freeware

Technology is distracting, there's no doubt about it. Instead of allowing electronic gadgets to draw your attention away from more important activities in your workday, use them to sharpen your focus.

Many time management methods require a multiday symposium to master. A simple alternative is Francesco Cirillo's Pomodoro Technique, which is named after the 25-minute kitchen timer in the shape of a tomato Cirillo used to maintain his focus while studying in college in Rome.

In 25 minutes, you can learn most of what there is to know about the straightforward Pomodoro approach to time management. The free … Read more

uTorrent 3.0 (download) graduated to beta yesterday, combining some impressive new features with initiatives from parent company BitTorrent to encourage legal torrent usage.

The new beta can stream videos and music while the files are still downloading, using progressive and sequential download technology. The streaming feature can also be used to preview a file before committing to a full download. The preview feature can lend itself to the new basic socialization features in uTorrent, which serve as a passive reminder while downloading that you can interact with other people also seeding or leeching the torrent.

You can now rate … Read more

These days, small businesses can use a break wherever they can find one. Free business software that performs as well as pricey packages seems a good place to start looking. We've found one: DRoster Freeware Standard from Kappix. It's a full-featured employee scheduling suite that happens to be free. It's highly flexible and almost completely customizable. It has the ability to create, schedule, and track assignments; create, print, and export reports; plan shifts and schedules; and back up data to an included Firebird database. It sounds like a lot, and it is, but DRoster is far from … Read more

With Avast 6 fresh out of the gate and CNET's opinion on record, it's time to ask you which of the many free security suites available is your favorite. The big three on Download.com are AVG, Avast, and Avira, although it will be interesting to see if the download counts are reflected in popularity. We aimed to have all the major players represented here, although we left out certain choices like ClamWin Antivirus, technically still in beta.

The poll will remain open until 11 p.m. PT March 3, and we'll look at the results March … Read more

New security features designed to keep its more than 110 million users safe debut in Avast 6, released today exclusively from CNET Download.com. They also have the added benefit of raising the competitive bar in computer security by pushing more and better free options to users. Avast Free Antivirus 6, Avast Pro Antivirus 6, and Avast Internet Security 6 all feature the new AutoSandbox and the WebRep browser add-on. (Click the links to get to the download page.)

The debut of the AutoSandbox makes Avast the second antivirus to offer a sandboxing tool for free. Comodo introduced a sandboxing … Read more

The last time you used a public Wi-Fi hot spot, did you get the feeling you were being watched? Good. You very well may have been.

Just last week the U.S. Federal Trade Commission published the Wise Up About Wi-Fi page that offers tips for safe use of public Wi-Fi. Among the tips is the familiar advice to use encryption at all times (look for "https:" in the address header and the lock icon in the address bar or it the bottom status bar, depending on your browser).

The FTC's public-Wi-Fi safety page recommends that you … Read more

Microsoft has done little to improve the import and export features in recent versions of Outlook. In fact, the program's Import and Export Wizard appears unchanged since at least Outlook 2003.

One change for the worse is that it takes several more clicks to reach the import/export function in Outlook 2010 than it does in earlier releases of the program. In older Outlook versions you simply clicked File > Import and Export to open the wizard, but in Outlook 2010, you must click File > Options > Advanced > Export.

You can save yourself a few clicks and … Read more

People may be spending more time than ever on the Internet, but many of them--especially young folks--are spending less of their time using e-mail.

That's the conclusion of a comScore survey Matt Richtel wrote about recently for the New York Times. Teenagers in particular prefer to do without subject lines and other e-mail elements, and they tend to stick with short messages they can send quickly. I think they're on to something.

I noticed a sharp decline in the number of messages in my inbox after I created filters for non-priority messages; in a post from last month … Read more

The fall months may be the season for colder weather and dying leaves, but in the software world it means major updates for security suites. We've reviewed and benchmarked 11 suites, organized them along the traditional line of cost, and picked one in each category that we highly recommend.

We looked at four updated free security options: AVG Anti-Virus Free 2011, Panda Cloud Antivirus 1.3, Microsoft Security Essentials 2, and Ad-Aware Free Internet Security 9. Other well-known free security programs, such as Avast and Avira, generally update in late winter or spring, so they were not included.

AVG … Read more