The Barrel

What’s Holding OpenOffice Back?

 
Why doesn’t free trump expensive? Every Microsoft product has a free, open source counterpart created by dedicated programmers who loathe everything the company stands for. The free stuff is darn good. Yet companies and individuals continue to buy billions of dollars worth of Microsoft products. To be fair, Microsoft software is sometimes better than [...]

Posted in Software

10 Great Software Programs You Can Get Gratis

 
As we bring another season of The PC Guy column to a close — I’ll be off for the summer — let’s take a quick look at 10 cool and free software programs. They include Paint.net, EssentialPIM, OpenOffice.org, PDFCreator, CDBurnerXP, 7-ZIP, Stickies, WordWeb and ooVoo. Coming out of left field in an already crowded [...]

Posted in Software

Firefox 3 Ready to Ignite June 17

 
A new version of the Firefox Web browser is scheduled for release Tuesday with improvements in security, speed and design. Many of the enhancements in Firefox 3 involve bookmarks. The new version lets Web surfers add keywords, or tags, to sort bookmarks by topic. A new "Places" feature lets users quickly access sites they [...]

Posted in News, Software

Adobe’s Acrobat.com could be an Office killer; Will interface matter?

Adobe has tied together its online office suite wacrobat1.pngith the beta of Acrobat.com and the user interface is the big differentiator. What remains to be seen is whether online office users care about aesthetics.
On Monday, Adobe unveiled Acrobat.com, a suite that allows you to create word processing documents, share files, convert PDFs and hold Web [...]

Posted in Software

Back Up programs

Okay the topic of doing back ups in linux has come to the forefront as of late so I thought I would toss a couple of possibilities into the fray. The first is Clonezilla and here is what they have to say about their product;
You’re probably familiar with the popular proprietary [...]

Posted in Software

Adobe Opens the FLV and SWF Formats

“The Open Screen Project is supported by technology leaders, including Adobe, ARM, Chunghwa Telecom, Cisco, Intel, LG Electronics Inc., Marvell, Motorola, Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, Qualcomm, Samsung Electronics Co., Sony Ericsson, Toshiba and Verizon Wireless, and leading content providers, including BBC, MTV Networks, and NBC Universal, who want to deliver rich Web and video experiences, live [...]

Posted in Software

Web criminals fuel big rise in “trojans”

Web criminals fuel big rise in “trojans” - Yahoo! News
LONDON (Reuters) - Cyber-criminals are behind a dramatic rise in stealthy programs called “trojans” that infect computers to sell rogue software, send unwanted email or steal personal data, a study has found.
If you’re reading this blog, it’s very important that you read and understand [...]

Posted in Billyware, Security, Software

Browsing the Web the old-fashioned way

Are you in the mood for some ’90s-style Web browsing with no graphic elements? Or, more realistically, do you work with a Linux console and often need to check something on the Web? If so, get acquainted with text-based Web browsers such as w3m, Lynx, and the similarly named Links.
While browsing the Web without a [...]

Posted in Software

Three Linux HTML editors reviewed

Today’s Web development tools offer capabilities that go beyond basic HTML editing. I compared three Web editors for Linux — Screem 0.16.1, Bluefish 1.0.7, and Quanta Plus 3.5.7 — to determine how well they handle today’s Web editing needs.

The
three programs are similar in many ways. All three are primarily code
editors with syntax highlighting, smart indentation, [...]

Posted in Software

Backup Your Flickr Photos With Flickrfs

What’s Flickr doing to you now?
Pondering a possible purchase at the hands of Microsoft? Threatening to add more features like support 90-second video clips? Withholding those free doughnuts you were promised?
Sounds like now might be a good time to make a backup of you Flickr images. Actually, even without the paranoia of a Microsoft takeover [...]

Posted in How-To, Software