Free Software Foundation by Kenn Wilson

Everyone likes free stuff. So we’ve decided to review some of the best freeware and freebies on the web. We’ve just added some new programs and comments in red.

Earthpages is not affiliated with any these companies, organizations or projects.

Disclaimer: This software and online content may be incompatible with your hardware and/or software. By clicking on the links below you agree that Earthpages.org | Earthpages.ca is not liable for any damages which may be incurred from visiting these links or downloading these programs.

Media Players

• VideoLAN – VLC media player Have you ever wanted to capture a still image from a video? Most free media players just won’t do it. After searching the web and reading all sorts of complicated do’s and don’ts from supposedly savvy technophiles out there, I stumbled upon this free program, which does it effortlessly. VLC also formats DVD playback in a variety of screen ratios, which can be nice.

Video Editing

• Bink Video (RAD Video Tools) Converts digital video files into different formats. Especially useful if your digital camera writes Quicktime .MOV files. Bink/RAD will convert them into .AVI files, which Windows Movie Maker can import!

Video Search

• Blinkx Not really freeware because there’s nothing to download. But it’s free and a good alternative to youtube and Google video searches.

Image Editing

• PhotoFiltre One of my favorite freeware photo editors with plug-ins, highlighting and “fade last effect” feature. Great power for a light, fast-loading program. PF doesn’t handle multiple layers like the GIMP but it’s light and tasteful. Don’t confuse this with PhotoFiltre Studio, which is not freeware.
• PhotoScape This is a fantastic program with some very high level filters, fun stuff and great text effects. I used this program for earthpages’ banner text – “twitter.com/earthpages”
• The GIMP GIMP stands for “GNU Image Manipulation Program.” The GIMP just keeps getting better and better; features include text, drop shadow, bevels, layers, color replacement and lots of filters.
• Gimphelp.org Some very cool filters for the Gimp.  While Photoshop 8bf filters may be the industry standard I find that using freeware opens me up to different graphics and artistic approaches that otherwise I’d never try. Here’s a good example. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to install these filters. Just read the instructions.
• Virtual Photographer This is a great program for enhancing your photos, compatible with the GIMP and other commercial software.
• Picasa IMHO the strongest thing about this photo editor is the excellent color, lightness and contrast fixing. And it’s very user friendly. Photo rotation is a bit blurry. Use PhotoScape for that. Picasa has some good filters. It’s getting better.
• Photobie I don’t use this one too much but it has some good filters and is under steady development. Like anything else, software preference is a pretty personal thing. Definitely worth a try.
  
• LightBox Solid performer. Free version touches up pics nicely with minimum of effort.
• Gifworks Very useful online animated gif editor – add effects, resize, optimize.
• Easy Thumbnails This creates good, sharp thumbnails with the utmost of ease.

AntiVirus, Junk and Spyware Removal

• AntiVir A wunderbar antivirus program from Germany with frequent free updates. Grab it while it’s still free!
• AdAware A ‘too good to be true’ program for detecting and cleaning invasive ads and malware that can slow down your computer. With free updates and lots of options.
• Advanced SystemCare This was recommended by Amit and it seems very powerful. But some may find it too aggressive and Gizmo’s Freeware says some have reported errors after using. I’ve tested this out and so far have had no probs with WinXP. It gets stuff CCleaner doesn’t, and vice versa.
• CCleaner Great program for cleaning junk files from your hard drive with frequent updates. Also useful for fixing registry integrity and blocking unwanted Windows startup programs. Users should have a medium level of technical knowledge – use with extreme caution and don’t even think about going past the default settings unless you know what you’re doing!
• Glary Utilities Recommended by Amit; still testing…
• Malwarebytes This is handy if by chance the other stuff listed here can’t help you.
• Revo Uninstaller Recommended by Amit: still testing…

FTP

• FileZilla FTP freeware. This is another “too good to be true” program with frequent updates. It just seems to be getting better and better.

