Articles about Free Software

Paragon Software Group has released Paragon Backup & Recovery 2014 Free for Windows PCs, a major refresh of its drive-imaging and restore tool. The tool, now available as a separate 64-bit build for the first time, adds full support for Windows 8.1, Storage Spaces and UEFI.

It also introduces a New Backup Format tab, allowing users to back up, browse and restore to and from a virtual disk drive format. There’s also a refreshed UI and updated recovery media builder added, allowing users to create a Linux-based recovery disc.

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SingularLabs has updated its optimization tool System Ninjato version 3.0 with the addition of a paid-for Pro version.

Both the free and Pro versions benefit from faster and more efficient junk scanning. In addition, the Startup Manager now uses an internal blacklist to highlight startup programs which should be removed.

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Piriform Software has released Defraggler 2.17 and Defraggler Portable 2.17, updated builds of its freeware defragmentation tool for Windows. Version 2.17’s main highlight is the addition of a new Statistics tab, alongside SSD optimizations and progress information being displayed via the program’s System tray icon.

The update also comes with the promise of various optimizations, performance tweaks and the usual slew of bug fixes and minor GUI improvements.

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Computers may be everywhere these days, but computer programming is still often seen in a very stereotypical way: it’s complicated, strictly for geeks only, not something of much use to anyone else.

The reality is very different. Anyone can learn the fundamentals of programming. It’s great for developing problem-solving skills, or just helping you understand how other applications work. And it’s really not that difficult, especially if you start with a simple language like the open source BASIC-256.

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At first glance DriveInfo looks like another very ordinary system monitoring gadget, this time listing every drive on your system, with its free and total space. Not exactly impressive, especially as it didn’t even get all these figures right for us (a 3TB network drive was reported as -1346.80GB).

It seems the developer has realized that users need more from their gadgets, though, and in response he’s equipped DriveInfo with a host of additional features and tools.

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Hot on the heels of the underwhelming appearance of Firefox 27.0 FINAL, Mozilla has released Firefox 28.0 Beta 1 and Firefox Aurora 29.0a2, both of which come with the promise of significant new features and changes.

First up is the debut of Firefox for Windows 8 touch, which has migrated across to the beta channel for the first time, while Aurora ships with a brand new user interface (Australis) and revamped tool for syncing settings between multiple computers and devices.

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Boris Eyrich Software has updated its popular paint tool Artweaver to version 4.5.

The new build improves integration with ArtweaverTeam.com, the companion site where several Artweaver users can collaborate on projects. The Uploader plugin is now installed by default, making it easier to get started, while team status messages are more clearly displayed on a separate status bar.

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Installing a reliable antivirus package is a key part of maintaining your PC’s security, but there’s more you can do. It’s just as important to ensure you keep up-to-date with the latest software patches, blocking security vulnerabilities before malware can exploit them.

SecPod Saner is a free tool which can help automate this process by scanning applications, highlighting missing security patches, and even downloading and installing them for you.

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If you're browsing the web and find an image you'd like to keep, then the procedure is almost always the same: right-click, select "Save image as", and choose your preferred destination. That's simple enough, too, but if you’re saving lots of pictures in the same session then it can get a little tedious.

SavePictureAs is an open-source tool which speeds up the image saving process (in all the main browsers, and most of the minor ones) by automating most of its steps. All you have to do is move the mouse cursor over a picture, press a customisable hotkey, and watch as the program simulates a right-click, selects "Save image as", points the browser at your favorite folder, and saves the picture with its default file name.

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VirusTotal has announced the addition of AegisLab as a new file scanning engine. The Taiwanese company was already working with VirusTotal on its URL scanner, but this should raise its profile significantly.

The good news continued in AV Test’s latest Android Security report, where AegisLab’s Antivirus Premium 1.1  and AhnLan’s V3 Mobile 2.1 were the only packages to score maximum marks for protection.

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VideoLAN has released VLC Media Player 2.1.3, the latest minor release of its open-source, cross-platform media player for Windows, Mac and Linux. Version 2.1.3 comes with the promise of fixing multiple bugs and regressions introduced in previous 2.1.x releases.

Important fixes involve improving audio and video output management across most platforms, and also include decoder and dexmuxer improvements too.

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Geotagging photographs sounds great, at least in theory. You buy a camera with GPS, and it records exactly where you take every picture, very useful when you’d like to return there later (or just if you’ve just forgotten where you saw that amazing sunset).

This isn’t quite as easy as it should be, because most image viewers and graphics tools don’t recognize or use positional data. There are some exceptions, though, and the latest, Geo-Tag Mapper, provides a very easy way to visualize your photos by their location.

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Evernote Corporation has released Evernote for Mac 5.5, a minor refresh of the cloud-based note-taking service’s desktop tool. Version 5.5 contains one major new feature of note: support for descriptive search.

The feature, currently only available to English-language users, is accompanied by a number of minor bug fixes and tweaks. It follows on from the recent updates to both Evernote for iOS 7.3 and Evernote for Android 5.7

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Dominik Reichl has released KeePass 2.25 for Windows. The open-source password management tool allows users to manage both offline and online passwords via a secure, encrypted container, and is also available in portable form.

Version 2.25 is a minor update, but introduces a new auto-type key sending engine that improves support for sending Unicode characters as well as sending keypresses into virtual machine and emulator windows.

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Opera Software has announced Opera 20′s debut in the Next stream. There’s no revolution this time, perhaps fortunately, but the new build does bring some small but welcome improvements.

A tiny 804KB network installer for Windows grabs the latest version from Opera’s servers, retries the download as required, looks for security issues and starts the installation. The regular offline installer will also remain available, though, and that’s what you’ll see if you download Opera 20 right now.

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