What's New

Adding a new wallpaper to Windows 7 or newer systems is a straightforward operation. You right-click on the desktop, select personalize from the context menu, then desktop background and pick one of the available pictures presented to you.

There is also an option to browse a custom folder and another to change pictures in select intervals automatically.

Whenever you install an application on your Android device using Google's Play store, an icon pointing to it is placed on your phone's home screen.

While that is sometimes desired, it often is not especially if you have customized the layout of the home screen to your liking.

What makes matters worse is that there is apparently no option to stop this from happening. Apps don't display any installation dialog on the phone if you initiate the installation on Google Play and the Android settings don't seem to hold any preference either that could prevent apps from doing that.

Remember Baidu Faster, the free PC maintenance program that Baidu released some time ago? It seems that the program may receive a name change in the near future as Baidu just published the first beta of Baidu Cleaner.

While it is not clear if Cleaner will indeed replace Faster, it is obvious that both programs share features.

If you hang out on Reddit regularly you may have stumbled upon some of the site's NSFW (Not Safe For Work) groups.

These groups offer content that is not suitable for minors but the only protection offered on Reddit is a warning the first time you try to access one of those groups or a post in it.

While the majority of these groups are about image or video contents, some display links or textual information only.

Google announced recently that it made the decision to improve protection against unwanted software downloads in the Chrome browser and Google search.

The company did not reveal which sites would be affected by this and it was unclear if major download sites such as Sourceforge, Download.com or Softonic would get a pass or not.

Update: The messages don't show up in Chrome Stable yet.

When Windows 8 shipped without a start menu and forced anyone to use the full-screen Start Screen view instead to switch between it and the desktop regularly, third-party start menu replacements started to appear left and right.

Probably the (commercially) most successful one was Start 8. It was first offered as a free beta but later turned into a paid product.

The start menu replacement and many competing products allowed Windows 8 users to display a start menu that resembled the Windows 7 menu.

While Outlook.com is mostly about email, it supports chat as well. You can click on the chat icon while you are on the site to display available contacts and options to initiate an audio or video-call with them.

If you open the interface right now, you should see options to connect to your Facebook friends and Google contacts as well so that you can communicate with these contacts on Outlook.com.

The default option for those who are wondering is Microsoft's own messaging service Skype.

Depending on what you search for on the DuckDuckGo search engine, you may receive something that the site calls Instant Answers on top of the results.

The main idea behind the feature is to display results for queries that can often be answered directly in the search results so that get them immediately without having to click on links to visit websites that may display the same answer.

Some say that Firefox Hello is a milestone as it enables anyone to communicate with each other from within the browser without account requirement, plugins or paying for it.

Others dislike the feature for a variety of reasons that range from bloating the web browser to simply being not interested in communication features.

juggling around between multiple open applications is often not very comfortable on smartphones. Say a link is posted on your wall on Facebook. A click opens it in the default viewer application for links, you read the article and then go back to Facebook to continue whatever you were doing so.

Flynx promises to have the solution for this that streamlines the process. The main idea behind the free application is to collect links in the background, load and collect them there until you activate the collection and browse it without leaving the app you are using.