Sadly, as I learned, not every user can actually enable the new security feature. Twitter says that folks must have a "verified phone number and confirmed email address", the former of which is still incompatible with my mobile operator: "Sorry, we don't have a connection to your carrier yet!". Other local mobile operators are supported, but not mine.

"Every day, a growing number of people log in to Twitter. Usually these login attempts come from the genuine account owners, but we occasionally hear from people whose accounts have been compromised by email phishing schemes or a breach of password data elsewhere on the web", says Twitter. I can only hope that I will not join the list of unlucky folks.

For users that have both a verified phone number and confirmed email address the process of enabling two-factor authentication is pretty straightforward.

Folks must head over to account settings, tick "Require a verification code when I sign in.", add a phone number and follow the prompts that show up afterwards. Users must type in the six-digit passcode each time they wish to log in from an untrusted browser.

Twitter follows companies like Google, Facebook, Dropbox, Apple and Microsoft in allowing its users to better protect the security of their accounts through two-factor authentication. It's about time, don't you think?

Photo Credit: Maksim Kabakou/Shutterstock

This may not be a surprise, but Skype explains its plans for the new Xbox and those ideas are ambitious. "Skype for Xbox One lets you enjoy your Xbox games, apps and live TV with friends and family as if they were right there with you in the living room, all through features such as group video calling and Snap", says Microsoft's Tony Bates.

Bates also tells us that Skype for Xbox One uses the new Kinect camera and your broadband connection to send one-to-one Skype video calls in full 1080p HD resolution. The camera has a wide-angle field of view, attempting to let everyone sit and chat comfortably, and the microphone is directional to block out ambient noise. Finally, Skype will work with the voice control showed off during the announcement.

Skype does nothing to clear the air about when the new console will arrive, but does give us more information on the capabilities that we can expect from this upcoming release.

The competition for your cloud business continues between Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Dropbox, Box and other competitors. Today Google takes its next step, with an attempt to make the experience better for Android customers with, what it terms, a "smoother" experience.

The search giant claims that Drive files will now be displayed in a clean, simple card-style. This will allow users to swipe between files to see large previews that will permit them to quickly review and discover the information they are looking for. If a customer wishes to keep some Drive files on his or her Android device, they will now be able to "download a copy" from the actions menu inside settings.

The new version of the app also contains a "Scan" feature that will enable customers to track paper documents like receipts, letters, and billing statements. OCR will take care of the rest, turning the document into a PDF.

Finally Google enhances the editing capabilities in Sheets, with the ability to adjust font types and sizes for a spreadsheet and tweak the cell text colors and cell alignment right from the app.

"The process of creating and accessing your stuff shouldn’t be, well...a process. Today, the Drive app for Android is getting several improvements to make creating and accessing your stuff on-the-go even easier", says Denis Teplyashin, Software Engineer for Google. The update is available now.

There are a couple of key enhancements to be found in this latest release, not least of which is support for formatting. The context menu can now be used to add richly formatted text so you can save even more time.

But the killer feature here has to be fill-in snippets. While regular snippets comprise static text, fill-in snippets can include input fields such as drop down menus, check boxes and more. This is great if you want to have a stock email on hand, but need the option to easily change a few key words or details here and there -- just call up the relevant snippet and make the changes with a few taps.

Another key new feature is a new Insert menu item which can be used in the creation of new snippets. It makes it much easier to include elements such as date, time and clipboard contents and brings the iOS version of the app more in line with the Mac edition. Snippets can be synced between the desktop and mobile apps so you always have access to the same snippets without the need to recreate them.

Of course, all of this comes at a price. The app will set you back $4.99 and can be purchased from the App Store.

What do you get for the money? The Lumia 521 packs a 4.0-inch IPS display with a resolution of 480 by 800, which can be operated using gloves. Power comes from a 1.0 GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor backed by 512 MB of RAM and a 1,430 mAh removable battery.

The Lumia 521 ships with 8 GB of internal storage and a microSD card slot which can extend the capacity by a further 64 GB (72 GB total). The smartphone only comes with a back-facing camera -- a 5 MP shooter capable of 720p video recording. Video chat fans might want to look elsewhere.

Other noteworthy specs include: HSPA+ network support, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth 3.0. The Lumia 521 comes in at 124 x 64 x 9.9 mm and 124.5 grams.

