Mike Williams

Utilities developer Anvisoft has released a free version of its browser security tool, Anvi Slim Toolbar.

The program provides real-time and on-demand tools to detect and remove malicious add-ons for Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome.

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Google has unveiled Google 5.0 for iOS, a new release of its search tool for iPhone and iPad.

Version 5, which incorporates functionality from Google Now, has been rebuilt from the ground up to add a number of new features, plus show off a new look and feel that’s been designed around the new iPhone 6 product family.

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Windows Calculator has improved a great deal in recent years. It still opens in a very basic "standard" view, but you also get Scientific, Programmer and Statistics modes, along with unit conversions, date calculations and more.

The free HiPER Calc Scientific seems a little basic by comparison, as it’s "just" a regular scientific calculator. But it’s compact, portable, and has more than enough functions and features to make it interesting.

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It happens all the time. You’re browsing a website, engrossed in the content, when suddenly an overlay appears and blocks your view. Annoying, even when it’s displaying useful information.

Usually clicking the "x" close button will get rid of the popup, and you can carry on as you were. But if there is no "x", or it’s been carefully hidden, then you might need a little help.

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If you’d like to run Android on your PC then you could install some heavyweight emulator, or maybe use a virtual machine.

But it might be easier to equip your Android device with Mobizen, a free app which allows you to view, access and control it from just about anywhere.

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Microsoft Minesweeper may have been an extremely basic game, but it was also easy to play, and a fun way to pass a few minutes, which is probably why it came bundled with Windows for around 20 years.

The game was finally dropped in Windows 8, but you can get it back with the free Logyx Pack, along with 107 others: Tetris, Battleships, Reversi, Checkers, Simon Says, and many more (see below for the full list).

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Before a PC can access a drive, it must first read various disk structures: the boot sector, master boot record (MBR), partition table, and so on. Normally you don’t have to care about any of that, but if these structures are corrupted, and the drive becomes unreadable, then you might want to know more.

HDHacker is a tiny tool which can read, display, save and restore a drive’s master boot record, boot sector, or just a defined number of continuous sectors. This is potentially very dangerous -- choosing the wrong drive or sectors could trash your system -- but it can sometimes be helpful.

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If you’d like to know when your favorite websites are updated then you could monitor their RSS or ATOM feeds, maybe a Twitter account or Facebook page. But if they don’t have any of these -- or checking them all seems like too much effort -- then you’ll probably just keep revisiting the site, again, and again, and again.

Update Scanner is a Firefox addon which saves time by automatically detecting and notifying you about changes to your chosen web pages.

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Cloud storage provider Dropbox has released a new stable build for desktop in the shape of Dropbox 3.0.3 for Windows, Linux and Mac.

The interface has been rewritten, bringing high DPI support on Windows, a revamped setup wizard for Linux, improved performance, and reportedly fixing "a large number of issues/ glitches" reported over the years.

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It may be very old, but Microsoft's Compiled HTML Help (CHM) is still a common format for software documentation, as well as the occasional e-book.

Windows has a standard HTML Help viewer which should be able to display most files, but it’s a little fragile (just search the web for "regsvr32 hhctrl.ocx"). It may not work well if you need to display files in various character sets. And even if there are no problems, it's still a very basic viewer.

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German multimedia developer Ashampoo has unveiled the latest edition of its flagship disc mastering suite, Ashampoo Burning Studio 15.

The headline addition is new support for M-DISC, an optical media type which, in theory, can remain readable for 1,000 years.

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PhotoStage Slideshow Producer is a free-for-personal-use video slideshow creator with plenty of unusual extras.

Installation is quick and easy. We politely declined the bundled Google Toolbar, and a few seconds later the program launched.

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It’s generally very easy to work with ISO files on a modern PC. Archiving programs can extract their contents, mastering software will burn them to disc, even Windows has offered basic support since Windows 7.

If you sometimes work on other people’s PCs, though, it’s wise to bring your own ISO application with the portable Passcape ISO Burner.

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Famatech has announced the yearly update for its network detection tool, Advanced IP Scanner 2.4.

The program now uncovers more details about all network devices, including device type (router, printer, more) and the operating system of remote computers.

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If you’ve tried a few Notepad replacements you’ll know they typically look and feel very similar. There are the core Notepad functions for quick and easy text editing, an expanded interface (tabbed, drag and drop editing) to make life easier, and any menus and dialogs are then expanded with useful extras.

The free-for-personal-use jane (Just Another Nasty Editor) takes a very different approach, ignoring many standards to go its own way. This can be frustrating, and it’s certainly not for everyone, but the program does also have some interesting features to explore.

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