Recent Comments Posted

http://www.ducklink.com/p/free-screen-capture-tool/

Sorry but the smart money is on Softmaker FreeOffice 2014. By far the best compatibilty with MS Office docs. Similar small footprint and broad functionality to Kingsoft and has regular updates.

When I went to the download, WOT rated it as blacklisted by a third-party lister. The 3rd party indicated that it also downloads potentially unwanted program that are hard to uninstall.

The download site, if you read the fine print, tells you that you must download their installer and that the installer will concurrently download other programs that you may not want but, it says you can easily uninstall those you do not want from the add/remove programs in Windows.

Why would they make you jump through those hoops?

On Open Candy

One bottom line is that some systems of the grandmothers, or anyone less tech-savvy, gets trashed.

Look, they wanted to foist a Uniblue registry product on you, a registry cleaner that has trashed systems for years.

The small benefit you might get (product A instead of B) is at the expense of the freeware community as a whole.

Caveat emptor!

Steven

I prefer DuckCapture...much better and easier...can capture scrolling webpages on Explorer, Firefox and Chrome...

I use Greenshot, but for capturing scrolling screens in Firefox I use Screengrab (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/screengrab-fix-version).

Double Action is a free stylish multiplayer game about diving, flipping, and sliding your way into action movie mayhem:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/317360/

Same here. I use Desktop Lighter:

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Tweak/Video-Tweak/Desktop-Lighter.shtml

It can change the brightness very easily using a slider, and can autorun with Windows. Although it's not being developed and an old software, it still works with Windows 8.1.

I don't think virus@hacksoft.com.pe works anymore.

"Reporting-MTA: dns; omr-m04.mx.aol.com
X-Outbound-Mail-Relay-Queue-ID: 6A70870000093
X-Outbound-Mail-Relay-Sender: rfc822; [my email].com
Arrival-Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2015 00:48:58 -0500 (EST)
Final-Recipient: rfc822; virus@hacksoft.com.pe
Original-Recipient: rfc822;virus@hacksoft.com.pe
Action: failed
Status: 5.7.0
Remote-MTA: dns; ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM
Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 552-5.7.0 This message was blocked because its content
presents a potential 552-5.7.0 security issue. Please visit 552-5.7.0
http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?answer=6590 to review our 552
5.7.0 message content and attachment content guidelines. 68si9195930qgg.9 -
gsmtp"

Thanks, Vic! This was very helpful. Now if someone can figure out how disable the stupid 'ghost URL' thingies that continually popup in the lower left corner of the screen, my life would be MUCh easier!

If you are a late night computer user and have trouble falling asleep, you should definitely give this a try.

Check out this study (which also mentions f.lux): http://www.brighamandwomens.org/about_bwh/publicaffairs/news/pressreleas...

(BTW, my kids use f.lux but I personally don't care for it.)

Is there a utility which will override web dictates to blacken text? Much is too pale to read quickly.

"If you use Windows, just get Linux".

I know it's still early in the year, but coolest comment of 2015 (so far) :)
MC - Site Manager.

If you use Linux, use Redshift. I use it to color-correct my monitor, which is too blue for me. Redshift is in the Mint repository. Two clicks, done.

If you use Windows, just get Linux.

Bangarang Player:
http://linux.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Audio/Bangarang-52125.shtml

Trojitá - a Qt IMAP e-mail client:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/trojita/

Curlew is an open source graphical application built around the well known FFmpeg/avconv and Mencoder command-line video/audio conversion utilities to provide users with an easy-to-use video conversion tool:
http://linux.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Video/Curlew-95832.shtml

"... Baka MPlayer is a free and open source, cross-platform, libmpv based multimedia player. Its simple design reflects the idea for an uncluttered, simple, and enjoyable environment for watching tv shows ...:"
http://bakamplayer.u8sand.net/

Quanta Plus:
http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=10135

DockbarX:
https://launchpad.net/dockbar

PdfXchange Viewer is still being developed. If you look at the site's download page, you will find latest versions of both editor and viewer... 5.5.311, released on the same date.

It works well! The reduced glare late at night does make a difference when I finally get to bed.
Never thought of the affects of blue light at night.

Thanks for posting, it's good to have an online resource for this as it's not something I'd use often enough to make it worth installing software on my system.

Your article by the way scores 93% for style, 79% for vocabulary and appears to be completely original :-)

Nice program! Thanks for the tip.

I see. I thanks for that.

Yeah I can't find anyway to make it capture a scrolling screen

I use [commercial software edited] and that is also supposed to do scrolling screen shot saves, however they are always broken up at the beginning so almost useless.
I mayy try this one and see if it works for me.

"TaxACT Free Edition and Deluxe include a maximum refund pledge for accepted Federal IRS E-file returns" per https://www.taxact.com/taxes-online/.

