Category Archives: Free Software Magazine

Pokerth: a good way to spend some hours of relax

It is vacation time and this week, in our Linux Page (in Spanish), we have posted some brief suggestion about playing Poker Texas Holdem just for fun with Pokerth. This version, optimized for Linux, has a nice graphics (e.g. you can select between different table) colors and is very intuitive to play. If you prefer, you can also play with other remote players clicking on the option you find in the below left menu. We played some good (bur not lucky) test games and the overall results were really positive. Unfortunately, tonight the pokerth.net server seems to be down… we hope tomorrow we will be lucky! Interesting.

Something to know before the release of Firefox 3.5: how to disable the geo-locating feature.

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This week in our Freeware Page we we have written a quick post about disabling geo-locating feature in the upcoming Firefox 3.5. I have always been an enthusiastic supporter of Firefox because I think it is so flexible that I can find any add-on I need for any purpose. I am also sure that the new Firefox 3.5 will be the perfect tool for my everyday navigation but there is something I am a little bit annoyed. In fact, the Firefox 3.5 will contain a default feature (which can be triggered remotely by a website you are visiting) declaring your geo-location everytime you connect to a site. This feature (previously known as project Geode by Mozilla Labs) could be useful for people involved in social networking but it is a potential wasting time feature for all the others. In fact, you have to declare if you want to automatically display your geo-location each time a website triggers this feature. For this reason, if you are not a social network addict, my personal advice is to disable this geo-locating feature as soon as you install (or update to) Firefox 3.5… (it continues in the Freeware Page).

How to build a website or blog using just free online tools. Part 1

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Today, in our Freeware Page we posted the first part of a brief research we made to discover the free online services, now available, to create webpages and posts. In particular, in this Part 1 we tested http://disposablewebpage.com/ and http://posterous.com/. Disposablewebpage is a very particular website builder because each website you create, has a life of just 90 days. It could be useful for all that temporary projects you want to share with your friends for a brief period or to reach specific goals in a bigger plan. Disposablewebpage is very simple to use but the graphic results are very basic. On the other hand, disposablewebpage allows you to invite your friends or your colleagues in order to completely share the website and the project. In our point of view, Posterous is even more interesting because it is so simple to use that everyone can develop his/her own post. We tried posterous and we were able to create and update our new test post in not more than five minutes. You can post just using your email (gmail.com, yahoo.com,hotmail.com, or aol .com); you have to insert the title in the subject field and attach all the images you want directly on your email. Recommended!

QuotePad a useful portable freeware to take notes “on the go” when in internet.

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This week, in our Freeware Page , we have added a short review about QuotePad which is a very interesting notepad that can be used to better organizing your online day by day work especially when in internet. In particular this light freeware allows you also to copy and paste large amounts of texts from web-pages and automatically recording the web-address. After coping the text you have only to go into your QuotePad and paste it using Ctr-Shift-Q. QuotePad directly memorizes the time of your “cut and paste” and allows you to write the most appropriate title for each of your notes. Moreover, clicking on “stay on top” (on the right in the upper bar) you can also stitch your notes above the browser you are using. Recommended.

How to share notes and images using thepiratebay.org satellite websites: PasteBay and bayimg

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Today, in our Freeware Page, we added a brief review about two, multiplatform free services offered by th piratebay.org. The first one is PasteBay which allows you to quickly create, save and protect (in a basic way) your own notes when browsing on internet. PasteBay is very intuitive, quick to use and effective. The only “trouble” could be the simple http connection (instead of https) and the password you choose that could be weak if you do not choose it in a proper way. The second online service offered by thepiratebay.org is bayimg which allows you to store images for your websites in 140 different formats. Each image could be uploaded till 100MB so it is possible to save online also high resolution images. We have spent five days testing the features offered by these two websites and we have really not found any problem or bug. Recommended!

