IEtweak 2

IEtweak 2

IE Tweak 2 is freeware, and I've been using it for a couple of years now. The site originates from Poland, and I've not encountered any spyware or malware from the site or the program itself.

IEtweak 2 is designed to configure and personalize settings of Microsoft Internet Explorer browser in versions 5-6. Program allows to change:

* toolbar's background
* animation in the right upper corner
* IE's title bar text
* Desktop icon
* number of simultaneously downloaded files from the same server (IE 6 only)
* default IE's browser engine
* default IE's download folder

For me, the most useful feature is being able to change the maximum number of simultaneous downloads, very useful!

Dexadine, Inc

Dexadine Free Software

One of the more unusual free software sites you'll find on the web, Dexadine, Inc.'s flagship software is their Ballistic Explorer, which lets you model ammunition ballistics. 30-day demo available.

Completely unrelated and even more interesting is the Acerose Password Vault, yet another password-keeping program.

They also have a simple photo sharing application for CDs called Photo Presenter (tm). It is relatively simple and easy to use compared to some of the software that comes free with digital cameras these days.

bartdart.com freeware

bartdart.com

There is something on bartdart.com for just about everyone! If you are a Microsoft .NET programmer, enjoy games, or like to tinker with your browser settings, there is something here for you.

Seven Segment LED Control for ASP.NET - is a simple, easy to use server control for Microsoft ASP.NET websites. With this control in your ToolBox, you can place alarm clock style digits within your webpages.

WinYaht - WinYaht is a hand held yahtzee game emulator.

ScrubXP - ScrubXP cleans a computer from temporary files and registry keys resulting from opening files and or using the Internet. It removes IE History, IE Temporary Files, all files from TEMP directory, IE Cookies, Documents List from Start Menu, Empties Recycle Bin, Clears Autocomplete Entries and Turns it Off, Clears Recent File Lists for Run, Common Dialogs, Recent Documents, Search Assistant, Typed URLs, Paint, Find Computer, Printer Ports, Find Files, Media Player, Previous Tasks, and Real Player

ProxyPal - Ever think that it takes way too many clicks to turn your Internet Explorer proxy on and off? Me too so I wrote ProxyPal. After installing ProxyPal, just add it to your IE toolbar and you have one click access to toggle your proxy. This is very useful for corporate latptops that connect to the Internet away from work. Install ProxyPal today to put an end to seven-clicking your proxy on and off!

Toolbar Chest for Outlook Express - Toolbar Chest for Outlook Express will save many of your Outlook Express settings such as Toolbar content, size and position. Toolbar Chest for OE will save window positions, layout settings and many other settings. Get your Outlook Express configuration just the way you like it, back it up with Toolbar Chest for OE, and never worry about having to reload Windows to get it back.

CableNut Software

CableNut Software

If you are looking to tweak your Internet connection like a hardcore tinkerer, take a look at CableNut's free software, CableNut. Works with cable or DSL setups.

CableNut is a tool for optimizing your Internet Connection. We have provided a way to tweak any option you may want to in the adjuster. You can load "CableNut Custom Setting" files that are included with the program to tweak your Internet connection.

You can make your own "CableNut Custom Setting" files save them for later use, or distribute them to anyone with the CableNut program. Dialup, Cable, DSL, and Satellite connections are supported out of the box. If you don't have one of the supported connection types don't worry you can visit the site, and ask the CableNut team for help. Best of all it is freeware. We don't haggle you with annoying advertisments, banners, time limits, or restrictions.

Just remember that we developed this application to make your Internet go faster, that is what we wanted. This software will support any connection type, and it does work with Windows XP!

Personally I'm happy enough with my connection to tinker at this level, but if you're looking to squeeze a little more speed out of your own connection for gaming, downloading or what have you, CableNut comes highly recommended!

FreeMind - Mind Mapping Software

FreeMind

FreeMind is a premier free mind-mapping software written in Java. The recent development has hopefully turned it into high productivity tool. We are proud that the operation and navigation of FreeMind is faster than that of MindManager because of one-click "fold / unfold" and "follow link" operations.

