Open Sez Me*

With the cost of everything rising, I am hearing more interest in Open Source software... more people taking the concept seriously. This blog often features free and inexpensive applications; open source applications are inherently different in that the programming is available for modification by others. Here are some alternatives for those interested in exploring the road less traveled (at least by corporate America):

Microsoft Office = Open Office
Internet Explorer, Outlook = Firefox, Thunderbird
Real Player = Real Alternative
Blackboard = Moodle, .LRN, and many others

Now if we could just find some Open Source gas... in the meantime, check Gas Buddy for the lowest prices in your neighborhood.


Category: Utilities_

*My childhood interpretation of "Open, Sesame!" from Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves

Manuals on Automatic

I conscientiously keep all manuals that arrive with any new products and gadgets in our house. However, I never clean them out and am sometimes dismayed to discover that I am giving house room to the manual for that Tandy laptop that passed away years ago. This clever site provides electronic versions of all of those manuals for many of your devices, without cluttering up your home.

Category: Utilities_, Other Cool Stuff_

Making This Blog (and others) Come to You

Here's a nice tutorial from Laurie Prange of Yukon College on how to use Google Reader. Google Reader, like other RSS readers or aggregators, collects the information you specify into one nice package, a custom newspaper, if you will. I use Bloglines currently, but any RSS reader is a great way to stay informed and something we should consider teaching our students in terms of information literacy and current awareness in a discipline.

Like many other Google services, this requires a Gmail address. If you need a Gmail invitation, please get in touch.


Category: Utilities_, Web_

Travelers Beware

If you use a Windows XP laptop when traveling, unplug and do not use any peripherals attached to a USB port as doing so will cause your batteries to drain faster than usual. Apparently, Microsoft has confirmed this bug.

FREE STUFF FREE STUFF FREE STUFF FREE

I feel like Crazy Larry, the used car salesman! You won't believe the bargains! They're giving this stuff away!

This is an amazing site listing freeware for just about any purpose...
I Want a Freeware Utility To... 450+ Common Problems Solved



Category: Utilities_, Other Cool Stuff_

Save That Site!

Librarians (and others) worry about the preservation of digital information. For instance, all of the blogs about the Katrina disaster--aren't these the primary documents, the journals, the diaries, of tomorrow's historian? (Stepping down from the soapbox) --if you have a need to archive web sites, this post from Resource Shelf offers three free solutions for local storage and off-line browsing.

Image from the Sandusky County Scrapbook

Category: Web_

HTML Scrubber

If you have ever tried to convert a Word document to a web document, you know that many things get lost in translation.. your formatting, good, clean code, and probably your patience. This post from Lifehacker outlines a procedure to remedy the situation, using OpenOffice. However, in the comments section of the post, you will find mentioned the following tips that seem a little less complicated:

• Office 2000 HTML Filter 2.0
• HTML Tidy
• Textism's Word Cleaner

Category: Web_, Utilities_

From the mailbag...

For those folks who need to check an email account that isn't web-based, try mail2web.com. You enter your email address and password & the service retrieves your email from your email server, even if you don't have a web-based email account. It is free and doesn't require registration of any kind. It allows you to use your existing email account instead of creating a separate web-based account. It allows you to not only read your email but also reply, forward, and delete messages.

Category: Utilities_

It Takes Two to Tango

For those of us wishing for a
real-time collaboration tool, this new site offers much potential.

Category: Other Cool Stuff_

I'm Ready for My Close-up, Mr. DeMille

I have seen spaces where you can share video online (YouTube comes to mind) but these are the first online video editing resources I have seen. Both are built on a collaborative, remixing model and offer some nice basic tools.

Jumpcut
Eyespot


Category: Video_

Survey says....

If you want to collect data quickly, you might consider an online survey service. SurveyMonkey.com offers a free basic subscription.

Category: Utilities_, Other Cool Stuff_

Spam mail a problem in outlook?

If you're an outlook user and are having trouble with the amount of spam that gets to your inbox you might want to check out SpamBayes. SpamBayes is a free, open source application that can plug into outlook. After you install it you mark spam that you recieve as junk and it will statistically analyze the message's content to learn how to better filter out the spam that you recieve. I use it and it works wonderfully. You can download SpamBayes at http://spambayes.sourceforge.net/

Category: Utilities_

More Picture Pages

Two more image tools from PCWorld's 101 Fabulous Freebies:

• Google Picasa: sort, store, edit the pictures on your PC
• Irfanview: edit, create slide shows, and convert images from one format to another

Category: Images_

Analyze This

I signed up to request a free Google analytics account a while ago and just received my invitation.

You can add up to 5 web profiles and you receive reports indicating the number of page views, unique and returning visitors, the origin of your visitors (see map and pie chart.) There is a substantial amount of tracking available for e-commerce and other goals, although I haven't explored that in depth. You can export in different formats, view different date ranges, etc. You can add others to the analytics account so they can see your reports also.

A very cool, free tool for web developers.

Category: Web_