Open Source and Free Software News: ianuarie 2015

sâmbătă, 31 ianuarie 2015

Giveaway - Start Menu X Pro - Windows system menu replacement

Start Menu X is a replacement of the system menu for professionals. Power users know how inconvenient and time-consuming it is to launch programs from the system menu, so Start Menu X is the right solution!

Benefits of PRO version:

Single-click launch!
Assign a primary program to any folder and start it simply by clicking this folder.
Change the structure and add tabs.
Manage the Virtual Groups.
Sort files by name.

Download link available today: http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/start-menu-x-pro-5-30-rerun/

Free alternative: Start Menu 8 from IObit
Start Menu 8 is specially designed for Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 to bring back both the Windows 8 start button and Windows 8 Start Menu. It offers the option to skip Modern UI, allowing users who only work on desktop to boot to Windows 8 desktop directly. It's the best Windows 8 start menu replacement. Start Menu 8 can also run smoothly on Windows 7/Vista/XP to replace the built-in start menu.

vineri, 30 ianuarie 2015

Giveaway - HippoEDIT text editor for programmers and power users

HippoEDIT is a Windows text editor for programmers and power users. One can use it as full featured IDE with support of projects, external tools and auto completion, or as simple source code viewer for web browsers and shell. With HippoEDIT, you can open large log files, view and edit Unicode texts, open files in different encoding and line break styles.
Editor has syntax highlighting and code outlining support for many programming languages, plugins extending the editor with new functionality (FTP Explorer, File Explorer, Spell Checker, Emmet and JS Beautifier, HTML Tools, XML Pretty Print, Live Colors etc.) and color schemes. HippoEDIT has many unique features that you will not find in other editors, which may speed up and simplify your work. Such as Hierarchy and Navigation bar, Colored Braces and Guides, inline color and image previewers, Intelligent Smart Highlight, Code Hints, Fuzzy search, User Text Highlighting, Multi-Clipboard, and Workspaces etc.

Download link available today: http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/hippoedit-1-60/

Free Alternatives:

Inkscape 0.91 released - open source vector graphics software

Inkscape is a graphic design software - vector drawing and editing. It is free (open source) and is an alternative to Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw.
Inkscape is cross-platform and has versions that run on Windows, Linux and OS X.
With the new release Inkscape 0.91 rendering and filters have become significantly faster.

Release highlights

Cairo rendering for display and PNG export;
OpenMP multithreading for all filters;
C++ code conversion;
Major improvements in the Text tool;
Measure tool;
Type design feature;
Symbol library and support for Visio stencils;
Cross platform WMF and EMF import and export;
Improved support for Corel DRAW documents, Visio importer;
Support for real world document and page size units, e.g. millimeters;
Numerous usability improvements;
Native Windows 64-bit build;
more release details and download links

Known issue - easy fix :)
• On MS Windows when the desktop colordepth is set to 16-bit, Inkscape is unusable because of exploding memory usage. Please set the colordepth to 32-bit.

10 most exciting features in Inkscape 0.91

Tileable Patterns in Inkscape

miercuri, 28 ianuarie 2015

Giveaway - Zoner Photo Studio 16 PRO

Zoner Photo Studio is the only photo software you’ll ever need. User-friendly Windows software, whose №1 advantage is that it brings every feature you need in a single package. From importing photos onto your PC, to organizing a photo archive, to editing, sharing, and RAW. And almost everything Zoner can do, it can do for batches of photos as well. For example, you can give 1000 vacation photos a frame, resize them to the size you need for a photo album, etc., all at once, saving you time.

Without doubt, it is a serious alternative to Adobe Lightroom. Zoner Photo Studio has a similar interface with a logical workflow.

Key Features:

Importing: Right as you’re downloading your pictures to your PC, you can tag them, rotate them to match camera rotation (EXIF), back them up, and more.
Managing: Give photographs a rating from 1-5, colored labels, descriptions, and more. Drag-and-drop them onto an integrated Google Map to GPS-tag them, so you’ll know exactly where your photos were taken even years from now. Then find any photo you need in seconds, even among thousands of others.
Editing: Dozens of photo editing and retouching features – cropping, resizing, straightening, local edits, exposure and color fixes and more. A Quick Edits panel helps you fix a picture in moments using just a few sliders. The Editor also offers dozens of creative Quick Filters and other creative tools like HDR, Tone Mapping, 3D, panoramas, etc.

