Frozonfreak here

25 Crazy Cake Designs

noreply@blogger.com (i lik 2 blog) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 14:57:00 +0000

clipped from abduzeedo.com

25 Crazy Cake Designs

India from above

noreply@blogger.com (i lik 2 blog) — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 05:24:00 +0000

clipped from www.desinuts.com

India from above

clipped from www.desinuts.com

Life in Desert

noreply@blogger.com (i lik 2 blog) — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 06:32:00 +0000

clipped from artsytime.com

Life in the Desert

Best of Photojournalism 2003

noreply@blogger.com (i lik 2 blog) — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 07:22:00 +0000

clipped from bop.nppa.org

This is the money being made TODAY in Open Source

noreply@blogger.com (i lik 2 blog) — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 16:31:00 +0000

There is a lot of money being made in Open Source, although the profitable companies are not always the ones you would expect.

While many companies don’t disclose detailed financial information we have dug around to find numbers for some well-known open source companies and projects to see how they are doing financially.

We start with perhaps the most famous of them all…

Mozilla

Mozilla has the famous Firefox web browser and the Thunderbird email client. In 2006 the Mozilla Corporation generated $66.8 million in revenue with 85% of the revenue coming from Google for being the default search engine and ads placed on search result pages. Google and Mozilla recently extended the deal to 2011 (just before Google launched Chrome, ironically).

Sources: Wikipedia, TechCrunch.

Canonical

Ubuntu Linux is hugely popular, but it actually isn’t profitable. At least not yet. Canonical is the company behind Ubuntu. It was founded by Mark Shuttleworth who previously founded Thawte, which he sold for about $575 million, some of which he is now using to fund Canonical. Shuttleworth recently went on record saying that Canonical is not yet cash-flow positive but that he is happy to keep funding it for another three to five years.

Source: The Guardian.

Alfresco

Alfresco is an open source alternative for enterprise content management. The company has received a total of $19 million in venture capital. According to the founder and CEO, John Powell, the company is heading towards profitability and an annual run rate of $10 million in revenue. Powell also believes that Alfresco will be able to go public in 2009.

Source: Venturebeat.

Novell

Novell is a software development company that holds open source projects such as openSUSE Linux in addition to their closed software. Novell’s yearly revenue outlook for 2008 is expected to be between $940 and $970 million. Their SUSE Linux Enterprise sales rose 65% to $28 million in the first quarter of 2008.

Source: CNET.

Funambol

Funambol is an open source mobile synchronization server described as “Mobile 2.0” that is offering its product for free to enterprises and instead gets its revenue from service providers. They have received a total of $25 million in funding and are cash-flow positive. Funambol may go public in the future.

Sources: TechCrunch, CNET.

Sun Microsystems

Sun offers both hardware and software but is known for its open source software such as Java, Star Office, OpenSolaris and lately its huge acquisition of MySQL.
It is difficult to isolate what kind of money Sun is making off open source since it is such a large company, but MySQL’s revenue was around $50 million in 2006, and it was not losing money.

Sun’s CEO, Jonathan Schwartz, has said, “Looking forward, we remain confident in open source innovation as the accelerant to our growth strategy through increased adoption of our open source offerings.”

Sources: Ostatic, CNET.

Red Hat

Red Hat is an open source software company with the Red Hat Enterprise Linux distribution and software such as JBOSS. In the first quarter of the fiscal year 2009, Red Hat pulled in $156.6 million, an increase of 32% compared to the previous year, and had $491.8 million in deferred revenue.

Source: CNET.

Yahoo

Yahoo is most famous for its search engine and Web 2.0 services such as Flickr, although it holds open source projects such as the groupware software Zimbra which it bought in 2007 for $350 million. Zimbra had about $20 million in bookings before the acquisition.

Source: CNET.

SugarCRM

SugarCRM is an open source CRM system which has received $41 million in funding. Their annual revenue for 2007 was about $15 million and they where cash-flow positive.

Sources: TechCrunch, MSPmentor.

Nokia

Nokia wasn’t known as an open source company until they acquired Trolltech, the makers of the Qt graphical user interface framework used in for example KDE. Trolltech went public in 2006 and was bought by Nokia in 2008 for about $104 million. Their revenue was then about €25 million with total losses around €6 million for the last couple of years.

Source: KDE Developers.

The 5 Hardest Games in the Online World

noreply@blogger.com (i lik 2 blog) — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 13:17:00 +0000

I’ve played a wide variety of games throughout my life so far, ranging from Spyro the (cute little) Dragon and Crash Bandicoot to the more controversial Grand Theft Auto and Manhunt series.

During my search for new games, I encountered some games that were more - special.

Frankly, some of these games made you pull out all of your hair before you were done.

For this article, I’ve searched for the hardest (free) games in the world. Believe me when I say it will be frustrating. It will seem impossible. And if you don’t die and fail a few hundred times before succeeding, you’re just not trying hard enough.

If this seems too much for you, please turn back now. Failure will be an option - nearly a necessity before succeeding. If you can find the courage, follow me into the gaming pit of doom.

5. La Mulana

You’re an adventurer, and armed with nothing but a whip, you choose to invade the tomb of La Mulana. Like always, these tombs are far from empty, and trespassers are not particulary celebrated.

There are many items to be found in the game, many of which will contribute to the story, and some that will grant you additional abilities and weapons.

Remarkable for this 2D platformer, is that the story is non-linear. Yes, the ending will always be the same - if you manage to reach it - but there are tons of different ways to get there.

The game was originally released in Japanese, but an English patch was made available by Ian Kelley of AGTP. So you’ll need to download and install both the original game and the English patch.

4. World’s Hardest Game #2

The fourth place is taken by a flash game - the World’s Hardest Game 2 (talking about paradoxes).

The game looks ridiculously simple, but don’t be fooled; many brave men and women went down because of carelessness.

You play with the red square. Your objective is to grab all the coins and return to one of the green patches. There’s only one obstacle; the little blue balls. Touch those and you’re done for.

Easy, right?

The problem is that these little blue balls constantly move around, which creates a deadly maze that you need to get through.

Instead of showing you the number of lives you’ve got left, the game chooses to mock you with the number of lives you’ve lost so far. Play through all fifty insane levels, and you’ll hold a name of honor.

If you enjoyed playing this game, you should also check out the first game of the series.

3. Japanese Mario Kitten (dl)

Our bronze medal goes to this Japanese Mario-like game.

The game has a high degree of randomness, which takes the difficulty to a whole new level, so don’t be surprised when you hit invisible bricks or get killed by the clouds from time to time.

Many people claim that because of this, completing it is more a matter of memory than of skill. But whatever the cause, the difficulty of this game is undeniable.

The game can be played out of your browser on this page, or you can download it here.

2. FLaiL

Being the second hardest game available, FLaiL receives the silver medal.

FLaiL is an acrobatic 2D platformer, in which you need to hike, jump and even fly accross the level to reach a red beam. The difficulty of this game lies not in any randomness, but - as you can see in the screenshot below - in the insanity of the level designs. Even the tutorials are pretty hard, and it doesn’t get any easier.

Play through the 80 available stages by yourself or in co-operation mode. It’s also possible to add a third player, who then occupies himself with dropping bombs to make it even more difficult!

1. I Wanna Be The Guy

By far the hardest game ever made, I Wanna Be The Guy.

I admit, if you manage to finish this game, you’ll be one hell of a guy.

You’re playing the role of Kid, who’s on the dangerous quest of becoming a guy. The game is frustrating at times, but wonderfully designed and hosts several cool references to old school classics - like the tetris level.

This game manages to combine utterly insane level designs with bits of randomness. You see the screenshot above? Chances are pretty good that a few of those spikes will try to attack you in mid-air.

Similar to Japanese Mario Kitten, remembering the oddities of each level plays at least as big of a role as your skill. However, if you manage to beat this game, you will be amongst the elite few.

Source

Blogged with the Flock Browser

NATURE’S BEST PHOTOGRAPHY AWARDS

noreply@blogger.com (i lik 2 blog) — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 08:33:00 +0000

clipped from fishki.net

Amazing corn field pics

noreply@blogger.com (i lik 2 blog) — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 08:32:00 +0000

clipped from www.linkinn.com

corn field

Best images of April 2008

noreply@blogger.com (i lik 2 blog) — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 08:31:00 +0000

clipped from www.marcofolio.net

7 Movies That Required Scientific Inaccuracy To "Make Sense"

noreply@blogger.com (i lik 2 blog) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 17:09:00 +0000

Yes, we know that when it comes to film you have to suspend your disbelief willfully. We accepted that Hamlet spoke to the ghost of his dead father, and we accept that Demi Moore's life was saved by the ghost of her dead husband. You could watch Lord Of The Rings and understand that it's fantasy. But sometimes, you're like "That would NEVER happen" no matter how much disbelief you're willing to suspend. You could suspend 100 disbeliefs, but sometimes, movies will require you to suspend 101 disbeliefs. Here are some movies that say "Here is a thing that can happen." And then you're like "Wait, no. This is untrue." Oh, also, sometimes not the entire movie is scientifically inaccurate, just certain parts.

7.) Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull

What It Should Have Been Called:

There Are A Lot More Problems In This Movie Than Just The Science

What Was Scientifically Inaccurate About It:

Indiana Jones decides that it's fun playing in a nuclear test town, so he goes to one. Soon, a nuclear test bomb is dropped, and everything is violently exploded. Indiana Jones is also exploded in the explosion, but he was smart enough to hide inside of a lead-lined refrigerator, which not only throws him about a mile from where it started, but Indiana Jones manages to climb out and say "Not even radiation poisoning can hurt me." Then some dudes scrub down his old, naked, and surprisingly (delightfully) muscular body.

What Would Have Happened Without Fake Science?

The truth is, no amount of man-scrubbing would prevent Indiana Jones from being melted by a shit-load of radioactive fallout. Instead of running around with Shia Labeouf, he would be writing his last will and testament. Which would be amazing actually. Can you imagine the stuff he would be able to give away?

6.) Jurassic Park

What It Should Have Been Called:

Mosquito Stomach's Are Amazing At Preserving Anything, Especially DNA

What's Scientifically Inaccurate About It:

Not only is Dr. John Hammond's company able to find one mosquito with enough DNA to build an entire dinosaur but they're able to find countless mosquito's carrying the DNA of countless types of dinosaurs to effectively grow a dinosaur zoo until the dinosaurs realize they are dinosaurs and can eat pretty much whatever they want forever. Also, there is plenty of dinosaur related foliage hanging around and apparently modern day air is exactly the same as air from the Jurassic period and other dinosaur related periods. Over the period of time that the DNA was "preserved" it would have undoubtedly been destroyed and obviously unusable. Which sucks, because who wouldn't want to go to an island of dinosaurs?

What Would Have Happened Without Fake Science?

Nothing, unfortunately. No hilarious goat-eating scene, no lawyer getting bitten in half by a T. rex, and certainly no Sam Neill "lips-slowly-parting-to-show-shock" shots.

5.) Lost In Space

What It Should Have Been Called:

One Lost In Space Was Enough

What Was Inaccurate About It:

This one gets more of a pass because it's Lost In Space. If you were lost in space in real life you wouldn't be lost in space for very long because space would eat your soul. The thing that made us really mad was that the guys in this movie are in a predicament and say "We should probably fly through the Sun, because even though space is infinitely huge, our best bet is to simply fly through the sun." The sun is as wide as 109 Earths. The Sun's surface is 5,778º K or 9,990º F, which makes us wonder why Kelvin is even necessary in this scenario because both numbers are ridiculously high. The core of the sun is estimated at 15.6 x 10^6 K. We aren't aware of a substance that the sun can't burn the shit out of. Even if Matt Leblanc has made his spacecraft out of it.

What Would Have Happened Without Fake Science?

People would still have hated this movie but been unable to cite the "flying through the sun" scene as reason why.

4.) Speed

What It Should Have Been Called:

Buses Can Do Whatever We Want Them To Do

What Was Scientifically Inaccurate About It:

A terrorist puts a bomb on a bus and the bomb will explode when the bus, after reaching 50 mph, will explode when it goes under 50 mph. This takes place in Los Angeles, a place renowned for its insane amount of traffic. Luckily for police officer Keanu Reeves, the traffic is only a problem for a few minutes, then it goes away. Also, Dennis Hopper is nice enough to put a light on the SPEEDometer to show the exact moment they reach 50 mph and when they will go under 50 mph. Another interesting thing about the bus is that it can fly. It manages to fly over a 50 foot gap of missing freeway. When it hits the ground, the bus yells "Boo-yah!" and continues on, excited that it was the first bus in history to fly. Without a ramp of some sort, the bus wouldn't have made the jump. And if it did, it would have been so damaged it wouldn't have been able to maintain 50 mph. Also, Ferris Buehler's friend Cameron is in it.

What Would Have Happened Without Fake Science?

Keanu, Sandra Bullock, and Ferris Buehler's friend Cameron all get blown up.

3.) Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

What It Should Have Been Called:

Chinese People Are Magical

What Was Scientifically Inaccurate About It:

Chinese people can't fly.

What Would Have Happened Without Fake Science?

Non-flying sword fights. Still awesome.

2.) The Day After Tomorrow

What It Should Have Been Called:

We Pollute So Much That The Earth's Climate Will Change In Less Than Two Hours

What Was Inaccurate About It:

The ocean suddenly decides it needs to be warmer than it used to be, which is a problem because ice hates warmth. Then all this polar ice melts and the ocean decides to drown New York City. Jake Gyllenhaal leads everyone to safety because his dad is Dennis Quaid and is the only person in the world who understands weather. Then there is a storm that freezes everything instantly somehow and wild wolves who are apparently taking a vacation to New York City chase Jake and his friends for some reason. Science tells us that while climate change is definitely possible (occurring right now), it wouldn't change the entire globe's climate in a few days. Also, Dennis Quaid manages to walk to New York City through the deadly weather from Washington D.C. to save Jake so Jake and his brother Randy Quaid can be in Brokeback Mountain.

What Would Have Happened Without Fake Science?

