Freeware discussion

VAIOSoft Recovery Manager


Recovery Manager is an invaluable, free data recovery software utility that can recover files from all types of flash media, including digital camera, notebook, palmtop, PDA, or other flash memory card. Various file types like images, movies and songs that have been lost due to system or battery failure, format or deletion, and corruption caused by hardware or software malfunction can be recovered.
It also provides features for Backup, Recovery & Format of flash media. These features permit an image file to be made of selected media, copied to a USB or other portable device, and restored to a new destination.
It is very simple to use and requires only a novice computer user's experience, and is available for Windows, Macintosh & Linux operating Systems
VAIOSoft Recovery Manager V1 should be on every digital camera owner's PC and can be downloaded from http://www.vaiosoft.com/

Copernic - Desktop Search Engine

The success of Google as an internet search engine has sparked a drive for the same capabilities to be applied to searching hard drives, network drives and other storage media. There are now a few desktop search engines competing for market share, and Copernic is well to the fore, and free.

It has recently been updated to version 1.5 and offers significant improvements over earlier versions. Some of these include:
  And previewing of found pictures, music, videos and contacts with:
It is very fast and can easily search an entire hard drive in less than a second to pinpoint the right file.
Sophisticated yet easy-to-use, Copernic allows instant search of documents in Word, Excel, Powerpoint or PDF format; emails and their attachments; history, favorites, and contacts; plus music, picture and video formats. In Windows NT/2000/XP, new and updated files and new Microsoft Outlook e-mails are indexed the instant they arrive on your hard drive.
Copernic takes the search terms as they are typed and searches the designated drives. As  more terms are added to the search the displayed results are narrowed to include only the latest combination. This applies equally to the expansion of a single word as to the inclusion of Boolean operators (AND/+, OR, NOT/-). Searches can be restricted to files meeting a size, date or type criterion, or contained in a specified folder. The resulting list of files is shown in a right hand pane, each with its parent folder and path. Beneath this pane is a preview pane that displays the search term highlighted in the selected document as you scroll through the list. The preview pane accommodates Web pages, text files, e-mails, music files, pictures, videos and contact sheets. Supported browsers are: Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla and Netscape 6x./7.x. Clicking Open File in the Menu Bar opens the file in its original application.

http://www.copernic.com/en/products/desktop-search/

Spam

Today spam constitutes more than two thirds of all e-mail transmitted over the Internet, accounting for billions of messages every day. There are currently several techniques for intercepting spam and more are on the way. But one of the most infuriating aspects of spam is that it changes continually to adapt to new attempts to stop it.
One of the more common ways involves the Naive Bayes algorithm. It starts with the probabilities of each word in the message showing up in spam and of showing up in legitimate e-mail messages. Multiplying the probabilities of all the words in a message and using a statistical principle known as Bayes' rule gives an estimate of how likely it is that a message is spam. But clever spammers have learned to use words such as "M0NEY" with a zero instead of the letter "O" or to split a word into multiple parts by using spaces, confusing the filter. Another way of identifying spam is by analysis of universal resource locater (URL) information - the code that links to Web pages. Ninety-five percent of spam messages contain a URL, so URL information is an especially good target for filters. Yet another way is by checking a "safe list" of senders that the recipient considers trustworthy. If the sender is on the list, the message is delivered to the recipient's mailbox. If not, a challenge message goes to the original sender asking him or her to authenticate the message. Approximately two thirds of all e-mail today uses "spoofed," or fake, sender addresses. The e-mail protocols in use today are based on trust: senders simply state who they are and the recipients believe them. This approach worked quite well in the early days of the Internet, before spam proliferated and before e-mail was used for business transactions.
Changing Internet standards is notoriously difficult, and it has been especially hard for e-mail protocols. A new industry standard, the Sender ID Framework, is finally addressing the spoofing problem by adding supplementary information to the domain name server (DNS) to list the Internet protocol (IP) addresses from which mail sent from a specific domain can come. Industry, the open-source community and the academic community all continue to study how to eliminate spam. There will always be a spammers of course, but hopefully their efforts will turn the flood  into a trickle. For a full discussion of this topic go to:

 http://www.sciam.com/print_version.cfm?articleID=000F3A4B-BF70-1238-BF7083414B7FFE9F

