Category: software

If you have not used Open Office, you should try it out. It is a free open source MS-Office equivalent. It is compatible with Word, Powerpoint, Excel, Lotus etc etc. Pretty versatile I should say. You can open an office doc and save as an office doc.
By far the best feature, I have used/like in OpenOffice is its ability to export to pdf.

For those who have used/who use OpenOffice, there is a new portable open office executable available. This could be loaded onto a USB jump drive for an office software on-the-go.

Go to the OpenOffice site here.
Get Portable OpenOffice here.

(via lifehacker)

A nice how-to from J_K9 on how to get a linux distro running from inside windoze, using the new free VMWare player. I am going to try this out some time. I have always hated rebooting to run linux – and VMWare was not free at that time. The how-to is pretty detailed.

Read the how-to here.

(picture courtesy the J_K9 webpage)

Ben Bishop has a wonderful how-to for flickr. A lot of us have seen/used flickr – but for those who are considering moving to it, this how-to is a storehouse of information – written in very simple english. Well written Ben.

Check it out here.

(thanks lifehacker)

Michael Hyatt of ‘Working Smart’ writes about his recent decision to sentence software to death row. Over the last year, he has been using his ‘ mac extensively and loving it’. But he says that, he suddently found that an overwhelming 150 new software titles had gotten into his power book. And to reduce the clutter, he has created a folder called Death Row. If he does not use any software in deathrow over the next 30 days, they would get uninstalled. Nice way to reduce clutter. Read the article here.

Do check out the following site for a very good utility. Colors that match. Especially valid for people like me, who get confused even while choosing which shirt to wear with which trousers ! Visit stylephreak by clicking here.Screenshot

M$ is making available Microsoft Express free for download for a year. The edition would be “Lightweight, easy-to-use, and easy-to-learn tools for the hobbyist, novice, and student developer”. It would include Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition, SQL Server 2005 Express Edition,Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition,Visual C# 2005 Express Edition,Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition and Visual J# 2005 Express Edition. I think it is pretty cool that they are doing this. They are basically working on creating a better image. This would pacify a big subset of users who think that M$ are very very expensive and cannot be used by the “common man”.
Download it here.(news courtesy lifehacker)

Wow. If you are one of those professional website creators and one of those people who are paranoid (and should rightfully be) about UI/appearance differences between mozilla and IE, your ears should perk up N.O.W. These guys have a firefox plug-in where you can invoke IE inside a firefox tab ! How is that for interoperability ?

Check it out at the mozilla add on site here.

Paul Stamatiou has a very good writeup on how to get your blog read by other people.

I used to have a personal blog at one point in time, and I had a very loyal readership. Lots of people commenting. Lots of people writing in to me etc. Due to circumstances in real life (as opposed to my cyberlife), I had to terminate that blog. Recently I started this blog hoping to write every day and archive some of the finds that I make on this topic. And since this is a very niche and upcoming topic for a blog, I do not think I have readers yet. So I went and had a peek. Paul has a nice write up on how to build readership. First and biggest thing I noticed was that it was almost essential to get into technorati (and yes I did it :)). I now need to figure out if there is a way of getting out RSS feeds from blogger.

Read Pauls full article here.