Macrium Reflect boosts performance, gains GRUB2 support
Paramount Software has updated Macrium Reflect to 5.2.6504, and despite the very minor-sounding version number, it actually includes several important changes.
The company claims that backup performance has been improved by an impressive 30 percent or more.
Copy websites locally for offline browsing with Cyotek WebCopy
Cyotek WebCopy is a clever tool which copies all or part of a website to your hard drive for offline browsing.
Grabbing a small and simple site is easy: just enter a URL in the "Website" box, and choose the Copy option. Cyotek WebCopy downloads that page, and any links (within the same domain), then repeats the process until it’s done. And then you’re able to view the local copy of any page, and browse it as though you were online.
Split, combine, encrypt, compress: jPDF Tweak is a one-stop PDF toolkit
jPDF Tweak is an open source Java Swing application which provides a host of ways to customize, adjust and work with PDF files.
You can split or combine documents, for instance. There are crop, rotate and scaling options. Or you can apply text or image watermarks.
Create, edit and process animated GIFs with Cyotek Gif Animator
From forum avatars to simple web slideshows, there’s still a place for animated GIFs. And, fortunately, they can be very easy to create. Cyotek Gif Animator provides everything you need to create, work and batch process your GIF animations.
Open an existing animation and it’s displayed in a simple vertical timeline. You can change its background color, add or edit a text comment, and decide whether (and how often) it should loop, before viewing any results in a Preview window.
Pixopedia is a quirky but very interesting image editor, paint and drawing tool
Pixopedia doesn’t initially look like the most powerful of graphics tools. Small flat buttons present various ugly and cryptic icons; even the more obvious ones don’t behave as you’d expect; and there’s no bundled Help file to consult, not even any obvious menus you might browse for clues.
Don’t be tempted to give up, though. The program is quirky in the extreme, but once you’ve learned a few basic tricks then life becomes much easier.
SnipDock takes screenshots and displays them for easy reference later
Install most screen capture tools and you’ll find they run almost entirely in the background. Often you can simply press a hotkey and have your image saved, printed, uploaded to Facebook and so on, without you having to do anything else at all.
What if you just want to capture something for almost immediate reference, though: an address and phone number, a map, directions, something you want to keep in view? Saving an image means you’ll have to find and reopen it, and so you might prefer the rather simpler SnipDock.
Give ClamWin simple real-time protection with Clam Sentinel
ClamWin is an easy-to-use open source antivirus tool which runs on every version of Windows from 98 upwards.
The program doesn’t offer any real-time protection, unfortunately, which is a significant weakness. But you can add this yourself, to a degree, just by installing Clam Sentinel.
Convert is a handy unit conversion tool
When you’re unsure about Fahrenheit vs Celsius, feet and meters, or just wondering how large a petabyte really is, there’s no substitute for a good conversion tool.
There are plenty of candidates online. Google has several (search "convert F to C" for an example). But if you just need something lightweight for your PC desktop, then Convert could prove very useful.
Microsoft Office Configuration Analyzer 1.2 now available
Microsoft has updated its handy troubleshooting tool Microsoft Office Configuration Analyzer to version 1.2.
The Scan screen has been redesigned to add new tools. An "Office Alerts" section displays links to relevant Office support documents, while corporate customers will find help with Key Management Services activation issues.
NConvert -- an amazing command line-based image processor
In an increasingly touch-oriented world, the idea of using a command line utility to process images might seem, well, just a little old-fashioned.
And maybe it is. But if you regularly need to resize, rotate, crop or convert multiple images, then there’s still no substitute for a console tool like NConvert.
ASCOOS Web Server is a convenient Apache/ MySQL/ PHP bundle for developers
If you’d like to test your latest web development project locally then you could download Apache, then whatever other components you might need, install them individually and hope they all work together.
Or you could just grab a copy of ASCOOS Web Server, which does most of the hard work for you.
First look: DrawPad Graphics Editor
Australian developer NCH Software has announced the availability of DrawPad Graphics Editor, a straightforward and easy-to-use free vector graphics tool.
The program’s tiny size (566KB) didn’t leave us expecting very much. This isn’t just a downloader, either: even when installed, DrawPad requires barely more than 2MB drive space.
Google, Bing, Yahoo keyword rank checker Rankaware adds scheduler
The keyword rank checker Rankaware has been updated to version 1.4.
The highlight is that this release finally adds a scheduler. You don’t have to manually initiate an update any more: enable the schedule and the program can check your current Google, Bing and Yahoo! rankings when the program starts, every day, or on any specified day of the week or month.
Emsisoft releases Mobile Security for Android
Emsisoft has announced the availability of Emsisoft Mobile Security 1.0, its lightweight commercial Android security solution.
Mobile Security offers a similar feature set to many competing products. A malware scanner checks your apps and files for threats; real-time protection detects and blocks malicious apps before they can be installed, while web protection prevents you accessing dangerous websites.
APUSB 47 restores USB drive autorun to Windows 7 and 8
At first, Windows AutoRun seemed like a very good idea. Just connect a removable drive, and as long as it’s configured correctly, a program is automatically launched to help process your files (or whatever else you want to do).
But then, of course, malware authors realized that this was a great way to infect PCs without anyone ever noticing. Individual users could turn AutoRun off, but eventually Microsoft decided this wasn’t enough, and the feature was disabled for all but optical media in Windows 7.
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