Dec 20, 2011

Browse the Ubuntu Software Centre online

This is one more reason why Ubuntu is the best Linux based distribution. From the 11.10 version on wards ubuntu has replaced the synaptic package manager with the Ubuntu Software Center (USC). Now the same software center is available online at https://apps.ubuntu.com . The entire catalogue of software is made available online.

Visiting this website will present you a   screen with various categories of software. You can search for applications. If you are viewing this website from Ubuntu or its derivatives, You will also see an option to install the application. Clicking on the install will install the application on your system. You can also filter  the applications for your Ubuntu version by choosing the version on the right side. The currently available  versions are Maverick, Natty, Lucid, Oneiric. Application views look much like they do in the native desktop app, with screenshots, information and user ratings and reviews.

I've compared the performance of the online based USC and the one that is on my system. The online based software center is more faster than that is in the Ubuntu on my system.

Ubuntu online tour

Linux based distributions can be frustrating for the first time users. It will be more difficult for the new people who wish to switch to Linux from windows as the user interface is changed in almost all major Linux distributions. You have to install the Linux  based OS to view its features but this can be time consuming process. Although there is a live CD mode for most Linux distributions, you have download the . ISO image, burn the image to the disk and try it by booting. This is also some what time consuming. But what if you can try the new OS on the web without any CD, DVD or installation.

Meet Ubuntu online tour. A website to get acquainted with the user interface of the Ubuntu. On this website you can see the features of the Ubuntu interface, experiment by exploring the menus and applications. There are two option two explore the interface. One is the 'guided tour' and the other is the 'show around yourself'. By selecting the former option, you will be auto guided by the program to explore various features of Ubuntu. Where as with latter option you are free to explore yourself.


The Ubuntu online tour interface is exactly similar to the interface of a real OS. It does not take long time to load the features. When you click on anything, the event happens instantaneously.

There is also download option to download Ubuntu. Once you have got enough understanding about the Ubuntu interface you can directly download from the Ubuntu online tour website. This is a very good web based application for newbies who want to try Linux or Ubuntu.

Have a great tour!!

Dec 16, 2011

terminator

We all know that a terminal in Linux is most the powerful application. Though we can do most of the tasks  with a single terminal window, sometimes we need multiple terminals to do some tasks .This may be done by opening multiple terminal windows. But this will occupy more real estate on the desktop you need to switch between the terminals to do the task. But what if we want to view all the tabs in a single glance. One simple solution would be to open multiple terminals in a single window so that you can see all the terminals at once. 


Well the solution to the above scenario is the 'terminator'. Terminator is a little project to produce an efficient way of filling a large area of screen space with terminals. The user can have multiple terminals in one window and use key bindings to switch between terminals. The above image is the screen shot of terminator with 4 terminals. The present working terminal is highlighted in red. You can switch between these terminals by pressing Ctrl+T or Alt+arrow key. Terminator is available in Ubuntu 11.10 through Ubuntu Software Center. Install terminator and launch the application. Right clicking on the terminal will  provide a menu to split the terminal. You can also change the color preferences of active, inactive and receiving terminals. Some other preferences options are same as that of default terminal.

If you wish to view a single terminal for a while, right click on that terminal and select zoom terminal. This will open the terminal in full screen. To restore, again right click and select 'restore all terminals'.

There are also many keybindings for terminator. Here are the keybindings to split the terminals


Ctrl+Shift+O (Split terminals Horizontally).

Ctrl+Shift+E (Split terminals Vertically).


For more keybindings right click on a terminal, select preferences and click on the keybindings tab.

Dec 14, 2011

PyRoom

Today I was going through the Ubuntu Software Center (USC) to find any applications that interests me. After some filtering and scrolling through the (USC) I found this simple, yet interesting application called PyRoom. It is a notepad with a difference. 




PyRoom is plain text editor just like another text editor. But what makes PyRoom special about is that it is a full screen editor. The whole screen is covered by the plain background and you are provided with a narrow resizable area in the middle of the screen for editing. This makes it easy to read or edit. You can write the text without being distracted by the Ubuntu menu bar or bottom bar. PyRoom has no menu bar or toolbar. This is a very good application to note down your first thoughts. There is no spell check, no bold or italic fancy quotes. The focus is only on writing.