Calendar Magic

Information in mid March 2005 from the freeware newsgroup:

Calendar Magic V15.3 is now available for download from: http://www.stokepoges.plus.com
and, within a few days, from: http://www.simtel.net/pub/dl/55320.shtml

Enhancements and improvements include:

  1. Made numerous minor changes to the user interface in line with
    recommendations from Kaj Nielsen. Also, at his suggestion, improved the
    logical grouping of buttons on the main Calendar Magic screen and
    introduced colour coding of main buttons to highlight the logical
    groupings. If you prefer Calendar Magic's "classic appearance", use the
    F12 key to turn button colouring off and on.
  2. Added around 250 towns and cities to Calendar Magic's worldwide
    locations database bringing the total to nearly 7500.
  3. Added the current time and date to the Alarm Clock display.
  4. Added a capability to the Unit Converter to enable the values of one
    selected unit in the conversion results to be watched during multiple
    conversions within the same category.
  5. In the Geometry Calculator, you may now specify the number of
    significant digits you wish displayed in results. Changing that number
    will automatically force a recalculation and redisplay.
  6. In "Before or After" a second output text-box has been provided from
    which it is easier to copy and paste any calculated date.
  7. In "What Time is it in?" the time for any worldwide location selected
    is now updated every minute.
  8. In "What Time is it in?" you may now use your own customised
    selection of favourite countries and locations instead of Calendar
    Magic's worldwide locations database.
  9. The number of significant figures specified for results in both the
    Unit Converter and the Geometry Calculator are now "sticky" - that is
    Calendar Magic remembers the values and redisplays them whenever either
    form is subsequently reloaded.
  10. In the "What Time is it in?" form, the last country and town/city
    selected from Calendar Magic's worldwide locations database are also now
    "sticky", as are the last country and town/city selected from a list of
    favourites.
  11. Added several additional observed days to the list for Norway.
  12. Added St. Patrick's Day to the list of observed days for the United
    States.

Enjoy!

Alex Balfour

Freeware for Windows XP

Someone new to the freeware group and Windows XP asked "What freeware would you recommend for XP, specifically to tweak some settings? Also any websites that offer tweaks would be appreciated"

Here are some of about 3,600 freeware programs listed at http://www.pricelesswarehome.org: 

Here are some  for Windows XP:

Ad-Aware - www.lavasoftusa.com - find, and stop spyware programs.

AddressBook - http://blaizfree.net - secure address book.

AxCrypt - http://axcrypt.sourceforge.net/ easy file encryption, open source.

CDex - http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/ - music ripper/recorder/converter/player.

Calendar -- http://www.geocities.com/cgopg/ -- wall calendar like program.

Convert - http://www.joshmadison.com/software/convert/ - converts measurements.

Eraser - http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/ - securely delete, and overwrite sensitive files.

Free Download Manager - www.freedownloadmanager.org - resuming downloader with anti-virus integration (uses your anti-virus program to scan downloads automatically).

Gadwin Printscreen - www.gadwin.com - automatically save screen shots, even from some games.

Hamsin Clipboard - http://www.iisr-cnc.com/hamsin/ extends clipboard use.

Irfan View - www.irfanview.com - pic. viewer, music player, slide show maker, etc.

Karen’s Replicator - www.karenware.com/ - great syncing and backup program.

Keep it Alive - www.pclightning.com - helps keep you from being disconnected online.

KeyNote - http://sourceforge.net/projects/keynote/ - Tabbed notebook, RichText editor, encryption.

KeyTweak -- (XP & 2000 only) - http://webpages.charter.net/krumsick/ tweaks (remaps) your keyboard.

