Google+ has taken the next step in evolving their service by launching a new games section. While still in its infancy, Google+ contains a starting offer of sixteen titles. The best known is a web app version of Angry Birds, but there's also bunches of other genres.

Is your Kindle out of juice or otherwise unavailable? No worries. Now you can access and read your Kindle library directly from your browser. Amazon recently released the Kindle Cloud Reader web app, providing even easier access to your ebook library, no matter where you are. In fact, with Kindle Cloud Reader, you don't technically even have to own a Kindle, since you can purchase ebooks and download them directly to your personal Amazon account cloud.

Amazon's Kindle Cloud Reader is available on Chrome for both Windows PCs and Mac. You can also install it on Safari for PC or Mac. The reader is entirely free (apart from book purchases, of course) and has a slick appearance with an easy-to-use interface. Since your information is saved in the cloud, you can even enable an offline reading mode in the event you don't have an internet connection.

Just like on an actual Kindle, you turn the pages by clicking on arrows at the right or left of your screen. The Kindle Cloud Reader's interface is otherwise left uncluttered, save for a small button that allows you to purchase books directly from Amazon and a few others that allow you to navigate away from the book you're currently reading. Although there's no app available for Firefox or other popular browsers yet, Amazon promises that support for additional browsers is coming soon.

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

A new interesting feature has made it to Gmail Labs: Preview Pane. If you've used desktop email clients like Microsoft Outlook on Windows or Mail on Mac, you already know what we're talking about: a sidebar pane where the content of the selected message is displayed for faster email checking. With the new Preview Pane feature you can now have that functionality in Gmail too. Here's how:

1. Log in to your Gmail account and select Labs from the drop-down menu on the top right corner.

2. Browse down to Preview Pane and click on Enable. Go all the way up or down and press the Save Changes button.

Slow internet connections can be a real drag. This is particularly true when it comes to loading web pages. Wouldn’t it be nice to have search results pre-loaded, so when you click on one the website just comes up instantly?

Google’s doing just that with Instant Pages, an add-on that comes included with the latest stable version of the Chrome web browser. Using the Google Instant feature that shows suggested search results as you type them, the Instant Pages plug-in will automatically pre-render the top search result that appears. If you click on it, the page should load instantaneously, as opposed to taking the typical two to five seconds.

This can really speed up your browsing. Of course it all depends on just how accurate Google Instant Search happens to be for you, as well as the likelihood of you choosing the top search option on a consistent basis. Unlike Google Instant Search – which some users have admittedly found annoying at times – Instant Pages shouldn’t cause any irritation whatsoever. Either you click on the top search result and get an instantaneous page load time or you choose another option and have to “suffer” through the normal wait time of a few paltry seconds. In the end, it’s a win-win situation for Chrome users all-around.

Google+ has only been around for  a couple of months and it's already reached 25 million users. More and more people are thinking about ditching Facebook and adopting Google+ as their main social network - and maybe you're among them! Moving to a new social website can be as much a pain as moving to a new flat, so if you're considering switching to Google+, here are a few tips that can help you with the migration.

Security

First things first. Before starting the process, you need to download all the information on Facebook to your computer, account just in case. If you don't know how to do it, check out my post on how to backup your Facebook account.

Importing photos

There are two ways to import your photos into Google+. One is using the Google Chrome extension Move your Photos, which accesses your Facebook account (after you authorize it, of course) and displays all your Facebook photo albums on a web page. You can then select the ones you want to import to Google+ and let the extension do the hard work for you.

The other way to import your photos to Google+ is using Picasa in combination with the backup copy you created before. Import the Facebook photo albums included in the backup into Picasa, and then enable the Sync to Web feature to upload and sync those images with your Picasa Web Album.

As soon as the images are on Picasa, they'll be available on Google+.

