tools

Junior Icon Editor is a free graphics drawing tool optimized for creating and editing icons to use in Windows. You can create icons in sizes up to 64x64 pixels and 32-bit True Color. It includes a variety of standard drawing tools like paint brushes and text tools, and its tabbed interface lets you create several icons at once. You can set transparency, enlarge or reduce images, and smooth edges, among other functions. Once you've created and saved your custom icons, you can use them to replace other icons in Windows.

Junior Icon Editor is basically a simplified, specialized image … Read more

When it comes to protecting your PC, there's no substitute for full backups capable of resurrecting your system from total disaster. But we're also big fans of regular targeted backups of personal files, favorites, and other data you don't want to lose, especially if your big backups are fairly infrequent. To be sure none of your important stuff falls between the cracks, we recommend a specialized backup application like Yadis Backup from Codessentials. This free tool creates full, one-to-one backups of your important personal data, settings, and documents that you can access normally, without having to restore … Read more

Verizon goes all in for 4G, the first Android watch is pleasing on the eyes, and Google TV adds cloud gaming from OnLive.

Links from Thursday's episode of Loaded, from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas:

If you use pro audio applications with OS X and are finding they hang when launched, this could be because of faults with third-party drivers for your MIDI instruments.

Music software company Avid has a music-editing package called Pro Tools that you may have installed on your system if you work extensively with audio. This package supports MIDI devices, but early versions of the program may result in a driver conflict with Apple's CoreMIDI framework for handling these devices. As a result, if you have Pro Tools installed and try to launch other audio-editing applications then you may see … Read more

Last May, long before the iPhone 4S was released, a bunch of Facebook users got tricked into spreading spam by clicking on a link attached to this headline: "First Exposure: Apple iPhone 5."

People who normally ignore all the other scams involving purported free software or naked celebrity photos clicked that fake news link and even completed a captcha on a second site, which reposted the scam to their own Facebook stream. That probably says more about how fanatical people are about Apple products than anything else. But it did raise the question--what does it take to lure … Read more

Alkitab Bible Study is a free, open source Bible reference and study aid. It offers multiple viewing options, daily devotionals, a powerful search tool, and extras like plug-ins, as well as the ability to download and install a wide variety of texts, commentaries, dictionaries, concordances, lexicons, and other reference works, many of them time-tested classics. Since it's an open-source project, it grows over time through updates and participation. It's also public domain. Alkitab Bible Study requires Java 6 or better.

Alkitab's installer includes several optional reference books you can select with checkboxes: King James Bible, Strong's … Read more

The security protocol that enables Siri to communicate with Apple's servers and return information via speech recognition has been cracked by developer Applidium.

What does that mean?

In a nutshell, according to Applidium, "anyone could now write an Android app that uses the real Siri!" The technology that Siri uses to communicate with Apple servers is not HTTP, as many developers may suspect. In fact, Apple uses TCP to connect with Siri.

After some more digging, Applidium had discovered the server name and address that Siri uses. After finding the server, a valid certificate was needed. By … Read more

Free Windows Cleanup Tool is actually a bundle of free Windows utilities that can clean your system, defragment your registry, and perform other maintenance. It's a no-nonsense package that is simple to set up and use. It offers plenty of options, especially the cleaning tool.

Free Windows Cleanup Tool's interface is rectangular dialog with vertically arranged program icons, tree-view settings panel, and main window. The first tool, the Cleaner, requires users to select exactly what they want to clean, which keeps inexperienced users from accidentally deleting the wrong files. The cleaner settings included all major browsers, system temporary … Read more

If the mobile version of your Web site is a stinker, Google would like to have a word with you.

The company this week began pitching a new initiative (read: marketing push) to get businesses to create mobile versions of their Web sites using compatibility diagnostic tools, along with a directory of mobile-site developers, if the results turn out to be underwhelming.

The new initiative, called GoMo, is a blending of "Go Mobile." The site's name was leaked earlier this week, as spotted by blog Fusible, however it was behind a password-protected page, which, as TechCrunch notes, … Read more