Download link available today: http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/zoner-photo-studio-16-pro/

About.com review ****: http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/productreviews/ss/Zoner-Photo-Studio.htm
Download.com review****: http://download.cnet.com/Zoner-Photo-Studio/3000-2192_4-75186165.html

Zoner free Android photo app: http://www.zoner.com/en/zoner-photo-studio-for-android
Google play - Zoner Android photo app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.zoner.android.photostudio

Free Alternatives:

Zoner Photo Free - free limited edition - PRO vs. Free edition comparison;
Rawtherapee - free open source;
Digikam - free open source;
Photoscape - free;
Photo-editing software, Lightroom alternatives - dedicated page on my blog.

sâmbătă, 17 ianuarie 2015

Giveaway - CollageIt Pro 1.9.5

CollageIt is an easy-to-use photo collage maker for Windows, which makes collage automatically. In a matter of seconds, this collage software can turn any ordinary photos into impressive collages.

Download link available today: http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/collageit-pro-1-9-5/

Free Alternatives:

Microsoft Research AutoCollage 2008
Pos Free Collage Maker
PhotoSpills
Whip for Windows 8
Collagerator
Fotor
AndreaMosaic Portable
Mosaic Maniac Collage Paint – a Paint.NET plugin
Mosamic

vineri, 16 ianuarie 2015

Giveaway - PDFZilla - PDF converter

PDFZilla is a desktop application that quickly and accurately converts PDF files into editable MS Word Documents, MS Excel Tables, Rich Text Documents, Plain Text Files, Images, HTML Files, and Shockwave Flash SWF Files. PDZilla also allows users to rotate, cut and merge PDF files.
Besides, the program can convert images like PNG, TIF, BMP or JPG to PDF files, which means users can simply create PDF files from images.

Download link available today: http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/pdfzilla-3-0-6-2/

Free Alternatives:

PrimoPDF
CutePDF
UniPDF

joi, 15 ianuarie 2015

Giveaway - Inpaint 6.0 - Image Retouching software

Inpaint reconstructs the selected image area from the pixel near the area boundary. Inpaint may be used to delete unwanted objects from your photos. Delete any unwanted object from your photo, such as extra power-line, people, and text.
The programs will automatically Inpaint the selected area to erase it. If some unexpected object spoils an otherwise good photograph, Inpaint may be used to remove it. Simply select the object. No need for fiddly messing about with the clone tool. It is alarmingly simple to use. Draw a selection around the object you wish to remove from the picture, and run smart remove selection.

Download link available today: http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/inpaint-6-0-2/

Free Alternatives:

marți, 13 ianuarie 2015

Giveaway - EaseUS Partition Master Pro 10.2

EaseUS Partition Master Processional is an easy-to-use yet excellent disk management tool. With its intuitive interface, users can easily resize, copy, and recover the partitions. It allows us to extend system or non-system partitions, freely drag partitions to move the unallocated spaces and migrate OS to another HDD or SSD.
Besides the main functions, users can convert MBR to GPT, convert basic partition to logical partition, clone the entire disk etc. Compared with other versions, the latest EaseUS Partition Master Professional is better compatible with SSD, better support to UEFI motherboard and GPT drive.

Download link available today: http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/easeus-partition-master-pro-10-2/

Free alternatives:

luni, 12 ianuarie 2015

Downloads of the Year 2014 on Download.com

Security apps and utilities are in the top downloads at Download.com.

Top Windows downloads for 2014

Top Mac downloads for 2014

duminică, 11 ianuarie 2015

Giveaway - Aiseesoft Total Video Converter

Aiseesoft Total Video Converter is designed with powerful video conversion functions to fix the “unsupported file type” error you frequently meet with. It can help you convert any video file at fast speed, and no matter it’s downloaded from online video sites or recorded with your camcorder. It supports multiple SD/HD video profiles, including MP4, MTS, MXF, MOV, AVI, DivX, XviD, WMV, MKV, FLV, HD WMV, HD MOV, HD FLV, HD MP4, etc.

Features:

Convert any video at fast speed and with super high quality
Extract audio from video files
Turn 2D video to 3D
Edit the video effect to suit your preferences
Support the latest devices and video editing software

Download link available today: http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/aiseesoft-total-video-converter-7-1-52/

Free alternatives:

http://www.freemake.com/downloads/ - (Audio Converter, Video Converter, Youtube Downloader, Youtube to MP3) - Adware - choose custom install and deselect the bundled software like various toolbars in the package.
Any-Video-Converter
HandBrake

vineri, 9 ianuarie 2015

Giveaway - Wise care 365

Protect and Speed Up Your PC with Wise Care 365 PRO now! Wise Care 365 Pro can keep your PC at peak performance. There are over 15,000,000 downloads worldwide. Wise Care 365 Pro is an all-in-one Windows maintenance and optimization software which includes the fastest scanning engine. It is a bundle of important registry cleaner, disk cleaner, and other system utilities for your PC.
Absorbed all the features of highly-praised Wise Registry Cleaner and Wise Disk Cleaner, Wise Care 365 cleans disk and registry, supports one-click PC checkup, optimizes system and protects privacy. All that make Wise Care 365 stand out from other PC maintenance and optimization utilities available today. Easy to use and effective, Wise Care 365 is the best solution to improve your PCs performance. Get Wise Care 365 and your computer will never run slow again!

