Note, these apps are free — not all of them are open source.

• OpenOffice – not quite as advanced as Microsoft Office and doesn’t have SharePoint integration, but if that doesn’t matter then look no further (check out Novell’s version too)
• Mozilla Firefox – just as secure as IE7 but insanely customisable. The best browsing experience available
• Mozilla Thunderbird – outstanding customisable email (make sure you install Lightning as well)
• Evolution – yes, it’s been ported to Windows, and is an excellent corporate groupware product
• Mozilla SunBird – if you prefer a separate application for calendaring, this is the one for you
• Pidgin - chat on every network through one lightweight open-source program, with none of the banner ads and hoop-jumping the official clients put you through.
• Media Player Classic – lightweight media player with lots of useful addins (like DVD playback)
• The GIMP – still one of the best image editing packages out there
• K-Lite Mega Codec Pack – play any media file available (includes Media Player Classic)
• VLC Media Player – cross-platform media player and streaming server
• MediaCoder – can convert pretty much anything to anything and back again
• Winamp – still the best music player, in my opinion
• RSSOwl – if you prefer a separate app to manage newsfeed/RSS/XML/Atom subscriptions, this is the one
• Juice – any podcast, any format
• AVG Anti-Virus – still kicking goals. Lightweight, stable and offers great realtime protection
• AVG Anti-Spyware – manual updates required for the free version, but still very good
• Ad-Aware Free – despite the push towards licensing, the free version is still great
• Spybot – still free, still powerful
• Azureus – a powerful and very advanced Java-based torrent client
• PrimoPDF – convert pretty much anything to PDF

Source APC Magazine

Media attention these days focuses mostly on the high-definition Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD formats. Yet in this interim period — while high-def adoption ever-so-slowly ramps up — standard DVD continues to see updates and new products. Here’s a wrap-up of some of the most interesting (and some of the more pedestrian) DVD players and burners that have crossed my desk this summer.

More at Computer World

It’s no secret that there’s a leaked beta of Vista SP1 floating around, but no-one yet has really taken the time to analyse it in detail to find out what it really does.

James Bannan made it his mission this weekend to trawl through the registry and file changes in SP1 to find out as best He could exactly what SP1 does.

First up, He can say that there is a very noticeable performance increase. It is obvious that since Microsoft released Vista to manufacturing, it has been optimising the code ever since. (suspect this revelation will fuel the fires of the people who say Vista was released before it was ready for prime-time.) There’s far less hard drive thrashing and in general the system seems much smoother and more responsive.

Amusingly, the build of SP1 he saw (which in this beta comes fully integrated into a 3.2GB Vista install DVD, rather than as a standalone update) still has Microsoft’s internal network shares embedded as the source of the updates. For example:

\\\\winbuilds3\\longhorn_SP1Beta1\\longhorn_SP1Beta1
\\6001.16549.070628-1825\\x86fre\\packages\\ServicePack”

Not that that info is really useful to anyone, but it mildly tickled our curiosity bone (next to the funny bone) to see the file layout of Microsoft’s internal distribution shares.

Read full review

Steve Rubel says page view metrics have four years to live.

The page view does not offer a suitable way to measure the next generation of web sites. These sites will be built with Ajax, Flash and other interactive technologies that allow the user to conduct affairs all within a single web page - like Gmail or the Google Reader. This eliminates the need to click from one page to another. The widgetization of the web will only accelerate this.

This is a dirty little secret in the advertising business that no one wants to talk about. Media companies love to promote how many page views their properties get. They’ve used the data to build equity. They will fight it tooth and nail to protect it, perhaps by not embracing interactive technologies as quickly as they should. But that’s not going to stop the revolution from coming.

As the page view platform crumbles, there’s going to be a shake out. Everyone is going to scramble to find a metric that helps them compete for ad dollars. Enjoy the show.

[via Ajaxian ]

This book seeks to give the experienced developer of Java web applications the knowledge necessary to add Ajax to their webapps. This is another Ajax book that goes broad rather than deep. Instead of investigating one or two frameworks, it delves into more than a half dozen, both Javascript and Java.

Quick summary: Chapters 2, 3 and 5 are the strongest in the book with useful information on tools, Javascript libraries and enhancing Struts applications with Ajax. The other chapters are not as strong and spend too much time covering old ground.

The book is divided into two parts. Part 1 is an introduction to a variety of Javascript and Java Ajax libraries and frameworks. Part 2 shows how to integrate those libraries and frameworks into existing Java web frameworks such as Struts and JSF. One place that this book differs from other Ajax books is that it doesn’t have a chapter introducing the reader to the browser technologies that comprise Ajax.
Read more of the review here.

