Mike Williams

Working with media files generally requires a whole library of software: download tools, editors, authoring applications and more. That’s not a problem if you’ve built up your own collection of favorites over a number of years, but if you’re a PC novice then it’s not easy to know where to begin.

But that’s where Freemore Audio Video Suite comes in, as the package claims to include a host of tools to help you create, edit, convert and share your media files, and all for free.

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Centigrade to Fahrenheit, miles to kilometers, pounds to kilograms -- everyone needs a unit conversion tool occasionally. And if you’re working with simple units, and are online at the time, then a quick web search will probably find a service to help. Or you can often use Google directly: just type 55F in C into the search box for a quick temperature conversion, for instance.

If you’d like some offline assistance, though, or need to run more unusual conversions, then the free ESBUnitConv is a great place to start.

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Sign up for an account with a website and you’ll usually see them promising not to share your details with others. “We hate spam as much as you do”, they might claim, although none of this seems to prevent the endless torrent of junk which pours into our inboxes on a daily basis.

It could be a better idea to simply never give out your main email address in the first place, then. And MaskMe is an excellent Chrome extension that can help.

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Real Networks Inc has released RealPlayer 16, the latest edition of its one-stop media player.

And the big addition this time is the redesigned RealDownloader, and in particular the new video bookmarking system.

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It's tough to make an impact in the Windows browser market. And no-one knows that better than Maxthon; after almost ten years, the program is still struggling to reach one percent market share.

The developers are nothing if not persistent, though, and Maxthon’s latest incarnation, now renamed Maxthon Cloud Browser, has just been released. Will this deliver the long-awaited breakthrough? We’re not sure, but it’s definitely an interesting attempt.

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The Walking Dead is now on its mid-season break, but if you’re missing the show already then you could turn to Zombie Shooter, a free game which provides all the opportunities for walker-slaughtering you’re ever likely to need.

Okay, it’s true, you won’t get quite the character development here that you do in the show (or, indeed, any at all). The game’s plot, such as it is, it rather more basic: essentially you’re just running around a secret research lab, slaughtering zombies, picking up weapons, ammo and health packs, and trying to figure out what’s going on.

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There have always been programs around to hide what you’re doing on a PC, and perhaps unsurprisingly they don’t have the best of names. The assumption seems to be that they’re only ever used by people who don’t want everyone else to know they’re looking at porn, say, or playing games when they should be working. But of course the reality is a little more complicated than that.

What if you’re shopping for birthday presents and the lucky recipient-to-be comes in, say? Or maybe you don’t want a work colleague to see you’re browsing a mental health website? There are all kinds of reasons why you might want to maintain your PC privacy, and SmokeScreen is a simple free tool which promises to help.

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If you’re looking to preserve your privacy online then there are already a host of free tools and services queuing up to offer you a new IP address, so discovering yet another, in the shape of SafeIP, didn’t exactly fill us with excitement.

The program doesn’t stop there, though. It also claims to block cookies, conceal your referrer and browser agent, block ads and prevent you from accessing known dangerous sites. And all for free, no adware or similar catches. Perhaps SafeIP was worth a look, after all.

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CyberLink has released PowerProducer 6 Ultra, the latest version of its DVD authoring tool, and while the changes aren’t revolutionary there’s plenty to explore.

The program now includes 14 animated 3D-like menu templates, for instance. Some aren’t so great, but others are very good indeed, and on balance they’re an excellent extension to the program’s abilities.

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Creating a great music player is a tricky business. You’ll need to provide plenty of features, but also make sure the interface is simple, unobtrusive, lightweight, and never gets in the user’s way. Very few players get this balance right, in our view, but Winyl is one of the exceptions.

The program arrives as a compact download (under 3MB), and installs quickly, with no browser add-ons or other extras to worry about (you won’t even see as much as a “Donate” button, unless you view the Winyl “About” box).

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If you'd like to keep your wireless network secure, turning on the best possible encryption is usually a very good place to start. There may still be room for problems, though (as I discovered, when my brother accidentally turned off his encryption entirely while trying to set up a TV), so it could be worth using NirSoft’s Wireless Network Watcher to keep a lookout for Wi-Fi intruders.

As usual with NirSoft programs, Wireless Network Watcher is compact in the extreme, a tiny download (even when unpacked it requires less than 700KB drive space) which requires no installation: just unzip it and go.

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Windows PowerShell may be Microsoft’s scripting choice for the future, but that doesn’t mean it’s all over for the humble batch file -- far from it.

Install the free Advanced BAT to EXE Converter and not only will the program help you develop new batch files, but it also allows you to extend them with new commands, before compiling the results into EXE files which will run on anything from Windows 98 upwards (no .NET or other annoying DLL dependencies).

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If you’d like to keep your wireless network secure then turning on the best possible encryption is usually a very good place to start. There may still be room for problems, though (as I discovered, when my brother accidentally turned off his encryption entirely while trying to set up a TV), so it could be worth using NirSoft’s Wireless Network Watcher to keep a lookout for WiFi intruders.

As usual with NirSoft programs, Wireless Network Watcher is compact in the extreme, a tiny download (even when unpacked it requires less than 700KB drive space) which requires no installation: just unzip it and go.

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If you’re at all interested in PC scripting then you’ll probably already know that Windows PowerShell is a very powerful technology that presents all kinds of interesting management and automation possibilities.

Figuring out how best to use PowerShell isn’t always straightforward, though. To put it politely. But the next time you’re struggling to understand how to do something, it’s worth remembering that help is at hand in the shape of Microsoft’s Script Explorer.

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Nir Sofer has announced that several of his network applications, including  CurrPorts, NetworkTrafficView, SmartSniff and CountryTraceRoute, now support the free MaxMind IP geolocation database.

In practical terms that means the programs now include a “Remote IP Country” column in their report tables, and in some cases this will list the country (and, occasionally, the city) for that IP address.

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