Leopard's new and improved iChat boasts two features that are sure to enhance both workplace productivity and friends and family tech support: screen sharing and document sharing. In a nutshell, iChat now makes it dead simple to review documents with one or multiple chat partners in what it calls iChat theatre (pictured) or share screens—either your screen or the screen of the person you're chatting with—VNC-style. That means that not only can you see what's going on with the other person's screen; you can also control it.

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Virtual desktops have been popular amongst geeks for years, but they're just starting to catch on with the consumer desktop crowd; in Leopard, Spaces be thy name. Previously Mac users had an incredible virtual desktop application called Virtue Desktops as their desktop management option, but with the announcement of Spaces, development on Virtue Desktops was dropped. I'm a huge fan of Virtue Desktops, so in my eyes, Spaces has some pretty big shoes to fill. So how does Spaces stand up?

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Mac OS X only: Afraid of screwing up your Boot Camp partition when you upgrade to Leopard? Free application WinClone images your Windows Boot Camp partition for easy restoration to the same or another partition, just in case. The Leopard upgrade shouldn't disturb your Boot Camp setup, but a backup image is nice insurance, especially if you want to resize the partitions on your Mac's drive. WinClone can image an XP or Vista Boot Camp install. As always, back up your important data before using WinClone, which is a free download for Mac only.

One thing that Windows and Outlook have always had up on the Mac's default email and calendar apps, Mail and iCal, is Outlook's integrated to-do manager. Today the game changes. Leopard's new Mail and iCal applications introduce their own take on the email- and calendar-integrated to-do list. So now the question is: Is it any good? The answer: Yes. And no. But probably yes. The To Do manager, at the moment, is a bit of a mishmash of some very good and a few bad—or at least unrealized—features.

The Mail.app To Do feature resides in the Reminders panel of the Mail sidebar below Notes. Mail to-dos can be organized by due date, priority (high, medium, low, or none), title, and calendar (that's right, they also integrate with iCal). You can create a new to-do in a couple of ways.

First, click the To Do button in the toolbar. You'll jump straight to the To Do window, where you can enter the details of a new item. Alternately, you can create your to-dos from Notes (another new feature in Mail). Once you've written a note, you can convert any line of the note or the entire note into one or several to-dos. The strange-yet-interesting thing about to-do notes is that the new to-do will appear in the To Do screen as well as the note, and you can check it off in either place. In fact, you can check off to-dos in a third place as well: iCal.

iCal's organisation of to-dos is much more convenient than Mail's To Do view, if only for its more prominent focus on due dates and priorities and its sidebar display (so you can view to-dos along with application content). To get a look at your to-do list within iCal, just click the thumb tack button on the bottom right of iCal. From there, you can check off your to-dos, re-prioritise, or change other information by double-clicking the item.

My biggest gripe about Mail's implementation of to-dos is that you can't create a new to-do from an email (or anything else, for that matter) via drag and drop. Also, the Notes integration is completely bizzare since Apple dropped the ball on supporting iPhone-to-Mail syncing of notes. As is, it comes off like a pointless appendage to Mail.app.

Another little bug I ran into: I couldn't change the due date of a to-do from Mail when iCal was open. Instead, I had to change the date inside iCal—though I would assume this will be fixed with an update.

In the end, to-do lovers have a promising addition to Apple's email and calendar apps, but considering the breadth of full-featured alternative to-do list managers that have popped up in the absence of one from Apple (including ones that integrate with iCal in one way or another), it's tough to say whether Leopard's To Do feature will catch on for the hardcore list keeper.

The time has come. You've been salivating for months over all the exciting goodies Apple has promised to deliver with Leopard, and now that you've got your install DVD, you're ready to make the upgrade to Mac OS X 10.5. Presumably you've already prepared your Mac for Leopard, so all that's left is the upgrade. Here's how it works.

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US-centric: Freeware mobile phone application and web site Cellfire delivers paperless coupons to your mobile phone so you'll never have to clip coupons again. With Cellfire, you can find a coupon for the business you're patronising right before you check out. Just download Cellfire to your mobile device or point your cell browser to Cellfire's homepage after signing up (tons of devices are supported, either through the download or the web site) and you've got access to coupons to anywhere from Ben and Jerry's and Subway to Hollywood Video and Virgin Megastore. To use a coupon, just flash your on-phone digital coupon at checkout. I haven't tried Cellfire yet, but if the inevitable blank stares and laughter one might expect to receive on holding up a cell phone and asking for a discount doesn't bother you, Cellfire looks like an interesting way to save a buck.

