If you're looking for a Twitter client for Android, you're spoiled for choice. There's a ton out there, and lots of them are very, very good. We've taken a look at some of the most popular, breaking them down by Appearance, Advanced Features and whether or not they are Power-User Friendly. Which one came out on top? Read on to find out!

Just a note: even though we looked at 9 apps, not all of them were included in the test. There's a limit to how many you can thoroughly test for one article, so I cut the field down to size subjectively - I cut the ones I don't like!

Two of the apps I didn't test came as pre-installed clients on the test phone - Swift and Peep. Both of them are good, but not great, covering the basics, but not much else. I also looked at Twidroyd, but didn't like the interface and found it a little buggy. HootSuite was also looked at, but again, I didn't like the interface or the two-step process for managing messages. Last, but not least, we checked out Seesmic. I'm not a fan of this app, but gave it a fair test anyway. Again, the two-step message process annoyed me, as well as the fact that feels a lot like the official Twitter app - but less intuitive.

In the end, we were left with four apps: Plume, Twitter, TweetCaster and Twicca

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

One of the hardest programs to track down is a good note-taking app. This seems weird, as there are a bunch of them out there. Even so, some just don't make the grade - they're ugly, awkward and sometimes really make it hard to jot down information when you're on the go.

EverNote and Springpad are considered by many to be two of the best. Both have smartphone and online versions, so we're evaluating them on their performance across devices and platforms, since accessibility is a major concern when it comes to note-taking apps.

Both score really highly in their Softonic reviews, so it's not surprising that you might be finding it hard to choose. The best way is to install both and test them, but if you're short on time - or motivation - we're here to do it for you!

Registration and sign-up

In the sign-up stakes, these apps are almost neck and neck. The sign ups are pretty much as painless as you get - email address, password and you're in. SpringPad does slightly better than EverNote - you don't need a username and there's no security CAPCHA, cutting out two steps and winning it this round.

Result - Springpad, but only just!

Available platforms

The availability of platforms is crucial for a note taking application. The aim is that no matter where you are or what you're doing, adding a note is as easy and fast as possible. Looking at our two applications, it's pretty obvious that Evernote comes out on top.

This application is available for pretty much anything you can imagine - Online, Windows, Mac, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Android, BlackBerry, Palm Pre, Palm Pixi, Windows Mobile and even a Windows, Mac and Linux compatible Firefox extension, for including online information in the click of a mouse button.

Springpad doesn't skimp, but it's not quite as impressive. It's available online and for Android, iPhone and iPad. There's no desktop version, and if you have any smartphone other than Android/iPhone, you'll miss out.

Result - Evernote, by a mile!

To some, the idea of connecting a Windows Phone to a Mac seems a little wrong somehow.  One eloquent colleague recently described me syncing a Windows Phone 7 device to an iMac as “like a monkey mating with a camel”. Microsoft isn’t overly keen on its products mixing with Macs either, and has yet to release its excellent Zune Windows Phone 7 management software on the Apple platform.

In my opinion, there’s nothing wrong with a beautiful mobile phone hooking up with a beautiful desktop computer and sharing themselves with each other–regardless of their different parentage. If you too, want to connect a Windows Phone 7 device to a Mac then fear not: it can be done!

All you need to do is download and install a piece of software called Windows Phone 7 Connector (developed by Microsoft itself, incidentally). This simple, free utility allows you to sync music, photos, videos and podcasts from your existing iTunes and iPhoto libraries to your Windows Phone 7.

When you plug your Windows Phone 7 handset into your Mac, you’ll be invited to set up and personalize your phone. Here you can change the name of the device, download the latest OS updates and change some of the default settings.

This year's Mobile World Congress is starting Monday February 14th in Barcelona, Spain. The location couldn't be better for us - a short ride on the red line and we're there - but for others it's a long trip that involves buying plane tickets, booking hotels, changing currency and knowing their way around the beautiful city of Barcelona. Luckily, there's an app for all that! We've compiled a list of  10 iPhone apps that will surely prove to be very useful for those of you planning to attend MWC next week. Here they are:

Kayak - The ultimate traveling app! With Kayak you can search for flights, book a hotel, rent a car, organize your itinerary and much more, all for free. The app includes information about airports and lets you track flight status as well.