Making Web Pages

• KomPozer I just tested this WYSIWYG editor by loading a fairly complex html page from the old earthpages. Nvu, on which KomPozer is based, used to scramble the code for this page and freeze but KomPozer didn’t. Apparently some techies didn’t like the fact that the buggy but very promising Nvu went into stasis. So they continued where Nvu left off. Great job! From my preliminary test it seems this might be the best totally free WYSIWYG editor around.
• Amaya A free WYSIWYG html editor that changed a few things (e.g. table borders, top spacing) when I loaded an html page created by Evrsoft First Page. But this is a good, straightforward product that would probably fit the needs of basic to intermediate users. Also has some cool special characters.
• Evrsoft First Page is a free WYSIWYG editor (with a 5 sec. nag screen). It has advanced features but, as others have said, the last version I tested was a touch slow and, on my computer, a bit buggy. Still, I’ve used it with great results. (And it might have been updated since I wrote this particular entry in May 2008).

Making Music / Audio Production

• Kristal Audio Engine This is a great program for sound recording in a multi-track format. It’s like a software version of the old Fostex and Tascam cassette recorders. Handles up to 16 audio tracks with effects, copy/cut and paste, bouncing and room for expansion. Although Kristal has been criticized for tracks not being in sync, spending a bit of time in the friendly user forum solved the issue for me.

Music Listening

• iTunes You don’t have to purchase media with this software. iTunes comes with fantastic, free streaming radio and a 10-band equalizer and preamp with great presets. Travel the world through talk and music!
• Winamp Music and video player with a 10-band equalizer and preamp to make music come alive. It includes free Shoutcast TV and Radio–i.e. streaming video and radio with password-protect content filtering.
• Live 365.com No download streaming radio portal. Impressive selection of genres.
• RadioTime Provides links to many streaming radio stations.
• AudioGrabber Handles WAV and MP3 formats. Audiophiles will probably know that WAV files sound better but are huge. MP3’s are “sonically acceptable” and take up less space for iPods, the web and the like. There are several free grabbers out there but I find this one sounds bigger and fatter than the others I’ve tested. Some audiophiles may like that, others may not.

Create RSS Feeds

• FeedSpring Indie web publishers can use this to generate their own RSS feeds.

Get News with RSS

• RSS Reader Get news stories from all over the web. This is a super program. But a while back I tested a beta version requiring net framework 2.0 and wasn’t impressed. About a third of my RSS feeds didn’t work. So I reverted to version 1.0.88.0 with net framework 1.1 and everything works great.

Scanning, File Conversion, PDF

• Scan2PDF – scan documents to PDF format Scan anything and convert to .pdf (for Acrobat Reader). Also open image files from your hard drive and convert to .pdf. I found that it works best if in “options” you enable the scanner interface to be seen. That way you can adjust the resolution and get really good results.
• Open Office I tested out the wordprocessor on this suite in 2008 and found it satisfactory, although the English thesaurus was weak, and downloading/installing more dictionaries was a hassle. It was also a bit slow to load and felt heavier on my machine than commercial products. Open Office easily converts to pdf, however, and supports a wide number of languages. And I believe there’s a more recent version.
• Bullzip This easily converts Windows documents to pdf. Lots of options. Fantastic.
• Primo PDF Primo easily converts Windows documents to pdf. I’ve used this great program for earthpages’ Policy and Disclaimer but will probably switch to Bullzip now that I’m aware of it. Why? Mostly because Bullzip is faster.

Multitasking

• Always on Top I use this with WinXP when I want to keep an application window visible while working with other applications. Examples could be keeping MS Word or maybe a Google chat contact visible while web surfing or blogging. This program is very light and works great.

Earthpages.org has no affiliation with these stories, their authors nor the websites they appear on

• Australian farmer finds mystery space junk   http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080328/sc_nm/australia_spacejunk_dc

• Psychiatry confuses distress with disorder  http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=554a1339-8bdc-4228-925b-e30edd959d25

• Free Photoshop beta launches online  http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/2008-03-27-free-photoshop-express_N.htm?csp=34