Jarte - Advanced Freeware Word Processor

Sometimes, we are so used to some of the programs we get in the standard Windows package, that we do not challenge them. Do you use WordPad? Probably, not, because it’s functionality is lacking many important functions. Jarte fills the gap. It is a significantly enhanced word processor using Window’s built-in word processing engine.

The Jarte Processor is able to support regular text files (TXT), Rich Text Format (RTF), MS Word (DOC) and MS Word 2007 (DOCX) file formats. Embedded features include tabbed document interface for easy access to your open documents, spell checking capabilities with instant dictionary and thesaurus word lookup, clipboard manager, single click bookmark support, visual header/footer designer, fonts and paragraphs formatting, print preview, multi-level undo/redo operations, and many other features.

Jarte Processor is absolutely free. There are no ads, no trial period, no nag screens, and no crippling of essential features. You can download the software from the manufacturer site: http://www.jarte.com/download.html

There are three packages for downloading. As strong supporter of the portable versions use, I would recommend choosing “Just the Files” version. With this portable package you can use the software from any place, including external USB Drive (for U3 USB Drive there is a separate installation package).

17 Free Utilities for PDF Files Reading

Portable Document Format or PDF is a file format created by Adobe Systems, Inc. PDF uses the PostScript printer description language and is highly portable across computer platforms. It captures formatting information from a variety of desktop publishing applications, making it possible to send formatted documents and have them appear on the recipient’s monitor or printer.

In my earlier publication ( http://freeware4review.blogspot.com/2008/02/smart-freeware-pdf-viewer-with-multiple.html), I have presented freeware review for the PDF-XChange Viewer, software that replaced the previously used Foxit Reader on all my computers. However, I got uneasy with that: if I, by chance, found the utility that is better than I was using before, there is a chance that I am missing a point and there might be another application on the market, which is far superior to both known programs. That drove me to the new investigation on the free utilities for PDF reading, available on the market. I did not find anything better that these two, I mentioned already, but now, at least, I can feel good for some time.

The list of the free programs, I have created, is posted on RateItAll. Feel free to access the brief reviews with ratings and links for downloading, and to leave your feedback:
http://www.rateitall.com/t-24911-pdf-viewers--freeware-reviews.aspx

Check out RateItAll

Smart freeware PDF Viewer with multiple options

When it came to the PDF reading, for long time, my favorite reader was Foxit Reader. It was much smaller, lighter, and faster than popular Adobe Acrobat. However, recently I found the free PDF viewer that gives even more options for the PDF files editing. Yes, it is true, with free viewer you cannot create PDF files, but with existing PDF files you can do almost anything. And when portable software appeared on the market, I decided to abandon my Foxit and to start using PDF-XChange Viewer. So far, I love the program. It is quick, smooth, and full of surprising features; with nice GUI and low amount of the utilized resources. May be, I will find some drawbacks with extensive use, but so far, I am happy with the program. Among its prominent features:

• Tabbed Multiple Document Windows for viewing multiple documents at once.
• You can add Comments and Annotations to any PDF file to provide visible feedback to the document creator.
• You can mark-up pages with text and objects and type directly in Typewriter mode.
• Ability to convert PDF files into images.
• Extract text from the file through Copy and Paste commands.
• Navigation enhancement for large or complex PDF files with ’Loupe’ and the ’Pan’ Window options.
• Included plug-Ins for both MS IE and Firefox Browsers.
• Additional features, such as Rotate and Crop pages.
• Easy integration with translation software as ABBYY Lingvo 12, Translate It!, Lingoes.
• And, finally, portable version: use it from any USB external drive or stick.

