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 Open Source Software - Shareware - Freeware Sites | ||||||||||
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| PCMag's Shareware Library | Searchable, categories of shareware and freeware. | |||||||||
| TUCOWS Home | The Ultimate Collection of Windows & Internet Software (fast downloads, updated daily, rated, includes Mac shareware) | |||||||||
| MS's Free Downloads | Free software, mostly Internet-related software & add-ons to MS-Office products - if you use MS Office, you will probably find several desirable items here. | |||||||||
| download.com for the PC | Searchable, categories. | |||||||||
| PCWorld's downloads | Searchable, categories. | |||||||||
| DIRfile.com | Home of 6200+ FREEWARE Software. Searchable, categories. | |||||||||
| WinPlanet | Windows software downloads and reviews | |||||||||
| Softpedia.com | Program descriptions, rated, searchable. A new competitor in the freeware/shareware repository domain. | |||||||||
| Fileforum | Searchable, categories. | |||||||||
| Simtel.Net | A worldwide distribution network for Shareware, Freeware, and Public Domain software. | |||||||||
| Sourceforge.net | "The world's largest Open Source software development website, with the largest repository of Open Source code and applications available on the Internet." | |||||||||
| filehippo.com | Free software downloads | |||||||||
| Jumbo's Shareware Collection | Nicely classified, with program descriptions | |||||||||
| IT Pro Downloads | Shareware/freeware site, includes Mac | |||||||||
| SnapFiles | Formerly WebAttack, no longer limited to Internet related software | |||||||||
| Nonags Freeware/Shareware | "A collection of Windows software that has no nags, no time limits, no disabled features or any other tricks" | |||||||||
| Pass The Shareware | New shareware | |||||||||
| SoftwareOutlet | Not shareware, but very good prices on commerical software. | |||||||||
| FreeSoftwareMagazine | Free Software Magazine is the free online magazine about free software. It is free to subscribe, free to download and free to read online. | |||||||||
| Internet Browsers | ||||||||||
| Find Browsers | Links to commonly used browsers, sorted by version and OS | |||||||||
| Internet Explorer 7 | Promises better ease of use (lots has changed in the interface), including tabbed browsing, "better security," add-ins (Firefox-type extensions). Some of the interface changes are hard to fathom, however, as, e.g., getting rid of the standard File/Edit/etc., menu bar and moving most of its functions to the right-side of the window and hiding the Copy/Paste items. They are violating their own interface conventions! For what purpose?! | |||||||||
| Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 | Interested in seeing what cutting (bleeding?) edge new fangled browser features MS is offering next? If you try this, as always, expect plentiful bugs in betas. Here is a review that suggests: "This is an important browser, and one that all businesses, technical enthusiasts, and other power users should begin evaluating immediately. But it's not something that's ready for the average consumer. Not yet." | |||||||||
| Firefox Browser 3.0.1 | Alert! Anyone using FireFox 3.0 should upgrade to version 3.0.1 immediately! Version 3.0 containa serious security hole. New features: and much more... | |||||||||
| Opera 9.5 | "Already regarded as the world's fastest, most secure browser, Opera speeds up your Web browsing with these features: | |||||||||
| Safari | New Apple (Mac) web browser, now available for the PC - I am impressed - the fastest browser I have ever seen with a beautiful and simple user interface. Many other neat features. | |||||||||
| File Formats/File Compression | ||||||||||
| jZip | "Create, extract and manipulate Zip, RAR, TAR, GZip, 7-Zip and other file archives, absolutely FREE for everybody, home and enterprise users, easy to use and fast archiving software." | |||||||||
| Wotsit's Format | "File format information on hundreds of different file types and all sorts of other useful programming information; algorithms, source code, specifications, etc." | |||||||||
| Graphics File Formats | Definitions, links to articles, software on graphics file formats - excellent! | |||||||||
| A Manual to Graphic File Formats | Short guide to the most common graphics file formats | |||||||||
| The File Extension Source | "A detailed database of file extensions and programs that use them" | |||||||||