Download link available today: http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/wise-care-365-3-4-1/

Download.com review:
http://download.cnet.com/Wise-Care-365-Free/3000-18512_4-75744630.html
- #4 in Maintenance & Optimization (Download.com)

Free alternative:
http://download.cnet.com/CCleaner/ - #1 in Maintenance & Optimization (Download.com)

joi, 8 ianuarie 2015

Blender 2.73 - new version of the 3d modeling, animation and rendering software

Blender is a professional free and open-source 3D computer graphics software product used for creating animated films, visual effects, art, 3D printed models, interactive 3D applications and video games. Blender's features include 3D modeling, UV unwrapping, texturing, raster graphics editing, rigging and skinning, fluid and smoke simulation, particle simulation, soft body simulation, sculpting, animating, match moving, camera tracking, rendering, video editing and compositing. Alongside the modeling features it also has an integrated game engine.

List of improvements for the new version of Blender 2.73:

Several Cycles Rendering updates, improvements and new features, support for GeForce 9xx GPUs.
New fullscreen mode, improved Pie Menus, 3D View can now display the world background.
Knife-tool now allows freehand smart cuts, and more improvements were made in selection tools, Bevel Modifier and Shapekeys.
Unwrapping UVs was improved, strength is now enabled for Grab and Snake Hook brushes, better visual feedback mode for painting with masks.
Sequencer now can show a backdrop, strips can be snapped to others along with other improvements.
Freestyle NPR Rendering has a new SVG exporter add-on, along with other improvements.
Grease Pencil had a major update, it is now possible to edit and animate strokes! New draw styles, and imporvements in user interface.

Collada Importer was updated, improving the compatibility with other software’s bone concepts.
Add-ons: FBX improved importing/exporting armatures, some Python API changes could need some Add-ons to be updated!
As usual several other minor updates and improvements, and lot of bugfixing also in this release.

Cycles Render

Volumes can now be rendered if the camera is inside them
Support for cubic voxels interpolations to avoid artifacts especially on low resolution smoke simulations
Support for GeForce 9xx GPUs
Faster rendering of homogeneous volumes
Improved rendering with area lights
Viewport specularity

User Interface

New Fullscreen mode displays an environment without any buttons or other “annoying” user interface elements
A number of Input Method Editors (IMEs) are now supported for complex non-latin character input (widely used in east-Asia)
Pie Menus are now using a confirm threshold
Pie Menus can now contain nested Pie Menus
The 3D View has a new option to display the world background

Modeling

The Knife-tool now allows freehand cuts drawing and closing of cut-loops via double click. Selection during modeling has been improved by adding the ability to select similar regions, plus the select more/less function has gotten the option to skip adjacent faces. A few other improvements were made, like for the Bevel Modifier, Shapekeys

Sculpting / Painting

Unwrapping UVs was improved by using a simpler unwrap method. Numerical input is supported for changing brush size, detail size and strength. The latter one can now also be changed for Grab and Snake Hook brushes. When painting with masks, the face-mask edges are hidden to give proper visual feedback of what you are painting on.

Sequencer

Similar to the Compositor, an option to show the current frame as a backdrop has been added. Strips can be snapped to others by pressing the G key while moving them and their content can be moved independently of the strip itself (S). A few minor things were also made, such as an option to toggle all waveforms on/off, or drawing of meta-strip range while editing them.

Freestyle Non-photorealistic Rendering

The non-photorealistic render engine Freestyle got a new SVG exporter, implemented as an add-on. It’s now also possible to cache view maps and a few more options for chain selection and chain sorting were added.

Animation

The Grease Pencil was given a major update. As a result, it is now possible to edit and animate strokes! There are new ways to draw styles, like filled stroke interiors, volumetric strokes, etc. The Grease Pencil’s user interface (which is now completely defined via Python) has been improved as well, plus two quick access pie menus were created for it. Besides from the Grease Pencil update, there are some other minor improvements regarding animation.

