Using Google Latitude is really simple. Just navigate to Google Latitude on your browser, and after accepting Google’s request to share your location, you’re pretty much ready to go. For those of you worried about privacy, good news: Google Latitude features solid, extensive privacy settings that make sure you only share your location with those you trust.

Once located, Google Latitude shows your current location on a map – and that of your friends as well. You’ll need to request your friends permission before you can see them on your map though.

Obviously, Google Latitude is much more useful when used on a mobile device such as a smartphone or a tablet PC. It’s a great complement for Google Maps, and also a nice way to get in touch with friends around your area. On the downside, of course, this means that having a GPS chipset on your device is an essential requirement to be able to use this tool.

With Google Latitude you can share your location with family and friends in a really easy way.

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Yes, there's an online version of Photoshop, but Pixlr Editor is just as powerful –and in our humble opinion, it features a nicer interface. Right after launching it on your web browser, you'll start noticing similarities between Pixlr Editor and Adobe's popular flagship: support for layers and masks, floating menus for tools and options, real-time preview, powerful selecting tools and what’s more, an impressive selection of filters and effects.

Pixlr Editor works with images imported from the hard drive, a website or an online gallery (Facebook, Picasa, Flickr and more). You can also create an image from scratch and work on it with the app's drawing tools. You have the possibility to open multiple images at the same time, though it considerably slows the tool down.

Another interesting feature in Pixlr Editor is its collection of special one-click effects, such as HDR, tilt-shift and kaleidoscope, among others.

If you need to edit an image and don't have Photoshop installed, Pixlr Editor is an excellent choice… and it runs in your browser!

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This free web application works in a similar way as Yahoo! Messenger or Windows Live Messenger. The differences are that Meebo requires no download, and you can chat to buddies across different IM and social media networks from the same interface.

Import your contacts

Meebo supports lots of the major IM clients and top social networks, including Facebook, Windows Live, Yahoo!, AIM and Google Talk. It also integrates with lesser-known services, such as Yonja, Dance Trippin, Ultimate Guitar and FooPets. The most notable omission is Skype, which is not supported by Meebo.

Using Meebo's accounts console, you can add all your network accounts very easily, enabling or disabling them individually if you want. All of your online and offline contacts appear in the tidy Buddy List console. Here you can manage all of your contacts, search for buddies and start group chats. The Buddy List can even be popped out, so it pulls away from the browser and can be used like a normal desktop app.

Chatting with Meebo

Double-clicking on a contact in the Meebo Buddy List will launch a chat window, from where you can start IM-ing your buddy. Chat options include changing the text font, size and color and choosing from a range of smilies (albeit a limited range).

There are plenty of cool chat features in Meebo. You can make audio and video calls, send files and play games, all via the chat window. The app also keeps a record of your chat history and allows you to view user profiles.

Meebo also has a 'Rooms' feature which allows you to set up private chat rooms and invite different contacts to join. These rooms are designed to offer an easy way for you and your buddies to watch online video and looking photos together. Paste in a URL from a site like YouTube, Google Video or Flickr, and you'll all be able to enjoy the content at the same time, in Meebo's integrated player. Unfortunately, this feature failed to work at all during our tests.

What else you can do

Your Meebo experience can be customized via the Preferences menu. Here you can adjust your IM settings, and also personalize the Meebo interface from choosing from a range of themed wallpapers.

Besides the main web app itself, Meebo has plenty of other tools to help you keep in touch with your friends. For instance, there's a mobile app for Android and iPhone devices, a Firefox extension that displays instant notifications, and a desktop-based notifier, too.

Meebo is a fun and practical tool that helps you keep in touch with all of your online friends from the same place.

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Though Kindle books are already accessible on almost all platforms (with the Kindle native application for Windows, Mac, iPhone and Android), Amazon has decided to make this access even wider and easier with the Kindle Cloud Reader. Created in HMTL5, the Kindle Cloud Reader currently works on Google Chrome and Safari only, with more browsers coming soon.

Kindle Cloud Reader has support for offline reading, which means that once your Kindle books are synced with your computer you can keep on reading even if you lose your Internet connection.

The app also includes pretty much all the functionality and configuration options you find in Kindle native apps, such as bookmarks, personal notes, the book’s cover and table of contents if available and syncing to the last page read on any other device.

Kindle Cloud Reader provides you with one more way to access your Kindle library, right from your web browser.

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Largely aimed at the younger audience, hi5 is free to join, but requires coins to buy gifts, access the Flirt network, or play certain premium games. Coins can be earned by taking part in certain promotions, or you can buy them with real money.

Signing up with hi5 is very simple and doesn't ask you to fill in lots of information about yourself, like many other social networks do. Once you've registered you can then spend time building up your hi5 profile: creating an avatar, posting status updates, adding photos, inviting friends, etc.

Connect with people

Although there's no live chat feature on hi5, there are still plenty of ways you can interact with your Hi5 friends. You can send them a message, give them a gift and 'high 5 them' (similar to poking in Facebook). You can also create friends 'circles' in order to group your contacts.

