WinPatrol uses a heuristic approach to detecting attacks and violations of your computing environment. Traditional security programs scan your hard drive searching for previously identified threats. WinPatrol takes a snapshot of your critical system resources and alerts you to any changes that may occur without your knowledge. You’ll be removing dangerous new programs while others download new reference files.

When you run WinPatrol, you should notice that Scotty the Windows Watch Dog is standing on your Windows System Tray/Taskbar in the right lower corner of your screen. Probably next to your clock or speaker icons. He loves music.

Just double click on Scotty to see the valuable information he has found out about your computer. If you hold down the right mouse button you’ll see a menu pop up with additional features. Using this menu you can select to have Scotty installed so he’s always watching out for you. You can always go back at any time and change your mind and uncheck the "Always Run WinPatrol" menu option. This menu also provides a way to Exit WinPatrol anytime you want.

Long gone are the days when you’d have to save up for weeks to make a long distance or international phone call. Thanks to Voice over IP technology and the widespread availability of broadband it’s now possible to talk free of charge to anyone in the world.

Skype has made the technology accessible to all through it’s simple and fun-to-use chat-style interface. The program is gaining in popularity, meaning the community of users you can chat to for free is expanding. This update certainly contains some decent additions to the previous version, most notably its webcam facilities. This means you can now watch your buddies as you chat to them and let them see you if you want.

You can use the program to chat with other Skype users anywhere in the world for free either via telephone or the built-in chat feature. However, some overly optimistic users may be disappointed to learn that you still need to pay for credits to make calls to landlines and mobiles with Skype, through the SkypeOut function. Luckily, this is a very painless process, and Skype has recently added a plethora of different ways to pay.

The program is perhaps even easier to use than ever, with streamlined new tools such as the ability to add a contact from the main Skype window and contact grouping for arranging your friends, family and colleagues into categories. You can even import contacts from Outlook, and find out if any of these use Skype. The changes to the interface and its icons may confuse existing users for a while, but once you get used to it, the new GUI is arguably more intuitive than ever.

As we’ve come to expect there’s plenty you can do other than just having a two-way conversation with a friend, including inviting other users into a conference, setting up chatrooms, exchanging files, and viewing the history of your contacts. You can even set up customized voicemail to record messages while you’re away from base.

We’re also excited by the new public chats function. You’ll get to join in many different groups and talk about a specific subject. You can even create your own chat for others to join in, like an Italian language class or a talk on the consequences of the Iraq war.

As more people clamber aboard the Skype bandwagon, the network will become a much more convenient way for people to chat with each other. The client now provides the perfect platform on which to join the communication revolution. Let the Skyping commence…

Review by James Thornton

If you’re forever adjusting your clock or worried about whether it’s showing the exact correct time, then this could be the answer for you.

SymmTime synchronizes your PC clock to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) – in other words, the atomic clock which is the World standard by which all clocks are set. Windows can sometimes gain and lose time, especially in older machines, and SymmTime ensures that you’ll never have to manually set the time ever again. SymmTime works by automatically synchronizing your system clock through via any accessible NTP server. The program allows you to set as many time zones as you need and You can set as many time zones as you need, and change them anytime you want which is extremely useful for those on the move. For instance you’ll never miss another international conference call on the move because you can set up a conference call at any time in any country. In addition, you can choose from an Analog (with clock face and hands) or digital clock face in 24-hour or AM/PM format.

For those on the move, this is a much better solution than constantly resetting your clock manually.

Review by Nick Mead

If you’re familiar with C++, then did you know that you can create some stunning widgets with it using an application like wxWidgets.

wxWidgets is a C++ programming environment which enables the creation of multi-platform applications with and without a graphical user interface. The developer says that he was motivated to design the program after the failure of other similar programs to help create dialogs visually. In particular, it was the limited set of widgets and impossibility to include non-graphical components which wxWidgets skillfully sidesteps. The key to the appeal of wxWidgets that most programmers will appreciate is the fact that it stores information in XML documents which, as the developers point out, eases the modification of both the properties of an object and the generated code without needing to recompile. In this way, the code creates templates which can be used over and over again to create variations on just one widget. If you’re not familiar with C++, none of this will mean much but if you’re in the know, it’s an effective way to create some truly impressive widgets.

Stay away if you don’t know C++ but for professional programmers, this is one of the fastest ways to create good looking desktop widgets.

Review by Nick Mead

Freeciv is a free turn-based multiplayer strategy game, in which each player becomes the leader of a civilization, fighting to obtain the ultimate goal:To become the greatest civilization. Freeciv is maintained by an international team of coders and enthusiasts, and is easily one of the most fun and addictive network games out there! That also means it has very extensive multilanguage support, something rare in games.

The goal of Freeciv is to build cities, which in turn can build armies to attack the other players. You start with 2 settlers and 1 explorer. Using the numeric keypad, move the settlers to a good location and build a city by pressing b (for build). Freeciv is turn based; every unit can move once per turn.

