High Motion Software has announced the release of ImBatch 2.0, its comprehensive image batch processing tool.

As before, you can use the program to resize or rotate photos, tweak colors and contrast, apply effects, set tags and more. But now you’re also able to apply new "AutoEnhance" tasks, which do their best to automatically optimize your target images.

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It’s a regular web annoyance: you’re busy online, a line of browser tabs open, when suddenly one of them starts playing a Flash video ad. Which one? Normally you’d have to check each tab in turn, but that’s all about to change with Google Chrome 32 beta.

The next time your concentration is disturbed by some unexpected sound, just glance at the tabs, and a speaker icon will appear next to any which are playing audio. Further icons highlight tabs currently using your webcam, or Chromecast, and we expect others will appear in future.

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PDF is a great format for sharing content, not least because it’s viewable just about everywhere. It’s not quite so convenient if you need to reuse that content elsewhere, of course, but there could be an easy solution: just use UniPDF to convert your source documents to Word (DOC, RTF), images (BMP, JPG, PCX, PNG, TGA, TIF), HTML or plain text.

The program is easy to use. Drag and drop your PDF files onto the program, choose an Output format, click "Convert", and watch as UniPDF goes to work.

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Search and replace is a key part of most text editors, and it’s generally very simple to use: type a keyword, press [Enter] to look for it, then step through however many matches there might be. This is so straightforward and familiar that it’s easy to forget there’s any other way.

Regular expressions do offer a far more powerful alternative, though, at least if you take the time to learn how they work. As an example, take a look at  \b[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}\b  : despite looking like binary garbage, this is actually a very useful search term which will locate any email address. Not something you could easily do in any other way.

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Microsoft has officially released the final version of Internet Explorer 11 for Windows 7. The latest iteration of its evergreen web browser ships with a firm focus on performance, with the promise of a 9 percent improvement over IE10.

There’s little visible difference between Internet Explorer 11 and its immediate predecessor for Windows 7 users -- none of the added functionally in the Windows 8.1 release has found its way into this build.

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jAlbum AB has released jAlbum 11.6, a performance-oriented update of its cross-platform web album builder that’s free for personal use. In addition to improving performance, version 11.6 adds a few minor changes and includes a number of notable bug fixes.

The main highlight of version 11.6 comes with vastly improved performance when editing videos, both when selecting a representing thumbnail and starting or stopping editing. Also notable is an improvement to the user interface, which is now more responsive when managing images that lack cached thumbnails.

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Prefetching is an excellent Windows Vista/ 7/ 8 performance-boosting technology where the system monitors applications as they start, detects any dependent files they might need, and preloads them when the program next starts. This can drastically cut down disk access times as an application switches from one file to another, making a real difference to your system boot and application launch times.

There’s more to prefetching than PC optimization, though. You can also use this data to monitor which programs are being launched on your system, and when. And you can view the files a program accesses when it first starts, which could be useful when troubleshooting. All you need is a forensics tool like Sanderson Forensic’s Prefetcher to interpret the data for you.

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If programs aren’t running as expected on a PC then checking whatever .NET versions are installed is often a good idea. So it’s a pity that Microsoft doesn’t provide a quick and easy way to do this, instead forcing users to navigate through multiple Registry keys (not so helpful when you’re trying to remotely troubleshoot problems with a PC novice).

Fortunately there are plenty of more straightforward alternatives around, and one of the more capable, ASoft’s portable .NET Version Detector, has just been upgraded to version 14.

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Online password manager LastPass has updated its range of browser-based extensions with the release of LastPass 3.0 for Windows, Mac and Linux. The manager, which supports all major web browsers, comes with a fresh new design and changes to the way users interact with web forms.

Also updated are the company’s premium-only mobile apps, LastPass 2.5.2 for Android, and LastPass for Windows 8, while LastPass 2.0.6 for iOS will be updated once it’s passed Apple’s store approval process.

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Open-source password manager KeePass 2.24 has been released for Windows. The tool, which allows users to manage a variety of online and offline passwords via a secure, encrypted container, boasts a number of minor new features to go with an impressive list of changes and improvements for such an incremental release.

First, KeePass 2.24 adds support for importing passwords from Norton Identity Safe 2013 CSV files. It also now supports tags when using either the generic CSV importer or Mozilla Bookmarks import options.

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PhrozenSoft’s VirusTotal Uploader has been updated to version 3.0, and there’s plenty of useful new functionality to explore.

You no longer have to launch the program as an administrator, for instance. You’ll still be able to upload most files to VirusTotal, get a verdict on whether they’re malware, and if you do run into any limitations then the program can be elevated at any time.

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Resplendence Software’s PC crash analysis tool WhoCrashed has been updated to version 5.0.

The big news in this release is that the program now runs properly on Windows 8.1. If your new system has a blue-screen crash, run the program, click Analyze and it’ll try to identify the cause for you. The crash report includes new hardware information, including system manufacturer and motherboard name.

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Web pop-ups are annoying, intrusive, and potentially dangerous, which is why all the top browsers make at least some attempt to block them. Google’s Chrome is no exception, but it won’t stop everything, and so you might want to add a little extra protection in the shape of JavaScript Popup Blocker.

As you’ll guess from the name, this free extension aims to block all JavaScript-generated pop-up and pop-under windows. You don’t have to worry about configuration, at least initially, as it starts working right away: just carry on browsing as normal.

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SeriousBit has rolled out EnhanceMy8 2.0, the latest edition of its Windows 8 maintenance and tweaking utility.

This release benefits from full Windows 8.1 support (although of course it also runs just fine on Windows 8). EnhanceMy8 2.0 is also the first digitally signed version of the program, which should ensure that it’s properly recognized as a trusted program by your security software.

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Amazon has continued to roll out its Cloud Player application with the release of Amazon Cloud Player for Mac 2.0 (despite the version number, this is the first release on the Mac platform). The new player is practically identical to the Windows build, which debuted in May.

Amazon Cloud Player, also available for iOS and Android, allows Amazon users to access all music stored in its Cloud Player service.

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