Nothing! Everyone would just be walking around a normal, non-homocidal-weather earth. The action would probably have to fast forward 70 years, showing a world where everyone is sweating, white Christmas's are a thing of the past, and Al Gore, long dead, receives thousands of "Sorry we didn't listen" letters every day on his grave.

1.) Armageddon

What It Should Have Been Called:

Anyone Can Save The World By Landing A Spacecraft On A Gigantic Asteroid And Then Blowing It Up With A Nuclear Bomb

What Was Scientifically Inaccurate About It:

Sure, even Michael Bay said that this movie is implausible. But is that going to stop anyone from taking the opportunity to tear one of his movies apart? Some scientists who saw the movie concluded that there were over 160 things that were retarded. That's how they said it; "We're scientists and the only way we can describe the things in this movie is by saying they're retarded."

Before the gigantic asteroid hits Earth, some smaller asteroids lead the way, where they manage to wreak havoc on only major cities instead of hitting the 70% of surface area the oceans provide, again proving that asteroids can't swim. Then, the world tells Bruce Willis and his friends to be astronauts. They realize they could be astronauts in as little as a few days, completely bypassing the normal "years" timeframe for most pussy astronauts. Then a crew flies a spacecraft directly onto an asteroid that, even though is moving fast, it's not TOO fast for America. Then they blow up the asteroid after drilling into it like it's a piece of the Earth, which it's not.

Other things that made us angry were when Bruce Willis was like; "To find out who has to stay and die we will pull straws." And someone was like "Well, where are we going to get straws?" And another person was like "Good thing I happened to bring my straw collection, complete with a short one, just for this sort of situation." Luckily, Ben Affleck pulls the short one. Unluckily, Bruce Willis decides that Ben Affleck is too important to die and still has to make Gigli and bang Jennifer's Lopez and Garner so he saves his life.

We were most angered by the fact that Bruce Willis was the only character that wanted to kill Ben Affleck.

What Would Have Happened Without Fake Science?

Earth gets murdered.

45 Rules for Creating a Great Logo Design

noreply@blogger.com (i lik 2 blog) — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 13:03:00 +0000

Do not use more than three colors.
Get rid of everything that is not absolutely necessary.
Type must be easy enough for your grandma to read.
The logo must be recognizable.
Create a unique shape or layout for the logo.
Completely ignore what your parents and/or spouse think about the design.
Confirm that the logo looks appealing to more than just three (3) individuals.
Do not combine elements from popular logos and claim it as original work.
Do not use clipart under any circumstances.
The logo should look good in black and white.
Make sure that the logo is recognizable when inverted.
Make sure that the logo is recognizable when resized.
If the logo contains an icon or symbol, as well as text, place each so that they compliment one another.
Avoid recent logo design trends. Instead, make the logo look timeless.
Do not use special effects (including, but not limited to: gradients, drop shadows, reflections, and light bursts).
Fit the logo into a square layout if possible, avoid obscure layouts.
Avoid intricate details.
Consider the different places and ways that the logo will be presented.
Invoke feelings of being bold and confident, never dull and weak.
Realize that you will not create a perfect logo.
Use sharp lines for sharp businesses, smooth lines for smooth businesses.
The logo must have some connection to what it is representing.
A photo does not make a logo.
You must surprise customers with presentation.
Do not use more than two fonts.
Each element of the logo needs to be aligned. Left, center, right, top, or bottom.
The logo should look solid, with no trailing elements.
Know who is going to be looking at the logo before you think of ideas for it.
Always choose function over innovation.
If the brand name is memorable, the brand name should be the logo.
The logo should be recognizable when mirrored.
Even large companies need small logos.
Everyone should like the logo design, not just the business that will use it.
Create variations. The more variations, the more you are to get it right.
The logo must look consistent across multiple platforms.
The logo must be easy to describe.
Do not use taglines in the logo.
Sketch out ideas using paper and pencil before working on a computer.
Keep the design simple.
Do not use any “swoosh” or “globe”symbols.
The logo should not be distracting.
It should be honest in it's representation.
The logo should be balanced visually.
Avoid bright, neon colors and dark, dull colors.
The logo must not break any of the above rules.

source

Desktop Security 101: A Quick Course In Safer Computing

noreply@blogger.com (i lik 2 blog) — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 13:01:00 +0000

1. Keep your passwords strong, and keep them in your head.

The single biggest computing security problem today, as it has been for decades, is poor selection, maintenance and protection of user passwords. Most systems still rely heavily on passwords for authenticating user access, and human nature being what it is, people tend to choose passwords that are easy for themselves to remember - the dog's name, daughter's birthday, favorite singer, etc. - and in many cases, they will write the password down on a post-it note and stick it on the monitor where they (and anyone else) can see it as a reminder. Or, they will choose a word at random from the dictionary, thinking "no one could possibly guess".

Password "cracking" is a favorite activity of people who get their kicks trying to break into computer systems, and the power of modern computers has given them some very effective tools to do it with. "Cracking dictionaries" can try not only every English dictionary word, but also well-known phrases, slang words, substitutions (e.g., "time2go") and a surprising number of other obscure things. In 2002, Penn Information Security was asked to find out why "zzyzzx" would not meet PennKey password criteria. On investigation, it turned out that it's a word from a popular video game of the late 1980s, and does in fact appear in a number of cracking dicitionaries.

Penn recommends that, in choosing a strong password, you choose one that is at least 6 characters long, but less than 16 (some systems may require them to be longer/shorter), that it be a mixture of at least three of the following: UPPERCASE (A-Z), lowercase (a-z), digits (0-9), special characters (@#$%&*, etc.). It should not contain whole dictionary words, and should avoid names or phrases that people with personal knowledge of you might be able to guess. One technique often recommended is to think of a phrase that has meaning only to you (it can even be nonsensical) and take the first letter of each word to "assemble" your password. For example, "Orange elephants invade Alaska; film at eleven" would yield 'OeiA;fae' as the password. For even better security, replace "at" with "@" and "eleven" with "11", for a password of 'OeiA;f@11'. (Note: "Orange elephants..." is a famous example - don't use this as your password). It's also a good idea to change your password periodically, and some system administrators will require this (and will enforce strong password selection as well). Above all, don't share your password with anyone, and don't write it down - the only secure place for your password is in your head.

It is slowly becoming more common for operating systems (Windows XP, for one) to permit use of "passphrases", which are essentially the same thing as passwords, but can be much longer and can include spaces and punctuation. Though they take a few more seconds to type in, passphrases tend to be exponentially more secure than passwords, especially if you mix upper/lower case, digits and special characters as recommended with passwords. Many people also find that passphrases are actually easier to remember than passwords.

Unfortunately, with more and more computing resources becoming available, we all have more and more different account names and passwords to remember. With the introduction of PennKey in October, 2002, this has become somewhat less of a problem at Penn as more and more campus computing resources provide user authentication via PennKey. It is tempting to try and use the same password for all your accounts, but as noted above, different systems have differing parameters with regard to password length, etc., so it will likely not be possible to have one, single password for everything. More to the point, it is recommended that you not use your PennKey password, or any other Penn passwords for outside computing resources. This helps prevent unauthorized access to your Penn data in the event your "non-Penn" password is cracked.

2. Don't open it - you don't know where it's been...

Without a doubt, the Number One method by which viruses, trojans, worms and "backdoor" programs are propagated is via e-mail attachments, and this is particularly true with computers running Microsoft Windows. More often than not, if you receive an attachment that you weren't expecting, or is from someone you don't know (and don't know why they're sending it), chances are that the attachment carries some variety of "malware" just waiting for you to set it loose by opening the attachment, particularly if the attachment has a filename extension of .exe, .pif, .scr or .vba (this is not a complete list, though). One of the favorite tricks of virus writers, et al, is to hide the virus in an attachment that, when run, produces a clever or entertaining animation on the screen that people like to forward on to all their friends without thinking.

So, in short: if you get an email attachment, unless you feel very confident about what it is, where it came from, and why it was sent to you - DON'T OPEN IT! At the very least, scan it with your anti-virus software to see if anything is lurking inside.

Speaking of which...

3. Get anti-virus software. Use it. Keep it up to date.

Penn makes this very easy to do for Windows and Macintosh users by providing site-licensed copies of Symantec Anti-Virus (SAV) for both operating systems to Penn users at no cost. To obtain a copy, visit the Computing Resource Center and pick up the PennConnect CD, or visit the Supported Products website at http://www.upenn.edu/computing/product/.Once installed, be sure to update the virus signature files (a very easy process) on a regular basis. Weekly, at the very least. Daily is even better, though daily changes aren't always made by the vendors.

Although it is true that unix and linux users (this includes Mac OS X, which is essentially a unix-type operating system) are substantially less likely to acquire a virus infection on their system, it is possible, and Mac- and linux-specific viruses have appeared in the last couple of years. There are anti-virus software applications available for these systems, and some of them are open-source, i.e., free.

4. If you can't trust the source you're downloading from, you can't trust the file.

The ability to transfer files back and forth - "uploading" and "downloading" - has been the backbone of the Internet since its inception in the early 1970s, and with the rise of peer-to-peer ("P2P") networks like KaZaa over the last few years, "file-swapping" and downloading are as popular as ever. In most cases, such as purchasing and downloading application software from a well-known commercial website, there's a high level of confidence that you're dealing with reputable people, and the transaction is usually done using a secured connection. There are many cases, though, where you can't be entirely sure who or what is at the other end, and whether or not you can trust the files you're getting from them. As with e-mail attachments (see #2 above), it's a good idea to run downloaded files through your anti-virus software (see #3 above) before opening or installing them. Also, if you're running peer-to-peer sharing software, get in the habit of reviewing the sharing settings of not only the directory you use for file-swapping, but your entire directory structure to make sure that nothing has been changed without your knowledge. And, be on the lookout for the sudden appearance of files that you don't recognize and/or don't recall downloading. "Mystery" files may be a signal that someone has gained access to your system beyond what you intended.

5. Don't leave a computer you're logged into unattended or unprotected.

This is very important not only when using your personal computer in your office or dorm room, but also when you are using public lab computers that are used by many other people, often in rapid succession. If you forget to log off a lab computer after finishing your session, you give the next person at the keyboard an open door into your account which they can use to read your email, personal financial information and other sensitive data. They could even change your password and lock you out of your own account!

Even in your office or dorm room (especially if you're in an "open suite" or a "cubicle warren"), if you get up and leave your computer unattended for no more than a few moments you provide an opportunity for someone to physically compromise your system. It takes less than a minute to install a backdoor program that will allow them complete remote access and control, or "spyware" that shows them everything you look at on your screen and everything you type on your keyboard.

All the major operating systems provide the ability to "lock" and password-protect the screen and system so that an unauthorized person with physical access cannot tamper with your computer. It's easy to say, "I'll only be gone a minute," only to get roped into that card game going on down the hall, or an extended chat at the water cooler. It's a good habit to get into to either log out or lock the system every time you get up.

6. Data on paper is the same as data on the screen.

Sometimes it's necessary to print out copies of important or sensitive data. If you have sensitive printouts, don't leave them lying around where unauthorized, prying eyes can see them. The data is just as sensitive and confidential on a printed page as it is on a computer screen, and if you don't want it read on the monitor, you probably don't want it read anywhere else. Keep important printouts in a secure location, and when you don't need them anymore, don't just throw them in the waste basket - shred them. Personal shredders ("cross-cut" preferred over "strip") are inexpensive and very useful in not only disposing of confidential printouts, but also junk mail, credit card offers and other printed material that may contain information about you that could be useful to identity thieves.

7. Your operating system needs to live and breathe. Don't let it get stale.

"Hackers" are continually probing and testing for vulnerabilities in all the major computer operating systems (this goes for mainframes as well), and are generally pretty adept at finding them. When this happens, the company that markets and distributes the operating system rushes to develop a "patch" to fix the problem and makes it available at no charge to users of the operating system. The problem is, many users rarely if ever check for availability of patches and system upgrades, let alone apply them. This is why the Code Red (I & II) and Nimda worms were able to spread so rapidly during the summer of 2001. They targeted and compomised systems that were running unpatched versions of Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS), even though the patch had been available for more than a year.

Along with weak passwords and virus-spreading e-mail attachements, unpatched computer systems constitute one of the premier security threats on the Internet. A compomised system threatens not only your personal data, it can be "hijacked" for use in remote proxy attacks such as a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), thereby becoming a threat to someone else's computer. DON'T LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU! All the major operating system vendors, including Microsoft, offer mechanisms that will allow you to regularly check for updates and apply them relatively easily if they are available. Keeping your system at "current patch level" is not an iron-clad guarantee that your system will never be hacked, but it's a heck of a good start

Likewise, there's often a security aspect to individual software applications (word processing, spreadsheet, database, etc.) as well. When updates appear (though they're not usually free in these cases), it's a good practice to see if there's a security update included.

8. Don't use it? Lose it.

All the major operating systems come packaged with all sorts of application and server software (the marketers call them "features"), and a major problem is that not only do they often turn these services on by default, they frequently give you very little explanation about what they do and little flexibility with regard to configuration settings. In general, the more services you have running on your computer, the more potential targets you have for hackers to exploit (see "IIS" in #7 above), not to mention slowing down your computer running things you don't need. These services include well-known, standard things like ftp, telnet, Samba, SQL, SMTP (e-mail server), Apache (web server) and others. If you really have use or need to run, for example, an ftp server, then go ahead and set it up, but make sure you fully understand the configuration, operation and potential vulnerabilities. Otherwise, if you don't need it, don't run it.

When considering what services should be running on your system, here are a few easy rules of thumb:

If you don't know what it is or what it does, don't turn it on. In most every case, if you find out later that you need it, you can go back and turn it on.
If it's on, and you don't need it, turn it off.
If it's off, and you don't need it, don't turn it on.

