For years, my favorite presentation software has been Keynote on the Mac, which I use extensively in my Journalism classes. Between that and MS PowerPoint, I thought, you wouldn’t need much else. So I was surprised when some of my students began presenting information in a way I had never seen before. These presentations felt like movies—with the camera zooming in and out and panning smoothly to and from various elements scattered over a huge canvas. It was free-form presentation that still maintained some order and structure. The tool they used was Prezi, which bills itself as “The Zooming Presentation Editor.”
Are there free alternatives to OpenOffice? This question, which reflects uncertainty over the future of the free and open source office productivity suite, has gained some urgency in the wake of Oracle’s latest decision to sue Google over the use of Java in its Android operating system.
I NEVER thought I would one day be running software from Oracle on my personal computer. Until recently, the database giant just made products aimed at large corporate customers, not individual PC users. In fact, Oracle’s chief executive, Larry Ellison, had once made a big to-do about how personal computers would one day be replaced by glorified terminals that would get their applications from huge servers connected over a network. So I was a little amused to see the Oracle logo pop up when I ran the latest updates of two programs that I use quite a bit, OpenOffice.org and VirtualBox, on my Linux-based PC at home.
Is Linux more secure than Windows? The quick and easy answer is yes. Most viruses and malicious software today are written to target Windows systems and will not affect Linux or Mac computers. If you’re going to work – and play – in a Windows world, you better get protection.
FOR Linux users, running a new Windows 7 PC feels a bit like getting all dressed up with nowhere to go. The operating system itself is attractive, but there aren’t that many built-in applications to get you started. A recent upgrade of our office computers gave me the opportunity to compile a checklist of things to do to get a new Windows 7 PC ready for prime time.
COMPANIES that want to save on software licensing costs can get an excellent office productivity suite by using OpenOffice.org, a free and open source alternative to MS Office. Here are a few tips to help people who are making the switch.
THE beta 1 version of Firefox 4 released last week has a distinctly unfinished feel to it. I suppose this was to be expected, given the browser’s beta status, but after the dramatic improvements that Firefox went through going from Version 3.0 to 3.5 and 3.6, the jump to 4.0 seems almost anti-climactic.
A YEAR ago, I wrote about Xara Xtreme 5, the fastest graphics design program I’d ever used. This week, I tried the latest update and found that the program, now renamed Xara Photo and Graphic Designer 6, has lost none of its snap, even as it gained a new look and a number of features.
WHAT’S the fastest browser? If you guessed Google Chrome 6 or Safari 5.0, you’re in for a surprise. The current speed demon is Opera 10.6, the alpha test version from the Norwegian company, Opera Software (http://www.opera.com). The Download Squad Web site reports that Opera 10.6 scored 25 percent better than Google Chrome 6 (development build), using the Peacekeeper browser benchmark. In fact, Opera’s developers say 10.6 users can expect a 50 percent improvement in JavaScript performance and page loading.
AFTER installing a new version of Ubuntu Linux, I always add a number of utilities that make my computing tasks easier. Most of these are not full-blown applications, per se, though some are really quite complex in their own right. Rather, the focus is on enhancing the capabilities of an already great operating system. The list of utilities has changed over the years, but some of my old favorites are still seeing a lot of action. All the utilities featured here can be installed through the Synaptic Package Manager.
IT’S been more than three years since the Linux Revolution blog declared that we need better presentation software. The call to action for open-source developers at the time certainly seemed timely. In 2006, if you had to create a business presentation on a Linux system, you didn’t have much choice but to use Impress, which came with the free and open-source OpenOffice.org productivity suite.
IT was gratifying to see that Ubuntu 9.10 or Karmic Koala made it to PC Magazine’s Best Free Software of 2010. “That you can get all this for free should make Microsoft and Apple quake,” Eric Giffith wrote in his extensive roundup of free software. I couldn’t agree more. Elsewhere in the article, I found many programs that I already use every day.
Digital Life is a blog that features a technology column by the same name that appears every Tuesday in Manila Standard Today, a national daily from the Philippines. This blog gives readers easy access to the column, which started in November 2002. Copyright 2009 Chin Wong.
Is Linux more secure than Windows? The quick and easy answer is yes. Most viruses and malicious software today are written to target Windows systems and will not affect Linux or Mac computers. If you’re going to work – and play – in a Windows world, you better get protection.
FOR Linux users, running a new Windows 7 PC feels a bit like getting all dressed up with nowhere to go. The operating system itself is attractive, but there aren’t that many built-in applications to get you started. A recent upgrade of our office computers gave me the opportunity to compile a checklist of things to do to get a new Windows 7 PC ready for prime time.
COMPANIES that want to save on software licensing costs can get an excellent office productivity suite by using OpenOffice.org, a free and open source alternative to MS Office. Here are a few tips to help people who are making the switch.
AFTER installing a new version of Ubuntu Linux, I always add a number of utilities that make my computing tasks easier. Most of these are not full-blown applications, per se, though some are really quite complex in their own right. Rather, the focus is on enhancing the capabilities of an already great operating system. The list of utilities has changed over the years, but some of my old favorites are still seeing a lot of action. All the utilities featured here can be installed through the Synaptic Package Manager.