Ext2fsd: an useful freeware to manage Linux partitions when running Windows

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Nowadays it is common to find PCs with more than one OS installed. Normally, when on a Linux OS, it is very simple to access Windows partitions and copy, create, delete or transfer files. Rarely, it could be also necessary to access Linux partitions (ext2 or ext3) from Windows OS but this operation it is not simple to manage. After some web-searches we have found a light and simple program which instantly allows to use Linux partitions as local disks: Ext2Fsd. In our Freeware Page we have posted a brief review about this freeware which is very simple to install (as usual we suggest to reboot your computer after the installation) and in just few clicks you will be ready to manage your Linux hard disks. We tested Ext2Fsd for a couple of weeks and we actually were satisfied from the results; in fact we have never registered any bug and all the writing – copying – deleting tasks were executed in a 100% proper way. Obviously, if you need to access a Linux partition, you are a purist and you do not want to use a Windows OS you can use a Linux Live CD. Potentially useful.

How to synchronize Gmail, Google Docs and Google Calendar with your PCs: the cross-platform Google Gears

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This week, on our Freeware Page , we have posted a brief review about Google Gears which allows you to keep, for example, your Gmail and Google Docs perfectly safe and synchronized with your computer. Google Gears does not add any new features if you think about what Thunderbird or Sunbird (now also known as Lightning) offer. On the other hand, Google Gears is very useful if we think it is very easy to setup and allows you to directly manage offline your email, documents and calendar without using other email applications. In the post we fastly show how to install Gears on your browser and how to start to use it. When you activate Google Gears a pop-up windows will remind you that this particular feature is totally experimental and you use it on your own risk but for our personal experience Google Gears works very well, in particular we really appreciated its Flaky option which allows you to synchronize your datas without “burning” too much band. When you are on a public PC you can also click on – load with offline disabled – button (on the below right corner) soon after the login window. Interesting!!

Easily backup your datas and save some energy: two interesting freeware for XP and Vista!

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This week, in our Freeware Page, we posted a review about two interesting freeware for Windows: FBackup and edison. FBackup is a powerful software which allows you to easily manage and plan your backups. All the menus are very intuitive and it is possible to back up files also when they are in use. Fbackup is very well structured and allows you to decide when, what, how (zip files or exact copies) and when backup your datas. On the other hand, edison is a simple freeware, developed to helpXP and Vista users to save more energy. Edison contains some simple setups which allow you to determine the best energy “saving” configuration depending your needs. This program can not be considered “revolutionary” but certainly helps to organize our PC, in a more efficient way. To conclude, we really think that using this freeware, we could benefit of some budget savings (in theory it is even possible to calculate your saving when using the dedicated menu). Recommended!

How to easily check HD health using a cross platform software: GSmartControl 0.8.3

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GSmartControl is a multiplatform (Windows, OS X, Linux) freeware drive health inspection tool which is very useful in all that case when you think something is not working perfectly on your HD. Today, in our Linux Page (in Spanish) we have posted a brief comment about this software which basically is the graphical user interface for smartct. The program is very intuitive and easy to use; it automatically detects all your internal HDs (with some external USB disks we had some problems because they were detected as unknown) and let you decide if you want to activate the SMART feature. This particular feature let you “predict certain kinds of failures with certain chance of success” so you have a better chance to avoid HD crashes and all the consequent data loss. If you prefer, clicking on the “Enable Auto Offline Data Collection” the HDs will be tested every four hours without impacting your CPU performance. I would like to focus your attention that GSmartControl is very well developed and it is possible to download many “personalized” versions for all the main Linux distributions, OS X and Windows. Last but not least, do not forget that SMART could predict some HD crashes but it is not 100% safe; for this reason we strongly recommend you to backup your PCs, at least every week!

How to create a terrific slideshow in just three steps using Animoto.

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This week, in our Freeware Page, we have posted some brief comments about the free part of services offered by Animoto, a Web 2.0 website which allows you to create short free multimedia slideshows. Using Animoto, it is possible to make a 30 seconds video clip which directly melts your images/photographs with a soundtrack you can freely select in their data bank. The link of the video will be sent directly to your email and to all your friends if you prefer. Obviously, a paid subscription allows you to obtain longer videos with HD quality but, after some tests, we were actually satisfied from the Animoto slideshow we had obtained without paying anything. It is a pity we had so many problems when we decided to use Linux OSs to test Animoto… Something to try if you like to show some photos on your website (especially if you have a dark background).