One of the much vaunted features of Nokia’s Series 60 range of phones is the capability of personalising your handset with custom themes. Just as we’re now encouraged to ‘skin’ desktop applications such as WinAmp media player, so Nokia want us to develop a more personal attachment to our phones by choosing or even creating our own themes. Series 60 Theme Editor is Nokia’s own free tool for creating complete theme packages.

Theme Editor’s installation includes some atypical steps, so it’s important that you don’t rush through the installation. The most problematic step is selecting default editors for bitmaps, vectors and sound files. No guidance is given for this step, and no default editing programs were found on my test system. Without any assistance from the manual, this proved to be a major stumbling block in getting the program to function at all. I’d therefore recommend installing Adobe PhotoShop for Windows prior to attempting to install Theme Editor, as the install program should detect PhotoShop as a default bitmap and vector editor.

At the end of the installation, I was prompted to restart the computer now, or wait and do it myself later. I chose to wait, but the installer immediately started trying to close my computer down. I managed to stop it, but this was an annoying reminder of why you’re always warned to close all other applications before an installation: things can go wrong.

Once up and running, Theme Editor doesn’t really improve much. After a few minutes tinkering with the program’s interface, it becomes clear that this is not an application aimed at users with a basic to intermediate skill level. Creating themes is a time consuming, fiddly and perplexing chore – as is trying to find help in the program’s manual. This is a shame, because Theme Editor is graphically well designed and looks like it could be used to produce some stunning results, if only it weren’t aimed at developers only.

In all, Nokia Series 60 Theme Editor is a disappointingly complex tool really aimed only at developers.

{t}Download{/t} Series 60 Theme Studio Carbide.ui 3.4 in Softonic

Do you often have to communicate with people who can’t speak your language? If you do then Translator+ makes for a great addition to your BlackBerry.

Translator+ is an online multi-translation tool that allows you to translate words and phrases between 12 different languages. By performing translations via a server rather than a local database, the program is very powerful, allowing the conversion of even the most unusual words and turns of phrase.

The user interface in Translator+ is clean and easy to navigate, if a little drab. You simply need to select the languages you wish to translate between from the drop-down list, then type the text you wish to translate and hit the ‘Translate’ button. The program’s settings allow you to tick the languages you want to appear in the Direction drop-down menu, making the whole process much quicker.

Another neat thing about Translator+ is the fact that it integrates with your email service, helping you to quickly compose messages in a foreign language.

All in all, Translator+ represents a fast and reliable way to translate text on the go.

{t}Download{/t} Translator+ 1.3.7 in Softonic

For the past few weeks I’ve been playing with the alpha version of Limewire 5, and I’m really impressed. Firstly, it’s been completely redesigned, and now looks ultra modern, sleek and attractive. While you still have the “Upgrade to Pro” pop-up every time you start, it looks and feels much friendlier.

All the features we’re used to are present and correct – there’s nothing that current users will find difficult to do in version 5 – and there’s something new too. If you have friends with Limewire and Gmail, Jabber or LiveJournal accounts, you can share file directly with them without sharing them publicly. Connecting Limewire to Gmail friend lists is genius – you don’t have to even think about IP addresses or any complicated connecting, just pick the files you want to share and that’s it.

Unlike older file sharing communities, you can’t search and add friends from the Limewire network, just use ones from you own friend lists. This is quite a change, and means two things – firstly, that you can have a really neat sharing community of your actual friends, and secondly that you can be sure no one is spying on what you’re sharing. I have read that Limewire is considering adding Facebook contacts to the app in a future release. Considering how many people are connected with each other through Facebook, utilizing that for easy file-sharing has wonderful potential. Not only can I get that warm community feeling when sharing music again, but sharing anything, from pictures to documents, is finally as easy as you want it to be.

I searched and found out that I wasn’t alone either. It seems that VLC Player has a tendency to be unstable on Mac for sometimes rather mysterious reasons. One problem concerns failure to play video due to errors in the preferences file as outlined by The Racing Geek. The solution:

1) Quit the application if it is running
2) Delete the VLC folder in /Users/USERNAME/Library/Preferences
3) Delete org.videolan.vlc.plist in /Users/USERNAME/Library/Preferences
4) Delete org.videolan.vlc.plist in /DRIVENAME/Library/Preferences

However, the main problem I’ve been experiencing is adding music. Since I wanted something simpler than iTunes, I decided to try using VLC as my default media player (big mistake) but adding huge amounts of music to it, simply causes it to hang and stop responding. Oh, how I miss simple apps like Winamp sometimes.

