Free software is a valid choice for many home computer, office computer and Internet server uses. Freeware comes in two basic types, free software with proprietary (ie private) code, and open-source software. It's important to remember that freeware is not a cheap or second-class option - it can often be functionally superior to equivalent commercial software and even of higher quality.
A good article for those interested in freeware.
Earlier this week we asked you to share the free apps you're most thankful for, and you came through with thousands of votes for apps covering the desktop, mobile phone, and devices in between. With a little spreadsheet magic and a few choices of our own, we bring you the top 50 free apps we're all most thankful for. Whether you're celebrating the holiday or not, it's a great list of free software that ought to make for some gluttonous downloading. The popular apps are some of the more obvious, however, so be sure to look further down the list for new free software you may not yet know about.
A good listing of free apps, from Lifehacker. You should be able to find something that interests you.
If one is of particular interest to you, and you would like to know more, let me know and I will try to set it up for a BRCS Freeware SIG session in the future.
Get free, downloadable versions of training courses for Office 2010.
View courses for Access, Excel, OneNote, Outlook, Powerpoint, Project, SharePoint Server and Word 2010.
All the courses come as PowerPoint 2010 presentations - if you don't have PowerPoint you can download the free PowerPoint Viewer to view the files.Tip: you can also download Office 2007 and Office 2003 training presentations and access all Office.com web-based training from links at the bottom of the page.
Download Office 2010 Training Courses
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Enjoy,
RhiannonClick here for more items like this. Better still, get Rhiannon's latest tasty tech treats delivered daily via your RSS feeder or alternatively, have the RSS feed sent as email direct to your in-box.
Free training, who says you can't get anything free from Microsoft?
techsupportalert.com comes through again!
If you’ve just downloaded a file to your computer how do you know if it’s safe to run it? These days many malicious files are specifically designed to seem safe in order to trick you into running them. As soon as you do they go about their nefarious purpose and may infect your computer, steal your credit card information and passwords, or other tasks which I can promise you won’t enjoy. So how can you tell the difference between these files and the legitimate ones?
Very good information from one of my favorite freeware source sites.
Found a post on snaphow.com which talked about this, and I thought it was very interesting.
Very good information about browsers and the web.
Back in 2007 we launched 1-800-GOOG-411, a voice-powered directory assistance service that connects you quickly to businesses across the U.S. and Canada. On November 12, 2010, we will shut down the service.
This was posted October 8, 2010 but, I did not see until today.
I have used this service infrequently, but when I did I was out of town and it came in very handy.
The only alternative I have been able to find is 1-800-BING-411, but I don't know much about it.
Does anyone know of other alternatives for people who don't have smart phones, like me?
In MakeUseOf’s latest free PDF guide “The Office Workers Guide To A USB Thumb Drive” you will learn the full potential of what you can do with flash drives and what type flash drive is right for you.
Another excellent PDF guide from MakeUseOf.
I recommend anyone interested in using USB thumb drives, or even those currently using them, download and read this.
This is geared towards the GIMP, but is good advice for any digital photo editing software that uses layers, at least in my opinion.
Since the 23SEP10 BRCS Freeware / Open Source SIG (Special Interest Group) meeting, it seems that I am seeing a lot of posts dealing with digital photo editing, both freeware / open source and commercial.
If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard someone say, “For all the money I’ve spent on Microsoft products, they should be giving me free software by now,” I’d be rich! Well, unfortunately, that’s not going to happen. But Microsoft does have a lot of Windows software that is free for the taking. We’re all familiar with the free Windows Live offerings, but that’s not all there is. Microsoft has a lot of free software just waiting for you to find it. You just have to know where to look. Here are 10 free programs to get you started.
A listing of some free Microsoft apps, most do not know about, but might be useful.
You can find a myriad of written tutorials and websites on GIMP, the open-source Photoshop alternative, as well as YouTube channels dedicated to GIMP tutorials, but which tutorials are more suitable and totally worthwhile for beginners?
Since I’m also a learner of GIMP, I thought that tutorials illustrating the first few points of the official user manual from GIMP.org may just be what beginners need to familiarize themselves. This collection here gathers clearly-narrated screencasts and are thus very good starting points for those that don’t prefer to read long user manuals.
So hit the jump to learn more GIMP terminology.
Yet another post related to the discussion about free photo editing software at the 23SEP10 BRCS Freeware / Open Source SIG (Special Interest Group) meeting.
Some excellent videos for GIMP beginners.
If you use Xmarks to synchronize your bookmarks, and other browser settings, this is a must read.
This posting explains that Xmarks will be shutting down in January 2011, and has some suggestions of free and paid alternatives to check out, as well as how to create an html backup by using the export feature at my.xmarks.com.
If you use Xmarks to synchronize your bookmarks, and other browser settings, this is a must read.
This posting explains that Xmarks will be shutting down in January 2011, and has some suggestions of free and paid alternatives to check out, as well as how to create an html backup by using the export feature at my.xmarks.com.
We talked about free photo editing software at the 23SEP10 BRCS Freeware / Open Source SIG (Special Interest Group) meeting.
Today I came across this list, via my delicious bookmark network's 26SEP10 posting at http://www.delicious.com/rohit.chdh, and thought it might be of interest to group members.
MONDAY, AUGUST 16, 2010
Monday Mischief
"I don't remember downloading this app. I wonder what it does... Here's mine: "I don't remember downloading this app. I wonder what it does...", I said to myself.I thought I was being smart by running it inside of sandboxie, but little did I know that was what the creator was counting on.When I ran the app it promptly attacked the sandboxie application, and loaded a virus into my main system. The virus said, "See sandboxie is not as safe as you thought it was. And, thank you for the $1000 from your credit card."Good thing, I wasn't connected to the internet. But, I did have to wipe the hard drive and reinstall my Windows ME.Let that be a lesson to me, to check everything out thoroughly if I am not sure. Also, never to try something like this on my primary PC (XP, Vista and Windows 7 machines). ***********