The Flirt section of hi5 allows you to exchange chit-chat with people you might be interested in hooking up with. You can enter the age range, sex and location of people you're interested in and then flick through profiles of matches. Be warned that some of the profile pictures contain nudity, so this section isn't really suitable for under 18s.

Play free games

There's a wealth of free games available to play on hi5, ranging from puzzles to skill games, as well as other applications. You'll also find more in-depth games on the site, which can be played in exchange for coins.

Although it has a considerable user community (more than 50 million monthly visitors right now), hi5 feels a lot more sparse than Facebook. There are less groups, fan pages and the like, and many of the ones that exist don't generate much activity.

If you like flirting and playing games, you'll have fun with hi5. However, it's certainly not one of the classiest social networks around.

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First there was the regular web app version of Angry Birds. With the release of Angry Birds Heikki, there's now a version for racing fans.

Gameplay

The web version of Angry Birds is nearly the same as the mobile edition. The same likewise goes for Angry Birds Heikki. Your aim is to destroy the green pigs and smash their strongholds on the right side of the screen by throwing birds at them. To fire a bird, you use a slingshot as a catapult, which is on the left side of the screen.

Every time you fire in Angry Birds Heikki, you need to carefully adjust the aim, power and angle of your shoot in order to hit the target. To help you improve your aim, Angry Birds keeps the trajectory of the previous bird as a dot line on the screen.

Angry Birds Heikki

One key difference to Angry Birds Heikki is simply the images. Instead of blocks of ice and wood that make up those dastardly pigs' forts, you get to enjoy tires and other racing paraphernalia. In that way, the differences between Angry Birds Heikki and other variants are more superficial than anything.

As of now, new levels will be unlocked on a date-specific basis to coincide with the approach of real-life F1 races. This will either keep users coming back to the game as the championship approaches in November later this year, or else make less diehard fans lose interest or simply forget to check back. Angry Birds Heikki also requires you to register with an email and a password before you can play, which might be off-putting to some users.

For those who didn’t have enough of it on their mobile phones, Angry Birds Heikki offers new levels for racing and general fans alike for free as a web app.

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Microsoft Producer for PowerPoint (formerly Microsoft Producer for PowerPoint 2003) used to be a downloadable application but nowadays you can only use it online. Microsoft Producer for PowerPoint 2010 is simply designed to allow you to access your PowerPoint files on the move from wherever you are in the world as well as create basic PowerPoint presentations for free.

PowerPoint now works via Microsoft's SkyDrive and so to access your PowerPoint presentations, you'll have to upload them first which requires signing-up for a Windows Live ID. After that, using Microsoft Producer for PowerPoint 2010, you can share documents with others, collaborate on them and create basic PowerPoint presentations with ease.

There are several templates to choose from and the interface is based on the desktop version with the Office ribbon to guide you through the various functions on offer. There's also a button that takes you instantly into the desktop version if you have it installed.

Microsoft Producer for PowerPoint 2010 is an excellent albeit slightly limited tool to create PowerPoint presentations online for free.

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Utilizing your gardening skills, with the occasional help of Crazy Dave, you have to harvest sunlight to grow an army of plants to destroy the hordes of approaching zombies. Each Plants vs Zombies round starts with a clear lawn, and you have to build up your defenses, usually starting with sun producing sunflowers, then peashooters, and so on.

As you progress through Plants vs Zombies you are given a larger armory including mines, bombs and more. While your capabilities improve, so do the zombies - you'll meet a range of zombies which require different tactics to be destroyed. The 60-minute demo gives you a great introduction to this really well balanced game. The attacking zombies are paced just right, so you're always under pressure to keep planting, while you have to do pretty badly to get overrun and lose.

The graphics are cheerful and detailed, while the sound features some amusing effects that never get irritating. The main game is broken up with mini-games, like bowling, which help to keep it feeling fresh. The mixture of real time strategy and cartoon zombies is pretty irresistible, and it's hard to imagine someone not enjoying Plants vs Zombies

Plants vs Zombies is cheerful, fun, and a remarkably addictive game. Try it out!

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There are lots of options when it comes to online FPS games, but BeGone is unusual as it's browser based. Unity allows BeGone to have impressive graphics: This is no Call of Duty, but it looks surprisingly good. You can change the camera view from first person to third person, which exposes the average animation of your character. Sound is pretty average, limited to environment noise, gunshots and groans.

A game of BeGone can have up to 12 players, in two teams. You spawn at on end of the map, and simply have to move around trying to kill the opposition, while not being shot yourself. Kills win you money, which can be spent on better weapons. This of course means other players may have better guns than newbies, and there seems to be no way to play in "expert" or "newbie" games.

While the game generally runs smoothly, there are sometimes moments when the frame rate drops, most often when you are being shot at, which is annoying. This is made worse by some bullet animation disappearing sometimes - you will feel you are being shot by an invisible hail of bullets sometimes! Hopefully these glitches will be ironed out, as without them BeGone would be an enjoyable, if not very deep multiplayer shooter.

