Articles about Software

The average desktop search tool doesn’t exactly have much initiative. Run a search for "Stephen" and it doesn’t matter how many Steves or Stevens you’ve got, records with the original spelling is all that you’ll see.

AIKIN Desktop Search ($99) uses fuzzy searching to take this further. Search for Stephen here and you might get hits for Steven, Steve, Stevie, Stephanie, right down to Staten Island any anything similar, all neatly organized with the best results (usually) at the top.

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S.M.A.R.T. which stands for Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology is a fantastic tool for anticipating hardware errors on hard disk drives. The utility can test for bad sectors and some software can even test for temperature, core speed and system fan speed anomalies. When S.M.A.R.T. software indicates an imminent hard drive failure, the user is notified so that data can be backed up and data loss avoided. Diagnostic programs are widely used on mechanical hard disk drives and RAID, but how reliable are they on solid state drives SSDs?

Checks include electrical and mechanical performance and read/write error rates. Electrical tests include RAM and read/write circuitry. Mechanical tests seek servo information on data tracks, scanning for bad sectors across the entire disk surface. However solid state drives are constructed very differently, although flash media does develop errors over time -- normally bad flash blocks in the NAND memory chips. Just like traditional hard disk drives, the controller manages these bad blocks and re-maps them to ‘extra’ blocks. Eventually the drive will run out of ‘extra’ blocks and S.M.A.R.T. is quick to identify this.

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More than 3,000 prisoners in the state of Washington have been released early from prison as a result of a software bug. The formula used to calculate sentence reductions was found to be inaccurate, and while the average early release prisoner mistakenly had 49 days shaved from their sentence, one was set free almost two years early.

The software bug stems from a software update way back in 2002. The update introduced a new way to apply good behaviour credits, and governors are astonished that the problem has been on-going for 13 years. The Washington Department of Corrections says that it has been aware of the issue since 2012.

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Now this is a real doozy -- a $90 graphical powerhouse for nothing! Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 9 covers all your design needs, from photo editor to DTP package, vector drawing to web graphics (including Flash animations).

Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 9 may retail for $89.99, but for 24 hours from from midday EST on December 24th, you’ll be able to pick up a one-PC license of this superb design tool for nothing, nada, zilch.

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Let’s face it, backups are pretty boring, which is probably the reason why they often get overlooked and people find themselves staring into the abyss of lost data. Part of the reason why so many of us hate backups is that the software used often seems to overcomplicate things with lots of options that many people never use.

Bvckup 2 aims to change all of this with a backup solution that’s clean, simple to use, elegant and fast. Produced by Swiss company Pipemetrics, Bvckup 2 is small -- the installer is less than 2MB in size - but packs in a surprising amount of sophistication.

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Ashampoo has announced the release of Ashampoo Burning Suite 16 ($59.99), and its more limited free version, Ashampoo Burning Suite 2016.

The new edition does a better job of finding song covers, even when there are no tags available, and can optionally blend multiple covers together into a single photo mosaic.

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IT asset management (ITAM) software manages the lifecycle of hardware and software. It can help influence decisions about which assets need to be purchased, redistributed, or disposed of.

There is a lot of choice in the market when it comes to picking the right ITAM software for your company, but Camterra has made it easy by rating the top 20 IT asset management software solutions as measured by total customers, users, social presence and vendor size.

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Application producers are aware of rapid change impacting their ability to make money from their software products, but they're not adopting the automated licensing and entitlement management systems that would protect them from those changes and enable them to be more agile, and grow revenues and profits.

This is the conclusion of a new report by Flexera Software which shows that producers are aware that rapid technology changes are impacting the business climate, creating new opportunity and risk.

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French developer Adlice Software has released RogueKiller 11, the latest edition of its powerful malware detection tool.

The new build comes with a completely rewritten kernel driver, delivering more efficient scans and improved reliability for the latest versions of Windows.

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Recently, Apple announced a new subscription service whereby customers can pay a monthly recurring fee to get an annual phone (hardware) upgrade.

Similarly, all Autodesk software will only be available on a subscription basis beginning August 1, 2016. These announcements yet again signal that the dominance of perpetual licensing in the market place is on decline.

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Google Apps for Work and Microsoft Office 365 are the two big beasts stalking the cloud software world, but there are differences in approach between independent software vendors (ISVs) for the two.

This summer the Cloud Technology Alliance surveyed 39 independent software vendors (ISVs) and channel partners about their market strategies for their cloud solutions in both Google and Microsoft environments.

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Everyone needs a solid, reliable backup solution, and Acronis True Image 2016 is one of the best when it comes to backing up everything from selected folders to entire partitions and hard disks.

You can now pick up a single license of True Image 2016 for just $29.99, which represents an amazing 40 percent off the MSRP thanks to our latest offer.

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BullGuard has shipped the latest version of its comprehensive security suite, BullGuard Internet Security.

The online backup tool now offers direct backup to your Dropbox account, great news if you don’t want to spread your files across multiple cloud accounts.

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AVAST Software has unveiled its 2016 product range, including Avast Free Antivirus 2016, Avast Internet Security 2016 and Avast Premier 2016.

The highlight is Avast Passwords, a new password manager available in every edition (yes, even the Free build).

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WinZip International LLC has released WinZip 20, a landmark release of what is perhaps the world’s best-known archiving tool. Version 20 builds on changes introduced in version 19 that saw the app move towards a unified file management system.

WinZip 20 introduces a new file management ribbon and frequent folders feature, plus makes working with files and folders more flexible while also widening its sharing options.

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