Yoono is a Firefox extension that works like a sidebar and lets you stay updated with friends and websites. You can stay connected with friends on social network websites such as Twitter, Facebook, Piczo, Flickr and Friendfeed. You can also talk to your friends using AIM, MSN and Yahoo Messenger using the widget. Yoono is a great extension if you want to save time switching between all the social network websites you use and keep less messenger programs running because of the built in instant messenger support. In a way Yoono is like Flock in the way that it keeps you connected with your social networks such as Flickr but I think Flock does a better job at it.

DoubleTwist is a Windows-only desktop application which liberates your media from the Digital Rights Management (DRM) labels and lets you share it with your friends and also synchronizes it with various other devices including external devices such as Blackberry, Nokia N Series and Sony Ericsson Walkman Series phones. It can also convert the songs in your iTunes library and lets you share them with ease. Plus it also works on video.

I am not a huge user of Facebook these days but nevertheless I have been taking a look at their newly introduced Facebook Chat because Facebook is the only medium in which I can keep in touch with a couple of long distance friends. But since I don’t like the actual Facebook website that much anymore, I was intrigued to find a Pidgin chat plugin which allows you to integrate Facebook Chat directly into the Pidgin Instant Messenger interface - and for me it works more or less smoothly so far.

After hearing so much about the Yahoo acquisition bid and the Google monopoly predictions lately, I suddenly an urge to play a bit of world domination myself.

If you’ve ever played Risk, the classic take-over-the-world board game then you will know its no fun playing with less then three people, or even setting up to play at all. So I decided to have a bit of a look for a good - and free - game of Risk on the Internet.

After sorting through a couple of pages of Google searches wanting us to buy the official PC version of Risk I came across some nice unofficial alternatives for you to play.

New media, social media, networking… who cares what its called? The fact is, for better or for worse, I find myself using it more and more these days. Profiles have always been a pain. Who doesn’t get sick of filling in details and interests and photos, but lately having an up-to-the-minute status message seems to be the in-thing.

Networks like Facebook and of course Twitter started it, and now everyone seems to be adding them in. MySpace now has numerous Facebook-like features including the current status message, newsfeeds and applications.

Do you remember when Facebook was only for college students? It seems so long ago now that anyone and everyone has a Facebook profile. With the addition of website pages, artist pages, and blog tools, I am on Facebook more now than ever. If you have a Facebook profile (as I’m sure most Make Use Of readers do) then you are probably aware of the 20,000+ applications that are available. While many of them are pointless, there are some that are quite good. Here are the top 5 facebook applications that don’t totally suck:

1. Scrabulous