EverythingTech

• 29Jan

  Must have Free Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS)

  Computers 2 Comments

  Recently I had to rebuild my computer (you can tell I’m a Windows user). I just built it clean and then installed only what I thought were essential programs as I needed them. There were so many desktop programs and utilities that I didn’t realize I used often that were all Free Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) so here is my must have list for Windows:

  Firefox – Web browser that should just be part of the Windows install (IMO)

  Thunderbird – Mail Client, RSS reader

  Filezilla – FTP Client / Server

  ExtractNow – Archive utility handles zip, rar, gz, tar, 7zip, and others

  Open Office – FLOSS Microsoft Office alternative

  XPDF – Adobe Acrobate PDF reader

  DVDx – DVD to Avi, mpeg, wmv converter

  Audacity – Audio editing software

  DeepBurner - CD Burning

  VLC – Media player. Love the traffic cone

  Gimp – Photo editing software

  Pidgin – Instant messaging AIM, MSN, Jabber, ICQ, etc.

  Spybot – Anti-Spyware

  Notepad ++ – Text editor for programers

  CDeX – CD to mp3 converter

  uTorrent – BitTorrent client

  TightVNC – Remote Control

  ClamWin – Antivirus

  ProcessExplorer – Originally a Sysinternals product now owned by Mircosoft is Task manager on Crack!

• 28Jan

  Offline Gmail

  Uncategorized No Comments

  

  Gmail Logo

   

   

   

  Google announced that they will be providing a way to get to your Gmail even is you don’t have an internet connection. From Google’s blog:

  Web-based email is great because you can check it from any computer, but there’s one little catch: it’s inherently limited by your internet connection.

  By using a google application called Gears, you are able to store a copy of you gmail to your local machine. It will automatically switch between “online” and “offline” if you have an unrelaiable internet connecetion. According to the blog, the feature should eb avaible in the next fw days. This would be handy for those of us who use gmail as a searchable repository.

• 27Jan

  Win a CRAY CX1 Desk-side SUPERCOMPUTER

  Uncategorized No Comments

  Microsoft is running a promotion until Jan 31 2009 where you can win a CRAY CX1 Desk-side SUPERCOMPUTER. How much geek cred would you get if you had this bad boy under your desk?! Awesome!

  

• 25Jan

  Convert DVD to AVI MPEG or WMV using open source

  Computers 1 Comment

  I was looking to rip my DVD to a digital format like AVI or MPEG to watch on any number of portable devices. There are tons of paid software out there to do this but I am a fan of free license and open source software (FLOSS). I came across DVDx an open source DVD backup software that  copies DVD movies to VCD, SVCD, DivX, AVI or WMV in a single step.

  The installation was straight forward and it installs a link to the DVDx guide that has all the explanation needed to backup your DVDs. This has quickly become one of my must have open source software list.

• 24Jan

  Wordpress 2.7 upgrade image upload not visible

  Computers No Comments

  I finally got around to upgrading to Wordpress 2.7 and of course I ran into an issue. According to the Wordpress documentation, I backed up my folders first and then deleted them from my server. I uploaded the new Wordpress 2.7 files to my server and ran the wp-admin/upgrade.php script. After my database was updated my blog was not visible. I needed to upload my themes back up to the server as well as plugins and images. The issue I ran into was I was missing the post editor. So I had a blog that I was unable to edit. After reading a few posts, I disabled all my plugins and re-enabled them. They all required an update for Wordpress 2.7, however, the new plugin upgrade process was easy and flawless.
  That did not fix my issues.  The resolution was to download a fresh copy of Wordpress and overwrite the /wp-admin folder on my server.
  

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