Sunday, April 01, 2012

No Foolin! Free Download Gold.

Lots of good freeware downloads these past several weeks.

Get panning.

Update for Windows Live Essentials 2011 now available - Windows Experience Blog. Trying to find out exactly what gets updated in these releases is always challenging. Comments on this page report issues with Live Mesh after the upgrade. read these comments if you rely on it before updating. Blaine points us to this page, Windows Live Essentials 2011 release notes that still isn’t great but is better than nothing.

Thesycon USB Descriptor Dumper - displays USB descriptors of any USB device.

sCheckbook - DonationCoder.com - bare-bones check-register application. No bells or whistles. Just the simple basics to record check information and keep a running tab. Others apps are out there with lots more features, but if you are training a young adult in the habits, this could be a simple place to start.

Universal USB Installer – USB Pen Drive Linux - “Live” Linux Booting USB creator tool. Select a distro, go though the steps, and it will load and configure your USB device with the ability to boot a system from that distro. See the link to see all the supported distros. It’s a very comprehensive collection.

Digital Lagniappe’s Photo Collage - Screen saver that tosses images from folders onto your desktop. I’ve been using SE-ScreenSavers for a long time, but this new screensaver is very nice. Options are light but enough to get the job done. It’s a pleasant change.

Audacity 2.0 - My favorite, go-to audio editor got a major version bump lately. I really like the performance and though I have only just started to feel like I have mastered the basics, I’m excited about this new version. For a rundown of the major new features: Audacity 2.0 Update Brings Lots Of Bug Fixes & New Features post addictivetips.com, Six years of betas later, Audacity 2.0 debuts post betanews.com. Also, don’t forget that Wavosaur free audio editor with VST and ASIO support is alike and kicking also.

Oracle VM VirtualBox - Updated to v 4.1.10. Changelog – Oracle VM VirtualBox, and Forum discussion on the 4.1.10 release. First go round I had trouble installing the updated VirtualBox Extension Pack for 4.1.10 and it kept bombing out part way though. VB quickly identified the issue and updated the pack and the new one went on smoothly. You should always download and install the matching Extension Pack when you update the main VirtualBox application. Head over to the Downloads page and grab both.

ISO Toolkit 5.0 - Tweaking with Vishal - This is a nice do-it-all tool to work with ISO files. Wish I had been able to include it in my Mostly ISO burning post a while back. A more detailed review can be found at this freewaregenius post.

If ISO Toolkit is too “geeky” then consider CD Manipulator MOD instead to manage your ISO file and disk-burning needs. The pictures speak for themselves. More details on the features over at this addictivetips post: CD Manipulator: Read/ Write & Master CDs, Create Easy Duplicates.

Greenshot remains my current screen-shot utility of choice. Though not perfect, it runs stably on XP and Windows 7 and contains enough editing and markup extras to make it more than adequate for my screen capture needs. That said, I saw two more screen-shot tools that you might be interested in: aeroshot and livecapture. This post has more details on the former if you are interested: Live Capture: All-In-One Screenshot Tool With 12 Different Modes by AddictiveTips. Their 5 Best Free Screen Capture Software For Windows post is a good place for a pros/cons review of several of these screencapture tools so you can find one that fits your particular needs.

And yesh. Time to update Flash again.

Game on with Adobe Flash 11.2 and AIR 3.2 - BetaNews

Adobe Flash Player APSB12-07 - 28 March 2012 - SANS ISC Diary

New, easier-to-update Flash designed to snuff out malware attacks - ArsTechnica

What’s my Flash Player version? Where’s the latest Flash update? -Ed Bott

Current Version Downloads via FileHippo

  • Flash Player 11.2.202.228 (IE) 64-bit - Download
  • Flash Player 11.2.202.228 (IE) - Download
  • Flash Player 11.2.202.228 (Non-IE) 64-bit - Download
  • Flash Player 11.2.202.228 (Non-IE) - Download

Keeping these updated has been challenging but this new version now gives you options for it to automatically check for and apply updates, notify you of updates (but do nothing else), or to not bother checking for updates. Choose wisely!

Cheers!

--Claus V.

No comments: