Archive for February 2008
Make your own PDFs
PDF Creator is an open source tool you can use to create PDF files. Using it is simple enough, it installs itself as a printer driver, so all you need to do to is change your printer in the print dialog box of any windows program. I often use it as a print preview for […]
In: Desktop App, M@'s Picks
Free Photoshop
GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is an open source image editor that is comparable to Photoshop. By no means is it a drop in replacement. But a lot of the core functionality is there, including layers, filters, plugins, paths and channels. There is a bit of a learning curve, especially because the majority of tutorials […]
In: Desktop App, M@'s Picks
Video Transcoding
Media Coder is an open source video transcoding utility. It supports a large number of formats, and plenty of advanced options for tweaking all of the encoder settings. Fortunately, an extension that is included in the typical install makes it all very easy to use with various presets for small and large video outputs for […]
In: Desktop App, M@'s Picks
Image Management
Google’s Picasa is a simple yet powerful way to store your photos. Once installed, it will scan your drive for images and present the chronologically by folders. You can then add your own tags to any image, and create albums of images, photos can even exist in more than one album. Once you’ve got things […]
In: Desktop App, M@'s Picks
On-Line Backup
Amazon’s Simple Storage Service (S3) service coupled with Jungle Disk is an excellent, inexpensive solution for on-line backup. The Amazon service is $0.15 per gigabyte per month, and $0.10 per gigabyte transfered. It’s pay as you go, so you’re never paying for more storage or bandwidth than you need. Jungle Disk is a very user […]
In: Desktop App, M@'s Picks