FREE Alternatives for the Software we can’t Afford..

// July 20th, 2009 // No Comments » // Admin Tools, Applications, Code, Cool Links, Design, Design Resources, For Geeks, Freeware, Geeks, Graphic Design, Graphics, I recommend, Photoshop, Software, Useful, Videos, Windows, web tools, webdesign, webmaster

Here’s a list of Open Source/GNU alternatives to all those programs that us poor people just can’t afford to buy but that we desperatly need… If you know of better open source alternatives please let me know. Leave a comment below.

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Open Office – Microsoft Office Replacement

OpenOffice.org is a multiplatform and multilingual office suite and an open-source project. Compatible with all other major office suites, the product is free to download, use, and distribute. It is currently version: 2.3.1. The version 2.4 will be released in March 2008.
Download Here.

KompoZer – Dreamweaver alternative

kompozer.net

KompoZer - Finally, a top-notch WYSIWYG web page program for the rest of us! Now there’s no need to pay a little fortune for a program to create and edit great-looking web pages, including powerful and easy to use CSS capabilities.

KompoZer is a complete Web Authoring System that combines web file management and easy-to-use WYSIWYG web page editing capabilities found in Microsoft FrontPage, Adobe DreamWeaver and other high end programs.

KompoZer is designed to be extremely easy to use, making it ideal for non-technical computer users who want to create an attractive professional-looking web site without needing to know HTML or web coding. Download Here.

NVU – Opensource Web Authoring Alternative

NVU is a complete Web Authoring System for people who are new to web design. FrontPage and Dreamweaver Alternative.
Nvu (pronounced N-view, for a “new view”) makes managing a web site a snap. Now anyone can create web pages and manage a website with no technical expertise or knowledge of HTML. Linux, Windows and Mac OSX users. Download Here.

Inkscape -Illustrator alternative

Inkscape is an Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.

Inkscape supports many advanced SVG features (markers, clones, alpha blending, etc.) and great care is taken in designing a streamlined interface. It is very easy to edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps and much more. We also aim to maintain a thriving user and developer community by using open, community-oriented development. Download Here.

Related Posts: 11 Free Photo shop alternatives

Synfig – 2D Animation Alternative

Synfig is a powerful, industrial-strength vector-based 2D animation software package, designed from the ground-up for producing feature-film quality animation with fewer people and resources. While there are many other programs currently on the market to aid with the efficient production of 2D animation, we are currently unaware of any other software that can do what our software can. Download Here.

Blender – 3D Modeler Alternative

Blender is the free open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating systems under the GNU (General Public License). Download Here.

gMax – 3D Modeler Alternative

Ofcourse Blender is seen as world’s best free 3d modeler but it doesn’t even comes near to how 3ds max looks like. So if you want it to look like 3ds max you should try gmax, howhever it’s more for creating game models.

Virtual Dub – Video Editor Alternative

Open Source Video Editing Software

Virtual Dub A powerful freeware video editor with lots of features, including a choice of compression codecs, splitting, addition of audio tracks. Excellent. Video capture/processing utility for 32-bit Windows platforms (95/98/ME/NT4/2000/XP). VirtualDub is mainly geared toward processing AVI files, although it can read (not write) MPEG-1 files. Download Here.

FREE Video Editing Software List

Zwei-Stein
Zwei-Stein 3.01 is a freeware non-linear, non-destructive video compositing and editing system which offers many advanced features unavailable elsewhere. With Zwei-Stein you can edit up to 256 video, audio and still image clips, each with up to 64 effects chained serially. Cropping, panning and custom effects are easy with automatic key frames. Download Here.

Avedit
It is a great tool to work with .AVI files. Regardless of small executable size, this avi editor offers you unlimited power of digital video processing. AVIedit allows you to join and split avi files, extract frames and do whatever you want… You can capture video by number of ways, including one-frame-per-minute (web camera) option, workaround annoying 2 Gb file size limit, send your videos to printer, heavy compress it and post to your webpage. You can change framerate, duration, frame size, color depth of your videos and other properties, even without recompression and without loss of video quality. AVIedit allows you to convert avi clips to bmp and bmp to avi, animated GIFs etc…. Download here.

