Software : Editor's pick: Beat procrastination with free website blocker Cold Turkey

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• Editor's pick: Beat procrastination with free website blocker Cold Turkey
• Editor's pick: Download mindmapping app FreeMind to plan the ultimate road trip
• Round up: The best free uninstaller 2016

Editor's pick: Beat procrastination with free website blocker Cold Turkey Posted: Beat procrastination with Cold Turkey Beat procrastination with Cold Turkey Tabbed browsers are both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, you can keep multiple sources open simultaneously for cross-referencing, and on the other, you can easily keep your social media feeds alongside your work, with numbers in the tab titles steadily climbing as fresh content appears in your feed. It's the same with emails; if you're honest with yourself, how many of the messages you receive throughout the day truly require an immediate response? And how often do you check your inbox? When you have to knuckle down to some serious work, it can take real grit to resist the lure of those little numbers. That's when you need Cold Turkey – a superb free app for Windows that acts as a high-dose willpower supplement. Cold Turkey is the most effective distraction-blocker around, working as a firewall to deny access to specific websites in all browsers. It comes equipped with a preset list of notorious time-thieves, including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and BuzzFeed, which you can customize with your personal procrastination destinations. Cold Turkey also lets you create new blocklists, which can be activated individually. To start blocking, just select 'Timer', enter a time and date for the block to end, and switch it on. Forking out US$19 (about £15, AU$25) for the premium edition lets you block sites on a schedule and add break periods, but the free version of Cold Turkey (as its name implies) is a cruel all-or-nothing affair. Once you've set the blocker, it's very hard to get around it. You can't uninstall Cold Turkey when you've frozen yourself out, or sidestep it using desktop clients or Windows apps. The only way we've found to thaw the Turkey is to access the forbidden sites via a proxy server - but forget we told you that. Provided you can find the self-discipline to avoid pretending you're accessing Facebook from Greenland, you won't find a more effective procrastination-blocker.

Editor's pick: Download mindmapping app FreeMind to plan the ultimate road trip Posted: Plan a road trip with FreeMind Plan the ultimate road trip with FreeMind Road trips take a lot of organization - as well as planning the major waypoints on your journey, you also need to consider driving times, places to stay, activities, what to bring and (perhaps most importantly) how to allocate your budget. Rather than writing everything out as a series of disconnected lists, creating a mindmap or spider diagram will help you think laterally, link ideas and get a lot of information in a small space. Superb free mindmapping software FreeMind will help you get everything on one page, without the hassle of pens and paper. Every mindmap in FreeMind begins as a blank page, with a single central label. Each label that branches off this one is called a node, and these are arranged in a hierarchy: parent, sibling and child. You can add new child nodes by tapping 'Insert' and create new sibling nodes by tapping 'Enter'. Start by listing the places you're planning to visit on your trip as child nodes from the central point, then create child nodes for each location for activities and places you're interested in. You can then use Freemind's options to prioritize the activities for each location. You could also create nodes between locations showing how long it'll take to drive from one to the other, and add costs to each activity. Things might start to look confusing as your map grows, but FreeMind lets you temporarily collapse branches by clicking a parent node. Double-click the node to expand it again. You can also make things clearer by applying formatting - putting each node inside a bubble, applying colors or attaching icons from the menu on the left. Hold Shift and left-click to format nodes as a batch. Now create a new child node for the essentials that you need to pack, and any preparation required to get them ready. Once you've completed each of these tasks, you can mark with with a tick, chosen from the menu on the left. If you decide to reorganise your list, you can move nodes between branches, and even move branches to a more logical place by dragging and dropping. Other nodes will shift to make room. If two nodes are very similar, select both and link them via FreeMind's Tools menu. You might also find it useful to make a list of background reading before you embark on your trip. Add a hyperlink using the Insert menu, then type a descriptive label for it. These could be links to maps, tourist information guides, hotel booking sites or anything else you think will come in handy. You can link to files on your PC in the same way - though you'll need to save your mindmap first. The MM file format can only be opened by FreeMind, so if you're planning to share your map consider installing PDF24 Creator, which can convert it to PDF format via FreeMind's Print menu. Mindmaps can be useful for all sorts of other projects, including weddings and house moves, as well as essays and even novels. Download FreeMind and give it a try before hitting the road.

