- Download Multiple Web Videos Into a Single Movie or MP3 - While there are tons of tools that let you download web videos with ease, MovAVI offers one unique feature. It can join multiple videos from YouTube, Metacafe, Break.com, etc. into one single file all by itself that you can later download in any format.
Related Reading: How to do Everything with YouTube
Using Movavi is simple - just add the different video URLs (5 is the limit) and select an output format. You can either request the combined video clip as an MP3 audio file (great for music videos) or in regular formats like iPod MP4, AVI, Flash Video & Quicktime.
Movavi will not join your videos instantly - it sends out an email when the video to ready for download. If you are looking for instant conversion, check this Flash Video Guide. MovAVI can also be used to join video files that reside on your local hard drive. [via Digital Inspiration]
- Free Open Source Counterparts of Windows Software
Why would you want to have Open Source software on your computer? Let's consider a few reasons:
- First reason that every one thinks of is that Open Source software is free of cost, well it certainly is about 95% of the time but it can be paid too although the license will be less restrictive. Nevertheless it can save you hundreds of dollars
- Another often overlooked aspect is that you can have full access to the source code of the software. This is a great blessing for someone who needs the ultimate customization.
- You can actually help in the development by fixing bugs, releasing your changes to the code (in accordance with the license of course)
- They may also offer more features then their commercial counterparts
With that out of the way, lets get to the fun part and lets save some bucks. I will be giving information on my personal favourites (which would generally mean BETTER) open source replacements. There are however other choices as well, so drop a line or two if our choices differ!
Microsoft Office ==> OpenOffice
OpenOffice provides a great alternative to Microsoft Office. The complete suite comes with a word processor (Writer), spreadsheet (Calc), presentation (Impress), drawing and graphing tool (Draw), tool for creating equations and formulae (Math) and finally a database tool which also builds reports and forms (Base). All components are multi-platform and multilingual. Its available for Windows, Linux, Mac and Solaris.
Download here
Microsoft Outlook Express ==> Mozilla Thunderbird
Thunderbird is a full-featured open source email client which provides an excellent open source alternative to all commercial email clients. Thunderbird offers a large features set, some of which are: support for POP and IMAP, built-in RSS support and spell checking. Thunderbird also has an integrated usenet news reader. The user-interface is completely customizable. Did I mention the many add-ons you can have?
Download here
Microsoft Internet Explorer ==> Mozilla Firefox (Relax, I know you are using it)
Firefox needs no introduction, still I will try - Firefox is an advanced browser built with its roots in the old Netscape browser. Today Firefox offers tabbed browsing, live bookmarks, many search extensions and many other extensions and toolbars. The support for Firefox by commercial companies is growing - and this is clearly seen by the number of extensions/toolbars they develop. So how did I do?
Download here
Winzip or WinRAR ==> 7-Zip
7-Zip is an excellent file archiver that can easily replace Winzip and WinRAR on your machine. It has a high compression ratio. It supports the following formats for packing/unpacking: 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR - and the following for unpacking only: RAR, CAB, ARJ, LZH, CHM, Z, CPIO, RPM and DEB. It integrates well into the Windows shell( right click menu). Also 7-Zip is available in 60 languages.
Download here
Microsoft Visio ==> Dia
Dia can be used to draw many different kinds of diagrams. It currently has special objects to help draw entity relationship diagrams, UML diagrams, flow charts, network diagrams, and simple circuits. It is also possible to add support for new shapes by writing simple XML files, using a subset of SVG to draw the shape. It can load and save diagrams to a variety of formats
Download here
JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA or Other Commercial IDE's ==> Eclipse
Java based IDE which aims to be a universal development toolkit. Even though it has it's roots in Java eclipse's plug-in base allows it to edit files for almost any environment including but not limited web, c/c and of course Java.
Download here
Nero ==> InfraRecorder
InfraRecorder is an easy to use CD and DVD burner application. It supports virtually all different formats including rewritable disc, multi-session disc and dual-layer DVDs. Also audio CDs can be created with just a few simple drag drops in InfraRecorder. Other important features include disc copying, audio CD ripping and ISO generation and burning images. InfraRecorder is available in more than 20 languages.