SolveigMM AVI Trimmer
SolveigMM AVI Trimmer is a free video editor to allow you to AVI movie cut extremely fast and lossless. This freeware AVI editor software is small, smart, easy to use and involves no encoding/decoding processes. Video enthusiasts use AVI Trimmer to cut commercials, cut video files or edit video for YouTube. AVI Trimmer solves annoying out of sync problem. It operates with all known types of AVI including DV AVI type 1 and 2.
Download Here.

Artweaver

Artweaver isn’t just a Photoshop alternative like GIMP, but a fair clone of Photoshop itself. While Artweaver lacks the polish and advanced feature sets of Photoshop, the menus are laid out like they are in Photoshop and the tools function close enough that use is intuitive. The programs are so similar, in fact, that seasoned Photoshop users will find themselves wondering why a feature is suddenly missing from the menu. While it isn’t a true replacement for Photoshop, Artweaver’s feature set is robust; it includes layer management, image cloning, a history function, transparency, pen tablet support, and a host of the common filters in Photoshop. Artweaver is available as a full install or in a portable version. Artweaver is a free download for Windows only.

Fotographix Beta 3

Fotografix is an amazing example of what creative developers can accomplish in less than one meg. The 680Kb portable application is a very capable image editor and provides nearly all the same functionality I utilize in Photoshop on a daily basis. It was a no-brainer to include in my list of 40 apps you can download in two seconds. Mirrored on Freeware Files.

GIMP

GIMP stands for “GNU image manipulation program”, and it is one of the oldest and most well known alternatives to Photoshop in existence. Although it doesn’t quite have all of them, you’ll find most of the features included in Photoshop somewhere in GIMP. GIMP is cross platform and supported by a large community.

If just having the feature set isn’t enough for you, there is an alternative based on GIMP known as GIMPShop. It’s the same as GIMP, except the layout has been structured as close to Photoshop as possible, so anyone making the transition should still feel right at home.

Handy Tweaks To Make GIMP Replace Photoshop

30+ Exceptional GIMP Tutorials and Resources

Inkscape

Inkscape is an open-source vector graphics editor similar to Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw, Freehand, or Xara X. What sets Inkscape apart is its use of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), an open XML-based W3C standard, as the native format.

Krita

Krita has been lauded for ease of use and won the Akademy Award for Best Application in 2006. Part of the Koffice suite for [Linux only] , Krita is slightly less powerful than both Photoshop and GIMP, but does contain some unique features. It has become very popular recently due to its ease of use. While it is not as feature-rich as the Photoshop, or even GIMP, it does contains the necessary tools to create/edit a professional image from scratch. In fact, the latest version contains some features that are not found in both GIMP and Photoshop.

ChocoFlop

ChocoFlop is a design application designed exclusively for [Mac only] , optimized for Mac architecture. It’s quick and fairly well featured. This program won’t always be free, but until a stable version is released (it’s currently in beta) they are allowing free use. The program works pretty well as is, and if you’re the type who doesn’t mind an occasional bug it’s certainly worth a look.

Picnik

Picnik is a web based photo editor that has recently taken off due to a partnership with Flickr. It has all the basic features plus a few advanced ones like layers and special effects. It is cross platform since you only need a browser.

Adobe Photoshop Express

Adobe actually has a free web based photo editor of their own. Adobe Photoshop Express has all the basic functionality you’d expect as well as a few advanced features (sadly though, no layers), and interfaces well with a number of photo sharing websites. Again, completely cross platform.

Paint.NET

Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. An active and growing online community provides friendly help, tutorials, and plugins.

CinePaint 0.23

CinePaint is a deep paint image retouching tool that supports higher color fidelity than ordinary painting tools. One of the advantage that it has over GIMP is that it is able to support 32-bits image (GIMP only supports 8-bits image). Cinepaint is mainly used by developers in the flim industry for motion picture frame-by-frame retouching. The current version runs on Linux, BSD, Mac OSX. Stable version for Windows is not available at the moment.

