Category Archives: free software

NoteCase: a simple multiplatform (Linux, Windows, OS X) freeware to preserve the privacy of your notes!

Today in our Freeware Page we added a brief post about NoteCase a powerful note editor for Linux. In our tests we installed NoteCase on a Ubuntu 8.04 with positive results. This free software allows you to write complex notes dividing them between “nodes” and, if you need, it is also possible to easily create child notes at each level. Moreover, using NoteCase you can insert images and links to your text. Using NoteCase, for complex projects, you can decide to insert tag in each node and find them in just few clicks with the “Find” feature. Last, but not least, when you save your notes, you can decide to save them into an encrypted file. In few wordsNoteCase is one of the best freeware to manage notes using different OS without risks. Recommended!

Three interesting extensions to enjoy a real Web 2.0 experience with OpenOffice 3.0

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After more or less a month from its release, the new OpenOffice 3.0 is receiving tons of positive comments. Anyway, this week, in our Freeware page, we have posted some brief notes abut three different extensions which are able to improve your effectivenss in office routines. First of all we have ooo2gd a simple menu bar which allows you to directly upload or download all kind of documents from Google Documents and Zoho. The second one is the Sun PDF Import Extension which has been created to allow minimal but useful changes to PDF documents. After few minutes we were able to make some interesting changes to a complex PDF documents with just a couple of clicks and export the result “into a hybrid PDF file, which is a PDF with the embedded source file asODF “. Last but not least we tested Sun Presentation Minimizer: an effective extensions which cuts the size of presentations reducing, for example, the image sizes. Using Sun Presentation Minimizer you will be able to simply and freely decide what kind of changes you want to make to your multimedia files contained in the presentations. To conclude it is necessary to focus your attention on the feature that also allows Sun Presentation Minimizer to work on Microsoft PowerPoint presentations. In few words we think that these extensions are guaranteed to be 100% satisfactory!!

Appnr: an useful webpage where to find the best -ready to be installed- programs for Gnome, KDE and XFCE!

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Today in our Linux Page (in Spanish) we have posted a brief review about http://appnr.com/ an online resource page where it is possible to find a huge amount of programs ready to be installed. In few words it is possible to directly install them with just a click on the the download button on the right of the page. To take advantage of this feature please, check (once a time) to have apt url installed. If you have not apt url on your PC you can install it by terminal with sudo apt-get install apturl. Moreover the appnr.com website is very easy to explore with a very intuitive graphical menu on the left side of the screen and a powerful internal search engine. Appnr.com also contains a very practical search option which allows you to find the programs already separated between Gnome, KDE and XFCE. To sum up it is possible to affirm that appnr.com could be very useful especially when we don’t find .deb packages and don’t want to spend time manually installing programs. Anyway, to keep always my Ubuntu updated, I personally prefer to directly add repositories in Third Party Software (in System – Software Sources). Something to try!

Pictomio: the most advanced photo and video manager for Windows

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This week, in our Freeware Page we have posted a brief review about Pictomio a very good program for “3D accelerated browsing of your photo and video”. Pictomio is more advanced than many similar software and its graphic appearance is very attractive. Pictomio has a full range of commands which allow you to easily organize and manage your photographs collections in at just few clicks. I spent, more or less, one hour to understand all (I suppose) the different features supported by this freeware and, at the end, I can say that my experience has been more than positive. What negatively surprised me is that Pictomio does not allow you to upload your images and videos to ftp servers or websites like Flickr .com. To sum up, Pictomio is something you have certainly to try because in the future with more social features it could become a benchmark for photo and video manager category. Interesting!

How to publish and share nice pdf documents, newsletters or magazines using Scribd.com and Issuu.com

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More than one year ago we wrote a short post about creating pdf files using Openoffice (also in its portable version), now, in our Freeware Page, we would like to talk about two interesting Web 2.0 websites which allow you to publish and share your documents. On one hand, Scribd.com is an interesting website you can use to upload and share files in the following formats: Microsoft Word (doc, docx), Microsoft Powerpoint (ppt, pptx, pps), Microsoft Excel (xls, xlsx), PDF (pdf, ps), Open Office Documents (odt, odp, sxw, sxi, etc.), Images (jpg, png, gif, tiff) and Text Documents (txt, rtf). On the other hand, Issuu.com is very intuitive to use but very effective. Using Issuu you can upload a pdf files transforming it into a “cool magazine format”. In few words, you can modify, with just a click, your pdf file in a browsable magazine, with active links and notes. Moreover you can also insert your “brand new” magazine as a htlm widget directly in your blog or website. Recommended!

