Articles about Free Software

It’s bad enough removing all those programs your PC manufacturer "thoughtfully" chose to include on your Windows 8 PC, but now it feels like Microsoft is at the same game. If you’re hankering to trim back the number of Modern UI apps pre-installed with Windows 8 or its immediate successors, then you need Windows 8 App Remover.

This tiny 220KB portable program acts as a graphical front end for a Microsoft tool -- dism.exe -- that does the hard work of getting shot of the files in one go, making it a much easier job than removing them individually or grappling with command-line parameters.

Continue reading →

Piriform Ltd has released CCleaner 4.13 and CCleaner Portable 4.13, the latest versions of its popular Windows cleaning tool. Version 4.13 adds support for Windows 8.1 Update and Windows Server 2012 R2 Update.

It also comes with improved browser cleaning tools as well as some general program improvements and support for three new applications, including Real Player Cloud.

Continue reading →

Avira has released Avira Free Mac Security 2.0.4, an update to its free anti-virus tool for Macs. Version 2.0.4 boasts a user interface redesign as well as performance improvements and tweaks to the Scheduled Update and Scheduled Scan tools.

The update also adds support for scanning network shares and squashes a number of bugs that plagued earlier versions.

Continue reading →

Sordum has released Simple Run Blocker, a compact portable tool which can prevent users on your PC from running certain applications.

The program is very simple to use. Drag and drop any target executables onto the Simple Run Blocker interface, save those settings, and the application should be blocked (although we found you may need to restart Explorer or reboot, first).

Continue reading →

Once upon a time, you knew exactly what was connected to your home network: your desktop, a laptop maybe and perhaps even your mobile phone. These days, keeping track of networked devices -- from printers to smart TVs -- can be a painful task.

If you’re wondering what’s currently connected to your home network -- perhaps you’re worried about security, or surprised at how slow your internet speeds are -- then you need help. And if you’ve got an Android, iPhone or iPad, help is delivered in the form of Fing -- Network Scanner.

Continue reading →

SecurityXPloded has announced the release of SX Antivirus Kit, a collection of its system checking and malware detection tools.

Despite the name, there’s no antivirus engine here, nothing to directly detect and remove threats. The 14 bundled programs are more focused on manual detection, helping you spot any signs of malware on your PC.

Continue reading →

Christian Kaiser has released Lightscreen 2.0, a major new version of his open-source screen capture tool for Windows and -- as of version 2.0 -- Linux.

Also available in portable form, Lightscreen 2.0 debuts a number of major new features, including screenshot previews, support for uploading photos to imgur.com with full history of uploaded shots.

Continue reading →

Prefetching is an excellent Windows technology which records the files loaded when an application starts, helping the system to optimise their launch times in future.

Normally this all happens entirely in the background. But if you’re having launch problems with a particular application, or you just want to better understand how your PC works, then NirSoft’s WinPrefetchView might be able to help. (As long as you’re not using an SSD, anyway – prefetching is unnecessary and, probably, disabled.)

Continue reading →

JPEG compression is amazingly efficient, but while this is normally good news, it’s a little disappointing when you’re archiving. Store your JPEG library in a zip file and you’ll barely cut their size at all.

Choose a more specialist compression format, though, and the results can be very different. WxPackJPG is a graphical front end for the open-source PackJPG. It claims to compress JPEGs by up to 20 percent.

Continue reading →

The software you run on a PC may be packaged in several different formats: EXE, DLL, CPL and so on.

These file types aren't just for executable code, though. They can also contain resources for the program can call on, as required: icons, bitmaps, cursors, videos and more.

Continue reading →

Trend Micro has announced the availability of two free scanners for the Heartbleed bug, meant for Google Chrome and Android. The first, a browser add-on, allows users to enter and check any specific URL.

The second, an Android app, is a little more advanced. It checks whether your device or apps are directly affected by the bug, or whether any installed apps access a cloud service which is still vulnerable.

Continue reading →

Team MediaPortal has released a major update of its open-source media center software for Windows. MediaPortal 1.7.0 FINAL comes with a number of under-the-hood changes that will impact the program going forward, including future plans for a home screen editor within the MediaPortal itself.

The new build also promises enhancements to the TV and video On Screen Displays, a new Wake On LAN feature and support for accessing information about video files automatically.

Continue reading →

As you might guess from its name, Rain Alarm is a smart app which can warn you about imminent snow or rain. That doesn’t sound too special -- there are a host of tools promising to do the same thing -- but this one has what it takes to stand out from the crowd.

It’s about as cross-platform as you can get, for example: there are apps for Android, iOS, Windows Phone and Windows 8; add-ons for Firefox and Chrome, or you can just visit the Rain Alarm website from almost anything with a browser.

Continue reading →

It seems that there have been few big names left unaffected by the Heartbleed bug in OpenSSL. Google may have rushed to patch the flaw, but the number of websites and services that fell foul of the discovery is staggering. It seems that even stalwarts of security are finding themselves in troubled waters, and this includes anonymizing service Tor.

Put very simply (very, very simply!), Tor works by not only encrypting data that is transferred online, but also bouncing it around a number of servers, making it all but impossible to trace to a particular user or computer. It transpires that some of the Tor nodes that are used in the process are running versions of OpenSSL that are vulnerable to Heartbleed, and this has led to calls for the affected nodes to be closed down. Writing to the Tor mailing list, developer Roger Dingledine suggests that up to 12 percent of the network's capacity may be lost if all of the vulnerable nodes are taken offline.

Continue reading →

WordPress.org has announced the release of WordPress 3.9, a significant update which brings a host of worthwhile improvements.

Uploading your images is now as easy as dragging and dropping them into the editor. Once there, quicker access to crop and rotation tools, as well as the ability to resize them "in place", makes for a smoother editing experience.

Continue reading →