| "Every File Format in the World" | "This is a list of file name extension or suffixes that indicate the format or usage of a file and a brief description of that format." | |||||||||
| Audio/Video Players & Files | ||||||||||
| Windows Media Player | MS's media players. | |||||||||
| VideoLAN | "A free cross-platform media player, supports a large number of multimedia formats, without the need for additional codecs. It can also be used as a streaming server, with extended features (video on demand, on the fly transcoding, ...)" | |||||||||
| Winamp | One of the best MP3 audio player on the 'net -- and it's free! | |||||||||
| MusicMatch Jukebox | "You get all you need to take a song from a CD or digital file, encode it to MP3 and play it... in one easy to use package!" | |||||||||
| RealNetworks | Home of RealPlayer streaming multimedia | |||||||||
| Shockwave Players | Plug-in for viewing streamed multimedia content | |||||||||
| Flash Players | Plug-in for viewing streamed multimedia content | |||||||||
| QuickTime | QuickTime for Windows Home Page | |||||||||
| free-codecs.com | Great source for Codecs | |||||||||
| WindowsMedia.com | MS media content | |||||||||
| mp3Trim | Freeware - "This software cleans up and removes unwanted parts of your MP3s." | |||||||||
| Anti-virus Software - Virus References/FAQs | ||||||||||
| AVG Anti-Virus/Anti-Spyware Free Edition Version 8 | "Get your free copy of the AVG Anti-Virus/Anti-Spyware System - AVG Free Edition and you will be able to use it without any limitations for life of the product. You can download free updates to get the latest program virus/spyware databases." Highly recommended. | |||||||||
| Avira AntiVir PersonalEdition | "The product combines first-class detection rates and ease of use with a top performance that protects your computer safely and hardly burdens older PCs." Highly recommended. | |||||||||
| ClamWin | "ClamWin is a Free Antivirus for Microsoft Windows 98/Me/2000/XP/2003. It provides a graphical user interface to the Clam AntiVirus engine." Works on W2K3 server. Much slower than commercial products, but you can't argue with the price! | |||||||||
| Spybot - Search & Destroy | "Can detect and remove a multitude of adware files and modules from your computer." Donationware. | |||||||||
| Ad-aware SE | New version - "designed to provide advanced protection from known Data-mining, aggressive advertising, Parasites, Scumware, selected traditional Trojans, Dialers, Malware, Browser hijackers, and tracking components. | |||||||||
| McAfee | Anti-virus info & DOS, Windows, Mac versions of their software. Their Threat Library is superb. | |||||||||
| McAfee FreeScan | McAfee's Free Online Anti-virus Scanner. YOu must be using Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.x or higher. | |||||||||
| VirusPortal | "A free portal dedicated completely to the phenomenon of computer viruses. It contains information and solutions that can prevent these malicious programs from attacking. VirusPortal is a Global Virus Observatory that allows you to monitor, in real-time, the virus status worldwide." | |||||||||
| Anti-Virus Course | Free "two-hour basic course, through which you will acquire a basic knowledge on viruses and on how to be protected against them." Part of Panda's Anti-Virus Encyclopedia. | |||||||||
| Virustotal | "A free service of suspicious file scanning, using several antivirus engines." | |||||||||
| Symantec Virus Encyclopedia | Symantec's AntiVirus Research Center's Online Encyclopedia offers the most up-to-date information on recent threats, detailed in their threat list. You may search their encyclopedia for a comprehensive description of viruses. Also you may consult their info on Virus Hoaxes. | |||||||||
| HouseCall | Trend Micro's free on-line virus scanner | |||||||||
| CIAC Hoaxbusters | CIAC, a creature of the US Department of Energy, provides a list of virus hoaxes | |||||||||
| Virus Encyclopaedia | "Written by the famous virus researcher, contains detailed info about more than 30,000 known viruses, along with virus classification, and common methods of virus detection and disinfection." Part of the VirusList.com web site - a comprehensive virus news and information resource. | |||||||||
| Hoax warnings | "This page is considered the industry standard information source for new virus hoaxes and false alerts." | |||||||||
| Of interest to MS Office users | ||||||||||