9. Watch out for those "Social Engineers".

No, we're not talking about extroverted locomotive drivers. "Social engineering" is a term that has come into use in the computer security field over the last few years to describe the activities of what are, essentially, con men (and women). Their game is to get someone to willingly give them privileged information by exploiting some combination of:

A) The innate, good-natured desire to be of help to a fellow human being.
B) The belief that everyone basically honest.
C) The person's current state of being extremely busy and distracted.
D) The belief that bad things happen only to other people.
E) Stupidity.
F) All of the above.

A social engineer is the kind of guy who will walk into a busy office in a manner that suggests he belongs there, announce he's been sent to fix the president's computer, impatiently demand to be shown where it is, then calmly say, "I need his user name and password - what are they?", secure in the knowledge that someone will at least try to get the information for him. Sometimes he'll call on the phone and say, "This is Joe from the Help Desk. There's a problem with your account I'm trying to fix, and I need your password to test it."

In short, social engineers use trickery, subterfuge, human nature and sheer audacity to collect nuggets of information they can put together in a way that tells them more about the "Big Picture", thus making it easier for them to make the "Big Score". To thwart them, it takes little more than paying attention to who is around, what they're doing, and being aware of whether or not it's appropriate for them to be there and doing that. In other words, common sense.

10. Scanning is a two-way street.

At any given time, the Internet is buzzing with people using scanning software to survey entire networks at a time, searching for vulnerable machines to direct attacks at. You may feel like "nothing I have on my computer is worth protecting, and they wouldn't bother with me anyway", but the truth is that any vulnerable machine is a target that can be put to use for all sorts of things when compomised (see "DDoS" in #7 above). And, when you come down to it, some hackers like to take over someone else's system for no other reason than to show that they can.

source

Ladies vs Real Women

noreply@blogger.com (i lik 2 blog) — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 05:55:00 +0000

Ladies - If you accidentally over-salt a dish while it's still cooking, drop in a peeled potato and it will absorb the excess salt for an instant "fix-me-up."

Real Women - If you over-salt a dish while you are cooking, that's too damn bad. Please recite with me, The Real Women's motto: "I made it and you will eat it and I don't care how bad it tastes."

---

Ladies - Cure for headaches: Take a lime, cut it in half and rub it on your forehead. The throbbing will go away.

Real Women - Take a lime, mix it with tequila, chill and drink.You might still have the headache, but who cares?

---

Ladies - Stuff a miniature marshmallow in the bottom of a sugar cone to prevent ice cream drips.

Real Women - Just suck the ice cream out of the bottom of the cone, for Pete's sake. You're probably lying on the couch, with your feet up, eating it anyway.

---

Ladies - To keep potatoes from budding, place an apple in the bag with the potatoes.

Real Women - Buy boxed mashed potato mix and keep it in the pantry for up to a year.
---

Ladies - When a cake recipe calls for flouring the baking pan, use a bit of the dry cake mix instead and there won't be any white mess on the inside of the cake.

Real Women - Go to the bakery - they'll even decorate it for you.

---

Ladies - Brush some beaten egg white over pie crust before baking to yield a beautiful glossy finish.

Real Women - Directions on Sara Lee frozen pies don't include brushing egg whites over the crust, so I just don't do it.

---

Ladies - If you have a problem opening jars, try using latex dish washing gloves. They give a non slip grip that makes opening jars easy.

Real Women - Go ask the very cute neighbor guy to do it.

---

And finally, the most important tip

Ladies - Don't throw out all that leftover wine. Freeze into ice cubes for future use in casseroles and sauces.

Real Women - Leftover wine??!?!?!

Source

Top 50+ Wallpaper Websites

noreply@blogger.com (i lik 2 blog) — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 18:37:00 +0000

Platinum Studio -
Aeiko.net - An exhibition of nature themed desktop wallpapers created by designers worldwide
MoodFlow - Dreams come alive - hand made, dreamy art wallpapers
End Effect - About one hundred graphic wallpapers
Wooden Fish - Blog with original wallpapers (also wide screen format)
Socksoff.co.uk - Wallpapers gallery, with possibility to post wallpaper with back link.
Digital Blasphemy - Providing Wallpapers from 1997. Dual-screen wallpapers available 3840 x 1200
Neon Sight Japan - Neon Sight Japan Wallpaper Collection 2007
Souldcore - HQ original wallpapers, mostly 1280×1024
Wallpaper Joe - Desktop wallpapers gallery (mostly 1024×768)
VladStudio.com - Great wallpapers, plus tutorials “how to”
PimpMyDesk - Main categories - Babes (26) Cars (12) Landscapes (63) Vectors (275)
Indeepop.com - Colorful Design Wallpapers
Dugnet.com - Linux/penguin’s Wallpapers
Artlebedev - Design studio creates HQ wallpapers with symbolic barcode logo on each one of them. The most creative wallpapers I ever seen!
InterfaceList - Free High-Resolution Widescreen Wallpaper
MacDesktops - Personalize your MacDesktops experience
Wallpaper Stock - Huge collection, a lot of categories, ultra high resolutions
Quality Wallpapers - Only the very best desktop wallpapers
DeviantArt - Collection of wallpapers from designers all over the world
Shadowness - Dark side design wallpapers
Free Wallpaper - Collected +50.000 wallpapers for you to download
Free Digital Wallpaper - 3d and abstract wallpapers, animals, nature, space, humor and places
Mapa.co.kr - Some Wallpapers from Japan designers
GetSkinned - Stuff for skinning your OS, wallpapers included
Shifted Reality - Original 3D and photography wallpapers for your computer desktop
Club VAIO - VAIO club, wallpapers included
WinModify.com - Wallpapers, skins, icons! Pimp your windows!
CrystakXP - Many wallpapers, sometimes - 1920×1200
KDE-Look.org - Eye candy for your KDE Desktop
Customize.org - Wallpapers community
WinCustomize.com - Home for skins, wallpapers, themes, icons and all you need to customize PC
NetCarShow - Offers thousands of high quality car pictures and car wallpapers
Exotic Car Wallpapers - Thousands of high quality professional photographs of everything automotive
Desktop Machine - Cars, babes, movies, bikes, ultra high resolutions
Mycarwallpapers.com - Thousands of high quality car pictures and car wallpapers
Getcarwallpapers.com - Car wallpapers with high quality to beautify your screens with them
3couleurs - Firefox wallpapers
9x Media - Multi monitor, high resolution wallpapers (3840×1024)
Desktop Girls - Hot sexy girls wallpapers
Space Wallpapers - Wallpapers of space, spaceships and earth
Brodyaga - European cities wallpapers
WStaylor.net - Vista wallpapers, plus some images of nature
Gamer Wallpapers - Site for all game lovers, tons of game’s wallpapers
Michael Swanson’s Blog - Personal blog with macro photos of flowers (till 1920×1200)
Arkhipov.com - Personal blog with macro photos of flowers (till 1920×1200)
Anime - Art anime wallpapers, mostly 1280×1024
Mattosai - Sexy anime girls wallpapers and Hentai pictures
Animepaper - More Anime pictures.
Wallpaperseek - A beautiful collection of 3d desktop images
Boysoncandy.com - Collection of wallpapers with world famous actresses
Mandolux.com - Resources for multiple screen walls… only few updates per months, but great photos indeed
Mybestdesktops.com - Personnel blog with lovely wallpapers
Socwall.com - Social Wallpapering, a community effort to classify, rank, and distribute high resolution images for use as computer wallpaper

source:dezignus

Ask Calvin’s Dad

noreply@blogger.com (i lik 2 blog) — Mon, 26 May 2008 16:06:00 +0000

Calvin’s dad (from Bill Watterson’s comic strip Calvin and Hobbes) is the coolest comic character I ever came across. Whenever Calvin asks him question he often makes up outlandish answers. Here is a collection of some quotes from the comic strip.

Astronomy

Q. Why does the sun set?
A. It’s because hot air rises. The sun’s hot in the middle of the day, so it rises high in the sky. In the evening then, it cools down and sets.
Q. Why does it go from east to west?
A. Solar wind.

Q. Why does the sky turn red as the sun sets?
A. That’s all the oxygen in the atmosphere catching fire.
Q. Where does the sun go when it sets?
A. The sun sets in the west. In Arizona actually, near Flagstaff. That’s why the rocks there are so red.
Q. Don’t the people get burned up?
A. No, the sun goes out as it sets. That’s why it’s dark at night.
Q. Doesn’t the sun crush the whole state as it lands?
A. Ha ha, of course not. Hold a quarter up. See, the sun’s just about the same size.
Q. I thought I read that the sun was really big.
A. You can’t believe everything you read, I’m afraid.

Evolution of Technology

Q. How come old photographs are always black and white? Didn’t they have color film back then?
A. Sure they did. In fact, those old photographs are in color. It’s just that the world was black and white then. The world didn’t turn color until sometime in the 1930s, and it was pretty grainy color for a while, too.
Q. But then why are old paintings in color?! If the world was black and white, wouldn’t artists have painted it that way?
A. Not necessarily. A lot of great artists were insane.
Q. But… But how could they have painted in color anyway? Wouldn’t their paints have been shades of gray back then?
A. Of course, but they turned colors like everything else did in the ’30s.
Q. So why didn’t old black and white photos turn color too?
A. Because they were color pictures of black and white, remember?

Theory of Relativity!!

Q. Dad, will you explain the theory of relativity to me? I don’t understand why time goes slower at great speed.
A. It’s because you keep changing time zones. See, if you fly to California, you gain three hours on a five-hour flight, right? So if you go at the speed of light, you gain more time, because it doesn’t take as long to get there. Of course, the theory of relativity only works if you’re going west.

How things work?

Q. Why do my eyes shut when I sneeze?
A. If your lids weren’t closed, the force of the explosion would blow your eyeballs out and stretch the optic nerve, so your eyes would flop around and you’d have to point them with your hands to see anything.

Q. How do bank machines work?
A. Well, let’s say you want 25 dollars. You punch in the amount and behind the machine there’s a guy with a printing press who makes the money and sticks it out this slot.
Q. Sort of like the guy who lives up in our garage and opens the door?
A. Exactly.

Simple Physics

Q. What causes the wind?
A. Trees sneezing.

Q. Why does ice float?
A. Because it’s cold. Ice wants to get warm, so it goes to the top of liquids to be nearer to the sun.
Q. Is that true?
A. Look it up and find out.
Q. I should just look up stuff in the first place.

Secret of omniscience

Q. How come you know so much?
A. It’s all in the book you get when you become a father.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Firefox Smart Keywords

noreply@blogger.com (i lik 2 blog) — Wed, 14 May 2008 15:20:00 +0000

Most firefox users know about bookmark keywords - shortcuts you can assign to bookmarks so you can access them from the location bar.

For example, to add a keyword for www.slashdot.org, you’d add a bookmark with the following values:

Whenever you type /. into the location bar and hit enter, you’ll go to slashdot.org.

Old news, right? Well, I was very surprised to learn that quite a few firefox geeks don’t know about the versatility of firefox keywords - specifically, smart keywords.

The basic idea is that instead of adding a keyword for a simple URL, you add a keyword for a search box. You type the keyword followed by your search terms into the location bar, and Firefox re-writes the saved URL to perform the appropriate search on the appropriate site.

For example, say you wanted to add a smart keyword for Wikipedia. You’d right-click on the search box, and click “add a keyword for this search”.

You can make the keyword anything you like. I generally use short keywords - like w here - for sites I use a lot, as a time saver. You might also notice that I’m saving this bookmark in a folder called Searches - I find it helpful to keep all my smart-keyword bookmarks together, just for the sake of tidiness.

Now, to use your smart keyword, you simply type w foo in the location bar, where foo is your search term, and you’ll be handily redirected to Wikipedia’s article on foo.

Neat, huh?

You can add smart keywords for practically any site with a search function. I use one for Google Maps

The Wayback Machine:

And even Urban Dictionary:

If you’re browsing through some sophomoric blog comments and come across an unfamiliar term, it’s certainly a great deal quicker to type Ctrl-T Enter ud feltch Enter than it is to laboriously look up the term by hand.

But, perhaps the most interesting aspect of smart keywords is their versatility. For example, I got a little frustrated with my Wikipedia shortcut - if I misspelled the search term even slightly, I’d end up on a productivity-killing error page. For example, w the last of the mohecans would give me:

This is especially galling, seeing as a Google search for that exact term instantly recognizes what I’m looking for.

Now, this gave me a bit of an idea; why couldn’t I use Google’s search engine in a smart keyword for wikipedia?

It’s possible, but takes a little bit of tinkering. First, create a new smart keyword based around google’s search box, but give it a keyword you want to use for wikipedia.

Now, open up this new smart keyword bookmark’s properties (under Bookmarks > right click > properties). We need to edit the Location property. It should look something like http://www.google.ca/search?q=%s. There may be some other information in there - it’s not important, we’ll be replacing it in a second. The %s value is the part that is replaced by your search term when you use the smart keyword. All we need to do is add some information to tell Google we’re only interested in pages from Wikipedia, so we paste http://www.google.ca/search?q=%s%20site%3Aen.wikipedia.org&meta= into the Location box. Now, when we enter gwiki widget into Firefox’s location bar, we search google for widget site:en.wikipedia.org - every wikipedia page that contains the word widget.

We’re almost there. All we need to do now is tell Google that we don’t want to be shown a search results page, but instead we want to go directly to the first result. We do this by adding &btnI onto the end of our URL. This code tells Google we’re doing an “I’m Feeling Lucky” search. So, the final URL for our smart bookmark looks like http://www.google.ca/search?q=%s%20site%3Aen.wikipedia.org&meta=&btnI.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

39 Web-Based Tools That Don't Require Registration

noreply@blogger.com (i lik 2 blog) — Sun, 11 May 2008 10:08:00 +0000

Online Conversion
FLVIX simply lets you convert video from URL source into a file that you can keep on your desktop and play it on your PC, Mobile, iPod etc. Copy the link of the page with the video on it and paste it into FLVIX textbox; Choose desired format : AVI, MOV, MP4, 3GP, MP3; Click on the convert button, and download the converted file.

Convert text to audio file with vozMe to use free on your site or blog. It is really don't get easier than that: Copy-paste the text that you want to convert onto their textbox, and generate yourself an audio file within seconds.