Currency - If you're new to euros, this app could be a life-savior. Currency includes updated exchange rate information for more than 100 different countries and currencies. It's the perfect tool to know if they're charging you too much for the paella!

Barcelona Subway - Once you're in Barcelona, metro is by far the fastest and most efficient way to move around the city. With this app you'll have all the information you need about the Barcelona metro (maps, stations, trip planners) right on your iPhone.

Catalunya Taxi - Do you prefer taking a taxi? No worries! Catalunya Taxi helps you get one without having to call a taxi service and wait on the line. Book a taxi ride, obtain an estimated price in advance and get the booking confirmation by text message.

Mobile World Live -When you're at the Congress you probably won't have time to follow all the conferences and exhibitions going on at the same time. Use the Mobile World Congress official app to keep track of everything going on in the mobile industry!

Bump - One important activity in the MWC is networking. Forget about your old-style business cards and use Bump instea: an app that lets you share whatever you want (photos, messages, contacts, even Facebook friend requests) just by bumping two phones together.

Babelingo - Of course, networking is so much easier when you speak the same language. If you don't, Babelingo can give you a hand with its collection of more than 300 useful phrases translated into 11 languages. Just choose your desired phrase and the app will display the translation.

AroundMe - Now where's the nearest ATM? Where can I find a coffee shop for a short break? I need to buy something, is there a supermarket near the MWC? Find the answer to these and other questions in the AroundMe app - a must-have when travelling abroad!

Lonely Planet Barcelona City Guide - Work is over! It's time for tourism, and the Lonely Planet guides have all the information you need. This app will tell you about all the museums, markets, monuments and tapas bars you can't miss while you're in Barcelona!

Bus Turístic Virtual -Another great option to explore Barcelona is the Bus Turístic - three bus routes that cover all the points of interest in the city. With the help of augmented reality, this app lets you locate the most outstanding spots in Barcelona and make the most of your visit.

If you want to make a cool animated profile picture, you should think about making a GIF. They're really easy and quick, and as long as you have the materials (a series of images or a video), it couldn't be easier.

To take the pain out of the process, we've rounded up 3 of the best desktop apps for creating GIF animations. Download the one you like the best, get animating and a funny GIF avatar will be yours!

Easy GIF Animator is one that lives up to its name - it's a feature-rich, easy-to-use GIF animator that's especially useful if you want to make GIFs from scratch - i.e. without a set of images. That's particularly useful if you want to make a text-based GIF, say with a song lyric, funny quote or instructions. Easy GIF Animator isn't a free program, but the trial version has 20 free uses, so you're sure to be able to get what you need.

MS GIF Animator is an old-fashioned program, but it's no-install and free, so if you want to get animating quickly, it's the perfect fix. This app supports .AVI video. Making a GIF from a video file is the ultimate easy GIF and takes an absolute a minimum of effort - just grab an .AVI file, pick the frames you want and save as a GIF. MS GIF Animator will let you make various tweaks and improvements, but even with very little involvement, you'll still get a great GIF!

Beneton Movie GIF is the last in our list. Completely free and very user-friendly, it has loads of sample GIFs and help, so even if you are attempting something a little more complex, you won't have any problems. It doesn't support video however, and be warned that it tries to install other software items, so keep an eye on the installation process!

There are several ways to do work for charity: you can donate food and clothes to people in need in your neighborhood, join an NGO or even buy software. Yes, you did read that: buying software can also help people.

Just like the Humble Bundle helped raise money for the Child’s Play Charity, the Bundlelytic charity bundle enables you to help those in need with just a mouse click. In this case, half of the proceeds will be used to help the victims of the recent floods in Queensland, Australia.

The bundle includes 9 useful Windows applications, which together have a value of $299 but which you can get for just $49.99. The programs included in the pack are:

• Paragon’s Partition Manager 11 – A powerful disk management tool to setup multi-boot systems, create system images and more.

• SafeWallet – Store all your sensitive data (passwords, credit card numbers and so on) in this encrypted vault with support for syncing with most mobile phones.

• Divvy – A must-have for productivity junkies, this app lets you organize all your active windows in the most comfortable way.

