Comments on: Live Free: Seven Pieces Of Open Source Software That Transformed My Life

By: Chris Robinson

Chris Robinson — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 20:44:12 +0000

I second Michael on Launchy. Its pretty awesome. I even install on people at my work’s computers because I am lost without my keyboard based task launching.

Quicksilver for mac is better than Launchy for windows…but as far as I know Launchy is the best windows option.

By: Michael

Michael — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 05:30:41 +0000

Great post.

I would like to suggest Launchy as an addition to your list. I use it more than any other piece of software on my computer.

- Michael

By: Karl Fogel

Karl Fogel — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 08:44:10 +0000

Welcome to the movement, Trent :-).

By: Billy Bob

Billy Bob — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 07:55:23 +0000

Many free/try/pay programs from download.com
Cutepdf Writer makes a PDF from a printed document
Advanced Clipboard Manager from sourceforge.net
Picasa2 is a nice photo manager from Google.
VideoInspector, KC Software, tells tech video info
Winnff is a handy video converter

Firefox has hundreds of addons and you can find them at the mozilla website or use a search engine with terms “firefox+addons” without the quotes. Absolutely a must for any firefox user.

Systernals.com (now owned by MS) has many free system utilities for maintenance, monitoring and security. Some are sod but a few are god.

Cool thread, thanks.

By: abovocom

abovocom — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 17:38:08 +0000

You will need to use the add on “Provider for Google Calendar” to make the synchronization work. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/4631

By: Frustrated Author

Frustrated Author — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 22:10:14 +0000

I have been frustrated with keeping track of all of my ideas for most of my life. I used to write them down on paper, then usually misplaced or lost the paper/notebooks. I spend so much of my time on my desktop, that organizing them on it was potentially my salvation.

I had never heard of keynote, although I have used open source and freeware apps for years.

The best I have been able to do so far was to have a .rtf text file in wordpad titled “random notes” with a shortcut on my quicklaunch bar. I use it to jot down immediate ideas, but it’s so long that I have trouble finding things in it. Every now and then I move things from it to other text files, which I then mostly forget about, lol.

I’m working on a bunch of articles to start a blog with or use in an ebook, or both. I’ve been using a program I think may be similar to keynote–treepad. It allows me to organize articles in a tree structure and drag and drop them around to organize them better as I add to them. I have a major issue with treepad however. It doesn’t allow me to format what I write in it.

My eyes aren’t as good as they used to be and the text size is a bit small for me. As soon as I post this, I’m going to download keynote and give it a try. It looks like this article was a great read if just for that one program. I do intend to try FreeMind, at least as well.

I know this is about open source software, but there is a freeware image viewer I have been using for years now that I think everyone should have that I want to mention. Irfanview, it’s one of my most used programs. Try it if you don’t already have it, you’ll be glad you did.

Oh, and I’ve been a fan of Firefox since it was Firebird 0.5, and use it as my default browser, I love it.

By: altofiddler

altofiddler — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 17:14:34 +0000

This article would be improved if you noted somewhere that you are a Windows user. I tried to download KeyNote, only to discover that it is Windows Only and there is no version available for Mac OSX. This proved to be true also for some of the Firefox add-ons that you mentioned.

KeyNote sounds great, but it is of no use to Mac users, you see.

By: Dean

Dean — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 02:07:14 +0000

There’s a phrase in the free software community, “I came for the freedom, and stayed for the quality”.

Mohsin: Try gtdtiddlywiki

By: Mohsin

Mohsin — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 10:07:52 +0000

Wow, I love the Wordpress.
And Joomla is another CMS,open source,
you will love it. It can be used to run
any type of site or of any size.

I am searching for nice,
light, simple, TODO list manager open source.
But i have not found in both your lists
related to open source.

Have anyone any suggestion in this regard?
Thank

By: valium withdrawal

valium withdrawal — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 23:28:47 +0000

valium withdrawal…

…

By: b

Tue, 06 Feb 2007 11:15:57 +0000

This is a great list.

It’s been mentioned here before but I highly recommend Ubuntu.

I am a long term Mac and Windows user and have installed Ubuntu on an old Mac laptop. Now it is the system I use out of choice.