PhotoPlus

PhotoPlus [Windows only] is the amazing photo editing software that enables you to fix and enhance digital photos, create stunning bitmap graphics and even web animations.

Links

There’s also free web services that allows you to perform basic image editing online.
Here’s few examples:

24 Free and Cute Icon Sets!

// January 20th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Blogging, Cool Links, Design, Design Resources, Desktop Icons, Featured, For Geeks, Freeware, Graphic Design, Graphics, Icons, Rss Feed Icons, Social Network, Social Network Icons, Windows, webdesign, webmaster

Here you’ll find 22 free icon sets. Just click on the image to view and download the icons from the designers websites. Enjoy! Leave comments if you enjoyed the post..better yet subscribe to the feed!

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Guy Actually Bought “I Am Rich” App for $999.99 – Oops!

// August 7th, 2008 // 16 Comments » // Admin Tools, Apple, Applications, Errors, For Geeks, Funny, Geeks, Ipod, Mobile, News, Pictures, WTF

This is a funny little story about a funny little man…who thought he was just pretend shopping online at the very real Apple Ipod App store…

What it actually does?

Once downloaded, it doesn’t do much — a red icon sits on the iPhone home screen like any other application, with the subtext “I Am Rich.” Once activated, it treats the user to a large, glowing gem (pictured below). That’s about it. For a thousand dollars.

Armin Heinrich—the German author of the application—has confirmed that not only one moron, but eight dumbasses actually bought the application. According to him, there are more waiting to get it:

Apple apparently had some problems with I Am Rich. After initially approving it for distribution, the company has since removed it from the store. Heinrich, a German software developer, has yet to hear back from Apple concerning the removal. “I have no idea why they did it and am not aware of any violation of the rules to sell software on the App Store,” Heinrich said in an e-mail with The Times today.

I Am Rich But Apple couldn’t pull it down before curious aristocrats — eight of them — had purchased it. Six people from the United States, one from Germany and one from France dropped a grand for the gem in the first 24 hours it was available, Heinrich said. That’s $5,600 in revenue for Heinrich and $2,400 for Apple, which collects 30% of each sale for “store upkeep.”

The fact is that he’s right. If there are people wanting to buy a piece of useless software for $999, why not let them do it? After all, people buy even more expensive crap that is completely useless, from paintings to collectibles to other commercial software. The market decides if a product is worth its price tag or not. And at least eight people got this, even if one is claiming that it was an accident. Accident or not, the fact is that Heinrich has pocketed $5,600 and Apple received $2,400 in 24 hours.

Not bad for a bad graphic and a silly phrase. [LA Times]

Did Heinrich get Paid?

Heinrich told LA Times that he had not yet received his $5,600 check from Apple, which has a policy of paying developers at the end of each calendar month. He’s unsure how the app’s removal will affect the payment process.

“I’ve got e-mails from customers telling me that they really love the app,” adding that they had “no trouble spending the money,” he said.

Did Dumbass #1 get Refunded?

Heinrich confirms the validity of the review pictured in the screenshot, and Apple has refunded his and another buyer’s money. “I don’t want to collect money from people who did this by accident and I am glad that Apple returned the money for two orders,” Heinrich said.

The 6 other people who bought this app…were obviously filthy rich anyway so this app is perfect for them.

I think Heinrich is awesome. Anyone who thinks of a random way to make money and then actually succeeds at it gets my vote.

ljArchive – now you can download your live journal!

