http://www.grisoft.com/
Free with free updates.
http://www.diceware.com/
Diceware is a technique that uses dice to produce random strings for passphrases [passwords] and other uses. The Diceware method provides an easy way to create strong passphrase that are easy to remember, for example: alger klm curry blond puck
Diceware is a method for picking passphrases that uses dice to select words at random from a list called the Diceware word list. Each word in the list is preceded by a five digit number. Each digit is between one and six, allowing you to use the outcomes of five dice rolls to select one unique word from the list. The more words you use, the more secure your passphrase. The Diceware method is secure even if an attacker knows that you used Diceware to pick your passphrase, knows how many words are in your passphrase and knows the word list you used. The security of Diceware comes from the huge number of combinations that an attacker must search through.
Freeware! No software download.
http://www.tolvanen.com/eraser/
Eraser is an advanced security tool, which allows you to completely remove sensitive data from your hard disk by overwriting it several times with carefully selected patterns.
You can drag and drop files and folders to the on-demand eraser, use the convenient Explorer shell extension or use the integrated scheduler to program overwriting of unused disk space or, for example, browser cache files to happen regularly, at night, during your lunch break, at weekends or whenever you like.
The patterns used for overwriting are based on Peter Gutmann's paper "Secure Deletion of Data from Magnetic and Solid-State Memory" and they are selected to effectively remove the magnetic remnants from the hard disk making it impossible to recover the data.
Other methods include the one defined in the National Industrial Security Program Operating Manual of the US Department of Defense and overwriting with pseudorandom data.
Freeware!
http://www.gnupg.org/
'GnuPG stands for GNU Privacy Guard and is GNU's tool for secure communication and data storage. It can be used to encrypt data and to create digital signatures. It includes an advanced key management facility and is compliant with the proposed OpenPGP Internet standard as described in RFC 2440. As such, it is aimed to be compatible with PGP from NAI Inc. GnuPG is a complete and free replacement for PGP. Because it does not use the patented IDEA algorithm, it can be used without any restrictions. GnuPG is a RFC2440 (OpenPGP) compliant application. GnuPG is Free Software. It can be freely used, modified and distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. PGP, on which OpenPGP is based, was originally developed by Philip Zimmermann; see his page for background information on PGP.'
'With PGP you can protect the privacy of your e-mail messages and files by encrypting them so that only the intended recipients can read them. You can also digitally sign messages and files, which ensures their authenticity. A signed message verifies that the information within it has not been
tampered with in any way. A key pair consists of two complementary keys—a private key to which only you have access, and a public key, which you can copy and make freely available to everyone with whom you exchange e-mail. Both your private and your public keys are stored in keyring files, which are accessible from the PGPkeys window in which you perform all your key management functions. To send someone a private e-mail message, you use a copy of that person's public key to encrypt the information, which only they can decipher by using their private key. Conversely, when someone wants to send you encrypted mail, they use a copy of your public key to encrypt the data, which only you can decipher by using a copy of your private key. If someone somehow manages to get their hands on your private key, they'll require your passphrase to use it. PGP is considered by many to be the benchmark for encryption software. It has heaps of features, including encryption/decryption directly to and from the clipboard. PGP is freeware but may have export restrictions, depending on where you live.'
http://www.pgpi.org
PGPdisk is an easy-to-use encryption application that enables you to set aside an area of disk space for storing your sensitive data. This reserved space is used to create a file called a PGPdisk volume.
Although it is a single file, a PGPdisk volume acts very much like a hard disk in that it provides storage space for your files and applications. You can think of it like a floppy disk or an external hard disk. To use the applications and files stored in the volume, you mount it, or make it accessible to you through a drive letter. (For example, if your hard disk is your C: drive, you might mount a PGPdisk volume as your D: drive.)
When a PGPdisk volume is mounted, you can use it as you would any other disk. You can install applications within the volume or move or save your files to the volume. When the volume is unmounted it is inaccessible to anyone who does not know your secret passphrase, which is a longer version of a password. Even a mounted volume is protected; unless a file or application is in use, it is stored in encrypted format. If your computer should crash while a volume is mounted, the volume’s contents remain encrypted.