Similar to its other Windows Phone 8 handsets, the Lumia 521 features Nokia's exclusive app collection. It includes the HERE suite (HERE City Lens, HERE Drive Beta, HERE Maps and HERE Transit), Man of Steel, Zinio, Nokia Music, Burton and MICHELIN Travel among others.

The Lumia 521 is an attractive choice for T-Mobile customers looking to grab an affordable smartphone. Only the one year-old BlackBerry Curve 9315 gets close in terms of price -- $168 outright or $7 per month over the course of two years. Which one would you choose?

Microsoft certainly seems to be ramping up the help for its new operating system at the moment. First it uploaded a "Get to know Windows 8" video to YouTube, and late yesterday it published a "Windows 8 End User Training Brochure" in its Download Center.

Unlike the video, the 36-page PDF guide is definitely new (there’s a screenshot from April 2013) and will prove a godsend for anyone struggling to get to grips with Windows 8 or Surface. Each of the multi-colored pages clearly and concisely explains how to use a particular element of the operating system, with the aid of large, friendly illustrations.

There are pages on exploring the Start screen, rearranging apps and creating groups, information on the Charms, and changing settings for apps and your PC, and even cheat sheets for touch and mouse control, and keyboard shortcuts.

According to the information on the download page:

Windows has been reimagined to be all about you and your style of working. Put what matters most right on your Start screen, and get instant access to your people, apps, sites, and more, so you can spend less time searching and more time doing. No matter what you want to do, you can get it done quickly in Windows 8. Whether you’re collaborating on a large project, preparing for an upcoming conference, or traveling for work, you can use touch, mouse, and keyboard together–seamlessly–to do what you want, the way you want. This brochure will show you how to get around, navigate, manage apps, and personalize in Windows 8.

The timing of the release is odd -- Windows 8 has been out for seven months now -- but still, better late than never...

Now the company's subsidiary, AdMarvel, announces what it calls "a forward step in the evolution of online video advertising into the connected TV space". Opera explains that "AdMarvel for Connected TVs will provide publishers and advertisers with a dynamic, rich ad-serving platform combined with sophisticated ad exchange, ad serving and ad management functionality on connected TVs".

While more ads is never what a customer wants to hear, Opera promises that by helping publishers and developers find the right buyers at the right price for their inventory it will provide more relevant targeted ads for the end-user, which I suppose could be considered a plus, if you happen to be in the market for a particular item.

Mediaworks is already the largest mobile ad-serving network. Connected TV's is the next logical step, as the market has been growing quickly. "As connected TV households worldwide reach critical mass in the coming couple of years, the TV screen will become the next frontier in delivering relevant advertising to consumers," says Mahi de Silva, CEO of Opera Mediaworks.

With the growth of these devices, it was inevitable that there would be a market for capitalizing on the customers. For now, the Opera TV Store ships on Sony Bravia TVs, Blu-ray disc players and devices such as TCL, Humax and MediaTek. This will certainly expand as device growth continues.

Any old security suite can protect your PC with a firewall and an antivirus product so the big players are increasingly looking for new angles to try to get us to buy their products. BullGuard’s flagship offering already has parental controls, spam filtering and PC tuning tools, so the latest release -- out today -- goes for the personal protection approach.

No, it doesn’t come with a goon in a dark suit and sunglasses to follow you around. It offers safeguards against identity theft and data leaks, plus it has social media protection. As an added bonus the amount of online backup space included with the package is increased to 25GB.

The ID protection module provides an extra layer of defense, running in the background to alert you via email or text if personal information has been compromised. Social media protection allows parents to monitor their children's Facebook profiles. It also has an app for the kids themselves to help them avoid risky behavior.

It scans the protected profile and alerts both parents and offspring to signs of bullying, "sexting", links to inappropriate content and more. The service works across tablets and smartphones as well as PCs.

BullGuard's Head of Product Management, Alex Balan says,

The changing face of threats and the changing habits of users in the modern computing age means that consumers face an uphill battle when trying to stay one step ahead of malicious third parties. Our intention when developing Premium Protection was to address these concerns and recognize that it's just as important to protect the person, as it is the PC. We've placed a strong focus on identity and social media protection, incorporating tools that can help guard against new threats alongside all of the 'traditional' protection required to help keep you (and your children) safe online.

The software comes as a 3-PC license for $99.95 (£69.95 in the UK) and you can download a 30-day trial from the BullGuard website. Existing BullGuard Internet Security users will be able to upgrade to the new suite.