Cities also produce units, which can be used for various purposes, from fighting wars to enhancing infrastructure. Different strategies depend on different focuses between things external and internal to a city.

The eventual goal of the game is to win either by using military units to conquer all opposing civilizations, or by using massive scientific knowledge and production to build a spaceship to send to Alpha Centauri before your rivals can do so.

As USB sticks and other flash memory drives increase in storage capacity, so does their popularity as software repositories. Many applications have developed special versions for these devices, usually known as “portable”. One of them is CCleaner Portable.

In a few words, CCleaner Portable is the pocket version of CCleaner, an excellent cleaning tool with which you can erase unused files, thus gaining back valuable free disk space and making Windows run faster and smoother. The great advantage about CCleaner Portable is that it allows you to do just the same without leaving any evidence of use on the computer. In fact, you don’t even need to install it. Simply run it from your USB memory stick and you’ll have immediate access to all of its features. CCleaner Portable does create some necessary keys in Windows Registry, but these are deleted when the program is closed, so there’ll be no trace of it left on the system.

Regarding its functions, CCleaner Portable does a very satisfactory job. The program helps you to get rid of many different files such as Internet cookies, temporary files, log files or all those leftovers found after months of installing and uninstalling applications. The configuration menu features interesting options like the possibility to keep certain cookies which may be useful for you or the ability to add custom file types to the delete filter. Apart from freeing up disk space, CCleaner Portable also lets you uninstall applications, find broken registry keys and list all the programs set to run when Windows launches.

On the down side, CCleaner Portable does not allow you to undo changes, so you must be very sure about what you want to erase before clicking on “Yes”. Also, the program can take a few minutes before finishing the analysis that must be done prior to deletion. However, this is probably due to the fact that CCleaner Portable runs from a USB device and that we checked all the available options when cleaning our system – the test found 558 MB of removable material, which obviously took a while to be deleted.

All in all, CCleaner Portable is every bit as good as its “big brother” and comes in really handy when you want to use it on any PC without installing anything or leaving any traces behind you.

Review by Elena Santos

Process Lasso is a unique new technology intended to automatically restrain running processes that are consuming too many CPU cycles. Often times, processes that are ‘out-of-control’ can bring an NT system to a near halt.

Once one or more processes have become CPU resource hogs, termination of the offending process(es) is very difficult since it is nearly impossible to even open the task manager. With Process Lasso, these processes are temporarily reduced in priority so that the system is returned to a responsive level. Process Lasso can even work when multiple processes are responsible for a decrease in system responsiveness.

In addition, Process Lasso offers capabilities such as default process priorities, termination of disallowed processes, and logging of processes executed.

If your computer’s performance suddenly starts to get worse and the whole system behaves in an abnormal way, you’re likely to have some kind of malware in your hard drive. Anyway, just to be sure, you can launch this program and see for yourself.

RunScanner analyzes your system (with two possible alternatives, quick or full scan) and displays all running processes in Windows file system and Registry. Each one of the elements has some icons to its left that provide you with more information about it, although you’ll have to check that online as the program doesn’t include a help file.

Scans are very quick (even the full one) and can help you discover what’s wrong with your system. Just bear in mind that this is not a definitive solution and that you need to be sure of what you’re doing before actually deleting anything. Just in case, the program includes a backup option to unroll unwanted changes.

RunScanner also features a process killer and a hosts file editor.

Review by Elena Santos

WordPress is a state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. What a mouthful. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time. More simply, WordPress is what you use when you want to work with your blogging software, not fight it.

WordPress started with a single bit of code to enhance the typography of everyday writing on the web and fewer users than you can count on your hands and toes. Since then it has grown to be the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world, used on hundreds of thousands of sites and seen by millions of people every day.

Everything you see here, from the documentation to the code itself, was created by and for the community. WordPress is an Open Source project, which means there are hundreds of people all over the world working on it. (More than most commercial platforms.) It also means you are free to use it for anything from your cat’s home page to a Fortune 500 intranet site without paying anyone a license fee.

Transporter P2P is a decentralised file sharing application and messenger program, designed for use over local area networks, and the internet.

The program is nowhere near as heavily subscribed to as things like eMule but the advantaged is that it can support virtually unlimited file sizes. The program has also been designed with communication in mind. You can share folders and drives in a few clicks and
as each contact can have their own list of shared folders. Global shares can also be created, which all contacts can access. You can view who is browsing your shared folders, and even kick users while they are browsing your files. The program is also very secure so it’s ideal for organisations that need to share data securely. When you transfer files by the IM, which can be any size, a status bar indicates how much is done and how long its going to take. Since the program has no central server, it’s also extremely quick and there’s no danger of anyone controlling what others can and can’t download.

A nice P2P solution for organisations or groups that need to exchange large files but eMule users will find nothing of interest here.

Review by Nick Mead