It's the fastest way to resize and convert your pictures and images. You can apply rotation, add some effects, and more. Just select your picture file, choose some process to apply and click on OK. Fixpicture comes in two versions: Flash or HTML.

Convert any file with the powerful ZAMZAR - Free online file conversion. Select file from your compute or URL to convert, choose the format, and receive converted file by email.

Update:
Convert websites to PDFs with active links and embedded video. htm2pdf is a very, very simple to function app that convert webpages to PDFs!

Generators
Web20Badges is a free set of cool web badges. Choose your desirable badge shape, text and color, then generate your badge, and download it to your machine.

With the famous Loader Generator service, you can generate and customize GIFs that you can use free in your site or blog.

Strip Generator - Fastest way to create a stripe. An Ajax-driven diagonal stripes background tile generator.

Online favicon.cc generator is an editor that allows you to create transparent icon graphics for your site or blog. Choose a color; Click on the squares and paint your icon; Download when you're finished, and put the favicon file into your webserver directory.

LinkBunch lets you put multiple links into one small link which you can share over IM, Twitter, email or even a mobile phone. When the recipient clicks on the tiny LinkBunch link, he/she will be presented with a page that contains all the links that you put in the bunch.

If you own a blog you must know how important is to tag your post with relevant tags. You also know how annoying it can be sometimes... But with Turbo Tagger you can instantly create Technorati tags for your site or blog without spending too much time and effort.

Utility that will evaluate an image and give you the image's primary and complementary dominant colors of an image, how many visually unique colors are in an image, and the top ten visually unique colors in an image.

QuickRibbon is a completely free generator which lets you create a custom ribbon, insert a link in it and place it in the top right corner of your website. It will take you less than 5 minutes to generate your own website ribbon with this trendy widget and add a stylish Web2.0 look to your page.

Create a web 2.0 button in only 4 steps. You can paint your button with preloaded web 2.0 icons, or upload your personal icon and customize the font of the text inserted.

Message Tools
Send free postal mail letters (to anywhere in the US) right from the browser. eSnailer automatically prints, envelopes, stamps, and mails your letters within 24 hours.

forlater is an easy to use e-mail reminders. Just enter your message, your e-mail and a date. forlater will then remind you at the right time.

Note2email is a web application designed to send quick text notes to any email address in the world. No need for password or username. Note it down and send it, as simple as that.

Have fun with your note. Send innovative messages contains photo, video, and music. Share your Onesenss e-cards with family and friends via email.

Video-Mail
Mailmotion is a video-mail platform that enable anyone with a webcam to quickly send video to family and friends. Record a short message (or upload a video file), specify recipient email(s), add some text to you video-mail, and define date to send.

voxlite is a great Flash-based video-mail application that allows you to send a video card using a webcam and a mic. Note that you have 20 minute recording time limit (which is A LOT)

GabMail is a free, easy-to-use video email service that enables anyone with a webcam or video camera to send, reply to and forward messages to anyone with an email address. Each recording can be up to 5 minutes long.

Easy Storage and Sharing Files
TinyLoad, a service that allows you to upload files to multiple services at the same time. With their new Bookmarklet you'll be able to upload files in no time to: MegaUpload, MediaFire, RapidShare, DivShare, BestSharing, SendSpace, Uploading, FileSend, EasyShare, and Amazon S3.

Senduit's service provides users with the ability to upload a file via HTTP-Protocol and receive a custom URL address to download the file from Senduit's servers. This address can be shared by the user freely and can be used to download the file a reasonable number of times.

3 step process to upload large files which can be sent to another person. Your recipient will get a link where he/she can download the file to his/her computer.

FlyUpload is a service which allows you to share video, audio and photos online. You may share anything with FlyUpload. Share files (up to 2GB), Unlimited downloads per 24 hours, Unlimited downloads (2000MB).

with Wikisend you can upload and download lots of files, big files, small files, data files, media files, archives or backups - any files. Share files with your friends using e-mail, MySpace page, your blog, forums etc,.

esyURL purpose is to turn long complex URLs to short easy ones, so they can be shared in blogs, forums, e-mails and so on. Furthermore, you can upload files (in a limit size of 2Mb per file) and receive an esyURL to access it, fast and without registration required.

Text Tools
Orangoo spell check application lets you check for spelling mistakes from any system or computer that has Internet access. You can Spell check text (in 27 languages) or a whole website page (English only).

Textris is a sweet little site for manipulating text in different ways. Alphabetizes, sorts, formats, changes case, uppercase, lowercase, even tools for coders.

In case you need another notepad... EditPad is pretty similar to the one you have on your desktop, web-based version.

TextSnip convert your text into a clean tabbed format allowing you to easily past text/code examples into a blog, form, or any website.

shortText is a simple tool to post text online, with minimum fuss. Write whatever you need and shortText will convert it to easy-to-share URL. You can also add pictures and video to your text.

Quick Statistics of your Site
A tool to check at-a-glance the link popularity of any site based on its ranking (Google PageRank, Alexa Rank, Technorati etc.), social bookmarks (del.icio.us, etc), subscribers (Bloglines, etc) and more. You can also generate a state widget to place on your blog.

BuiltWite is a massive tool that providing all the technical analysis and SEO optimization info you need to know on a site.

Picture this...
If you need an avatar for one of your favorite social network, mypictr helps you to get it in few seconds. First upload your picture, select and crop yourself from it, choose which network, and click 'picturit' to get the result!

A simple tool that turn your photos into cool reflecting images.

kwout allowing you to quote part from any web page as image with an image-map. You can upload the results directly to Flickr, Tumblr, or website. A new feature called 'my-kwout' will let you show the collection of the sources that you quoted via kwout.

Online tool for making anti-aliased rounded corners, for avatars and images.

ResizR is a very useful little helper that allows you to resize an image from your local computer or the web, then download the results to your computer - Free.

Pixenate is simply a great online image editor, that enable you to edit your image with lots of effect tools. When you finish, you can upload your creation directly to Flickr, Myspace, Web, or your own computer.

Last service is my favorite one, I use it constantly so I highly recommend it:
It is actually a Wii application, but it works great on the web as well. Just pick your favorite artist/band, and finetune will play hours of music based on your taste.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

All Softwares

noreply@blogger.com (i lik 2 blog) — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 06:53:00 +0000

All Software

.NET Framework Version 1.1

Microsoft Corporation - 23.14M (Freeware)

.NET Framework Version 2.0 SP1

Microsoft Corporation - 23.61M (Freeware)

.NET Framework Version 3.5

Microsoft Corporation - 2.74M (Freeware)

3DMark03 3.6.0

Futuremark - 178M (Freeware)

3DMark05 1.3.0

Futuremark - 286M (Freeware)

3DMark06 1.1.0

Futuremark - 579M (Freeware)

7-Zip 4.57

7-Zip.org - 840K (Open Source)

AbiWord 2.6.0

AbiSource Community - 5.59M (Open Source)

ACDSee 10.0.238

ACD Systems - 33.93M (Commercial Demo)

Ad-Aware 2007 7.0.2.7

Lavasoft - 18.95M (Non-Commercial Freeware)

Adobe Air 1.0

Adobe Systems Inc - 11.25M (Freeware)

Adobe Photoshop CS3

Adobe Systems Inc - 463M (Commercial Demo)

Adobe Reader 8.1.2

Adobe Systems Inc - 22.37M (Freeware)

AIM 6.8.2.19 Beta

America Online Inc - 13.59M (Freeware)

Alcohol 120% 1.9.7.6221

Alcohol Software - 9.65M (Commercial Trial)

Alt-Tab Thingy 3.4.1

Nymithium Technologies - 385K (Freeware)

AntiVir Personal 7.06.00.270

H+BEDV - 16.96M (Freeware)

Ares 2.0.9

Ares - 1.99M (Open Source)

a-squared Free 3.1.0.20

Emsi Software - 22.02M (Freeware)

ATI Catalyst Drivers 8.3

ATI Technologies Inc - 44.24M (Freeware)

ATI Catalyst Drivers 8.3 Vista

ATI Technologies Inc - 39.71M (Freeware)

Audacity 1.3.4 Beta

Audacity Development Team - 2.93M (Open Source)

Audiograbber 1.83

Audiograbber - 1.59M (Freeware)

Autoruns 9.13

Microsoft SysInternals - 532K (Freeware)

Avant Browser 11.5 Build 21

Avant Force - 1.85M (Freeware)

Avast! Home Edition 4.8.1169

Alwil Software - 20.78M (Non-Commercial Freeware)

AVG Anti-Spyware 7.5.1.43

Grisoft Inc - 11.84M (Shareware)

AVG Free Edition 7.5.519

Grisoft Inc - 34.29M (Freeware)

AxCrypt 1.6.4.1

Axantum Software - 1.23M (Open Source)

Axialis IconWorkshop 6.11

Axialis Software - 19.46M (Commercial Demo)

Azureus 3.0.5.0 Beta

Azureus - 7.61M (Open Source)

BearShare Lite 5.2.5

Free Peers Inc - 3.34M (Freeware)

BitComet 1.00

BitComet.com - 5.19M (Freeware)

BitDefender 10 Free Edition

BitDefender.com - 21.08M (Freeware)

Blender 2.46 RC1

Blender Foundation - 8.59M (Open Source)

BSplayer 1.37.826

BSplayer - 2.76M (Freeware)

Cabos 0.7.9

Cabos - 4.17M (Open Source)

CCleaner 2.06.567

Piriform - 2.62M (Freeware)

CDBurnerXP Pro 4.0.024

cdburnerxp.se - 2.75M (Freeware)

CDex 1.70 Beta 2

CDex - 2.32M (Open Source)

ClamWin 0.92

ClamWin - 17.89M (Open Source)

CloneCD 5.3.1.0

SlySoft Europe Ltd - 2.58M (Commercial Trial)

CloneDVD 2.9.1.5

SlySoft Europe Ltd - 4.81M (Commercial Trial)

Codec Pack All-In-1 6.0.3.0

- 9.59M (Freeware)

Comodo Firewall 3.0.21.329

Comodo - 19.93M (Freeware)

Core FTP LE 2.1 (Build 1552)

Core FTP - 3.31M (Freeware)

CPU-Z 1.44.2

CPUID - 515K (Freeware)

CuteFTP 8.2.0 Home

GlobalSCAPE - 6.56M (Commercial Trial)

CuteFTP 8.2.0 Pro

GlobalSCAPE - 7.98M (Commercial Trial)

CutePDF Writer 2.7

CutePDF - 1.55M (Freeware)

CWShredder 2.19

Trend Micro Inc - 520K (Freeware)

DAEMON Tools 4.12.3

DAEMON Tools - 3.53M (Freeware)

dBpowerAMP Music Converter 12.4

Illustrate - 4.03M (Freeware)

DC++ 0.705 Beta

DC++ - 2.89M (Open Source)

DeepBurner 1.9.0.228

Astonsoft - 2.65M (Freeware)

Defraggler 1.01.064 Beta

Piriform - 428K (Freeware)

DirectX 9.0c (Mar 08)

Microsoft Corporation - 69.46M (Freeware)

DivX Play 6.8.0.30

DivX Team - 16.23M (Freeware)

DVD Shrink 3.2.0.15

DVD Shrink - 1.07M (Freeware)

eMule 0.48a

eMule Project - 3.68M (Open Source)

Eudora 8.0.0 Beta 3

QUALCOMM Inc - 7.77M (Freeware)

EVEREST Home Edition 2.20

Lavalys Consulting Group - 3.99M (Freeware)

FastStone Image Viewer 3.5

FastStone - 4.06M (Non-Commercial Freeware)

FastStone MaxView 2.1

FastStone - 1.38M (Non-Commercial Freeware)

Feed Demon 2.6.1.2 Beta

NewsGator Technologies - 3.93M (Freeware)

FeedReader 3.12

FeedReader - 4.54M (Freeware)

FileZilla 3.0.9 RC1

FileZilla - 2.98M (Open Source)

Firebird 2.1.0 RC2

Firebird Project - 6.32M (Open Source)

Firefox 3.0 Beta 5

Mozilla Organization - 7.20M (Open Source)

Flash Player 9.0.115.0 (IE)

Adobe Systems Inc - 1.45M (Freeware)

Flash Player 9.0.115.0 (Non-IE)

Adobe Systems Inc - 1.42M (Freeware)

FlashFXP 3.6.1240

IniCom Networks - 4.32M (Commercial Trial)

FlashGet 1.9.6.1073

Amaze Software - 4.44M (Freeware)

Flock 1.1.1

Flock - 10.63M (Freeware)

Foobar2000 0.9.5.1

foobar2000.org - 2.68M (Freeware)

Foxit Reader 2.2.2129

Foxit Software - 2.14M (Freeware)

Fraps 2.9.4

beepa.com - 969K (Shareware)

Free Download Manager 2.5.755

freedownloadmanager.org - 5.64M (Open Source)

GetRight 6.3d

Headlight Software - 4.73M (Shareware)

Gizmo Project 4.0.1.344

SIPphone Inc - 13.49M (Freeware)

GMail Drive 1.0.12

viksoe.dk - 152K (Freeware)

GOM Player 2.1.9.3754

Gretech - 5.57M (Freeware)

Google Desktop 5.7.802.22438

Google - 1.75M (Freeware)

Google Earth 4.2.0205

Google - 12.79M (Freeware)

Google SketchUp 6.4.112

Google - 32.55M (Freeware)

Google Talk 1.0.0.104 Beta

Google - 1.53M (Freeware)

Google Toolbar 3.0.2007.0525 (Firefox)

Google - 969K (Freeware)

Google Toolbar 5.0.1112.7760 (IE) Beta

Google - 1.27M (Freeware)

Google Web Accelerator 0.2.70

Google - 1.55M (Freeware)

Hamachi 1.0.2.5

LogMeIn Inc - 985K (Freeware)

HijackThis 2.0.2

Trend Micro Inc - 793K (Freeware)

ICQ 6.0.6043

ICQ Inc - 13.79M (Freeware)

iMesh 7.1

iMesh - 7.97M (Freeware)

