Freeware

Comedy site Funny or Die beat out the competition in getting "iSteve," the first Steve Jobs biopic, out for viewing. Take that, Ashton Kutcher. In all that haste, Funny of Die may have cut a few corners as far as accuracy goes. That's left the film open for evisceration by Apple fans on high alert for anachronistic images.

The film is full of tripping Steve Jobs scenes, Bill Gates beating computer components with a hammer, and Steve Wozniak looking like he just wandered off the set of "Lost." It's also full of computer parts that just don't fit the time period. It's the sort of thing that will either make Apple fanboys giggle, or send them up in arms to the Internet to complain.… Read more

Every week, we compile the best new reviews, products, and features from the Download.com software catalog and blog, package them up in a tidy little newsletter, and e-mail it out to all of our lovely subscribers.

If you are a registered CNET member, you can sign up for the newsletter yourself (it's listed as "CNET Download.com Software Dispatch" under "Software News and Reviews"), or check back every Tuesday to read our latest roundup.

Notable New Products

They're simple, social, and entirely made for mobile, all of which might explain the explosive growth of standalone messaging apps even as Facebook offers a free way to chat on smartphones.

One of the biggies, Kik says that it now has more than 50 million users and that people -- mostly young people -- are signing up at a rate of 200,000 a day. That's twice the rate that Kik claimed when it last released stats. Just last November, the app claimed 30 million users and said that 100,000 people were signing up each day.

"… Read more

How do you kill a FeedDemon? Apparently, all it takes is a decision from Google.

In a blog post, Nick Bradbury, the founder of the popular RSS feed manager FeedDemon, cites Google's call to shutter Google Reader on July 1 as the final "nail in the coffin" for his desktop and laptop app. Bradbury mentions numerous serious concerns, such as spending time with his family and recently being forced to take a day job, but he also talks about the inner workings of FeedDemon.

The software, he explains, relies on Reader for synchronization, "and there's … Read more

Browsing and installing all of the free software we offer at Download.com can potentially bog down your computer over time. It can be hard to resist installing something just because it is new, looks useful, or simply, is free. It is a good idea to do a house cleanup and getting rid of junk that you don't need once in a while to improve the performance of your computer. But how do you know what to remove?

It can be easy to forget which program does what and why you have it installed, making PC cleanup a nightmare. … Read more

Just days after its release, one of the most high-profile iOS jailbreaks turns out to be the fastest to be adopted too.

Evasi0n, which gives iPhone, iPod, and iPad owners deeper access to the software on their devices than Apple allows, has been downloaded and used by nearly 7 million people since its release on Monday, Forbes reports.

To put that figure in perspective, Apple last month said that it had sold more than 500 million iOS devices cumulatively, and that 300 million of those were running iOS 6 -- its latest major release.

The 7 million tally comes from … Read more

Capcom dropped a Christmas gift to the public today: the free release of Street Fighter X Megaman. It's still in all its 8-bit glory and makes my 6-year-old gamer spirit tingle with nostalgia.

SFxMM is a fan-made game cover of Megaman, an old 8-bit platformer that lived on the original Nintendo Entertaiment System since the late '80s/early '90s. The mechanics of the game are simple: run, shoot, jump and slide through each stage until you reach the boss at the end. Though the game is centered around the Blue Bomber himself, most of the fan service seems to … Read more

Bakery Story (iOS, Android) is a cute and simple interactive social networking game along the same lines as FarmVille. It's part of a series of "story" games made by the same studio (TeamLava), and just like FarmVille, it can become extremely addicting.

In Bakery Story, players open their own bakery where they can create and sell an assortment of sweets, desserts, and beverages in exchange for money (coins). The process of creating a confection is nothing more than a few taps, after which the player must wait a certain amount of time before the item is ready. … Read more

There are countless ways to find free apps for your iPhone, iPod, or iPad. You can peruse the App Store. You can subscribe to a Twitter feed like 148Apps Now Free. Heck, you can even use an app; I continue to be a fan of Appsfire Deals, which serves up a huge helping of freebies every day, right on your iDevice.

But here's the thing. Sometimes you don't want a seemingly endless list of unknown apps to wade through. You want a personal recommendation, like from a friend who says, "Hey, I found a great freebie today, … Read more