Software

Avira AntiVir is one of the most popular antivirus applications available, and the latest upgrade to version 9—which adds anti-spyware and anti-adware features to the free version—makes it that much better.

Anti-spyware and anti-adware support are nothing new to paid users, but if you’ve been enjoying the free version of AntiVir, it’s always nice to get a few more features. If you’ve been using Avira up until now, the new download probably won’t look all that different, but the new under-the-hood features will obviously be a welcome addition. Head on over to CNET for a more detailed look at the new features. Avira AntiVir is a free download for Windows only; the premium version costs $26 and throws in email scanning, rescue CD creation, and a few more features.

Download Avira AntiVir 9

Tiny portable utility NiftyWindows adds a ton of features that make working with windows easy—so you can move, resize, and even roll up windows without moving your hand off the mouse.

Once you’ve launched the no-install-required utility, simply right-click on a window and drag to either move or resize the window—dragging the corner will resize that corner, and dragging from the middle will move the whole window. You can roll up the window by holding down the right mouse button over the title bar and pressing the left mouse button—do the same thing over the window area and it will minimize.

Middle-click the titlebar to maximize the window, or use the scroll wheel while holding down the right mouse button to navigate through the regular Alt-Tab window switcher—a very useful feature once you get used to it. The only issue in our testing appears to be a slight incompatibility with Firefox and the middle mouse button shortcuts, but you can disable them under the Mouse Hooks menu.

NiftyWindows is free and open-source, available for Windows only. If you just want to roll up windows, check out previously mentioned WinRoll, or take a look at our top 10 ways to trick out your desktop. Thanks, cfusion!

Fans of GNOME Do, the Quicksilver-like application launcher for Linux, will be glad to hear that a lot of kinks have been worked out in its 0.8.1 release, and a few new features added in.

The big new thing is the analog clock option, which looks pretty nice and turns into an array of world times you selected when clicked on. More importantly to most users, though, the smoothness and appearance of thesmart and functional Docky theme has been overhauled, hopefully giving more users with varied graphics powers a better experience. There’s also a few “behavior” changes that I haven’t quite ferreted out yet; GNOME Do users, post your own finds in the comments, and I’ll update the post.

GNOME Do is a free download for Linux systems only. Hit the link below for help on getting it into your distro.

Google has launched a Linux version of Goole Desktop

The application, designed for indexing and finding data in PCs, as well as for searching the Web.
Like the Mac OS X version, Google Desktop for Linux is a beta, or test, product. The Windows version shed its beta tag already, meaning Google considers it a more stable and mature product.

At this point, Google Desktop for Linux does not feature the Sidebar and Gadget features present in the Windows version.

Gadgets are mini-applications that display things such as e-mail, weather data, photos, and news on the desktop. The Sidebar is a vertical panel where the Gadgets can be organized.

This Linux version, developed by Google’s Beijing engineering team, is available in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, simplified and traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Portuguese.

Google Desktop for Linux runs on Debian 4.0, Fedora Core 6, Ubuntu 6.10, Suse 10.1, and Red Flag 5.

You can download it for free from Here