Available for free with PGPHack used on PGPFreeware 6.5.1i.
http://www.invisiblenet.net/iip
The Invisible IRC Project aims to develop a decentralized, anonymous, encrypted real-time IRC network. 'The user runs a "proxy" on his machine which sends messages to "relay" servers, which in turn route them to a private server layer (whose participants in turn anonymize each other). The end user just connects with a regular IRC client like mIRC to his local proxy (e.g. "/server localhost 6667"), and from that point on he has an encrypted, anonymized IRC connection. There is a native Win32 version of the proxy. The application is open source. It was originally developed to create an anonymous meeting place for Freenet users to exchange Freenet keys."
http://steganography.tripod.com/stego/software.html
The word Steganography combines the Greek 'steganos' (which means roof or cover) and 'graphy' (which means drawing). A steganography program hides bits of a data file in some of the least significant bits of another file in a way that the existence of the data file is not visible and can not be proven. Example; a text file secretly embedded within an image or sound file. The image or sound file loses some quality but is still fully functional and the existence of the text file within remains secret. Cryptography, by contrast, relies on ciphers or codes to scramble a message. You can use Cryptography and Steganography together so that you can scramble a file and then hide the existence of that file within another file.
This collection includes freeware and shareware programs for Windows, DOS, Java, Macintosh, Unix/OpenBSD/Linux and Amiga.
http://www.zonelabs.com/
In buildings, a firewall is a barrier that prevents a fire from spreading. In computers, the concept is similar. There are a variety of "fires" there out on the Internet—hacker activity, viruses, worms, and so forth. A firewall is a system that stops the fire from spreading to your computer.
A firewall guards the "doors" to your computer—that is, the ports through which Internet traffic comes in and goes out. The firewall only lets traffic through the ports that you have specified can be used. This has two security benefits:
Freeware version available.
http://www.safer-networking.org/index.php?page=download
Spybot - Search & Destroy can detect and remove spyware of different kinds from your computer. Spyware is a relatively new kind of threat that common anti-virus applications do not yet cover. If you see new toolbars in your Internet Explorer that you didn't intentionally install, if your browser crashes, or if you browser start page has changed without your knowing, you most probably have spyware. But even if you don't see anything, you may be infected, because more and more spyware is emerging that is silently tracking your surfing behaviour to create a marketing profile of you that will be sold to advertisement companies. Spybot-S&D is free, so there's no harm in trying to see if something snooped into your computer, too :)
Freeware.
http://www.edonkey2000.com/
"eDonkey is the most advanced file sharing application around. It is a completely decentralized peer to peer network. It allows you to trade any type of file, mp3s, video, images, software, etc. It runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux." Free.
http://www.emule-project.net/
The new Napster. Download music, videos, pictures and software.
http://www.realvnc.com/
VNC (Virtual Network Computing) software makes it possible to view and fully-interact with one computer from any other computer or mobile device anywhere on the Internet. VNC software is cross-platform, allowing remote control between different types of computer. For ultimate simplicity, there is even a Java viewer, so that any desktop can be controlled remotely from within a browser without having to install software.
VNC has a wide range of applications including system administration, IT support and helpdesks. It can also be used to support the mobile user, both for hot desking within the enterprise and also to provide remote access at home, or on the road. The system allows several connections to the same desktop, providing an invaluable tool for collaborative or shared working in the workplace or classroom. Computer support within the geographically spread family is an ever popular use.
The open source version of VNC has been freely available since 1998, and more than 20 million copies of the software have been downloaded. The software has also appeared on numerous magazine cover disks, and for several years all popular versions of Linux have included VNC. It is in active use by many millions in industry, commerce, education and at home. Virtually all Fortune 500 companies use VNC, and installations of VNC across thousands of workstations are commonplace.
Today, the RealVNC team has re-designed and re-implemented the VNC system. Compatible with the original protocols, the system is now an extremely flexible, modular and scaleable platform for vertical development, integration and licensing.
http://lycos26486.l97.lycos.com.cn/default.htm
Net Transport, one of the fastest and most powerful downloading tools that is ever made available online for free access and distribution, now features unprecedented full support of the most prevalent Internet protocols, including:
With independently developed Enhanced Multi-Threading (EMT) technology, Net Transport can make the most of the network bandwidth of various types of internet connection. As the fact is now quite apparent that more and more software sites are giving their support to resume and multi-threading downloads, you probably will find Net Transport is the right stuff you have long been seeking. If you had some experience of online downloading before, you will notice that the added support of MMS and RTSP streaming media data, powered by the EMT technology mentioned above, is almost enough to make Net Transport unique among its numerous counterparts. Besides, its built-in functionalities such as support for HTTPS streaming retrieval, powerful and flexible multi-proxy (including HTTP<Connect>, SOCKS4&5 proxies) settings and the most efficient file manager, are also the hotshots that have gained Net Transport the current reputation.
http://freenet.sourceforge.net
The “Freenet” project aims to create an information publication system similar to the World Wide Web, but with several major advantages over it.