Software is free for private and commercial use, no restrictions. Downloading link:
http://www.docu-track.com/downloads/users/
Video Tutorial is presented below:

PDF-XChange Viewer

PicLens - New Generation of the Web Photo Viewers

PicLens is a browser plug-in that brings pictures viewing process to the next level of the user’s aesthetic experience. The software was recently updated, covering more Browser types and supported Web Images galleries. In terms of the Browsers list, PicLens works with Internet Explorer, Firefox, Flock, and Safari (where it’s a bit limited), creating an amazing moving wall of the images in the reviewed gallery. You can stop, where you need, and increase the particular picture. You can come closer to the picture wall, you can look on it from a far to get more pics on the screen. You can move the wall backward, zoom in to full-screen version, or start a slideshow. In order to start the application, all you need to do is just click on the new "play" icon appearing on every image, when you pass it thorough with your mouse, while yo are on the application supported Web Sites.

The list of the supported sites is already quite impressive, and it growth fast: Photo Sites (Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa, Smugmug), Social Networking Sites (Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Hi5, Friendster), Image Galleries (Google Images, Yahoo! Images, Ask Images, Live Images, and AOL Images). You can also search for images from inside the program, not leaving your 3-D magnificent view. The Application is free and ads-free as well. May be, that is just temporary, until the user base grow enough to make the ads use business model more valuable.

Home Page: http://www.piclens.com/

Brief Video Presentation is Attached

PicLens 1.6 -- Full-Screen 3D Views for the Web

***************************

Update 04-19-2012:

At the end of 2008, PicLens evolved to got a brand new name: Cooliris. Over the time, the company focus has shifted. Now, Cooliris's core consumer product is LiveShare, a free real-time media sharing application for mobile and web that makes it easy for groups to share privately or publicly. 

30 Top Freeware Spam Filters

E-mail spam, also sometimes referred as "bulk e-mail" or "junk e-mail," involves a vast amount of nearly identical messages to be sent to the numerous recipients by e-mail. E-mail addresses are collected from chatrooms, websites, newsgroups, social networking sites and viruses which harvest users address books, and are sold to other spammers. I do not need, probably, to tell you, how serious the problem is, as if you did not come online yesterday, you would be familiar personally with the problem. However, I will just show you some stats to highlight its global character. Kelly Liyakasa spared some spam-related statistics (Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/spam-articles/spam-statistics-168033.html) that will catch your attention:

• The average PC user receives over 2,000 spammed emails per year.
• The average computer user receives about 10 spam email per day.
• About 28% of people answer spam emails - wrong action!
• 15-20% of corporate email is spam.
• 63% of “take my email off your list” aren’t fulfilled, and even can bring more spam.
• 86% of emails posted on websites end up receiving spam.

More recent spam stats will give you the recent trends and distribution per country of origin (Source: http://www.commtouch.com/Site/Resources/statistics.asp).

One of the ways to fight the spam is using the disposable email addresses, not giving your real one in the situation where there is a good way that your address might be misused. More about this spam-fighting approach you can read in my publication “ 40 Free Disposable Email Address Services to Fight Spam”.
But, what can you do, if your email address is already on the spammers’ lists? Changing it for a clean one might be time-consuming and complicated, as you have to notify all your friends, customers, and other trusted sources on the email address changes. If you use Web-based email address, your server is supposed to take care of the problem by installing the appropriable filters on the server. It might be more or less successful, but, as far as I know, there is no free solution to significantly improve the process. My spouse, for example, never gets my emails to her Yahoo! Account, as all mail with Hyperlinks in the signatures goes directly to the bulk mail folder. But, if you use the stand-alone POP3 email client on your Hard Drive, the responsibility to filter out the incoming mail is yours.

I have prepared the Rating List with 30 Freeware Utilities to filter incoming email messages for your Email Client on RateItAll Web Site (as usual)
http://www.rateitall.com/t-24874-anti-spam-freeware-utilities.aspx

All the programs have brief description, rating, and links for downloading.

CCleaner - Portable Freeware for Windows Maintenance

CCleaner freeware was included in almost all the popular listing of the best free software for the 2007 yearly reviews. CCleaner is short for “Crap Cleaner” - a perfectly appropriate name, with the program doing an excellent job of cleaning out unused and temporary files from the system that are accumulated over time during the normal computer use. This also includes quite accurate cleaning of Internet and PC usage tracks like browser cache, recently used files, web sites visited and more. User is able to select the items that he wants to be cleaned, and also specify the particular cookies that should be preserved on the computer. In addition, the program comes with a registry scanner that scans for invalid references with consecutive automatic fixing.

