Free Software

Australian developer NCH Software has announced the availability of DrawPad Graphics Editor, a straightforward and easy-to-use free vector graphics tool.

The program’s tiny size (566KB) didn’t leave us expecting very much. This isn’t just a downloader, either: even when installed, DrawPad requires barely more than 2MB drive space.

The keyword rank checker Rankaware has been updated to version 1.4.

The highlight is that this release finally adds a scheduler. You don’t have to manually initiate an update any more: enable the schedule and the program can check your current Google, Bing and Yahoo! rankings when the program starts, every day, or on any specified day of the week or month.

At first, Windows AutoRun seemed like a very good idea. Just connect a removable drive, and as long as it’s configured correctly, a program is automatically launched to help process your files (or whatever else you want to do).

But then, of course, malware authors realized that this was a great way to infect PCs without anyone ever noticing. Individual users could turn AutoRun off, but eventually Microsoft decided this wasn’t enough, and the feature was disabled for all but optical media in Windows 7.

It’s been almost two years since the last release, but the excellent AVI compression tool AVI ReComp has finally been updated to version 1.5.6.

There’s only one significant addition in this build, but it’s a good one. When choosing a target size for the output video, you’re no longer restricted to the default choices. Click "Custom sizes", add whatever new sizes you like, and in future they’ll appear along with the standard options.

It’s now almost 20 years since Clonk first appeared, a fun multiplayer platform and real-time strategy game.

The core program gave you control over "Clonks", "small but nimble humanoid beings". You moved them around a 2D horizontally scrolling world, reworking the landscape, setting up mining operations, managing your economy and taking part in "fast and fiddly melees".

Opera has updated the alpha version of its web browser with the release of Opera Developer 21.0.1432.5 for Windows and Mac. The new build fixes a few regressions, plus implements new tab-related tweaks to improve start-up times.

Version 21.0 opens with a number of important fixes, restoring Adblock to full working order and promising an end to the "Harlem Shake" when hovering over tabs on the Mac platform. It also fixes a number of unspecified crashes.

If you’ve tried a few free photo managers then you’ll know that the vast majority are, well, disappointing. Most have absolutely no original ideas. And some don’t even match up to the basic functionality you get with Explorer, all on its own.

We didn’t expect very much from the image viewer Photoimp, then -- but it turned out to be a real surprise.

In an ideal world, updating Windows would never require any manual intervention. You’d set up your PC to install updates automatically, and get on with other things, leaving your computer to manage any patches all on its own.

Life isn’t always that simple, of course. If you need to update a PC which doesn’t have a fast (or any) internet connection, or maybe you have to manage the updates for several systems, then the regular Windows Update applet may not be enough.

Apache Software Foundation has unveiled the first public beta of its forthcoming Apache OpenOffice 4.1 release. The new version continues to build on the major changes introduced when version 4 was released last year.

Although termed a minor release, version 4.1 does add one major new feature -- the ability to commentate and annotate on text ranges -- as well as a number of significant improvements. It also moves to 64-bit only on the OS X platform.

Go to work on the Windows desktop and the mouse cursor is normally very useful, a helpful guide which ensures you’re always pointing and clicking in exactly the right place.

Sometimes, though, it’s a little different. If you’re taking screen grabs, maybe watching a full-screen application, you might not want the mouse cursor around. And that’s where AutoHideMouseCursor can help.

TotalEdit Professional is an interesting and very capable Notepad replacement. But it used to cost $29.99, a major issue when competing editors such as Notepad++ cost nothing at all.

It seems that the developers have also realized this is a problem, though. And as they’re looking to Android and iPhone products as a means to generate revenue, TotalEdit Professional is now available for free. (It still installs as a trial version, but just register with the license code 2D5B073C-93D0-6D40-8970-B041-C2C and it’ll be activated right away).

Gamers of yore will remember the delight that could come from playing a text-based computer game. Forget pushing polygons around the screen as fast as a GPU's legs can pump, these were games where words were king. Back in 1984, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy game took the gaming world by storm and now, thirty years later the BBC has resurrected the classic title in an exclusive online version that's free for anyone to play.

This accessible and hilarious sci-fi classic translated well into a game, and whether you missed it the first time around or you like the idea of reliving the mid-80s, warm up your keyboard and prepare to type your way to victory -- and immense frustration. This is not the first time the game has been revived, but this time around there is an HTML5 version to enjoy and there are some comedic touches right from the start. The game developers decided to replace the $, % and ^ symbols with symbols for the Altarian Dollar, Flanian Pobble Bead and the Triganic Pu, "not because they are needed in the game, but just because we felt like it."

Microsoft has unveiled an update to its Windows chat app with the release of Skype for Windows 8 v2.6. Version 2.6 unveils one major update, support for syncing read chats and picked-up calls across multiple devices.

The new feature means that users can switch from their Windows 8 device to another platform and be sure that any chat updates or picked-up calls made on the secondary platform are now acknowledged by the Windows 8 app too.

Download a program called "CopyCD" and you're probably not going to expect very much. Copying discs is a very basic task, after all, and limiting itself to CDs makes the program seem even worse.

CopyCD's extremely basic interface -- like something written on day 2 of a "Learn Visual Studio" course -- doesn't help. You're able to choose your "master" drive (the source), and your "copy" (the destination); an "OK" button launches the copy process, while an "Exit" button closes CopyCD down. Can that really be it?

The larger your movie and media collection, the harder it can be to manage. What happens if your carefully crafted naming convention proves incompatible with the new media server you’ve switched to? Or you’re missing artwork for a selection of movies? And is it too much to ask about obtaining subtitles without too much fuss?

The solution to all of these woes can be found with one incredibly clever, and completely free, tool for Windows, Mac and Linux. That tool is FileBot 4.0.