Add-ons

Some updates were made for the Collada Importer. Compatibility of Blender bones to other software’s bone concepts was made better and the problems with “Leaf Bones” and that Collada isn’t aware of Blenders connection system between bones were fixed.
The FBX Add-on now uses some advanced handling/tweaking options for importing and exporting armatures. To Add-on developers: Some changes were made to the Python API, make sure to check them out and update your Add-ons if necessary!

More Features

Several optimizations: mesh deform modifier now uses SSE2 with multi-threading, compositor’s gaussian blur node implemented in OpenCL, vertex parent optimized for a few cases. In 3D View added GLSL specular transparency support for Blender internal materials, and support for specular highlights in cycles materials. Motion Tracking predictive tracking has been implemented now, enabled by default and doing magic under the curtain. Added shortcuts for masks and tracks copy-paste operators.

Download link: http://www.blender.org/download/

miercuri, 7 ianuarie 2015

Giveaway - Ashampoo Photo Commander 11 - photo manager

Ashampoo Photo Commander 12 offers good value as an all-in-one photo editor and manager for Windows. It can repair, resize, and optimize digital snapshots, add effects, create albums and slideshows, organize and share images and folders, and a lot more.
Whether it’s simple brightness, contrast and color manipulations or complex tasks such as image restoration, Ashampoo Photo Commander 11 provides everything you need in one intuitive package.

Key Features:

Manage, organize and browse your photo collection;
Work with intuitive wizards to achieve best results;
Save time and auto-adjust your images for maximum visual clarity;
Restore picture quality and remove noise, scratches and other unwanted objects;
Become creative with a myriad of brilliant image effects;
Convert between numerous image formats;
Turn your images into greeting cards, calendars or photo collages;
Upload your work to social networks or share your images through email.

Download link available today: http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/ashampoo-photo-commander-11-2/

!!! The Giveaway it's even better on the Ashampoo Gift page (PhotoCommander 11, Burning Studio 2015, Snap 7, WinOptimizer 2014, Music Studio ): https://www.ashampoo.com/en/usd/lpa/gift
Coupon code: GIFT

Ashampoo® Burning Studio 2015	Ashampoo^® Music Studio 4
Ashampoo^® Snap 7 -Capture, illustrate and share your viewing experience.	Ashampoo^® Photo Commander 11 -All-in-one image viewer, organizer, editor, converter and publisher
Ashampoo^® WinOptimizer 2014 -Optimal improvement, maintenance and adjustment of your Windows^® system!

Free alternatives - photo managers and editors:

http://open-source-spot.blogspot.ro/2014/11/rawtherapee-42-free-image-processing.html
http://open-source-spot.blogspot.ro/p/photo-editing.html - detailed article - Gimp, Paint.Net, Zoner Free, RawTherapie and many more.

vineri, 2 ianuarie 2015

Giveaway - Process Lasso Pro

Process Lasso is a process priority optimization and system automation utility. Although Lasso offers a plethora of advanced rules and features, you need not be a tech whiz to use it. As soon as you install Lasso, without any further action, it’s ProBalance technology will immediately start restraining CPU hogs to help your PC retain responsiveness during high CPU loads.
Process Lasso’s most popular feature is the unique process optimization technology called ProBalance (Process Balance) that will improve your PC’s responsiveness and stability through process priority optimization and/or CPU affinity adjustments. In addition to ProBalance, there are countless features allowing the user to take full automated control of the processes on their PC. You can have a wide range operations performed, or settings applied, each time a process is run.
What’s New:Gaming Mode has been improved to include a pre-customized power plan for maximal performance. Right out of the box, it can even enter Gaming Mode when you play any Steam game.

Download link available today: http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/process-lasso-pro-7-6/

Pagini

sâmbătă, 31 ianuarie 2015

Benefits of PRO version:

vineri, 30 ianuarie 2015

miercuri, 28 ianuarie 2015

Key Features:

sâmbătă, 17 ianuarie 2015

vineri, 16 ianuarie 2015

joi, 15 ianuarie 2015

marți, 13 ianuarie 2015

luni, 12 ianuarie 2015

Top Windows downloads for 2014

Most popular Windows newcomers

Top Mac downloads for 2014

Most popular Mac newcomers

duminică, 11 ianuarie 2015

Features:

vineri, 9 ianuarie 2015

joi, 8 ianuarie 2015

Download link: http://www.blender.org/download/

miercuri, 7 ianuarie 2015

Key Features:

vineri, 2 ianuarie 2015