Keeping your Windows computer virus-free doesn't have to cost you a lot of money. Heck, it doesn't need to cost you any money. There are plenty of good options available for those of you on the hunt for free antivirus software.

Wait - free? Don't companies like Norton make a good business out of selling antivirus protection? Why would someone give it away? Developers of free antivirus solutions like Avast and AVG are counting on a couple of things. First, that you'll like the free offering enough to want to buy an upgraded version of their product. Second, that if enough home users talk about how much they love it that their "computer guy" at work might want to use it on the company's systems.

The free options listed after the break offer the same kind of protection as the boxed software you can buy at the store.

Two things to keep in mind:

First, as with other free software, some of the developers ask for support in the form of a toolbar install. They're all optional, so make sure to un-tick the checkboxes during the install if you don't want the toolbar.

Second, a number of the developers offer a non-free version on the free version's download page via a service called TrialPay. The totally free version is normally on the left, the TrialPay offer on the right - make sure you're clicking the link you actually want.

Netflix users are in an uproar, and rightfully so.

If you're not familiar with what Netflix is, then sorry...please move along.

Kidding...you can rent movies online, and you can create a queue of what you want to see, and they'll mail them to your house as they're available. It's like an autopilot feature and it frakkin rocks.

A few months ago the company put out an even cooler feature that let Netflix account holders create multiple queues under one account. So basically your baby daughter, mom, uncle Steve, and your parrot Whiskers could have their own queue of movies that they want to see.

Such a time saver, such a great function that really reminds you why you use and love (and pay for) Netflix.

Don't go and try to sign up just for that feature though, because Netflix just announced that they're taking it away.

Since Google Reader began reporting actual numbers of subscribers, we have since found out that it's actually one of the most popular web-based readers. That said, one of its least popular features has been its ability to email a feed item you're looking at. Reader would typically pop up a Gmail window, which in itself wasn't such a bad thing, but the message being sent was mostly mashed together gobbly-gook containing a 'This item was sent to you by a Google Reader...' message, along with the entire text of the post you were reading. Nearly anyone who's used the feature would likely agree that this was not the prettiest way to share something via email with your friends and colleagues. Adding insult to injury, it seemed like a trivial thing for Google to fix this feature; they simply could have tweaked the template that creates the Gmail message to contain maybe just a link to the feed item. Easy enough, right?

Well Google, staying true to their form, finally wound up doing much more than making a few changes to a template; they have completely revamped Google Reader's email feature to offer a vastly improved experience. Clicking 'Email' on an item now displays an in-line email compose window, complete with the ability to pull names and addresses out of your Gmail account. As for what the message actually sends, Google also went above and beyond by including the news item in its entirety; headline, pictures, links - the whole nine yards. While this might not be such great news to those who use plain-text email clients and services, Google is probably betting that most recipients of Reader-shared messages are using Gmail or some other form of capable client.

The new email features should be live and kicking for all Google Reader users, as we noticed them already enabled on our accounts.

With so many great webmail offerings out there, only two are considered the frontrunners. Yahoo, the oldest player, has just revamped with unlimited storage and some drag and drop interface changes, while Google has the threaded simplicity thing going on adding built in Chat, Doc, Calendar, and Spreadsheet applications with a less cluttered appearance.

In this battle, who is the real leader? Veronica Belmont from Cnet put up both Yahoo Mail and Gmail up to the test on which one of these AJAX email applications is the leader. She weighs in and compares all of the strengths and weaknesses of both services in interface design, features, speed, organization, and security to come up with the end winner.

You just might have to whip out Ross's post-install checklist, because the WordPress crew have unleashed a major update, dubbed "Ella", to their web-based blogging (and now CMS) platform. Matthew Mullenweg lays out a few of the many new features in their announcement post, but to summarize, v2.1 includes:

• Autosave - this one's pretty self-explanatory; drafts are now automatically saved to prevent those dreaded "my browser crashed an all I got was this lousy blank post" moments
• New Tabbed editor - effortlessly swap between WYSIWYG and code views
• Lossless XML import/export - moving between WordPress blogs has never been so easy
• Spell checking in the WYSIWYG editor
• Search engine privacy option - is being indexed by Google putting the squeeze on your personal space? Exclude yourself from their prying bots
• Set any page as the front page - CMS-like features are slowly creeping in, and this is a major one that users have been requesting for a while
• Improved upload manager - more manager than mere conduit, you can now administer all your uploads
• More AJAX administration - not content with mere eye candy, the Dashboard now includes more AJAXy goodness for better and faster back-end management

