So let’s get started.

1) Open Office

Whenever I see someone use Microsoft Office, I can’t help but laugh at them. They wasted $150 on a program which they can get a better alternative for free! Of course, I’m talking about Open Office. Open Office is what I consider to be the freeware version of Microsoft Office. In fact, they look pretty identical. Open Office has a word processing program like Microsoft Word, it has a presentation slides program like Microsoft Powerpoint, it even has a spreadsheet program like Microsoft Excel!

But, you know what’s the icing on the cake? You can still edit all of your old Microsoft Office documents using Open Office. In fact, you can save all of your documents in Open Office to a compatible Microsoft Office file format!

2) Gimp

Imagine this; Your parents just brought you Photoshop CS3 for your birthday. Although your parents had to spend $1000 for it, they’re happy to see you happy. Now, imagine days later you found another powerful image editor for free. GIMP is an image editing program similar to Photoshop, but it’s available for free. Like Photoshop, you can digitally draw stuff, you can edit photos, and create awesome banners or buttons for your website.

But, I will say this about GIMP; GIMP is not as powerful as Photoshop, at least without the addons. Another unique feature about GIMP is the ability to install useful addons to the program. If you keep installing powerful addons such as layer styles, animation editor, GIF editor and etc, then GIMP could become just as powerful as Photoshop!

3) Google SketchUp

You’re a hobbyist and you’re trying to design a robot for a robotics competition. Your robotics team is trying to look for some money to buy a suitable design program like AutoCad. After weeks of saving, you finally bought the program. However, one of your teammates just learned about a design program which is free. Now those weeks of saving feels wasted, does it?

Anyway, Google SketchUp is a design program similar to AutoCad. Google SketchUp is perfect for newcomers who’s entering the world of design. Google SketchUp features a powerful pencil tool, push and pull, rulers, paint guide-lines, and many more! Also, Google SketchUp is very precise, since you’re able to put measurements in inches, millimeters, centimeters, or whatever measurement of your choosing. The best part is that you can export these models to Google Earth, another awesome freeware from Google.

However, if you believe that the products you’re using are the best of the best, then I don’t blame you. Of course using commercial software has its advantages compared to using free ones.

Anyway, I would still like to share with you my favorite OEM website. Introducing, http://www.ankhsoft.com! Popular software such as Adobe Photoshop CS3, which typically costs $1000, only costs a friction of the cost at the website! And programs such as Flash 8 only costs $70 at the website. Trust me, with these options available to you, there should be a reason why you should visit bit-torrent sites like Piratebay.org anymore!

1. Orbit Downloader - Orbit Downloader is similar to Free Studio below except that it only saves the videos in FLV (flash video) format.
2. Free Studio - One of my favorite Freeware around. It can convert almost anything into mp4 format. Of course, it can only download videos from Youtube.

Now, simply follow the following steps to download and convert a video into MP4 format.

1. Download The Tools! - Do I really need to explain this? Download the tools you’ll need, which are those I told you above.
2. Visit Your Favorite Video Site - For this tutorial, I decided to use Myspace videos since I found this funny and yet vulgar Spongebob parody on the site called “Grandma’s Kisses”.

   

3. Start Orbit Downloader - Start Orbit Downloader from your desktop if you have not already done so.
4. Start Grab++ feature - For this, you’ll need to look at the system tray which is located at the bottom right of your screen, where the date and time is located. You should see the orbit downloader icon in there. Right click on it, and select “Grab ++” (if you don’t see it in the system tray, then click on the “show hidden icons” arrow).

   

5. Download the video file - We’re getting close to the part where you can actually download the FLV video file! Once you have started the “Grab++” feature, select “videos” in the Grab++ display menu. You’re video file should be the file with the biggest amount of MB (megabytes). Select it and press the download button. Save the file to a directory you usually save your video files. For the tutorial, I saved it under my downloads folder.

   

6. Wait - Wait until your file has been completely downloaded.

   

7. Almost There! - Once your file has been completely downloaded, start Free Studio. Select Flash from the main menu and then select “convert flash video to iPod format”. Select your file from the directory you saved it to earlier, and press OK.

   

8. Wait again - Wait until Free Studio is finished converting the file.

Once you have the video converted, you can of course easily import the video into iPod or iPhone and play away! Have fun!