"Unlike the Web, information on Freenet is not stored at fixed locations or subject to any kind of centralized control. Freenet is a single world-wide information store that stores, caches, and distributes the information based on demand. This allows Freenet to be more efficient at some functions than the Web, and also allows information to be published and read without fear of censorship because individual documents cannot be traced to their source or even to where they are physically stored. To participate in this system users will simply need to run a piece of server software on their computer, and optionally use a client program to insert and remove information from the system.
http://www.mozilla.org/
Mozilla is an open-source web browser, designed for standards compliance, performance and portability. It has been argued that it offers superior security to Internet Explorer.
Freeware!
http://www.winzip.com
WinZip is one of the most commonly used programs for compressing/extracting archive files. Files can be compressed to drastically reduce their file size for storage or for quicker file transfers. In this format they are inaccessible until the files contained within the archive are extracted back into their original format and file size. WinZip features built-in support for popular Internet file formats: ZIP, TAR, gzip, UUEncode, XXencode, BinHex, and MIME. ARJ, LZH, and ARC files are supported via external programs. Features include;
WinZip is shareware.
http://www.rarsoft.com
RAR is a powerful tool which allows you to manage and control .rar archive files. These will often offer greater compression than the .zip format.
WinRAR is shareware.
http://www.icq.com
ICQ ("I Seek You") is an Internet program that notifies you who's online at all times and enables you to initiate contact with those people at any time. ICQ does the searching for you alerting you in real time when they sign on. You can chat, send messages and files including sound files, play games, create your own Web page, send Internet greeting cards, etc. etc. ICQ version 99a is beta software which contains bugs, but has new or improved features to previous versions of ICQ. Free trial software with currently undefined expiry date.
"mIRC attempts to provide a user-friendly interface for use with the Internet Relay Chat network. The IRC network is a virtual meeting place where people from all over the world can meet and talk. To IRC all you need to do is Connect to a server, Join a channel, and Chat! mIRC will guide you through these initial stages and hopefully you'll be chatting in no time. If you get stuck or want to find out more about a certain feature, just click on a Help button in a window or browse the Help file and you should find many hints to help you out.
As you become more experienced you can also start configuring mIRC's features to suit your own needs and tastes, features such as colours, fonts, function keys, aliases, popup menus, scripts, sounds and many others."
http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu
SETI@home is a scientific experiment that uses Internet-connected computers in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). You can participate by running a free program that downloads and analyzes radio telescope data. You don't need to know anything about science or SETI to use SETI@home.
Freeware.
http://www.xs4all.nl/~beware3/irc/
I run this IRC server for our home Local Area Network. My two brothers and I use mIRC to connect to the server and chat away on our LAN.
IRC is the standard protocol for chat on internet.
Even though IRC is only text, it is popular. Right now, hundreds of thousands of people are using irc, most of them are on 4 big nets: Undernet, EFnet, IRCnet, and Quakenet.
Running your own IRC server is very useable for different kinds of communication on internet or LAN, such as:
Features:
Freeware.
http://www.winamp.com/
"Winamp is more than just a player. It's your window to the multimedia world. From MP3s to streaming video, Winamp is the one place you go to feed your audio/video habit." Free.
http://streamripper.sourceforge.net/
"With the emergence of file sharing protocols such as Napster, Gnutella, and now Mojonation and Freenet, the average Internet user can download nearly any mp3 he wants in a matter of no time, but many times people don't know what they want. Streamripper allows you to download an entire station of music. Many of these mp3 radio stations only play certain genres, so you can now download an entire collection of goa/trance music, an entire collection of jazz, punk rock, whatever you want."
Free. Install WinAmp, then Install Streamripper. Then go to www.shoutcast.com and record live radio stations that play the genre of your choice. All free.
http://www.alcohol-soft.com/
Commercial product. "Imagine being able to store your most used CDs [and DVDs] as images on your computer and just call them up at the click of a button! And then run them at 200x the speed of some CD drives and without requiring the CD [or DVD] itself! How about being able to make a backup of that CD onto another CD either using the CD itself or just using the image you have created? This is what Alcohol allows you to do and much more."
http://www.dvddecrypter.com/
"DVD Decrypter is a free tool that allows you to decrypt and copy DVDs to your PC's hard disk. From there you can watch them with the likes of WinDVD and PowerDVD, you can write them back to DVD-R / DVD-RW / DVD+R / DVD+RW / DVD+R DL / DVD-RAM media or you can convert them to VCD / SVCD / DivX for burning onto CD-R / CD-RW.