I doubt that the IRS would sanction a tax preparer which offers variable tax calculations (i.e. refunds) depending on the fee paid. I suspect doing so violates Federal law.

If it works a pdf import saves no more than 15 minutes of entries. I wouldn't have commented but I had the delusion that the folks at TaxAct might read my comments and do something about it:) I'll remove the comments.

Rick

This is the URL in the original post:
http://www.paperrater.com/

If you use that and run a test, you get no plagiarism results.
If check there, you are referred to the full (paid) version.

The original article as posted needs to be revised to make it accurate.

[Snide comment removed]

It looks simple, but I prefer "Greenshot" still. It's easy to use and offers a lot of useful features.

I guess you are correct.

Please note that with different software, there are different conditions, and therefore, sometimes it can be hard for an editor to choose a category for such software.

Like, LastPass can be called as unrestricted freeware, since by comparison of free and commercial version, I found that the free version is not restricted, and the commercial version has extra features, which might not be required by general users.

Similarly, Access Manager can be called as feature limited freeware, since the free version has less features than commercial ones.

Therefore, these can be interpreted differently by different editors. Gizmo's provides a guide or just a review of the software. Editors try to provide as much information as possible, but it is also on the users to check the sites of the software, and decide on their own.

"... Rendera is an open-source painting package. It is useful for useful for photo-retouching, seamless tile production, and other painting tasks ...":
http://sourceforge.net/projects/rendera/

You may want to check out Docfetcher again. Version 1.1.12 seems to include MP3's, and at least jpeg/jpg among images. It has no issues on windows 7 for me (e.g. no 64-bit java problems). Because it is portable and I'm mostly interested in searching my pdf library, it has become my new indexer. I had been looking for a capable portable desktop indexer one for quite some time and had been previously disappointing. Docfetcher looks to be getting 3 updates per year the last couple years so it's being supported currently as well.

I tried this a long time ago and I distinctly remember that I hated it at the time. The idea sounds great in theory, but in reality it kept dimming the screen too much, it was never comfortable.

Perhaps it improved over time, I'll give it another shot.

Edit: No, it's still too uncomfortable for eyes, also there's no option to detect games/movies so it can be disabled automatically as far as I could tell.

Moderator: Could we please have an official statement as to whether this is currently "free" including the Plagiarism component.

It works on OS X as well. There's a version for linux: https://justgetflux.com/linux.html but I ended up using redshift http://jonls.dk/redshift/

PyGTK lets you to easily create programs with a graphical user interface using the Python programming language:
http://www.pygtk.org/

nvpy is a simplenote-syncing note-taking tool:
https://github.com/cpbotha/nvpy

Qihoo Internet Security 5.0 released. They don't update the IS version webpage though, it still shows at 4.9

The Total Security is at version 5.2 Stable and 6.0 Beta, but it's good to see the lightweight Internet Security version is still getting developed.

I fixed the link. Thank you for reporting :).

Chiron, should I activate the "Viruscope" using its configuration? thank you

Mr Dui: sorry, but your submission's score has been compromised by inadequate research. Mr Schifreen was entirely correct in asserting that Paper Rater checks for evidence of plagiarism, and does so at no cost to the user. Accordingly, it's only possible to award you an overall mark of 50%, because no matter how eloquently you proceeded to argue your case, the fundamental premise was manifestly flawed.

Mr Schifreen therefore collects a further 1,392% on the basis that his submission was wrongfully disputed.

As to Mr Sicknero, an additional award of 100% is hereby given in recognition of both originality of content and of thought.

The free version does not check for plagiarism. One could do that easily by copy and pasting text into a browser search box. We all know the pitfalls of grammar and spell checker. I really see nothing in this that is not readily available in any common word processing program.

As for plagiarism, it can only suggest similarities in passages and the instruction determine what has not be properly paraphrased or cited and whether the material is or is not in the public domain.

Qtractor is an Audio/MIDI multi-track sequencer application written in C++ around the Qt4 toolkit:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/qtractor/

EiskaltDC++ is a cross-platform program that uses the Direct Connect and ADC protocols:
https://code.google.com/p/eiskaltdc/

"... bpython is a fancy interface to the Python interpreter ...":
http://www.bpython-interpreter.org/

"... TuxGuitar is a multitrack guitar tablature editor and player written in Java-SWT, It can open GuitarPro, PowerTab and TablEdit files ...:"
http://sourceforge.net/projects/tuxguitar/

I was at a friend's, today, and he has a Chromecast. We were discussing a YouTube video, and I brought it up on my phone. He switched the TV over, and two taps later, the video was playing on his TV.

Here at home, I don't have a Chromecast, but my Tivos work the same way. I can easily send a YouTube video to either of them.