There you are, a few simple steps on how to convert a video file from FLV format to MP4.

These tie up 99% of the browser market but that doesn’t mean you have to be restricted to only these applications. There are a number of very viable alternatives, some built on the Trident or Gecko rendering engines and others from scratch.

Of the Mac browser alternatives I have recently discovered two recently which impressed me the most:

Shiira

Shiira is a Japanese based browser with the goal “to create a browser that is better and more useful than Safari” (not too difficult in my opinion).

Keeping that in mind, Shiira is very similar to Safari in basic functionality and offers a lot of the same features but also offers a lot of enhanced functions and general usability improvements. Like Firefox, Shiira is open source and has been built upon WebKit (an open source application framework that provides a foundation upon which to build a web browser) and with Cocoa (Apple Inc.’s native object-oriented application program environment for the Mac OS X operating system) and runs on Mac OSX 10.4 and higher.

Comparisons of speed, stability and performance between Safari and Shiira are about equal, I’m not sure how it compares to recent updates to Safari but the general impression I get is it’s hard to tell. The last update for Shiira was in January this year.

Shiira shines when you get to appearance customizations as it comes with two themes (Aqua and Metal) and plenty of options for tabs, appearance, icons and moving the interface layout around.

If you use Safari already I can’t see one reason not to use this instead, but I guess it’s all just personal preference. Definitely worth a look anyway.

Camino

A little more well known, Camino is built upon the powerful web-browsing capabilities of the Gecko rendering engine, which is also used by Mozilla Firefox. As such Camino can benefit also from developments such as the recent release of Mozilla Firefox 3.0. The advantage of using Gecko is quite significant compared to other browser’s such as Shiira which are developed by a very small number of people. Mozilla has a community of thousands of developers all helping to build a much greater browser.

Interestingly one of the Camino founder developers was later employed by Apple to work on Safari and it was his influence maybe which gave Camino an early reputation of rapid page loading and speedy browsing. Its other founder was hired by Google and now works on the Google Firefox team but also develops Camino in his 20% time.

In my opinion, Camino can make a very good browser as a Safari or even Opera replacement. On the other hand, Firefox 3.0 boasts better OS integration but for real integration Camino does a fair better job.

It will be interesting to see where these browser go in the future, they still have plenty of opportunities as Firefox managed to gain amazing success in a market dominated by Internet Explorer with 90% or so market share.

Loadtime
Let’s start off with something simple. In the first test, I tested to see how long each program takes to load. Frostwire started off strong with a load time of 5 seconds. So what about Limewire? Limewire took an extra second to load, meaning that Frostwire was slightly faster than Limewire.

Looks

Frostwire looks

It’s no beauty contest, they’re both the same. None of them look that different from the other. They both have the same tabs (well, Limewire has more tabs than Frostwire), and has that same basic structure. The only difference between the two is the color scheme. Frostwire’s color scheme uses blue and white, while Limewire uses green and white. Really, there’s no clear cut competition in terms of looks.

Limewire looks

Search Results
One of our test was the search engine test. One method I did to see which one was better was test their search results. Since Limewire and Frostwire all contain pirated stuff, we instead used “kittens” for our search. When I typed “kittens” for an image search for Frostwire (btw, I was looking for kittens the animal, and people had all of these crazy “kitten” images), it showed the search result a lot faster than Limewire. Although Limewire’s search speed was slower than Frostwire, it had a lot more search results than Frostwire. By searching “kittens”, it showed 44 search results for “kittens”, while Frostwire showed 26. In the end, despite Limewire’s turtle search results, it clearly beats Frostwire in terms of the number of search results.

Download Speed
My last test was the download speed test. I tested the download speed of both contenders by downloading an episode of my favorite web series “Arby n Chief”. To keep it fair, I downloaded the same video for both Frostwire and Limewire. When I clicked the download link for both bit torrent downloaders, Frostwire savagely beat Limewire’s download time by 25 seconds (Frostwire downloaded the file in 15 seconds flat!)! Words could not describe how shocked I was when this outcome resulted. Clearly Frostwire had a faster download time than Limewire.

Extra Features

Frostwire chat

The only extra feature Frostwire has that Limewire doesn’t is the community chat feature (e.g. chatroom). Everything else is identical.

