We’ve got 20 tickets to give away, and all you have to do to be in with a chance of winning one is to send us your name and address and we’ll let you know if you’ve won.

Closing date for entries is Wednesday March 10.

Click here to enter the competition.

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Product features:

· Room-filling 12-watt speaker great for iPod, MP3 and other audio devices

· Small and lightweight – great for travelling, mini parties in the park, garden and home.

· Unplugged – battery as well as mains powered.

· iPod charging

Subscribe at  http://www.myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/wvm/p049

Offer expires 17th March 2010

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Facebook is one of the most popular websites on the internet for sharing information, photo galleries, videos and more with your friends.

Some of this information may be useful to share with people you know, but it is an absolute goldmine for people intent on stealing your identity. With just a few items of information from your Facebook page, someone could take out a credit card, apply for a loan or access your bank account.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t share this information with your friends, however. Facebook contains lots of privacy settings to make sure that your information is only available to the people you really want to see it.

Step-by-step: Safeguard your privacy

1 Navigate to the settings

The privacy settings of Facebook are powerful enough to ensure that only your friends can see your information. To change the privacy settings of your Facebook profile, click the Settings link located at the top right-hand corner. Next select Privacy Settings to begin editing who can see your profile.

2 The Privacy hub

This is the main page that enables you to choose which privacy features to change. Privacy settings are divided into sections: Profile, Search, News Feed and Wall, and Applications. You can also add people or email addresses to a block list, to preventing them seeing your profile and interacting with you.

3 Profile privacy

Clicking Profile takes you to settings about who can see the information on your profile. It is broken into sections and for each there’s a dropdown box of options for who can see it – Everyone, My Networks and Friends, Friends of Friends, Only Friends or Custom. It’s best to select Only Friends.

4 Contact information

Facebook is great for letting old friends get back in contact, so promoting your website and email address can be a good idea. You don’t want everyone to see this, though, because you could end up with an inbox full of spam. Set who can see the information by clicking Contact Information.

5 News Feed and Wall

The News Feed shows your friends what you are up to, such as when you comment on a video, add someone as a friend or change relationship status. You may not want to broadcast some of these events, so click News Feed and Wall and uncheck any changes you don’t want to share.

6 Search privacy

The Search link takes you to a page where you can set who can search for you and what information they’ll see. When someone searches for you in Facebook, they see your profile picture and other information, which you can change. The most important option is Public Search Listing. If this is checked, people could type your name into a search engine, such as Google or Bing, and find your profile. This is an essential feature to turn off to prevent unknown people finding your profile.

7 Applications

Applications are mini programs, such as games, that you can add to your profile. They can be fun, but when a friend adds an application to their wall, it can access their data – including your profile. Click Applications, then Settings and uncheck the boxes to prevent third-party applications viewing your profile.

8 Safe and sound!

After following these steps, your Facebook profile and the personal information it contains are now safe from unknown prying eyes. This doesn’t change how you and your friends
interact with each other on Facebook – it just means that you can enjoy Facebook without worrying about identity theft.

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Inside issue 41:

• Get Windows inspiration with 21 new things to do today!

• Learn essential Windows skills, such as giving your computer a healthcheck

• We tell you everything you need to know about netbooks

• Learn how to get more from email

• Quick and easy ways to enjoy free music on the web

Also with issue 41 we’re giving away 2 fantastic free gifts!

Gift one

Windows Tips Book

68 pages of essential fixes for all Windows users

Gift two

Free disc worth £60

The Missing Programs

43 vital applications no Windows computer should be without

Watch out for it in your newsagents from February 17 2010 or alternatively subscribe here to get the issue.

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Try them all today!

Windows key and Home
Clears all windows expect the current open one

Windows key and Space
Peek at the desktop by closing all open windows

Windows key and Up Arrow
Maximize the window

Windows key and Down Arrow
Minimize the window

Windows key and Left Arrow
Snap the window to the left side of the screen

Windows key and Right Arrow
Snap the window to the right side of the screen

Windows key and Shift and Left Arrow
If you’ve got dual monitors, this shortcut will move a window to the next screen on the left. Very flash!

Windows key and Shift and Right Arrow
Same as the above shortcut but for the right screen. Still quite flash!

Windows key and T
Opens a thumbnail preview of the application or window that is currently open

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Instead of adding songs one by one, you use a set of filters to automatically fill the list with your choices. In this way you can create a playlist full of songs from a decade of your choice, a favourite artist or your most highly rated tracks. The list continues to update as you add songs to your library.

I’m going to show you how to make and edit auto playlists from scratch. I used Windows Media Player 11, available in Windows Vista and Windows XP. The version in Windows 7 is Windows Media Player 12. Where there are differences, I’ve explained them in this guide.

Step-by-step: Create an autop playlist

1 Create the playlist
In Windows Media Player 11, click the down arrow under the Library button. In Windows 7, the button is labelled Create Playlist instead. Choose Create Auto Playlist. You’re prompted to enter a descriptive name. Under Music in My Library, click the green Add icon.

2 Select criteria
Scroll to the bottom of the criteria menu and choose More… This pops up a more comprehensive selection of choices. For now, choose Release Year. In the New Auto Playlist window, the item Release Year is added to your criteria. Click the Last 30 Days link and pick a year from the menu.

3 Stacking up criteria
You can choose more than one set of filters for your playlist. Click on the green Add icon once again and choose Release Year once again. This time, click on the Is After link and select Is Before from the menu. Then choose the next year in the list after your previous selection.