The solution I’ve found is simply to add music in smaller chunks. Album by album seems to work better although this is obviously painfully slow and inconvenient. Users on the Videolan forum are at a loss to explain why this happens – it seems that for all its simplicity, VLC cannot handle a basic operation like adding a large directory of music to it. The most likely explanation is that it can’t handle either metadata or album art, although if this is the case there should be a simple way to deactivate reading these.

So come on Videolan, when are you going to fix this simple bug that will enable Mac users to enjoy VLC Player as a lightweight alternative to iTunes?

With more than 4600 built-in vector symbols, drawing couldn’t be easier! Create a wide variety of business charts and presentations based on templates and examples while working in an intuitive and familiar office-style environment.

Luckily for us, the swindle is fairly easy to spot. First, double check every link before clicking on it, even if they come from people you trust. Also, make sure you’re on the actual Twitter

If this advice is already too late and you’ve been tricked, use the Reset password service to create a new password and regain access to your Twitter account. Meanwhile, you can find more inmore information about the whole issue on Twitter’s official blog.

The last time it happened to me, a chat box simply popped-up from a supposedly female contact called “-sex”. The spam message was quite simply a smiley emoticon with a party hat on.

While this type of spam is fairly harmless, other types are more sinister, such as the one received by a user on the Skype forums who reports:

At 08.00 today I had a skype call from ” his lordship”. (lordship.pua) skype user, He claimed to work for my bank and they were doing some work on my account !! Could i please confirm my sort code and account number.

Other users report spam messages that claim their PC has a virus, content that includes crude pictures and sexually explicit messages aimed at female users. The problem is due to the fact that Skype simply aren’t filtering spam as they should be, which I find inexcusable. I have no spam problems when using an IM client such as online” and “Display notifications in the Windows tray when someone requests my contact details”

On Mac:

1. Select “Skype” and then “Preferences”
2. Select the “Privacy” tab
3. Follow the same steps as for Windows above

Doing this obviously limits your availability on Skype and will cause problems if someone is trying to call you for the first time and you haven’t added them to your contacts. However, until Skype starts blocking spam itself, this is the most effective way to protect yourself from uninvited guests. For a more in depth look at Skype spam, check out this interesting article at VoIP News which dates the problem back to early 2008. If after reading that you’ve really had enough, then take a look at the post I wrote a while back about 5 alternatives to Skype.

Anyplace Control is a remote control software, that allows you to control a remote PC over LAN or Internet.

The program displays the remote computer’s desktop on your local screen and lets you use your mouse and keyboard to control that PC remotely. In other words, using this program you can operate a remote PC just as if you were sitting in front of it, right from where you are, no matter where you actually are.

The built-in File Transfer feature provides an easy way to transfer files to and from a remote computer.

Most of us have experienced – or at least witnessed – the effects that alcohol can have on a person’s basic ability to stand upright. Done Drinking puts you in the shoes of a guy who has had one two many pints and challenges you to get him home.

Done Drinking makes use of the iPhone’s accelerometer so you can control your drunken bum, Tipsy, simply by tilting the screen from one side to the other. It’s not as easy as it sounds as the bubbles have got to his head and made it virtually impossible for Tipsy to walk in a straight line, so you’ll need to be very precise in your movements. The object is to travel as far as possible without Tipsy falling over. You get three tries and your total distance is recorded in the high scores table.

Done Drinking is good fun to play with funny cartoon graphics and a humorous musical score. However, for me the game is just too repetitive and there aren’t enough elements in it to make it anything other than a brief diversion. There aren’t any levels as such and no obstacles, power-ups or other characters so the action quickly becomes a bit stale.

There are a few options in Done Drinking, such as volume, controls and the units of distance display – but I would’ve liked to have seen a bit more customization here.

Done Drinking is fun for a while, but the amusement soon gives way to fatigue and nausea – much like with booze itself.

{t}Download{/t} Done Drinking 1.0 in Softonic

If you want to make your phone look a little more pretty then the White Abstract Flowers theme could be just the ticket.

This elegant Series 60 theme transforms your phone’s home screen with a wallpaper consisting of some beautiful hand-drawn flowers on a white background. The White Abstract Flowers theme also adds a series of new icons to your system’s menus. Although these aren’t hideous, I found them to be a bit drab.

Anyway, if you want a bit of floral decoration for your mobile then the White Abstract Flowers theme is worth a look.

{t}Download{/t} White Abstract Flowers Theme (S60 3rd) in Softonic