Apple today announced the release of iCloud, the online storage service that replaces MobileMe. iCloud has a number of competitors to deal with but biggest of all is Dropbox for Windows and Mac. While iCloud may certainly be a wake up call to Dropbox which hasn't seen much innovation in recent years, it's unlikely to replace it anytime soon. Here are some reasons why:

• Dropbox is truly cross platform

Dropbox will remain by far the easiest way to share files across platforms whether you're on Windows, Mac, Android or Linux. The only mobile platform it doesn't work with is Symbian and there's even a client to fix that.  iCloud meanwhile is restricted to mainly Apple devices such as Macs, iPhones and iPads. PCs are supported (although Windows XP isn't). Basically, if you don't have an Apple ID , then iCloud will be inaccessible to you.

• Dropbox is more flexible

Dropbox can store anything you throw at it. iCloud on the other hand is much more application based and backups/syncing will rely on developers adding support for it in their apps. This is great for Mac users that use official Apple products such as  iTunes and iPhoto etc but not no good for those that rely on third party apps that don't add iCloud support. Even though the free version of iCloud offers 5GB of free space compared to 2GB on Dropbox, you can't do as much with it.

• iCloud isn't a backup solution

iCloud is fine for syncing but not for backups - at least not for photos. At the moment, iCloud only allows photos to be stored for up to 30 days. Dropbox allows you to store your files for as long as you want or maintain your account. Apple may change this if they realize it's  a deal breaker for many users but until then, iCloud will be seen more as a syncing tool than a backup one.

Like MobileMe, it goes without saying that iCloud is likely to be a big hit with those who rely only on Apple products. It may also be popular with iTunes users that want to sync their music, calendar and address book with the cloud but nothing else. Dropbox may lose users of its professional version as people opt to use iCloud for music, and use the free version of Dropbox for general storage.

Whatever happens, iCloud should at least motivate Dropbox to improve its product and that can only be good news for its users.

Download Dropbox for Windows and Mac.

Popular mobile game Words with Friends is coming to Facebook, developer Zynga has announced. The Scrabble-style word game allows you to take on your friends by creating words on a board, scoring points based on the value of the letters in that word.

The Facebook app will allow you to pit your wits against your buddies on Facebook. It will integrate with your mobile Words with Friends games, meaning you can start a game on your phone, then continue playing on Facebook once you get home. According to PC Mag, the Word with Friends Facebook app will include an option to trash talk your opponent on their wall.

To be among the first to find out when Words with Friends for Facebook is released, simply goto Facebook and Like the game’s page. If you want to play Words with Friends now, it’s available for iPhone and Android.

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.

File sharing and collaborative tools are all the rage lately. From cloud-based Box.net to Microsoft SharePoint and beyond, being able to access your important documents immediately and from virtually anywhere is of utmost importance to users today.

Dropbox is arguably the best known cloud-based file sharing service. It’s available for Windows PCs, Macs, iPhones and Android smartphones. It’s Android that received this newest Dropbox update, and although it’s a small one, it should please Android users who value simplicity and ease of use.

Beyond vaguely described bug fixes, security updates and performance improvements, Dropbox for Android has added two new features that make using the app from your phone even easier. The first involves the ability to delete folders in your account directly from your phone. This will help users cut down on clutter wherever they go. The second update has added photo thumbnails to the file browser. This should help users quickly identify the files they’re searching for.

Making file uploads and organization both quicker and simpler seems to be Dropbox’s main points of focus and it’s hard to find anything to complain about when this newest update gives users just that.

Right on the heels of Google+, another site supported by the search engine giant is up and running, although it's also currently in invite-only mode.

Photovine is a new image sharing service created by Slide which, according to the site's Privacy Notice, is part of Google Inc. The concept seems relatively simple - create an account, download the app (apparently for both iPhone and Android smartphones, if the image on the service's initial web page is any indicator) and share with friends and family. As people connected with you upload their own photos, the images can be linked based on common user-created captions, until you've gone from a single picture "seedling" to a full-grown photo "vine" that's growth is virtually limitless.

If you're wondering whether Google plans to connect this new service to Google+, it's unclear so far. With the obvious and enthusiastic interest in garnering a Google+ invite from the general public though, it'll be interesting to see how the two new web apps might end up being connected. For the time being, Photovine is taking requests from interested web users on its main page and promising to roll out invites later this month on a first-come first-served basis.