ImgBurn 2.4.1.0

Lightning UK - 1.86M (Freeware)

Inkscape 0.46

Inkscape - 33.45M (Open Source)

Inno Setup 5.2.3

Jordan Russell - 1.35M (Open Source)

IntelliPoint 6.2

Microsoft Corporation - 14.12M (Freeware)

IntelliType Pro 6.2

Microsoft Corporation - 13.98M (Freeware)

Internet Explorer 8.0 Beta 1

Microsoft Corporation - 14.43M (Freeware)

IrfanView 4.10

Irfan Skiljan - 1.10M (Freeware)

IsoBuster 2.3.0.1

Smart Projects - 2.63M (Shareware)

iTunes 7.6.2.9

Apple Inc - 57.01M (Freeware)

IZArc 3.8.1550

Ivan Zahariev - 3.55M (Freeware)

Java Runtime Environment 1.6.0.5

Sun Microsystems - 15.18M (Freeware)

jetAudio 7.0.5 Basic

COWON America - 22.37M (Freeware)

JkDefrag 3.34

J C Kessels - 454K (Open Source)

Kaspersky Anti-Virus 8.0.0.316 Beta

Kaspersky - 27.40M (Commercial Trial)

KeePass 1.10

KeePass - 1.27M (Open Source)

K-Lite Codec Pack 3.85 (Full)

- 13.85M (Freeware)

K-Lite Mega Codec Pack 3.85

- 17.44M (Freeware)

Launchy 2.0

Josh Karlin - 3.37M (Freeware)

LeechGet 2007 Release 2000

LeechGet.net - 2.57M (Non-Commercial Freeware)

LimeWire Basic 4.16.6

Lime Wire LLC - 4.30M (Freeware)

MagicISO 5.4.256

MagicISO - 2.92M (Shareware)

MailWasher 6.1

MailWasher - 7.21M (Freeware)

Maxthon 2.0.9.1640

Maxthon International Ltd - 3.80M (Freeware)

McAfee VirusScan 10

McAfee - 9.54M (Commercial Trial)

Media Player Classic 6.4.9.1

- 1.93M (Open Source)

MediaMonkey 3.0.3.1155 RC1

Ventis Media - 6.53M (Freeware)

Microsoft ActiveSync 4.5

Microsoft Corporation - 7.52M (Freeware)

Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer 2.1 Beta 2

Microsoft Corporation - 1.31M (Freeware)

Miranda 0.7.3

Miranda IM - 1.43M (Freeware)

mIRC 6.3.1

mIRC Co - 1.65M (Shareware)

Miro 1.2.2

Participatory Culture Foundation - 24.47M (Open Source)

MpcStar 2.2

MpcStar - 23.67M (Freeware)

MySQL 5.0.51a

MySQL AB - 22.72M (Open Source)

Nero Burning Rom 6.6.1.15c

Nero Inc - 34.27M (Commercial Trial)

Nero Burning Rom 8.3.2.1

Nero Inc - 185M (Commercial Trial)

Netscape 9.0.0.6

Netscape - 5.78M (Freeware)

NOD32 AntiVirus 3.0.642

ESET - 19.43M (Commercial Trial)

Norton AntiVirus 15.5.0.23

Symantec - 62.10M (Commercial Trial)

Notepad++ 4.8.2

Notepad++ - 1.94M (Open Source)

NSIS 2.36

Nullsoft - 1.49M (Open Source)

NVIDIA Forceware 174.74 WHQL Vista

NVIDIA Corporation - 35.11M (Freeware)

NVIDIA Forceware 169.21 WHQL

NVIDIA Corporation - 43.81M (Freeware)

O&O Defrag 2000 Freeware

O&O Software - 2.08M (Freeware)

ObjectDock 1.9

Stardock - 12.05M (Freeware)

OpenOffice.org 2.4.0

OpenOffice.org - 112M (Open Source)

Opera 9.27

Opera Software - 4.70M (Freeware)

Outpost Firewall Free 1.0

Agnitum Ltd - 2.50M (Freeware)

Paint Shop Pro 12.0

Corel Corporation - 326M (Commercial Demo)

Paint.NET 3.30 Beta 2

Rick Brewster - 1.41M (Open Source)

Password Safe 3.12

Rony Shapiro - 1.87M (Open Source)

PC Inspector File Recovery 4.0

Convar - 5.83M (Freeware)

PDFCreator 0.9.5

pdfforge - 15.16M (Open Source)

PeerGuardian 2.0 Beta 6c

Phoenix Labs - 1.60M (Open Source)

Picasa 2.7 Build 37.49

Google - 5.82M (Freeware)

Pidgin 2.4.1

Gaim - 12.41M (Open Source)

PowerArchiver 2007 10.22

ConeXware Inc - 4.55M (Shareware)

PowerDVD 8.0.1531

CyberLink - 113M (Commercial Demo)

PowerPoint Viewer 12.0.4518.1014

Microsoft Corporation - 25.77M (Freeware)

PrimoPDF 4.0.1

activePDF - 17.66M (Freeware)

Process Explorer 11.11

Microsoft SysInternals - 1.57M (Freeware)

QuickTime Alternative 2.5.1

- 12.84M (Freeware)

QuickTime Player 7.4.5.67

Apple Inc - 22.60M (Freeware)

Quintessential Player 4.51

Quinnware - 2.21M (Freeware)

Rainlendar 2.3

Rainy - 3.44M (Freeware)

ratDVD 0.78.1444

ratDVD.dk - 4.51M (Freeware)

Real Alternative 1.75

- 5.69M (Freeware)

RealPlayer 11.0.0.442

RealNetworks Inc - 321K (Freeware)

RealVNC 4.1.2

RealVNC - 721K (Freeware)

Recuva 1.12.291

Piriform - 746K (Freeware)

RocketDock 1.3.5

Punk Software - 6.16M (Freeware)

Rootkit Revealer 1.71

Microsoft SysInternals - 225K (Freeware)

Safari 3.1

Apple Inc - 18.62M (Freeware)

SAM 5.0.0.7

KishKish.com - 2.71M (Freeware)

Samurize 1.64.3

Samurize.com - 5.31M (Freeware)

Sandboxie 3.24

Sandboxie - 349K (Freeware)

Sandra Lite XIII (13.12)

SiSoftware - 14.35M (Non-Commercial Freeware)

SeaMonkey 1.1.9

Mozilla Organization - 12.41M (Freeware)

SetPoint 4.40

Logitech - 54.50M (Freeware)

Shareaza 2.3.1.0

Shareaza Development Team - 5.02M (Open Source)

SharpReader 0.9.7.0

Luke Hutteman - 800K (Freeware)

Shockwave Player 11.0.0.429

Adobe Systems Inc - 8.88M (Freeware)

ShrinkTo5 2.04 Basic

ShrinkTo5 - 1.05M (Freeware)

Silverlight 2.0 Beta 1

Microsoft Corporation - 4.38M (Freeware)

Skype 3.8.0.96 Beta

Skype Technologies - 20.95M (Freeware)

SmartFTP 3.0.1010.22

SmartFTP - 6.02M (Non-Commercial Freeware)

Songbird 0.5 Beta

Pioneers of the Inevitable - 13.46M (Open Source)

Spamihilator 0.9.9.38

Michel Kramer - 1.66M (Freeware)

SpeedFan 4.33

Almico - 1.55M (Freeware)

Spybot Search & Destroy 1.5.2

PepiMK Software - 9.27M (Freeware)

Spyware Terminator 2.1.0.314

Spyware Terminator - 9.37M (Freeware)

SpywareBlaster 4.0

Javacool Software - 2.55M (Non-Commercial Freeware)

SQL Server 2005 Express SP2

Microsoft Corporation - 36.45M (Freeware)

SQL Server Management Studio Express

Microsoft Corporation - 38.49M (Freeware)

Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall 4.5.916

Sunbelt Software - 6.27M (Non-Commercial Freeware)

SuperAntiSpyware 4.0.1154

SUPERAntiSpyware - 6.05M (Freeware)

Sygate Personal Firewall 5.6.2808

Sygate Technologies - 8.80M (Freeware)

SyncBack 3.2.18

2BrightSparks - 1.77M (Freeware)

TaskSwitchXP 2.0.11

NTWind Software - 393K (Open Source)

The Gimp 2.4.5

The GIMP Team - 15.98M (Open Source)

Thunderbird 2.0.0.12

Mozilla Organization - 6.42M (Open Source)

TightVNC 1.3.9

TightVNC - 1.52M (Open Source)

Trillian 3.1.9.0

Cerulean Studios - 8.64M (Freeware)

TrueCrypt 5.1a

TrueCrypt Foundation - 2.52M (Open Source)

TUGZip 3.4.0.2

Christian Kindahl - 3.82M (Freeware)

Tweak UI 2.1

Microsoft Corporation - 146K (Freeware)

UltraEdit-32 14.00

IDM Computer - 12.52M (Commercial Trial)

UltraVNC 1.0.4 RC14

UltraVNC Team - 1.74M (Open Source)

Universal Extractor 1.5

Jared Breland - 4.60M (Freeware)

Unlocker 1.8.6

Unlocker - 236K (Freeware)

uTorrent 1.8 Beta 9360

Ludvig Strigeus - 548K (Freeware)

Virtual PC 2007 2007

Microsoft Corporation - 30.41M (Freeware)

VirtualBox 1.5.6

innotek - 17.08M (Open Source)

VLC Media Player 0.8.6f

VideoLAN.org - 9.28M (Open Source)

VMware Player 2.0.3

VMware Inc - 174M (Freeware)

VMware Server 1.0.5

VMware Inc - 146M (Freeware)

WinAce 2.69

e-merge GmbH - 3.86M (Commercial Trial)

Winamp 5.531 Full

Nullsoft - 8.57M (Freeware)

WindowBlinds 6.0.2

Stardock - 15.74M (Shareware)

Windows Defender 1.1.1593

Microsoft Corporation - 4.95M (Freeware)

Windows Live Messenger 8.5.1302

Microsoft Corporation - 2.29M (Freeware)

Windows Media Player 11

Microsoft Corporation - 24.56M (Freeware)

WinDVD Platinum 8.0.6.109

InterVideo Inc - 117M (Commercial Demo)

WinPatrol 14.0.2007.1

BillP Studios - 689K (Freeware)

WinRAR 3.71

RARLab - 1.15M (Shareware)

WinSnap 2.1.1

NTWind Software - 489K (Shareware)

WinZip 11.1.7466

WinZip Computing Inc - 8.95M (Shareware)

Wireshark 1.0.0

Wireshark.org - 20.71M (Open Source)

XChat 2.8.7

XChat.org - 968K (Open Source)

XnView v1.92 Beta 4

XnView.com - 7.72M (Non-Commercial Freeware)

Yahoo! Messenger 9.0.0.907 Beta

Yahoo! Inc - 12.70M (Freeware)

Yahoo! Widget Engine 4.5.1

Yahoo! Inc - 14.63M (Freeware)

Y'z Dock 0.8.3

- 923K (Freeware)

ZoneAlarm Free 7.0.470.0

Zone Labs - 44.64M (Non-Commercial Freeware)

Zoom Player 5.0.2

Inmatrix - 1.45M (Shareware)

Google launches ‘voice search’

noreply@blogger.com (i lik 2 blog) — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 06:40:00 +0000

A year after it launched ‘voice search’ over phone service in the United States, Google launched the facility in Hyderabad. The beta version of the Google Local Information service on a toll free number 1800-41-999-999 was launched on March 31. The facility now is available from 8 a.m. to midnight 24x7.

Presently, Google is providing the local business information and movie show timings only. The Google chaps would give you address and contact numbers of any local business establishment and also the movie show timings.

The best part is the user calling the toll free number has an option to be connected to the local business he is looking for – again for free.The user also has an option of asking the Google to send the information over SMS to his mobile number, if he prefers. But the only irritant is that even the database of Google sometimes can have wrong numbers. When The Hindu tried to get the number of Yashoda Hospital in Secunderabad, indeed a number was sent – but a wrong one. However, on a second attempt, correct number was provided.

The SMS facility, would be of immense use to those on the move. Google would not only SMS the telephone numbers but also the complete address. Thus, ends the search for a ‘voice search’ facility in our city.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Popular Desktop Applications And Their Online Alternatives

noreply@blogger.com (i lik 2 blog) — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 03:37:00 +0000

Due soaring software costs, computer users are being pushed away from original software and towards piracy. However, internet has changed the scenario considerably with a lot of applications being available online. Microsoft Office has given way to Google Docs and Zoho, more and more internet users are using Meebo instead of all the instant messengers, and what’s more - all these online alternatives are free

Go ahead, check out this list of more than 25 online alternatives for your native desktop applications and save money!

