Free Software

Vivaldi Technologies has unveiled the first beta of its new web browser for power users with the release of Vivaldi Beta. The aim of Vivaldi is to give users unparalleled control over their web browsing experience, and has been developed by a team led by Opera’s co-founder, Jon S von Tetzchner.

The alpha releases have been downloaded by more than two million early adopters, but this first beta release is aimed at general users, and among its new features are support for Chrome extensions and web panels.

Web highlighters can be a handy addition to bookmarks, highlighting blocks of web text so they’re easier to find later.

Highly is a free Chrome extension which takes the process to the next level, by making it easy for users to share their highlights with others.

Web servers can be complex, with many modules to install and a lengthy list of settings to figure out.

Devd is an open source http server for 64-bit Windows, OS X and Linux, which proves it doesn’t have to be that way. The program arrives as a single executable, no other dependencies or modules required. Just unzip it and you’re ready to go.

Windows Sysinternals has announced updates for six of its freeware tech tools.

Autoruns 13.5 gains a right-click option which enables startup programs to be resubmitted to VirusTotal for a new scan.

Ashampoo has announced that its application remover Ashampoo Uninstaller is now free for anyone to download and use.

It may not look that way when you install it -- there are still prompts for license keys -- but register with your email address and you’ll get a free key immediately.

Fractal generators have been around for a very long time, but most of them just provide yet another way to produce the same Mandelbrot-based imagery we’ve seen so many times before.

Mandelbulber is different, because not only does it give you more formulae to play with, but it also renders your creations in spectacular 3D.

Mozilla is starting an open source-supporting award program with an initial allocation of $1 million. The company has long been a proponent of open source software, and now wants to give something back to the community on which it so heavily relies.

The Mozilla Open Source Support (MOSS) is described as a way of both giving back to the community, but also giving forward to up and coming projects that could benefit others. A key feature of the program is a focus on improving the security of open source software, and Mozilla is looking to identify up to ten projects to help fund by the middle of December.

Set up Windows for a dual-monitor system and your mouse cursor should move smoothly from one display to the next.

This brings real advantages, but you may also notice a few issues, because the cursor doesn’t just stop at the edge of the screen any more. It’s all too easy to move to a scroll bar, or some other control at the far side of one display, and find your mouse cursor overshoots to the other screen.

Polarr’s free online photo editor and mobile apps have generated a lot of interest this year, thanks to their well-judged mix of power and ease of use.

If you’ve not yet tried the editor for yourself, Polarr’s Chrome app is a great place to start.

The XBMC Foundation has unveiled Kodi 15.2, a maintenance update of its open-source, cross-platform media center. This is the second release since version 15 debuted back in July.

The major focus of the new release is to improve stability on the Android platform, but there are numerous other bug fixes implemented in what Team Kodi has dubbed "The Final Chapter" in its release notes.

If you’re not mathematically inclined then it’s easy to assume that scientific calculators are too complex, out of your reach, not something you’ll ever need or use.

Kalkules is a free and portable scientific calculator for Windows which shows that isn’t necessarily true.

Copyfish is a free Chrome extension for extracting and translating text from images, videos, PDFs and more.

The package couldn’t be any easier to use. Click the Copyfish icon on your address bar, click and drag to draw a rectangle around your text, and wait: the OCR result is displayed in a few seconds, along with a translated version.

Many antivirus tools and security suites now include "vulnerability scanners" which check PCs for security issues.

But despite its age, Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer still does a more thorough job than most, without costing you anything at all.

Logging in to a PC as a standard user is great for security, but not so convenient if you regularly have to run programs which need admin rights.

RunAsTool is a portable tool which makes it quick and easy to launch applications with the rights they need.

NirSoft has released AdvancedRun, a free tool for launching programs with custom user, priority, CPU affinity, window size and state, compatibility settings, environment and more.

Whatever settings you define can be used just once, or saved for reuse in shortcuts or scripts.