Download here
VMware or Microsoft Virtual PC ==> VirtualBox
VirtualBox allows you to run a guest operating system on your PC, in this case either Windows or Linux based. The guest operating system support covers most Windows (including Vista) and Linux versions. VirtualBox is a very stable tool. I have run Ubuntu inside Windows without any problems. Networking, Clipboard, Disk Management are all seamless.
Download here
Microsoft Remote Desktop for Windows ==> TightVNC
TightVNC is an open source remote desktop application. It allows you to control a graphical user session on a machine remotely through the network. Both VNC server and client runs on multiple platforms. You just need to run the server on the machine you want to access and use the TightVNC viewer to access the system remotely. Some extra features like send special key strokes, file transfers and fullscreen view are also very handy.
Download here
Microsoft Internet Information Services ==> Apache HTTP Server
Apache HTTP Server is the most deployed and used web server on the Internet. It is always up-to-date with the latest HTTP standards - and runs on any modern operating system. Apache is secure. There are plenty of extendable modules available that make it even more lucrative choice to the MS IIS. Not to mention the packages that bundle together Apache, perl, php, Mysql, Filezilla, Mercury mail. Definitely one of my personal favourites.
Download here
Pheew.. that's some information. [via MakeUseOf]
- Who do you call when you have a techie problem? Most likely a call centre in India !!
and you thought Pattaya was bad
- Ace Backup: Versatile Backup Software
Backups are important. I'm not only saying this because of the three dedicated servers that I'm running on the Internet that host my websites which earn the money I'm living from. No, it's also important at home. The importance depends mainly on how the computer is used. If you just play some games and surf the web you probably do not need to fear data loss. If you are writing a book for the last year you should make sure you create regular backups to avoid loosing all of your work of the last twelve months.
Ace Backup is a versatile backup software that was commercial and is now freely available. The basic features are to create backups of data on local drives, ftp servers or CD and DVD. It supports encryption offering five different encryption algorithms, versioning of files, compression, file filters, logs, multiple backup locations and scheduled backups.
One interesting aspect of Ace Backup is the opportunity to launch applications before and after a backup job. This would make it possible to run a disk cleaner after backup for instance or an application to shutdown the computer.
Multiple backup locations can be managed independently from each other or synchronized. Lastly the Explorer integration makes it relatively easy to add new files and folders to a project. [via gHacks]
- These are pictures of the wreck of a brand new A340-600, in November 2007, that had never flown. Brand spanking new right out of the hanger, without a single hour of air time. Enter the Arab flight crew. Thank the French and their Arab friends for this bit of 'comedy of errors'. Nine employees of the Arab airline were in the aircraft, but not one employee from French Airbus was present. The Arabs taxied out to the run-up area. Then they took all four engines to takeoff power with virtually an empty aircraft. This was their first mistake as they obviously didn't read the run-up manuals. They had no clue just how light of an empty air bus really is.
No chocks were set, not that it would have mattered at that power setting. The brakes will not hold it back at full power anyway. As it turns out, the takeoff warning horn was blaring away in the cockpit because they had all 4 engines at full power. The aircraft computers thought they were trying to takeoff but it had not been configured properly (flaps/slats, etc, etc). Then one of these brain surgeons decided to pull the 'Ground Sense' circuit breaker to silence the alarms. This fools the aircraft into thinking it is in the air.
That was their last mistake. As soon as they did that, the computers automatically released all the brakes and set the aircraft rocketing forward. The poor bastards had no idea that this is a Safety feature so that pilots can't land with the brakes on. There was no time to stop and no one smart enough to throttle back the engines from their max power setting. So the rest is as you see it below.
Which airline are you flying to Thailand?
- Update on yesterday's post re the roving candid camera shots of Pattaya night life. It would appear that Mapjack have now removed the offending images. [via The Sunday Morning Herald]
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