So you want to write a completely new metaphysics? Why don't you use FreeMind? You have a tool at hand that remarkably resembles the tray slips of Robert Pirsig, described in his sequel to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance called Lila. Do you want to refactor your essays in a similar way you would refactor software? Or do you want to keep personal knowledge base, which is easy to manage? Why don't you try FreeMind? Do you want to prioritize, know where you are, where you've been and where you are heading, as Stephen Covey would advise you? Have you tried FreeMind to keep track of all the things that are needed for that?

I've been using FreeMind for about 2 years now, and it is easy to use, simple to understand, and works great for planning and brainstorming. I've even used it for team planning in business use. It has a feature that allows you to display public mindmaps on your web site.

WSU's Paint.NET

Washington State University

Paint.NET is image and photo manipulation software designed to be used on computers that run Windows 2000, XP, Vista, or Server 2003. It supports layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools.

It started development at Washington State University as an undergraduate senior design project mentored by Microsoft, and is currently being maintained by some of the alumni that originally worked on it. Originally intended as a free replacement for the MS Paint software that comes with Windows, it has grown into a powerful yet simple tool for photo and image editing.

Freeware, and the code is open-source!

Art Plus Marketing & Publishing

Art Plus Marketing & Publishing

This Croatian company produces a number of shareware applications, but the most interesting one I will list first, as it is freeware:

EasyNoter - Top rated Personal Information Manager / Organizer! The freeware version is known as the Lite version. There are also Standard and Pro versions available.

xTerminator - xTerminator 4.5 will help you block spam and most of worms before they even reach your mailbox. Shareware, but won't expire so you can try it out until you're sure you like it.

Wallpaper Calendar - Not only can you display calendars on your desktop but you can also display short notes and even diary entries. You can set reminders, use built in diary or link Wallpaper Calendar with EasyNoter (even LITE freeware version) and display EasyNoter Diary entries on your desktop.

Calendar Designer - How would you like to have your own calendar design hanging on the wall? Use Art Plus Calendar Designer to insert your own images to numerous predefined layouts or create and print your own calendar designs.

I always recommend that if you like any shareware, always pay the author if you decide to keep the software! Promote the ideals of shareware and try before you buy!

Skype

Yeah, that's right, Skype.

Sometimes we get so bombarded by cyberculture that we don't expect people to ask "What's that?" when we mention popular web services. Especially ones that have a large impact on the future of telecommunications, such as Skype.

Skype - Skype is a little program for making free calls over the internet to anyone else who also has Skype. It’s free and easy to download and use, and works with most computers. They also have some paid services that extend Skype, such as ones that allow you to call landlines and mobile phones, a real telephone number where people can reach you over Skype using their telephones, and voice mail. For Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Get it, works great!

AxiomX Software

AxiomX Software

More than software, this site promises Art - Music - Software!

Among the interesting proggies to toy with:

PicSizer - A batch utility that resizes images for use on the web and in email. It's the perfect tool for quickly generating screen-friendly versions of your images at dramatically reduced file sizes.

Inpatient Manager - A database application for hospitalists created by a family practice physician - designed to help teams of physicians manage the sign-in/sign-out process in an organized and efficient way, ultimately improving patient care.

PicTexter - PicTexter converts images to text art and saves the result to a variety of formats. It includes a set of professional-quality effects that optimize images for this particular application.

KioskLaunch - Launch a Web page in Internet Explorer's kiosk mode with the press of a key, or automatically from a CD.

Check out the rest of the freeware here.

KanaSolution - Support a Student!

KanaSolution

Provided by an Indonesian student studying abroad in my own country, Canada! This site definitely earns the description of great freeware, as there are a number of interesting products here. Among the best of the bunch you will find:

DynDNS Updater - a utility which can be used to automatically update the IP address database in DynDNS server into current IP address. What this means is that if your home Internet connection has a dynamic IP but you want to run a web server, you can subscribe to different service providers who will make your web site reachable, even if your IP address changes.

Kana Clip - Kana Clip is a Windows program which monitors text copied into clipboard. The copied text is saved into memory so it can be accessed later through popup menu. The popup menu is activated by using user defined hotkey. Using permanent clip, Kana Clip can also be used to paste predefined text. The text contained in permanent clip can be easily edited by using any text editor program.

Kana Reminder - Kana Reminder is a program which can be used to set a reminder to be triggered at a specified time. It can also be used to run another program at a specified time.

There are many other unique and interesting applications on the site. Many have won awards too! Check out KanaSolution!