Application	Online Alternative	Description
Vista	YouOS	YouOS is a virtual OS that you can customize without the hefty price or desktop trappings. A combination of OS functionality and web access, it still has the same look and feel of a desktop.
Microsoft Office 2007	Google Docs, Zoho	Google Docs and Zoho includes the same creation applications for creating word documents, spreadsheets and presentations as MS Office.
Adobe Photoshop CS3	Splashup	Splashup is an online photo image editing app that contains similar photo editing tools found in Photoshop CS3 and can integrate seamlessly with popular photo sharing services.
Microsoft Visio 2007	Gliffy	Gliffy has the basic functionalities to create and share quality flow charts, complex diagrams or technical drawings.
Adobe Acrobat 8.1	iConv	Create PDFs from a variety of formats by simply uploading your file. No registration, installation or cost required.
Apple 1 Password Manager and Form Filler 2.5.7	clipperz	With clipperz, you create direct log in links for your online accounts. Just log in once to clipperz to access them.
Apple Aperture 1.5	Flickr	A popular online photo management and sharing site. With a free basic Flickr account, you can upload photos via email or the upload webpage.
Microsoft Outlook 2007	Gmail	Gmail accounts have tons of space, instant messaging, built in search technology, no banner ads, and available in 40 languages.
Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 Adobe Flash CS3 Professional	app2you	This neat web service allows you to create your own simple web application without any coding or web designing experience whatsoever!
Desktop calculators	InstaCalc	InstaCalc is an advanced web based calculator. Send a link of your calculations to others or embed a calculator into your own website. Other features include unit conversions and programming commands.
MS Outlook HP fax machine Printing paper	FaxZERO	With this internet faxing service, you can send digital documents within Canada and US for free. Just upload the document and you’re set.
SharpReader (Windows) NetNew Wire (Mac OS X) Straw (Linux)	Netvibes	Netvibes is a nifty RSS reader and web home page. Stay connected to everything online at all times–catch up on blogs, facebook, to-do lists, news and weather.
Website Analysis Software	Google Analytics reinvigorate.net	This online tool allows you to keep track of your website and how it’s being accessed. Track content views or the amount of time spent on the site.
MSN Messenger Google Talk ICQ AIM Jabber Yahoo!	meebo	A web portal for instant messaging, meebo lets you have the same online chats, but without the download. Access Google talk, msn, Yahoo!, jabber, ICQ and AIM from any computer. Check out our earlier post on ‘Top 10 web based Instant Messengers‘
All desktop tools	Sosius	Sosius has all the essential desktop tools online: calendar, file management, rss feeds, projects, file management, databases, and collaboration and messaging tools.
Desktop Task Lists	Ta-da List Backpack	This is an online to-do list that you can easily access and share with others while online. You can even check your lists on an iPhone when you’re on the go. Like Ta-da List, Backpack is a to-do list web tool, but more dynamic and complex. Create pages of to-do lists with images, set up text message alerts or even share your pages with others.
Microsoft OneNote 2007	Stikkit	Stikkit is a simple online alternative that creates “little yellow notes that think”. The notes are sharable and accessible anywhere.
Apple MindManager 7.0 Mac Mindjet MindManager 7.0	Bubbl.us	This web application allows you to brainstorm online when you need to map out projects or make long term business plans.
Microsoft Money Plus Premium	Wesabe	Part financial application and part user community, Wesabe combines both to provide you with communal tips and forums so you can keep track of your spending habits.
MS Excel 2007	chartAll	chartAll.com is a free online web service where you can create, store and publish simple charts from your own data sources. Charts can be customized with colors, themes, and fonts.
MS PowerPoint	Preezo	Preezo is an Ajax web application that gives you the power to create and share professional quality presentations over the web without software or plugins.
Adobe LiveCycle ES	Wufoo	From job applications to customer surveys, Wufoo lets you create forms quickly and easily with an HTML interface.
Excel spreadsheets Invoices Financial software	PayPal	PayPal acts as the go-between that connects you and online recipients. An online must-have when making business purchases.
USB storage devices Hard drive storage space	DivShare, Xdrive, Mozy	Simply upload and share your media and document files online to free up storage space on your computer.
Video Converter	Media Convert, ConvertTube	Simply upload and share your media and document files online to free up storage space on your computer.

World Worst Polluted Places 2007

noreply@blogger.com (i lik 2 blog) — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 16:10:00 +0000

World Worst Polluted Places 2007

It’s definitely not one of the ‘Top Ten’ lists you’re likely to be campaigning for, The Blacksmith Institute, an NGO that works to solve pollution problems in the developing world, has released its second annual list of the World’s Most Polluted Places. This year’s list includes two sites each in China, India and Russia, and one site in Azerbaijan, Peru, Zambia and Ukraine. This threat is affecting more than 12 million people, according to the research done by Blacksmith with Green Cross in Switzerland. Those 12 million people mentioned are well open to respiratory diseases such as asthma, as well as birth defects and premature death.

Many of the sites’ pollution comes from mining of heavy metals like lead and chromium; all of the sites pose serious threats to human health and the environment.

LA OROYA, PERU

Since 1922, adults and children in La Oroya, Peru - a mining town in the Peruvian Andes and the site of a poly-metallic smelter - have been exposed to the toxic emissions and wastes from the plant. Peru’s Clean Air Act cites La Oroya in a list of Peruvian towns suffering from critical levels of air pollution, but action to clean up and curtail this pollution has been delayed for area’s 35,000 inhabitants.

NORILSK, RUSSIA

An industrial city founded in 1935 as a slave labor camp, the Siberian city of Norilsk, Russia is the northernmost major city of Russia and the second largest city (after Murmansk) above the Arctic Circle. Mining and smelting operations began in the 1930s and this city now contains the world’s largest heavy metals smelting complex, where nearly 500 tons each of copper and nickel oxides and two million tons of sulphur dioxide are released annually into the air. The city has been accused of being one of the most polluted places in Russia, where the snow is black, the air tastes of sulfur and the life expectancy for factory workers is 10 years below the Russian average.

A 1999 study found elevated copper and nickel concentrations in soils in as much as a 60 km radius of the city.

LINFEN, CHINA

Shanxi Province is at the heart of China’s enormous and expanding coal industry, providing about two thirds of the nation’s energy. Within this highly polluted region, Linfen has been identified as one of its most polluted cities with residents claiming that they literally choke on coal dust in the evenings. In terms of air quality, the World Bank has stated that 16 out of 20 of the world’s worst polluted cities are in China while the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) has branded Linfen as having the worst air quality in the country. Levels of SO2 and other particulates are many times higher than limits set by the World Health Organization.

SUKINDA, INDIA

Sukinda Valley, in the State of Orissa, contains 97% of India’s chromite ore deposits and one of the largest open cast chromite ore mines in the world. Twelve mines continue to operate without any environmental management plans and over 30 million tons of waste rock are spread over the surrounding areas and the Brahmani riverbanks. Untreated water is discharged by the mines into the river. This area is also flood-prone, resulting in further contamination of the waterways. Approximately 70% of the surface water and 60% of the drinking water contains hexavalent chromium at more than double national and international standards and levels of over 20 times the standard have been recorded.

CHERNOBYL, UKRAINE

The world’s worst nuclear disaster took place on April 26, 1986 when testing in the Chernobyl power plant, 62 miles north of Kiev, triggered a fiery meltdown of the reactor’s core. Thirty people were killed in the accident, 135,000 were evacuated, and one hundred times more radiation was released than by the atom bombs dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Twenty years later, the 19-mile exclusion zone around the plant remains uninhabitable.

KABWE, ZAMBIA

Kabwe, Zambia, is located about 150 kilometres north of the nation’s capital, Lusaka, and is one of six towns in close proximity to the Copperbelt, once Zambia’s thriving industrial base. In 1902, rich deposits of zinc and lead were discovered there. Mining and smelting commenced soon after and ran almost continuously until 1994 without addressing the potential dangers of lead contamination. The mine and smelter are no longer operating but have left a city poisoned by debilitating concentrations of lead dust in the soil and by metals in the water. In one study, the dispersal in soils of lead, cadmium, copper, and zinc extended over a 20 km radius at levels much higher than those recommended by the World Health Organization.

DZERZINSK, RUSSIA

Until the end of the Cold War, Dzerzhinsk was among Russia’s principal production sites of chemical weapons. Today, Dzerzhinsk is still a significant center of Russian chemical manufacturing. Almost 300,000 tons of chemical waste were improperly disposed between 1930 and 1998. In this waste, around 190 identified chemicals have been released into the groundwater. In places, the chemicals have turned the water into a white sludge containing dioxins and high levels of phenol - an industrial chemical that can lead to acute poisoning and death. These levels are reportedly 17 million times the safe limit. The Guinness Book of World Records has named Dzerzhinsk the most chemically polluted city in the world.

VAPI, INDIA

The town of Vapi marks the southern end of India’s “Golden Corridor”, a 400 km belt of industrial estates in the state of Gujarat which includes Nandesari, Ankleshwar, and Vapi. There are over 50 industrial estates in the region including more than 1,000 individual industries that extend over more than a thousand acres. Many of these are chemical manufacturing estates producing petrochemicals, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, textiles, dyes, fertilizers, leather products, paint, and chlor-alkali.

TIANYING, CHINA

Tianying in Anhui province is one of the largest lead production bases in China, with an output accounting for half of the country’s total production. Low-level technologies, illegal operation and the lack of any serious pollution control measures in the firms have caused several severe lead poisoning cases in the region. It is also believed that there are numerous small scale recycling plants in the area, which are notorious for polluting. As a result of these indiscriminate practices, lead processing firms in Tianying have been pressured by local residents and officials to shut down their operations.

SUMGAYIT, AZERBAIJAN

Sumgayit was a major Soviet industrial center housing more than 40 factories manufacturing industrial and agricultural chemicals. These included synthetic rubber, chlorine, aluminium, detergents, and pesticides. While the factories remained fully operational, 70-120,000 tons of harmful emissions were released into the air annually. Factory workers and residents of the city have been exposed to a combination of high-level occupational and environmental pollution problems for several decades.

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Now playing: K K - Yeh Kahan Mil Gaye
via FoxyTunes

The Amazing Air Powered Car

noreply@blogger.com (i lik 2 blog) — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 15:09:00 +0000

From steel makers and aluminum manufacturers to fabled liquor empires and Britain’s beloved Tetley Tea, corporate India is expanding aggressively in its quest to unseat Japan and China, Asia’s two incumbent economic powers. Perhaps not surprisingly, capitalism suits the former British colony well — at least in the aggregate — and with the birth of the world’s cheapest car and a play for Ford’s premium European business, Tata looks set to usher in a new era of Indian industrial leadership.

It isn’t just that the Nano will cost a symbolic 1 lakh (US$2500) , or that its 33 horsepower engine will reach speeds of 65 miles an hour, or that transportation in India will be revolutionized in ways that inventors of the Segway only dreamed. More important than the car itself is its underlying raison d’etre: the emergence of India’s swelling middle class, set to grow from 50 million today to nearly 600 million by 2025. Following similar demographic and economic trends in China, these first-generation middle class consumers will fuel the next cycle of global economic growth for automobiles, electronics, mass media, food, and pretty much everything else we’ve come to take for granted over the last fifty years.

The story isn’t all roses, but the challenges of sustainable and responsible economic development are slowly being addressed. Technological advances in agriculture, structural advances in micro-finance and micro-capitalism, infrastructural developments within and between major urban centres, and demographic trends will continue to fuel investment and innovation across the continent.

That said, for those of us living in the peaceful economic bosom of the G8, India’s latest foray into industrial design and manufacturing could spell the beginning of the end of heavy industry in Western markets, and fuel the push to reinvent the economies of the developed world. Traditionally, systemic shifts of this magnitude involved sizeable labour migrations and ultimately some measure of political instability.

One can only hope that Canadian policymakers — particularly in auto-dependent Ontario — are students of economic history and move to educate and innovate away from their 20th century manufacturing addictions before the knowledge-based industries of the future are too far out of reach.
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Now playing: K K - Dekho Na
via FoxyTunes

100 Ways to Save The Environment

noreply@blogger.com (i lik 2 blog) — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 14:51:00 +0000

In Your Home – Conserve Energy

Clean or replace air filters on your air conditioning unit at least once a month.
If you have central air conditioning, do not close vents in unused rooms.
Lower the thermostat on your water heater to 120.
Wrap your water heater in an insulated blanket.
Turn down or shut off your water heater when you will be away for extended periods.
Turn off unneeded lights even when leaving a room for a short time.
Set your refrigerator temperature at 36 to 38 and your freezer at 0 to 5 .
When using an oven, minimize door opening while it is in use; it reduces oven temperature by 25 to 30 every time you open the door.
Clean the lint filter in your dryer after every load so that it uses less energy.
Unplug seldom used appliances.
Use a microwave when- ever you can instead of a conventional oven or stove.
Wash clothes with warm or cold water instead of hot.
Reverse your indoor ceiling fans for summer and winter operations as recommended.
Turn off lights, computers and other appliances when not in use.
Purchase appliances and office equipment with the Energy Star Label; old refridgerators, for example, use up to 50 more electricity than newer models.
Only use electric appliances when you need them.
Use compact fluorescent light bulbs to save money and energy.
Keep your thermostat at 68 in winter and 78 in summer.
Keep your thermostat higher in summer and lower in winter when you are away
Insulate your home as best as you can.
Install weather stripping around all doors and windows.
Shut off electrical equipment in the evening when you leave work.
Plant trees to shade your home.
Shade outside air conditioning units by trees or other means.
Replace old windows with energy efficient ones.
Use cold water instead of warm or hot water when possible.
Connect your outdoor lights to a timer.
Buy green electricity - electricity produced by low - or even zero-pollution facilities (NC Greenpower for North Carolina - www.ncgreenpower.org). In your home-reduce toxicity.

In Your Home – Reduce Toxicity

Eliminate mercury from your home by purchasing items without mercury, and dispose of items containing mercury at an appropriate drop-off facility when necessary (e.g. old thermometers).
Learn about alternatives to household cleaning items that do not use hazardous chemicals.
Buy the right amount of paint for the job.
Review labels of household cleaners you use. Consider alternatives like baking soda, scouring pads, water or a little more elbow grease.
When no good alternatives exist to a toxic item, find the least amount required for an effective, sanitary result.
If you have an older home, have paint in your home tested for lead. If you have lead-based paint, cover it with wall paper or other material instead of sanding it or burning it off.
Use traps instead of rat and mouse poisons and insect killers.
Have your home tested for radon.
Use cedar chips or aromatic herbs instead of mothballs.

In Your Yard
Avoid using leaf blowers and other dust-producing equipment.
Use an electric lawn- mower instead of a gas-powered one.
Leave grass clippings on the yard-they decompose and return nutrients to the soil.
Use recycled wood chips as mulch to keep weeds down, retain moisture and prevent erosion.
Use only the required amount of fertilizer.
Minimize pesticide use.
Create a wildlife habitat in your yard.
Water grass early in the morning.
Rent or borrow items like ladders, chain saws, party decorations and others that are seldom used.
Take actions that use non hazardous components (e.g., to ward off pests, plant marigolds in a garden instead of using pesticide).
Put leaves in a compost heap instead of burning them or throwing them away. Yard debris too large for your compost bin should be taken to a yard-debris recycler.