Though it is minimal in features, you can customize the editor by pressing the Ctrl+P. Pressing Ctrl+P brings up a small window where you can set the preferences of PyRoom. Currently there are twelve themes. Auto save option is also available. You can resize the the text area, change text color, text background.


PyRoom is available in Ubuntu Software Center in Ubuntu 11.10

Nov 7, 2011

Gnome shell

GNOME has taken the user interface to a new level which is natural, user-friendly, visually appealing , clutter free and eye catchy features. Gnome 3 has done this by taking advantage of the hardware graphics capability of modern processors, graphic cards and other hardware. Gnome 3 also saves a lot of real estate on the screen. It takes away the clutter and things are shown to the user only when needed.


Graphics and a visually pleasing desktop is analogous to the taste of a food. If the taste of the food is not good, people will not eat that food even if it has vitamins, proteins and calories. Similarly if people didn't find the user interface eye-catching, they will be frustrated and feel irritated. Of course a visually pleasing and appealing user interface needs powerful hardware graphic capability. Luckily most computers, tablets, laptops, net-books produced in the last five years have sufficiently powerful graphics capability based on which Gnome 3 was conceived.
The following screen shots shows the GNOME shell interface. One feature I mostly liked in the GNOME shell is the minimizing and switching windows. In GNOME 2, we have minimize, maximize and close buttons. There is a contradiction between 'switching windows' and 'minimizing'. When we switch to a window we are minimizing the other windows. And when we are minimizing a window we are switching to another window. In GNOME 3 there are no minimize and maximize buttons for a window. Just click on the activities tab on the top right corner of the screen or press the windows key on your keyboard which will show the preview of the windows which are opened and click on the window you wish to work on. All windows which are inactive are hidden by default. You can choose the window you wish to work by clicking on the activities tab or pressing the windows button on the keyboard.




There are two vertical bars.one on the left and the other on the right. The one on the left side is called 'dash'. This contains the favorite applications. You can also customize the dash by adding your own applications.The vertical bar on the right is for active workspaces. 


The search entry at the top right can be used to search docs, applications, music and also web.


The power off menu item in the status menu is hidden by default. After clicking on the status menu, press the Alt button  on keyboard, the suspend will turn to power off.


The synaptic package manager is no longer available. This has been replaced with Ubuntu software centre.


I have tested the GNOME shell on my laptop which has 1GB of RAM, 32-bit dual core processor,14 inch screen and minimal hardware accelerated graphics, though sometimes it strucks for a few seconds. The overall experience is satisfactory.





Aug 27, 2011

Leafpad - GTK+ based simple text editor

Leafpad is the most simplest and minimal text editor. It has been designed keeping simplicity in mind. It is based on GTK+. Leafpad is released under the GNU General Public License (GPL). If you are are trying to develop a text editor, consider to take look at the source code of the leafpad. The source code of leafpad can be a starting point for a much complex text editor. 
screen shot of Leafpad


Currently Leafpad has the following features:
  • Codeset option (Some OpenI18N registered)
  • Auto codeset detection (UTF-8 and some codesets)
  • Unlimitted Undo/Redo
  • Auto/Multi-line Indent
  • Display line numbers
  • Drag and Drop
  • Printing
Leafpad is also available for Nokia's Maemo platform.Leafpad may be present in the package managers of the respective Linux distributions.


For more on Leafpad visit 
http://tarot.freeshell.org/leafpad/

Aug 26, 2011

cssed- CSS Editor

cssed is a simple application for creating cascading style sheets for your websites. It is an open source application developed under GPL. Cssed is a small developer editor and validator, that tries to ease the CSS editing.To create a style you don't need to write the code simply select the property and its corresponding value from the side bar present on the right side, the code will be added to the editing area. Also it has three wizards which helps you to simplify the creation of css. They are: selector wizard, color wizard and box properties wizard.The selector wizard allows you to add the required selectors easily, simply select the required selectors and click on add the all the selectors will be added.
The color wizard helps to set the color of background, foreground,border top, border bottom, border left, etc,.The box properties wizard you can set the width, height, margins, padding, borders of the box.
It features syntax highlighting, syntax validation, MDI notebook based interface, quick CSS properties and values insertion, auto-completion and dialog-based insertion of CSS complex values.Apart from good GUI properties, in cssed most of the tasks can be completed using the keyboard shortcuts (accelerators).
screen shot of cssed








Available plugins are: 

  • cssed-filebrowser-plugin: adds a file browser a la gnome2 
  • cssed-findinfiles-plugin: adds a tab to the footer panel, which allows you to search for a term from a given directory 
  • cssed-quicksearch-plugin: adds a search field to the toolbar, for use within the active document 
  • cssed-tag-plugin: adds a new tab to the footer panel, to create and browse tags created with exuberant-ctags 
  • cssed-vte-plugin: adds a console to the footer panel, from which you can execute any command line tool 
cssed is available in Ubuntu 11.04 synaptic managar.