Third-party developers are able to add their own actions, and OrangeScape announces it is doing exactly that with its self-service workflow builder, KiSSFLOW.

KiSSFLOW lets users build business workflows that flow through various departments like Finance, HR, Marketing and Administration. Adding the quick action functionality will allow workflow users of Google Apps to respond to notifications, and complete tasks like "Approve", by clicking the button displayed in the message’s subject line.

"Working with its ecosystem of partners, Google continually adds exciting, user-centric new capabilities that take the maturity of the Google Apps platform to new levels," said Dinesh Varadharajan, head of KiSSFLOW at OrangeScape. "With this release of new quick actions, KiSSFLOW is thrilled to work closely with Google to provide simple yet powerful self-service workflow for Google Apps customers. Unlike some of the other products that have a portion of their users on Gmail, KiSSFLOW users are 100 percent Gmail users -- our entire user base is going to love this new capability".

KiSSFLOW is priced at $3.00 per user, per month and is available in the Google Enterprise Marketplace.

Photo Credit: Dmitriy Shironosov/Shutterstock

On Wednesday, cloud storage provider MediaFire, which now boasts 30 million users, launched support for native music playback and video streaming in its Android, iOS and web apps. The new feature is available through an update that is rolling out today.

MediaFire currently offers three plans -- basic (free), Pro and Business -- which come with 50GB, 100GB and 1TB of cloud storage, respectively. However, users who do not wish to shell out for a premium plan (either Pro or Business) are stuck with a 200 MB limit for uploaded files, which suggests that they are not able to take full advantage of both music playback and video streaming support.

While music files fall well below the 200 MB limit in most cases, high-definition videos (the norm these days) that folks might want to stream, like movies, well exceed this small size.

MediaFire is obviously aware of this, as the company now offers a 50 percent discount for its paid yearly plans. Both Pro and Business allow users to upload files up to 10GB in size, which is (unsurprisingly) enough to stream large 1080p videos.

What's that saying? Oh, yes, "Pay to play".

Photo Credit: olly/Shutterstock

You can buy plastic guns designed to add a touch of realism to first person shoot-em-ups on the iPhone. Just slide in your device, and use the screen to view the action and pull the gun trigger to fire. The Inteliscope is kind of like that, but instead of letting you attach your iPhone to a plastic gun, it’s designed to be used on real tactical firearms.

To clarify, it isn’t a game, rather it’s a "combination of a tactical rail mount for an iPhone or iPod and an app that brings critical ballistics and environmental insight to the shooter in real time". Among the features on offer is the ability to "shoot around corners with no head exposure". Handy.

The device, designed and assembled in Sandpoint, Idaho, apparently attaches to any firearm with a Picatinny (Mil-STD-1913) or Weaver tactical rail and features a portable quick-release protective cover for your iPhone.

The app’s on-screen HUD is packed with features including:

• Intuitive User Interface
• Custom Crosshairs
• 5X Digital Zoom
• Video Recording from the Shooter’s Perspective
• Ballistics and Firearm Data
• Built-in Compass
• GPS Position
• Local Prevailing Winds
• Shot Timer
• Flashlight and Strobe using Built-in LED

The Inteliscope is scheduled to launch in June and is available for preorder now, priced at $69.99. There are versions for the iPhone 5, iPhone 4/4S and iPod touch.

No word on an Android release, yet.

Daniel Gary, the developer behind the app, decided to further build on Itsdagram's success by releasing a free, ad-supported, version which comes with unlimited photo uploads and the same feature set as its paid counterpart. Previously, the trial variant only allowed users to post a single photo to Instagram.

The developer also released an update for Itsdagram, meant to bring new feature and iron out a couple of bugs. The app now boasts a tweaked UI (User Interface), a counter for followers, following and photos on the user's profile page and a refreshed live tile design which reflects its new icon.

Users have the ability to approve and deny follow requests, enable private profiles and save photos on the device. The app no longer allows to send feedback directly to the developer as the corresponding page is now removed.

The latest version of the app also comes with bug fixes and improvements for the finding friends feature, repeating notifications and the registration process.

Itsdagram (paid version) is available to download from the Windows Phone Store.

Itsdagram (free version) is available to download from the Windows Phone Store.