Ubuntu on the old mac laptop (12″ PowerBook) is faster than OSX on my new Intel Mac mini. The penny finally dropped and I realised that as OSX and Windows develop they render old hardware useless. Ubuntu (and other Linux builds) allows you to continue using your old hardware. A fantastic cost saver.

For me it is a simple joy to use and you have the very personal support of a friendly, helpful community.

By: Eric Stern

Eric Stern — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 09:25:18 +0000

Just wondering if anybody has tried CellSwapper (http://www.cellswapper.com)
to get out of their phone contracts without paying any early termination
fees?

By: dd

dd — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 13:57:06 +0000

i’m interesting in the combination of google calender and thunderbird(lightning) as you sead bellow.

Where this gets transcendent is the integration with Google Calendar, allowing me to be sitting at a conference, fire up a web browser, add an event to my Google Calendar, and then have it automatically add itself to Thunderbird when I get home.

could you elaborate on that? because i cannot find print to print out the lightning calender. and how to automatically feed the lightning from google calender.

By: Wise Bread

Wise Bread — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 04:31:28 +0000

The Software of Starving Students foundation packages the best open source (or at least, free) software into a downloadable CD. It's a good way for people to check out open source software without having to download each app. Other than WP, Freemind and Keynote, I use all the other apps you mention on a daily basis as well! In fact, OO, Gaim, Firefox and Thunderbird are the default applications my company uses -- just one example of open source being enterprise worthy. Keynote sounds really interesting... I'll have to check it out. Vim is my favorite text editor, but it may be too geeky for general purpose usage. ;) Cheers, Greg

By: Motocrossed

Motocrossed — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 15:33:18 +0000

I too have tried keynote but he stopped development in 05 and I am afraid to rely on anything that is no longer in development or upgraded. I agree, it is an excellent program. I continue to use Google Notebook, seems to work for me and can be used anywhere I have a connection. The one thing that does bother me is I cannot replicate on my USB drive

By: G

Thu, 11 Jan 2007 15:12:38 +0000

I’m sure everyone knows already, but Google personal page has tons of useful widgets including many types of sticky notes and lists you can use. I use different types to help me keep my life organized. Definately not to be missed.

By: Lou

Lou — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 09:47:21 +0000

My little gem of a program is Index Your Files (free home edition) and you can get it here: http://www.indexyourfiles.com/home.html
Indispensible to me for indexing and searching for files. I’ve found it is better and more efficent than Google Desktop Search or Copernicus . I can instantly find almost any file on my hard drive, usually in less than a second.
Btw, nice software list. I installed the Answers Firefox extension a few minutes ago….Excellent.

By: links for 2007-01-10 » Personal Finance - Save Money at Binary Dollar

links for 2007-01-10 » Personal Finance - Save Money at Binary Dollar — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 07:26:59 +0000

[...] You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. One Response to “links for 2007-01-10” 1 Nick says: January 10th, 2007 at 7:57 pm I should just visit your link posts instead of using a feed reader. You pick all the best stuff each day for me. Leave a Reply [...]

By: Jeff

Jeff — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 06:42:25 +0000

Nice list. I keep downloading Open Office, but I can’t seem to give up Word and Excel. Not sure what’s wrong with me…

That Firefox, and especially Thunderbird, extension list is worth the price of admission alone. You’ve got me curious about KeyNote and FreeMind too.

By: john

john — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 03:22:52 +0000

i feel the same about keynote. i absolutely love and depend on this program. after trying dozens of programs free and commercial, i still haven’t found anything that rival it. hard to believe this program is free. it helps me to store and organize my most important ideas and data. the only thing that doesn’t get stored into this program is my mathematical notes which goes into “scientific notebook” and snapshots of webpages which gets stored into the free “evernote” program.
keynote is the reason my last laptop was a windows and not a mac. i know you can run a windows emulation program on the mac, but i didn’t want to bother.

there is one free program you might want to check out if you do most of your computing on a laptop with a sd or smart card slot. the program is called karen’s replicator and is nothing more than a simple backup program. i use it to save my most important files and folders on my sd card. all it takes is two or three clicks and i have my most important files like keynote backed up.