For more about cssed visit http://cssed.sourceforge.net/

Aug 20, 2011

Mp3splt

Here is a simple mp3 and ogg cutter for those who want to trim the mp3 and ogg audio files. This tool can be used to make ring tones for your mobiles out of mp3 songs or sounds.Mp3Splt-project is a utility to split mp3 and ogg files selecting a begin and an end time position, without decoding. It's very useful to split large mp3/ogg to make smaller files or to split entire albums to obtain original tracks.



If you want to split an album, you can select split points and filenames manually or you can get them automatically from CDDB (internet or a local file) or from .cue files. Supports also automatic silence split, that can be used also to adjust cddb/cue splitpoints. Trimming using silence detection is also available. You can extract tracks from Mp3Wrap or AlbumWrap files in few seconds. For mp3 files, both ID3v1 & ID3v2 tags are supported. Mp3splt-project is split in 3 parts : libmp3splt, mp3splt and mp3splt-gtk.After splitting, the split points and split files can be viewed by clicking on their respective tabs.
This tool is supported on GNU Linux, *BSD, MacOS X, BeOS, Windows

MP3Splt is available in the synaptic of ubuntu 11.04


For more details visit http://mp3splt.sourceforge.net/mp3splt_page/home.php

LiVES

Here is another opensource video editing application LiVES (Linux Video Editing System). LiVES mixes realtime video performance and non-linear editing in one professional quality application. It will let you start editing and making video right away, without having to worry about formats, frame sizes, or framerates. A very flexible tool which is used by both professional VJ's and video editors - mix and switch clips from the keyboard, use dozens of realtime effects, trim and edit your clips in the clip editor, and bring them together using the multitrack timeline. You can even record your performance in real time, and then edit it further or render it straight away.



The GUI is based on gtk+ 2.14+, runs under KDE, Gnome, Metacity, Fluxbox, Compiz and any known window manager.LiVES can also be scripted to be used as a video server. Can load single images or directories of images in numerical order and assemble them into videos or slideshows.
LiVES is available in the synaptic of Ubuntu 11.04.

For more about LiVES visit  http://lives.sourceforge.net/

Jul 23, 2011

fotoxx

There are a number of simple imaging editing applications. With all those we can only do so basic tasks like cropping, tagging, rotation, etc,. But if want to do some advanced tasks you need to go for GIMP, a popular digital photo editing application. GIMP occupies a lot of space and most of its features may be not used at all. What we need is an intermediary photo editing application that has some basic and well as some advanced features but with very less installation size than GIMP.

Enter Fotoxx , a simple, low foot print (2MB approx) , yet powerful  application for your image editing needs. It has most of the features of a typical photo editing and application like GIMP. With this application you can do most of the basic manipulations on the images and also some advanced task like importing camera RAW files and edit with 16-bit color. You can edit the entire image or only the selected area. Assign the tags and edit the already existing tags. Clicking on the image gallery button will show thumbnails of all the images of the present directory. Mass tagging is  also possible. Multiple images can be combined to a single wide image using the panorama feature. Up to four images can be combined. You can also create art effects by converting a photo into a simulated drawing, painting, or embossing. Withe High Depth of Field (HDF) feature, multiple images of the same subject but with a different focus distance can be combined to form a resultant image which has a depth of field spanning all the input images.

It has a very big list of features. So the features list is not posted here. To put it in a single line, fotoxx is a Swiss army knife for your digital image editing needs.

Fotoxx can be installed from the synaptic package manager of Ubuntu 11.04.It is also available in the rpm package format. for more on the fotoxx visit http://kornelix.squarespace.com/fotoxx

Jul 11, 2011

google + invitation from muktware.com

www.muktware.com, a leading web based free magazine on opensource, Linux, Android and FOSS, is giving free Google + invitations. All you need to do is to subscribe to the muktware.com newsletter and verify your subscription. The muktware Editor will send you a Google + invitation after verification.