So who won?
Although it wasn’t a clear cut competition, Frostwire is probably the better bit torrent downloader compared to Limewire. Despite the fact that Frostwire does not have a larger number of search results and looks almost identical to Limewire, its download speed, chat room feature and load time is the number reason why you should go with this bit-torrent downloader.

As of yet no application has successfully bridged the gap between power and performance and connectivity and synchronization. Office Live makes some attempt at this but I personally find it far too slow and buggy to use. The biggest downside for Office Live is that most end users simply don’t need the high end features that it provides. I love the new Office Interface, but when will I ever use mail merge or functions like it?

For many of us we just need simple tools, and I’ll show you the best online services currently available which you can use in conjunction with, or as a replacement for Microsoft Office.

1. Google Docs

   Word Processor | Presentations | Spreadsheets

   

   I think Google Docs is an amazing service, I love the fact that in many ways it really isn’t an Office alternative and doesn’t try to be. You’ll see the other services here are trying to provide a complete Office replacement in terms of features and power but Google has just created a service which just provides the features most users will need and makes it incredibly simple to share and collaborate with other users.

   In fact in many cases I just Docs it as a glorified note-taker, but who cares? It’s free, fast and perfect for working on documents with someone else. It also supports Office file formats as well as Open Documents and can import and export to the desktop.

   You’ll need a Gmail account, an Open ID (includes Yahoo ID) in order to use Google Docs, but since most people should have either a Gmail account or Yahoo address already this shouldn’t be a problem. If not, you’ll just have to register for one, but that shouldn’t be too much of a problem, right?

   Features are added regularly based upon user feedback. I have found myself using it more and more lately as I move between places like work, home and university and need to quickly keep documents accessible from all locations.

   If you worry about not being able to access your files when not connected to the Internet then you can use Google Gears to access Docs from the desktop when you are offline. The official Gear site supports Firefox and Internet Explorer, but you will need to go here to get a modified plugin for Flock.

   Daniel did a great article recently where he shows how you can use CSS to style your documents, Google Docs doesn’t have many formatting options so it might be worthwhile to give this a go.

2. Zoho

   Word Processor | Presentations | Spreadsheets | Collaboration | Financial | Management | Recruiting | Wiki | Web Applications

   

   Zoho has just about every office application you’ll ever need (over a dozen), and along with Google Docs has become one of the most popular online office suites. In fact recently the decision was made to allow anyone with a Google account to access Zoho. It may seem a strange decision considering the two could be competitors but as I said before, the two have somewhat different focuses. Zoho as a Office replacement, Google Docs can be used in conjunction.

   Most of the services are free, but some features such as the Zoho Payments and the CRM, payment is required after a certain number of projects have been completed.

3. Acrobat.com

   Word Processor | PDF creator| Collaboration | File Manager

   

   Adobe has its own set of free web applications at Acrobat.com which provide some very useful tools for office productivity. The tools include Buzzword, a word processor, ConnectNow for collaboration, Create PDF, Share Files and My Files, the document manager.

   Essentially Acrobat.com isn’t actually a complete office suite as it doesn’t have a presentation or spreadsheet programs, however if you would like a well designed, fully featured online word processor and PDF creator then Adobe Buzzword is absolutely perfect.

4. ThinkFree Online

   Word Processor | Presentations | Spreadsheets

   

   I hate one thing about Thinkfree. It has a sidebar of ads extending down the right hand side of the page. It may seem like no biggie considering we are constantly bombarded by advertising every day we step out of bed, but to me some things shouldn’t be intruded upon and I hate to see advertising right up there alongside my documents.

   That aside the service itself is great, and really pushes the boundaries of what a web based service can be expected to do. In fact look at the screen-shot alone you would be surprised to know this is in fact entirely a web based application.

   Built upon Ajax and mimicking the Office user interface, ThinkFree provides the capabilities of group editing and collaboration and the publishing of documents directly to webpages and blogs. However, unless you upgrade to the premium version, you cannot access documents offline although you can still use the import and export features.

   The premium version also provides synchronization functions, removes the advertising, and increases the 1 gigabyte storage allowance.

There you are. The four most famous and widely used online office suites. Which one do you think is the best, or is your favorite?

