Articles about Free Software

Gaia Sky is what the developer calls a "real-time, 3D, astronomy visualization" package, which normally means you get to fly around like you’re in Star Trek, but with real-world deep-space images to make it more "educational".

The project is based around the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission to chart around one billion stars of our galaxy.

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ScriptSafe is a free Chrome extension which has been helping users manage their web privacy for years, building up a huge list of features along the way.

The add-on can help block various content types, fingerprinting technologies, cookies, web bugs, Google analytics, cross media requests, social media buttons and a whole lot more.

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Canadian VPN provider TunnelBear has updated its Windows and Mac clients to version 3.0. The Windows release features a simplified, stripped-back interface and connects and reconnects up to 60 percent faster than before.

There’s a new option to mark networks as "Trusted". TunnelBear then connects to trusted networks rather than others, whenever there’s a choice.

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Math is hard to avoid, even if you’re a total mathphobe, and anyone might find they occasionally need to use an equation in a document.

High-end packages like Microsoft Word have equation editors built-in, but if you’re not so lucky then MathMagic Lite is a convenient free-for-personal-use alternative.

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Open-source PDF toolkit MuPDF has been under development in one form or another since 2002, and over the years it’s built up a host of document viewing, conversion and extraction features.

The package doesn’t get the attention it deserves on Windows -- probably because the key tools are console-based -- but if you don’t mind spending time at the command line, it’s certainly worth a look.

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Opera 40 has been released, bringing an easy, convenient VPN feature to the masses. It’s also reworked the battery saver tool, which was introduced in Opera 38, and adds RSS feeds to personal news.

The VPN server allows users to browse the web securely through an encrypted, tunneled connection on any network (including insecure Wi-Fi open hotspots). It also makes it possible to spoof the user’s location, giving them access to otherwise geo-locked content.

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Mozilla has finally released Firefox 49 FINAL for Windows, Mac and Linux. The release has been held back a week due to the need to fix two 'blocker' bugs. The bugs -- which concerned loading Giphly embeds in Twitter, and slow scripts and unresponsive script dialogs when resuming Firefox -- have now been resolved.

Firefox 49 sees the new 'e10' multi-process architecture roll out to more users, plus improves Reader Mode with a new Narrate feature. Fans of the Firefox Hello chat tool will, however, be disappointed to learn that the feature has been decommissioned.

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Modern CPUs are powerful devices which can run most applications without difficulty, but run enough processes at the same time and your performance will soon fall away.

Project Mercury (64-bit version) is a freeware tool which automatically optimizes process priorities and RAM usage to ensure your active application always has the maximum system resources.

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Switching your DNS servers can improve web performance, enhance security and help you reach some sites you can’t normally access.

It’s awkward to do this manually, but Change DNS Helper is a free tool which makes the process much easier.

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Get involved in any graphic design project and you’ll probably spend an age choosing the color scheme -- but this shouldn’t just be about personal taste.

Around 5 percent of the population have some form of color vision deficiency, so it’s important to consider how they might see your finished design.

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The popular mobile app Prisma has been making headlines recently with its ability to transform images into works of art using the styles of various artists. Now the open-source NeuralStyler is claiming to deliver similar results on the desktop, for both pictures and videos.

This isn’t just ordinary pixel-based filtering, according to the developer. Instead NeuralStyler uses "artificial intelligence" to convert your source media using styles of artists like Van Gogh, Wassily Kandinsky and Georges Seurat.

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You’ve found what looks like a great image online, but there’s a problem: it’s so lo-res that it’s almost unusable. Google’s image search may be able to help. In Chrome, right-click the picture, select Search Google for Image and click Large, if available, to see higher resolution versions of the same shot.

Google’s tools are useful, but TinEye takes it to the next level, locating more images, more precisely, even if they’re cropped or edited.

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Build a batch file of any complexity and there’s a chance you’ll need to interact with the user, either to ask a question or display a message.

Messagebox is an open-source solution which delivers the basics you need, has no dependencies, and runs on anything from Windows NT 4.0 up.

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Fast boot times, long battery life, low prices -- there’s a lot to like about Chromebooks. But there can also be issues, like the low volume you’ll sometimes get from the more feeble internal speakers.

Google for advice and the top hits offer advice like "turn the volume up in Settings", which isn’t a lot of help for most users.

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There are many ways to find lyrics to whatever you’re playing online, but they’re usually slow, inconvenient, maybe inaccurate, and sometimes all three. Lyrics Here is a browser addon for Chrome, Firefox and more which instantly finds and shows the lyrics for whatever you’re playing on YouTube, Spofify, Deezer, Google Music, SoundCloud and 40+ similar sites.

There’s nothing to set up or configure. Just visit YouTube or a music site, find and play something, and a new pane quickly appears (usually at the same time as playback starts) with the song title and lyrics.

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