Other notables include pages that can now be drafts or private, significant improvements to database code, link sub-categories, over 550 squashed bugs, better internationalization and much, much more! Aaron Brazell also chimes in with 10 things you need to know about the new version, including some screenshots of how a few of the new goodies look and work.

Finally, if you can't wait to get your hands on the upgrade, you might want to check the WordPress 2.1 plugin compatibility page in their codex, as beta testers and developers have been laboring to put everything they can through the ringer to see just what works with the new version, and what might need updating. As with all major platform updates like this, however, you might simply need to wait a little while for everyone to get on the same page. Either way, this looks like an impressive upgrade to an increasingly popular blogging tool that i personally can't wait to get my hands on.

Yahoo! is rolling out some nice new features in their Yahoo! Mail Beta. Their first issue fixed was the service's loading speed. This new update seems to have sped up the time it takes to load new messages and send new messages, areas that once seemed too slow for me, that now seem to be quite substantially faster. The Yahoo! team has also added some new features, including a weather display, and a Calendar update. Even though most of us never leave our computers, it's always nice to see what the weather is like outside. Now we can, with the addition of a cool little weather display on the top of the welcome page. The Calendar has been updated to allow for setting reminders when adding or editing new calendar events. Yahoo! also fixed a number of bugs that I wasn't aware of, including some IE annoyances like excessive clicking sounds. As for compatibility, no worries--the Yahoo! Mail Beta will work on Windows Vista, as it's on the supported operating systems list now. An extremely useful feature that has been added is the support for keyboard shortcuts. A series of shortcuts using the Ctrl, Shift and arrow keys will allow you to move up and down your lists, or move on to the next or previous messages.

Although I'm a big fan of Gmail, I think I should pay more attention to what Yahoo! is up to; these are some serious releases from the team. Don't have these goodies on your Yahoo! Beta Mail account yet? Ryan Kennedy the official Yahoo! Mail Beta evangelist informs us that the update is being rolled out over time, so sit tight!

Just one more thing....Yahoo!, let us know when this thing is coming out of Beta.

Digg just unleashed a major update, cranking out a number of new features geared towards more powerful management and customization of the user experience, as well as incorporating multimedia in a big way. Kevin Rose posted an overview of the new features at Digg the Blog, complete with a short video and narration of all the cool new stuff.

The first big new feature is an upgraded UI with a focus on customizing how you use the site, what topics you see headlines for and a flexible width for the 30-inch display owners in the audience. Users can now toggle entire topics in their user profile, so if sports and politics are the last thing on your digg agenda, they can now be entirely removed from it.

Next up is a new Top 10 Stories/Videos section (pictured above to the right of headlines) for each top-level category (Technology, Science, etc.), which aggregates the top stories of those categories in real time.

Not sure how I didn't notice this for a week, but Pandora now has a few new features, as described on the Pandora Blog. The biggest new features is the addition of a "QuickMix" button, which is a sort of super-shuffle for when you're in the mood for music from across the board. When you click on QuickMix, Pandora will start playing songs from all of your stations. You can edit the QuickMix to exclude stations you don't want in rotation. The other new features are just icing on the cake: A "Move song" option that lets you remove the current song from the current station and add it to another station, and a new function to sort your stations by name or date added. I already listen to Pandora for a few hours a day, and I'm really digging the QuickMix for a change of pace. Thanks, Pandora!

Google has announced what is quite possibly the largest update to Google Reader since its inception, bringing an entirely new UI, more keyboard shortcuts, new bookmarklets and a whole lotta results from user feedback to the table. Overall, as a Google Reader fan for some time, I am pleasantly surprised by this wholly positive and usable update, but it isn't without a few confusing quirks.

