Washington  - Need to edit a photo but don't have your favourite photo software handy? No problem. Log onto the internet and give the free FotoFlexer a try. This online photo editor has many of the tools found in standard photo editing software. You just upload a photo, and in seconds it appears in the FotoFlexer online application, where you can crop it, adjust the colours, beautify it, or perform dozens of other operations.

Frankfurt, Germany  - A few years ago, customers shied away from digital photo frames. Nowadays, they are the centre pieces of slide shows often with accompanying, background music.

But then, some people are already using the frame as an alarm clock or a digital photo album.

Digital photo frames first hit the market in 2007. It took them a few years to achieve widespread popularity, but now the digital multi-taskers are flying off shelves, said Constanze Clauss, a spokeswoman for the German Photo Industry Association in Frankfurt.

Hamburg  - Online deals abound, especially if customers keep their eyes on auctions where the gavel comes down on a workday. Many items selling for lower prices than comparable items when auctions are held at a weekend, reported a German computer magazine.

Therefore, sellers should schedule their auctions to end over the weekend, notes Computer Bild Spiele.

If a seller has problems describing his product, a quick scan of the internet should turn up a pre-written prescription. The magazine suggests using whole blocks of text as they often include the best item descriptions.

Kiel, Germany  - Faced with the task of erasing everything on their hard drive, most users simply opt to reformat the drive. If the drive or PC is to be sold or given to someone, that's not enough as data subjected to a formatting is not really permanently gone. In the wrong hands, a bit of time and skill are all that's needed to recreate data the user thought had been erased forever.

Washington  - Amazon. com got people talking again about electronic book readers recently when it unveiled the second version of its Kindle e-reader. This handheld device, with its high price tag but hefty library of titles behind it, has a relatively small but avid user base. Amazon's Jeff Bezos and others, however, believe that the e-reader is destined to displace paper as the distribution medium of choice for books, yet most people have yet to even hold an e-reader. What's the fuss about? Read on for some answers.

Q: What's the attraction of e-readers?

Berlin - A computer virus which has already hit defence computers in Britain and France has spread to German military systems, the Defence Ministry in Berlin said Saturday.

The Conficker computer worm has exasperated computer users right around the globe in recent weeks, but security-conscious military users had been thought to be better prepared to repel it.

The spokesman said several German armed forces sites had to be disconnected from the military network after hundreds of computers were taken over by Conficker. However, no other disruptions were reported.