DVD Decrypter can write most types of CD / DVD images via its 'ISO Write' mode, and it supports all the latest writers (including booktype / bitsetting on many of the major ones - i.e. BenQ, LiteOn, NEC, Plextor, Sony). You can even use DVD Decrypter to erase / format your rewritable media!"
http://www.dvdidle.com/dvd-region-free.htm
Commercial product. DVD Region+CSS Free enables you to watch and copy any region-coded/CSS-encrypted DVD movies on any DVD drive! It fully supports region-protected (RPC2) DVD drives, and does not require any firmware modifications. It will even work if you have used up your region counter and can no longer change the DVD drive's region.
DVD Region+CSS Free works automatically in the background to make a DVD appear region code free and unprotected to any DVD player and DVD copy software. With the help of DVD Region+CSS Free, you can watch any region coded DVD movies with a software DVD player like PowerDVD or WinDVD! With DVD Region+CSS Free's help, DVD copy software (such as DVDFab, DVD X Copy, InterVideo DVD Copy, etc.) is able to copy DVD's which are CSS protected!
New Feature: DVD Region+CSS Free decrypts not just DVD's, it now allows you also to play, copy and rip protected Audio CD's!
http://www.dvdidle.com/dvd-fab-platinum.htm
DVD Fab allows you to copy one DVD by splitting in among several separate DVDs and retaining the same perfect original quality. Commercial product.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/mediaplayer/
Windows Media Player plays local multimedia files or streamed multimedia content. It supports almost any type of local and streamed multimedia format, including Real Audio, Real Video, MPEG 1, MPEG 2, MPEG 3 (MP3), WAV, AVI, MIDI, MOV, VOD, AU, and QuickTime. It has a fully resizable display, intelligent streaming, a favourites menu and the ability to automatically download new codecs. Free.
http://www.adobe.com/acrobat/
Acrobat Reader lets you view, print, navigate and search Adobe PDF's (Portable Document Files) and is freeware. Many texts are only available on the net in PDF format. The counter-part program, Adobe Acrobat, costs money and lets you create your own PDF files.
http://www.real.com
Real Player Plus is shareware. All the other versions of Real Player are free. Plays streaming and/or offline videos and internet radio stations etc.
http://www.mgshareware.com/frmmain.shtml
FreeRip is a freeware application that let you save audio CD tracks to Wav or MP3 or Ogg Vorbis audio files. FreeRIP is also an audio file converter since it can convert and encode Wav files to Ogg Vorbis (.ogg) or MP3 (.mp3), and back.
FreeRIP is a CD ripper, this means that it can record digital audio tracks directly from audio CD to files on your hard drive (this process is known as "ripping"). You can save tracks as CD quality WAV files or encode them to Ogg Vorbis or MP3 compressed audio format.
http://www.rz.uni-frankfurt.de/~pesch/
mp3DirectCut is a small freeware tool for editing MPEG audio directly. You can remove parts, change the volume, split files or copy regions to new files. All without the need to decompress your MP3 into PCM/WAV. This saves work, encoding time and disk space. And there is no quality loss through any re-compressions.
Trim your CD grabbings or directly to MP3 recorded vinyls or tapes. Cut favorite songs from long MP3 radio or live recordings. Make multiple cuts and fades. mp3DirectCut is very fast and gives you extensive control over your MP3s.
http://bladeenc.mp3.no/
BladeEnc is a somewhat infamous freeware MP3 encoder. A program to generate MP3 files from WAV, AIFF or RAW sound files. It's about both speed and quality. “Based on the same ISO compression routines as mpegEnc, so you can expect roughly the same, or better, quality. The main difference is the appearance and speed. BladeEnc doesn't have a nice, user-friendly interface like mpegEnc, but it is more than three times faster, and it works with several popular front-end graphical user interfaces.” The compression format has support for a huge number of bitrates (the bigger the better), which means better quality but bigger file size.
“If you, like most people, want to make 128 kBit MP3-files you should go for MP3 Producer or MP3 Compressor since these encoders are the fastest available and well-geared for coping with this bitrate. However, if you want to produce high quality MP3's of 160 kBit or higher (personally I prefer 256 kBit) you should definitely go for either BladeEnc or mpegEnc. Even if the latest versions of MP3 Producer and L3Enc supports higher bitrates than 128 kBit, they are still geared for lower bitrates and therefore generates lower quality at high bitrates than a more general
implementation.”
http://www.openoffice.org/product/
Free. "OpenOffice.org 1.1 gives you everything you'd expect in office software. You can create dynamic documents, analyse data, design eye-catching presentations, produce dramatic illustrations, and open up your databases. You can publish your work in Portable Document Format (.pdf), and release your graphics in Flash (.swf) format - without needing any additional software. OpenOffice.org 1.1 is now available for more users than ever, with support for complex text layout (CTL) languages (such as Thai, Hindi, Arabic, and Hebrew) and vertical writing languages.
