Microsoft Project is expensive, very expensive. But once you started using it, you can’t stand not having a nice clean GANTT project chart. Why not get a free Microsoft Project? Even better than downloading MS-Project for free, I am proposing you to use an on-line GANTT chart/project builder that is completely free and works on-line: Gantter.
Gantter
I have been really impressed by the quality of such a software program. It may need to get some interface polish for Opera users (I had a couple of little display bugs), but the operation is fully adequate for many projects.
With the repeated announcement of (minor) incidents with the security of the original PDF reader from Adobe, I wondered what could be a good replacement. Obviously, it seems important to stay around free or low prices (Adobe Acrobat: Windows/Mac/Linux, Basic: free, Pro: $299), but is it possible to beat the Adobe product to read PDF files?
PDF-XChange (Windows, Basic: free, Pro: $34): loads real fast (much faster than the Adobe viewer), has all the basic options (annotations, graphic annotations, etc.) and the Pro version allows to reorganize the pages of a document or to extract text from it.
Foxit (Windows/Linux, Basic: free, Pro Pack: $39.99): loads even faster, allows annotations (but only the Pro versio does it without watermark).
Sumatra PDF (Windows, free): is even simple; everything is done for sheer speed.
Apple PDF Preview (Mac, free): is very powerful (and it’s free, remember) and included in the MacOS offering; annotations, extraction, reorganization, all is available
OK, you’ve already seen all the icon collections on the Internet. Nothing can surprise you anymore. Stop! Icons Etc is really something else. You will find hundreds of high-resolution quality icons all of them being free and of the highest quality.
I just took one part of the simplest category: Rain drops.
Rain drops (on Icons Etc.)
I’m sure that you will find whatever you need for your web site, for your Windows desktop or any other icon-based application.
I am not sure that this is exact all over the Internet, but I just noticed that this is true for YLovePhoto, one of my web sites: There are more visitors using Firefox than Internet Explorer.
YLovePhoto.com
Then, I checked for Roumazeilles.net itself, and I noticed the same situation:
Roumazeilles.net
It appears that Firefox is moving very fast. Who would have thought -a few years ago- that Microsoft’s world domination would be toppled like that?
A rather interesting article of DownloadSquad tells us about the trial version that Nero offers for its Nero 9. I had already mentioned that there are solutions to pay nothing in order to get Nero 8 in free download (see lower), but it goes quite far.
You must give them your email address to download the trial version for Nero 9 – What do they want it for? Some Spam database address?
The installation brings an Ask.com tool bar – Why do we want this?
At the end of the installation, you are requested to transmit (anonymously) some additional information – What data? Why?
At first launch, you are requested your email address again – Those guys have no memory, I guess…
The free version does only data discs (no audio discs) – This is nothing more than the really free software programs shown below
Knowing that, the splash screen start only use is to show you what you don’t have in the free trial version – Speak about teasing me!
Of course, the uninstall process does not fully clean your machine – They are not even able to do it, or not even polite enough to do it…
With 55MB to download, this is only 20 to 50 times bigger than the real free alternatives!
So, I suggest that you turn to other options that are really free and well-polished:
Just a short notice. I discovered a very simple and relatively powerful Internet privacy solution, Ultrasurf, for those of us who may be interested in browsing the Internet in near complete anonymity: hide IP addresses and locations, clean browsing history, cookies & more …
A friend of mine recently bought a copy of a Japanese wood engraving. While reading this article from BibliOdyssey, about the wood engravings of Kitagawa Utamaro, I thought I should share some of the pictures of this artist.
It’s true that if you want to burn a CD-RW or a DVD-R (or any other optical slice of storage in the shape of a CD/DVD), the name of Nero immediately comes to mind. The advertising efforts are paid with this success (well supported by the good quality of this CD-bruning software), but there are very good replacements that you can download for free and use in place of Nero.
I consider that the most useful and often the most interesting wallpapers for your computer desktop are images that are relatively feature-less. A picture full of little details continuously grabbing your attention is a major nuisance. It’s much better to have either a very smooth image or a photo containing a lot of continuous tones.
Windows 7 official wallpapers
Look at the full set of the Windows 7 wallpapers. This is the upcoming version of Windows (after Windows Vista, it seems that Microsoft intends to switch back to a numbering scheme). Most of them may be colourful, but with very smooth surfaces where your icons will be appearing quite neatly and they offer a nice contrast.
Fresh Impact Crater Formed between February 2005 and July 2005 Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
So, I was quite interested when I stumbled upon the collection of pictures taken by the HiRise (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera installed on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter). Shooting photos of Mars surface, this photo camera brings extraordinary color images that provide nice patterns to be used as background for your Windows desktop (or even Linux or Mac desktop) and can be renewed quite regularly: Their catalog is available on the University of Arizona web site.
Furthermore, they provide an enormous resolution for their images which is a very good way to extract any size you may need for your extra-high-resolution background or to cover your 2- or 3-LCD display. Or even more. If you feel that there own selection of wallpapers is not enough:
800×600
1024×768
1152×864
1280×960
1440×1080
1600×1200
1920×1440
2048×1536
2560×1600
You can still stick to the original size (JPEG-2000 format images range between 0.5GB and 3GB).
