Free Download A Day

Logical Games has created a truly beautiful and thorough version of the popular boardgame Scrabble. You can play with a friend, play against the computer, or watch the computer play a demo game if you're not sure of the rules or procedures. You can save a game in mid-play so you can return to it later. There's even an "undo" feature, so if you don't like the last move you made, you can forget that it ever happened.

Scrabble is all about words, and Pro Scrabble comes with a searchable dictionary database that you can use during play to find words to create with the letters you have available. Add your own words to the dictionary, or import a word list from another site if you find a list you prefer. When you've played a game of which you're particularly proud, you can export the table as a jpg file to save for posterity. With Scrabble becoming more and more popular, there are even professional players who make a living playing this game, so here's your chance to start training to be the next national Scrabble champion.

Download Pro Scrabble

Photobie is free image editing software designed to retouch photographs. No more red-eye! The program uses layers during editing, just like Photoshop, and it can even accept Photoshop filter plugins. While the interface is intuitive, there's a support forum for users to ask questions and to share their Photobie experiences. Fix red-eye, apply a watermark, design a logo, or apply a fancy mask to make your photo edges look like torn paper. The user gallery is filled with examples of what users have created.

As if free photo editing wasn't enough, Photobie provides an advanced screen capture tool, a simple gif animation tool, and a photo framing tool.

Photobie is another Microsoft .NET framework application, so make sure you've got that installed if you want to use the program.

Get Photobie

The game of blackjack is all about probabilities. To have the best chance of winning, you can rely on your lucky pair of shoes, or you can practice, practice, practice and develop real skill and understanding. Blackjack Analysis Toolkit is for the serious gambler who wants to best shot at beating the house on their next trip a casino, and who doesn't mind some hard work along the way. The software author claims the program will teach you to play perfect strategy blackjack, with an even higher rate of accuracy than card counting.

The program is not a blackjack simulator, so you don't really "play" the game as you learn. You instead drop different combinations of numbers into program (cards a player might hold vs. what the dealer holds), and the program will calculate your correct play (whether to stand, hit, or double down). It will show you not only the best result, but all results, so you'll be able to compare the "perfect" answer to your own answer. You can mix and match the number of players and number of desks.

Blackjack Analysis Toolkit is written in Visual Basic, and requires that Microsoft .NET Framework be installed.

Get Blackjack Analysis Toolkit

Microsoft Internet Explorer comes with settings that allow you to remove temporary internet files, old history files, temp files, cookies, etc., but the settings are hard to find and a bother to use. Sweepi is a program which will take out your IE trash with just one single click. In the process, Sweepi will destroy the data completely using "Sweepi Slicer", so it can't be recovered. This protects your privacy and personal data (the type which might be stored in a cookie). This will also free up a lot of hard drive space, because temporary Internet files can build up to enormous proportions.

The most recent version of Sweepi contains tools to help you optimize your RAM, and it will also help you create a backup boot disk in case of trouble. It keeps itself updated automatically if you give it access to the Internet. It works with IE, all the way up to the newest version, IE 7.

Get Sweepi

You can search the Internet to find a variety of TV stations streaming their feeds, but it's a hit and miss proposition. You might easily miss an interesting feature if your search doesn't work correctly, but a program appropriately called "TV" can help you avoid those sorts of headaches. TV has searched the Internet for you, and stores in its database over 300 Internet TV channels from a number of countries. The attractive interface lets you search for stations by country, language, and category, and then plays your selection back through RealPlayer or Windows Media Player at a fixed 640 x 480 resolution (4:3 ratio). If nothing else, the program would be handy for students studying a new language, or travellers trying to find out more about the country they plan to visit.

New channels are added to the software's database automatically, just as inactive channels are removed. The program is intended for broadband use, and will work on Windows 98 and higher.