In addition to a chance to be part of the excitement, Firefox 3 will also improve your browsing experience with many new features:

• Smart Location Bar - Besides letting you type in a web site, as always, the location bar in Firefox 3 will also dynamically search your browsing history and provide you with a list of sites that match what you’ve currently typed. Both URLs and page titles from your history are searched, making for a very intuitive interface.
• Enhanced Security - In coordination with Google, Firefox 3 will warn you if you are about to visit a site which is know to supply malware and viruses.
• Faster and More Efficient - A key focus of this release has been increasing the speed at which you see your web pages, and decreasing the memory footprint of the browser. In a browser face-off, run by builder.au, Firefox 3 came out on top for efficiency.
• Easier Add-On Management - The new add-ons interface includes a search and browse system, directly inside the add-ons tab, instead of requiring the you to navigate to an external site.

If you’re really eager, you can download release candidates of Firefox today. The release candidate site has the latest downloads for various languages and operating systems. Before you migrate completely, check out the current known issues, to make sure you won’t be hit by any of them.

However, if you’re nervous and unsure about this upgrade, you can download the stand-alone version of Firefox 3 from PortableApps.com. They bundle up Firefox and it’s suitable for installation on a flash drive, but it can be installed on your hard-drive as well. The nice thing about this route is that it doesn’t touch your existing Firefox installation, you can install it, test it out, and delete the directory entirely if you aren’t happy with it.

For those of you who’ve never even tried Firefox, this is a great time to make a switch. Check out this face-off article for some reasons. They conclude that Internet Explorer 7 is the worst performing browser of those tested. Firefox 3 comes in near the top of the pack, beat only by Safari and Opera which both exhibit occasional compatibility problems on different sites.

Remember, Firefox 3 Download Day, June 17th… be part of record-breaking history!

Let’s start the Windows Vista Disk Defragmenter and have a look. Looks like it’s scheduled to run once every week, by default.

You can force the defragmentation to start immediately by clicking on the “Defragment now” button of course. But compare to Windows XP, there is no progress bar now. This is because the defragmentation process in Vista is non-linear unlike Windows XP’s, so there is no way to estimate accurately how much time a defrag would possibly take. Instead of trying to show estimates of how much time the defragmentation will take, the defrag team came up with a better solution: reducing the impact of defragmentation on your computer by making it use low-priority I/O and low priority CPU, so you can still use it and do what ever it is you do while the defrag is on. That’s why the whole process is scheduled to run in the background! So smart can die…

Now, many do not know you can also invoke the defrag tool from the command prompt. Check out a screen shot below.

Go to elevated command prompt by running it as an administrator. Then issue the command “defrag -c -v”. The system will defragment all the volumes on the computer in verbose mode. After the defragmentation completes, it will show detailed analysis output.

Like it or not, those are what you get on Windows Vista, Basic, Home, Business or Ultimate editions. There’s no progress bar, no indication of elapsed time, or remaining time. There’s no information on what files are fragmented, and how fragmented the hard disk is.

If you still very much fancy the good old Windows XP Disk Defragmenter, or at least shows more information, such as a progress bar, then you should use Auslogics Disk Defrag.

This is what CNET Reviews has to say about Auslogics Disk Defrag.

We found the program fast, even on older XP systems. A handy HTML report is prepared after each defrag session. … Fantastic utility far superior to Windows Disk Defragmenter.

This FREE program shows you a detailed disk fragmentation map while the defragmentation is running. The map shows you disk clusters, each cluster being red (still fragmented), blue or green (already optimized), gray (free space) or yellow for clusters occupied by the Master File Table. Isn’t this more intuitive compared to Windows Vista’s Disk Defragmenter?

After the disk defragmentation is complete you get a summary of the process. What are you waiting, go download this disk defragmenter now while it’s still free.

So, there you are. I have shown you three tools to defrag your Windows Vista. Depending on your mood, you can use whichever one you like and they will certainly make your computer’s file system cleaner and more organized. Happy defragmenting!

No one can resist the temptation of having something for free. Whether it is free food, or stationeries, or a free-testing drink, as long as it is a freebie, people will line up in long queues to get it. Well, at least the good news about free software is that you don’t have to be in a long line just to get your hands on some good stuff.

I love testing out new software. I never like trial versions, because they expire within a time limit and if they don’t, there will be some kind of limitation also. So, I’m always on a look out on freeware, scouring the Internet for some free programs that can make my life easier, more interesting and yet they cost nothing.

