If you’re one of the few that like to keep all of your software open-source, then chances are you’ve given Microsoft Office the flick and are using OpenOffice. Well, OpenOffice has been updated to version 3.2 and come with a plethora of new features to satisfy your document-making and office needs. OpenOffice should also be notably more stable and faster to open and use.

OpenOffice is available for Windows, Mac OS, most Linux distros and Solaris and is a great free alternative to Microsoft Office. You can grab the download from OpenOffice.org.

Today sees the release of the highly anticipated update to the most popular bittorrent client: uTorrent 2.0. One of the major changes to uTorrent in 2.0 is the addition of the Micro Transport Protocol (uTP). The uTP aims to reduce network congestion and interference between uTorrent and other network-using applications – this is one of the reasons ISPs throttle torrent traffic and uTP aims to solve that issue.

For the end-user the benefits of uTP are faster downloads thanks to less network congestion, and faster web browsing while uTorrent is running. For ISPs, less congestion means that the torrent protocol is gentler on their network, which should benefit them as well as other users using the network. And for those wondering if the interface has changed, it has, but only slightly (see the screenshot below).

You can download/upgrade to uTorrent 2.0 by downloading it from here. If you need to downgrade to 1.8.5 for whatever reason, you can grab it from us here

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I find myself using this really simple add-on for Firefox all the time. Basically what it does is when you highlight text in a passage/title/link/whatever, then drag and drop it anywhere, it will search Google in a new tab for the highlighted text. It also works with unlinked URLs – just highlight an unlinked URL such as google.com, drag & drop it and it will automatically go to the URL – and photos – just drag & drop to download the image (you can disable that if you like).

You’ll find yourself using it a lot if you’re a Firefox user, so head over to the QuickDrag add-on page now to download it.

Of course, not much fresh news here for those who are already using Google Chrome 4.0 via the beta channel, but Chrome 4.0 for Windows has finally gone stable; sorry Linux users, you’re stuck with the beta channel for just a bit longer. The major change for Chrome 4.0 is support for the extension framework, which should rival Firefox’s Add-ons and create more competition between the two browsers.

Currently, there are over 1,500 extensions available for Chrome, including ad blockers, several Google product enhancement tools and a lot of extensions that are available on Firefox already. Also new in Chrome 4.0 is bookmark sync, which synchronises your bookmarks across your different machines so you don’t have to create them on each machine – to use bookmark sync you’ll need a Google account which, as a Chrome user, you should have already.

Head over to Google’s Chrome page to download the browser if you feel like adopting it right now, or you can update to 4.0 from within Chrome.

Sun’s VirtualBox is an extremely handy (and free) tool to use for virtualising operating systems inside your current OS. It is one of the best free virtualisation tools available, making it a great solution for those who don’t want to pay for programs such as VMware Workstation.

VirtualBox runs on most of the popular operating systems that are available today including Windows, Mac OS X, Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Debian, Solaris, Red Hat and more. You can virtualise most Linux distributions as well as most versions of Windows (both DOS and NTFS); Mac OS X is unsupported unfortunately. We installed VirtualBox 3.1.2 on our Windows 7 32-bit machine and wrote up a guide on how to get an OS running inside a virtual machine.

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Another cool new feature that will be present in Adobe Flash 10.1 (as well as GPU Flash acceleration) is a private browsing mode that works within the browser’s private browsing mode. When you activate private browsing from inside your browser, Flash Player will store all the data you collect during the session (such as history, cache, cookies, passwords)  in a temporary location, which is then erased when the session ends to fully keep private browsing private.

The new feature will only work with some browsers – Internet Explorer 8.0+, Firefox 3.5+ and Chrome 1.0+ – private browsing in Safari isn’t currently supported but should be in later builds. Adobe Flash Player 10.1 is slated for a first half of 2010 release.

There have been several betas and release candidates, but Firefox 3.6 is now finally ready for the general public to update to. For current users you will be happy to know that 3.6 is 20% faster than 3.5 thanks to better JavaScript performance, start-up times and responsiveness. A new feature called Personas has also been included, which is simple browser theming with a single click and no restart.

To download/upgrade to the latest version of Firefox, head over to the Mozilla website to grab it. The full list of updates can be found below:

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ImgBurn is by far the easiest and best way to burn disc images on your computer to an actual disc – and it’s free too. When you have an image on your computer, just right click the file, choose burn using ImgBurn, set up your options and wait for it to burn. Simple, easy and completely free and it supports a wide range of disc images and disc types (including Blu-ray). No need to use Nero or another bloated application for your image burning any more.

Today it appears as if Mozilla has decided to completely change the way they release new versions of Firefox. They have removed Firefox 3.7 from the development schedule and added a completely new process in its place. Updates will be released more frequently which add new features and security; these updates will be released every “four to six weeks” rather than with the bigger updates. Major releases, such as Firefox 4.0 due for release at the end of the year, will be rarer.

Director of Firefox, Mike Beltzner, thought that the old way of releasing updates was too slow and when many features were released at the same time, show-stopping bugs were more likely to appear. With the new process bugs will be less likely and we will get new features much faster, such as the new updated “Lorentz” which will put add-ons in a separate process to reduce the chance of a crash.

If you’re wondering where the next Firefox disappeared to, Firefox 3.7 will become just another normal update in the new 4-6 week update schedule. Firefox 3.6 is on-schedule and will be released sometime in the next week or so.

To help improve the security of their users, Facebook has teamed up with McAfee to give every one of the 350 million members free access to McAfee Internet Security for 6 months, after which users can pay a discounted rate to continue enjoying McAfee. This new team comes up after McAfee announced that Facebook and Twitter would be huge targets for malware this year.

Facebook has also integrated McAfee security into their website. If your Facebook account is compromised, they will temporarily deactivate your account an online scan will activate to rid your computer of viruses, after which you can restore your account and return to normal. To start getting protected with your free copy of McAfee, visit their Facebook page and go to the Protect Your PC tab.