Modern technology enables a team to operate in different locations across your company and the world. If you’re a software developer, there’s no reason why you couldn’t pick the best programmers based in Germany, document writers from the UK, whilst your graphic artists could be based in the States.

The problem is bringing these people together. You need a system where your team or teams can share files and information, make sure that no-one overwrites someone else’s work and keep a collection of previously updated files, so you can quickly reverse back to a previous revision, if necessary. Doing this on your website requires you have the relevant versioning technology and that it will work across various operating systems. A versioning tool that works fine on Windows may not be suitable for OS X.

DropBox is an online sharing tool that enables you to select the files you want to share and synchronise with other users, then simply upload them to the remote site. That bit is done automatically, so you don’t need to worry about having to upload the files manually. You can share folders and collaborate with other users on the files within these folders. Versioning will stop work being overwritten.

You can just use DropBox on a personal level, too. If you own a desktop computer at home, use another at work and a laptop when you’re away from the office, simply use DropBox to synchronise your important files across each machine. You can also access your DropBox files from the web, if you need access from a temporary host PC.

Better still, setup your software so they write preferences to your DropBox folder, then sync these settings and preferences across your computers, enabling you to have the same setup across your desktop and laptop or PC and Mac. We use it to store our 1Password account and synchronise this data across our computers, meaning everyone has access to the same database.

DropBox will limit you to 2GB of free online storage (and you can purchase more, if required) and is available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Note that this is the "Beta Build" which Dropbox release to forum members for testing.

What's new in v64 (see changelog for more)?

- Fix an issue that prevented Smart Sync online only files from being opened on Windows.

Modern technology enables a team to operate in different locations across your company and the world. If you’re a software developer, there’s no reason why you couldn’t pick the best programmers based in Germany, document writers from the UK, whilst your graphic artists could be based in the States.

The problem is bringing these people together. You need a system where your team or teams can share files and information, make sure that no-one overwrites someone else’s work and keep a collection of previously updated files, so you can quickly reverse back to a previous revision, if necessary. Doing this on your website requires you have the relevant versioning technology and that it will work across various operating systems. A versioning tool that works fine on Windows may not be suitable for OS X.

DropBox is an online sharing tool that enables you to select the files you want to share and synchronise with other users, then simply upload them to the remote site. That bit is done automatically, so you don’t need to worry about having to upload the files manually. You can share folders and collaborate with other users on the files within these folders. Versioning will stop work being overwritten.

You can just use DropBox on a personal level, too. If you own a desktop computer at home, use another at work and a laptop when you’re away from the office, simply use DropBox to synchronise your important files across each machine. You can also access your DropBox files from the web, if you need access from a temporary host PC.

Better still, setup your software so they write preferences to your DropBox folder, then sync these settings and preferences across your computers, enabling you to have the same setup across your desktop and laptop or PC and Mac. We use it to store our 1Password account and synchronise this data across our computers, meaning everyone has access to the same database.

DropBox will limit you to 2GB of free online storage (and you can purchase more, if required) and is available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Note that this is the "Beta Build" which Dropbox release to forum members for testing.

What's new in v64 (see changelog for more)?

- Fix an issue that prevented Smart Sync online only files from being opened on Windows.

There are two schools of thought when it comes to online advertising. The first is that it’s intrusive, wastes precious bandwidth and ought to be stopped or blocked at all costs. Seems logical at first glance, but think about the second school of thought: most of the content provided for free on the internet wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t for advertising – if you don’t want to pay for content, then surely allowing the site in question to display advertising is the least it can expect in return? Ultimately, there’s a question of whether or not you’re effectively stealing content by blocking the very adverts that allow that content to be there in the first place. It’s a moral – and ultimately financial – argument that’s set to run and run.

AdBlock doesn’t really go with the second argument – at least not in its default state: once installed, reload any web page and you’ll see the ads have gone. All you have to do now is choose whether or not to display the icon in your taskbar and whether or not to allow Google text ads to be displayed where they appear.

If some ads continue to appear that you wish to block, or you actually want to support certain websites by allowing them to display advertisements on their pages, you can tweak these settings from inside the program’s extended configuration options, accessible by clicking the spanner icon and choosing Tools > Extensions.

The problem with many screen capture tools is that, while they can often be customised to switch between capturing in full screen, windowed or custom modes, it can be awkward to continually configure them as required. This is an issue that SnagIt addresses by offering eleven preset capture modes that can be activated with simple keyboard combinations. The program can be used to capture anything you see on screen - and in the case of the option to capture entire web pages, even things you can't see - and the captures are automatically stored in the program interface ready for further editing or converting to various image formats.

Image editing options are basic, but more than enough to cater for basic screenshot editing. From cropping and scaling to adding text and drop shadows, all of the tools you could need are close to hand. If you frequently perform the same actions with your screen captures - such as resizing them to particular dimensions, adding the same text label and saving them in a specific format - this can be saved as a keyboard shortcut for easy access.