// July 3rd, 2008 // 3 Comments » // Admin Tools, Applications, Blogging, For Geeks, Freeware, Live Journal, Useful, Windows, Wordpress, web tools

Ok this is cool folks..if you always wanted to backup or download your entire live journal but you never knew how or you knew how but your like me didn’t want to sit there and use the LJ export tool which only allows you to download one month at a time..I have been writing in my journal for 7 years so that would take me hours.

ljArchive

What is ljArchive? It’s a Windows-only exporter for LiveJournal. ljArchive is a tool for downloading, browsing, and analyzing journal entries and comments from LiveJournal (or LiveJournal clones). ljArchive is currently available for Windows, and may soon be coming to gtk/Linux. ljArchive allows you to do the following to your journal:

Download and navigate a synchronized, local archive of your journal or community.
Search through your journal for keywords, and browse through search results immediately.
Export your journal into various formats, such as XML, HTML, PDF (in conjuction with LJBook), and MIDI (yes, MIDI!).

Plus you can.. Run custom plugins on your journal. ljArchive comes with the following plugins: Entry Reader – reads your journal entries aloud using text-to-speech technology. Regressive Imagery Analysis – provides a psychological profile of your journal. Word Count – provides a list of the words used in your journal, and their frequency. Post Frequency – graphs the frequency of your posts over time. Comment Count – graphs the number of comments left by users in your journal, and also how many comments you’ve left them. You can also use it to export your entire journal to an .xml file and import it into a wordpress blog! Download ljArchive

Clipomatic

// June 29th, 2008 // No Comments » // Applications, Blogging, Freeware, Geeks, Useful, Windows, web tools, webdesign

There are a few programs I could not live without at work and at home. Clipomatic is probably the one I use the most. It’s a clipboard manager.

How it works

Start Clipomatic, and it will automatically begin monitoring the clipboard and recording its changes. When you want to paste an old item, you just put the keyboard cursor where you would like to paste and press Ctrl-Alt-V instead of Ctrl-V. A menu pops up with your clips – you can select one with the mouse or with a single keystroke. The menu then disappears, and the item is pasted.

Just check out out and you’ll like it…

More Info/Download Clipomatic

Free Social Network Icons and Bullets

// June 2nd, 2008 // 45 Comments » // Admin Tools, Blogging, Design, Desktop Icons, Email, For Geeks, Graphics, Icons, Useful, Windows, Wordpress, Wordpress Themes, web tools, webdesign

Here you’ll find a bunch of random social networking icons, bullets, buttons..and more icons etc..that you can use on your blog or website. Make sure to check out some of the other icon posts I’ve posted, just do a search for icons in the search box in the sidebar.

Just remember to please host them yourself..no hotlinking please. There are plenty of free image hosts available. Try tinypic.com or photobucket.com! Enjoy!

mail2 apollo add_to_favorites home sale comment6 send_mail rss23 mail6 lastfm twitterrific1 digg7 chat1 flickr9 mail21 mobilescrobbler1 rss24 rss25 twitter28 twitter34 digg41 digg9 cydia facebook3 feeds1 lastfm1 flickr-2 mail22 mobilefotosmc-aldwin myspace1 mail-alt myspace-spargett oneconnect sketches-2 tweetsville rss26 twinkle wordpress4 twitterlator twitterrific3 tube7 calendar1 videos-2 cydia-2 padlock youtube-limitedability aim-2 delicious_mine youtube4 wordpress-zwaldowski text1 flickr2sn8

hatrss_white1 hatrss_blk1 glossy_rss_icon_by_ubxtrapl rssicon0811

128x128-digg rss3t1 arancione1

Flock – Browser

// May 31st, 2008 // No Comments » // Browsers, Freeware, Social Network, Useful, Windows, web tools

Has anyone checked out the Flock browser yet? I downloaded it on a whim because I’m always downloading apps and checking them out and that includes browsers. Yes, I love my Firefox but I’m not stuck up..yet..I will try anything.

Anyway’s..I downloaded Flock and it’s pretty cool. It has a side bar deal you can pull up that allows you to log into all your accounts like digg, tweeter, WordPress, Live journal, Gmail, Facebook, Flicker, Yahoo, etc..etc…

You can post to your Live journal from the Flock Browser..or your WordPress or any of them really…I was on youtube checking out a video and little pop up came over the video I clicked blog and it let me post it to my live journal. *spiffy*

It’s worth a look see. I’m not saying hey change your browser this is the new it.

I’m just saying you really should check it out.

I needed a IE browser engine that was anything but IE and so I found and downloaded a browser call The World and now I use that browser everyday at work. So..you know it pays to try new stuff.

http://www.flock.com/

I hate Dotster!

// May 27th, 2008 // 5 Comments » // Errors, For Geeks, Hosting, Tutorial, Update, Useful, WTF, Web Hosting, Windows, Wordpress

I’m working on a website for a customer who happens to be hosted at Dotster. Can you believe I can not get a WordPress installed on his webspace after working there for a freaking year!? Me either. It’s so wack. I’m so frustrated. I know it’s not me I did everything right. Grr!

Anyway’s I ended up installing him on my webhost! Haha! WTF? Uh yeah. I was sick of messing around with their wacked out settings. I got everything installed I’m just waiting for his name servers to propagate. What I’m gonna try and do is export it over to Dotster once it’s created..will that work? Well..that’s the plan.

30+ Free Mobile Internet Applications

// May 11th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Admin Tools, Blogging, Email, For Geeks, Freeware, Geeks, Mobile, Useful, Videos, Windows, web tools

I was looking for applications to add to my phone and I found a list of them I thought I’d share with my faithful readers..helloo *echo* ah well..here they are anyway..

Search and Browse

Opera Mini – Whether you want to access your mail, RSS feeds or bank information, Opera Mini is a quick and secure way to get your data on the go. Great interface for scanning pages and zooming in and out. OS: Java

Mobispin – Your favorite news, blogs and feeds on the go

Mozilla Minimo – Multiple tabs, Social bookmarking, RSS Support, Widget and Extension support . OS: Windows Mobile

Microsoft IE for Mobile – Standard browser features, Sync the Favorites you’ve saved on your PC. OS: Windows Mobile

Mowser.com – A search and start page for mobile browsing.

Tappity.com – Discover, submit, and rate mobile sites to share with others.

WamPad.com – A mobile search engine for all sorts of information including MySpace.

Chat

Fring – Go mobile withSkype, MSN Messenger, ICQ, Google Talk, SIP, Twitter, AIM & Yahoo! First VoIP ever for the mobile phone.

Ebuddy - Mobile chat experience on MSN, Yahoo! and AIM, all in one single buddylist.

Bing - Java (J2ME), BlackBerry, MSN, ICQ, Yahoo, AIM & GTalk on the go!

Cellity FreeSMS – Send text messages from your mobile worldwide FREE of charge*

Miscellaneous

Flurry.com – Access to email, feeds, update your friends and more.

Goosync.com – Sync your Google Calendar with your mobile phone or PDA.

MoMail.co.uk – Access any and all of your email accounts from one centralized mobile mailbox.

PlusMo.com – A widget service for mobile devices that has over 20,000 widgets at your disposal.

MyWaves – delivers video content from the web to your mobile for FREE!
READ ON FEARLESS WARRIOR!

20 More Free + Useful Mobile Apps after the cut…

Below are Publishing tools, RSS Feeds and Bookmarking all for your Mobil Phone….and all for FREE!

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Protect yourself from a DNS rebinding attack

// May 7th, 2008 // No Comments » // Abuse, Admin Tools, Cool Links, DNS, Errors, For Geeks, Geeks, I recommend, News, Tutorial, Useful, WTF, Windows, webmaster

OpenDNS released a free tool called fixmylinksys.com that lets Linksys users easily change their default password to protect themselves from the [DNS rebinding] hack which Kaminsky explains after the cut….

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Errors Installing Windows Service Pack 1? Problems with Vista’s Event Log Viewer? A FIX!

// April 13th, 2008 // No Comments » // Admin Tools, Errors, For Geeks, Freeware, Microsoft, Useful, Windows

I run Vista on my computer at home and about 3 months after I bought it some of the Windows services stopped working out of the blue namely the Windows Event Log Viewer. Not having it hasn’t really caused me problems yet and I assumed the only way to fix it was to reinstall Vista..

