Mike Williams

Highlight (and share) the web with Highly for Chrome

Web highlighters can be a handy addition to bookmarks, highlighting blocks of web text so they’re easier to find later.

Highly is a free Chrome extension which takes the process to the next level, by making it easy for users to share their highlights with others.

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Kaspersky Safe Kids: free parental controls for all your devices

Parental controls are often regarded as a premium extra by security companies, and are only bundled with their most expensive high-end suites.

If you’re working on a budget then it could make more sense to opt for a specialist tool, and Kaspersky Safe Kids Free gives you a lot for no cost at all.

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devd is a lightweight http server

Web servers can be complex, with many modules to install and a lengthy list of settings to figure out.

Devd is an open source http server for 64-bit Windows, OS X and Linux, which proves it doesn’t have to be that way. The program arrives as a single executable, no other dependencies or modules required. Just unzip it and you’re ready to go.

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Opera 33 arrives with new branding

Opera FINAL 33 has shipped, complete with its brand new identity.

This isn’t just about a new icon. No, really. It’s three: a wireframe icon for the developer build, a partially painted version for betas, and a full 3D O for the final release, in Opera’s signature red.

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Sysinternals ships updates for Autoruns, Sysmon, RAMMap, Sigcheck, BgInfo

Windows Sysinternals has announced updates for six of its freeware tech tools.

Autoruns 13.5 gains a right-click option which enables startup programs to be resubmitted to VirusTotal for a new scan.

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Ashampoo Uninstaller is now free

Ashampoo has announced that its application remover Ashampoo Uninstaller is now free for anyone to download and use.

It may not look that way when you install it -- there are still prompts for license keys -- but register with your email address and you’ll get a free key immediately.

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Generate spectacular 3D fractals with Mandelbulber

Fractal generators have been around for a very long time, but most of them just provide yet another way to produce the same Mandelbrot-based imagery we’ve seen so many times before.

Mandelbulber is different, because not only does it give you more formulae to play with, but it also renders your creations in spectacular 3D.

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Optimize your mouse movements for a dual display PC

Set up Windows for a dual-monitor system and your mouse cursor should move smoothly from one display to the next.

This brings real advantages, but you may also notice a few issues, because the cursor doesn’t just stop at the edge of the screen any more. It’s all too easy to move to a scroll bar, or some other control at the far side of one display, and find your mouse cursor overshoots to the other screen.

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Polarr 3 is a versatile photo editor for Chrome

Polarr’s free online photo editor and mobile apps have generated a lot of interest this year, thanks to their well-judged mix of power and ease of use.

If you’ve not yet tried the editor for yourself, Polarr’s Chrome app is a great place to start.

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What’s really running on your PC? Part 1: Windows System Processes

PC too slow, possible malware infection, just not behaving as it should? Then you'll probably launch Task Manager or something similar to figure out what’s going on.

Sounds great, until you find 50 or more cryptically-named background processes and realize you’ve barely any idea what most of them do.

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Kalkules is a scientific calculator anyone can use

If you’re not mathematically inclined then it’s easy to assume that scientific calculators are too complex, out of your reach, not something you’ll ever need or use.

Kalkules is a free and portable scientific calculator for Windows which shows that isn’t necessarily true.

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Copyfish: free OCR and translation for Chrome

Copyfish is a free Chrome extension for extracting and translating text from images, videos, PDFs and more.

The package couldn’t be any easier to use. Click the Copyfish icon on your address bar, click and drag to draw a rectangle around your text, and wait: the OCR result is displayed in a few seconds, along with a translated version.

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NirSoft rates antivirus engines for false positives

If you regularly download small technical Windows tools then you’ll know they’re often incorrectly flagged as malware, even when from very trusted sources.

Which security companies are the worst offenders? Freeware developer NirSoft has released a report scoring Virustotal’s 57 antivirus engines for their response to its utilities.

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Clean up your pictures with Photo Noise Reducer for Android

Modern smartphones come with great cameras which generally deliver good results, but of course they can’t change the photographic basics: if there’s not enough light then your pictures are going to ruined by noise.

Photo Noise Reducer Pro is a free-for-personal-use Android app which provides various ways to denoise, smooth and generally clean up your images.

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Check your PC network security with Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer

Many antivirus tools and security suites now include "vulnerability scanners" which check PCs for security issues.

But despite its age, Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer still does a more thorough job than most, without costing you anything at all.

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