• Altaro Oops!Backup – Create backup copies of your important documents, and go back to any of their previous versions at any time.

• System Speedup Pro – Fix the most common problems in Windows with just one click, and remove suspicious processes and junk file as well.

• novaPDF Professional – Fully featured app that lets you convert any document to PDF through a virtual printer driver.

• EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard – Recover accidentally deleted data from corrupted or reformatted partitions, USB drives, and memory cards.

• Returnil System Safe – Crate a safe virtual environment on your system to test potentially dangerous applications.

• Pixo – An original image editor that lets you apply effects to your photos as if you were painting over them.

If you decide to buy the bundle, you’ll automatically be entered into a draw to win a 250GB ioSafe portable hard drive and one of 100 copies of Nitro PDF Professional. So you see, you have nothing to lose and lots to win: good quality software, a handy portable hard drive and of course, helping people.

Measuring distances on a map is useful when planning trips, but can also be a bit tricky. Luckily Google Maps makes it much easier, especially if you use the distance measurement tool available in the Google Maps Labs area. Here’s a short tutorial on how to use it.

1. Open Google Maps, click the green beaker icon on the top right menu and enable the tool.

2. Once back in Google Maps, click the little ruler icon on the bottom left corner and select your preferred measurement unit. You can choose between the traditional metric or English systems, or if you’re feeling geeky, pick other more original systems like Californian varas (!), nautical miles or even light-years.

3. Click the source location and then your destination and you’ll get the distance between those two points expressed in the measurement unit of your choice.

4. Google Maps expresses the distance in a straight line, which of course isn’t always the most accurate approach. To obtain a more realistic value, simply keep on adding more points to your route, following a given road or train route. Google Maps will automatically calculate the distance between the first point and the last one you create.

There was lots of laughter at Softonic today as we tried out the coolest feature in the new version of Google Translate for Android - Conversation Mode.

It is pretty revolutionary - but for the moment it's only available in Spanish/English. Once you have installed Google Translate (you might also need to download text-to-speech software, but if you do, the app will prompt you), hit the little microphone and speak.

Google Translate quickly analyzes what you have said, translates it into Spanish (or vice versa) and plays it back - in Spanish - to the listener. To respond to what's been said, press the Responder en español button, and speak Spanish. The original speaker hears your answer in English, and so on. Google Translate's Conversation Mode allows you to have conversations in languages that you don't actually speak!

If Google Translate isn't sure what has been said, it will ask you for confirmation before translating - but you can turn this feature on or off. Even so, the app did pretty well when we tested it, often getting the translation more or less right on the first go, especially if you speak loudly and clearly. As you can see from the screenshots - even when it's wrong, it's pretty funny!

Amazon has published a Kindle app in the new Mac App Store, thus adding a new reading platform for all your Kindle titles: your own Mac.

With the new Kindle app for Mac you have access to all the features included in other versions of the program, as well as the Kindle device itself. You’ll be able to highlight and annotate the text, add bookmarks and of course, visit the Kindle book store right from the app. Also, thanks to the Whispersync functionality, your Kindle books will be seamlessly synced across all the different Kindle versions you use – including this new app. This means you can pick up your reading exactly where you left it, no matter what device you use.

Having such a nice array of goodies, it’s not surprising that the Kindle app is already at #3 in the Mac App Store top free apps – especially if you also take into account that there are no other e-book reader available, not even Apple’s iBooks app.

By anyone's standards, January can be a pretty depressing month. The weather's gray, there's a likelihood you've maxed out your credit card over the holiday season and, to top it all off, you may have overindulged in the festive treats. What could be better, then, that a free app that's going to help your waistline?!

One of my favorite apps for Android and iPhone, RunKeeper, has announced that for the month of January 2011, the pro version of their exercise app will be available free to current users of the free version. We reviewed the app and were really impressed, and the AudioCue and Advanced Coaching mentioned as part of the pro version sound great. Head to the Android Market or Apple Store and download it now!

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.

Yeah, yeah, you got a new Mac for Christmas. Lucky you. I suppose you want to install some software on it now too?

