thefreecountry.com

[Free] 2 New Free Online C# Tutorials: Learn to Program in C#

2 Jul 2009 03:25:58 GMT

Two new free online C# tutorials have been added to the Free Online C# Tutorials, References and Documentation page. One is from the horse's mouth itself (Microsoft) and the other is from a tutorial delivered at a Microsoft .NET Crash Course in Cambridge. If you're hankering to write programs using C#, check these out.

[Free] New Cartoon/Animation Drawing Program: Create Your Own Cartoons

1 Jul 2009 02:55:24 GMT

Fancy creating your own cartoon (animation), with or without sound? Pencil lets you create your cartoons as a Flash file, a QuickTime movie file or as a series of PNG images. For lack of a better category page to list this interesting open source program, I've provisionally added it to the Free Drawing and Painting Software page. Since it can produce Flash files, you can even exhibit your cartoons on your own website. (QuickTime movies should work too, but not everyone has the QuickTime plugin.)

[Free] New Icon Editor: Add a Favicon Icon to Your Website or Customize Your Desktop

30 Jun 2009 05:36:15 GMT

Two new free tools, an icon editor and a cursor editor, have been added to the Free Resource Editors, Compilers and Icon Editors page. The icon editor, IcoFX, lets you create icons, such as the "favicon" icon that is used by websites or the icons that appear on your computer desktop. The cursor editor, AniFX, can be used to create cursors, even animated cursors, that you can integrate into your programs or substitute for existing ones to customize your computer. Check them out.

[Free] Another New Free Web Host with Domain Hosting

25 Jun 2009 03:56:16 GMT

A new web host has been added to the Free Web Hosts with Free Domain Hosting page. Besides letting you host your own domain with them, this free web host, L4rge, also provides PHP (with limitations), MySQL access, a script installer, and so on. Check it out.

[New] Free ASP Forum Scripts: Put a Discussion Forum on Your Website

24 Jun 2009 02:31:30 GMT

Are you thinking of putting a forum or discussion board on your website, where visitors can chat or discuss topics of relevance to your website? This new page lists free ASP forum scripts that you can install on your site to provide that facility.

Note: if you do not specifically need your forum script to be an ASP script (that is, it can be in any language), please also see the Free PHP Forum Scripts and Free Perl Message Board Scripts pages. You'll have a wider selection that way.

[New] Free Regular Expression (Regex) Libraries and Source Code

22 Jun 2009 04:05:39 GMT

Are you thinking of adding support in your program for searching for a particular piece of text? If so, the free regular expression libraries on this page will allow you to do so in the standard way used by most software, without having to reinvent the wheel. For the puzzled, regular expressions are just a concise way to specify a pattern of text to match.

Note: if you are looking for a search and replace utility so that you can find a file or document containing something you wrote a while ago, you should check out the Free Text Search and Replace Utilities page instead. The libraries page mentioned earlier is meant for programmers, while the utilities page is useful for everyone.

[Free] New Web Content Management System: Manage Your Website Using Only a Web Browser

18 Jun 2009 04:36:28 GMT

A new web-based content management system has been added to the Free Content Management Systems (CMS) PHP Scripts page. It is customizable, supports extensions that you can add to your site (like a blog module, a forum module, a calendar/event module), has a number of themes that you can select to change the appearance of your website, and so on.

For those not sure what Content Management Systems are, they let you create and manage your website from your browser. That is, after you install it on your site, all you need to do is to log into your site from your web browser to add your content, customize the appearance and so on.

[Free] New PDF Converter: Convert Any Document from Any Format to PDF

11 Jun 2009 02:08:46 GMT

A new PDF converter has been added to the Free PDF Converters, Editors and Printer Drivers page. CC PDF installs itself on your system as a pseudo-printer driver. When you print a document from any program, you can select that printer, and it will generate a PDF file for you (instead of sending the document to your printer), thus allowing you to create PDF files from any program that can print. Like all the other PDF converters on the page, it is free.

[Free] New Text Editor: TED Notepad

8 Jun 2009 05:24:23 GMT

Another text editor has been added to the Free Programmer's Editors, Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and ASCII Text Editors page. TED Notepad is a Windows notepad replacement with souped up features, including Unicode support, hotkeys for every function/feature, multiple clipboards, text case conversions, and so on. Check it out, or get one of the other free text editors on that page.

Note: those looking for web editors or HTML editors may prefer to visit the Free HTML Editors and WYSIWYG Web Editors page instead. Those are, of course, also free.

[Free] New Open Source Fonts

4 Jun 2009 03:07:24 GMT

A new website offering free and open source fonts has been added to the Free Fonts page. This site provides a number of Unicode encoded and legacy fonts supporting many languages. If you are looking for fonts to make your documents look interesting and unique, check it out.