BeGone is impressive for a browser game, but in the end feels old fashioned and buggy compared to 'real' action games. It's perhaps a signal of the quality of browser game we can expect in the future, but it's not up to scratch yet.

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The online app uses a large international network of servers to simulate the uploading and downloading of files. Click on the Begin test button on Speedtest.net and you'll be invited to run the test using either the default server, or choosing one yourself from the map. Speedtest.net will then perform a latency test, before measuring download and upload performance.

Your results are displayed in a small, easy-to-understand window, which you can copy to your desktop if you like. This shows you the download, upload and ping speeds, along with information about your ISP and the server that was used in the test.

There's plenty of extra analysis available on Speedtest.net if you want it. The service can show how your result compares with your ISP's average, and the Your Results section gives a more detailed breakdown of the test process, which can be exported as a CSV file.

If you're geeky about internet speeds then it's well worth having a look at Speedtest.net's World Results section, where you can check out stats about internet performance in countries and cities around the world.

On the downside, Speedtest.net doesn't allow you to set individual package sizes to analyze and the test isn't very configurable in general.

Speedtest.net represents an easy and clear way to measure your internet speed, although the validity of the results cannot be assured.

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The main difference between Tumblr and other blogging platforms is ease of use: you can create a Tumblr account with just an email account, and start posting in less than two minutes. The online publishing editor in Tumblr has templates to create and share regular text posts, videos, photos, quotes, audio files, chat logs and links.

Personalization in Tumblr is simple; you can customize theme and appearance, create extra pages, and link it to other social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. There are free and premium (paid) Tumblr themes to choose from and, if you have the necessary knowledge, you can also design your own.

Besides being a publishing platform, Tumblr offers also some social networking features, like the ability to ‘follow’ other Tumblr users as on Twitter, ‘like’ special posts as on Facebook and republish posts on your own Tumblr from other people (the so called ‘reblog’ function).

The Tumblr system lets you have a Tumblr subdomain (something like myname.tumblr.com) or link your blog to a domain name you already own. In the first case, however, it can be difficult to find a free domain name – and it’s a bit annoying as well, as there’s no way to check name availability before sending the form.

If you’d like to start a blog in the simplest possible way, give Tumblr a go. It won’t disappoint.

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With Facebook you can easily keep in touch with friends, find people you lost contact with years ago and share all sorts of information with them: status updates, links, videos, photos and more. It’s precisely this amount of personal data that has caused Facebook some trouble over the years, with users complaining about privacy. But privacy on social networks only depends on you: on how much information you want to share, and how you configure your privacy settings.

Talking about settings, Facebook includes a bunch of them to customize your profile (personal data, education, work, hobbies and so on) and configure your privacy, in terms of who can access the information you publish. You can create different user groups with different sharing privileges, so that you have control over who sees your data.

Your profile in Facebook features the so called Wall, where you can share messages, photos, videos and links with your friends. You also have a real-time chat to talk to contacts who are also online, and private messages for more confidential information.

Besides these basic social characteristics, Facebook also includes pages for popular actors, bands, movies, TV shows, Internet websites, sports, activities and pretty much anything you can think of, which you can join as a fan. Another important element in Facebook are applications: small apps added to your profile which enable you to play online, send postcards, take quizzes, exchange gifts and much more.

In short, Facebook is the quintessential online social network, with all the functionality and features you need to keep in touch with your loved ones. The only thing you should be concerned about is the amount of time you can end up wasting on it!

Facebook is the most popular online social network – a place where you can keep in touch with friends, share links, photos and more, and engage in all sorts of online games and activities.

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Overview

Formerly known as Windows Live Hotmail, Outlook.com is not only free but other offers "unlimited" space, alongside integration with SkyDrive.

New interface

Outlook.com has a completely new interface from the old Hotmail. Much like Google's popular web-based service Gmail, Outlook.com's important folders are located on the left of your screen. Everything from documents, flagged emails, photos and shipping updates are located under the "Quick views" main folder. The more traditional and expected folders for your inbox, junk mail, drafts, and sent messages are also situated to the left.

At the top of your Outlook.com screen is a dynamic tool bar that will change depending on the content you're currently viewing. Chat is also integrated with your Microsoft Live and Facebook contacts, making it a convenient way to keep in touch with friends and family while simultaneously accessing your email.

Unfortunately, there are no right click options in a few places, notably the People and Calendar sections, which might present frustrations for some users.

Conclusion

Overall, Outlook.com is a great improvement on Hotmail's outdated interface. It's still playing catch-up to Gmail though in a lot of different ways. While the chat integration and easy to use contact management system are huge pluses, it's unlikely to sway hardcore Gmail users away from a service that offers a great Priory Inbox, and integration with Google Plus, as well as a myriad of other Google services.

Outlook.com is a vastly improved upgrade to a popular web-based email service that most former Hotmail users will undoubtedly appreciate.

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