[via Ajaxian ]

The classical arguments everybody doing freelance contract work knows or should know.

1. “Do this one cheap (or free) and we’ll make it up on the next one.”
2. “We never pay a cent until we see the final product.”
3. “Do this for us and you’ll get great exposure! The jobs will just pour in!”
4. On looking at sketches or concepts: “Well, we aren’t sure if we want to use you yet, but leave your material here so I can talk to my partner/investor/wife/clergy.”
5. “Well, the job isn’t CANCELLED, just delayed. Keep the account open and we’ll continue in a month or two.”
6. “Contract? We don’t need no stinking contact! Aren’t we friends?”
7. “Send me a bill after the work goes to press.”
8. “The last guy did it for XXX dollars.”
9. “Our budget is XXX dollars, firm.”
10. “We are having financial problems. Give us the work, we’ll make some money and we’ll pay you. Simple.”

Read the counter arguments for every single point at Painter Creativity

[via]

In the continuous jostle to develop the world’s biggest plasma television, Matsushita Electric, owner of the Panasonic brand has announced that it hopes to start selling the world’s largest 103-inch plasma television by early 2007. And the statistics of this new entrant? Weighing under 475 pounds and measuring approximately 8-by-4.5 feet, this latest monster is set to beat the existing 102-inch model developed by Samsung by a mere one inch. And by way of comparison, “the panel is bigger than a double-sized mattress and almost as heavy as an upright piano.” The plasma panel is capable of producing images at a high definition resolution of 1920-by-1080 pixels. Now Matsushita competitors such as LG and Samsung will have to grease up their machines and announce something even better and “bigger” to stay in the race.

The device is slated to be launched at a price of - hold your breath - $50,000 in Japan this September. The 103-inch panels are already available for order by business users in the United States and will ship this autumn.
[Via Popgadget, The Sidney Morning Herald]

There is no need to buy a smart phone with a full qwerty keyboard if you have EQ3. EQ3 transforms any phone with a regular keypad into a smart phone, by squeezing a qwerty keyboard onto a regular mobile phone keypad. Eatoni does this compression very carefully to get the maximum value out of each of your keystrokes. The result is a huge improvement over the old-fashioned predictive text systems you’re used to.

The trick behind the EQx series of keyboards is to extend the work done by the original designer of Qwerty, Christopher Latham Scholes. As everybody knows, Scholes was looking to reduce the collisions between typebars in the first typewriters. He found he had to move some letters around so that frequently used pairs of letters were on opposite sides of the type basket. Similarly, the EQx series groups Qwerty letters together on keys so as to reduce collisions between words. Anyone who has used predictive text on a telephone keypad is familiar with the phenomenon. For instance “smirnoff” and “poisoned” are typed with the same sequence of keystrokes so that someone trying to write “go get smirnoff” will write instead “go get poisoned”, which may not be the party invitation intended.

With the EQ3 keyboard, this sort of collision occurs about 1/3 as often. With the EQ6 keyboard, it occurs 1/60th as often.

The advantage of reduced ambiguity is not just that collisions are reduced. Combined with proper software, one can use these keyboards to correctly type words the system has never seen, and without adding them to a user dictionary.

[via eatoni ]

German electronics vendor Medion has always been a good bet when it comes to hardware on a budget but – without diverting from its strength – the company has decided to put a neat twist on things.

Pentium M 1.7GHz CPU, 15.4in WXGA display, Intel 900 onboard graphics, g wireless, 40GB HDD, 256MB DDR2 RAM upgradeable to one gig, 3x USB2.0 ports, FireWire, Ethernet, VGA/TV Out, dual layer DVD rewriter.
Laptop comes equipped with a customisable cover that can be used to display anything from personal photographs to designs and logos. An owner simply visits www.medion.com/individual where they can choose from a gallery shot or upload an image of their choice and the company will produce the cover and send it to you for £45 (includes VAT and delivery). For businesses looking to outfit their workers with a distinctive machine or even parents wanting to get their children setup with something fun at little cost this could well be the answer.

The MIM 2220 will be available exclusively from Woolies (yes, that does mean Woolworths Steven!?!) from 1 August and comes with a 12 month warranty which includes telephone and email technical support. Ultimately, even if the customisable cover doesn’t appeal you could do a lot worse than save some cash with this.

[via Trusted Reviews ]