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Protecting your computer from damaging spyware, adware and malware is crucial to make sure your PC runs as quickly as possible whilst at the same time ensuring that your information isn't compromised.

Thankfully there are plenty of diverse programs out there that can protect your PC in varying different ways and the best part about it all is that most come with some sort of free elements included.

Even with a plethora of features behind the paywall, there are a number of excellent programs available and the best five free anti-spyware software programs are outlined here.

When it comes to an extensive solution that gets to the bottom of any malware, adware or spyware on your system, there aren't many that come close to Malwarebytes Anti-Malware.

At its heart is an extensive scanning solution that combs through your PCs nooks and crannies in one of two ways. The Threat Scan looks in the places it knows threats hide in order to safeguard your PC whereas the Custom Scan can be adjusted to look for bugs in places specified by the user.

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware

The scan takes some time as it goes over every file and once it is done presents you with a list of threats and you either deal with them all individually or select the quarantine all option. Users will find a range of other options in the settings menu such as the ability to specify files, and folders that should not be scanned, and the opportunity to change detection and protection options.

You will also notice the sheer number of features that aren't included in the freeware version of Malwarebytes Anti-Malware such as advanced website protection, online backups and the chance to schedule scans. The amount of things behind the paywall is one of the only drawbacks of MalwareBytes Anti-Malware that provides a simple way to protect your computer from the ills of the internet.

Many anti-spyware programs come as part of a cover-all-bases anti-virus package and Ad-Aware Free Antivirus+ is no different in that sense. After the initial installation, which is an admittedly rather long one, only because it carries out a virus scan on your computer, Ad-Aware can be largely left to run in the background.

Scanning-wise there are three options that include a quick scan of active processes, full scan of everything on your PC, or a custom scan of user defined locations with all three designed to find spyware that you can then choose to quarantine. Protection against spyware goes further than that still through a real-time protection engine that stops viruses before they have a chance to enter your PC.

See the article here:
Roundup: Best Free Anti-Spyware Software 2015

Forget the idea that a 1040EZ form is the only simple way to file taxes. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and participating tax agencies have a virtual smorgasbord of free tools and programs available to help you get your taxes filed in a timely, efficient manner without having to pay hundreds of dollars for a tax professional to do it for you.

Weve compiled a list of eight free resources that can offer you support this tax season.

1. Taxpayer-advocate service

This service is free of charge and offers tips for filing your taxes, making payment plans, interacting with the IRS, amending a return and more. It also provides guidelines to help ensure you dont make a costly mistake. There is at least one Local Taxpayer Advocate in each state, and if you qualify to receive an advocates help, one will assist you with your taxing needs.

2. Free file

If your income was less than $60,000 in 2014, you can file your taxes online for free by using Free File. The free software walks you through each line of a return, helps you find tax breaks and electronically files your federal return. It can be a useful resource for those filing their taxes for the first time. You can still file for free if you earned more than $60,000, but in this case you will be using Free File Fillable Forms instead. It gives you electronic forms to fill out and doesnt walk you through each step like the former program does.

3. Get transcript

If you want to view information regarding the items from your tax return or your tax-account transactions, you can use the Get Transcript feature on the IRS website and receive a transcript via mail or directly online. A Tax Return Transcript will let you see most line items from your tax return, and a Tax Account Transcript gives you details on what type of return you filed, how much in taxes were paid and more.

4. Wheres my refund?

Once you filed your taxes and the IRS received your electronically filed tax return or paper return, you can check the status of your refund by accessing this feature via the IRS website or the mobile app, IRS2Go. For a electronically filed return, check the refund status within 24 hours after the IRS receives it. If you filed a paper tax return, wait about four weeks. The IRS generally issues refunds within 21 days, and the site that tracks your refunds status only updates once every 24 hours.

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8 free IRS tax tools

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Feb. 26, 2015 /PRNewswire/ --

Highlights:

Synopsys, Inc. (Nasdaq: SNPS) today launched the embARC Open Software Platform to help accelerate the development of DesignWare ARC processor-based embedded systems. The new embARC platform gives ARC software developers online access to a comprehensive suite of free and open-source software that eases the development of code for the IoT and other embedded applications. Device drivers, operating systems and middleware ported to and optimized for ARC processors are available for download without cost from the embARC.org website. The website also provides access to software development tools and documentation as well as user forums to facilitate the sharing of information and expertise among the ARC-based design community.

"We are pleased to see that the embARC Open Software Platform supports the use of the popular open-source FreeRTOS," said Andrew Longhurst, business development manager at Wittenstein High Integrity Systems. "We offer OPENRTOS, the only commercially licensed and supported version of FreeRTOS, thus allowing designers using embARC to move to an RTOS with professional support, maintenance and updates, if needed."

Drivers, Operating Systems and MiddlewarePre-ported drivers for the GPIO, UART, SPI, I2C and other peripherals as well as leading real-time operating systems (RTOS), including FreeRTOS and Contiki OS, give developers a choice of industry-standard software environments for their ARC-based systems. FreeRTOS is a scalable, compact and reliable operating system that is popular among embedded software developers. The Contiki OS is specifically designed for networked, memory-constrained systems such as low-power, wireless IoT applications.

The embARC platform provides a choice of middleware components and a robust starting point for the development of IoT-related devices. The components available for use with FreeRTOS include the TCP/IP stack lwIP, file system fatfs, and MQTT and libcoap IoT protocols. The Contiki OS includes a middleware package with an integrated IoT protocol stack including MQTT, a publish/subscribe messaging protocol for lightweight machine-to-machine communications, and the CoAP application layer protocol for resource-constrained IoT applications.

"FreeRTOS is professionally developed, supported and yet completely free for developers to embed in their commercial products without any requirement to expose their proprietary source code," said Richard Barry, director at Real Time Engineers Ltd. "As the leading RTOS for embedded applications, we are really pleased that Synopsys is making FreeRTOS available as part of their new embARC Platform. ARC users now have a simplified path to join the hundreds of thousands of developers worldwide who already benefit from the ease of use and proven reliability of FreeRTOS."

embARC.orgembARC.org is a dedicated website that provides developers centralized access to free and open-source software, drivers, operating systems and middleware supporting the embARC Open Software Platform. The website also provides documentation and a forum-based community where developers can share their resources, expertise and code to help speed deployment of ARC-processor based embedded systems.

Free and Premium Software Development ToolsFree software development tools built on the open-source Eclipse IDE and GNU toolchain are available for use with the embARC Open Software Platform. This gives developers a flexible software environment with an IDE, compiler, debugger and utilities that are familiar to embedded developers. The embARC software is also supported by the commercially-available Synopsys ARC MetaWare Development Toolkit, giving developers the option to use a highly optimized toolchain for maximum code density and performance.

The embARC Open Software Platform has been ported to Synopsys' ARC EM Starter Kit, a low-cost software development board consisting of pre-installed FPGA images of ARC EM Processors with peripherals and a software package. The Starter Kit enables rapid software development, code porting, software debugging and profiling for the EM4, EM6, EM5D and EM7D processor cores.

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Synopsys' embARC Open Software Platform Accelerates Development of ARC-based Embedded Systems for the Internet of Things

By Molly McLaughlin

For budding genealogists, using a free program is a great wayto get your feet wet. Mocavo offers a generous free plan (Mocavo Basic) that includes access to thousands of integrated public records. Itspaid plans, Mocavo Silver ($7 per month) and Mocavo Gold ($9 per month), offer a free seven-day trial and a few extras to simplify your research process. In general, Mocavooffers a fun, simple interface and a good feature set, even with the free plan. The only thing missing is a publishing option. Despite some shortcomings, Mocavo is our Editors' Choice for free genealogy software.

Setup and InterfaceTo get a good sense of the service, I signed up for a free trial of Mocavo Gold, which offers a central database for conducting your research, email alerts about possible ancestors, and live webcasts with their chief genealogist. Only Mocavo Gold members can export their family tree as a GEDCOM file, though. After the trial, which requires a credit card, you can pay month to month or annually, for a discounted price ($80 for Silver, $100 for Gold).

When you sign in for the first time, a windowopens that asks if you want to perform a surname search on up to three names. If you do, you're automatically signed up with surname groups. In those groups, you can see all the data related to thesurnames from a range of sources, including the social security death index, state death records, census records, court, land and tax records, family and personal histories, immigration and travel, and more.

Mocavo'sinterface is well designed, and I like its light tone when it comes to communications, alerts, and other content on the site. For example, when I connected my account with Facebook, a message appeared that said, "Double-check your relationships to the people below before we add them to your family tree. We understand that some friends are 'basically sisters,' but let's keep it genealogical here."

Building Family TreesAs is par for the genealogy course, you can create your family tree from scratch or upload a GEDCOM file, but in Mocavo,you can also connect to your Facebook profile. It only works if you've added the Family Members feature to your profile, however. I uploaded a small GEDCOM file (about 3KB) from OneGreatFamily, and it was accurately processed in about a minute.

You can add a photo to relative's profiles in addition to life events and notes. After I added one of my relatives, I accidentally hit the save button a few times and ended up create multiple entries. To fix it, I had to delete the duplicates one by one, which was annoying since I couldn't think of a reason anyone would want to create duplicate entries in the first place.

Public records are free no matter the plan. When you find a matching record, you can attach it to aspecific family member, save it in your shoebox (avirtual catchall for info you want to save, but you're not sure where it goes), or hide it forever if it's not relevant. Next time you search, any results that you've connected to a family member are marked as such, so you don't do double work. I love that the research is integrated so you don't have to copy and paste which can lead to errors. Mocavo shares this excellent feature with the PCMag Editors' Choice award-winning Ancestry and Arviches.

Your family tree can be dragged all around the page, so you can easily access specific family members. You'll appreciate this functionif you need to add children to a relative near the bottom of the page, as the drop-down menu may get cut off. It took me a few minutes to get the hang of it, but it was generally easy to use and responsive.

There aren't any formal publishing options. You can print blank trees, diagrams and charts, but if you want to create anything fancy, you'll have to go elsewhere. There is an option to edit the blank PDFs, but that's just double work.

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Mocavo

Download Download App For FREE
Download Download App For FREE The Download App is a free application from Download.com that helps keep the software on your Windows computer up-to-date, as well as clean up the junk that...

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