Posting on Tumblr, of course, many users are worried about the impact advertising may have on the Tumblsphere, others that Yahoo will change the ethos of the site. There was disquiet about rumors Yahoo would push to make it more family friendly by filtering content too -- around 1 in 6 Tumblr pages is reckoned to contain porn. Despite assurances, and the fact that the circulating message about the clean up has been exposed as fake, there's a lot of distrust out there.

Already websites like www.bluegrownup.com are springing up with the aim of offering disgruntled Tumblrs a new home. There’s also a tool to help users migrate their blogs to WordPress.

Personally I like Tumblr, though I don’t exactly fit its cool kid demographic. I've used it since 2010 and it's the only blogging platform I've stuck with over a long period of time, mainly thanks to its ease of use and its ability to integrate content with other sites. If Yahoo can manage Tumblr in a sensitive way and preserve what’s good about it I'll be happy to stay. It seems to have managed this trick with Flickr so there is hope.

It's worth considering what this means from the Yahoo side of things too. If you can locate a Yahoo user you won't find them worrying about upcoming changes -- Yahoo doesn't inspire that kind of user loyalty. But Tumblr isn't the only thing the company has bought recently and there's a definite pattern to the acquisitions. Earlier this month it purchased Astrid -- a smartphone daily organizer app -- for an undisclosed amount. In March it bought news aggregation app Summly from British teen entrepreneur Nick D’Aloisio for $30 million. What these and Tumblr have in common is an emphasis on personalizing the web experience. They’re also all targeted heavily towards mobile devices.

We can expect to see the impact of this shopping spree on the delivery of Yahoo's news and other services. You can already detect change in the air with the new tablet-friendly Flickr layout, though as with any redesign there are some users who don’t like the new look. Whether all this will be enough to make people really care about Yahoo again only time will tell. In the meantime Tumblr users should probably sit tight for a while and see what happens.

Photo Credit: fotoscool/Shutterstock

Irish security firm Safer-Networking Ltd has announced the release of Spybot +AV 2.1, a major reinvention of the package which sees the addition of virus protection for the Home ($13.99) and Professional ($25.99) versions (the free build removes malware and rootkits only).

A great deal of this new release is about delivering the framework necessary to support the antivirus engine. An update mechanism delivers antivirus signature files multiple times a day, for instance. The system offers real time protection, too, although this can optionally be turned off if there’s a chance of it conflicting with something else.

One potential risk with this kind of major change is that you’re affected by false positives, with the program flagging every tiny utility you’ve downloaded recently as a serious threat. Spybot +AV 2.1 allows you to remain fully in control, though, with a new "selective removal" option which means you can review its findings, and decide if you want to remove or keep any suspect files.

Elsewhere, this new release applies a number of tweaks to further enhance its performance. Smarter use of white listing for system files mean the program has less work to do; multi-core support helps it take full advantage of your system resources; and if you’re in a real hurry, there’s now an option to have the program scan only the most recently used files.

An integrated proxy server sounds particularly interesting, as it looks out for and blocks "suspicious cookies and access to suspect URLs". We’ve not been able to test this yet, but clearly there’s major scope for future developments here.

And other enhancements include a simplified "Protected Repair Environment" (Professional version only), which makes it even easier to clean up an infected PC; new French and English language support; and, of course, the usual interface tweaks to try and simplify program use.

The major improvements here are to the Home and Professional editions, then, but the free edition of Spybot 2.1 also has enough to justify the upgrade, and it’s available for download now.

Veteran UK developer Xara has released a brand new version of its acclaimed creative design tool, Xara Photo and Graphics Designer 9.1.0. Version 9 concentrates on revamping the package’s photo tools, with the introduction of Photo Healing, Background Erase and new masking tools and photo FX plug-ins.

Version 9 also adds other new features including a Shape Painter tool, support for graphical bulleting and numbers, and improved font support, with multi-weight fonts now accessible from the Fonts menu and direct support for Google Fonts implemented.

Xara Photo and Graphics Designer 9’s new photo tools are designed to be both easy to use and effective. The new Photo Healing tool -- like those in other packages -- is designed to quickly erase spots, scratches and other unwanted blemishes from photos, but is also designed to be used in conjunction with the program’s magic erase feature, making it possible to eradicate large unwanted parts of images with the promise of "amazingly seamless results".

The Background Erase tool, meanwhile, is designed to allow users to quickly cut complex images out of photos for placing on alternative backgrounds, while the new masking tools are designed to simplify the task of selecting parts of an image for applying selected effects too. These include both region painter and mask painter tools for selecting or protecting parts of the image from alterations.