  • visit http://www.muktware.com/newsletter-subscription enter your email id and click on subscribe
  • go to you email inbox and verify the subscription.
  • you will get a google+ invitation from the editor of muktware.com
  • open the invitation message and click on " Learn more about google+". This will take you to your Google + account.


For more on this visit the facebook fan page of muktware.com at https://www.facebook.com/muktware

Jun 20, 2011

FBReaderJ — an e-book reader for Google Android platform

FBReaderJ is an e-book reader for the Android platform. It is a clone of the FBReader book reader written in Java and is distributed under the terms of the GNU GPL.

FBReaderJ supports several e-book formats: oeb, epub,fb2. In future releases the list will be extended to support the same formats as the original FBReader. Direct reading from zip, tar and gzip archives is supported.

Binary package for Android 1.6+ is available from the Android Market. (To install start Android Market apllication on your device, search FBReader and press the "Install" button.)





























1.1.0 is released (June 11, 2011).
Changes:

  • Text selection 
  • Traditional Chinese localization 
Supported e-book formats are: 

Jun 18, 2011

webdoc

Webdoc is an innovative social platform for people to express themselves and interact with others online in ways that haven’t been possible until now. It's like the conversation is happening in real life. A new service where conversations happen in free-form spaces called “webdocs. you can put almost anything into a webdoc : pictures, videos and music from all over the web, but also interactive applications like games, polls, slideshows or web services such as Google Maps and Twitter. Its the most easiest way to create a mixed content and share with friends. To create your webdoc visit http://www.webdoc.com



webdoc in action from webdoc


Suppose that you have information about your favorite topic from various sources and in various formats like videos, images, text, graphics, games, maps, etc, you can insert all those in a webdoc, create a mixed content that is rich with graphics, polls, games, animations and share your webdoc with a unique link with your friends on the web.

Jun 14, 2011

Google to acquire Admeld

Internet giant Google which gets its most its reveneues from online advertising, confirmed that it is acquiring admeld Inc. Admeld provides publishers with expertise & tech to sell ads smarter. Admeld in its june 10th blogpost posted by Micheal Barret said, "I'm happy to say that over the weekend our company entered into an aggrement to be acquired by Google. He further added that their relationship is driven by a shared belief that managing display advertising is far too complicated for publishers and together both the companies would adress this issue.


Google also has confirmed this in its blog post http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/helping-publishers-get-most-from.html

However there was no offical information on the price of acquisition. Unconfirmed reports estimated the value of the deal to be around $400 million.

This acquisition gains significance in the wake of the recent comments by Google's CEO Eric Schmidt that they didn't took the facebook very seriously. Facebook is now emerging as the new competitor for goolge in advertisements.

Jun 10, 2011

India's $35 android tablet-PC all set to roll out

Nearly six years after the idea of low cost laptop was conceived for Indian students, the much awaited $35 tablet-PC for Indian students is all set be launched this june ending. The first lot of 10,000 laptops would be delivered to IIT-Rajasthan. Once it is launced it will be the world's chepest tablet in the world.The HRD Ministry officials confirmed each Indian state would be given 3,000 devices once the supply of 1,00,000 devices is made. The Central government would contribute about 50 per cent of the cost and a student would need to pay Rs. 1,000 for the device. The device is basically targetted at students for educational content. It is perhaps the cheapest innovation of all time. The government of India would contribute about 50 per cent of the cost and a student would need to pay Rs. 1,000 for the device.

HRD Minister Kapil Sibal displaying the $35 tablet-PC






















The device features includes:
  • WiFi connectivity
  • PDF Reader, Open Office
  • 7inch touchscreen
  • web browser with javascript support
  • remote device management capability
  • video streaming
  • flash video
  • zip/unzip facility
  • multimedia input-output interface option
  • 2 USB ports
  • built-in keyboard and
  • 2 GB RAM.
The storage can be external hard-drive or a solid-state memory upto 32 GB. Thedevice comes with features a basic tablet should have. This device runs on Android operating system.

 It is for this ambitious project that the government of India has refused to join the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC).The OLPC laptops cost around $100. In 2006, India decided not to become involved in the OLPC program. According to the Education Secretary Sudeep Banerjee, OLPC could not be taken seriously at that time.Banerjee also stated that the need for classrooms and teachers was greater than "fancy tools" and that if there were money available, it would be better spent on the existing education plans than attempting to implement OLPC in a pilot stage.By 2008, India had begun its own attempts at creating low-cost laptops. Instead of OLPC's target price of $100 per laptop, the HRD ministry is aimed for a $10 laptop. Many people have critized the Indian Governtment for not joining the OLPC and they even said that a tablet for $35 is not possible.

Jun 8, 2011

Ovi mobile application from web feeds in 4 simple steps

Ovi app wizard lets you to create simple Nokia ovi store application from your website feeds in four simple steps. Its like all your website feeds are wrapped into a mobile application. The mobile application created this way is used by mobile users to access your website. you dont need any programming to do this.

Ovi app wizard takes you through the process step-by-step, and makes app creation easy. No programming skills are needed, and no registration fees are required. It is the most simplest way to create a mobile application for your web content.

Ovi app wizard generates three different applications for Nokia phones
• Web application for Nokia Symbian touch screen smartphones
• Java application for Nokia keypad devices

visit http://appwizard.ovi.com/web_nokia/signIn.jsp and click on the Get Started.
Everything is self explanatory.



May 27, 2011

gwrite:HTML5 rich text editor

Gwrite is a simple HTML5 rich text editor based on GTK+. The interface is very clean. It is light weight with all the features that a basic HTML editor should have. You can insert pictures, create tables, view the HTML source, insert special characters and math equations and much more. It can installed on Ubuntu.

gwrite has the following features:

  • HTML5 file format
  • Standard word processing user interface
  • Content structure oriented word processing
  • Title style table of contents production
  • Similar navigation/documentation views in Microsoft Word
  • Paragraph selection when double or right click in navigation view
  • Word count: for document or selections, count the words(with and without spaces), paragraphs, lines, English words, Chinese characters.
  • Images inclusion via Base64
To install the gwrite visit http://code.google.com/p/gwrite/

Apr 10, 2011

Liferea

Liferea (Linux Feed Reader) is a simple yet powerful offline capable desktop aggregator caches feeds and is suitable for use with portable devices (laptops, hand helds...) that do not have a permanent internet connection. There are many other news readers available, but these others are not available for Linux or require many extra libraries to be installed. Liferea tries to fill this gap by creating a fast, easy to use, easy to install news aggregator for Gtk/Gnome.


Lifera has the following advantages over other online news aggregators:
  • Your cached feed contents are saved on your own (secure) machine.
  • Your cached feed contents are searchable locally with other tools (e.g. Beagle)
  • Your feed list is not accessible to 3rd parties
  • Each feed access are done in private.

pen.io

Here is a simple alternative to blogging. Pen.io is the fastest way to publish online. Created by  Anthony Feint, an Australian entrepreneur and designer. you don't need any registration to publish your post. Just enter the page name and password and click create page. This will open the page for editing. You can also insert links, and you tube videos. Pen.io is the best and fastest way to create beautiful text based pages in seconds and share them with the world. you can also create multiple pages. No personal information is collected. It takes just seconds to create a page and start adding content. Pen.io has been designed as a more permanent alternative to blogs. Blogs are great for posting regular content - with Pen.io, you can create a page and set and forget.


You Can Use Pen.io To:
  • Publish Essays
  • Create Pages for Upcoming Events
  • Share Code Snippets
  • Publish Ebooks
  • Share Recipes
  • And Much Much More



want to pen? then visit http://pen.io/

Mar 28, 2011

Edutor Advantage: handheld interactive learning device

Edutor Advantage.   photo courtesy: The HIndu
Edutor Technologies (India) Pvt Ltd has launched a handheld multi-media e-learning system called Edutor Advantage. This device will enable the students worldwide achieve academic success through one-on-one tutoring and engaged personalized learning. If you want to learn anything, anywhere, anytime there is nothing better than Edutor to offer you.The touch screen device comes with a preloaded, class-specific, curriculum-aligned content that is easy for students to understand. The device is priced at Rs. 5845 and the content will cost another Rs.1,635.The company said that the content will be updated every year in tune with the changes made in the curriculum. So the students can update the content as they move to higher classes
 

Using Edutor your child can now revise Maths, Science,Social and English curriculum topics wherever, whenever he/she wants.

