ScarTech » FLOSS

FLOSS Pick #8 – SlickRun

Tim — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 02:12:28 +0000

SlickRun is an awesome floating command-line utility that gives you almost instant access to any application or website. At least that’s what the developer’s website claims, and I have to agree. The beauty of SlickRun is realized once you’ve begun to add your own Magic Words. For example, I created a wiki magic word where all I need to do is type wiki and a topic and press enter. Next thing you know Firefox loads (or a new tab opens) a Wikipedia page about the topic.

I know the source isn’t available, but it’s still free (as in beer, not speech). You can download it here. It’s definitely a useful utility.

FLOSS Pick #7 – Google Reader

Tim — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 22:53:09 +0000

I have a man-crush on Google Reader. I used to be a died-in-the-wool RSS Bandit user. Then I gave Google Reader a try. I was sold the minute I added a feed to the reader at work, and I didn’t have to re-add it on my reader at home. It’s nice to be able to read a couple feeds at work (business use only – I promise), then not have to worry about marking them as read on my reader at home. The reader is very simple and does what I want. Like Gmail it’s not perfect (or pretty), but it solves a problem: an RSS reader I can use anywhere. As always, here’s a screenshot.

On a side note, I really need to change the name of this series of posts. Google Reader isn’t exactly FLOSS. It is free though, so it gets a spot on my list of apps I use daily.

Floss Pick #6 – Flickr Uploadr

Tim — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 23:03:42 +0000

In the increasingly incorrectly named Floss Pick series, my next pick is the Flickr Uploadr. I love to take lots of pictures, and Flickr is right up my alley. It gives me an easy place to share photos with my family, and I use it as my de facto backup for my pictures. The Flickr Uploadr gives me the ability to easily upload and tag photos. It’s really just as easy as drag-drop-upload.

The application is freely available from Flickr, and there are versions availablefor Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux. There’s also a plug-in for iPhoto available.

FLOSS Pick #5 – MusicBridge

Tim — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 01:41:04 +0000

If you’re like me, you’ve got thousands of audio files. I’ve ripped all my CDs. I listen to tons of podcasts. And now that the Amazon music store offers non-DRM MP3s, my library is growing even more. Usually I use iTunes when listening to them, but sometimes I do like firing up Windows Media Player. Here’s the problem: my iTunes library isn’t readily available to WMP. I can import the tracks, but what about playlists, ratings, album art, etc? That’s where MusicBridge comes in. You can use iTunes and WMP on the same machine and keep their libraries synchronized. I like to create smart playlists of rated songs, so I don’t want to lose the song ratings if I want listen to them using WMP.

I’ve written code to remove dead tracks and duplicates from my iTunes library, but MusicBridge is a must-have.

I don’t think the source is available for MusicBridge, so it’s not technically FLOSS. It’s free, but the developer does ask for a donation if you can manage it. You can download MusicBridge here.

FLOSS Pick #4 – Notepad++

Tim — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 22:05:26 +0000

I’m going old school a little bit for this pick. It’s a good old fashioned text editor. Notepad++ is an excellent editor, and the latest version added a hex editor. Quite frankly, that’s what put it on my FLOSS list. I can use one app for hex and text editing. I use it for writing quick and dirty scripts, batch files, and as my default viewer when I “View Source” from a browser window. It’s got syntax highlighting, tabs, and loads of other features. It loads very fast and does what I want. My only wish is for a diff tool.

Here’s a couple screen shots:

You still aren’t using notepad are you?

FLOSS Pick #3 – Sandcastle

Tim — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 02:02:42 +0000

My next FLOSS pick is something I’ve begun using for creating documentation at work. Sandcastle is tool for creating MSDN style documentation for .NET projects. If you’ve ever used NDOC, then you’ll love Sandcastle. It looks very similar, but it actually works! I’ve used it to document several VB.NET libraries. You can create chm help files, or html help files. Very cool!

You’ll need a couple of things to get going:

FLOSS Pick #2 – VirtualBox

Tim — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 23:34:02 +0000

It seems like virtualization is all the rage these days, and my second FLOSS pick is no different. A co-worker suggested I take a look at VirtualBox, and it’s a good thing. It’s fast, free, and supports Windows, Linux and BSD guest operating systems. It runs on Windows, Linux and the Mac version is in beta. Virturalization is great for testing code against different OS versions and patch levels. One of the really cool features is the ability to run seamless Windows apps in Linux. This means you can run Windows apps outside a virtual machine. As far as I know you can’t do this with VMWare, but I believe it is supported in Parallels.

VirtualBox is developed by a software company named innotek located in Stuttgart Germany (which happens to be where the HQ of the company I work for is located).

There’s a great review here, and the download can be found here.

FLOSS Pick #1 – TrueCrypt

Tim — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 00:12:06 +0000

First. Let’s define FLOSS. It’s Free/Libre Open Source Software. The Wiki entry describes it much better than I could, so if you’re interested you can read more here.

The first FLOSS pick of the week is TrueCrypt. TrueCrypt is an open source disk encryption utility for Windows (2000, XP, Vista) and Linux. What I like about it is that you can create a virtual encrypted disk and save it to a single file. You can backup the file to CD, online, or wherever. What’s really cool is something called Traveler Mode. You can save your encrypted disk on a USB stick and run TrueCrypt right from the stick without having to install the app.

Very cool indeed.