So..I just ignored it.

Until a couple days ago when I was prompted to install the new Windows Service Pack 1 the installation failed and it returned Error Code 800706B5 on SP1.

So, I was forced to figure out how to fix the issue and I found a work around that worked like a charm. I finally got the Event Log Viewer running and I successfully installed the service pack.

I think what happens when you try to install the update is it trys to write to the system event file, finds that it’s non-operational, and then quits. That’s just a guess, though.

According to the forums it was discovered that the the issue has to do with permissions that have been configured incorrectly at some point. The evil lies within this folder… C:\Windows\System32\LogFiles\WMI\RtBackup and so you if you either delete it or rename the folder and reboot it will automatically re-create the folder and your issue will be fixed. First I tried to rename the RtBackup folder but all I got was permission denied errors so I downloaded a client called Unlocker which worked. Some claime you can rename the folder in Safe Mode with UAC off. I already had UAC disabled; I just used the Unlocker application and I didn’t even try it in Safe Mode.

I’m such the tech rebel.. I know..

Download link: Unlocker

More detailed instructions on how to do it after the cut…..>

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Hacker Super Bowl – PWN 2 OWN – Mac goes down in two minutes

// April 10th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Abuse, Apple, For Geeks, Geeks, Microsoft, News, Videos, WTF, Windows

Most Mac users today live in a fantasy land. Mac’s can’t get Hacked? DOH! Read on my Mac friends…you’ve been pwned!

It’s the most anticipated matchup in the hacker world: Linux versus Mac OS X versus Vista. Who will get hacked first?
That’s what organizers of the CanSecWest security conference hope to discover this week as they give show attendees a shot at hacking into the three laptops they’ve put on display here in Vancouver.
The catch? They have to use a brand-new “zero day” attack that nobody has seen before. The prize is $20,000, plus you get to keep the laptop.
Show organizers are calling the contest PWN 2 OWN. It may be the quickest $10,000 Charlie Miller ever earned.

He took the first of three laptop computers — and a $10,000 cash prize — Thursday after breaking into a MacBook Air at the CanSecWest security conference’s PWN 2 OWN hacking contest.

Show organizers offered a Sony Vaio, Fujitsu U810 and the MacBook as prizes, saying that they could be won by anybody at the show who could find a way to hack into each of them and read the contents of a file on the system, using a previously undisclosed “0day” attack.

Nobody was able to hack into the systems on the first day of the contest when contestants were only allowed to attack the computers over the network, but on Thursday the rules were relaxed so that attackers could direct contest organizers using the computers to do things like visit Web sites or open e-mail messages.

The MacBook was the only system to be hacked by Thursday, however, the word on the show floor is that the Linux and Vista systems will meet with some serious challenges on Friday.

Miller, a former National Security Agency employee best known as one of the researchers who first hacked Apple’s iPhone last year, didn’t take much time. Within 2 minutes, he directed the contest’s organizers to visit a Web site that contained his exploit code, which then allowed him to seize control of the computer, as about 20 onlookers cheered him on.

Read the rest…

Also read: Hacker Super Bowl pits Mac OS vs. Linux, Vista

MacBook Air hacked in security contest

Vista Falls on the Last Day

The Vista laptop fell on the last day of the conference.

Since it was the third day of the contest, which saw a MacBook Air get hacked on Thursday, the TippingPoint Zero Day Initiative relaxed the rules even further. On the first day of the contest, only the operating system could be targeted, but on the second day that was expanded to include standard applications. An undisclosed Safari flaw led to the MacBook Air’s downfall.
But on Friday, hackers could target any “popular” piece of application software that you might find on a system. The Fujitsu laptop, running Vista Ultimate, was compromised by a previously undiscovered flaw in Adobe’s Flash software.

More….

Read: Adobe already knew of Flash flaw that allowed Vista attack By Emil Protalinski | Published: April 05, 2008