Have you ever been in a situation where you simply cannot delete a file from your computer? If so, you're probably familiar with error messages like Cannot delete file: Access is denied or The source or destination file may be in use.

Sometimes this is for good reason. Windows is constantly running various processes in the background and may need the file to operate properly. Killing such processes could make your system unstable or even crash it. However, if you're sure the file is not essential and its just being stubborn, Unlocker might be able to help you out. Unlocker adds an option to the drop-down menu when you right-click your mouse on a file. By selecting Unlocker, the program automatically overides locked file messages and allows you to get rid of all but the most stubborn files on your computer.

Last night I was trying to watch a Quicktime streaming video in Firefox and I kept on getting this annoying message about not having the appropiate plug-ins installed. So I wondered, how am I meant to know which plugins are correctly installed for Firefox? The answer came to me in the shape of a nice Mozilla trick: just type “about:plugins” in the browser’s address bar and you’ll see a list of all the plug-ins you've installed so far.

This little tip reminded me of a couple other Firefox tricks I’d like to share. You may already know them but hey, there are always novice users out there.

First, here’s another “about” tip which you can use. Type “about:config” in the address bar and you’ll obtain a large list of configuration variables that rule your browser’s behavior. What’s more, you can customize them in order to change the default search properties, make pages render more quickly or control the private data stored by Firefox; and much more besides.

Second, there are some keyboard shortcuts which are really useful for web browsing, even if you’re more comfortable with the mouse. Combinations include CRTL+T to open a new tab, CTRL+L to focus on the address bar and CTRL+K to activate the search box on the right side of the Firefox interface.

One last tip: try typing “about:mozilla” in the browser’s address bar and see what you get. Don’t you love Easter eggs?

If you're worried that your favourite clips might be removed from You Tube and Google Video by the commercial big boys, why not download them onto your hard disk before its too late? VDownloader does exactly that by automatically detecting videos, and prompting you with a popup to download the file in either AVI or MPEG format. Whilst many other similar programs only download in flash FLV format, VDownloader allows you to choose the format you want. There's even an option to batch download if you're visiting a site with multiple clips that you'd like to save for future use or your own editing purposes.

Luckily for some but sadly for others, Christmas is over. Now it's time to go back to harsh reality and forget about the holidays... or maybe not! Because if you used your digital camera while enjoying Christmas dinner or meeting some old friends back in your home town, now it's time to make the most of those pictures.

To begin with, Picasa is a good option to store and organize pictures in your computer. It also allows you to retrieve them easily by means of a handy timeline. Then you can just select the best ones and create a nice printed collage with Arcsoft PhotoImpression.

However, if you’re on the ecological side and don’t want to waste paper, you can always record a photo VCD with the help of MemoriesOnTV. It’s a really easy-to-use piece of software that will enable you to show off your best shots on the DVD player.

If any picture needs retouching, take a look at PhotoFiltre, a powerful app that features everything you may need to edit and optimize photos. Like the well-known Photoshop, but smaller, lighter and cheaper – basically free.

One last tip: don’t forget to resize your pictures before sharing them by email; otherwise the message will take ages to download. VSO Image Resizer will do it for you in just a couple of mouse clicks, saving you time, work and bandwidth.

Future Force Company Commander (F2C2) is the long awaited sequel to the highly popular and controversial America's Army. To give a quick recap, America's Army was a first person shooter developed by the US military as an effective way of getting more recruits. You were based as a Marine in the Middle East.

F2C2 is a "realtime strategy" game designed to mesmerize new recruits with an array of technological warfare. Developed by Zombie, the game is composed of four missions where you will have to guide, organize and direct your battalions to glory. It's teeming with cinematic cut offs, military jargon and detailed military maps.

A recent Wired article points out that it has been developed so it is "harder to lose". You make use of extremely advanced precise technology against an enemy that "doesn't learn from experience". While we can see the obvious benefits of making US forces seem invincible, the tactic could backfire. What type of gamer gets his kicks out of a game where you can't lose?

Susan Nash, an e-learning expert, is also worried that the video game will trick new recruits into believing that a career in the army is all about "riding a joystick" in a comfy chair. In America's Army, you weren't allowed to play as insurgents. In F2C2 you can never lose. In games designed by the US Army to aid recruitment, is this all so surprising?

Check out the video here after the break:

So you've become addicted to scanning the globe, you know how to make various layers appear, like hospitals, parks or getting driving directions, but do you know where to find the special content from the Google Earth community? It's fairly simple: open up the layers column on the left, select 'Google Earth Community', then 'Community Showcase' and just browse through all the new content. We particularly like the UNESCO Heritage Sites, which shows locations of cultural and historical importance. Check out our video:

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Be sure to check out all the content made available in Google Earth. It's constantly being updated and some of it is really interesting. Just avoid having too many layers on the screen, otherwise it will become overcrowded with information.

You're kindly invited to join us in this new weekly series starting today in our blog. We'll be offering you a selection of the best Firefox extensions with which you can dramatically improve your web browsing experience, so get ready to give your Firefox a boost!

Gmail Manager is the perfect solution for Firefox users who are also the proud owners of a Gmail account. This neat extension allows you to check your email right from the browser's interface. Also, you can check several accounts simultaneously, receive new email notifications, review account details, read new message snippets and log on to the Gmail website with a single click.

All these functions are available through the extension's M-shaped tiny icon, which you can place either in the toolbar or the browser's status bar.

It's a mystery that has challenged man since the beginning of time - from Nostradamus to David Copperfield - how to predict the future. While we can't make any guarantees, we can offer a few crystal balls to help you through 2007.

