PdfTrick is a free open-source tool for selectively extracting images from PDF documents.

Yes: selectively. Unlike most of the competition, PdfTrick doesn’t dump hundreds of files in a folder -- it only saves the images you actually need.

Opera Software has unveiled Opera 36 FINAL, a major new release of its desktop web browser for Windows, Mac and Linux PCs. The latest build firmly targets users of Windows 10, with Opera claiming that "surfing with this platform [Opera] can be much better than the one offered by its default browser, Microsoft Edge".

To that end, version 36 has redesigned its UI to more closely resemble modern apps found in the Microsoft Store, while Opera is keen to stress it’s better integrated native Windows 10 features than other rival browsers.

1Clipboard is a free tool which enables sharing your clipboard contents with other PCs or Macs. The developer says that Android and iOS apps are "coming soon".

The program works by synchronizing your clipboard contents via Google Drive. This keeps 1Clipboard relatively simple and straightforward internally, but does mean you’ll need to sign in with a Google account wherever you want to use it.

Freeware animated GIF builder Instagiffer has finally seen its long-awaited full Mac update.

This may not be the end of any problems -- the release notes say "fonts and captions should now work in newer OSX versions", and "it’s been tested on Mavericks and Yosemite only" -- but it’s a fun program and worth a try.

PExe is a tiny free tool for identifying and disassembling .NET executables.

This could be useful for basic troubleshooting (is this a .NET program?), looking inside an application before you run it, detecting signs of malware, and more.

Link shorteners like bit.ly, tr.im and T.co offer a convenient way to share URLs, but they also hide their real destination. Is it a malicious site? Who knows?

Websites like LongURL or CheckShortURL will usually expand short links for you, as long as they’re using a supported service.

Most memory "optimizers" are a pointless waste of time, more likely to slow you down than offer any noticeable performance benefit.

But if you think your PC is using more RAM than it should, then there is one small and very simple tool which might be able to help.

Before sharing most videos you’ll probably want to cut out unwanted scenes, reducing file size and helping viewers focus on the main content.

Free Video Cutter is a simple tool which strips out the leading and trailing frames you specify, saving the results without any loss of video quality.

TreeSheets is a freeform data organizer, which developer Wouter van Oortmerssen describes as "the ultimate replacement for spreadsheets, mind mappers, outliners, PIMs, text editors and small databases".

Okay, yes, that is a little over-ambitious, but van Oortmerssen -- a software engineer at Google, who formerly worked at Crytek on the original Far Cry -- knows what he’s doing, and TreeSheets delivers far more than we expected.

Benchmarking your PC’s hard drives is easy, at least in theory. Download some freeware, point it at your hardware, and you’ll have some vaguely performance-related figures within a very few seconds.

That’s fine for getting a basic speed measurement, but if you’re got more heavy-duty requirements -- benchmarking a server, say -- you’ll need something far more configurable.

Aura is an ambient sound generator for Windows which combines soothing forest sounds to create a comfortable, relaxed working atmosphere.

Launch the program and it immediately starts playing its samples in a random pattern: a babbling brook, the wind in the trees, woodpeckers, cuckoos, rooks, crows and more.

Whether you’re worried about malware, or just need to find out what someone else is doing on a PC, logging any executables launched can tell you a lot.

Normally this involves installing some kind of monitoring application, like the Event Monitor Service we talked about last week, but if you’re trying to track PC usage without someone’s knowledge, that can be risky.

It’s a common PC problem. A dialog box appears with some key data, you need to copy it to the clipboard, but -- the text isn’t selectable, so you're forced to retype it.

The Control Panel "System" applet is a perfect example. It has several lengthy lines of text you might really want to save -- Product ID, Processor Type -- but none of them are selectable.

NooG is a lightweight internet search bar for the Windows desktop.

We watched the installation process closely, because this is just the kind of app to trash your system with a pile of adware, but no -- the entire program is under 2MB in size, nothing intrusive at all.

Security vendor NoVirusThanks has released Event Monitor Service (EMSvc), a Windows application which logs key system events in real time.

The package can track file creations, file deletions, PE files dropped to disk, created processes, loaded modules, loaded drivers and registry changes.