Google is on fire: in just a few days they've launched their own social network Google+, announced the rebranding of Picasa and Blogger to Google Photos and Google Blogs respectively, and slightly redesigned a few of of their online services (such as search and calendar). The new design will presumably be slowly rolled out to all Google services in the near future, but you can have a sneak peek - at least in Gmail:

To preview Gmail's new look you have to click the gear icon on the top right corner and select the Mail settings option.

Then click the Themes tab and browse down to the bottom of the page. You'll see two Preview themes: standard and dense.  The first one uses the same space between text lines that Gmail has been using up to now, while the second one leaves more space between lines and makes it all cleaner.

Whatever theme you pick, Gmail will immediately apply the new design. This is how my inbox looked with the standard Preview theme:

Google+ may be more than "just" a social network, but it can be used in in a similar way to Facebook, and many people want to join precisely because they want a change. Facebook has suffered a number of privacy scares as it has grown, so how does it compare with new kid Google+? Let's take a look at the  privacy options of both social apps.

Privacy Settings:

Facebook's privacy dashboard has a neat table that shows you who can see what. Click Customize and you can edit these settings. You can choose to share things with just you, friends, friends of friends or specific people. You can also opt to hide certain categories from specific people. Here you can also preview your profile as it appears to any of your friends.

The Google+ privacy settings page is much longer, but every segment is clearly explained. Editing your settings takes you to your profile, letting you see exactly which part of your profile you are altering. Google+'s Circles means you choose who can see your posts and updates as you make them, giving you much greater control.

While their approaches are different, I think both are good attempts at making privacy and sharing settings accessible and user friendly.

If you're into social media and tech, you can't have missed the news that Google has sort-of-launched a beta for its new social network, Google+.

Like Facebook, the system allows users to add friends and share updates, photos, videos and links. Unlike Facebook, Google+ also offers Hangouts (group video chat), Circles (a better way of grouping your contacts) and Sparks (a not very well integrated way of subscribing to topics).

Google+ was originally opened up to a select bunch of übergeeks, who in turn started to invite friends onto the service. Then Google closed the invites system. So now it seems you just have to wait....

...Or do you?

I tested this method found via a friend on Google+ and it worked. Firstly, you need to know someone who's already on Google+. Then, get them to create a new Circle - it doesn't matter what it's called. Next, have your friend add you to the Circle, which you can do by inserting an email address and then a name. Finally, send an update to that Circle, checking the 'Also email x people not yet using Google+' checkbox before sending the update.

If everything goes according to plan, you should get an email from Google+ that includes a link to view the new update. Clicking the link takes you to a page that allows you to join the service immediately.

Google is currently throttling the number of people who can join via this method. Therefore, it may not work all the time. But keep trying and you should get lucky soon.

If you don't know anyone who's already on Google+, leave a comment below and I'll do my best to invite you when Google relaxes invitation controls. I can't guarantee that everyone will get an invitation but I'll do what I can.

Microsoft's two biggest sources of revenue are Windows and Office. After several months of beta testing, the release of Office 365 therefore marks a significant change in the way Microsoft is attempting to do business. The company has been effectively forced into this situation by Google Docs which is completely free to use and offers a competitive alternative to buying Office. However, the one advantage Microsoft have is that not only is Office a more powerful and complete package than Google Docs, but millions of people and businesses trust it and use the desktop version of it everyday.

In theory then, Office 365 sounds like a win-win situation. For the first time, users no longer need Office installed on their computer - they can access the entire suite online for a small monthly fee with all the functionality as if it were installed on their computer. Individual users get to use the Office suite for a modest monthly fee (up to $6) without having to pay the hefty price for the full package while companies no longer need a tech department to maintain and administer Office onsite. Microsoft meanwhile get a steady revenue stream every month and perhaps most importantly, guaranteed income from lucrative updates to Office which users will be obliged to pay for to continue using the service.

Sounds too good to be true? Let's take a look:

When you sign-up for Office 365, you have to create a domain name for yourself which isn't too painful. This domain (yourname@yourorganisation.onmicrosoft.com) will be used for all of your Office 365 activities:

When you log-in, you're presented with the main dashboard. Office 365 will then attempt to setup with Outlook Online, Lync Online and Sharepoint Online. This can take a few minutes: