Friedbeef’s Tech

“Free software is a matter of liberty, not price.
To understand the concept, you should think of ‘free’ as in ‘free speech’ not as in ‘free beer.’”

-Richard Stallman. Founder of the Free Software Movement.

Open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product’s sources. Some consider it as a philosophy, and others consider it as a pragmatic methodology. No matter which side you take, there’s no denying the good that has come from this movement.

Here are 3 pieces of open source software which I have grown to love.

GimpShop

• Free image editing software
• Great for : Making those fine touches on your photos
• Open-source alternative to: Photoshop

The beef: When the original Gimp editor came out on the scene, it’s user interface was an utter nightmare. Enter Gimpshop, the user interface add-on which got Gimpshop to function like Photoshop, and made it accesible to the masses. In true open source style, a great idea was improved on, shared with the world - and everyone reaped the benefits.

A point to remember, this is NOT an image creation tool — it is an image manipulation tool. Don’t try to figure out how to draw something here.

Notepad ++

• Free text editing software
• Great for : quick coding
• Open-source alternative to: Notepad or any commercial HTML editor

The beef: Notepad++ has ability to recognise programming languages, and among other things, makes it easier to read by color coding, creating hierarchical modules on the fly. This is a how I do all my HTML and PHP editing now, and it has made my site template editing a much easier process.

7-zip

• Free file compression tool
• Great for : Working with Zip files
• Open-source alternative to: Winzip or WinRAR

The beef: This does everything I need in terms of compression, and it also claims to be more effecient than WinZip and other paid services. Has all the basic funcationality like password encryption, ability to split archives into multiple files, and best of all supports the following:

• Packing / unpacking: 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR
• Unpacking only: RAR, CAB, ISO, ARJ, LZH, CHM, Z, CPIO, RPM, DEB and NSIS

Final note: If you liked this list, you may enjoy this one as well.

Related Link: Freebies and free stuff at GoFreebies.com

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Imagine looking up any topic with a single mouse click from any application. No need to pop open a browser, look it up on Google, or even visit a website.

Some time ago I wrote about One-Click Answers from Firefox, and how easy it was to use. I’ve recently revisited this free plugin by the Answers.com crew and was pleasantly surprised to see how far they’ve taken this concept.

What it is:

Just Hold Down the Alt Key and Mouse-click on any word, and it will get looked up on the Internet instantly. No opening browsers, no copy & pasting into Google, no hassle.

3 Things I Loved:

1. All search results are now Inline, meaning it does not open a browser window to display your information. It just pops right up.
2. Integration with Windows and OSX documents. You can now instantly lookup items not just in Firefox, but in IE, Notepad, Word, PowerPoint, and other files on your PC.
3. It recognises the surrounding text around my Alt-click and applies context to it. For example, by Alt-clicking on the word ‘coast’, it can accurately guess if I’m talking about Coast Guards, or the West Coast, depending on the sentence the word is being used in.

2 Things That Could Be Improved:

1. I could not get it to work with PDF files.
2. Comes bundled with too many items that I don’t need. Yes, you can turn them off via the options menu, and I understand the need for them especially since Answers.com is giving this tool away for free, but I’m not a big fan of toolbars, and ‘daily highlight’ popups. Let me emphasise though, that all this can be turned off easily.

Try it if you want a…

• Faster way of looking up information
• Reliable source of information (Answers One Click results come from authoritative sources)
• Safe place for your kids to get information, sheltered from inappropriate, incorrect, outdated and offensive content.

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If you’re a Firefox user like 52% of this site’s visitors, you would have probably heard of ‘Spread Firefox’, which is a community aimed at promoting the use of Firefox as alternative browser among the general Internet population.

I recently managed to catch up with one of its active members, South African Firefox evangelist Charl van Niekerk, who was kind enough to provide me with a short IM interview for this piece.

In this interview we cover:

• His involvement in Firefox marketing materials
• Translations of Firefox into Afrikaans
• His thoughts on why the users of this browser are so passionate about it – and why Opera users don’t respond the same way
• What anyone can do to spread it as an alternative browser

James: Well let’s start with your projects thus far. I know you from work with Firefox flyers, Mozilla Wiki, and your involvement with the 5 minute challenge. Is there anything else you’re involved in?

Charl: The main projects I have contributed to so far are those you mentioned, although there was also the Firefox S5 (presentation slideshow) project, and localizing Firefox itself as well as some other materials to Afrikaans.

James: Translations are a great way to reach out, and I’m sure this makes it easier for native speakers to get used to this browser. Do you have direct involvement with the Mozilla organisation for this?

Charl: Not really much more than being involved with marketing; localisation teams are registered with but operate independently from the Mozilla organisation; the localisation team I am involved in is part of translate.org.za which localises various open source packages to various southern African languages

James: Are the translations already live and being used, or still work in progress, and how large of an audience are you targeting with this work?

Charl: The Firefox 1.0 translation was completed and listed on Mozilla.org; the Firefox and thunderbird 1.5 translations were completed but unfortunately a little late; currently we are working on the 2.0 translations of both Firefox and thunderbird and hope to have them ready for the release of 2.0. We hope that with the (official) release of 2.0 we will have a couple of thousand users

James: In your opinion, why do you think Opera does not have such a user community like Firefox hell-bent on conversion? It’s free, safe, arguably follows w3 standards better than Firefox, but yet the level of passion for the browser is not there. Why do you think that is so?

Charl: Opera is a great browser indeed; however, although it is free as in “no cost” it isn’t free as in “free software” as per definition of the Free Software Foundation. The source code is kept closed and nobody is allowed to view and/or modify it.

Firefox is truly “free” in all senses of the word. It is open source which means that any person has the freedom of looking how Firefox has been built and can modify it for their own use or create software packages based on it.

I think this motivates the Spread Firefox community to market it as no organisation has complete control over the software; it is public property in a way.

James: If someone wants to start getting involved in spreading Firefox, what is the easiest or first thing they should do?

Charl: I think the best thing to do would be to register on SpreadFirefox.com, browse around, hear what others are doing and if you have a good idea of your own, to post about it and get feedback. Contributing to others’ projects is normally quite easy also. The more contributors, the bigger the success! :)

Charl van Niekerk is working for a software development company in the city of George, South Africa. One of his current pet projects is an overhaul of Mozilla Materials. If you’re reading this using Internet Explorer, find out what all the hype is about!

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