keeps statistics of your improvement.

• MaxType Typing Tutor - An advanced tutor to improve your typing speed. You can use any TXT file as training test, compete against a computer-controlled opponent in a speed test and record your own typing in order to keep track of your performance. The program measures up to 20 parameters of your typing.

• Klavaro Touch Typing Tutor - This tool helps you improve your speed and accuracy when typing. It includes lessons that become increasingly difficult as you make progress through them, from practicing two letters to writing full texts. Klavaro Touch Typing Tutor has support for many different keyboard layouts and languages.

If you're a keen college basketball fan then no doubt you're counting down the hours until March Madness begins this Thursday. With such intense schedule of games, following the NCAA tournament and keeping track of picks that you've made can be hard work. Luckily, there are a few iPhone apps that provide live coverage of the matches and give you a way of tracking the bracket. Here are three free apps that will see you safely through March Madness:

College Basketball Live! is a great tool for keeping track of matches in real time. Not only does it give you play-by-play coverage of all the March Madness games, but it keeps you updated with the latest news and blogs for your favorite teams and players. The amount of game stats and analysis is very impressive, and College Basketball Live! even lets you chat and trash talk other fans.

CBS Sports NCAA March Madness On Demand Lite gives you complete coverage of the tournament from the opening rounds to the Final Four, then the National Championship itself. The app includes a scrollable bracket that updates in real time, along with video highlights of all games, plus lots of previews, comparisons and stats. You can also use the application to manage your CBSSports.com Bracket Manager selections.

ESPN Tournament Challenge gives you access to the popular bracket game of the same name. You can fill in your bracket picks very easily within the app, simply by tapping on the team you think will get through each round. You can enter up to 10 different brackets and pit yourself against other players by entering one of the hundreds of groups. The app lets you watch live updates of games via the ESPN Mobile Gamecast.

If you're a bit of a motorhead then you'll no doubt be gearing up for the start of the Formula 1 season this weekend. I love F1, but I find it very hard to take time out over the weekend to sit in front of the TV and watch the events unfold. Luckily, there's a bunch of apps that let you follow the action on your phone while you're out and about. Here's my pick of the best F1 apps for all the various mobile platforms. All of them keep you updated with the latest news, standings and race information, and some even deliver live coverage of races.

[Image: stock.xchng]

iPhone:  Formula 1 Live Racing 2010. If you want to stay close to the action on your iPhone then this is the app for you. Formula 1 Live Racing 2010 not only delivers the latest news during the season, but you also get live commentary, lap-by-lap race positions and real-time leaderboards. The application also offers in-depth guides to each of the F1 circuits, including distances and weather information.

Palm/Windows Mobile: F1 Season 2010. Although this one doesn't offer any live commentary, F1 Season 2010 does make for a useful companion to the coming season. It offers lots of information about the drivers, cars and teams, and provides maps of all of the circuits. The app can be updated after every race so you have up-to-date stats on the current standings in the race for the Formula 1 championship.

BlackBerry: ScoreMobile. For some reason, F1 BlackBerry apps are a little thin on the ground. However, you can get coverage of races from the F1 section of the ScoreMobile application. You can view details of upcoming races, check the latest standings, and follow all the news on live blogs. One good thing about ScoreMobile is its integration with your BlackBerry calendar, allowing you to set reminders of when the Grand Prixes are on.

Android: F1Android. If you're serious about Formula 1 then this Android F1 app is for you. Besides bringing you the very latest news from a variety of sources, the program offers detailed information about all of the courses, current standings, and even an archive of Grand Prixes from years past. The Teams and Drivers section gives you the full run-down of all this season's contenders.

Symbian/Java: F1 Live Formula 1 News. The Symbian platform is another that's poorly served in terms of F1 apps. This Java-based application is probably the comprehensive you'll find. It offers Formula 1 news in six different languages, along with the latest information about teams and drivers. The app gives you a choice of news services to follow, so you can get fully informed about all the latest developments.

You could also check out the mobile sites of some of the big Formula 1 news services, such as Planet F1 or ESPN F1. Also, keep an eye on the digital store of the offical F1 site. It promises both a new mobile web site and a free F1 timing app, so it's worth keeping tabs on.

