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Online ads slow down Web browsing and are quite annoying in general. As an extension for Google Chrome, AdBlock Plus will eliminate all of the ads from your browsing experience, even ones attached to videos on YouTube. It installs in seconds and has absolutely no hiccups or surprises.

This software offers one the best features related to ad blocking -- it strips Web videos of ads. This is a fantastic feature if you frequently watch TV shows or other videos online. Other than that, this program isn't about what you see, but what you don't. While there's … Read more

Bible Glo is a Bible study tool that includes the King James translation in full. For Mac, iPhone, and iPad, Bible Glo provides a wealth of accompanying information and analyses as well as linked resources and media content. The app is easy to install. The free version of Bible Glo has some limitations, but upgrading to the premium version will cost you $34.99.

The Bible Glo interface opens with a set of icons that let you decide what your actions will be during the session. Bible Glo calls these "lenses" as they control how you see the … Read more

So you'd like to be able to illustrate your reports and documents with top-quality charts and diagrams. You've got MS Paint, or maybe something better. You open a new document and...yikes. It's not as easy as it looks, and you end up trying to draw straight lines with your mouse. Why not try creating diagrams in Pencil? This free, open-source diagramming and GUI prototyping tool has a huge range of stencils and preconfigured elements to drag and drop into an intuitive interface. Pencil works as a Firefox add-on or a standalone tool using XULRunner, which is … Read more

Microsoft's Word and its clones dominate the word-processing scene, but some alternatives are worth a look, especially when they take a different approach. Take FocusWriter, for instance. It encourages focus and productivity with a full-screen view and a pared-down interface and features such as autosave, goal-tracking, formatting, spell checker, and find-and-replace. FocusWriter Portable is a fully portable version of this versatile freeware. You can save it on a USB drive and run it on any compatible Windows PC.

FocusWriter opened with a plain gray screen displaying our cursor. Hovering over the top edge produced a menu bar, while at … Read more

Copy managers have long been popular third-party utilities, offering to speed up, schedule, or simplify the process of copying files and folders, singly or in batches, compared with the built-in Windows tool. WinMend File Copy's developers claim it boosts copying speeds by up to 300 percent over the Windows command. It adds the ability to pause and resume downloads, display skipped files, and other features typical of aftermarket copy managers.

WinMend File Copy collects the basic functions of copying files and folders in a colorful, easy-to-use interface, with a list view for batches. Tabs labeled Our Products and About … Read more

Registry cleaners can keep your PC humming like new, if used with caution. Used carelessly, they can do more than make existing problems worse; they can create new ones, ranging in severity from nuisance to total catastrophe. Some of the tools we've tested do a better job than others in excluding things that shouldn't be changed, and they're free, too. Take WinMend's Registry Defrag, for example. Its Registry defragmentation and cleanup utilities are designed to be safe and reliable.

Registry cleaners tend to have simple, colorful interfaces that pare the user experience down to the essentials. … Read more

FoxArc Movie Editor allows users to create video presentations using still images, videos, and audio files. Although the program works, we found it to be somewhat inflexible and not as powerful as we had hoped.

The program's interface is sleek and fairly intuitive; users import the files they want to use, arrange them on the timeline, and then add special effects as desired. However, unlike similar programs we've seen, FoxArc Movie Editor does not support drag-and-drop placement of files. That means that rearranging files on the timeline is a matter of right-clicking them and then moving them one … Read more

WinMend Folder Hidden is an interesting security utility that can safely hide any file or folder on a Windows partition or removable device, which covers most users' hard drives and external drives as well as flash drives, memory cards and sticks, micro devices, and anything else you can store a file on. Your files and folders stay safe and hidden even if they're reinstalled on another computer, and they can't be seen or accessed by other programs and operating systems. You can enable password protection for specific files and folders or whole volumes of data. WinMend claims that &… Read more

Ah, fractions. They're so useful, but so time-consuming to work with. Who wants to mess with finding a common denominator? Even keying fractions into a normal calculator can be a pain. Fortunately FractionCalc supplies an easy way to work with fractions. This basic fraction calculator allows users to perform simple arithmetic with fractions and convert between fractions and decimals. Although the interface could be better, the program works well.

The program's interface is very plain: just a series of boxes in which to enter numbers. It took us a moment of looking at it to figure out what … Read more