FLAC: our favourite multiplatform (Linux, Windows, MAC OS X) Free Lossless Audio Codec!

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It is true! MP3 format is the most common format we normally use in our everyday applications but MP3 is a lossy compression algorithm and it is not comparable with the quality of uncompressed audio formats as Monkey’s Audio, ALAC, WMA. This week, in our Freeware page, we posted a brief review about some particular features of FLAC: a multiplatform (Linux, Windows, MAC OS X) Free Lossless Audio Codec. Nowadays, FLAC is well and constantly supported by many music player producer. We compared FLAC and MP3 formats using the “Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G Major – Allegro” by Bach and the results were very interesting. For common listeners (as us) the audio quality was, more or less, the same but when we asked to a couple of friends (authentic music “hooligans”) to describe the difference between the two music files (FLAC and MP3) they spent more than 15 minutes of their (and our) time talking about “tones”, “pizzicato” and something else that I really do not remember at the moment! After the listening, when we compared the file extensions, we discovered that the FLAC file was five times bigger than the MP3 (25.6MB vs 5.1MB)… To conclude, we really think that FLAC represents a fantastic (and the best) lossless format for home stereo systems. On the other side, if you are not a music purist, MP3 could be the best choice for listening music on portable audio devices.

How to create free tutorials and presentations: the multiplatform Wink

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This week in our Freeware Page we have posted a brief but complete tutorial about Wink: the best free “tutorial and Presentation creation software” for Windows. We installed Wink with just few clicks and after a reboot (recommended) we were ready to try its features. Wink is easy to use, includes audio features and it is possible to add notes directly to every single frame. Anyway Winks has many output formats as Macromedia Flash, EXE, PDF, PostScript and HTML so you can decide if you prefer to create a video, a standalone .exe for pc users, a printable manual or a webpage. Moreover, Wink allows you to choose your best ratio between performance and video quality. Unfortunately its Linux version runs only with x86 computers and we have to wait next release to completely enjoy Wink’s features. Recommended!

Open Source Living and Iconlet: two multiplatform open source “mines”!

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Today, in our Linux Page (in Spanish) we have posted a brief review about two interesting websites: OpenSourceLiving.com and Iconlet.com. In particular, OpenSourceLiving contains a library of 130 multiplatform (Windows, Linux, OS X) open source software. The main menu is very intuitive and all the different sections are very simple to explore. Moreover you have the possibility to suggest open source projects which are not included in the website yet. On the other

hand, Iconlet is a search engine dedicated to icons released under the Gnu, Creative or Eclipse licenses. The “advanced search” option allows you to organize your search preselecting the image resolution, the graphic format and the license. This particular website also offers a useful plug-in for a Iconlet dedicated search field in Firefox. Last but not least, for each icon found, Iconlet provides full information about author, image resolution, graphics format and license type.

Pingdom Tools: a couple of “must have” online tools for blogger and webmasters!

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Today, in our Linux Page (in Spanish) we have posted a recension about Pindom Tools: two useful (and free) on-line tools which can be very useful for blogger and webmaster. Using Pingdom Tools you can have a fast report about the loading time of your web-pages. The Pingdom report is very easy to understand, with just one glance you are able to better understand the hierarchy and the load order of the graphic objects in your blog/site. Using Pingdom tools you can dramatically improve the time for loading your site and change all the objects, scripts, images or plugins which slow your sites. Last but not least, Pingdom offers an accurate ping and trouceroute service to better understand your network response time and track down possible errors.

MusikCube: the opensource competitor to iTunes

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In our Freeware Page we have posted a review about MusikCube, the most powerful competitor to iTunes. It is superfluous to remind that this opensource software has exactly the same features than iTunes (e.g. tags and dynamic playlist), personally I prefer to underline that MusikCube is extremely lightweight (12,792K on my XP), fast (due to the sqlite database engine), compact and easy to use (it has also a good integrated CD ripper) . Unfortunately it is not possible to personalize (or create) the skin but there are more than 20 plugins you can choose between. Moreover I tried to connect my IPod but I did not succeed; with Zen and Rio I had not any problem. To conclude, I suggest MusikCube to all people who are loking for a modern mp3player with a terrific integrated library manager!