Version 9 also debuts 11 new Photo FX plug-ins. These are used for creating striking effects, such as simulating the effect of High Dynamic Range images with the Fake HDR tool, or marking specific parts of an image as color before rendering the rest of the image in black and white.

Non-photo improvements
Away from the photo-editing component, Photo and Graphics Designer 9 also implements a new and easier way to recolor elements in complex grouped objects such as clipart or buttons. Users can now simply drag and drop a color onto the group, then pick the color it’s intended to replace.

Also added in version 9 is a new Shape Painter tool for painting on to an existing shape to enlarge it, add new areas or adjust its shape or outline -- it’s designed to offer a simpler alternative to the existing Shape Editor tool.

Font support has also been improved with support for selecting multi-weighted fonts in the program’s font menu joined by the implementation of direct support for Google Fonts, the free collection of fonts recently made available by the search engine giant. A new Google Font picker makes it easy to select from the entire collection -- currently numbering over 600.

The new build also sports some minor improvements: fly-out toolbars are now easier to use, JPEG/PNG conversion is now quicker and subtly better thanks to a new converter tool, while version 8 also adds compatibility with Windows 8 touch devices. Many of these subtle tweaks mirror those made to Xara’s Web Designer 9 tool, which was also recently released.

Xara Photo and Graphic Designer 9.1.0 is available now as a free trial download for PCs running Windows XP or later. The full version retails for $89.99 plus VAT.

Don Mattrick, President of the Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft, kicked off the event unveiling the Xbox One, a name that dispelled many myths about Infinity, 720 and 8.

If you wanted to watch the live unveiling but were unable to due to more pressing things -- like work perhaps -- don't worry. You can catch up on it here at your leisure. The hour long video is definitely worth watching, and because the presentation is no longer live, you can skip ahead to the really good bits.

As cloud-based storage gains traction vs. physical storage, there have been many big-name providers popping up, such as Google Drive and Amazon Cloud. However, Dropbox continues to be an extremely popular option for both personal and business users alike.

While already popular for business use, the company announced on April 10, 2013, that it was working on single sign-on for business users.  This would enable Dropbox to better integrate with the corporate world -- a huge step towards broader corporate adoption and acceptance.

Surprisingly, on May 21, 2013 (only about a month after announcing that it was being worked on), Dropbox released the single sign-on option.

But What exactly is Single Sign-on?

Single sign-on enables business users to access Dropbox based on their centralized corporate login without needing to login to Dropbox separately. In a corporate setting, this is a huge win for both the user and the admin.

It is a win for the user as it is one less password for them to remember. It is a win for the admin, as they will have less lost and forgotten password issues to resolve. More importantly, these wins translate to productivity and cost savings for the company.

Convenience and economics aside, single sign-on also provides increased security. Dropbox single sign-on will work seamlessly with existing password policies such as frequency of password changes and password requirements. It will also allow admins to easily add and restrict access to users.

So what are you waiting for administrators? It’s available now -- start making your user’s lives easier and impress your boss in the process.

Photo Credit: Sergej Khakimullin/Shutterstock

Google has released Chrome 27 for Windows, Mac and Linux. And while the previous build was less than exciting, this one delivers multiple improvements which see the browser’s page display time improve by 5 percent.

Much of this acceleration is down to smarter scheduling, with Chrome 27 making more intelligent decisions about what it loads, and when. Previously, for instance, the browser might tie up bandwidth downloading a vast number of images in parallel. Now it focuses on visible images, and limits parallel downloads to a maximum of 10, so the details you need should be displayed noticeably faster.

Another significant enhancement comes from moving Chrome’s resource scheduler into the browser process, which means it has much more knowledge about your system state. In particular, it can spot and take better advantage of network idle time, preloading images just as soon as it has the opportunity.

Elsewhere, the official release blog post talks about "improved spell correction, and numerous fundamental improvements for Omnibox predictions". We’ve yet to confirm these in practice, but anything Google can do here will be welcome.

Developers will appreciate the new chrome.syncFileSystem API, which helps them create apps which can save and synchronize data on Google Drive. (Although as the API notes point out, this is about app-specific syncable storage, not some general API which will access whatever files happen to be on your Google Drive.)