Captures can be shared with others by posting them directly to Flickr, your blog or sending them via instant message or email. The fact that captures are automatically saved means that there is no need to remember to do so manually, but if you do want to help to keep things organised, detailed tagging options are available. For those difficult to capture moments, a timer can be configured to give you time to ensure that onscreen furniture is correctly positioned before a screenshot is taken for you.

This is an incredibly versatile tool that can be completely customised to suit your needs. It can be made as simple or as complicated as you need it to be, and for this it is to be applauded.

What's new in v2019.1.0 (see the full changelog for more info)?

- Added integration with Windows Snipping Tool and Snip & Sketch utilities.
- All in-app messages now respect the banner setting in Preferences.
- Stamps now searchable with German and French terms.
- Added some British and Australian search terms to the English version.
- Combine Images window now remembers settings.
- Captions are now wide enough on a combined image of varying sized images.
- Smart Move reset button now triggers a recalculation.
- Callout Text is now saved to file immediately after typing.
- Checking for updates now more reliable when multiple versions of Snagit installed.
- Resolved spelling and capitalization errors in German and French onboarding.
- Resolved unnecessary warning when opening Snagit 2019 captures in Snagit 2018.
- Resolved Simplify alignment buttons not working in floating properties.
- Resolved canceling out of Smart Move processing dialog leaves Smart Move in a bad state.
- Resolved blank tray thumbnails in German and French versions.
- Resolved issue where Auto Simplifying an image would never finish on 32-bit systems.
- Numerous other bug and security fixes, localization updates, and performance improvements.

Not everyone gets by with the default browser on their computer, and when it comes to picking an alternative, Firefox is one of the most popular out there, having clawed back support from upstart rivals like Google Chrome and Opera in recent years by switching to a rapid release cycle, ensuring major new versions of the browser are released every six weeks.

It’s true to say that individual updates often fail to deliver anything substantial, but cumulatively they roll together to produce a web browser that is radically different to the one – version 4 – that marked the start of a new era back in 2011.

Some of the landmark new features we’ve seen include a per-site Permissions Manager, enhanced Sync options, tabs on demand, silent updates and add-on enhancements. We also saw the launch of specific development branches including UX, which has led to the new Australis user interface, which sees a streamlined tab, revamped menu and customisation features.

One group particularly well served by the rapid release cycle have been developers, and a plethora of tools from Javascript Scratchpad (Firefox 6) to full-blown Developer Toolbar (Firefox 16) have worked their way into successive builds as Firefox courts this important community of users.

And underpinning this all are a constantly evolving set of performance improvements, standards support (HTML5 and CSS3 are constantly being added to, for instance) and bug fixes.

Firefox 64.0 is now in the stable channel. Improvements/changes include:

- Better recommendations
- Enhanced tab management
- Easier performance management
- Improved performance for Mac and Linux users, by enabling link time optimization (Clang LTO)
- More seamless sharing on Windows
- Added option to remove add-ons using the context menu on their toolbar buttons
- New for enterprise users: Updated the policy engine on macOS to allow using configuration profiles to customize Firefox for enterprise deployments

If you are looking for the best quality for your video files, there are a number of formats to choose from. One that offers great quality is x264 and Hybrid is a free tool that can be used to convert between formats. There are many tools that do a fairly similar job, but where Hybrid stands out is in the sheer number of options that are afforded you. In many respects, this is not a tools for the faint-hearted, but if you want control over the encoding process, this is the program for you.

You can convert a wide variety of video types into mp4, m2ts, mkv or webm containers or create a Blue-ray or AVCHD structure ready to burn to disc. The stark tabbed interface may seem slightly intimidating at first, but once you have worked through the conversion process a couple of times, everything will start to make more sense.

Using the program is not quite as simple as using a wizard-based tool, but all that needs to be done is to work through each of the program tabs in turn. After selecting the video file and subtitle track you would like to use, you can specify encoding settings and indicate whether your video should be cropped or resized. If you are creating a disc, you can set up chapters, and if you are looking to convert several videos, you can add them all to a queue to be processed one after the other.

As a standalone program Hybrid is already a powerful piece of software, but there are a number of optional components that can be used to add extra features – again at no cost. The neroAacEnc tool can be used to aac encoding while fhgaacenc is used for not only aac but also alac encoding. If you are not going to be using these features, there is no need to install them, but the option is there if you need it.

Version 2018.12.09.1 fixes include (see changelog) for more:

- jobs: deleting *.sub files
- Vapoursynth: mClean, missing libtemporalmedian dependency
- Subs: use more digits when calculation stretch factor
- Avisynth: selectEvery + Avisynth Filter View
- Avisynth: Preview filter reload
- Jobs: vpx mkv checks
- x265: minimize command line + weightb and preset slower+
models: error messages about models which weren't created due to hardware/os limitations
- Avisynth: job id wasn't replaced when using dgindex