Articles about Free Software

And Google decreed, "Let there be image search, a tool whereby mortals may search for images by providing a source image". And it looked, and the tool was rather useful in its own way, but horribly awkward to use at times when you had to right-click the image, choose to copy its URL to the clipboard, switch to Google Image Search, paste the URL into the correct box and so on.

So Google said, "I can’t be faffing about like this", and its bods developed a browser extension to make the process much simpler. And so Google Search by Image for Chrome 1.5.0 and Google Search by Image for Firefox 1.1.2, were born.

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While there are plenty of irritations to be found online, few are quite as annoying as Flash ads. Distracting animations, irritating music, applets expanding over content you’re trying to read -- it’s really no surprise that many people install ad blockers on a new PC before they do anything else.

Some ads will still penetrate your defenses, of course. And legitimate Flash content may occasionally be just as annoying as the worst adverts. To fully protect yourself, then, you’ll need a more general content filter, like the Chrome extension FlashControl.

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Bloggers rejoice: WordPress 3.6 has been released, sporting the name "Oscar" and including a number of major new features to excite users. The open-source CMS system gains new features for both users and developers, including built-in HTML5 media player and new audio/video API.

The new release is joined by a brand new theme -- Twenty Thirteen -- that provides a modern-art inspired, single-column layout that’s designed to work across mobile and desktop platforms. Sidebars and widgets have been moved into the footer, and it comes with support for Genericon font-based icons.

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You’ve come up with an important business proposal, and want to share your ideas with someone else. You could just mail them a PDF document with the details, but if the deal falls through, there’s no way to control what happens to the file later.

Protect that document with the free SmartRM, though, and it’s a very different story. You can decide who opens it, when, how many times, whether they can print it, and more. And if there are problems, then you can restrict or block access in just a few seconds -- even after you’ve sent them the file.

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Goversoft’s excellent privacy and system cleanup tool PrivaZer has today been updated to version 2.0.0, with a range of additions and improvements making it now more thorough than ever.

Enhanced Chrome cleanup sees the program now wipe the browser’s omnibox history, for instance, along with its stored passwords, download history and journals.

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The standard Windows "uninstall a program" applet may not exactly be packed with features, but it’s fine for occasional use. Find and select your program, click Uninstall, and follow the instructions -- it’s all very straightforward.

You can only uninstall one program at a time, though, so if you’re intending to do a serious cleanup then this can quickly become tedious. Which is why you might want to try a little third-party help, in the shape of Macecraft Software’s Decrap.

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jAlbum AB has released jAlbum 11.4, a minor update of its cross-platform web album building tool. The software, available for personal use as a free, ad-supported program, resolves an issue that saw the red-eye reduction tool get broken, plus comes with the promise of faster loading times for larger projects.

This performance improvement claims "significantly faster (around 10 times)" loading of large album projects with sub-folders.

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Safer Networking has announced the release of Spybot -- Search & Destroy 2.1 SR2, a minor update to its popular malware-cleaning tool. Spybot S&D comes into two flavors -- a free-for-personal use edition that concentrates on anti-spyware protection, or various paid-for versions that come with extra anti-virus protection plus additional tools.

Version 2.1 SR2 comes with few visible changes and no new features, but it does respond to user feedback in tweaking the default Internet Protection settings to provide better performance, although what security compromises have been made to achieve this aren’t made clear.

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It’s been around since 1997, but Microsoft’s Compiled HTML Help (CHM) format is still often used for application help files, e-books and more. If you’re working on a PC then that’s no problem -- the files are easy to read -- but if you need to browse them on other platforms, then you might like to try CHM Decoder.

Point this small, free and portable tool at a CHM file, and it will quickly convert this into the original HTML. Open the root page and you’ll be able to browse it just like the original file. Only now it’s in a format which you can access almost anywhere.

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We’re always happy to try out desktop search tools, but at first glance XSearch didn’t seem promising. It doesn’t use indexing, for instance, so you know performance will take a major hit. And the authors talk about how some prefer search as it was back in Windows 98/2000, which might lead you to think the program is going to be very basic indeed.

But then we downloaded it, took a closer look, and were very pleasantly surprised. XSearch may not have all the conveniences you’d like in a modern search tool (or even most of them), but there’s still plenty of flexibility here, and it could be a useful addition to your portable toolkit.

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Researching your family history is a fascinating way to spend a few hours (and days, weeks, months and years), but keeping track of everything you’ve found can be a problem. Behind your family tree lurks a mass of names, dates, locations and relationships, and getting any of them wrong can cause you major problems later.Fortunately there’s plenty of help on offer, though, and the open source Family Tree Analyzer is an easy way to start. Point the program at your tree data (in GEDCOM form) and it can produce a range of reports, highlighting problems, providing new ways to browse your data, and generally giving your research a gentle push in the right direction.

You’ll first need to save your existing data in the GEDCOM format. If you’re using family tree software then you can probably do that via a Save or Export option. If your tree is on the web, then check the site for export features (at Ancestry, select Tree Pages > Tree Settings > Export Tree).

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Renowned security expert Bitdefender has officially launched its free secure web browser for Windows users. Bitdefender Safepay 1.9 comes with the promise of a "secure hacker-proof browser", aimed at providing users with a secure tool for online banking and e-shopping.

Safepay also offers a free security audit for your PC, and offers users a paid-for upgrade whereby free Wi-Fi hotspot protection is offered to provide safe, encrypted connections even when using open, non-encrypted hotspots.

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Google Earth is a great mapping tool, hugely detailed and packed with features. Like Street View, for instance, which helps you navigate millions of miles of road all around the world, and would probably justify installing the program all on its own.

If you don’t like the program, though -- or, maybe, you just don’t like Google -- then there are some excellent alternatives available. The open source and cross-platform Marble, for instance, can’t compete with the photos and the imagery of Google Earth, but is still extremely powerful and has a great deal to offer.

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Most PC users will occasionally need to convert audio files from one format to another, and for this most part this is quite straightforward. If, say, you have a few WMA’s which you need to be MP3′s, then just about any audio conversion tool ever written will get the job done.

What if you need to work with some unusual source formats, though? Extract the soundtrack from a video? Configure audio file tags, or take complete control over the encoding process? Then you’ll need a conversion tool with a little more power. Like TAudioConverter, in fact.

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If you’re leaving your PC unattended for a while then locking it (pressing Win+L) can be a sensible precaution, as it prevents others from viewing your files or interfering with running programs.

The Windows Lock function also hides the current contents of the screen, though, annoying if you want to leave a movie playing, or perhaps monitor the progress of some lengthy task you’re running. And that’s why might sometimes prefer KeyFreeze, which locks your PC but leaves the screen active, just as before.

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