There are few better feelings in computerland than setting up a new Mac. And while Macs come loaded with plenty of really great software (iLife, for example, is a multimedia suite that would cost hundreds of dollars to replicate properly on a PC), there are some pretty essential free apps I can recommend:

Google Chrome - Apple purists will argue that Safari is just as good (or better). I disagree. Chrome beats Safari in browser speed tests and has a slicker, more modern user interface. Google Chrome is also a more stable and resource-friendly piece of software, both on Mac and PC. Finally, Chrome is more extensible. And while it's not up there with Firefox yet, this does make a difference.

VLC Media Player - An uncontroversial choice, this. VLC is an absolute must have for anyone intending to play or work with video files on their Mac. It can play pretty much any video file you throw at it, and can even fix dodgy AVI indexes, meaning that it'll repair files that are too broken to work elsewhere. Added to that, its advanced transcoding and playback controls make it a more customizable player than QuickTime.

TweetDeck - I resisted installing TweetDeck on my latest Mac (a living room MacMini) for some months. My rationale was that I didn't want to spend too much time using Twitter on my TV. Then I realized that I was spending loads of time tweeting either from the Twitter website or from my cellphone. So I gave in and installed TweetDeck. It's not the lightest piece of software out there but you can avoid all the extraneous stuff. Anyway, TweetDeck's the best Twitter client on the market.

Transmission - I'm not a big fan of torrents. It might be something to do with my internet provider but I've noticed far more problems with my home connection when torrents are downloading. But if I do need to download a torrent, the only app I'd use to get it would be Transmission. A native Mac app, it's extremely light, quick and easy to use. A must-have for any torrent freaks out there.

FaceTime - In the light of Skype's recent disastrous outage, it's always a good idea to have a backup chat app. Apple's new FaceTime beta is only available for Macs and iPhones so you can't currently use it to chat to friends who only have PCs. That said, it's a powerful and attractively designed video chat app which any Mac owner should have installed.

So you got an iPad for Christmas? Congratulations! It's really a state-of-the-art gadget, wonderfully designed and with lots of apps available to customize it. Talking about apps, this may be the first question that pops into your head when you start using your iPad: which apps should I download? There are literally thousands of them on the App Store, so let us recommend just five - the five essential apps you should install on your brand-new iPad.

Instapaper - An excellent tool that saves web pages for later offline reading. Instapaper is the perfect way to read those long articles you never have time for, while commuting, queueing or waiting for the doctor. The articles in Instapaper are optimized for perfect readability, and can be sent from over 130 other apps.

Flipboard - Check social networks like you never did before. With Flipboard you can see what your friends are up to on Facebook and Twitter, read the latest articles on your favorite Google Reader feeds and see the most recent photos shared on Flickr in a totally different way: a completely customized magazine, created on the spot for you.

Air Video - If space is an issue to watch videos on the iPad. AirVideo is the solution. With this awesome app you can watch all the videos on your computer without having to sync them with the iPad. Video is streamed over air and converted in real time! Air Video works with almost all video formats and is packed with features.

Kindle -The iPad version of Kindle is optimized for this gadget's gorgeous screen, enabling you to read Kindle books on a neat, easy-to-use interface. You have access to the entire Kindle catalog with over 750,000 titles, including best-sellers and new releases. Plus all your books, notes, bookmarks and more are synced via Amazon.

Plants vs. Zombies - There are excellent games for the iPad, but Plants vs. Zombies is probably one of the best you can get. The HD version looks amazing on the 6'' screen, and the game is as insanely addictive as its iPhone version. Will you be able to get rid of all 26 types of zombies threatening your home?

There are many good things about the Holiday Season, and one of them is the amount of sales and special offers you find on the App Store these days – from paid apps being considerably cheaper, to top games available for free for 24 hours.

After EA’s massive sale last week, it seems that Gameloft is following the same path by announcing their own sale. The Gameloft special Christmas offer includes a bunch of great titles such as Real Football 11, NFL 11, Settlers and Assassin’s Creed: Altair’s Chronicles, for only $0.99.

But Christmas sales on the App Store are not limited to games. Lonely Planet offers a dozen city guides for free, covering all major cities in Europe: Berlin, London, Paris, Vienna, Munich, Prague, Copenhagen and more. Just bear in mind that all of them are over 20MB downloads, so you probably want to get them over WiFi or via iTunes.