Having a good homepage is important. After all, they're the first thing you see when you launch the web browser, and usually the starting point of your working day. There are many different options and possibilities when it comes to choose the right homepage for you, so let's take a look at some of them:

• About:blank – The classic option. It's the perfect homepage for those who can't stand overloaded designs and don't really need a specific point to start from. The blank page gives you total freedom to choose a different path in your web browsing every day.

• iGoogle – The traditional option. Pretty much everyone has a Gmail account these days, so it's only natural that iGoogle is another traditional choice for your homepage. It's connected with all Google services, and you get lots of gadgets and themes to customize it with. Read more »

As I walked to work this morning I noticed the first early buds on the trees. And you know what this means? Time to get out in the garden again and get everything ready for the spring spectacle. To avoid some of the disasters I had last year, I decided that I would add a new weapon to my arsenal of gardening tools - my iPhone. There are plenty of apps available that will help you make your garden looking blooming marvelous. Here's a selection of some of my favorites. (Note, you'll need iTunes in order to open the links).

Keep an eye on the sky with WeatherBug

The weather can be your plants' biggest friend or its worst enemy. A more comprehensive forecast tool than The Weather Channel or Accuweather.com is WeatherBug. Pulling data from your nearest weather station, it displays temperature (current plus highest and lowest of the day), wind speed and direction, wind chill and rainfall. It even goes into stuff like the dew point, pressure and humidity. A seven-day forecast is also available. Free

Work out what to plant with Garden Plants Database

Choosing the right plants and flowers for your garden can be a daunting prospect. Garden Plants Database makes it easy to figure out what you want before you even set out for the garden center. The bumper database contains more than 1,000 common plant names and their descriptions. Each entry includes a photo, along with information such as height, spread, colors, and bloom time. $0.99

Know your trees with Botany Buddy

It's quite expensive, but if you're looking to expand your knowledge of trees and shrubs, Botany Buddy is the perfect app. It features an impressive search tool that lets you identify a tree you don't know, or find the right plant to go in your garden. The database boasts 1,300 native and ornamental species, giving you helpful info about size, habits, exposure, seeds, flowers, and more. $9.99

Find out how much soil you need with PotVolume

If you're potting this spring, PotVolume will help you make sure you use the right amount of soil every time. The app is very simple to use. You simply enter the height of your pot, along with its width at the top and bottom. Then, PotVolume calculates the volume in cubic inches and quarts. You can then use these figures to work out how much potting soil to use for that particular pot. $0.99

Catalog your harvests with Homegrown

Ideal for those who grown fruit and vegetables, Homegrown lets you keep a record of everything you pick. once you've added the details of all the fruit-bearing plants in your garden, you're able to quickly input the number of fruits or veggies that you pick on a given date. You can set the start of the season for each plant, then view your personal harvest data for the entire season on one graph. $0.99

Get the hottest tips with Gardening News and Updates

For the latest in what's going down in the gardening world, install Gardening News and Updates on your iPhone. This reader loads the latest tips and tricks from a host of popular gardening blogs. The app comes with some neat features, suchas the ability to read blogs offline, to check for new blog posts when you launch, and to search all the blogs using one particular keyword. $0.99

Get practical help with iGarden USA

Americans are nuts about gardening, and iGarden USA provides hands-on help to anyone looking to feed their green-fingered habit. It contains a wealth of helpful features, such as recommending planting dates for your particular location, lots of data on vegetables, herbs and fruits, plus a guide to identifying particular garden pests. You can even add your own seeds, including planting dates and photos. $4.99

Figure out how much concrete you need with Concrete Calc

If your gardening ambitions extend to constructing paths, patios or terraces then Concrete Calc could come in very handy. The app calculates how many cubic yards of concrete are needed for any given job. You simply type in the length, width and thickness, then hit the Calculate button and you'll be given the specifications you need. There's also a Waste Overage option in the input fields if you need it. $0.99

Plan a BBQ with Weber's On the Grill

Once you've got your garden looking great, why not invite your friends round for a barbecue in it? Weber's On the Grill is a fantastic resource for planning a BBQ, featuring 250 classic recipe, along with 40 recipes for rubs. Besides the recipes, you can record ingredients that you need in an itemized shopping list, watch instructional grilling videos, and browse more than 100 barbecuing tips. There's even a built-in timer for cooking meat to perfection. $4.99

Take a time out and play a gardening game

After all that hard graft you deserve a bit of time to yourself to relax. So sit down, pull out your iPhone and play one of the many fun garden-themed games that are available for the device. My favorite is the gripping (and terrifying) Plants Vs Zombies, in which you must cultivate killer plants to take down the undead. Others include the sedate mowing game, Sunday Lawn, and the potting puzzler, GreenFingers.