The program is very small, fast, and effective, allowing Windows to run faster, more efficiently and freeing for user a good chunk of the hard disk space. There are five or six video manuals for the software proper use on YouTube, so you can just search for them there, if you prefer detailed visualization approach to get familiar with all program features. As usual, I prefer portable software for personal use, if available, as it does not require installation and can be run from the USB external drive or stick. You can download the portable version, kindly offered by the author.

http://www.ccleaner.com/download/builds/downloading-portable

The presented release 2.04.543 is the latest, and, in the future, you can simply run inquiry for the available updates from inside the program, clicking on the link Check for updates in the lower right corner. The software is a irreplaceable part of my portable USB maintenance and repair “toolbox”. It is highly recommended for the users of all levels of expertise.

******************

Update 1: April 07, 20012

I have decided to update the post, giving the latest software release v3.17.1689 from 27 Mar 2012 and stressing out that over the years CCleaner remains as one of the best utilities of its class. Check again the impressed list of features:

* Internet Explorer: Temporary files, history, cookies, super cookies, Autocomplete form history, index.dat files.

* Firefox: Temporary files, history, cookies, super cookies, download history, form history.

* Google Chrome: Temporary files, history, cookies, super cookies, download history, form history.

* Opera: Temporary files, history, cookies, super cookies, download history.

* Safari: Temporary files, history, cookies, super cookies, form history.

* Other Supported Browsers: K-Meleon, Rockmelt, Flock, Google Chrome Canary, Chromium, SeaMonkey, Chrome Plus, SRWare Iron, Pale Moon, Phoenix, Netscape Navigator, Avant and Maxthon.

* Windows: Recycle Bin, Recent Documents, Temporary files, Log files, Clipboard, DNS Cache, Error Reporting, Memory Dumps, Jump Lists.

* Registry Cleaner: Advanced features to remove unused and old entries, including File Extensions, ActiveX Controls, ClassIDs, ProgIDs, Uninstallers, Shared DLLs, Fonts, Help Files, Application Paths, Icons, Invalid Shortcuts and more...

* Third-party applications: Removes temp files and recent file lists (MRUs) from many apps including Windows Media Player, eMule, Google Toolbar, Microsoft Office, Nero, Adobe Acrobat, WinRAR, WinAce, WinZip and many more...

* 100% Spyware FREE: This software does NOT contain any Spyware, Adware or Viruses.

Updated link for portable version download: http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download/portable

25 Defragmenters for Your Hard Drive - Freeware Reviews

Visually, imagine that your Hard drive consists of hundreds of thousands of little starage boxes, preserving the pieces of data. It either uses a storage box or it doesn't, never filling one with data from more than one program. When you add anything to your Hard Drive - a program, a note, audio, video, else - the record is not necessary saved in an area of contiguous disk space. For example, a 20 K file might be fragmented and spread over six disparate disk clusters, each 4 K in size. When this file is accessed, the system needs to obtain the contents of each of the clusters to open it, which would involve reading different areas of the disk for a single file. When you delete a file, the box is emptied, creating an empty space within your system. When defragmentation is performed, fragments of the same file are saved in contiguous areas of disk space, thus speeding up read access to the file and improving overall computer performance. There is a special section of the disk containing the File Allocation Table (FAT). It is a file system that keeps track of where all the files are stored on the hard drive. The FAT performance is significantly simplified after the HDD defragmentation.
One of the best freeware portable defragmenters I have already presented in the former publication:
http://freeware4review.blogspot.com/2008/01/jkdefrag-defragmeter.html

However, it is always good to have a choice. For your convenience, I have prepared the Web Rating List of 25 Free Defragmentation Computer Programs with brief description, review, ratings, and downloading links. I think, it is one the most complete listing of the programs in this category, as I worked hard to find them all.
http://www.rateitall.com/t-24840-hard-drive-defragmenters--freeware-reviews.aspx

Enjoy the Release!