Ignore the "tvcatchup" bit in the title this UK only (at the moment) piece of software will let you  watch many of the most popular Freeview Channels on your computer without any additional hardware. You need to join, but that is free, download and install the software or use the browser based version. You will then have acdess to BBC 1, 2, 3, 4, ITV 1,2,3,4, Dave, Film 4 , E4, Cbbc, Citv etc including some of the +1 channels.

You may ask "What use is this, when I already have a digital TV".. well not everyone can get the digital channels, even though the "normal" channels are being switched off. Plus those of you with children will know how often you loose control of the remote... tired of watching Cbeebies every day, now you can sit with you laptop and headphones and watch whilst still keeping an eye on your kids.

This is a new programme and we are promised a "record" function in the coming months which will make this great free facility even better.

I highly recommend this as a great way to watch Freeview Channels. It is totally legal and I use it constantly to avoid Bob the Builder and Fifi :-) - (Read more)

Inkscape is a vector graphics drawing programme. If you don't know what that means you probably don't need it (unless you fancy exploring a more techinical sort of drawing)

In their own words" An Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.

Inkscape supports many advanced SVG features (markers, clones, alpha blending, etc.) and great care is taken in designing a streamlined interface. It is very easy to edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps and much more. We also aim to maintain a thriving user and developer community by using open, community-oriented development."

In their words "Artweaver is a simple Freeware program for creative painting", i.e. Artweaver offers you all artistic effects which you need for your work.

You can create sketches from photos and experiment with a wide range of brushes. The brush simulation is thereby so realistic as possible.


Advantages of Artweaver

• Support of many different digital brushes e.g. chalk, charcoal, pencils...
• Standard image editing tools like gradient, crop, fill and selection tools.
• Transparency and Layers support.
• Effect filters like sharpen, blur, emboss and mosaic.
• Support for the most common file formats like AWD (Artweaver), BMP, GIF, JPEG, PCX, TGA, TIFF, PNG, and PSD.
• Pen Tablet support for a realistic feeling.
• Support for many languages through language files (Columbian Spanish, Danish, Hungarian, Swedish, ...).
• Artweaver is Freeware.

Open Office is THE most popular  piece of open-source software on the Internet.

There are 5 different parts to this programme: A word processor, Spreadsheets, Presentation, Draw and Database.

It is compatible with other office suites and you can open and save files which can be opened by other using paid for programmes. Why anyone would buy an office suite when this one is available free I really don't know. I have been using this for over 5 years, get free updates and free support (forum)

" It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose. OpenOffice.org 3 is easy to learn, and if you're already using another office software package, you'll take to OpenOffice.org 3 straight away. Best of all, OpenOffice.org 3 can be downloaded and used entirely free of any licence fees. You may install it on as many computers as you like. You may make copies and give them away to family, friends, students, employees - anyone you like. - (Read more)

A fantastic little paint programme for younger children (about 3 - 10 I would think). It has colours, text, shapes, brushes and all the other things you would expect to find in a paint programme.

Don't forget to download the additional "stamps" package. This gives loads of small stamps: cars, flowers, planets, animals etc which children can use in their picture. Each of the "stamps" can be resized, and reversed giving loads of useable combinations. Certainly a great paint program to start child off with before they move onto the more complicated ones.

Don't forget to look under the "Magic" button, this contains a lot of items you would expect to find in a paint programme but wouldn't find unless you clicked this button.

This is by far the best childrens paint programme I have found, better than even some of the paid programmes around. Give your kids a treat and download this for them and as a bonus it will keep them quiet for hours :-) As with most software for children you will probably need to spend a little time with them going through it but they should soon be using it totally on their own. - (Read more)

PagePlus is the award-winning desktop publishing software that enables you to create stunning documents for your home, school, business or club - no experience required!