OK, that's been true for a while, but with PopCap's release of last year's Plants Vs Zombies for iPhone, zombies are once again becoming difficult to avoid!

If you feel like getting down with the undead, but find games like Left 4 Dead too gruesome, here are my top three brain-eating alternatives:

1: Plants VS Zombies. If you haven't played this, download the demo, now available for PC and Mac! Zombies and gardening combine to make incredibly addictive gameplay. It's part of the 'tower defense' genre, but don't let that put you off as it's an almost perfect game. Can you afford to miss a zombie Michael Jackson?

2: Attack of the Paper Zombies !!! This free indie game for Windows is a great mix of real-time strategy and the undead, although in this case, the lifeless hordes are also aliens! The pencil and paper graphical style is probably unique for a zombie game too. Download it here.

3: Pixel Force: Left 4 Dead. You may remember that re-imagining things can be a terrible disaster - Planet of the Apes, for example. However, Pixel Force: Left 4 Dead re-imagines Valve's fantastic cooperative shooter as a Nintendo Entertainment System game from 1986. It feels like the real deal, too. I think the original's more exciting, but this is still a cool game. No Nintendo required, you can download and play it in Windows.

There's no better foodie fun than spending a few hours browsing the web for new recipes, ideas, information and discussion. Get the most out of your surfing by leveraging a few Firefox add-ons that will make the experience even more fun!

First, you'll need to search for delicious recipes. There are loads of add-ons that simply add a foodie search engine to the options in the navigation toolbar search. This is a really easy way of making recipe searches even faster, and you can add several without weighing down the browser. I've tried a few personally - Epicurious is great for big-name US chefs and BigOven.com will appeal to BigOven users. GoCook, meanwhile, has something for everyone while Opensourcefood takes you to NibbleDish.com, an irresistible web 2.0 recipe resource. If you find recipes you really like, use an add-on like recipefox to "grab" and add them to your collection.

There's also plenty of tools for Firefox that you might not have thought of, but will come in really handy on your culinary explorations. If you are a fan of international cuisine, you might need a converter for those funny recipes in pounds/grams/fathoms (delete as appropriate). Converter's a great one that I can't live without - although for the dreaded cup/gram problem, you'll have to manually input the conversion.

Now, I hate to end the post on a negative, but both you and I know that dedicated foodies have a tendency to become a bit chubby. Make sure you keep a handle on your calorie intake with Food and Calorie Finder, a cool add-on that automatically scans the page for food items and displays their nutritional value in a side bar. Now there's no excuse!

We're big fans of Twitter here at Softonic, so I was surprised when I realized that we haven't actually written a post about the best clients for PC. Well, fret no more, because I'm about to remedy the situation. Read on...

Echofon is a great option for serious tweeters. Although it seems to get uglier with every release, it's still the OnSoftware team's first choice. It integrates into Firefox, doesn't take up much room, and makes it easy to post and switch between Twitter accounts. Try it!

Saezuri is equally light and flexible, but this app operates from your desktop, not the browser. It has pretty much the same features as Echofon, so if you like the sound of the add-on but don't use Firefox, this is the client for you.

DestroyTwitter is guaranteed to make an impact. Scary name aside, it’s also a powerful Twitter client. A member of the AIR family, this sleek black app uses tabs to keep your tweets, contacts and messages under control.

Twhirl is the perfect solution if you want something even lighter. Fast, easy to use, but fully-featured, this AIR application is a great option. It also allows you to customize the interface and update frequency, as well as having support for various accounts.

TweetDeck is probably the most popular Twitter app on Softonic. It's quite a looker and has lots of features, making it almost as good as using Twitter directly. It also integrates into Facebook and MySpace, but it isn't weighed down by the extra functionality.

Seesmic Desktop is a tool you often see on Twitter rankings, but it doesn't make my top ten. Although it is a perfectly useful Twitter client, it also has a lot of additional non-Twitter related features. If you do want one app for all your social media needs, check out Sobees, AlertThingy or Yoono Desktop. They all do a similar job, but are more streamlined and nicer to use.