Tor blocks third-party tracking, debuts security slider
Privacy software Tor has been updated to version 4.5 with a stack of new and enhanced features.
Improved website isolation stops most third-party tracking by social networking buttons, adverts and "mashup" content.
Generate gorgeous math-based art with Spirograph
Spirograph is a classic geometric drawing toy, developed 50 years ago and still popular today.
Normally it involves using multiple gears to draw intricate patterns on sheets of paper, but if that sounds like too much hassle then you could just download the open source (and entirely unofficial) Spirograph for your PC.
Caddy is a hassle-free web server
Running your own local web server can make it easier to develop and test websites, but there’s one small obstacle to install first: you’ll have to find, download and install one, and figure out how to set it up.
Caddy is a simple but surprisingly capable server which cuts through the usual hassle and can handle simple sites with no configuration at all.
Scan your Mac for malware with KnockKnock UI
Windows malware may get all the attention, but OS X can be vulnerable too, and if you think your Mac might be infected by something dubious then it’s important to take a closer look.
KnockKnock UI is a tiny free application which lists persistently installed Mac software (modules which are loaded when your system starts), submits them to VirusTotal for checking with 50+ antivirus engines, and reports the results.
treev is a Chrome search bar for your cloud files
In theory, storing your files in the cloud means you can access them from anywhere. But in practice, there’s often a complication: you’ll have to find them first.
Treev is a free Chrome extension which can search all your Google Drive, Dropbox, Trello or Box accounts from a single search bar.
Create, convert, encrypt, annotate, and watermark PDFs with PDF-Pro
If you need to work with PDFs then you’ve probably built up a whole library of tools to help out: a viewer, a creator, maybe a conversion tool, something else to split or merge files, and the list goes on.
EPapyrus PDF-Pro tries to replace all of these -- and a whole lot more -- with a single free (for personal use, $49 otherwise) package.
Synfig Studio's 2D animation suite hits version 1.0
After more than 18 months of intense development, open source 2D animation tool Synfig Studio has at last hit version 1.0.
The release brings a pile of professional features, including a complete bone system with automatic shape deformation, a new cutout tool, a dynamics converter with automatic friction effects, a bitmap painting engine, initial support for bitmap frame-by-frame animation, and more.
Find the best Wi-Fi networks around the world with wiMAN
Restaurants, malls, trains, hotels: it can feel as though Wi-Fi is everywhere these days. Until you’re traveling, when you can still spend an age trying to find a network, only to find it’s password-protected or the local winner of Slowest Wi-Fi 2015.
WiMAN is a free Wi-Fi manager for Android and iOS which can display a map of all your local Wi-Fi networks, along with estimates of distance (x minutes by foot/ car), and flagging them as "verified" (another wiMAN user has connected), "authentication provided" (another user has connected but you need a user name/ password) or "not verified" (no-one has connected yet).
NovaBACKUP 17 brings installation assistance, phone and email tech support
NovaStor has announced the release of its industrial-strength backup solution for Windows, NovaBACKUP 17 (priced from $49.95 for PCs, $349.95 for servers).
The update sees NovaStor’s remote installation service "Setup Assistance" included with the sale of every server product: a 30-minute online appointment with a product technician who will remotely install NovaBACKUP, configure it and schedule a first backup job for you.
Create quality HTML prototypes with Pingendo
Pingendo is a free cross-platform WYSIWYG application for prototyping web pages. It uses Twitter’s Bootstrap as a base, and responsive web design support ensures your sites will adapt to fit phones, tablets, laptops and desktops.
Getting started is as easy as dragging and dropping. Organize your layout; add lists, tables or forms; add some text, maybe a few images (single pictures, thumbnails, a carousel), and insert media objects including YouTube videos and Google Maps.
Outlook for Android comes out of preview
Microsoft has dropped the "preview" tag from its free Outlook for Android app, following a host of recent updates and improvements.
The interface has received a colorful revamp, and been redesigned to better follow Android design principles. The app now supports IMAP accounts, as well as Office 365, Exchange, Outlook.com, iCloud, Gmail and Yahoo! Mail.
Stream video torrents instantly(ish) with Ace Stream Media
Ace Stream Media is an easier way to play video and audio torrents. You don’t need a separate client, or have to wait for the file to be downloaded before it can be played -- the program’s various tools will stream .torrents directly, no other software or waiting around required.
The easiest way to do this is via the bundled Ace Player HD. It’s a fork of VLC Media Player 2.0.5, so a little out of date, but what you’re gaining is the ability to open a .torrent. We tried this, there was around a 30 second pause while the player made its connections, downloaded and buffered the first part of the video, then it started to play, just as though it was a local file.
Mem Reduct: a memory cleaner which isn't rubbish
Let’s be frank: most memory cleaners are garbage. They’ll lure you in with bogus claims about fixing memory leaks, dazzle you with flashy interfaces and colorful graphs, yet usually make no difference at all to system performance (or even slow you down) because they’re doing something Windows does as required, all on its own.
If you still think they might help you anyway, there are a few more honest and capable tools you can try, and Mem Reduct is a great example.
Sysinternals announces Sysmon 3.0, Autoruns 13.3, Regjump 1.1, Process Monitor 3.11
Microsoft Sysinternals has just announced its round of updates for April, this time including updates for Sysmon, Autoruns, Regjump and Process Monitor.
Background monitor Sysmon 3.0 now reports remote thread creation events, perhaps improving the chance of detecting code injection attempts. Process names have been added to process terminate events, and filters are more flexible and easier to use.
Create HTML family trees with Genealogica Grafica
Genealogica Grafica is a Windows shareware application which creates various family tree charts and reports from GEDCOM files, saving them as HTML files ready for sharing on your own website.
If the program name sounds familiar, that’s no great surprise -- the first release appeared way back in 2006. But after a long pause, development seems to have resumed again, with support for Unicode and (partially) stylesheets. We downloaded the latest release to see how it looked.
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