Recently in Freeware Review Category

I would like to introduce this Free Paint program. Tux Paint.

My daughter, Grace, loves it. She still remember that she played it one year ago when I use Edubuntu.
Actually, I installed it in Windows XP yesterday.

Yes, this program is Open Source and can run on a variety of platforms, including all versions of Windows (including Tablet PC), Mac OS X 10.3 and up, Linux, FreeBSD and NetBSD. It works well on older, slower systems, as well as thin-clients such as LTSP, Citrix® and Windows Terminal Services. It even runs on some handheld computers!

Let's see a screenshot.

Look, kids will like it. This drawing program for children ages 3 to 12 (for example, preschool and K-6 in the US, key stages 1 & 2 in the UK). It combines an easy-to-use interface, fun sound effects, and an encouraging cartoon mascot who guides children as they use the program.

If you have a kid in this age range, just click here to download and install it.
I promise your child will say thank you to me.

Just know this site and service and software, TVU networks

You don't need to sign up. Just download the client software and launch it.

There are hundreds channels can be watched through it.

Of course you need the high speed Internet to keep TV video smoothly.
A typical TVU channel has a bandwidth of 280-400; channels with bandwidth under than will usually be of lower quality. Channels with a bandwidth of 400-550 will be high-quality. Channels with bandwidth over 550 can work well, but only if the broadcaster and the viewers have very high-speed Internet connections.

I watch ROC President Ma's speech live yesterday. Good video quality of TVBS-N.

My friend told me this site, StudioTax.

As always StudioTax 2007 is available free of charge and for personal use only.

Same as all other Tax softwares, it is still pre-certified release. When CRA certified it, the final version will be released.

StudioTax is a windows bilingual personal Income Tax preparation software made by Canadians for Canadians. StudioTax is distributed using a flexible licensing model. No license key or registration is required to download, install and use StudioTax. After you use StudioTax and you find it useful, we ask that you take the time to make a modest monetary contribution toward the support of this product.

Basically I treat it as a Donation-Based software.

I have not much experience about it. I will make a more detail review later.

We use IM very often in the office and home.

You may install a lot of IM client software like me. Including MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk, etc. If you has Chinese friends, you might have QQ either.

I hate that they use different Protocol, and they can not communicate with others. Do we have a Universal tool to have them in one client application?
The answer is YES.

Pidgin is what I would like to introduce to you.

What is Pidgin?

Pidgin is a multi-protocol Instant Messaging client that allows you to use all of your IM accounts at once.

Firefox just released its v2.0.0.5 version.

If you are not reminded to upgrade, you can click Help >> Check for Updates to find the new update.

After update, my Alexa plugin has also updated to 1.1.

Firefox fixed following bugs in this release.
MFSA 2007-25 XPCNativeWrapper pollution
MFSA 2007-24 Unauthorized access to wyciwyg:// documents
MFSA 2007-23 Remote code execution by launching Firefox from Internet Explorer
MFSA 2007-22 File type confusion due to %00 in name
MFSA 2007-21 Privilege escalation using an event handler attached to an element not in the document
MFSA 2007-20 Frame spoofing while window is loading
MFSA 2007-19 XSS using addEventListener and setTimeout
MFSA 2007-18 Crashes with evidence of memory corruption

Sometimes I need a program to read a document, or help to tell me the pronouncation of an English word. If you read my post often, you must know English is not my comfort zone.

There are lots of Text to Speech softwares. Today I want to introduce a free software.

NaturalReader Free Version.

Yes, NaturalReader has three versions. Including free version, Professional Basic Pack at $39.5, and Enterprise Value Pack at $99.5.

For the home user, NaturalReader Free version is enough.

Here are full Common Functions:

Read Text files
o Text files
o MS Word files
o MS Internet Explorer webpages
o Adobe PDF files
o Emails

Read settings/adjustments
o Speed
o Voice (male/female)
o Quality
o Volume

The problem is the default Free version has only Microsoft Mary voice. No actually natural voice included. It read text like a Robot.

The solution is go to Internet and find the natural Voice Package.
I use a P2P tool, Emule, to search "Text to Speech" and get a lot of results.
Say, Text-To-Speech.English.Paul.rar
or
NeoSpeech.Text-To-Speech.16K.Kate.rar

They all have good voice.
After install these two voice packages, NaturalReader can easily recognize them.

