Free Software

Foxit Software has taken the opportunity to rebrand its popular PDF viewing and editing products with its latest major release. Foxit Reader is now Foxit PDF Reader 11.0, while PDF-editing tool Foxit PhantomPDF is reclassified Foxit PDF Editor 11.0.

Both newly renamed tools unveil revamped user interfaces with the promise of being leaner, simpler, and more intuitive to use. They both also gain support for more 3D functions and digital signature enhancements.

Cyber risk management company Axio is expanding its free Axio360 Ransomware Preparedness Assessment tool to give organizations detailed visibility into their cyber posture with regard to ransomware.

The assessment tool has been developed based on guidance from National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Axio's proprietary research based on hundreds of real ransomware events.

It’s no secret that Microsoft wants you to use its Edge browser in Windows 10. It’s tried a lot of ways to persuade users to switch from Chrome, Firefox or other browsers over the years, including advertising Edge in Windows.

The new Edge is genuinely good now, but that doesn’t mean you have to use it if you prefer another browser, like Chrome or Firefox.

Productivity suite Zenkit has unveiled a major platform update (4.5.0) that applies to all its standalone apps: Zenkit To Do, Zenchat and Hypernotes by Zenkit.

The undoubted highlight of this new release is the addition of a standalone drawing and annotation component, which works in the same way across all platforms. Version 4.5.0 also sees several improvements to the recently launched Hypernotes application.

QR Codes offer a simple way to do all sorts of things on your smartphone, from opening a web page in your browser or adding a new contact, to opening a map at a specific location.

Prolific software developer NirSoft has created new tool for Windows that lets you quickly generate a QR Code ready for scanning with your phone.

There are plenty of screencast tools out there, but while many offer cut-down free versions, they’re often more crippleware than freeware. Eyeing a spot in this market is IObit, which claims -- with some justification -- to provide a genuinely usable free screen-recording tool with its latest new release: iFun Screen Recorder 1.0.

The software promises no time-limited recordings, unwanted watermarks or other restrictions forcing you to upgrade to make proper use of the program -- a Pro version does exist, but its features can be safely ignored by most. And while it may lack the more sophisticated features of well-known screen-casting tools, you get all the core functionality you need to produce decent screencasts.

We all know we should backup our data to keep it safe in the event of problems, but it's a task that often gets neglected.

To mark World Backup Day on March 31st, AOMEI is giving BetaNews readers the chance to make their backups easier by geting its Backupper Professional Edition software -- worth $29.95 -- completely free.

While Audacity has been in receipt of pretty regular updates, it is quite a while since there were any major changes to the free audio editing software. All of this changes with the release of Audacity 3.0.0, however.

To kick things off, there are bug fixes -- lots of bug fixes. In fact, there are more than 160 that have been addressed, ranging from minor problems to "really juicy high priority bugs". But Audacity 3.0.0 is about much more than just fixing bugs. There are improvements across the software as well as a completely new project format.

Vivaldi Technologies has unveiled Vivaldi 3.7 for Windows, Mac, Linux and Android. The challenger web browser’s main focus in this new release is performance on desktop, while Android users gain improvements to the Bookmarks Manager as well as onboarding pages to introduce new versions as well as welcome new users to the app.

Performance gains are primarily delivered through faster opening and closing of new tabs and windows, with tabs opening twice as fast as previously and new windows appearing 26 percent faster than before. Lucky owners of Apple’s new M1-based Mac range should also notice further improvements thanks to the unveiling of the first native build for the ARM-based chipset.

Say hello to Hypernotes from Zenkit, the third standalone productivity tool from Germany’s Zenkit. The tool follows on the heels of Wunderlist-replacement Zenkit To-Do and Zenchat and is designed to work in conjunction with both tools as well as a standalone app.

The new app's sales pitch is the promise of creating, sharing, and understanding knowledge in a new way. Think of it as a tool for managing knowledge in various forms, from simple notes to complete documentation like a wiki. As with other Zenkit tools, it offers both free and paid-for tiers, and can be accessed through any modern web browser as well as via a cross-platform collection of desktop and mobile apps for offline use.

Jellyfin 10.7.0, the open-source pretender to Plex’s media-streaming crown, has been released. What started out life as a fork of the last open-source release of Emby (3.5.2) is rapidly evolving into its own, distinct media server with the added advantage of being completely free.

Version 10.7.0’s highlights include extending SyncPlay support to TV shows and music in addition to movies, redesigned OSD and Up Next dialogs and new PDF and Comics reader functionalities. Behind the scenes, things have undergone major changes with the promise of "significantly improved web performance".

The original Microsoft Edge was often described as being 'half-baked' with features commonly found in other browsers either poorly implemented or missing entirely.

With the switch to Chromium, Microsoft had a chance to start over, and it hasn’t wasted the opportunity. The new Edge is a massive improvement over its predecessor and the software giant isn’t resting on its laurels either, striving to add new features on a regular basis. Case in point being Microsoft Edge 89.

If you’re a Chrome user, you’ll probably be used to the frequency with which Google pushes out new versions. The search giant has been delivering new milestone releases every six weeks for over a decade now.

That’s about to change, however. Google already rolls out security updates on a bi-weekly basis, and this has inspired the company to speed up the general release cycle, ensuring we’ll get access to new features much quicker than before.

Hot on the heels of Edge’s sleeping tabs feature, Opera 74 rolls out today with its own equivalent in the form of 'tab snoozing'.

The update also unveils improvements to both its Easy Files feature, a means of quickly attaching files to email and other web-based forms, plus the Search Tabs tool.

The Universal Media Server Project has released Universal Media Server 10.0.0, a major new update of its open-source, cross-platform Java-based media server for Windows, Mac and Linux computers.

The server, which works with a wide range of UPNP/DLNA-compatible devices from mobiles to smart TVs, gains significant improvements to its web and DLNA browsing interface, with the aim of providing more flexible and visually pleasing options for navigating the user’s content.