And the good news is that there is no copyright restrictions, so you could do pretty much what you want with them: Really free desktop wallpapers.
Simply the best video player for Windows, VLC, just quit its long beta phase. This is official now, VLC v1.0.0 is available with a list of small improvements brought to an already impressive product that I can only recommend if you are using video (to read DVD, BluRay, HD-DVD discs; to stream videos from your computer; to convert your videos; and I sure forget some).
They were the FPS games of your youth (if you are as old as I am): Doom, Heretic and Hexen are three games where you killed, maimed, crushed, punched and powdered thousands of monsters and all kinds of adversaries. Did you know that you could play all three of them on line?
How many PC gamers started their career with video games as raw (according to today’s criteria) as Doom or even Quake. We may find their quality too low for our eyes, but they already demonstrated their main strength: the gamer found interesting adversaries and environments where you could not know what would happen behind the corner of a corridor (that generation of video games did not yet open the doors to a wide environment like in FarCry or Crysis).
Doom 1
Already, before the year 2000, PC games were expensive. But here comes the Internet and bands of Internet users now expect to find free things all around. Authors of such games (like Id Software) decided to follow this trend and offer some of these older games as ways to attract more customers for other games. These ones start by being free, and stay as being very pleasant to play.
Doom was put in the public domain a few years ago. Consequence: Here is somebody deciding to re-write it in Flash and you will be able to play Doom (more precisely, Doom 1). You will need Flash 10 and I’m told that PowerPC Macs are not compatible, but you’re going to tote a shotgun and the BFG mini-gun at outer-space monsters and without paying (free).
Limitations of QuackLive:
Windows XP
Windows Vista
Firefox 2.0/3.0
Internet Explorer 7/8
Doom is not enough? You want more, more quality, more guns, more speed? Why not Quake? Id Software just opened access to QuakeLive.com. For free, you’ll get to play Quake, right now, freely, for no money. It will be fun…
More precisely, here is Quake III Arena with free access to all. It will go fast. This is violent gaming. It will only stop when you’re dead.
YouTube link
This is not enough? Again? So, let me offer some video games with calmer settings, but still free. Even better, Linux games.
live.linuX-gamers.net succeeded at preparing Live-DVDs (DVD that are completely autonomous, you can boot on them without installing Linux).
Apple is not only delivering sleek computer designs and nice little mobile phones. They are also producing a good web browser: Safari.
It’s new version, Safari 4, is just out. Faster, still as good and powerful, but Apple is now claiming the crown for the “fastest” web browser. It could well be possible when Snow Leopard OS-X becomes available later this year. Running natively as a 64-bit Mac application, it could gain 50% from today’s already powerful base of Safari 4.
I’ve been using and recommending the Opera web browser for many years. It’s a kind of a Firefox where everything you need would be directly included rather than having to download extensions. And it’s fast too. For mobile applications (PDAs, mobile phones, etc.) Opera Mini is probably the best possible option and it is in a tight competition for the market leader position.
Now, Opera is launching a beta test version 10 of the browser. And it has amazingly interesting new features.
Fast browsing on slow connections
Tab browsing enhanced and flexible
Speed dial from the empty new page
Web mail integration
Re-sizable search field
Much faster web engine and impressively standards-compliant
In-line spell checker (I use it a lot to support my blogging habits)
Auto-update (better than merely asking you to check for updates)
Mouse control
Even better, after testing it in alpha, I can tell you that it is quite stable. The beta version should stay that way and that is a good thing too.
While I had a long love affair with BitComet as my prefered BitTorrent client, it happens that I currently prefer to use the lean and clean uTorrent software. It is a bit smaller (but it has a tendency to eat up memory if left serving files for a long time -it’s ok if you stick to downloading) and it has a nice little interface that is clean and easily understandable.
As with many a BitTorrent client, µTorrent or uTorrent tends to have a relatively complex configuration. Many options, some of them utterly cryptic, a lot of them with a possible impact on performance. After months of tweaking, I think that I have obtained a configuration that is clearly optimized to download several giga-byte-sized packages (videos/movies, Linux distributions, full databases, etc.) on a fast ADSL connection (20Mbit/s, here).
So I was suggested to share it with all the ones who want to try and get quickly a BitTorrent connection working as fast as possible.
All the options
I don’t need to explain the choice of language (µTorrent has one great advantage of having such a large choice for localization).
I did not install IPv6 support (my ISP does not support it), but it is a very critical item to check because -as soon as it becomes readily available- it will bring a significant layer of compression and obfuscation to avoid your ISP throttling down your P2P traffic (as some US and Canada ISPs currently do; Shame on them!).
I don’t care receiving the beta upgrades (I’m all for the stability of software) and I favor browsing as anonymously as reasonably possible.
Since I am working at home, there is no need for the anti-boss key.
Download: I prefer to immediately pre-allocate file size (rather than seeing the software program stop later because it has been eating up all disk space), and I don’t want to the PC to shut itslef down while downloading. While it is generally good to reduce electricity consumption, stopping in mid-transfer is not good for the efficiency of the whole process. (more…)
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