[New] Free Web Hosting Control Panel Software

29 May 2009 04:05:24 GMT

If you are setting up your own web server, or having to manage a bare-bones dedicated server or virtual private server (VPS), the software listed on this page may interest you. These free (and often open source) web hosting control panel software let you manage the server from your web browser. They let you configure the web server, email, FTP, databases, DNS, user accounts, domains, and so forth without having to resort to manual editing of server configuration files.

[Free] New Digital Audio Editor: Wavosaur

24 May 2009 03:33:54 GMT

A new audio editor, Wavosaur, has been added to the Free Digital Audio / Sound Editors page. This one supports the usual assortment of editing features as well as support for VST plugins, ASIO, pitch shifting, vocal removal, loop, bit-depth conversion, etc. Like all the other digital sound editors on that page, it is free.

[New] Free Hard Disk Backup Software: Bacula

18 May 2009 04:02:13 GMT

A new computer backup software has been added to the Free Hard Disk Backup and Restore, Hard Disk Image and Cloning Utilities page. Bacula is a free (in fact, open source) network-based backup program that you can use to back up multiple computers on a network. It supports backup to hard disks as well as tape drives.

Note: Bacula is interesting mostly to administrators of multiple computers. If you are an ordinary computer user, you may prefer to look at the other free hard disk backup and imaging tools listed instead. The others cater more to individual users, and are meant to be easy to use. Such tools capture a complete snapshot of your computer system so that if your computer should ever fail, or it gets badly infected by a virus or spyware, you can restore it back to its original working condition.

[Free] New Free Archiver and Compression Software: FreeArc

15 May 2009 04:54:46 GMT

Are you running out of space on your computer, and want to compress those files that are rarely used? Or perhaps you want to send someone some files by email, but they are so big that you wish you can reduce their sizes and pack them into a single convenient file that can be auto-expanded? If so, check out the newest archive/compressor to be added to the Free File Archivers and File Compression Utilities page. This one is both free and open source.

[Free] Get Advertisers and Sponsors for Your Website

13 May 2009 05:04:43 GMT

Are you looking for advertisers and sponsors for your website or blog? Another affiliate network has been added to the Affiliate Programs: Free Sponsors and Advertisers page. Affiliate networks allow you to get sponsors and advertisers for your website from a multitude of different companies. The latest entry has companies from a large number of industries, so it's likely that you can find relevant advertisers for your website from their system. Signing up is free, of course, since affiliate programs are supposed to pay you, not the other way around.

[New] Free/Open Source Web (HTTP) Server Software

11 May 2009 05:32:05 GMT

The free and/or open source HTTP and file servers on this new page let you set up your own server for your website(s). There are general purpose web servers, file servers (for download sites and file sharing sites) as well as high performance, lightweight servers designed for very busy websites. Check them out.

[Free] New Free Personal Firewall: Agnitum Outpost Firewall Free

10 May 2009 06:26:43 GMT

The Agnitum Outpost Firewall Free 2009 has been added to the Free Personal Firewalls page. It provides bidirectional protection, application behaviour monitoring, protection against the firewall being terminated by unwanted programs (like malware), configurable firewall rules, etc. Guard your computer against unwanted intrusion: check it out. It's free.

[Free] New Free Secure File Wiping/Deletion Tool

8 May 2009 04:39:40 GMT

You hear about people recovering secret data from hard disks sold at eBay practically every other month, even though the sellers have actually deleted their own files before selling. As everyone knows, deleting a file from your computer doesn't really clear it from your hard disk. It's still there and can easily be recovered by using data recovery programs. To really securely delete files, you need a proper wiping utility, like the latest addition to the Free Secure File / Disk Deletion (Wipe) Utilities page. This newest entry, Freeraser, is a file wiping utility, that you can use to thoroughly remove traces of a file from your hard disk.

There are other secure deletion tools on that page as well, including those that can thoroughly wipe your entire hard disk clean before you dispose of it or sell it.

[Free] New Hot Key Utility: Become a Power User

7 May 2009 10:19:58 GMT

For power users, or people who want to work more efficiently on their computers, a new Windows hotkey utility has been added to the Free Keyboard Macro, Remapping and Hot Key Software page. ZenKEY makes it easy for you to control and manage your computer by allowing you to map keystrokes or hotkeys to a wide variety of actions including moving windows around, spreading groups of windows around, making certain windows transparent, invoking hidden Windows utilities and system commands, open documents/folders, simulate a series of keystrokes, and so on.

Check it out. It even has an amusing website. (Or it is to me, anyway.)

[Free] New Open Source Java Framework: Spring

6 May 2009 04:13:25 GMT

A new Java framework has been added to the Free Java Source Code, Class Libraries, Applets, Beans and Frameworks page. The Spring Framework is a layered Java/J2EE application platform with lightweight containers, database/JDBC abstraction, a web application framework, classes for writing unit tests, and so on. Check it out if you're writing Java programs.