Celebrate July with one of these 19 software downloads

The halfway point of the year has come and gone, and as we slide our way through the calendar, there are more and more software releases to keep track of. If you’ve been busy through the first week of July, here are some of the highlights that you may have missed.

Starting off this week’s selection of titles are a number of tools with a connection to the Internet. Connectify Lite 3.5 is a great free tool that can be used to turn your laptop onto a WiFi hotspot that can be used by other laptops or mobile phones. If you want to use the Internet as a platform for your photography, jAlbum 10.8 can be used to share your photos online. ShareMeNot is a browser extension that can be used to prevent social networking buttons from tracking you line -- it is available as ShareMeNot for Firefox 2.0.1 and ShareMeNot for Chrome 1.0.

Users of Microsoft’s Outlook PIM can turn to Microsoft Outlook Configuration Analyzer 2.0.0 to check the software for problems, while WSUS Offline Update 7.4 makes it easy to keep Office and Windows up to date. Microsoft’s .NET Framework is behind a huge range of tools, and .NET Framework Setup Verification Utility can be used to check your installation for problems that may be preventing other tools from running properly.

For more entertaining tasks, MediaMonkey 4.0.6 makes it easy to manage your music collection so you can always find what you want to listen to. VLC Media Player 2.0.2 (32-bit) and VLC Media Player 2.0.2 (64-bit) are releases aimed at Mac users as the latest version of the media player supports Retina Display.

Do you find that Windows Explorer is a little lacking for you, EF Commander 8.50 is a competent replacement with a raft of helpful built-in utilities, and Z-Cron 4.9 is an advanced task scheduling tool that far exceeds the capabilities of Windows’ own built in tool.

If you’re looking to gain a little extra space to work with, Dexpot 1.5.18 is an interesting virtual desktop manager, complete with impressive 3D transitions. Back to tools which make it easier for you to work with files, Attribute Changer 7.10 is all you need to change time stamps, file attributes and more, while IObit Smart Defrag 2.5.0.1160 places you in full control over your hard drives, with the latest version adding support for Windows 8.

Security is important whatever you happen to use your computer for, and USB Safeguard 6.0 Free is a handy tool that can be used to encrypt the contents of your USB drive so that its files cannot be accessed by other people. To help stay safe online, Comodo Dragon 20.0 is a Chrome based browser with a keen focus on security, but no support for extensions.

If you’re more concerned with taking care of the files you have stored on your hard drive, backing up data is absolutely essential. Genie Backup Manager Home 9.0 inclues everything you need to secure your data with impressive performance and rich feature-set.Genie Backup Manager Professional 9.0 includes additional encryption options, advanced scheduling and other features that will please the more discerning securer of data.

That’s it for another week. We’ll be back in another seven days to help you keep up to speed with the week’s releases.

Photo Credit:  Kudryashka/Shutterstock