Download TV

Stay organized with Rainlendar, an attractive and feature-rich desktop calendar program which runs on both Windows and Linux. The appearance is customizable and skinnable, so you can match it to your desktop theme or create any color scheme that appeals to you. If you use another calendar application already, like iCalendar or Outlook, you can transfer your appointments between programs, and view your Outlook events in Rainlendar.

Rainlendar events can be given different colors and icons, making important events easy to spot. Upcoming and long term events can be displayed differently as well. When an event is due, an alarm can be set off either prior to the event, or at the actual moment of the event. Another nice feature of Rainlendar is its ability to display multiple calendars, so you can have one for birthdays and holidays, one for homework, one for TV scheduling, etc.

With built-in ability to backup, restore, print, search, and even localize the calendar to your language, Rainlendar is a highly useful program for just about anyone.

Download Rainlendar

Save yourself from the misery of mistakenly deleted files by downloading UnDelete Plus. UnDelete Plus is a quick and easy way to restore data that you've accidentally removed, whether it be from the Windows recycling bin, from a DOS window, or from a network drive. The program can even restore files from CompactFlash, SmartMedia, MultiMedia, and SecureDigital cards. It works on all versions of Windows starting with Windows 98, and can restore files in FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, and NTFS.

To use the program, scan the drive where your file was deleted with UnDelete Plus. The program will show you a list of files it's located, and will also indicate the condition of each file (whether or not the file seems to be recoverable). It's recommended that you save any recovered file to a different drive, so it isn't accidentally written over during the file recovery process.

UnDelete Plus recommends that you maintain good "hard drive habits" if you want the best chance to retrieve your files. Defrag your drive often, and recover data immediately after it's been lost!

Get UnDelete Plus

Geek alert! If you're wearing a pocket protector and carrying at least one mechanical pencil, you'll definitely want to download SpeQ Mathematics, a small but extensive math calculator. You'll probably also find it handy if you're just an average math student, because SpeQ performs most calculations you'll need for your homework. It even draws graphs. To use it, just enter your variables into the intuitive interface, and then choose the calculations you want to execute. You can easily edit your variables to test different outcomes, and plot a graph of your results. The program can perform calculations for arithmetic, statistics, trigonometry, integers, probability, and a number of other options. There are about 100 built-in constants for math and physics, including the popular "chaos theory".

SpeQ is easy on system resources, and will run on just about any Windows computer. It can also be executed from a flash drive or floppy disk. The help and user guides are detailed and extensive, so don't be intimidated. If you can use your Windows calculator, you can use Speq Mathematics.

Download SpeQ Mathematics

There are a number of reasons you might need to grab a screen capture, and the most basic way to do it is to use the Shift-PrtScrn key combo on your keyboard. The disadvantage to that is your screen cap is life-sized, and probably far larger than you need it to be. You'll end up using graphics editing software to make a copy of the screen grab, so the process of quickly grabbing an image of what's on your monitor can become a huge chore.

FastStone has a convenient solution to this problem with software program, "Capture". Capture allows you to grab an image of anything on the screen, and you can specify specific windows, objects, scrolling windows, and even freehand-selected areas. No more cropping after the fact, because Fast Stone Capture will ensure you don't grab any parts of an image that you don't need. The program appears as a floating window, or can be minimized to the Windows tray, so it's always accessible. It's not a memory hog and can be configured to run as soon as Windows starts. Once you've grabbed your screen cap, you can edit and save it in the program's internal editor, even adding fun features like drop-shadows and watermarks. FastStone Capture works in Microsoft Internet Explorer, FireFox and Opera.

Download FastStone Capture

If you're not allowed to goof off at work, don't download 123 Solitaire. This is a free collection of twelve highly-addictive versions of the card game solitaire. The assortment includes classic solitaire renditions like FreeCell, Spider, and Forty Thieves. The games are complete with sound effects and detailed help files to get you started, and the TreeCardGames claims that each game has more than nine trillion possible variations to play.

To keep things interesting, the full-color games are compatible with Windows XP Themes and are skinnable.

Get 123 Free Solitaire