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If you have the Google +1 button on your website – or indeed if you have visited any website that features it in recent times – you may have noticed that it used to be rather slow to appear.

However that has all changed now, thanks to Google’s efforts to improve the relatively new +1 service.  The button appears as a small rectangular box with +1 inside it.  It is easy to recognise because the top of the rectangle contains the four colours Google is known for – red, blue, green and yellow, in that order.  Now whenever you load a web page with the +1 button on it, it will appear three times as quickly as it did before.

The update has only been announced in the last day or so, which means that it may take a few days to be rolled out completely.  If you still get slow rendering at the moment it should change very soon, so that it loads just as quickly as the rest of any web page it appears on.

The good news – apart from the faster loading itself of course – is that anyone who features the Google +1 button on their website doesn’t have to do anything to get the faster service.  Everything is done by Google and all the webmaster has to do is sit back and wait for the faster service to arrive.

It is a nice tweak from Google, and perhaps one that is overdue.

If you’re on the go a lot or just need to be sure you can access your desktop or office computer quickly when you need to, then remote access software is probably something you’ve looked at.  Now, you can do it from your iPad or iPhone using apps like LogMeIn Ignition.

The app works pretty simply: you get a streamed image of exactly what’s on your desktop to your iOS device.  This means you can access any of your home or office computer’s applications, files, etc. through the iPad or iPhone’s screen and make changes, transfer files, send emails, etc. as if you were sitting in front of your computer itself.

Using yoru finger, you can move your computer’s mouse pointer, click/scroll/drag/double-tap the mouse, zoom in and out on things on the screen so you can avoid things looking too  small, and more.

With the new updates that were just added to Ignition, you can fully integrate your iPad with your home or office computer and even transfer files between remote computer systems from the device.

The app is feature-rich, runs very well, and has a lot of options for maximizing your productivity while using it.  You can even put your computer on “sleep” mode and wake them up via the app for access, then put them back to sleep when you’re done.  So no leaving your system on and wasting electricity.

A very nice app and worth having if you’re on the go.

The Magic Charger is a new wireless charger for the Mac’s Magic Mouse from Mobee Technology.  It sets up very quickly and works really well.

You put the special batteries (included) into the mouse and from then on, recharging only requires that you put the mouse on the charger (just set it there, anywhere on it) and it charges.  The batteries hold charge for about six days of normal use, but you can charge them as much as you’d like.

The design looks good with your Mac devices as well, matching the sleek and slim looks Apple is famous for.  It’s also very portable if you’re a mobile user.

It allows you to recharge your mouse without changing batteries or even opening the mouse, which means you’re less likely to break or lose something important.  It is powered from USB so you can plug it into your system or the wall (includes a converter).  It’s made up of recyclable materials as well.

Installation is quick: remove the old batteries and replace with the included Magic Charger batteries.  That’s it.  Very quick and cool.  Here’s video:

Disclosure Notice: I received free product in order to conduct this review. No other compensation was given.

The Hit List is a life management system from The Potion Factory.  It’s not just a to-do list manager or an alarm clock.  It’s a lot of things and all of them are extremely useful for those who live in a very busy world.

You can create lists of items to do, of course, but you can also organize them by work, family, importance, and more.  You can measure progress as you work on tasks, record the time spent on them, take notes as you organize, set up repeating tasks, synch with other apps and devices to keep your tasks together, and more.

For example, I set up a workday with my appointment schedule for the day, including addresses and contacts, and did this from my computer.  I synched that with my iPhone.  I made my first appointment and then, upon leaving, took some quick notes about it so I could put together some things discussed later.  I went to another appointment and this being a client meeting, I “clocked in” using the Timer feature.  After it was over, I “clocked out” and had the time stored for later reference for billing.

I had a voicemail, so I picked that up and it was a friend wanting to know if I had lunch plans.  I checked and I didn’t, so I sent him a text and said to pick a spot and let me know.  I added this as a Quick Entry when he replied, so now I had a 12:30 lunch appointment set and could forget about it since I was due at the soccer field for my son’s practice.

Through the day this continued. When I was in the office and at home, the phone synched so that my Hit List was updated on all my computers.  I organized the day’s notes and information and made task lists for the next day so I could get some emails and other things off to finish out the day.

It’s a great app, very very flexible and extremely useful.

As anyone who uses Twitter will know, keeping up with the different people you follow gets harder the more people you are in contact with.  However there is now a new tool you can use that makes it even easier to keep up with the best of your Twitter stream.

TweetPort enables you to get the highlights from your Twitter stream sent directly to your chosen email account.  This can be done every day, every week or every month, depending on your requirements.  This means that instead of being overwhelmed by messages from all your Twitter followers every time you log in, you get a regular email report instead.  This gives you an easy to read summary of what has been going on, and you can choose to access your Twitter account from the email if you wish.

TweetPort is currently offering a free thirty day trial of the service to all followers.  If you choose to continue with it after that time it costs $3 per month.  The system works by using an algorithm that provides the highlights of all the tweets that appear in your Twitter stream.

The crucial part of this new application is whether or not people will be prepared to pay for the service.  The cost has clearly been kept low and three dollars a month is not expensive at all.  But since there are so many free applications already available, it will be interesting to see whether TweetPort really catches on.

Want to see those killer 1970’s Budweiser commercials from when beer was beer and men had hairy chests? How about those big hair ’80s MTV music videos we all used to pretend to be morose to back in the day?

There’s now an app for that.

This may be one of the coolest apps to hit the iPhone and iPad in a long time. The Video Time Machine is an entertainment revolution happening in your hand.  It’s an app that lets you pick a year (any year) and then watch videos from that year in a sort of flashback retro video feed.

The app has access to over 10,000 curated videos from many eras, including classic silents from the early 1900’s through to Elvis and all the way towards today.  It’s integrated with Twitter, so when you find your favorite A-Team episode available on the app, you can share it with your friends.  Their enthusiastic response, of course, is not guaranteed.

You can sort results by category as well as year, so if you want to see all of the videos they have that feature the BeeGees, look under Music and you might find them.

The Video Time Machine was developed by Original Victories, Inc. and is available in the iTunes store.  Below is a commercial for the app: