FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT By Deanna McElveen Every now and then, I come across a free utility that does one useful thing so well that I wonder why the ability isn’t already built into Windows. This is one of those programs. Nyrna is a free, open-source utility that lets you suspend a running game or application and […]

FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT By Deanna McElveen Attacks on your computer usually try to get you to do something that you know you probably shouldn’t do — such as opening an email attachment, downloading a cute elf game, or clicking a 100%-off coupon link. I’ve been warning people about this stuff for years. You’re AskWoody readers, so […]

FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT By Deanna McElveen • Comment about this article Before we get into today’s freeware, it might be helpful to talk about the service behind it. That service is VirusTotal. Even if you use VirusTotal regularly, as I do, you might be surprised that VirusTotal has been around for 22 years! It launched on […]

ISSUE 23.30 • 2026-07-27 FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT By Deanna McElveen I was never a big fan of Microsoft’s built-in Sticky Notes nor its forced “upgrade” to the bloated and slow Sticky Notes New. I don’t want integrations with other programs. Stop mushing everything together, Microsoft. I don’t like my food to touch! Note: Thank you, Rick, […]

FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT By Deanna McElveen Remember when we all had digital cameras and just willy-nilly dumped all those photos into our computers after that trip to Council Bluffs? It was easy. Oh, sure — all the file names were IMGXXX or DSCXXX, but we were going to rename them once we got settled back in […]

FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT By Deanna McElveen When following a video or text tutorial while working in another program, did you ever have to constantly switch back and forth between windows? Maybe you’re watching the weather radar, like we do here in Tornado Alley while doing other work. Perhaps you need to keep your notes or reference […]