Venture-backed startup Safe Shepherd is a service we can really get behind. Users sign up and enter their personal information (personal names or aliases, email addresses, phone numbers, mailing addresses, etc.) into a profile, and Safe Shepherd locates that information on data broker websites and then erases it.

It helps protect your information against sites like BeenVerified.com, Radaris, Spokeo, and RapLeaf, which scrape whatever data they can find and sell it to marketers, or even worse, to potential identity thieves.

Cloud-based desktop software analytics platform Trackerbird completed its beta phase and launched to general availability on Thursday. The platform lets .NET software developers and vendors embed tracking mechanisms in their software to watch installations, trends in feature usage, user behaviour, demographics, and license conversions.

It's similar in concept to Concerity Analytics, which we launched here on BetaNews two years ago. By integrating Trackerbird's SDK into a desktop application, developers can collect anonymized reports and detailed conversion funnel analysis in real time. All software usage metrics collected by Trackerbird are totally anonymous and no IP addresses are stored. Developers can make Trackerbird analytics collection an option that the end user can choose to run.

Not long ago, investing in an office suite meant parting with a fairly substantial amount of cash, and while it is still possible to pay a great deal for a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation tool, there are also an increasing number of free options available. One newcomer is Kingsoft Office Suite Free 2012 which can be used both at home and in the office as an alternative for Microsoft Office.

The suite comprises three tools; Kingsoft Spreadsheets Free 2012 (to help with number crunching) Kingsoft Writer Free 2012 (for processing words) and Kingsoft Presentation Free 2012 (for the creation of slideshows and presentations). Each application is fully compatible with files created in their Microsoft Office counterpart. Each of the programs is impressive in its own right and all manage to look the part as well. While some free software has a tendency to look cheap, the offerings from Kingsoft are good-looking as well as functional.