Stories by: Ursula Seymour

It's hard to imagine a world before the advent of the internet. We depend on it for everything: as a source for daily news fixes and research, and as a soapbox from which to tell the world what we think of it. It's a diversion and a photo gallery; it helps us manage our social lives and engage with other net citizens.

To back up, you can buy an external drive and save your data to that, or opt for an online service such as Carbonite 3.5

Cyberlink YouCam is webcam effects software aimed at making YouTube and video chat a lot more fun

Cyberlink DVD Suite 6.0 Ultra provides the best support for Blu-ray disc and HDDVD technology in the consumer market

Sony has entered the digital-imaging software fray, putting its Photo Go 1.0 application up against titles such as Adobe Photoshop Album and Corel Photo Album. With this market so well catered for, Sony could be wasting its time. However, Photo Go has an ace up its sleeve - it's genuinely intuitive and simple to use.

There are now three main players on the home video-editing stage -- Ulead Videostudio, Adobe Premiere Elements and Pinnacle Studio. Pinnacle Studio Ultimate 11.0 is owned by Avid, a leader in professional video editing, and this version sees some high-end additions borrowed from its experience in the industry.

With clairvoyants who say you were a great knight in the past, the interest in tracing your roots would be a lot more fascinating. Where once you would have had to store all the information, documents and photos in unwieldy spreadsheets or documents at best, or shoeboxes in the garage at worst, now software titles such as Family Tree Maker 2008 Platinum Edition provide you with a simple way to store and track all that precious data.

Australians are famous for their lack of skill when it comes to learning new languages -- the stereotype of an Aussie abroad being someone who just shouts louder to make himself understood. Rosetta Stone language-learning software aims to set us straight by providing an innovative means of learning a new language on your computer.

BitDefender provides a full suit of armour to protect your PC when it's online, either while you're browsing the Internet, sending e-mail or simply while your PC is connected via always-on broadband. It does so with the help of a suite of tools: antivirus, spam protection, parental controls, firewall and antispyware. This selection of weapons more than matches those offered by other Internet security suites, including Symantec and McAfee.

SystemWorks 2006 Basic Edition is the latest addition to Norton's suite of utilities. Despite the 'Basic' tag, it's aimed at more experienced PC users - those who already have some protection but want to beef it up a bit. No antivirus software is included.

Roxio's Easy Media Creator (EMC) 7.5 Supersonic is the result of years of acquisitions within the specialist media software industry. It pulls together tools such as VideoWave Photosuite, that Roxio inherited when it bought out MGI, and adds the applications Sonic Solutions brought to the party after acquiring Roxio.