In Your Office

Copy and print on both sides of paper.
Reuse items like envelopes, folders and paper clips.
Use mailer sheets for interoffice mail instead of an envelope.Use mailer sheets for interoffice mail instead of an envelope.
Set up a bulletin board for memos instead of sending a copy to each employee.
Use e-mail instead of paper correspondence.
Use recycled paper.
Use discarded paper for scrap paper.
Encourage your school and/or company to print documents with soy-based inks, which are less toxic.
Use a ceramic coffee mug instead of a disposable cup.

Ways To Protect Our Air
Ask your employer to consider flexible work schedules or telecommuting.
Recycle printer cartridges.
Shut off electrical equipment in the evening when you leave work.
Report smoking vehicles to your local air agency.
Don't use your wood stove or fireplace when air quality is poor.
Avoid slow-burning, smoldering fires. They produce the largest amount of pollution.
Burn seasoned wood - it burns cleaner than green wood.
Use solar power for home and water heating.
Use low-VOC or water-based paints, stains, finishes and paint strippers.
Purchase radial tires and keep them properly inflated for your vehicle.
Paint with brushes or rollers instead of using spray paints to minimize harmful emissions.
Ignite charcoal barbecues with an electric probe or other alternative to lighter fluid.
If you use a wood stove, use one sold after 1990. They are required to meet federal emissions standards and are more efficient and cleaner burning.
Walk or ride your bike instead of driving, whenever possible.
Join a carpool or vanpool to get to work.

Ways to Use Less Water

Check and fix any water leaks.
Install water-saving devices on your faucets and toilets.
Don't wash dishes with the water running continuously.
Wash and dry only full loads of laundry and dishes.
Follow your community's water use restrictions or guidelines.
Install a low-flow shower head.
Replace old toilets with new ones that use a lot less water.
Turn off washing machine's water supply to prevent leaks.

Ways to Protect Our Water
Revegetate or mulch disturbed soil as soon as possible.
Never dump anything down a storm drain.
Have your septic tank pumped and system inspected regularly.
Check your car for oil or other leaks, and recycle motor oil.
Take your car to a car wash instead of washing it in the driveway.
Learn about your watershed.

Create Less Trash
Buy items in bulk from loose bins when possible to reduce the packaging wasted.
Avoid products with several layers of packaging when only one is sufficient. About 33 of what we throw away is packaging.
Buy products that you can reuse.
Maintain and repair durable products instead of buying new ones.
Check reports for products that are easily repaired and have low breakdown rates.
Reuse items like bags and containers when possible.
Use cloth napkins instead of paper ones.
Use reusable plates and utensils instead of disposable ones.
Use reusable containers to store food instead of aluminum foil and cling wrap.
Shop with a canvas bag instead of using paper and plastic bags.
Buy rechargeable batteries for devices used frequently.
Reuse packaging cartons and shipping materials. Old newspapers make great packaging material.
Compost your vegetable scraps.
Buy used furniture - there is a surplus of it, and it is much cheaper than new furniture.

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OpenOffice 3 has PDF import, native Aqua UI, and Tara Reid

noreply@blogger.com (i lik 2 blog) — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 02:38:00 +0000

OpenOffice 3 has PDF import, native Aqua UI, and Tara Reid

There’s been quite a bit of buzz recently after it was announced that OpenOffice 3 was due in September. It seems, however, most people still aren’t aware of what’s in store.

We love OpenOffice.org, hereby referred to as OpenOffice like normal people do. We like the fact it does pretty much everything we need for free, we like the out-of-the box PDF and Flash support, its better-than-Word ability to work with large documents, and the joys of using a standard file format that’s actually, you know, a standard.

But the Openpoffice.org website is a rather scary place. We managed to find this conference presentation lurking in the shadows before running away in fear of mid 90’s web design. Here’s the best bits:

Native Mac OS X Aqua version

The Mac finally gets a native OpenOffice. This has been going on for a while - you can already download the native OS X OpenOffice 2.3 beta, but this time it’s official.
Sure, NeoOffice already does this, but OpenOffice 3 for Mac is new code that will be released and updated at the same time as the Windows and Linux versions. Speaking of Windows, Vista users also get some kind of unspecified ‘integration’ for 3.0.

New PIM

We love our Pimms with ginger ale, lemonade, citrus fruit, cucumber and ice. OpenOffice 3 has a different recipe:

Email
Calendaring with meeting invites and free/busy publishing
Task management
Server connectivity to CalDAV servers, Google Calendar and Sun Calendar Server, as well as the obligatory iCal support. Alas, no mention of Zimbra.
Specifically touted by OpenOffice developers as an ‘Outlook replacement’

Support for Everything

Remember showing your mates the Flash export in OpenOffice 2 Impress? Well drag them round again, as OpenOffice 3 takes it a step further.

PDF files can be imported into Draw and edited with all their layout intact. Yum.
The whole Openoffice suite can save ‘hybrid’ PDF documents that can be viewed as PDFs or edited as OpenDocument files.
Edit wikis directly from OpenOffice without learning Yet Another Needless Wiki Markup Format.
WordPress and Movabletype blogs can be edited too.
Support for MS Office 2007 XML. Microsoft confusingly calls this ‘Office Open XML’. We call it Stop Naming Your Unstable Undocumented Shitty Format To Sound Like Ours Thanks.
Math fetishists can enjoy enhanced Latex support.

Extension Manager

Openoffice 3 will have simple Firefox-like extensions. There’s a wide variety of existing OpenOffice extensions already available:

Fax support (both send and receive)
Google docs integration
Remote control for presentations via your bluetooth remote
Version control with Subversion
Voice commentaries for presentations

Reports

Beancounters and thier minions can now make pretty documents from databases using Base’s new reporting engine.

Tara Reid

This release marks the appearance of Tara Reid in OpenOffice. Witnesses report the anorexic booze hound stumbled into OOs build system by accident, and will now live inside OpenOffice translating documents into a language only spoken when you’ve drunk 8 bottles of vodka.

Unfortunately in current betas, when this feature is enabled, OpenOffice smells vaguely of pee.

So that’s it for OpenOffice 3. Betas are arriving in the next few months, and the final should be done by September.

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The Top 50 Proprietary Programs that Drive You Crazy — and Their Open Source Alternatives

noreply@blogger.com (i lik 2 blog) — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 02:15:00 +0000

Basics

Windows Vista OS to Ubuntu OS: This is Microsoft’s operating system (OS), and even Microsoft fans have become disillusioned with this product. Open source OS alternatives have expanded; but these OS often are difficult for the average user to install, learn, and operate. Why deal with it when Ubuntu has become so easy to use that even the most computer illiterate can jump into this operating system with very little time spent on a learning curve? In fact, users can purchase a Dell computer with Ubuntu already installed. Remember, however, that when it comes to using open source software that the open source community often focuses on applications that can be used through Windows, Mac, Linux, or Unix with the majority seemingly devoted to Windows.
Internet Explorer Browser to Firefox Browser: Sure, Internet Explorer (IE) is free; but, that’s because it comes packaged with Windows’ operating systems. Free is far different from open source software, where users have more control over how that software works. While you might feel more comfortable with a proprietary operating system, you can still use an open source browser like Mozilla’s Firefox, an exceptional product that expands its use with ‘add-ons‘ created by avid users.

Office Suites

Microsoft Office to OpenOffice: If the price makes you feel that Microsoft has worked you over, then switch! If you compare Microsoft’s Office with other products, then you’re looking for something that includes an email client, a word processor, a spreadsheet tool, and a multimedia presentation application. The only product that provides a competitive edge against Microsoft is Google (that includes Gmail, Google Docs, Google Presentation and more). But, some would argue that Google isn’t truly open source. So, the next best bet alternative would be OpenOffice, an open source project that includes everything you’d find in Microsoft Office except the email client.
Mactopia to NeoOffice: Another Microsoft office suite, but this time meant for MacIntosh computers. Try NeoOffice instead. NeoOffice® is a full-featured set of office applications, including word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing, and database programs for Mac OS X. This suite is based on the OpenOffice.org office suite, but it has integrated dozens of native Mac features and can import, edit, and exchange files with other popular office programs such as Microsoft Office.

Office Tools

MathWorks MATLAB to Scilab: MATLAB is a highly used application for numerical computing. It provides a programming language that allows users to work with numbers in any possible way imaginable through visualization. Scilab is the open source alternative to MATLAB, and it provides visualization of numerical data just as MATLAB does. Scilab is partly compatible with MATLAB, and both tools are suited for Windows, Linux, and UNIX.
Microsoft Access to Kexi: Microsoft Access is a versatile tool for creating database-driven applications and to maintain office or personal data. Access contains an embedded database engine, but it also connects to other databases through ODBC. On the other hand, Kexi allows users to design forms to gain access to and to create data, just like Access. Kexi also contains an embedded database engine and it can import data to Microsoft Access databases. Plus - Kexi is open source, whereas Access belongs to Microsoft.
Microsoft Word to OpenOffice Writer: If you want to break that office suite down and begin to replace the suite item by item, then you can start with this product first. Writer is the word processor component of the OpenOffice.org software package that is similar to Microsoft Word, and with a roughly equivalent range of features. Writer can be used across a variety of platforms, including Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris. Writer also includes the ability to export Portable Document Format (PDF) files with no additional software, and can also function as a WYSIWYG editor for creating and editing web pages. One plus over Word is that Writer carries functions and number formats in its tables from Calc, OpenOffice’s spreadsheet application.
Microsoft Excel to OpenOffice Calc: Another Microsoft product, Excel still carries its productivity pluses as a spreadsheet, but it no longer carries an air of absolute necessity. Google’s Docs can bring an online, sharing atmosphere to your spreadsheets now. As for a truly open source product that can replace Excel, try OpenOffice.org Calc. This tool provides full spreadsheet functionality incl. a huge number of statistical and scientific functions, pivot tables and charts.
Microsoft Visio to Dia: Visio actually is a great application that allows users to go from complicated text and tables that are hard to understand to diagrams that communicate information at a glance. The only thing that spoils the context is the fact that this software is that it’s not open source. Instead, use Dia, a GTK+ based diagram creation program for Linux, Unix and Windows released under the GPL license. Dia was ‘roughly’ inspired by Visio, which should make this tool easy for transition.

Productivity

Blackboard to Moodle: Blackboard has been the CMS (Course Management System) ‘industry standard’ for educational purposes for many years. This program allows instructors to build courses, manage student workloads, and more. But Moodle has gained significant ground as an open source alternative to Blackboard, as it helps educators to create effective online learning communities in a scalable package that costs nothing to use.
Box to Cabos: If you’re into file sharing, you’ve probably heard of Box.net, if not used them. Not only can you share files, Box allows you to store your files securely online, allowing you to access them from any computer, phone or mobile device for a fee. Cabos, another file sharing program that’s open source, provides simple sidebar user interface, firewall to firewall transfers, proxy transfers, Universal Plug and Play, iTunes + iPod integration, “What’s New?” searches, international searches, and more. All you need is Windows 2000 or later. Mac OS X 10.2.8 or later. Mac OS 8.6 or later. Granted, you don’t have the file storage capacity, but at least you can share files with Cabos without that extra storage capacity.
Microsoft Project to Open Workbench: Microsoft allows users to control project work, schedule, and finances, and effectively communicate project data to other users. But, it costs to do that with Microsoft. Instead, use open source Open Workbench to accomplish exactly the same project details for free. When users need to move beyond desktop scheduling to a workgroup, division or enterprise-wide solution, they can upgrade to CA’s Clarity™ system, a project and portfolio management system that offers bidirectional integration with Open Workbench.
Mindjet to FreeMind: Mindmapping is a way to share ideas among individuals and groups for productivity. This type of activity takes time, but it saves time. So why should you pay for a product when you can save money by using FreeMind? This latter product will accomplish all the Mindjet does and more. That “more” is the fact that FreeMind is open source.

Graphic Programs

Adobe Illustrator to Inkscape: Adobe’s vector drawing system is one of the best in the industry. However, like Photoshop, the price can be prohibitive for some designers and artists. Try Inkscape instead, an open source vector graphics editor similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X. Inkscape uses the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format and it supports many advanced SVG features (markers, clones, alpha blending, etc.). Finally, the streamlined interface is easy to use to edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps and much more.
Adobe PhotoShop to GIMP: Even if you’re paying for upgrades instead of the original package, the price for Adobe’s Photoshop can be prohibitive for some photographers and graphic designers. Try GIMP to see if this open source tool can’t provide you with all the power you need for your photography and graphic design needs. GIMP stands for Gnu Image Manipulation Program, and it’s the solution that comes closest to emulating the Photoshop environment.
Adobe Premiere to Avidemux: Premier is state of the art real-time non-linear video editing for any format including High Definition (HD). Supports 16-bit color resolution, GPU accelerated rendering for faster effects and even advanced DVD authoring. On the other hand, Avidemux provides Windows, Mac, and Linux users with an easy-to-use open source tool for DVD/DivX converting and editing. Avidemux also has scripting support for automation and even offers DVD authoring with the addition of the open source software, dvdauthor.
AutoCAD to Archimedes: AutoCAD is an AutoDesk tool used by any designer who creates design drafts - mostly architects. Archimedes is an open source computer aided design (CAD) alternative that focuses primarily on architectural design. AutoCAD definitely has the winning score thus far, but Archimedes shows promise. The latter program contains all the drawing features a designer would need, but its interoperability is weak. Designers still can export scalable vector graphics, so there’s a real market for this open source tool (this opinion isn’t based upon Archimedes’ newest release).
Microsoft PowerPoint to OpenOffice Impress: You can make a move away from this Microsoft tool with the use of Google’s Presentation or with OpenOffice’s Impress. Both tools represent full-featured presentation applications that allow users to create and modify diagrams and pictures right within the application.
Microsoft Paint to Tux Paint: While not a serious graphics program, it is widely used by many computer users, mostly children Try Tux Paint instead of Paint, as this open source product stands apart from typical graphics people edit software (such as GIMP or Photoshop) in that it was designed to be usable by children as young as 16 months of age. The user interface is meant to be intuitive, and utilizes icons, audible feedback and textual hints to help explain how the software works.
TruSpace to Blender: Caligari offers a range of products that enable designers and artists to produce 3D images - at a hefty price. Blender, on the other hand, provides one tool that provides full multiresolution sculpting capabilities with 2D bitmap/3D procedural brushes (Paint, Smooth, Pinch, Inflate, Grab) supporting symmetry. And, that’s just the beginning of Blender’s capabilities. This open source software is free to download and use.