And of course there’s the usual selection of security fixes, 13 this time. 10 of these, all rated "High", were "Use-after-free" issues, memory corruption flaws which at their worst may allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code. (Chrome isn’t alone, though -- similar issues were uncovered in IE recently, and it seems that the area is a hot topic for security researchers right now.)

On balance, then, while Chrome 27 may look exactly the same, it has some very welcome changes under the hood. The browser is now available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

The Microsoft partner network (MPN) is Microsoft’s ‘official’ body for channel partners. A Microsoft partner is one of the 640,000 companies worldwide that build, sell, or consult with Microsoft products. Most of these companies operate in the small-medium enterprise (SME) space, selling services related to Azure, .NET and SQL, Office 365, and SharePoint.

The MPN isn’t a revenue earner for Microsoft in itself, but the reason for its being is pretty clear. A successful partner ecosystem means lots of lovely license sales for Microsoft. With Office 365 subscriptions to push (and Windows likely following this model sooner rather than later) the MPN is a pretty important area for Redmond guys right now.

Offline there is a lot of support (marketing, financial, networking) available to partners, but online is where things are much more interesting. There are a number of private portal sites for partners, offering access to useful digital assets. But the only public tool is something called PinPoint -- a searchable directory of partners.

The site seems to be moving away from a straight directory service, towards more of an online store. As the releases of Office and SharePoint 2013 (and of course Windows 8) show, apps are very important to the future of many of Microsoft's biggest products. The jury is still out on apps in Office and SharePoint, but any success will in part depend on the process of downloading, installing, and maintaining them. PinPoint seems to be an almost ready made solution.

This leaves a bit of a gap for people wanting to find a Microsoft partner to work with, a gap that a new site called PartnerPulse hopes to fill. PartnerPulse is a new way for potential customers to find, review, and compare Microsoft channel partners. Partners can join for free, create a profile, and use social tools to market themselves.

More than this though, PartnerPulse is a social marketing platform, one that is as much about what customers say about partners as what partners say about themselves. Sites like PartnerPulse, as well as those catering for non Microsoft vendors (VendorStack being a good example), are part of a wider trend in the enterprise world for peer reviews and social analysis.

So what does this mean? Well PartnerPulse gives every partner a profile. Every profile hosts any number of Pulses, which are short messages posted by anyone. Pulses can consist of text, images, URLs, or ratings. But Pulses can also be summed, and calculated. Text can be analysed for sentiment (are the contents generally positive or negative). Ultimately partners can be scored based on their Pulses. Who has the most Pulses, who has the most positive Pulses?

This is a new way for companies to think about marketing online, to think about reviews and ratings. Klout and Kred have made great strides in this area for individuals. Sites like PartnerPulse now want to do it for companies as well. If 640,000 members of the Microsoft Partner Network want to differentiate themselves, they need to sit up and take notice. Online marketing isn’t just about Google adverts, or sponsored blog posts. It is about people, reputations, scores, and reviews. PartnerPulse is trying to give Microsoft partners a platform, it will be interesting to see how they use it.

Photo Credit: nopporn/Shutterstock

Open-source multi-messaging client Instantbird 1.4 has been released for Windows, Mac and Linux. The latest version of Instantbird, which provides a central location for accessing multiple IM accounts including AIM, Yahoo, Twitter, Facebook and Google Talk, strengthens its Twitter integration by updating to the Twitter API v1.1, a necessary step to ensure it’s able to communicate with Twitter after June 11.

Other Twitter changes include the timeline being updated to include all people the user is currently following in the Participants list, while the character counter has also been improved to take into account automatic link shortening, making retweets easier.

Other changes in version 1.4 include improvements to the IRC authentication process, which now handles bouncers such as ZNC much better than previously. Users can now also easily override self-signed, invalid or out-of-date certificates for IRC servers.

The log viewer has also been updated so conversations are now grouped by date, while each account now keeps debug logs that are easily accessible via the Account Manager -- right-click the account in question, choose Copy Debug Logs and then paste the contents into a text window such as that of an email or a plain text editor.

Instantbird is built upon the Firefox core, and version 1.4 is now built on Mozilla 20.0.1, and uses libpurple 2.10.7. One side-effect of this change is that it is no longer compatible with Macs running OS X 10.5 or earlier.

The update is rounded off by a large number of bug fixes, which are detailed in the program’s change logs for interested parties. Instantbird 1.4 is available now as a free, open-source download.