Archive for the 'Legal downloads' category

A few templates for documents you would want to use with OpenOffice 3.0 or MS-Office.

Microsoft Office 2007 Templates

Free legal download.

You want to download free short movies. Here comes BritFilms – Short Films. A neat web site with a very pro look and content.

Filled with short movies, some news about independent cinema and quite a few other things to discover.

hanks to FreeGeekery, here are 101 Awesome Downloadable Fonts for Designers. I am sure that you will appreciate teh variety, the diversity and the quality of this archive.

• AceBackup: Free Windows backup
• Ad-Aware 2008: Free anti-spyware
• StarBurn: Free disc burning, audio ripping utility (download Nero for free)
• LogoEase: Create your own logo for free
• AutoGK: Rip your DVDs to DivX and Xvid formats
• Opera 9.5: an excellent replacement for Internet Explorer
• Comodo Friewall Pro Free: Free Windows firewall for Windows XP
• Antivir: Free anti-virus for Windows
• Avast: Free anti-virus for Windows
• AVG 8.0 free: Free anti-virus and anti-spyware for Windows
• Replace data backup with data sync, thanks to these articles from Tom’s Hardware: [1] and [2]

Have a good Summer working on installing and testing all these.

After years of preparation and beta-phase, finally, Wine has been able to reach launch as Wine 1.0. Why is it significant? Because this is the software package designed to be able to run many Windows applications from a GNU/Linux distribution. If you want to switch to Linux, you may not be willing to abandon some of the applications that were developped for Windows.

Wine is there to solve the problem. It runs many games and it runs Photoshop CS2 and CS3 from the box (I did not test it myself, though). It was the plain objective of Google when they allocated money and developers to support this project. They reached their goal.

It is probably the right time to try OpenSuse 11.0 (one of the best new Linux distributions) with Wine.

See also: Run Windows Apps in Linux with Wine 1.0.

We never can get enough of them, but our computers are sometimes overflowing. Software applications are everywhere, but how to choose the right one for the task at hand? I built a real collection of pages where you will be able to find nearly all you can dream for nearly all computers:

• Five important security apps for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows
• Superior Alternatives to Crappy Windows Software
• The Windows Apps You Never Need To Install
• Battle of the Free Windows Software Firewalls; We have to admit that there is no longer any good reason to pay for your computer security under Windows.
• Top 100 of the Best (Useful) OpenSource Applications
• Logiciels gratuits from TutoWeb.
• Now, to look into the future, Sneak peek at OpenOffice.org 3.0
• And, last but not least, for old dinosaurs, let’s remind you that you can still use VAX-VMS on your Linux PC. If you don’t know what I am saying, either you’re too young, or you never received a hacker education. Or both.

If you have an old collection of PC MS-DOS games that has been sleeping at the bottom of a drawer, you may have two approaches: A/ you prefer to forget the old pixels and buy new games, B/ you were so found of those that you want to play even on your newest PC. However, it is difficult because most of these run only in a DOS box, but are so unusable because of the speed of the processor and the limited compatibility of the sound and graphics.

Now DOSBox.com offers a real solution with a free emulator.

Usable for MS-Windows, most Linux boxes, some Apple OS and OS/2.

SitePoint is giving away (for a limited time only) an excellent e-book about PhotoShop. It’s well worth the effort to donwload the PDF file.

SitePoint sensational Photoshop book is now FREE to Download!

Hollywood in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s created a long string of cheap horror movies that never reached the top rating lists. However, some of them, despite being left mostly abandonned by their authors, are worthy of some renewed attention. In this context, it is interesting to notice that the Internet Archive has recently pointed to a nice list of these B horror movies. In there, you will find (available for free download):

• Attack of the Giant Leeches
• Attack of the Killer Mushrooms
• Horrors of Spider Island
• Killers from Space
• Bloody Pit of Horror
• The Satanic Rites of Dracula
• Werewolf of Washington
• Killer Shrews
• The Giant Gila Monster

Some abstract images of sand. Shot in Lagoa do Peixe (Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil) in 2008. To me, they looked a little like some satellite photos of the planet Mars.

Click on the thumbnails if you want to access the 1280*1024 versions

Those photos can be used freely for your own wallpaper (on your own computer).

We do not often see the sceenplay of a movie we like. Maybe it’s fortunate because they are hardly exhilarating except when they come from Alfred Hitchcock (the man was a maniac of detailed preparation) or when they describe all about animation movies.

The Wall, the Alan Parker movie created with the eponymous music album from Pink Floyd stays a monument of moving images. But, now, you can look at the pages of Roger Waters and Gerald Scarfe, the original screenplay (in PDF).

Trevor Cawood is a movie director that has been noticed in a number of short movies in the world of advertising. Personally, I noticed ads for Citroën and for GMC. But you must remember him for his participation to the special effects of The Matrix Reloaded (Matrix 2) or The Matrix Revolutions (Matrix 3). But in 2007, he directed this short movie that I found some time ago.

Synopsis

A mere business worker seems to be choosen by an impressive creature of cement (a golem, maybe). Permanently stalked and followed, he has to learn to live with it.

Nothing is for sure, but Wired has an article about this issue: paying a monthly fee to have fully legal access to unlimited music download on P2P. Wired seems to believe that it would be a piracy levy on ISPs, but I think it would be a real license paid on a monthly basis.

If you have a nVidia graphics card on your PC, you can get a free download of recent games from Steam / Valve.

For a limited time, if you qualify (you only need your PC to hold a nVidia graphics card), you can donwload a free copy of the following games from Steam just by creating an account or having an account on Steam.

• Portal: First Slice (11 levels of this new innovative game from Valve)
• Half-Life 2: Deathmatch (networked FPS)
• Half-Life 2: Lost Coast (FPS technology demonstrator)
• Peggle Extreme (a relatively simple game inspired by old brick games)

Look! It’s a free offer for only half of the PC owners in the world.

Long ago, I had already published the old Copyright FAQ (”10 Big Myths about copyright explained” * by Brad Templeton), but here is a good post from PlagiarismToday: “10 Basics About Copyright Everyone Needs to Know“.

The very good anti-virus software got a little better with version 8. But the free version (which made it so popular) is not yet available. For now, you’ll have to stick to the excellent v7.5.

You may not have the time and money to go to University lectures. But there are other open options that the Internet is now offering. Many universities and famous institutions provide free online lectures. Let’s browse a few of the best ones I could find:

• Collège de France : the most famous French scientific institution has free-access lectures all year long. Most of them are available online too (from Mathematics to Philosophy through Archeology).
• The MIT publishes a number of lectures in video-on-demand (and has a large web site named OpenCourseWare).
• OpenYale is presenting seven free introductory courses taught by distinguished teachers and scholars at Yale University.
• Courses of all levels from the Washington University (introductory, undergraduate, graduate).
• PodCasts from UC San Diego
• Lectures from Vanderbilt.
• Computer and Computer Graphics, from University of British Columbia or from Virginia U.
• Webcasts from Oxford Internet Institute.
• Webcasts from Rice University.
• Podcasts from York College (NYC).
• Harvard at Home.

I could also advise you to check the Lecturefox Blog with a lot of information about these free lectures.