| New/Recommended Software |
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- Stop Using Avast and AVG Plugins Right Now
- Well, this is a first, wherein I cite an article that recommends NOT using free software! "Two browsers have yanked Avast and AVG online security extensions from their web stores after a report revealed that they were unnecessarily sucking up a ton of data about users' browsing history." If you are using Windows 8.x or 10 I don't think you need extra antivirus software anyway. (Still recommend Malwarebytes free version though.) See next link for more info.
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- Why you can stop paying for antivirus software
- "You don't need to pay for antivirus software anymore. Microsoft’s Windows Defender, a free service that is built right into Windows 10, is now as good as the paid antivirus/antimalware solutions that have been collecting your money for years."
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- Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware
- "Can detect and remove malware that even the most well known anti-virus and anti-malware applications fail to detect." Free and highly recommended - Install (and keep uo-to-date) even if you have other good anti-virus protection. It is especially good at finding/destroying malware that other programs cannot - run in safe mode if you think you may have an infection.
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- Glary Utilities
- "Offers numerous powerful and easy-to-use system tools and utilities to fix, speed up, maintain and protect your PC. It allows you to clean common system junk files, as well as invalid registry entries and Internet traces. You can manage and delete browser add-ons, analyze disk space usage and find duplicate files ..." and much more. Free and highly recommended.
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- VideoLAN 3.0
- A free cross-platform media player. Version 2.0 has many new features:
- "This is the first major release in three years. It activates hardware decoding by default to get 4K and 8K playback, supports 10bits and HDR playback, 360° video and 3D audio, audio passthrough for HD audio codecs, streaming to Chromecast devices (even in formats not supported natively), playback of Blu-Ray Java menus and adds browsing of local network drives." Free and highly recommended
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- uBlock Origin
- A cross-browser, cross OS ad blocker that has been described as an HTML firewall. It has many nice features not the least of which is its low CPU/memory footprint. Oh, and as a bonus, it vastly speeds up the loading of pages with heavy ad graphics/animations. Many web sites which depend on advertising income are now detecting the presence of the ad blocker and and either asking for you to turn it off for their site (which is easily done in UBlock Origin) or not allowing you to see their content until you do disable it. uBlock Origin is available as a free extension for all major browsers on all major OSes, including Chrome/Firefox for Windows, Apple (Safari), Microsoft Store (Edge), and there are even Android versions.
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- LibreOffice
- "LibreOffice 7.5, a feature-rich major release of the LibreOffice 6 family with better performance, a large number of new and improved features, and enhanced interoperability with proprietary document formats," i.e., MS Word, Excel, etc.
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- Belarc Advisor
- "builds a detailed profile of your installed software and hardware, network inventory, any missing Microsoft hotfixes, anti-virus status, security benchmarks, and displays the results in your Web browser." Very useful.
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- The new Firefox/Firefox Quantum
- FireFox is now faster than Chrome. And now with its ability to sync across platforms, it is a serious contender to Chrome. Here's what Tech Republic has to say about it.
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- Dropbox.com
- Excellent! Free and highly recommended. Site/software for saving data online. "Any file you save to Dropbox also instantly saves to your computers, phones, and the Dropbox website. Features:
- 2 GB of online Dropbox storage for free, with subscriptions up to 1TB available.
- Your files are always available from the secure Dropbox website.
- Dropbox works with Windows, Mac, Linux, iPad, iPhone, Android and BlackBerry.
- Works even when offline. You always have your files, whether or not you have a connection.
- Dropbox transfers just the parts of a file that change (not the whole thing).
- Manually set bandwidth limits -- Dropbox won't hog your connection.
- Shared folders allow people to work together on the same projects and documents.
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- Google Drive
- Google Drive replaces Google Docs & Spreadsheets. As before, you can:
- Use an online editor to format documents, spell-check and more.
- Upload Word documents, OpenOffice, RTF, HTML or text.
- Download documents to your desktop as Word, PDF and more.
- View your documents' revision history and roll back to any version.
- Invite others to share your documents by e-mail address.
- Edit documents online with whomever you choose.
- Publish documents online to the world, or to just who you choose.
