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Clearing Up the Confusion E-Zine Vol 01 Issue 03
------- Clearing Up the Confusion E-Zine -------
Vol 1, Issue 3
Huh. OK, I'm not sure how it happened, but I somehow missed a week.
I either misremembered exactly when I sent out the last issue, or I
messed up with some basic addition and multiplication. At any rate,
my apologies for not sending out an issue last week. From this point
forward, it should be delievered to you every two weeks without fail.
I added it to my "Remember the Milk" calendar. More on that in the
future. This issue, I thought I would talk about something near and
dear to my heart: Free Software (and that's free as in "free beer").
In This Issue...
1. Article: No Credit Card Necessary
2. Blog Posts
3. Shameless Self-Promotion
4. The Fine Print
1. Article: No Credit Card Necessary
About a year ago, I wrote several blog posts about free
software. Being a somewhat frugal person, the more I can do without
taking out my credit card, the happier I am. Well, a year later, and
I still use a lot of no-cost applications. I thought I would give a
quick rundown on some of the ones that are tops on my list. You might
consider checking them out for yourself.
Let's start off with some of the big ones:
* Browser: Mozilla Firefox (http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/).
The basic functionality is pretty darn amazing. Fast loading,
advanced sites look good, tabbed windows. You name it and Firefox
probably has it. If it doesn't, check out the vast plethora of
extensions which you can add to customize your browsing experience
(https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/). You can find add-ons
which do everything from helping you keep up with the blogs you read
to temporarily disabling those annoying Flash-based advertisements.
* Email Program: Mozilla Thunderbird
(http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/). Thunderbird is
Firefox's cousin at the post office. Where Firefox makes your
browing into a pleasant, relatively hacker-free experience,
Thunderbird does the same for email. It supports most email
protocols, encrypted or not. You can extend Thunderbird, too, as
with Firefox, though the selection is a bit smaller. My only
complaint with Thunderbird is that I haven't yet found a way to
search through *all* of my mail, which is divided into several
folders and subfolders.
* "Productivity" Applications: OpenOffice.org
(http://openoffice.org/). This is the no-cost version of the
Microsoft Office suite of applications. If you need a word
processor, spreadsheet, drawing tool, presentation editor, or
database package, this has it all. Those of us who tried to save
money on our new computer by purchasing the Microsoft *Works*
package, now know that they have a real problem if someone sends
them a document originally created by MS Word or Excel.
OpenOffice.org to the rescue! It can read and write in the formats
for the corresponding MS applications.
Now, for me, that takes care of a lot of my computer usage right
there, and I didn't have to send a single dollar to anyone! Some of
the other packages I use?
* Operating System: Linux (http://www.linux.org). Specifically I use
the Fedora distribution (think of a distribution as a brand), but
there are a myriad of others out there. Linux isn't always for the
faint of heart, but if you'd like to check it out, most
distributions have what they call a "Live CD". Essentially, you
create a Live CD by downloading the contents of the CD from the
distribution website, create the CD using your computer's CD writer,
and then you can reboot the computer and it will come up as Linux,
without damaging your existing Windows set up.
* Sound Editing: Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net). You may
not have to do sound editing very often, but when you do, this
little package should have everything that you need unless you are a
professional sound engineer (and even then you can probably make
due).
* Photo/Image Processing: Picasa (http://picasa.google.com), or The
GIMP (http://www.gimp.org). The first of these is a pretty nice
package from our friends at Google. With it you can do most of the
things you might want to do to your digital photos. You can
sharpen, brighten, adjust color levels, do all sorts of special
effects, and even get rid of red-eye. If that isn't powerful enough
for you, try out the GIMP (the GNU Image Manipulation Program). It
has a pretty steep learning curve, but it is almost as powerful as
Photoshop for image manipulation, without the hefty pricetag.
I could go on and on about all kinds of great applications and
utilities, but I think you get the idea. If you'd like to find out
more about free software, especially on the Windows platform, you
should check out the Tech Support Alert site
(http://www.techsupportalert.com/). Gizmo Richards has a list of his
top 46 free utilities. If you sign up for his free newsletter, you
get access to the extended list up to 103. I'm sure you will find
something in the list to make your life a little easier (or a little
more fun).
One note of caution: Be careful from where you download your free
software. "Free" software can be loaded with adware, spyware, malware
(viruses and other nasties) which you probably don't want to mess
with. The sites I've listed above (and those in Gizmo's list) are
reputable sites with which you can feel safe. C|net (http://cnet.com)
is another safe download point.
So go out and get that software you want, without taking your credit
card out of your pocket.
Copyright 2007, Greg Peters
2. Blog Posts
Links to posts on the "Clearing Up the Confusion" Blog from the last year:
Monday, March 20, 2006 -- Free Stuff, Revisited
http://clearing-confusion.blogspot.com/2006/03/free-stuff-revisited.html
Thursday, March 01, 2007 -- Take a New Vu on Your Website
http://clearing-confusion.blogspot.com/2007/03/take-new-vu-on-your-website.html
3. Shameless Self-Promotion
The "Clearing Up the Confusion" E-Zine is a production of Greg Peters,
owner, chief cook, and bottlewasher of Cyber Data Solutions. CDS has
been helping nonprofit and charitable organizations develop their web
presence for more than a decade. Visit us on the Web at
www.cyberdatasolns.com to see how we can help your organization.
4. The Fine Print
Questions:
If you have any questions, concerns or comments regarding the Clearing
Up the Confusion E-zine, please email Greg Peters at:
gpeters@cyberdatasolns.com
This content may be forwarded in full, with copyright and contact
information intact, without specific permission, when used only in a
not for-profit format. If any other use is desired, permission in
writing from Greg Peters is required, with notification to the
original author.
We never send the "Clearing Up the Confusion" E-zine uninvited, and we
NEVER share, sell or rent our mailing list to anyone. Your privacy is
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