Web Editors

Adobe GoLive CS2 to Mozilla SeaMonkey: GoLive is an integral part of the Adobe Creative Suites products, so it works with your InDesign documents and allows those documents to be converted to Web pages. But, you might want to try Mozilla’s SeaMonkey before you commit to the total Adobe suite option. The Mozilla SeaMonkey project includes a Web-browser, email and newsgroup client, HTML authoring program and IRC chat client. The Composer is simple but it handles tables, CSS, positioned layers and more without sweat. Add-ons currently include Scribefire, the blog blog editor that integrates with your browser and lets you easily post to your blog.
Adobe Dreamweaver to NVU: While this tool is a powerful WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) HTML editor, other options exist that can save money. NVU (pronounced N-view, for a “new view”) is a complete Web Authoring System for Linux Desktop users as well as Microsoft Windows users to rival programs like FrontPage and Dreamweaver. Use NVU to create Web pages and manage a Website with no technical expertise or knowledge of HTML.
Macromedia Flash Professional to OpenLaszlo: Developers use Flash to create multimedia events on the Web. Since the program utilizes vector-based graphics, it provides a venue that goes beyond the Web. As an open source product, OpenLaszlo provides developers with a platform to create zero-install Web applications with user interface capabilities of desktop client software. In other words, OpenLaszlo applications developed on one machine will run on all leading Web browsers on all leading desktop OS. These applications, like Flash, provide animation, layout, data binding, server communication and more.
Microsoft Frontpage to Bluefish: While not as powerful as Dreamweaver, Front Page is a widely used proprietary application used to create Web pages. Take a gander at this list to understand your many open source options for HTML editors. Try Bluefish as one option that can save you money and, possibly, time.
Windows Notepad to ConTEXT: Yes, you can get the world’s most versatile HTML editing tool absolutely FREE when you purchase Windows version 2.0 and above. But, why would you want to do that when you can work with open source ConTEXT? This application is a small, fast and powerful freeware programmers text editor, developed to serve as a secondary tool for software developers.
Altova XMLSpy to XML Copy Editor: XMLSpy is one of the most popular XML editors on the market today. Its editing features and support for both schema and DTD development along with XSLT, XQuery and XPath development make it an ultimate XML tool. As an open source alternative, XML Copy Editor is a versatile XML editor primarily focused on text editing with XML files. However, XML Copy Editor provides many other features including validation of DTD and XML schemas - as well as XSLT and XPath with tag-free editing. Both tools are Windows applications.

Publishing

Adobe Acrobat to PDFCreator: Yes, you have a free trial to create a PDF through Adobe. However, this PDFCreator easily creates PDFs from any Windows program. Use it like a printer in Word, StarCalc or any other Windows application.
Adobe Framemaker to DocBook: Adobe Framemaker software represents a powerful authoring and publishing solution for technical communicators who want to author and publish technical documentation in multiple languages. While this software is reliable, so is DocBook, an open source publishing tool. Additionally, you have access to all the free wikis and documentation that shows how to install, use, and customize the tools and stylesheets.
Microsoft Publisher to Scribus: When it comes to Desktop Publishing (DTP) Microsoft’s Publisher provides more control over document elements than Microsoft Word through a DTP-oriented approach. However, professional users still consider this program an entry-level application. Since it’s part of the Microsoft Office Package, many users will find its costs negligible as well. With that said, Scribus offers an open source DTP alternative. Scribus brings award-winning professional page layout to Linux/Unix, MacOS X, OS/2 and Windows desktops with a combination of “press-ready” output and new approaches to page layout. Scribus supports professional publishing features, such as CMYK color, separations, ICC color management and versatile PDF creation.

Communications

AIM to Pidgin: Give it up. AIM, AOL’s Instant Messenger, no longer rules. The open source alternative is Pidgin, a multi-protocol Instant Messaging client that allows you to use all of your IM accounts at once. Let’s break that down: No matter if you use Windows, Linux, BSD, and other Unixes. You can talk to your friends using AIM, ICQ, Jabber/XMPP, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, IRC, Novell GroupWise Messenger, QQ, Lotus Sametime, SILC, SIMPLE, MySpaceIM, and Zephyr. Can AIM do that? No? Well, then.
FeedDemon to RSS Bandit: FeedDemon for Windows constantly searches through feed search engines with keyword-generated searches as well as generalized searches. It also allows offline reading as it ‘prefetches’ your subscribed feeds. NewsGator also synchronizes with FeedDemon so you can gain access to news without your computer. Except for the fact that FeedDemon isn’t open source, it’s an ideal, robust reader. But, for open source fanatics, RSS Bandit provides an equally robust alternative RSS and Atom reader that allows you to keep track of all of the news feeds you follow. Its newspaper view can be customized and the templates are compatible with those used in FeedDemon. Plus, RSS Bandit allows you to synchronize everything with NewsGator online. Finally, RSS Bandit also provides access to news on news servers (similar to Google Groups) - it uses NNTP to read and post to newsgroups anywhere on the net. It integrates to Google Groups by linking to posts on their website.
Microsoft MSN Messenger to aMSN: Microsoft offers MSN Messenger to the masses as freeware on Windows, and it’s grown from a simple IM application into a trendsetter in a competitive market. Features include voice and video chatting, gaming, remote support - on top of that it allows connection through mobile devices when you are not near a computer. aMSN, the open source Windows alternative to MSN, aims to mimic its proprietary competitor as much as possible. Most of its extra features are added through plug-ins. You can add, at your leisure, POP3 email support and translation, voice clips, Webcam support, Chat logs, Conferencing support and more.
Microsoft Outlook to Thunderbird: Say that you decided to switch to OpenOffice, but you need an email client to replace Microsoft’s Outlook. Try Mozilla’s Thunderbird, an application that carries a similar interface and that is easy to use. Additionally, you can use Lightning to integrate Mozilla’s Sunbird calendar application with Thunderbird.
Skype to Wengophone: Skype is a very strong freeware internet VoIP (Voice over IP) product in the telecommunications industry. It started with a simple and free PC-to-PC telephony, but today offers full integration with existing telephone systems. Skype today also offers voicemail, video conversations and sending SMSs. Its open source alternative, WengoPhone, also provides free PC-to-PC calls as well as chat and video conferencing. Created by Wengo, this phone also can provide SMS and call-out features that allow users to communicate with any phone at reasonable prices.

Media

iTunes to Songbird: If you’re accustomed to the equation where “Apple + iPod + iTunes” equals a ton of money, then you might consider a switch to Songbird. Songbird is an open source player and a platform committed to “playing the music you want + from the sites you want + on the devices you want.” Songbird thereby challenges the conventions of discovery, purchase, consumption and organization of music on the Internet.
Nero Burning Rom to K3b: Nero Burning Rom is a popular tool to burn CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs. This software includes backup, cd copying, audio features and more, and it’s easy to use. But, it’s not open source like K3b (Windows). This latter program creates and burns CDs and DVDs, including ripping with DivX/XviD encoding, DVD copy, ISO burning, Video CD (VCD) creation, Audio CD creation for almost any audio file, CD-TEXT support for audio CDs, support for DVD-RW and DVD+RW and much more. Oh, and did we add that it was easy to use?
Quicktime to Darwin Streaming Server: Apple’s QuickTime 7 Pro is good for everything from creating podcasts to transcoding media in more than a dozen formats. And, the software isn’t that expensive when compared to other products. But, why not use an open source application that shares the same code base as Quicktime Streaming Server? Darwin Streaming Server is an open source project that’s perfect for developers who need to stream QuickTime and MPEG-4 media on platforms such as Windows, Linux, and Solaris.
TiVo Desktop to Galleon.tv: Tivo-to-Go users were disappointed to discover that their Tivo software wouldn’t work with Windows Vista. Some answers to this problem included spending more time and money on various solutions that might work to restore that software’s functionality. One solution included using the open source software, Galleon, instead of trying to “fix” Tivo or Windows Vista. Galleon is a free open source media server for the TiVo® DVR which allows you to enjoy many kinds of content and interactive applications right on your TV. The server runs on your home computer and organizes your media collection so that they can be viewed on your home network. Galleon also brings Internet content and applications to your TV.
Windows Media Player to Miro: This application seems ubiquitous…no matter what you try to open, Windows Media Player is in your face, right? Well, replace that in-your-face attitude with Miro, an open source program that turns your computer into an internet TV. Miro has 2,500 unrestricted channels with a huge selection of HD content. Plus, you have access to any publisher with video RSS feeds, including anyone on YouTube, Revver, Blip, and many, many more.

Utilities

CuteFTP to Filezilla: Sure, CuteFTO is cute, but it’s not free. Sure, it’s reliable, but so are many other File Transfer Protocol applications. Try Filezilla, a fast FTP and SFTP client for Windows with tons of features - easy to install, easy to use, very reliable, secure, and open source.
iBackup to ZManda: Who can you trust with your backup files? It’s difficult to decide, as price alone means nothing. You want safe, reliable servers or tools that can keep your backups available and intact. iBackup has proven to be worthy of that task, but you might want to look at ZManda as well. This open source solution protects more than half a million of servers and desktops running various versions of Linux, UNIX, BSD, Mac OS-X and Microsoft Windows operating systems worldwide. Not only do they backup information, they’re into recovery as well.
Norton Ghost to Partition Image: Norton Ghost isn’t a shabby backup system, as it’s a complete tool that backs up everything but the kitchen sink. If you have a complete disk failure, Norton Ghost can bring it back to life on a new hard disk (although you don’t need to make a complete backup every time). You can take this backup to external drives, CDs or DVDs. If you’re an open source advocate, however, Norton Ghost doesn’t cut the cake. You’ll want something like Partition Image (for Linux) or Ghost for Unix (G4U) for Windows or Unix users. Both tools are disk cloners that act differently, but they’re as robust as Norton Ghost. Read more at their respective Web sites before you make the jump. (For a complete rescue disk including Partition Image see SystemRescueCd).
Rational Purify to Valgrind: IBM’s Purify is a well respected and much used debugging tool. It uses topnotch memory corruption and memory leak detection to keep hard-to-find bugs from any application. As an open source alternative, Valgrind also detects leaks and other memory related programming errors. But, it also detects threading bugs and includes a call-graph profiler that detects bottlenecks in code. as well as threading bugs. A user might say that Valgrind is better than Purify, even if it is open source.
WinZip to 7-Zip: Some of us grew up with WinZip, so it’s sad to say goodbye. But, we all gotta leave home at some point, and when the open source 7-Zip beckons, maybe you should heed the call…

Security

Kaspersky Anti-Virus Personal to Winpooch: Kaspersky Anti-Virus probably is among the top products on the market for Windows-based anti-virus tools, mainly because it’s well known for its outstanding detection rates. It commits to multiple tasks as it protects against viruses, script viruses, checks file archives (such as zip files) and removes viruses from mail. It also provides protection against spyware as well as adware. As an open source alternative, however, Winpooch also scans files on your computer, detects malware, and prevents all the viruses, trojan horses and other problems that Kaspersky hunts down as well. Winpooch, by the way, adds a real-time scanning capability that ClamWin (noted below) lacks.
McAfee VirusScan to ClamWin: McAfee is well known as one of the oldest companies in the anti-virus market. Many individuals need to deal with this software company, as its tools come packaged with many new Windows OS computer systems. The plus side to McAfee is that it is reliable and that it offers 24/7 support. The downside is that it’s not open source. ClamWin, on the other hand, is a free Antivirus for Microsoft Windows 98/Me/2000/XP/2003. It features high detection rates, scheduler, automatic download of virus database updates and a plug-in for Microsoft Outlook. As noted above, ClamWin doesn’t provide on access realtime scanning, but when combined with WinPooch, this capability is added.
Norton Personal Firewall to WIPFW: Many people could work with Norton in their sleep, as this company has been around that long. The Norton Personal Firewall for Windows will monitor and check all Internet traffic and it will reject any attack or intrusion attempt. Ubiquitous popups and permissions are part of the game, as it seems that each new Website carries its own set of Norton no-nos. As an alternative, WIPFW is a firewall for Windows based on IPFW for FreeBSD UNIX. It provides virtually the same features, functionality, and user interface as Norton Personal Firewall. The big difference? WIPFW is open source.

Financial

Authorize.net to OpenSSL: Granted, Authorize.Net’s preferred payment gateway connection, Advanced Integration Menthod (AIM), provides the highest level of customization and security to merchants for submitting transactions online. But, why pay for a secure SSL when you can get an open source product for free? The OpenSSL Project is a collaborative effort to develop a robust, commercial-grade, full-featured, and Open Source toolkit implementing the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL v2/v3) and Transport Layer Security (TLS v1) protocols as well as a full-strength general purpose cryptography library. A worldwide community of volunteers uses the Internet to communicate, plan, and develop the OpenSSL toolkit and its related documentation manages the project.
Microsoft Money (Plus) to TurboCash: While Microsfot Money Plus is much more than a personal accounting software, Turbocash can boast that claim plus more. Turbocash is open source and free to use. In fact, you might compare TurboCash more to Quickbooks than to Microsoft Money. However, as a personal finance tool, TurboCash is much more user-friendly to the average home budgeter than Compiere.
Quickbooks to Compiere: Few people are unfamiliar with Quickbooks, as this software has made its way into many a small business computer. If you feel that few opportunities exist to switch, think again. Compiere, produced by Global Era, provides one solution to open source ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solutions for any small to large business. Compiere 3.0 marks the introduction of Compiere Professional Edition, a new premium offering targeted at larger organizations that require more advanced services and commercial licensing from Compiere.

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