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- Paint.NET
- "Free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. An active and growing online community provides friendly help, tutorials, and plugins." I now use it in preference to my old favorite Paint Shop Pro - great for simple tasks like cropping/resizing/optimizing - highly recommended.
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| New Sites/Articles |
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- oryxspioenkop.com
- Open souce intelligence info, especially in regard the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
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- Thoughtco.Com/
- "ThoughtCo is a premier reference site with a 20+ year focus on expert-created education content." Great stuff!
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- Historic Supreme Court Decisions
- "C-SPAN's 12-part television series produced in cooperation with the National Constitution Center, exploring the issues, people, and places involved in some of the most significant Supreme Court cases in our nation's history."
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- Abraham Lincoln: A Life
- Michael Burlingame's Abraham Lincoln: A Life, published in 2008 in two large volumes and nearly 2,000 pages, is believed by many Lincoln scholars to be the most exhaustively researched and fully documented biography of Abraham Lincoln ever written.
The work as originally submitted was even more extensive, but largely because of space limitations, it was considered necessary to condense both the narrative and the accompanying documentation. ... this site [contains] the author's original unedited manuscript.... accessible by individual chapters, ... in searchable, read-only PDF format. |
- Standard Ebooks
- A volunteer-driven project that produces new editions of public domain ebooks that are lovingly formatted, and free.
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- SlickDeals.net
- Perhaps the best site for finding great deals on computers, electronics and many other things.
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- Ben's Bargains Guides
- Guides and ad scans for finding the best deals on computers, electronics and many other things.
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- A Dictionary of the English Language
- "A Digital Edition of the 1755 Classic by Samuel Johnson" - marvelous idea, a pdf facsimile and the beginning of a transcription into searchable text - hope work continues.
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- Merriam-Webster Dictionary
- Wonderful resource for the wordsmith (or just word lover) with many interesting features like the Time Traveller, showing when a word first appeared in printed form in the language. Hope it stays online for many years.
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- 18 History Podcasts
- A recommended list of 18 history podcasts.
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- History of Philosophy (without any gaps) podcast
- "The series looks at the ideas, lives and historical context of the major philosophers as well as the lesser-known figures of the tradition." Peter Adamson has produced the most comprehensive, accessible, serious and occasionally humorous, podcast treatment that I know of, at least in English. Currently he has done over 300 episodes, and he has gotten into the Italian Renaissance, with several hundred years of history and several years of podcasting to go. Reddit has an annotated list of philosophy related podcasts, if you are interested. Another good one: Ancient Greece Declassified
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- Practical.Engineering
- One of the very best YouTube video collections covering many different engineering topics. Highly recommended if you have any interest in engineering topics.
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- LibriVox
- LibriVox provides free audiobooks from the public domain.
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- KhanAcademy.org
- Excellent site for learning in many areas. "With a library of over 2,600 videos covering everything from arithmetic to physics, finance, and history and 211 practice exercises, we're on a mission to help you learn what you want, when you want, at your own pace. "
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- Gifford Lectures Online
- "Presents a comprehensive collection of books derived from the Gifford Lectures [a tradition of more than a hundred years]. In addition to the books, the Web site contains a biography of each lecturer and a summary of the lecture or book." Wonderful if you care anything about the confluence of philosophy, science, and theology.
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- MIT's OpenCourseWare
- "A free and open educational resource for faculty, students, and self-learners around the world." Incredible content!
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- Ted.com
- "Inspired talks by the world's greatest thinkers and doers" - great stuff!
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- FreeRice
- An Internet word game has generated enough rice to feed 50,000 people for one day. The game, FreeRice, tests the vocabulary of participants. For each click on a correct answer, the website donates money to buy 10 grains of rice.
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- Washington Post Puzzles
- Crosswords, sudoku
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- USAToday Puzzles
- Many puzzles, including crosswords, sudoku
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- Casual Printable Crossword
- Seven American-style crosswords are available each day (rotated at midnight eastern time). Solutions available the next day.
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- Fun-with-words.com
- "Over 500 pages of word puzzles, games, amazing lists, and fun facts."
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