Round up: The best free uninstaller 2016 Posted: The best free software uninstallers The best free uninstaller Software installers are rarely tidy - they spread files throughout your system, and their built-in uninstallers don't always clear it all away afterwards. Sometimes you'll be informed that "some elements could not be removed" as the uninstaller effectively shrugs its shoulders and leaves the mess behind - whether it's temporary files, old shortcuts or broken registry entries. All this detritus builds up over time, and can slow down your system or cause conflicts further down the line - particularly in the case of security software, which won't run properly if it detects files associated with another tool. Third-party uninstallers can clear up the mess in moments. If you're already having trouble with a program you thought you'd removed, the tool can scan your drives for files and broken links left over. If you want to uninstall a program thoroughly, the tool will run the program's own uninstaller, then perform a cleanup scan immediately afterwards. More advanced tools will monitor what happens when you install a new program - what files are created and changed - so it can rapidly reverse those changes when you want to remove it. 1. IObit Uninstaller Thorough and thoughtfully designed - as good as many premium alternatives IObit Uninstaller gets right down to business, scanning your system for installed software the moment it starts. Its smart, clear interface displays a list of all your installed software, with extra tabs if you're only interested in the newest programs (if you've tried something new and don't like it), and the biggest ones (which will have the greatest impact on system performance). There's a batch processing option for removing multiple programs at once. If you've already uninstalled a program but suspect it's left mucky footprints across your drive, IObit's deep scanner can hunt down junk including broken shortcuts and caches created when installing software updates. IObit Uninstaller also takes a look at your web browsers to identify any plugins that could be uninstalled to speed up your surfing. It currently supports Firefox and Internet Explorer, but not Chrome or Edge. Each extension is accompanied by a user rating to help you decide whether to keep it. There's a file shredder thrown in too, which doesn't really fit with the premise of an uninstaller, but all the other tools are relevant and useful. IObit Uninstaller is the best free uninstaller you can download, and its thorough scanning makes it the equal of many premium programs. 2. Wise Program Uninstaller Light as a feather, but less thorough than IObit Wise Program Uninstaller is a portable app, so you don't have to worry about it leaving mess of its own, though it offers you a free trial of a product called Spyhunter that you might prefer to decline. It's a very quick and lean little uninstaller that scans your system for already installed programs and displays ratings to show you how other users feel about them. You probably already know what you want to erase, but it's a thoughtful touch. Your choices for each program are Safe and Forced uninstall (some also have a Repair option, but only if it's part of the software in the first place). Safe uninstall is simply a way to access the program's own uninstaller, whereas Forced performs a deep scan to track down scrap files and broken registry entries. It shows you everything it's identified before deleting them, but this doesn't serve much purpose; you're unlikely to be able to pick out an individual Registry entry and say "Hang on, I need that!" The main downside of its small size is that it can't log new programs as you install them, but as a program uninstaller it's well designed and not bulked out with unecessary system tools. 3. GeekUninstaller A streamlined little app to mop up messy software GeekUninstaller is another free portable uninstaller, weighing in at just 2.5MB. Although a 'Pro' version is advertised on developer's site, this is actually a completely different program called Uninstall Tool - GeekUninstaller is completely free, It performs a speedy system scan and provides the usual options: regular or forced uninstall. If you don't recognize something, GeekUninstaller will Google it for you - a simple but welcome addition that saves you loading up a browser. That's pretty much it - there's no deep scan for remnants of previously uninstalled programs, and no monitoring for new installations, but if you're simply after something to clean up as you go, uninstallers don't come smaller and simpler than this. It comes in over 30 languages too, which is undoubtedly a bonus. 4. Ashampoo Uninstaller (trial) A premium trial to give your system a thorough scouring This is a time-limited trial of Ashampoo Uninstaller rather than the full program, but is well worth considering if you need to purge your PC of one particularly stubborn piece of software, or want to give it a thorough spring clean. The basic trial lasts 10 days, but you can extend for an extra month by signing up for an account (a standard requirement with Ashampoo's free software). The uninstaller itself is impressive, as you'd expect from a premium product - it can remove existing applications, and log new ones as you add them. You can set it to start automatically at the same time as Windows, though your startup time might take a knock as a result. There are also system optimization tools like a file shredder, file restorer, disk defragmenter and even a font manager, but Ashampoo Uninstaller is an excellent tool without these - they are just padding. 5. Revo Uninstaller Free Effective, but bloated with strange and unnecessary extras Revo Uninstaller Free's icon-strewn interface is colorful but cluttered, and includes tools like a startup program manager, plus links to Windows' own system tools (including defrag and on-screen keyboard). These really aren't necessary, and just distract from an otherwise solid free uninstaller. There are four uninstall options: built-in, safe (built-in with additional registry scanning), moderate (with extra scanning of common locations for leftover files) and advanced (moderate mode, followed by a thorough scanning of your whole system). There's also a strange 'Hunter Mode', which lets you uninstall programs by dragging their icons onto a crosshair on your desktop. It's much more work than selecting the program from a list - a metaphor gone rogue. Unlike some uninstallers, Revo begins by creating a system restore point, which is reassuring. It can't log new installations, though - if you want that, you might like to give Revo's Pro version a whirl for 30 days. It's worlds away from the free edition's late-90s styling, and will give your drives a good scrubbing.

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