MoffSoft FreeCalc - www.moffsoft.com - calculator, w/ tape window, resizeable, and stays on top.

Mozilla-FoxFire - www.mozilla.org - Browser, Mozilla based , blocks pop-ups, has resuming downloader, etc.

Mozilla-ThunderBird - http://www.mozilla.org/projects/thunderbird/release-notes.html - best free mail program.

Multi-timer - www.programming.de -10 in one timer (counts up or down).

Nail It - http://www.pier7.net/dojo/Nail-It.htm - keeps a window "on top" (for example your calculator).

Open Office - www.openoffice.org - full office suite, compatible with others, open source. (60mb+).

Panda Money -- http://adrienmiller.free.fr/Dwnloads/EngDownloads.htm - a check register like money program.

PassKeeper - www.passkeeper.com - password/info keeper encrypted/password protected.

PDF Creator - http://sector7g.wurzel6.de/pdfcreator/index_en.htm - make .PDF files.

QuickPad - http://www.geocities.com/helmi79/software/software.html - quick auto-saving notes.

RegSeeker - www.hoverdesk.net/freeware.htm - advanced registry cleaner.

Restoration - http://www.webattack.com/get/restoration.html - restore files deleted past recycle bin.

Script Defender - www.analogx.com - protection from virus scripts.

Spider - http://www.fsm.nl/ward/ - lets you read/empty your temp. and index.dat files, etc.

Splitter - www.martinstoeckli.ch/ - splits files, folders.

SpyBot -search and destroy --- http://spybot.safer-networking.org/ removes spyware from computer.

SpywareBlaster - www.wilderssecurity.net/spywareblaster.html - stops spyware from running.

SpywareGuard -- http://www.wilderssecurity.net/ - prevents spyware installing.

StartupMonitor ----http://www.mlin.net/StartupMonitor.shtml - monitors the startup list.

TextShield - http://members.lycos.nl/textshield/ - small, fast, rich text editor w/spellcheck.

TotalUninstall -- http://www.martau.com/tu.html - monitor and uninstall programs better

TreePad - www.treepad.com - small, configurable, indexing, plain text data program

WordWeb - www.wordweb.co.uk - English dictionary and thesaurus.

Zone alarm - www.zonelabs.com - a very good free firewall

7-zip - www.7-zip.org/ - free, open source, zip - unzip utility .

Any questions , just go to the sites and read about them.

These are some sites to get stuff from, (utilities, games, etc.)

All the applications listed by MLC and mike555, be sure to visit http://www.blackviper.com/ for more settings.

1. First: Default in XP is NOT to show the file extensions. You can change this in Windows Explorer by going to Tools > Folder Options > View > UNCHECK "Hide extensions for known file types". What madness made Microsoft hide these is a mystery.

2. Second: I would download TrackerV3 as an alternative to Windows Explorer. You may still need to use Windows Explorer occasionally, but minimal use will prevent problems. http://www.trackerv3.com. 

3. Third. Keep looking at alt.comp.freeware and the recommended programs on http://www.pricelessware.org/

Finally, three sites (amongst many) you'll find useful:

Frank Bohan


InfoZip

WinZip is a shareware application that should be registered after some days. Here's a freeware substitute:

Information about InfoZip posted in the alt.comp.freeware newsgroup by Bjorn Simonsen

Update February/March 2005

(have not tried the new versions myself, just passing the info):
http://infozip.sourceforge.net/ 
http://sourceforge.net/projects/infozip 
	"Info-ZIP's purpose is to provide free, portable, high-quality
	versions of the Zip and UnZip compressor-archiver utilities that
	are compatible with the DOS-based PKZIP by PKWARE, Inc." 
	"LATEST RELEASES: WiZ 5.03 was released on 11 March 2005. Zip 	
	2.31 was released on 11 March 2005. UnZip 5.52 was released on 27
	February 2005."

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