CCleaner

CCleaner

From the CCleaner main page:

CCleaner is a freeware system optimization and privacy tool. It removes unused files from your system - allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space. It also cleans traces of your online activities such as your Internet history. But the best part is that it's fast (normally taking less that a second to run) and contains NO Spyware or Adware!

I've been using CCleaner for about a year, and although it is a powerful tool, the interface is somewhat confusing. Does a very thorough job and has a lot of useful features. I see they've gotten away from the original name of the product, "Crap Cleaner".

Gersic.com's ZuluPad

Gersic.com

Thomas Gersic has one really cool application on his site: ZuluPad. It even has a cool name. This is what Thomas says about ZuluPad:

ZuluPad is a notepad on crack. It's a place to jot down class notes, appointments, to-do lists, favorite websites, pretty much anything you can think of. The great thing about ZuluPad is that it combines the best parts of a notepad with the best parts of a wiki, a concept made popular by Wikipedia.

You can find the Windows and even an OS X version on the download page HERE.

Free Windows Software by Finn Ekberg Christiansen

Free Windows Software by Finn Ekberg Christiansen

Mr. Christiansen hasn't updated his site in about a year, but has a decent selection of Delphi (a programming language) software. I found his two most useful freeware applications to be:

Shalom Help Maker - Shalom Help Maker (SHM) is a Windows help file editor that does not need MS Word. It supports images, popup windows, links to other pages, web pages, E-mail addresses etc., and has automatic updating of links (jumps to other pages) when pages are rearranged or deleted, listing of unused bitmaps and popup pages, listing of links to the present page ... and lots more. SHM makes old-fashioned hlp files, not chm files (HTML based help files). It runs on all Windows versions, including XP. Has some really great reviews over at Fileforum.

Empty Temp Folders - Empty Temp Folders (emptemp) helps you manage folders that contain temporary files, left over by other applications. It's easy to add any folder and you can empty a folder (or all folders) with one click. Also emptemp will let you list and delete cookies, history files and temporary internet files (this requires MS Internet Explorer version 5+). Emptemp also has a search function to let you find and delete temporary files outside the normal temp folders. Any program can leave behind temporary files or backup files anywhere on your harddisk. These files have file types like .tmp, .bak, .old and .log. You can add your own file types. Emptemp also displays the amount of memory the content of the clipboard takes up, and lets you delete it. And it can find broken shortcuts (.lnk files) on your harddisk, so you can delete or fix them.

Handy Software

Handy Software

Handy Software makes a variety of commercial software for network & printer monitoring and system shutdown. Most of their software is commercial with a free trial, but there are a couple of freeware programs available on their site:

HTTP Monitor Lite - HSLAB HTTP Monitor is a handy real-time performance monitoring and statistics analysis software application for Apache servers, which are used ubiquitously in the web hosting industry. Basically, with HSLAB monitoring system administrators always know who is currently connected (via connection tree), server operations distribution, amount of bandwidth being consumed, number of server requests per unit of time and other important server parameters.

Sys Monitor Lite - HSLAB Sys Monitor is a real-time monitoring and statistics tool that allows you to keep an eye on a specific system performance value. You can choose from CPU, memory, network connections, network traffic, disk space, connected users and more. You can only monitor one of these values at a time, but easily switch between them as needed. The small display can be placed anywhere on your screen and takes up very little desktop space.

Their site would be somewhat more organized if every link didn't open in a new window. Another gem on their site is their network printer monitoring. Very useful for keeping costs down.

Handy Recovery

Handy Recovery

Handy Recovery™ is an easy-to-use data recovery software designed to restore files accidentally deleted from hard disks and floppy drives. The program can recover files damaged by virus attacks, power failures and software faults or files from deleted and formatted partitions. If some program does not use Recycle Bin when deleting files, Handy Recovery can restore such files. It can also recover files moved to Recycle Bin after it has been emptied.

One thing I really like about Handy Recovery is that it does one thing, and does it well. A 30-day free trial is available.

Sam Francke Free Ware

Sam Francke Free Ware

Sam has some freeware programs aimed at developers, designers and other do-it-yourselfers. These include:

uniCSVed - Unicode CSV (Comma separated value) editor. Most programs that manipulate values or store information like spreadsheets, accounting programs, address books etc can export and import CSV files.