4 Play your list
Finish by clicking OK. You should have an auto playlist that has songs released between the two years you selected. Double-click on the playlist name to start playback. If the navigation pane isn’t visible in Windows Media Player 11, go to Layout Options and choose Show Navigation Pane.

5 Refine the choices
If, after playing the list, you find there are some songs you like more than others, here’s an easy way to modify the automatic choices. Go through the list and use the Rating column to give each song a score. Right-click on the playlist name in the Navigation Pane and choose Edit.

6 Add new criteria
You’re taken to the Edit Auto Playlist dialogue. Under the criteria you added previously, click the green Add icon. This time, find and select the My Rating option. You can leave it at the default of At Least 4 Stars. When you click OK, any track rated below four stars is removed from your list.

7 Save your list
To convert the auto playlist to a normal one, right-click on the auto playlist in the Navigation Pane, then click Add to “Untitled Playlist”. The new list is added to the List Pane. Click the “Untitled Playlist” label and choose Rename Playlist. In Windows 7 you can do this just by clicking the label.

8 Review your handiwork
Brilliant! You’ve now set up and created an auto playlist using different criteria to choose tracks, then you refined that choice with a few expert tweaks. Auto playlists update when you add tracks to your library but normal playlists don’t. You can also convert your picks to an ordinary playlist.

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Windows 7 is packed with amazing wallpapers, but even these can become a little stale. A new feature, however, enables you to automatically display images from the web on your desktop. As long as these are available using RSS – a technology that enables content from web pages to be pushed to PCs without having to visit the original source – Windows 7 can display fantastic images on its desktop.

The search engine Bing is famous for its amazing background images, which are updated daily. So much effort goes into the image selection that Microsoft employs someone full-time to choose the images. What’s more, they are available via RSS, so it’s easy to enjoy these images on your desktop.

Step-by-step: Bring Bing images to your desktop

1 Find Bing code
Alongside Flickr, Bing is a fantastic source of images. What’s more, it’s possible to take an RSS feed of the images and have them displayed as a dynamically-changing Windows 7 wallpaper. Go to http://snipurl.com/bingrsstheme and copy the special code, by highlighting it and then clicking Page > Copy.

2 Save as
Now open Notepad (click the Start button and type in ‘notepad’ to find it) and paste (Edit > Paste) in the copied information. Next go to File > Save As and write the name bing.theme. This changes to a Windows 7 theme when you save it, rather than a text document. (The icon resembles two squares.)

3 Run theme
You don’t have to install the theme like a normal program to add it to your themes library – simply double-clicking the file you created populates your list in Windows 7. Once you’ve run the theme, you don’t need to keep the original file around either, so feel free to clear your desktop.

4 Change theme
Once installed, right-click on the desktop and choose Personalize. All your installed themes are listed in the main window, and you can see the customised RSS themes under the
My Themes tab. There are some Windows 7 themes already provided underneath to play with, too.

5 Choose your image
Bing changes its background image every day, but using the RSS feed doesn’t mean you’re stuck with today’s picture. If you go to Personalization > Desktop Background, you see a list of over 100 Bing images from the past months, and you can choose any one you like.

6 Stretch
Microsoft is still working on getting the rights to full size desktop images for its Bing collection, so the images are centred rather than full-screen – which isn’t ideal. To rectify this, right-click on the desktop then select Personalize > Desktop Background > Stretch, though there might be some loss in quality.

7 Try more
If you want to try more RSS backgrounds, download theme files for Flickr from www.istartedsomething.com. These download images from the feeds of several excellent photographers who have authorised their photos to be used. Just download the theme files and open them to add to your Theme library.

8 Sit back and enjoy
Now you have a desktop background which refreshes every day, with a never-ending stream of fantastic and awe-inspiring photos from all over the world. Look out for more RSS wallpaper feeds appearing, as photographers realise the power of the Windows 7 desktop background.

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Inside issue 40:

• Speed up Windows. Our plain English guide to the best fast, free and easy tricks to give any Windows PC a shot in the arm!
• Step-by-step: Streamline Windows 7 in 15 minutes
• 34 pages of expert step-by-step tutorials – more than any other magazine

Also in issue 40:

• Improve Internet Explorer – optimise your browser today
• We review the best Windows 7 netbooks
• 12 simple ways to surf faster! Get more from the web!

And much more…

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Six of the top 10 detections are Trojan horse programs, showing how much of a threat this type of malware poses to computers connected to the internet.

Trojan.Win32.Generic!BT – a generic detection for Trojans that comprised nearly one quarter (23.15 percent) of all the malware found. It remained in the top position for the third month in a row, growing by nearly 20 percent from 18.69 percent of all detections in December. It is a detection that includes many downloaders associated with scareware or rogue security products.

After holding the top spot on the list for most of 2009, the password-stealing Trojan-Spy.Win32.Zbot.gen held the second position on the list for the third consecutive month, decreasing from 6.23 to 4.91 percent of all detections.

The top 10 most prevalent malware threats for the month of January are:

1.      Trojan.Win32.Generic!BT   

2.      Trojan-Spy.Win32.Zbot.gen  

3.   Exploit.PDF-JS.Gen (v)   

4.   Trojan.Win32.Generic!SB.0 

5.   Trojan.Win32.Malware

6.   Trojan.ASF.Wimad (v)

7.   INF.Autorun (v)

8.   Virtumonde

9.   Packed.Win32.TDSS.aa.3 (v)

10. Trojan.HTML.FakeAlert.a (v)

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