I like NaturalReader's following functions:
1) Read regular text file in it.
2) Read the select text in Firefox or IE.
3) Convert text to MP3 directly.

Do you want your own Web Gallery, or Web Photo Albums. Check Gallery. It is a Open Source program

I use a one-click-installation feature of DreamHost to install this service for my Grace's site. The album is located at http://www.gogracego.com/album.

Why I choose this photo album organizer?
You know I setup a Blog for my Grace powered by WordPress. It has a Gallery plugin can connect this Gallery with WordPress.

WPG2.
The features of WPG2 shown as below:
* Gallery 2 Images, Videos, Albums (displays the Album Highlight Image) can be displayed in Blog Entries
* Random, Recent, Daily, Weekly, Popular Images, Albums can be displayed as image blocks in the Wordpress Sidebar
* Management of Gallery2 users, secured by Wordpress User Roles and Capabilities
* Automatic logging in of Wordpress Users into Gallery2
* Displaying Gallery2 Output within a Wordpress Page

It looks powerful.
I upload the photos on her own Album location.
She login the WordPress, pickup a photo, and write something about it.

It is easy for her and for us.

I upgraded my G2Soft Supporting forum yesterday.
The latest one is 2.0.22.
It took me about 15 minutes to upgrade it from 2.0.19. Easy and smooth.

The PHPBB can be downloaded here.

The PHPBB is simple to upgrade, but the mods I installed are not working any more. I have to fix them or install a updated version.

I use two mods, Userlist and attachment.

I found Userlist 2.0.6C and install it in 10 minutes.

The Attachment mod is so complicated. I spent over 30 minutes to go thought lots of files to do the modifications.

Now everything is fine.

Thanks to these author of Freeware.

Now a lot of website owner find some malicious code hide in their webpages. Some are put by hacker.

The codes are also encoded. Webmaster can not remove the malicious code from the original html codes, they are all mixed.

Now, this tools is help you to decode it and find out.

The program name is Windows Script Decoder.

You can download it from official site or download file here.

It is a command line tool. The usage is very simply.

scrdec18 [-cp codepage] [-urldec|-htmldec] [-verbose] [-dumb]

This tool is so good. I used it yesterday. All smoothly.

I like freeware and Open-Source program, just like Phpsysinfo.

I have a Windows 2000 server with php and mysql enabled.
Phpsysinfo will displays things like Uptime, CPU, Memory, SCSI, IDE, PCI, Ethernet, Floppy, and Video Information.

I met a A Warning and Fatal Error when use the latest version, 2.5.3-rc2, which is released on February 16, 2007.
The error shown as below.
Warning: (null)(): Invoke() failed: Exception occurred. Source: SWbemLocator Description: Access denied in C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\personal\phpsysinfo\includes\os\class.WINNT.inc.php on line 36

Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\personal\phpsysinfo\includes\os\class.WINNT.inc.php on line 44

I searched the Forum and got the answer.
The answer is from the project administrator(bigmichi1).

you need to set up a folder based authentication, so that when you open the site you are promted to enter a user and pass. this is because only special users have the rights to read all required informations, like the administrator user

I introduced some FastStone programs before. I used this FastStone Capture so often and I feel this tool is good enough. It is better than some commercial products.

I respected FastStone's work to make it free. Thank you.

First of all, let's see the screen of it.

It can capture screen by:
Active Window;
Window or Object;
Selected rectangle region;
Selected region with freehand;
Full screen or whole monitor;
Scrolling window. -- This is very good feature, you know, some window is very long, and you want capture the whole page, not the one screen. This tool is so good to save your time. Look at the sample below.

AWStats is a very powerful log analysis tool.
I still remember last update for AWStats 6.5 half year ago.

First of all, let's see the changes it bring in.
New features/improvements:
- All geoip plugins support the PurePerl version.
- Possible use of vhost in extra section.
- Support IPv6 in AllowAccessFromWebToFollowingIPAddresses parameter.
- Added svn family to browsers detection.

Fixes:
- Remove some Perl warnings.
- Remove lc() on translation strings.
- Not sanitized migrate parameter.
- Not sanitized urlxxx parameters that could be used for XSS attacks.

Other/Documentation:
- Added AWStats version in stdout outputs.
- Updated some language files.
- Updated browsers database.

Compare with the last version 6.5, there is not many changes this time.
I will update my AWstats to-night.