One of the more useful freeware programs that I found on the net is the GIMP program. GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program. If you like to manipulate digital photographs like photo retouching, image composition, and image authoring, you’d love this small yet powerful program. Did I tell you it’s FREE?!

I am not very skilled at photo editing, but once in a while, I do like to ‘flip’ through my ‘stack’ of digital photographs in my hard drive, selecting photographs that I can ‘improve’ or just add some special effects onto it, and then show it to the world. I know there’s this everyone’s favorite program called Adobe Photoshop, but the program is just too big and took up a lot of my valuable CPU’s memory. Not to mention the expensive price that you need to pay to get a licensed version. And to actually buy some software that I’ll just use once in a blue moon? I’d think not.

Back to GIMP. GIMP is a rather small but yet a smart program for its size. Only roughly around 16MB in size, it offers almost the same functionality as any professional image editing tools that you’d need to empty your pockets for. Built with worldwide users in mind, it not only works on many types of operating systems (Windows, Mac, Linux, and Sun OpenSolaris), it also comes in many different languages. And the best thing about GIMP is that it is open source, so it will be free (forever!) and it is also much more customizable when compared to the Photoshop.

Since it is similar to its giant-much-more-expensive friend, GIMP also offers a lot of functions and features, only a few short of Adobe Photoshop but these can be rectified by installing the plug-ins and the extensions. GIMP’s features include Painting (with a full suite of painting tools included), Advanced Image Manipulation (like Layers and Channels, Transformation tools, and Foreground Extraction tools), and also Animation. You can read more about their features here.

If you have a hard time trying to find the menu of where everything is, no worries, you just have to right-click on your work area, and the long list of the things that you can do to your picture will be there for you to choose.

There is also the Acquire Screen Shot feature. Even though I am a Prt Scr person, I have to admit that this is a cool feature. You can find the feature under the File => Acquire => Screen Shot menu. After 2 clicks, there is a (+) sign that you can drag to a window, and Wala! A snapshot of the screen will appear in your GIMP’s work area.

One of the problems that I encountered when using this fantastic program were the layout of the interface.

Unlike traditional programs, GIMP opens up at least 2 separate windows, which were the Main GIMP menu and the work area. More windows will open up if you want to view the different dialogs like Layer, Brushes and Colors. I don’t know about you, but I never liked a cluttered taskbar.

Also, in the version that I was using (GIMP 2.4.5), the help section was not included in the installation file. But it was not really a big problem as a lot of GIMP tutorials can be found on the Internet.

Maneuvering around the interface might also pose some problems for some in the beginning. Anyway, even though its interface is not like the traditional Photoshop program, most of the features are actually intuitive and after a few clicks, you’d figure out where and how a certain function should be and should work.

In a nutshell, GIMP offers its users the same deal as Adobe Photoshop, but they do it for free. With its ‘more pros and less cons’ advantage, GIMP is a no-cost software for the beginners, easy to use for the amateurs/hobbyist and definitely powerful for the professional photographers/web designers to use. GIMP is for everybody! Who says free stuffs ain’t good stuffs? Try GIMP today!

Dropbox was created by 2 MIT students back in 2007. Although they are now a three-man team. Its aim is to simplify file sharing, but it also has a lot of cool features besides the ol ‘upload-and-share’. It is still in private beta but you can get an invitation to join from getdropbox.com

Upon registering for Dropbox, you will have to download its desktop application. This is necessary in order to utilize all of Dropbox’s features. I’ll explain later on. Once the application is installed, a little dedicated folder will be set up, and it will be linked to your Dropbox account. So everything that you put in the folder will be uploaded. This ‘drop’ folder will have 2 sub-folders to arrange your files: Photo and Public. Everything that you dump into the Public folder will have an external link assigned to it, so you can instantly share those files with anyone.

What pleases me most about Dropbox is the fact that I only have to drag-and-drop my files into this folder in order to upload and share them online. Another amazing thing about Dropbox is that it has a roll-back feature. Anything you delete or edit will be cached. So in case you delete something and would like to retrieve them again, it’s as easy as clicking ‘Show deleted items’ and restore them. It can also track changes made to files, so the original file will always be available, even though you overwrote it with a never one.