YoPoW - Another web album generator

DeKnop - a graphics editor that lets you create buttons for your web site.

... and others! Check it out.

Price Media

Price Media

Price Media has a few interesting freeware applications on their web site, including a free desktop publishing program called Cascade DTP. There's not a lot of information on the site, nor are there support forums, so in this case you're on your own unless they offer email support.

In addition to the desktop publishing program, they also have an unusual program called Rostrum Camera that does image tracking or panning across a particular image. The other two applications are a wallpaper manager and Galleria, a slide show picture viewer.

MP Software's PHP Designer

MP Software

MP Software makes a great freeware PHP editor called, of course, PHP Editor 2005. They now also have PHP Editor 2006 in the beta development stage. The freeware IDE (integrated development environment) program has garnered some pretty impressive awards & reviews. If you code in PHP, it's worth checking out.

Terabyte Unlimited Freeware

Terabyte Unlimited

Terabyte Unlimited, makers of partitioning and multi-boot software, have a page of interesting freeware. Many are obscure and only work with their own software, but there are a few interesting ones such as:

BurnCDCC - This utility is used to burn an ISO file to a CD/DVD disc. Many new systems come with a limited CD/DVD software package which lacks the ability to burn .ISO files.

DISKINFO - This DOS utility will display BIOS and ATA details of your drives.

Drop to DOS - With Drop to DOS, you can right click on any folder and choose the Drop to DOS option to take to you a command prompt within that folder. Works with Win9x/WinME/WinNT/2K/XP.

Karen's Power Tools

KarenWare.com

Replicator Automatically copy and backup files.
WhoIs Discover who owns Internet Domain Names, and how to contact their owners.
Calculator A Calculator with a difference! This one can accurately handle numbers containing thousands of digits.
Cookie Viewer View and delete web "Cookies" left by the web sites you've visited.
Hasher Compute and verify MD5, SHA-1, SHA-224, SHA-256, SHA-384 and SHA-512 hashes of text strings, files, and groups of files.
Once-A-Day II Automatically perform tasks, the first time Windows starts or a user logs on, each day!.
Disk Slack Checker See how much of your disk space is being wasted.
Drive Info View information about the disk drives attached to your computer.
URL Discombobulator Understand those cryptic web addresses, and make a few of your own.
Directory Printer Print the names, and other information, of all folders and files on your computer.

... and many more!

Fog Creek Software's CityDesk

CityDesk

Fog Creek has a great content management program that can be used to create web sites easily, but instead of requiring software on a web server, it runs on your desktop! You can also use it to create blogs and news sites. They have a free edition that publishes small sites of up to 50 pages, get it HERE.

ABC Amber - Conversion Utility Software

ABC Amber

ABC Amber's award winning conversion utility software has the answer to just about any need you may have...even conversion to any of 50 languages! Convert text, images, databases, e-mail and more! Powerful, yet easy to use.

Trial software available, includes convertors for text, pdf, chm, MS Outlook, MS Access and MS Excel.

Darkwet.net

Darkwet.net Utilities

Darkwet has a number of freeware applications related to publishing:

cover xp - very easy to use software that prints cd covers without having to resize pictures

webcam xp - powerful webcam utility with an integrated http server so you don't need to install a web server on your computer. works under all windows os and the server port can be changed. now supports multi-cam!

webcast xp - this is the small brother of webcamXP. it uses a real streaming engine (windows media) and unlike the original windows media server it will be configured and ready in a couple of minutes.

gallery fx - the perfect tool if you want to create large html galleries in a few clicks. it has 7 different anti-alias modes for different pictures types. you can create as many presets as you want and use it as much as you want for free

businesscards xp - this tool will allow you to perfectly match your hi-res bitmap on any kind of Business Cards template within a few clicks... it uses a printing engine based on coverXP

staffDB - staffDB is an online staff manager database in asp/mysql which is based on myvideochat.net engine. it allows to store all the informations about the staff / workers including pictures and time charts and it can be used with external softwares connecting to the db to print access passes and addresses lists.

dvd subtitler - software dvd player created by gersen that adds missing subtitles on dvd movies, to use it you must have the script that goes with the movie for the desired language (compatible with most popular scripts formats). This software is requested by all anime fans because many dvds are in japanese only