BitDefender 60-Second Virus Scanner protects from the cloud
Bitdefender has released 60-Second Virus Scanner, a cloud-based malware hunter which aims to provide an extra layer of security protection for your PC.
And at first glance this seems to work well. Installation is speedy; there were no conflicts with existing security software in our first tests; and the program really did complete its scan in only 60 seconds.
Google Analytics Cookie Cruncher exposes your online activities
When you need to know more about the websites someone is visiting (you want to make sure your kids haven’t been straying on the darker side of the web, say) then checking their cookies has always been one option. But the information you’ll get is often very limited, maybe just to a domain name, and so won’t always be particularly useful.
Google Analytics Cookie Cruncher may be able to help, though, by focusing on Google Analytics cookies. These contain much more data, and in a standard format, so with just a little work you may be able to see the sites someone has browsed, the search keywords used to locate them, the date and time of the last two visits, and the number of times a site has been visited in total.
Easily reveal hashes in file Properties
There are plenty of tools available to help you calculate file hashes, but using them may not always be convenient. You’ll need to load the application, import your files, choose appropriate options, export the hashes, maybe more.
If you get tired of all this, though, you could always install the free HashTab, which makes life much easier. Just right-click a file, select Properties > File Hashes, and maybe copy your hash of choice to the clipboard in a couple of clicks.
System Mechanic 11.5 better supports Windows 8, adopts per-home licensing
Iolo technologies has released System Mechanic 11.5, the latest edition of its flagship PC maintenance and optimization suite.
And the company points to the new Guided Recommendations as the highlight of this build, claiming they “harness the collective intelligence of the entire System Mechanic community base”, in particular when helping to figure out exactly which startup tools you need to run, and which you can safely do without.
Image Analyzer offers features you wouldn't expect for free
Let’s be frank: most free image editors are dull. They tend to offer the same style of interface, the same basic functionality, with little to distinguish them for the competition. That may be fine for beginners, but if you’re a more experienced user then you might sometimes wish for something more.
There are more interesting alternatives around, though, and Image Analyzer is a particularly good example. It’s far from perfect, but if you’re looking for a photo editor with a little extra features and functionality then the program could keep you busy for a very long time.
Free Image Printer saves documents as PDFs
Virtual printers are a popular way to create PDFs, and with good reason. If a particular application doesn’t support exporting as PDF, that’s no longer a problem: just print it, send the job to your virtual PDF printer, and it’ll create the file for you – very convenient.
If you like this idea, though, you don’t have to limit yourself to saving PDFs. Free Image Printer also adds a virtual printer to your PC, but takes the next logical step of supporting more formats, allowing you to also save your print jobs as HTML, XLS/ XLSX, MHT, RTF, and a host of image types: JPEG, PNG, TIFF, GIF, BMP, WMF, EMF and more.
Find and download music with MP3jam
If you want to download music for free then the Internet isn’t exactly short of options, so discovering that we now had another, in the shape of the new MP3jam, didn’t exactly fill us with excitement.
But then we actually tried the program. And it turned out to be a real surprise.
When streaming content stutters, try DPC Latency Checker
You’ve got a speedy, modern PC and a fast internet connection -- so why is it that you can’t watch streaming videos without regular dropouts and interruptions?
These kind of problems can be frustrating, and they’re certainly tricky to diagnose. But the free DPC Latency Checker could help point you in the right direction.
Document Metadata Cleaner 3 scrubs Office files of personal info
Create a document in Microsoft Office and you’ll usually find it includes metadata, information you might not realize was there: your name, company name, some computer details, version information, comments and more.
Windows makes it easy enough to remove metadata from individual documents (right-click > Properties > Details > Remove Properties and Personal Information), but you can also use the free Document Metadata Cleaner 3 to check and clean your entire system in a single operation.
BurnAware 5.5 supports DVD-Video
BurnAware 5.5 Free and Home, are now available for Windows. Version 5.5 adds DVD-Video as an option to the file system selection when compiling ISO files, plus adds other minor features and resolves a number of issues and bugs that surfaced after version 5.4 was released 15 days earlier.
The key new feature in BurnAware 5.5 is the new DVD-Video mode option when selecting a file system for ISO compilation, allowing users to create video DVDs. It’s joined by support for BIN image files when creating boot discs.
Is your PC safe from malware? OPSWAT Security Score answers
Understanding a PC’s security status normally involves considering many separate factors. Does it have an antivirus program installed, for instance? A backup tool? A firewall? Are they set up correctly, and being used on a regular basis? Evaluating every possibility could take you a very long time.
Or alternatively, you could just run OPSWAT’s Security Score, a free and portable tool that will quickly report on your target PC’s security, and give advice on how it could be improved.
HTML and CSS editor TopStyle 5 is a major upgrade
It seems to have been in beta for a very long time, but, at last, HTML and CSS editor TopStyle 5 finally is released. And there’s a very lengthy list of new features to explore.
Strong CSS3 support, for instance, now makes it easy to create one stylesheet for large displays, perhaps, and another for mobile devices. A CSS Gradient Generator means you can use gradients in CSS3, no images required; you can add text shadows in a couple of clicks, and the new Prefixr handles the tricky business of converting your tidy CSS3 code into something which will work on all the main browsers.
What's hogging your disk space? WizTree knows
Your hard drive’s filling up? There’s no shortage of tools around to help find out why, but the need to crawl through every single folder on your system means they can be a little tedious to use.
Now there’s a much faster alternative, though, in the shape ofWizTree, a free and portable application which can deliver a detailed report on your space hogs in just a second or two.
SFTP Net Drive maps remote servers as local virtual drive
Using your own web space to store and manage files may sound like a good idea at first, but there can be complications, in particular when choosing software. You can’t just use any backup program, for instance, as you’ll need FTP access, which cuts down your choice considerably.
If you have some web space with SFTP access, though, there is a simpler way. Install SFTP Net Drive and it will map your remote server to a virtual drive in Explorer, allowing you to access it just like any other network or local drive, from Windows or any application you like.
Quickly troubleshoot Microsoft Outlook
Emiel Wieldraaijer has released OutlookParameterGUI 1.0.4, the latest edition of his useful Outlook troubleshooting tool.
The core idea of the program remains the same. It displays and gives help on various Outlook command line parameters, then allows you to launch the program with that parameter at a click. So if your custom views are messed up and you’d like to restore the defaults, say, you might select the /cleanviews parameter, click Start -- and that’s about it.
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