| MS Office Tools on the Web | From MS - Office updates, "how-to" articles, and tips | |||||||||
| MS Office Templates | From MS - Office templates - for Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Access | |||||||||
| Design Gallery Live | From MS - clipart & photos for use in Office | |||||||||
| vitalnews.com | Home of WordTips and ExcelTips | |||||||||
| MS Office 2003 Service Pack 2 | "Office 2003 Service Pack 2 contains significant security enhancements, in addition to stability and performance improvements." | |||||||||
| PowerPoint 2003 Add-in: Microsoft Producer | Free add-in for PowerPoint users. "Producer 2003 provides users with many powerful new features that make it easier to synchronize audio, video, slides, and images to create engaging and effective rich-media presentations." | |||||||||
| MS Office File Converters and Viewers | "Converters allow you to open files created by people using different versions of your Office programs. Viewers provide a means for people who don't have Office programs to see your work. You can provide them with the appropriate viewer along with your Office files." | |||||||||
| Some useful Windows shareware/freeware | ||||||||||
| 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. You can also view and manage installed shell extensions, encrypt your files from unauthorized access and use, split large files into smaller manageable files and then rejoin them. Furthermore, Glary Utilities includes the options to optimize memory, find, fix, or remove broken Windows shortcuts, manage the programs that start at Windows startup and uninstall software. Other features include secure file deletion, an Empty Folder finder and more." Free and highly recommended. | |||||||||
| PortableApps.com | "Now you can carry [on your flash drive many useful] computer programs along with all of your bookmarks, settings, email and more. Use them on any Windows computer. All without leaving any personal data behind." Includes portable Firefox and Thunderbird, OpenOffice, and much more. Free and highly recommended. | |||||||||
| OpenOffice 2.3 | "OpenOffice.org is a multiplatform and multilingual office suite and an open-source project. Compatible with all other major office suites, the product is free to download, use, and distribute." Available for Windows and Linux. Here is an article with an overview of OO 2.3 features. Now includes a database (named BASE) that stores its data in XML (reads and writes Access, DBase, and MySQL files). Here is a tutorial blog devoted to OO. | |||||||||
| AVG Anti-Spyware 7.5 | Free version of one of the very best anti-spyware programs available - fast, more thorough than Spybot or Ad-aware. Excellent companion to AVG Anti-virus. Highly recommended. | |||||||||
| CCleaner | "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 FREE! :)" | |||||||||
| Ad-aware SE | New version finds a lot more junk - "designed to provide advanced protection from known Data-mining, aggressive advertising, Parasites, Scumware, selected traditional Trojans, Dialers, Malware, Browser hijackers, and tracking components. | |||||||||
| Java VM for Windows | Java Runtime Environment to support Java in IE, etc. | |||||||||
| Picasa from Google | Yet another breakthrough web-software application from Google. You download a small program that allows you to organize and manipulate (simply, powerfully) your images and then publish them ALL AT ONCE to a web albumn for others. Terrific idea! Beats Yahoo photos (where you must upload images one by one) hands down. Highly recommended. | |||||||||
| uTorrent | "µTorrent was written with efficiency in mind. Unlike many torrent clients, it does not hog valuable system resources - typically using less than 6MB of memory, allowing you to use the computer as if it weren't there at all. Additionally, the program itself is contained within a single executable less than 170 KB in size." | |||||||||
| IsoBuster | "Rescue lost files from a bad or trashed CD or DVD!" | |||||||||
| CDInterface | "CDInterface is a free tool to create autorun cd menu for your software collection.Will organize your softwares and have all the informations you want - title,description,serial number,updates,etc...An easy to use interface.No programming language is required." | |||||||||
| Google Toolbar | Search the web with Google from any site: Free and highly recommended! | |||||||||