Windows/Mac/Linux (Firefox): Firefox extension Readeroo integrates with your Del.icio.us bookmarks to make keeping up with your backlog of unread links a cinch. Let's say you stumble onto a link on Lifehacker that you're dying to read, but—weirdly enough—you're at work and can't get to it (damn boss looking over your shoulder). Rather than tossing it carelessly into your ever-expanding, unmanageable pile of unread bookmarks, add it to Del.icio.us by clicking your Readeroo Add button—which automatically bookmarks the link in Del.icio.us with a "toread" tag. When you finally get a spare minute or two, just click Readeroo's Read button to cycle through your unread links and automatically tag the item "donereading" (the actual tags used are customisable if you don't like the defaults).

If you still prefer adding and tagging your Del.icio.us bookmarks using a more robust extension like Del.icio.us Complete, you can still do so—just tag the item with "toread" and Readeroo will pick up on it. You'll need to provide the extension with your Del.icio.us username and password the first time you use it. If you've got an unwieldy mess of Del.icio.us bookmarks you've never gotten around to reading, this extension is a must-have. Readeroo is a free download, works wherever Firefox does.

You can easily improve the quality of your conversation (and improve the likelihood that people will actually listen to what you have to say) by dialing back on the quantity. Self-improvement site The Positivity Blog has more:

Going on and on about something may be a way to show off your cleverness. Cleverness is overrated. It's mostly a good way to feed your own ego...If you keep it simple and clear and if you focus on the people you are talking to you'll become more free to say what you want. It might not feel as good at first since you are not stroking your ego or reinforcing your cleverness. But I have found that in the long run it makes things easier and reduces some of your own inner limitations.

This would certainly cut down on superficial chatter, but there's a fine line to walk between being succint and being blunt. How have you improved your conversational skills? Let's hear in the comments.

Gmail's IMAP support roll-out this week had nerds all atwitter about the possibility of synchronised email access across devices, computers, and clients. IMAP is far superior to regular old POP for fetching your messages and maintaining your folder list whether you're on your iPhone, office or home computer. If IMAP's got you curious but you're not sure what desktop application to use with Gmail, consider the extensible, fast, cross-platform and free Mozilla Thunderbird, our beloved Firefox's little sibling. Here's how to get the full Gmail experience in Thunderbird with IMAP.

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SearchMash, Google's sandbox web site for new search ideas, now has a Flash-driven version with some helpful features but a few drawbacks as well. Clicking through results (or navigating with a keyboard) brings up instant thumbnail previews of web sites, videos, and images, and rolling to the left edge brings out a recent search toolbar. As with the Ajax-based SearchMash site, the lack of ads is a nice side benefit, but the combination of Flash and framed results can make link-grabbing difficult, and many users might be annoyed at having to click twice to reach their result. Still, SearchMash might make a decent tool for finding a web site you remember seeing or for quick-look image browsing. This version of SearchMash requires Flash 9 for viewing.

All platforms: Add tasks, set appointments and keep on top of your schedule with Mozilla Sunbird and Lightning, the free calendar managers that function as a stand-alone client or extension to the Thunderbird e-mail program. Version 0.7 of Sunbird/Lightning touts a redesign of the user interface and task-adding dialog, along with user-requested functions like adding tasks in different timezones, more customizable recurring events and an improved "Today" glance panel. Sunbird and Lightning store information in a SQLite format, but can also work with iCal data or Google Calendar through an extension. Both are free downloads and work on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

After losing his iPod Touch when it slipped out of his pocket in a cab, skater Sean Bonner decided to make his iPod easier to hold onto.

I started thinking about about things I've owned in the past that I didn't lose, and which ones of those were definitely not slippery. The answer was immediately obvious. A skateboard.

He purchased a length of black grip tape and covered the back of his new iPod with it. So far, it hasn't moved.

Mac OS X only: To-do lists are a great way to keep your mind and projects organized, but messing with your program or web-based list's features defeats the purpose. Enter TaskPaper, a seriously simple task manager from the developers of the distraction-free word processor Writeroom. TaskPaper, now in a finished 1.0 version, keeps it simple with text-based lists that can be modified by TextEdit or any other editor. The interface keeps the focus on projects, tasks and checking them off, but tabbed windows and context browsing allow for bigger-picture views. TaskPaper is available as a free trial for Mac OS X 10.4 or later, but a licence will set you back $18.95. If you're looking to get serious with to-do lists, check out Gina's guide to the art of the doable to-do list, or get even more streamlined with paper lists.