Articles about Free Software

If you don’t look after your computer, it will start to slow down and misbehave. Smartphones too can get clogged up and begin to lag as the amount of storage space and available memory starts to diminish with use.

There are lots of good, free apps available that you can use to make sure your Android (or iOS) device is running at peak performance. Here are some of the more recent.

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Every time you create, modify or access a folder on your PC, Windows records these details in the Registry. There’s nothing shady about this -- the action is a key part of recording your folder view settings, and maintaining a list of your favorite folders -- but it does introduce a privacy risk, as snoopers can use the data to track some of your PC activities.

Exactly how much information is exposed here will vary, but if you’re not already familiar with the issue then it makes sense to check your PC with the free ShellBag AnalyZer & Cleaner. There’s no adware, no installation required, just download and launch the program and in a few seconds you’ll have the full picture.

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What’s the one thing that is missing from Windows Explorer? Actually, there’s probably more than just one thing missing, but what is the most obvious? Tabs. They are now so ubiquitous in web browsers that it’s unlikely you give them a second thought; they’re just there and you use them. Why should your file browser be any different? This is an anomaly that the developers of Clover felt had to be put right with the latest release.

Aside from the addition of tabs to Explorer -- which means that it is possible to deal with multiple folders in a single window -- there are a number of other changes in this latest released. For anyone concerned with aesthetics, support for themes means that the look of the program can be completely changed.

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Saving a document as a PDF generally produces a very small file, which is one reason the format is such a popular way to share information.

This isn’t always the case, though. And so if it’s important your documents are as compact as they can possibly be, then you might like to try shrinking them even further, with a little help from the free (for personal and non-commercial use) ORPALIS PDF Reducer Free.

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If you’re working on some important PC task and want to avoid distractions, then maximizing your program window is usually a good place to start. But if you need to monitor several programs -- or the window just can’t be maximized -- then Le Dimmer may offer a more interesting approach.

The program is tiny, portable, and has just a single task: after launching, it dims everything on your desktop apart from the current window.

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Yesterday Dropbox for business received a big update with single sign-on. Now, today, the company rolls out new features for the consumer version of its cloud storage service. New updates have been added to the PC, Mac, Linux, web and Android apps, but those on iOS will have to wait.

All versions receive support for six additional languages -- Russian, Polish, Indonesian, Malaysian, and Traditional and Simplified Chinese. Reginald Harris of Dropbox claims the company has translated 553,800 words in 43,662 lines of code to make this possible. Harris states this enables "sharing your most important stuff with friends and family -- no matter where in the world they are or what language they speak".

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Although the decentralized digital currency first appeared in 2009, Bitcoin’s popularity has really taken off in recent weeks and the value of the coins has skyrocketed since January. The world’s largest Bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, currently has the currency listed as being worth $209 per coin.

Although you can purchase bitcoins, the real way to get your hands on some is to mine for them using a computer. The process involves solving a complex mathematical algorithm and it becomes harder to find blocks of bitcoins as time goes on because there’s only a set number of them in the system (the total number of bitcoins in existence will never exceed 21 million).

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Adobe has refreshed its cross-platform web media playback and runtime tools with the release of Adobe Flash Player for Other Browsers 11.7, Adobe Flash Player for Internet Explorer 11.7 and Adobe AIR 3.7.0.

There’s only one notable change to report in this first stable release of Flash Player 11.7: enhancements to the sandboxing features that allow it to better address application launches in protected mode.

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If you’d like to download a YouTube video then there are plenty of options available, from web services like KeepVid to dedicated tools like Free YouTube Download.

Capturing streaming videos from other sites can be a challenge, though, as their URLs are often concealed by scripts and similar tricks. Examining the page source will sometimes give you clues, but URL Snooper could be a simpler option: the program just watches your internet activity, and displays a list of any streaming URLs it finds.

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Piriform has released Recuva 1.46 and Recuva Portable 1.46, brand new versions of its free data recovery tool for Windows PCs. Recuva can restore both lost and deleted files from a wide variety of devices attached to the user’s PC, including hard drives, camera memory cards and MP3 players.

Version 1.46 contains one notable new feature -- an option to scan folders for deleted items via the Windows Explorer context menu. It also promises better scanning of exFAT and FAT32 drives along with other minor tweaks and improvements.

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Mozilla has released Firefox 20 FINAL for Windows, Mac and Linux, and version 20 promises to be something of a landmark new release with a number of notable new features migrating across from the beta version.

The headline new feature has to be the long-awaited panel-based download manager, but Firefox 20 also debuts per-window Private Browsing, plus new developer features including an option to view Developer tools in a separate window to Firefox itself.

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Manually shutting down your PC when you’ve finished a task is easy enough, but Windows isn’t quite so straightforward when it comes to automating the process. Playing around with the power options and the task scheduler may deliver what you need, but for real flexibility you’ll be much better off turning to the free Airytec Switch Off.

The program is a surprisingly tiny download (191KB), which once installed adds an icon to your system tray. And right-clicking this displays a menu showing the various actions it can carry out: shutdown, restart, log off, sleep, lock, and more.

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Sysinternals has announced updates for Autoruns and Process Monitor, as well as the release of a new command line tool, Registry Usage.

The Autoruns tweaks are the most significant. In particular, all reports now include a timestamp for executable files, folders or Registry keys. And so if you browse to HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run in the Everything view, say, you’ll now see a timestamp which tells you when that Registry key was last modified.

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Glorylogic Software has released ISO Workshop 4.0, a major update of its disc image management, conversion and burning tool. Version 4.0 broadens the tool’s ISO format support to cover six different disc types: CD, DVD, Blu-ray, Bridge, DVD video and bootable.

The program also tweaks the existing user interface, adding new buttons to facilitate creating folders and editing files within ISO images. Other buttons have been added for loading and extracting files from ISO images.

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Copying files in Windows is normally as easy as a quick drag and drop -- but if they’re locked, it’s a different story. An error message will warn you that the file is in use, and you’re left to resolve the situation yourself, or just try again later.

One alternative is to run a backup program, as most can use Microsoft’s Volume Shadow Service to copy locked files. But this could seem like overkill, especially for only occasional ad-hoc copies, which is why you might prefer the simpler and more lightweight ShadowCopy.

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