The first and most noticeable update is the radical change to Google Reader's UI, bringing it more in line with the tried and tested UI of many other online readers, but still with much of the Google engineers' unique genius baked in everywhere. Above you can see Reader has adopted the typical folder/grouping system on the left, while headlines can be listed on the right.

A tipster by the name of OperaBoy sent us a screenshot of Opera X, and - if it's real - it looks tasty. Obviously highlighted is a 'Synchronize' feature, which looks a lot like Firefox extensions add-ons like Google's Browser Sync and Foxmarks, offering the ability to keep bookmarks, notes, newsfeeds and contacts in sync between computers. Whether Opera will be offering the actual sync/storage space, or if users will need to supply their own WebDAV/FTP like with Foxmarks, is yet to be seen.

Personally, I'm not a heavy Opera user (though I crack it open on occasion to play with the interesting stuff they're always doing), so I'm not spotting any other major features on their way in this new version, but that doesn't mean they aren't there. One thing I do know, however, is that the ability to sync all these things between computers should be a big appeal for those who, like me, are looking for a one-stop solution for an app/browser that can handle all these tasks well. I, for example, am a paid Backpack user, but I'm finding that it doesn't expand well for some uses, in part because 37signals doesn't offer any kind of a search engine for all your notes and lists. Depending on how well these features are implemented and how syncing performs, Opera X could turn out to be another trail-blazing release from the unfortunate and ill-deserved underdog of the browser market.

Tonight YouTube went down for a few hours for scheduled maintenance and came back up with a few new features. First is customized URLs, which allows you to "choose a customized URL for your channel, to make sharing your videos and favorites with friends easier." As I understand it this will allow video publishers to ditch URLs like youtube.com/profile?user=someuser and replace them with something more memorable. The second is YouTube Music, a new section for musicians to post their music videos. This presumably fits in with YouTube's plan to host "every music video ever created" and compete with MySpace Music, but so far it seems pretty incomplete--the YouTube Music section looks just like other channel areas on YouTube, making it very difficult to find your favorite artists. I can only assume this is slated to improve soon.

YouTube has also made some minor refinements to the display that appears at the end of a video. Oh, and there's one other change worth mentioning: They changed their "Play" button. The round Play button that used to appear on YouTube videos embedded in other web sites has been replaced by a more distinctive lozenge shape. The control area still looks as ugly as ever, though.

Update: There's now an post on the official YouTube blog discussing the changes.

del.icio.us is at it again, and this time they've added site thumbnails to the popular links on the homepage. Unfortunately, this is the only place thumbnails exist, but it's at least a step towards catching up to some of their competitors in this particular department.

Also making (another) appearance on the homepage is the re-introduction of popular tags, along with (from what I remember) some minor new UI elements as well. Bookmark counts are now in a more striking blue box, and I just noticed the tag cloud now uses red to denote tags that you share with everyone else (is this new or not?). Finally, on their blog they also hint at "lots of plans" for the recently updated del.icio.us API, but they offer nothing as hints towards whether it'll be a kitchen sink or a bookmarking A.I. that 'marks things for me based on my mood and past bookmarks. I guess we'll just have to wait (im)patiently.

Podcasting portal Odeo has announced a couple cool new features in its official blog. The first is a "Starred Audio Player," which could be described as a Flash widget that you can add to your blog or web site that displays and plays all of cool audio you've found and "starred" on Odeo. It lets you customize the colors and change how items are displayed. You can see an example of the Starred Audio Player in action here.

The second new feature is much smaller, but just as welcome: Resume Play. if you're listening to something on Odeo and close the page, when you go back to Odeo it will automatically resume where you left off. Excellent.

OSNews writer Adam Scheinberg has written a review of two popular photo sharing services, Flickr and Picasa Web Albums, on his blog. Apparently, enough of the OSNews readers liked the review so much that they pressured him into posting it to OSNews, which made me think there just might be something to it.

To be honest, I think he does a good job of reviewing both services objectively, so I don't want to ruin his conclusion. I personally am an iPhoto and Flickr user since I'm on Mac OS X, but I've heard great things about Google's Picasa, and I've poked around with Web Albums since Google released an uploader app and iPhoto plugin for Mac OS X.

Check out Adam's review of the two big-hitters and see what you think. You might even learn something new about these services.