Other features of Dropbox:

• 2GB storage (5GB for earlier beta testers)
• No upload limit (or none that I’m aware of)
• Mac and Windows compatible
• Folder syncing
• Shared folders across users

I’ve been using Driveway for a while, and for me it’s been the most reliable. With a new account, you’ll get 2GB of storage. I know, that’s not much. However, if you send an email to your friend telling them about Driveway, you’ll get another 2GB automatically. So essentially, if you sent 10 emails, you’ll get 22GB of storage!

Driveway uses a web interface which is pretty simple to navigate. Click on ‘Upload’ and choose your files/folder to upload and you’re set. There is a 500MB limit on each file, though. Uploading is pretty straightforward and you have the option to automatically send an email to the person you’re sharing your file with. So set the file to upload and leave it running. Nothing to worry about.

One cool feature about Driveway is that you get to see the IP of the person who downloaded your file and the number of times the file was downloaded so you’re able to track where your files are going.

Classic and simple file-sharing but reliable.

DivShare is a tricky little devil. Two years ago when I first started using it, they had no limit to their storage. That’s not the case anymore. They’ve set the limit at 5GB; with 50GB of transfers monthly. I have to admit that I’m pretty disappointed with DivShare. Their 200MB file limit is also nothing to be impressed about. Nevertheless, DivShare is one of the big guns in terms of online file sharing and it would be impartial for me not to cover their service.

Like all web interfaces, it gets a little hard to manage your files if you have a lot of them. It’s difficult to see all of your files at once, and you have to keep pressing ‘Next’ to move on. That’s the case with my DivShare. I uploaded everything there when I thought that it was still unlimited storage. Now, it’s pretty cluttered.

DivShare does have its strengths. They have an embedded video player, photo & document viewer. So you can actually preview the files before you download them. Any video you upload will have the option to be converted to FLV so that you can use their player. The original file will still be available for download, of course.

One last thing about DivShare, it’s upload has been a little flaky lately. I’m not sure if it’s just me, but the conventional upload method isn’t very reliable. I resort to using their Java uploader and things get a little better.

Lastly, the new kid on the block. Not many have heard of Podmailing. I’ve written an in-depth article about it, check it out if you want to learn more.

Podmailing is ‘file sharing bit-torrent style’ to put it simply. In order to send files to your friends, you’ll have to use its desktop application. Choose the file to send, enter your email along with the recipient’s and click ‘Send’. Right here, two things happen. Firstly, the file starts uploading to Podmailing’s server. Secondly, an email is sent to your recipient, and if the recipient opens the email he/she has the option to either wait for the file to finish uploading to the server OR download the desktop application to retrieve the file instantly. But how, you may ask, is the recipient able to download the file before it is completely uploaded to the server? The answer is: P2P. Embedded within the desktop application is a P2P protocol. A direct connection is set up automatically between you and your recipient.

The recipient also has the option of downloading the .torrent of the file which you are uploading. Open that with any Bit Torrent application, and they can start downloading the pieces which has already been uploaded to the server and establish a connection to the seeder (you!). If you have multiple recipients, even better as they can help to seed once their downloads are complete, speeding up the process of spreading your files across to friends.

Enter Tor, a free networking software which allows you to use the Internet anonymously. It connects your machine to a host of random machines globally so that your web traffic is bounced off those machines, making the process of tracking the origin of the web request more convoluted. In short, the tool provides a reasonable degree of anonymity to web browsing.

An excerpt from Wired:

Wayne Richardson over at the Fsckin w/ Linux blog has put together a dead simple tutorial for setting up Tor and Privoxy to enable anonymous web browsing on Ubuntu Linux. He even includes installing the Torbutton add-on for Firefox and all together the set up takes about 30 seconds.

This anonymous web browsing is a good addition to the set of anonymous mailing services online. If you are using a fixed IP, then perhaps using this tool could also help in preventing malware attacks tied to IP addresses.

Also, the TorButton that you can download for free and install as a Firefox add-on is good for seamlessly enabling and disabling anonymous browsing. Give this great add-on a try!

One point to keep in mind though is that Tor provides only anonymity to your browsing and does not protect your online sessions per se. This means that you are as vulnerable as ever if you click on a link that leads to installation of malware on your PC. The utility only obscures the site level statistics regarding the origin of the web request.