None taken, by the same logic your statement "attractive interface" is equally meaningless?

In any case, I was referring to the interface design. The use of "Buttons" for almost everything, the large bland icons, the colorfully vague logo design. It all reminds me of applications that was made with VB5/6 for Windows 9X back in the day.

I tried it and from what I could tell, you can't really change anything about the interface design. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but you can change colors and fonts, but the icons and ultimately the overall design remains the same.

Password Safe has a disk on key version, but that is a different thing. It does not restrict Password Safe, which is free, in anyway, and therefore, the software will be called as unrestricted freeware only.

Same thing will apply to Access Manager. It has a premium version, yes, but the free version is not restricted in any way. The premium version has extra features. Therefore, this will be unrestricted freeware too. If there are some features in the free version, which are restricted, and those are available in the commercial version, then only it won't be called unrestricted freeware.

The category is undergoing a major update, and since writing the review, Download Ninja has been updated to include IE and Opera support. It will be corrected during the major revision.

No problems here. But generally you are right. Most people probably just click, and there may be next time when I use these services more efficient efforts to put something on my system.
But the work for changing all links is huge. Perhaps we should add some warning first....

Thank you for your comments.

You stated that "Ninja Download" doesn't support IE, but according to the download page, it supports IE out of the box.

In any case, I tried briefly but it was disappointing. It has several flaws, some of which you mentioned already, but there are two particular flaws that were a deal breaker for me.

1) The automatic categorization for downloads seems to be broken, more often than not it would give me the category of "None" regardless of the extension of the file I'm downloading.

2) The integration does not work unless "Ninja Download" is running in the background. If you close it, then the integration either doesn't work or gives you an error. I shouldn't have to keep it open 24/7 in the background, I certainly don't need to do that with FDM.

In any case, it looked promising, but FDM remains my favorite still.

You said: "You set up Windows Update to automatically download and install any future patches from Microsoft."

Are you simple? Why on Earth would you infect your computer with MS patches automatically?
Do Backups. Check.
Run Firewall. Check.
Run Anti-virus. Check.
Run Anti-malware. Check.
Trust Microsoft. NO.

Password management is a challenging category for Gizmo's freeware reviews, because there are so few good products that are completely free. E.g.:

* Password Safe is listed as Unrestricted freeware, but it has a premium feature.

* Dashlane's free version (mentioned by Bolt1955) is for only one device, which also leads to its offering no secure backup or online database access. Thus, people using the free version to generate strong passwords would need to manually create and maintain secure backups of their password vault.

* Access Manager is also listed as Unrestricted freeware but it, too, has a premium version.

I realize that my bullet-points might be newer than the information from the time of the original review of these programs, but that date is not shown. When an update is only for copy-editing (maybe for _any_ update that isn't comprehensive?) it would be desirable to see the original review date as well as the copy-edit date.

When a new review is written, I would like to see each review include a comment on the product's security. E.g., is PINS, which hasn't been updated since 2003, "not crackable" as its website claims because it uses 448-bit Blowfish? KeyWallet also uses Blowfish encryption, and is in version 1.0, which apparently might be from 2001. I see that Bruce Schneier, Blowfish's creator, switched from Blowfish to Twofish in 2006 as part of his changes "to provide better security" to his Password Safe product.

For that matter, perhaps it's time for Gizmo's reviews to list the current version's DATE along with its number. While a version number is meaningful mostly in comparison to the version offered by a download site or already installed on one's computer, a version date has additional meaning--such as in alerting us to the possibility that a vintage 2003 program might not be up to the challenges of 2015 technology.

I would also like to see more priority given to the free SW's quality and functionality. In other words, if the free version of a freemium brand deserves a top rating, so be it, but if the free version of a freemium brand such as RoboForm is so limited in functionality as to make create "a major reservation" about recommending it for most readers, than its free version should be listed appropriately lower in the article and rated with fewer stars, and its limitations should be mentioned more prominently than the glowing description of its advantages. Similarly, when a new reviewer comes to this page, it will be interesting to see how that person assesses KeePass (with its free mobile apps) against the free version of LastPass (with its advanced features for the desktop version).

[Moderator's note: Commercial content edited out.]

Not exactly. Both WPS Office 2014(subscription based) and Kingsoft Office 2013 (pro and free versions) can still be downloaded from the Kingsoft web site. Read WPS = new subscription based offer and Kingsoft = Free or Once-off purchase for Pro version

You can still download Kingsoft Free Office 2013. Just search for it on Google.
Kingsoft Free Office 2013 is still the best choice, totally free and saves to MS Office 2007/2010 document formats. None of the others save/export to docx, xlsx.
Agree with your comments on WPS Office 2014 - Stay well away!
NB: Significant amount of functionality is removed once trial is expired.