If you're used to using other office suites - such as Microsoft Office - you'll be completely at home with OpenOffice.org 1.1. However, as you become used to OpenOffice.org 1.1, you'll start to appreciate the extras that make your life easier. You can of course continue to use your old Microsoft Office files without any problems - and if you need to exchange files with people still using Microsoft Office, that's no problem either."
http://www.wordweb.co.uk
Freeware. Can be integrated with your wordprocessor.
http://www.notetab.com
There are two versions of NoteTab Standard: a Freeware version called
NoteTab Light (ex-Super NoteTab Light) and a commercial version called
NoteTab Standard or Std (ex-Super NoteTab).
NoteTab™ is a top-rated text and HTML editor for Windows 95, 98, and NT4 and higher. It is user friendly and yet feature rich with many innovative productivity tools. Whether you create web pages, write source code, send E-mail, take notes, analyze text, read files, or do anything related to text, you will certainly find NoteTab a worthy tool and a great time saver.
Notetab Light contains no nag screens and may be freely distributed as long as the original distribution package is used.
http://www.ozemail.com.au/~kevsol/sware.html
Freeware thesaurus and word-prompter. “If your word processor doesn't have a thesaurus (or in the case of some versions of Microsoft Word, not much of one), take a look at the Thinking Man's Thesaurus. This freeware 16-bit program lets you enter words either directly or through the Windows Clipboard. A click of a button gives you alternatives, grouped in the sense the word was used. A list of antonyms can be brought up as well. The new word is easily copied to the Clipboard, ready for insertion in your document. The Thinking Man's Thesaurus will tell you if a word is spelled correctly and display similarly spelled words, but it won't offer alternatives as a spelling checker would. Two editions of the program are included, a standard version and a version for use with the freeware dictionary program WordWeb.” From www.zdnet.com
http://www.wordweb.co.uk
Freeware. Can be integrated with your wordprocessor.
The GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. The GIMP is an application suitable for such tasks as retouching of photographs, composing and authoring images. Its capabilities as an image manipulation program make it a worthy competitor to other similar programs such as Adobe Photoshop or Corel PhotoPaint.
The biggest advantage of The GIMP is it's free availability from a variety of sources including the Internet. The GIMP also comes bundled with most GNU/Linux distributions. There are even versions available for Microsoft Windows or Apple's Darwin(MacOSX). Even more importantly, it's not freeware. The GIMP is an OSS (Open Source Software) program covered by the GPL license , which gives the users the freedom to access and also to change the source code that makes up the program.
http://www.sodipodi.com/
Sodipodi is general vector illustrating application for Linux/Unix and Windows. It uses W3C SVG as native file and in-memory image format and can do many neat things.
Freeware.
ascgif.zip
21kb compressed. Executed from the DOS Prompt. Converts a GIF file (Version 87a) to ASCII text. Shunned by ASCII artists who work manually to achieve better results.
http://www.ipswitch.com
WS_FTP LE is a Windows based file transfer client application that
is used to transfer files between a user’s local PC and another,
remote computer system connected via a modem and telephone lines
or by a local-area network. With WS_FTP LE, users can connect
to any remote system that has a valid Internet address and an FTP
server program, browse through directories and files, and transfer
files between the two systems. In addition, users can create, change,
and remove directories and view, execute, rename, or delete files.
WS_FTP is not shareware. The Limited Edition version, WS_FTP LE is available free of charge to non-commerical home users, students and faculty of educational institutions, and to U.S. federal, state, and local government employees. All others must buy WS_FTP Pro, the advanced commercial version.
http://www.arachnoid.com/arachnophilia
'Arachnophilia' is a simple, yet powerful, HTML editor. If you want to make your own webpages, Arachnophilia is a good place to start. Features include,
Careware.
http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html
Xenu's Link Sleuth (TM) is a freeware spider program that checks Web sites for broken links. Link verification is done on "normal" links, images, frames, backgrounds and local image maps. It displays a continuously updated list of URLs which you can sort by different criteria. A report can be produced at any time.