Internet Resources New Software (Updated: Tuesday, September 18, 2007)
"The World's Most Popular Business Graphics Software. It's graphics software for everyone. SmartDraw makes it possible for non-designers to create compelling business graphics, like: Flow charts Organizational Charts Floor Plans Maps Gantt Charts Office Layouts Timelines Sales Territory Maps Concept Maps." Does everything Visio can do, but cheaper and MUCH easier to use. With Visio you get a few dozen templates. With SmartDraw you get 50,000! 30 day free trial. Highly recommended.
OpenOffice 2.3 "OpenOffice.org 2.3 incorporates an extensive array of new features and enhancements to all its core components, and protects users from newly discovered security vulnerabilities. Mission Statement: To create, as a community, the leading international office suite that will run on all major platforms and provide access to all functionality and data through open-component based APIs and an XML-based file format." Available for Windows and Linux. Here is an article with an overview of OO 2.2 features. Now includes a database (named BASE) that stores its data in XML (reads and writes Access, DBase, and MySQL files).
AVG Anti-Virus Free edition "Get your free copy of the AVG Anti-Virus System - AVG Free Edition and you will be able to use it without any limitations for life of the product. You can download free Updates to get the latest program virus databases." Highly recommended.
AVG Anti-Spyware 7.5 Free version of one of the very best anti-spyware programs available - fast, more thorough than Spybot or Ad-aware. Excellent companion to AVG Anti-virus. Highly recommended.
Safari New Apple (Mac) web browser, now available for the PC - I am impressed - the fastest browser I have ever seen with a beautiful and simple user interface. Many other neat features. Watch out IE and Firefox! Free, of course. Still in beta, but still worth a look.
Netscape 9.0 New! Many new, useful features make it worthy of consideration.
Ad-Aware 2007 Free New version - "designed to provide advanced protection from known Data-mining, aggressive advertising, Parasites, Scumware, selected traditional Trojans, Dialers, Malware, Browser hijackers, and tracking components.
CamStudio "CamStudio is able to record all screen and audio activity on your computer and create industry-standard AVI video files and using its built-in SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into lean, mean, bandwidth-friendly Streaming Flash videos (SWFs)." Free!
AVG Anti-Rootkit Free "A new, free product aimed at detection and removal of Rootkits. Rootkits are a specific malware type which hide in other applications or a computer‘s operating system kernel. This allows malicious applications to then collect passwords and sensitive data from the infected computer without user knowledge for personal information theft, spam relay and other criminal intents."
VideoLAN "A free cross-platform media player, supports a large number of multimedia formats, without the need for additional codecs. It can also be used as a streaming server, with extended features (video on demand, on the fly transcoding, ...)" Highly recommended.
Avira AntiVir PersonalEdition "The product combines first-class detection rates and ease of use with a top performance that protects your computer safely and hardly burdens older PCs."
SpamPal Open-source spam blocker.
Mailwasher Free version of a commercial anti-spam program.
Internet Explorer 7 After long delays, IE 7 is finally here, promising better ease of use (lots has changed in the interface), including tabbed browsing, "better security," add-ins (Firefox-type extensions). My first impression based on the RC 2 is that this may be worthy of consideration. Some of the interface changes are hard to fathom, however, as, e.g., getting rid of the standard File/Edit/etc., menu bar and moving most of its functions to the right-side of the window and hiding the Copy/Paste items. They are violating their own interface conventions! For what purpose?!
Firefox Browser 2.0 New features: Visual Refresh: Firefox 2's theme and user interface have been updated to improve usability without altering the familiarity of the browsing experience. Built-in phishing protection: Phishing Protection warns users when they encounter suspected Web forgeries, and offers to return the user to their home page. Enhanced search capabilities: Search term suggestions will now appear as users type in the integrated search box when using the Google, Yahoo! or Answers.com search engines. Improved tabbed browsing: By default, Firefox will open links in new tabs instead of new windows, and each tab will now have a close tab button. Resuming your browsing session: The Session Restore feature restores windows, tabs, text typed in forms, and in-progress downloads from the last user session. Inline spell checking: A new built-in spell checker enables users to quickly check the spelling of text entered into Web forms (like this one) without having to use a separate application. and much more...
Picasa from Google Yet another breakthrough web-software application from Google. You download a small program that allows you to organize and manipulate (simply, powerfully) your images and then publish them ALL AT ONCE to a web albumn for others. Terrific idea! Beats Yahoo photos (where you must upload images one by one) hands down. Highly recommended.
MozBackup "MozBackup is a simple utility for creating backups of Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, Mozilla Suite and Netscape profiles. It allows you to backup and restore bookmarks, mail, contacts, history, extensions, cache etc."
ClamWin "ClamWin is a Free Antivirus for Microsoft Windows 98/Me/2000/XP/2003. It provides a graphical user interface to the Clam AntiVirus engine." Works on W2K3 server. Here is a review.
IsoBuster "Rescue lost files from a bad or trashed CD or DVD!"
Google Earth "Quickly zoom from space down to street level and combine imagery, 3D geography, maps, and business data to get the total picture in seconds." Free version available for download.
ipodder "Want to listen to internet audio programs but can't when they are scheduled? This program lets you create your own custom online audio anytime, anywhere. Really."
TheOpenCD "TheOpenCD is a collection of high quality Free and Open Source Software. The programs run in Windows and cover the most common tasks such as word processing, presentations, e-mail, web browsing, web design, and image manipulation."
Jpegdump "Makes an binary image copy of a memory card and extracts all included jpeg files, even if the files have been deleted (but not overwritten). "
Gimp.org "The GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages."
PowerPoint 2003 Add-in: Microsoft Producer Free add-in for PowerPoint users. "Producer 2003 provides users with many powerful new features that make it easier to synchronize audio, video, slides, and images to create engaging and effective rich-media presentations."
Belarc Advisor "Builds a detailed profile of your installed software and hardware, including Microsoft Hotfixes, and displays the results in your Web browser" - Free!
Microsoft's Anti-spyware Software "Download anti-spyware software and more to help protect your computer."
DeskPins "DeskPins can be used to make any application topmost, that is, to keep it above all other windows. Just grab a pin from the DeskPins icon in the system notification area (a.k.a. taskbar tray) and click on any window. This functionality is identical to the "Always on Top" setting found in some programs. With DeskPins you can add this feature to any program!" Marvelously useful, free tool - keep the system calendar, calculator, anything, visible while you edit/create documents.
Your Uninstaller 2006 Pro "Your Uninstaller 2006 Pro is a drag-and-drop uninstaller. All actions will be taken automatically and in a step-by-step manner to completely remove the program associated with the icon. Your Uninstaller 2006 Pro also provides a straightforward user interface, which allows you to use many advanced functions, such as highlighting newly installed applications and automatically removing invalid programs. The program comes with several useful utilities, including a start-up organizer. It allows you to fully control all the programs that run automatically at start-up. An Internet Explorer context menu organizer allows you to clear your right-click menu. A temporary-file remover allows you to scan your entire disk for unused files and to completely remove them."
Tweak UI for XP Everything in the standard Tweak UI plus ten more individually downloadable power toys