| Thunderbird | Thunderbird gives you a faster, safer, and more productive email experience... designed to prevent viruses and to stop junk mail so you can get back to reading your mail. From Mozilla.org - complements Firefox. Highly recommended. | |||||||||
| MozBackup | "MozBackup is a simple utility for creating backups of Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, Mozilla Suite and Netscape profiles. It allows you to backup and restore bookmarks, mail, contacts, history, extensions, cache etc." | |||||||||
| Tweak UI for XP | Everything in the standard Tweak UI plus ten more individually downloadable power toys | |||||||||
| PC Inspector File Recovery | "A data recovery program that supports the FAT 12/16/32 and NTFS file systems. It recovers files, even when a header entry is no longer available." Free. | |||||||||
| Acrobat/PDF/Flash | ||||||||||
| Adobe Acrobat Reader | Update for popular plug-in/ActiveX control viewer for displaying inline PDF files. | |||||||||
| FlashPaper | New FlashPaper app can create both Flash documents that load quickly and PDF files. Recommended. | |||||||||
| PDF Online | Free PDF conversion services - convert HTML to PDF or PDF to HTML. Works surprisingly well. | |||||||||
| PlanetPDF | All about Adobe Acrobat and PDF files, tips, tricks, other add-in conversion software. | |||||||||
| PDF to HTML conversion | "With access.adobe.com PDF to HTML conversion by form, all you have to do is type in a URL to an Adobe PDF document into an electronic form and select the Get This Adobe PDF Document As HTML button. The Adobe PDF document will be converted on-the-fly to HTML, and will be returned to you immediately in your browser application." | |||||||||
| Kinati 2PDF Converter | "This web-based file conversion service allows you to submit your document and retrieve the converted file back as a PDF document." | |||||||||
| AcroTips | 50+ tips on using Adobe Acrobat and PDF files. | |||||||||
| pdf995 | Free download - create PDFs from any application. "The free versions of pdf995 products will display a sponsor page in your web browser each time you run the software." | |||||||||
| Adobe Acrobat 4.0 Tips | "A 22-page PDF booklet (from Adobe) covering a range of applications used to produce files that can be easily converted to PDF documents" | |||||||||
| PDF Research Companion | "A designer's guide to the Portable Document Format" | |||||||||
| Optimizing PDF Files | "Here are nine rules for optimizing your files." | |||||||||
| Software for Web Page Development | ||||||||||
| Gimp.org | "The GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages." | |||||||||
| HTML Kit | "HTML Kit is a full-featured free editor for HTML, XHTML, XML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP and other text files. Over 400 plugins are available for it, including HTML Tidy for creating standards -compliant web pages." FREE! Highly reommended. | |||||||||
| Notepad++ | "A free source code editor and Notepad replacement, which supports several programming languages, running under the MS Windows environment." | |||||||||
| Filezilla FTP Client | FileZilla is open source software distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. | |||||||||
| Xenu's Link Sleuth 1.2j | "Xenu's Link Sleuth (TM) is a spidering software that checks Web sites for broken links. Link verification is done on "normal" links, images, frames, backgrounds and local image maps. It displays a continuously updated list of URLs which you can sort by different criteria. A report can be produced at any time." - A great little program and its free! | |||||||||
| CamStudio | "CamStudio is able to record all screen and audio activity on your computer and create industry-standard AVI video files and using its built-in SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into lean, mean, bandwidth-friendly Streaming Flash videos (SWFs)." Free! | |||||||||
| GSiteCrawler | Google (and Yahoo!) Sitemap Generator for Windows. "GSiteCrawler will help you generate the best Google Sitemap file for your website. The GSiteCrawler uses different ways to find all the pages in your website and can generate all sorts of files, statistics and more. The sitemaps file format has lately been also adapted by Yahoo! - even MSN/Live.com is pledging it's support." | |||||||||
| Nvu | "A complete Web Authoring System for Linux Desktop users as well as Microsoft Windows and Macintosh users to rival programs like FrontPage and Dreamweaver." | |||||||||
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