Free Software

Inmatrix has released Zoom Player Free 9.5, a major new build of its lightweight, format-friendly media player for Windows.

Version 9.5 revamps its full-screen navigation interface to make the player friendlier to use with mice and touch-screen displays, plus adds a new text file viewer and includes various other tweaks and improvements.

TeamViewer has unveiled TeamViewer 10 beta, the latest edition of its popular remote access and control tool.

New integration with Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive and Box makes it quicker and easier to share files in meetings or remote control sessions.

IObit has released Smart Defrag 3.3, an update to its performance-boosting Windows defragmentation tool that has built-in functions for automatically defragging drives to keep them running swiftly.

Version 3.3 opens with support for the publicly available Windows 10 Technical Preview, but also adds in new and optimized features to make it a worthy update across all supported platforms.

Brackets is an open source text editor built with web technologies for web designers and developers. Adobe created the tool three years ago, and has been contributing to it ever since. Now, after 45 minor releases, Brackets finally hits the long awaited 1.0 milestone.

The program blends visual tools into the editor, making it easier to design in code. Recent additions include multiple cursors, split view, theme support, and more. The latest release also comes with a preview version of Extract for Brackets, which is a new Creative Cloud service that speeds up the process of pulling design information like colors, fonts and gradients out of a Photoshop file, and turning it into CSS.

Ping is the most basic of networking troubleshooting tools, and easy enough to use, but its standard text output is, well, a little limited. Endless tables of figures make it more difficult for you to spot issues, and to convey them to someone else.

PingHurry could make your life easier by displaying ping results in graphical, as well as text form. It’s a simple visual ping tool for Windows 7+, portable and entirely free.

First proposed in its basic form more than 40 years ago, File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is an archaic networking technology which should have been ditched long ago.

Remarkably, though, it’s still useful in some areas -- when accessing your own web server, maybe -- and as a result there’s still a strong demand for FTP clients. Normally this might involve installing something like FileZilla; it’s fast, reliable, packed with features, and a great choice for heavy-duty FTP users.

Notepad may be a weak, feeble and hopelessly underpowered editor, but its more powerful replacements can have problems of their own. Piling on the features often brings an array of interface clutter -- ribbons, toolbars, menus, panes, status bar and more -- which can get in your way and slow you down.

Distraction-free text editors take a different approach, replacing all the usual interface chrome with a clean, minimalist look. This can be great when you just want to concentrate on the task in hand, and as Write! shows, they can still have plenty of features to explore.

If you need to annotate an image then most graphics editors will have a few tools to help: text, drawing, maybe a shape or two.

That’s fine for the basics, but if you regularly need more then it’s worth trying iPhotoDraw, a free image annotation program for Windows XP and later.

News aggregator service Feedly has unveiled Feedly 24.0, a major new release of its iOS and Android-friendly tool. The iOS build follows days after the Android version was unveiled.

Version 24.0 introduces two new features of note: access to shared collections and tagging support. The iOS version also debuts a new design optimised for the latest iPhones while the Android build introduces support for the forthcoming Android L.

Who doesn't like free stuff? Not many people, but there are various definitions of free. Free as in beer, free as in speech, and so on. The open source software movement combines these two ideas, and many more, by making software freely available to anyone who wants to use it, and also affording them the right to tinker with the code and change it in whatever way they want. It's one of the foundations of Linux, and it's a philosophy that -- in increasingly cash-strapped times -- is gaining momentum.

The Document Foundation, creator of the LibreOffice variant of the free OpenOffice suite, today announces that it is joining the Open Source Business Alliance. The aim is to help with the deployment of the free office suite on larger scales within companies and organizations.

It’s that time of the month when Piriform’s team delivers their regular CCleaner update, and sure enough they’ve announced the availability of CCleaner 4.19 and CCleaner 4.19 Portable.

The big news this time is compatibility with Windows 10 Technical Preview. If you’re using the new system so much that it’s cluttered with junk, then the program can now give it a thorough cleanup, just like any other.

Social media scheduling service Buffer has unveiled Buffer 4.0 for iPad and iPhone, a major new release of its companion app for sharing and scheduling posts on social networks. Like the web-based service, the app supports Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn accounts.

Version 4.0 becomes a universal app, and now offers full, native iPad support. It also adds a new Share option for scheduling content from other apps.

EaseUS software has released EaseUS Todo Backup Free 7.5 and EaseUS Todo Backup Workstation 7.5, a major new release of its comprehensive Windows backup tool.

The program, which allows users to take both file- and image-based backups from a single tool, gains one significant new feature with this release: the ability to mount and unmount image backups.

Bitdefender has announced the availability of Bitdefender Adware Removal Tool for PC, the first public beta of its portable program to detect and remove unwanted software.

The Removal Tool arrives as a single 41.8MB executable file. There are no supporting files, and it doesn’t download anything else: just run it and go.

Avast Software has announced the release of its 2015 product lineup, including Avast Free and Pro Antivirus 2015, Avast Internet Security 2015, and Avast Premier 2015.

All editions now include a Home Network Security option which scans your local network for vulnerabilities: Wi-Fi status, router settings, passwords still set to common defaults, more.