Articles about Free Software

Binary Fortress Software has announced the release of ShellSend 2.0, the latest edition of its free tool for sending emails from the command line.

The new build adds an extra parameter which specifies the email body text, rather than pointing the program at a separate text file.

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When it comes to purchasing new software, many organizations do so to increase efficiency, save time, and reduce costs. This is particularly true of nonprofits, which often have limited staff and busy schedules.

Enter "free" software: on its surface, a simple, cost-effective solution. However, free software isn’t always free, and nonprofit executives often learn this the hard way: after incurring costs from implementation, consultants, ancillary features, support, and ongoing maintenance. These costs add up to more than a solution with an upfront cost but long-term savings. Here are pitfalls to avoid and tips to help you select something that will be a better fit for you, your nonprofit, and your budget over the long haul.

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Microsoft has had a hard job convincing people of the merits of the Windows Modern UI in Windows 8, so any help it can get to make the Start screen in particular more useful has got to be a good thing. With that in mind, it can only applaud Russian software developer Greatis Software.

The folk at Greatis are the brains behind a collection of gadgets and tools for making the Start Screen that bit more useful. Step forward, Start Screen Unlimited Lite 2.0.

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If you’ve taken a video which you’d like to share with others, it can often be useful to include a few frames as well. They’ll give your recipients an immediate idea of the contents, and might help them find the movie again later.

Batch Video to Image Extractor is a free tool which can help by extracting image frames from one or more videos. At its simplest, just drag and drop your source videos, decide how many frames you need, and you’re ready to go.

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Web tools like Google Translate or Bing Translator have done a great job of bringing speedy translations to the masses, but they’re not always ideal for regular use: you’ll be forever copying, task switching, pasting, setting options and maybe a whole lot more.

QTranslate is a free Windows tool which gives much easier access to a range of web translation tools, including Google Translate, Bing Translator, Promt, Babylon, SDL FreeTranslation.com, Yandex.Translate, youdao and Baidu.

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Windows is a highly configurable operating system, with hundreds of settings and options available. But taking full advantage of this can be a challenge, as many settings are buried deep in the Registry, while others are scattered around a host of programs and applets.

Windows Tweaker aims to help by giving easy access to 100-plus system tweaks (on Windows Vista and later) from a single interface. It’s portable, open source and entirely free of adware and other annoyances, so we downloaded the latest version 5.0 to take a look.

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Utilities developer Sordum has released Drive Letter Changer, a portable tool which allows you to reassign PC drive letters in two or three clicks.

The program is small (a single executable under 400KB) and has a very basic interface: mostly just a table with a list of your current drive letters, their labels and names.

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When it comes to capturing the Windows desktop, you’ve no shortage of options, and we’ve covered many of them here: SnagIt, QIP Shot, HotShots and more.

Of course there’s always room for another, and Grabilla is an especially interesting example, as the program comes packed with unusual extras to help it stand out from the crowd.

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Privacy’s a big thing nowadays, and with the US government in particular leaning on big businesses to make it easier for user’s private data to be shared, you’ve a right to feel uneasy. Whether you’re looking to encrypt files on your PC or even add another layer of encryption to files before uploading them to the cloud or sharing via email, a raft of free tools are emerging to help you do just that.

One of the latest to hit the market -- albeit in somewhat unfinished form -- is a free tool for Mac and PC called Secryptor Basic 1.0.

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Mastering chess can be difficult. Very difficult. Even if you have time, patience and a gift for strategic thinking, you’ll still need to find plenty of challenging opponents to develop your skills.

Still, if you’re running short of real-life candidates then you could always turn to your computer, where there’s plenty of help for players of every level.

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Utilities developer SecurityXploded has released Browser Password Remover, a free tool for managing stored passwords across a range of browsers (Firefox, Internet Explorer [v7.x -- v10.x], Google Chrome, Google Chrome Canary/SXS, CoolNovo, Opera, Comodo Dragon, SeaMonkey, SRWare Iron, Flock).

The program can be used as a simple password viewer. Launch it, click Show Passwords, and you’ll see all stored credentials for every supported browser.

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When it comes to tapping into our fondness for old computing and gaming platforms, Stella has always been at the forefront. This cross-platform Atari 2600 VCS emulator first saw the public light of day back in 1996, and now -- 18 years later -- it may just have delivered it most significant update yet with the release of Stella 4.0.

Version 4, also available in 64-bit form, sees the emulator ported across to SDL2, which brings many new features and performance improvements.

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VirusTotal is an excellent free web service which scans any file for malware against 50+ of the top antivirus engines. But it can take a moment to use, as you must visit the site, choose the type of scan you need (file or link), then point VirusTotal in the right direction.

VTzilla and VTchromizer are Firefox and Chrome add-ons which simplify this process by integrating VirusTotal scanning options into the browser, enabling you to check any file or URL with one or two clicks.

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Icecream Apps is a new company which recently launched three freeware Windows tools: Media Converter, PDF Split and Merge and Image Resizer. Polished and professional, available in several languages and with Mac versions available “pretty soon”, the software suggests Icecream wants to be taken seriously. We downloaded the new range for a closer look.

Icecream Media Converter is a free tool for converting video and audio files between all the main formats (and most of the minor ones). The program can import multiple local files, or download its source videos from web URLs, before converting them to your preferred device, audio or video format.

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Image conversion tools are supposed to save you time, at least in theory, but after you’ve chosen your source files, specified exactly what you’re likely to do with them, and set up your destination options, it doesn't always feel that way.

Send-To Convert makes your life easier by allowing you to set up a conversion task, and run it directly from Explorer. At its simplest you might select a few images, right-click, select Send To > Send-To Convert, and that’s it: your images are converted right away.

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