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Byline: Steve Lawson

FRENCH car-makers Peugeot are to turn their cars into mobile Wi-Fi hotspots. Early next year the company will offer an optional in-car wireless router that uses a HSDPA 3G modem.

Dubbed WiFi On Board, the box will allow the user to connect using whichever carrier he or she prefers.

At this stage, it's not clear to what extent the unit is built into the fabric of the car - for example, is the modem plugged in to the ciggie lighter?

Nonetheless, Peugeot promise the unit will allow passengers to surf the internet and play online games while travelling, so there will be no more "Are we there yet?" from the back seat.

Peugeot haven't said how much the device will cost, though they did say the accessory will initially only be offered for the 5008 MPV, with other vehicles getting it added to their optional extras lists in due course.

PEDDLERS of internet "scareware" didn't waste much time doing their vulture impressions this week, linking their malicious websites to the sad death of actor Patrick Swayze.

Security firm Sophos reported that within hours of his death, websites were up and running which were designed to rip off users searching for more information on the Ghost actor.

They use a technique called "black-hat search engine manipulation", which means many sites that appear prominently in search engine results are hacked to point to sites offering fake anti-virus scanners.

Surfers visiting these sites are warned of non-existent security problems in a bid to trick them into buying dodgy, often useless software. Videos of Serena Williams' US Open tennis semi-final outburst and the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks were also exploited as themes for these scareware traps.

AND finally, I'm indebted to reader Richard Davidson for his tip about pixlr.com, which is a high-quality, cloud-based photo editing tool.

The brainchild of Swedish developer Ola Sevandersson, pixlr.com is a Flash-based website designed to mimic many of the attributes of Adobe's Photoshop image editing program.

Pixlr feels just like an installed application; it requires a broadband connection to get the best out of it, but it works on your uploaded images with speed and even boasts the ability to work in layers, just like Photoshop.

Once you have finished working on an image, you save it back onto your PC - the results are surprisingly good.

Oh, and it's totally free to use.