Stock photo vendor Shutterstock has released Shutterstock Tab, a free Chrome extension which displays a gorgeous image as a background for every new Chrome tab.

As a bonus, there’s also a clock, a 5-day weather forecast, and a tiny toolbar with links to recently visited sites.

Windows screen recorder Screen2SWF, once a $49 commercial product, is now available for free.

With so much freeware competition around already you might be thinking, "so what?", but wait: the program does have some interesting features which help it stand out from the crowd.

TeamViewer GmbH has released the final version of TeamViewer 11, its remote access tool for Windows, Linux and Mac computers. The new release, also available as a portable build for Windows users, launches with an emphasis on better performance through various networking optimizations.

Version 11 also unveils a redesigned toolbar and client interface, plus adds new options that include unattended access to Android devices as well as a SOS button for those businesses who want to provide it.

NirSoft has released MMCSnapInsView, a free portable tool which provides details on all the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-ins installed on your PC.

Snap-ins are the Windows components behind many system administration tools -- Event Viewer, Device Manager, Task Scheduler and more -- although they’re also included with some third-party applications.

High Motion Software has shipped ImBatch 4.4.0, a major update to its free-for-personal-use image batch processing tool.

New PDF input support means the program can now process multi-page PDFs just as easily as image files.

Build a great presentation and PowerPoint gives you various ways to share it with the world: by email, as a OneDrive link, individual slides, an online presentation, and more.

Social Share is a free Office add-in which also enables PowerPoint to directly share presentations via Facebook and Twitter.

Apps tracker is an open source tool that logs which programs are being run on your PC, and for how long.

The program is portable, so there are no intrusive drivers or Windows services to worry about. Just launch it, click the window close button and it minimizes to your system tray.

Changing your baseline volume level in Windows is easy -- click the speaker icon, spin the mouse wheel -- but if you want to adjust the volume of some other device then it quickly gets more complicated.

You might click the "Mixer" link, for instance. Or maybe the speaker icon. And then the levels tab. And then you adjust the various levels for that device, but what if you want to tweak something else…?

If you’re running a great security suite, with an accurate "second opinion" scanner on hand, then installing a program called Ultra Virus Killer might not seem a high priority.

But wait: despite its name, UVK isn’t just about malware hunting. It has a pile of other PC maintenance and management tools to explore.

After five years of stop-start development, 7-Zip has just released a new stable version 15.12.

It’s been a long wait, but if you’re still using the latest stable build -- 9.20 -- then there are plenty of reasons to upgrade.

Selecting the best colors is a key part of any graphic design project, yet most color pickers only display your chosen shades in tiny boxes.

Colortypist is a portable Windows freebie which allows you type color names or codes and displays them full-screen, in real time.

Monitoring your PCs disk space isn’t difficult, at a basic level: just launching Explorer will get you started, and there’s plenty of freeware around to take the process a little further.

That’s probably enough for general home use, but if your system is complex -- more drives, several drive types -- then it might be time for an industrial-strength solution.

IObit has unveiled a new edition of its all-in-one PC maintenance suite, Advanced SystemCare 9.

A new "Speed Up" section includes modules to control Windows startup programs, close resource-hungry apps or processes, remove unwanted browser add-ons and optimize Windows and application settings.

Configuring and optimizing a PC takes some thought, a lot of experience and, usually, a great deal of time. So it’s all the more annoying if your carefully tuned settings are altered by something else, without your permission.

Sometimes you’ll have an idea when this happens. You might install something, carry out a particular action, and the setting changes. If you can’t see when or why a change happens, that could be even worse, especially if it’s something security-related -- perhaps malware was involved. Whatever your situation, you need to investigate further, and a good first step is to monitor the Registry, find out more about what’s being changed, and when. The best way of doing this depends on your precise needs, but here are five possible options.

VirusTotal has announced the availability of sandbox execution for OS X apps, including DMG files, Mach-O executables, and ZIP files containing a Mac app.

Users may submit files via the website, OS X uploader app or API, but reports now contain a "Behavioral information" tab which lists details like the processes launched, DNS queries made, and any files opened, read or written.