If your moods are up and down like a yoyo, one way to monitor them is with Biorhythm Calculator. Your biorhythm is the cyclic evolution of your physiological state according to monthly, yearly and environmental changes. This program allows you to predict your emotional, physical and intellectual state based on your date of birth. You can even track celebrity biorhythms so you can see exactly how you compare to Britney Spears or even that Scientologist-du-jour, Tom Cruise.

If you look to the skies for inspiration, Asynx Planetarium might be your best bet. While offering no personal predictions, it can offer an insight into the night skies thousands of years into the future upon which you can predict your astrological destiny.

Finally, if stock market prediction is more your thing, check out SprinN Professional. SprinN monitors the latest stock market data to give you predictions on market indices, share prices and currency fluctuations.

Note that we can't guarantee the accuracy of any of these programs but if anyone finds remarkable similarities between their psychological state and Hugh Heffner's or makes a fortune on the stock market, please let us know.

According to gaming blog Kotaku, the Slamdance film festival decided to drop Super Colombine Massacre RPG from its shortlist of finalists. The controversial game allows users to experience the events that happened on April 20th 1999 at Columbine High, by enacting the two shooters, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris. In a statement on the game’s website, the creator, Danny Ledonne, explains that he developed the game to answer the question everybody is asking: "Why did they do it?" According to him, after playing the game, you supposedly get a "deepened" and "refined" understanding of the events of April 20th 1999.

Super Colombine Massacre RPG (SCM) was hoping to distinguish itself in the new Guerrilla Gamemaker Competition that will be launched at this year’s Slamdance film festival. But Peter Baxter, co-founder and president of the festival, decided to remove it from the finalists lists after a few of the financial backers pulled out when they learned SCM was in the competition. Ledonne was not angry at the decision but expressed his worries concerning "freedom of speech and video game development". It is the first time in 13 years that an entry has been removed from the Slamdance festival because of public protests.

Considering how fresh the Columbine story still is in people's minds, it's understandable that the game is to face censorship. Yet it's surprising that it happens at the Slamdance Guerrilla Gamemaker competition, an event for independent game developers that experiment "in art style, gameplay, metaphor, story, concept and time".

Although P2P networking still survives as a means of downloading video, audio and software, many people are now turning to torrents as a means of getting hold of their entertainment. While BitTorrent and BitComet rule the roost in terms of on-the-fly downloads, there are a few other pretenders to the crown that are worthy of a mention. BitSpirit is definitely up with the best of them, allowing you to grab hold of torrents quickly without any fuss.

The application is significantly easier to use than many of its rivals, however, BitSpirit disappoints compared with its peers when it comes to tracking active downloads. If you would like to access information on your current download then you need to access the torrent itself, rather than relying on the application to provide you with this information.

Instead of manually dragging all your new photos, videos and music onto your Windows Media Player library, just use the "media information changes button" in the library tab. That way the application will automatically browse your PC for new content and add what it finds into your library. If you add new stuff constantly, make sure you do this regularly to keep your media collection up to date. Check out our screencast:

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It's simple and only takes a few seconds. If you have the new version of Windows Media Player (version 11) installed, try it out.

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Ranking at number 9 in Microsoft's own Top Ten Tips & Tricks, ReadyBoost is on first sight an interesting way to speed up your Vista PC's performance without buying more RAM:

Windows Vista introduces a new concept for adding additional performance to a running system. Windows ReadyBoost™ lets people use flash memory on a USB 2.0 drive, SD Card, Compact Flash, or other memory form factor to provide additional memory cache—memory that the computer can access much more quickly than it can access data on the hard drive. Insert a USB 2.0 memory drive with at least 512 MB capacity. When prompted, click use this device to speed up my computer.

Microsoft is clearly keen to talk ReadyBoost up as an innovation. Like Paul Thurrott, though, we were left wondering about a couple of things. For example: what is the net gain in performance when using a 1GB thumbdrive as cache rather than your traditional hard-disk which might well have in excess of 100GB free space? Isn't this just a fancy name for moving the pagefile to a USB device? Matt Ayers responds succinctly in this useful Q&A session:

Even if you’re extremely careful about downloading only music which is compatible with your player, there comes a moment when you need to convert audio files from one format to another. And if you have never used this kind of software before, you may feel a little bit lost at the beginning: which program should I use? Will it have support for this or that?

Free MP3 WMA Converter is probably one of the best answers one could give to these questions. In spite of being quite plain both in aspect and functionalities, this little app does its job and does it well. So don’t let yourself be fooled by its simplicity and spare us five minutes to take a deeper look.

If one of your New Year’s Resolutions is learning a new language, you can count on iTunes to lend you a hand.

The iTunes Store Podcast section includes a whole category dedicated to languages with quite an interesting selection of available options, such as Spanish, French, Italian or even Japanese. Just visit the Store, then head to Podcast - Education - Language Courses and make your choice.

Besides, most of them are free, so you have no excuse to begin babbling your first words in whichever language you choose. Amuse-toi bien!

With the release of Zudeo, Azureus is jumping onto the legal torrent bandwagon. This application features the classic and extensive Azureus torrent client and adds to it an online platform from which you can download and submit legal audio and video content.

Zudeo’s interface is a complete shake-up to what Azureus users are used to. The bittorrent developer has decided to focus on online multimedia content and introduce user participation. The first thing the user sees is a list of thumbnails of the latest videos uploaded to Zudeo. You can browse these files by using the left side menu, divided in time, main channels and tags. The menu at the top also links to hot and new content. Zudeo takes the web 2.0 road and you’ll see that most of the files have tags. You can write out a comment and leave a rating. The program also makes it a no brainer to send a video by email and link to content directly from your blog or website. There’s also a little diggit tag for each file, to submit them to the ultra famous social news site. It’s still a shame that Azureus omitted all the other famous social networking sites like del.icio.us or reddit. Maybe in a few months?