She can also take a test on the corresponding topic
She can practice those dance moves she learnt in the school
She no longer needs to search through a bulky dictionary
She can now learn how to pronounce words correctly using Edutor

The company is planning to release a similar solution for Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE), International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) and SSC in the coming months.

for more details visit   http://www.myedutor.com/home.aspx

Feb 17, 2011

OpenShot:best open source video editor

OpenShot is the best open source video editor.OpenShort supports many video,audio,and image formats. The new version 1.3.0 has been released and comes with a lot of improvements. Adding files to your OpenShot video editor is easy. Just drag and drop audio, video, or image files into your project from your Gnome desktop.The new version has improved stability, performance and usability. You can add multiple video clips to the timeline in one step. Also it has got new exciting 3D animations. You can rotate the video and upload to youtube and Vimeo. OpenShot is available in the Live DVD format. Using this you can burn the iso image of Openshot  to a DVD and boot the computer to evaluate the OpenShot without disturbing your installed system.You can also download it as a package form the project's website or use the package manager of you Linux distribution.One of the most difficult tasks in creating a video or film is keeping track of and organizing all of your media files, such as videos, sound effects, sound track, titles, credits, and scenes. The OpenShot Filter Bar, which helps you find what you need faster than ever before! Want to only view your audio files? No problem. What to only view your videos that have a label of "Scene 1"? No problem. What to find a specific transition or effect? No problem. Either click one of the easy toggle buttons, or enter the first few letters of what you are searching for.

OpenShot's Features include:

  • Support for many video, audio, and image formats (based on FFmpeg )
  • Gnome integration (drag and drop support)
  • Multiple tracks
  • Clip resizing, trimming, snapping, and cutting
  • Video transitions with real-time previews
  • Compositing, image overlays, watermarks
  • 3D Animated Titles
  • Title templates, title creation, sub-titles
  • SVG friendly, to create and include titles and credits
  • Scrolling motion picture credits
  • Solid color clips (including alpha compositing )
  • Support for Rotoscoping / Image sequences
  • Drag and drop timeline
  • Frame stepping, key-mappings: J,K, and L keys
  • Video encoding (based on FFmpeg )
  • Key Frame animation
  • Digital zooming of video clips
  • Speed changes on clips (slow motion etc)
  • Custom transition lumas and masks
  • Re-sizing of clips (frame size)
  • Audio mixing and editing
  • Presets for key frame animations and layout
  • Ken Burns effect (making video by panning over an image)
  • Digital video effects , including brightness, gamma, hue, greyscale, chroma key (bluescreen / greenscreen) , and over 20 other video effects
  • OpenShot provides extensive editing and compositing features, and has been designed as a practical tool for working with high-definition video including HDV and AVCHD .

To downlaod OpenShot visit  http://www.openshotvideo.com/

Feb 12, 2011

UnPlug:firefox extension to save audio and video embedded on webpage.

UnPlug is a simple, easy to use Firefox extension which lets you save video and audio which is embedded on a web page - it's a video download tool.When you are on a webpage UnPlug scans the web page and tells you where media players are getting their data from, and allows you to easily save the media file.

UnPlug works for lots of sites including youtube.com, video.google.com, metacafe.com, vimeo.com, veoh.com and lots, lots more.The list of website supported by UnPlug is available at http://unplug.dbatley.com/websites.php
 

suppose you are watching a youtube video and would like to download the video.Click on the UnPlug toolbar icon present on the top-right corner of the Firefox window.This will bring up a new window with options to download the video in low,normal and high quality. This is shown in the  fig.

To download the UnPlug for Firefox visit https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/unplug/

Jan 20, 2011

LibreOffice: release candidate 3 available for download

LibreOffice is the free power-packed Open Source personal productivity suite for Windows, Macintosh and Linux, that gives you 6 feature-rich applications for all your document production and data processing needs: Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, Math and Base. Support and documentation is free from our large, dedicated community of users, contributors and developers.

Libre office release candidate 3 is available for dowload.This version comes with a lot of improvements over its previous RC version.

The general features of the new release are:
  • Load and Save ODF documents in flat XML to make external XSLT processing easier
  • Make License Information accessible via the Help menu
  • Made on-line Help available on-line, via the WikiHelp
  • Added "Experimental" mode, to allow users to test out as-yet-unfinished features
  • Bundled Linux "Libertine G" and Linux "Biolinum G" fonts
  • Added the LibreColors to the palette
  • Implement import of alpha channel for RGBA .tiffs
  • Show all appropiate formats by default on "Save As
  • Use radio buttons widgets to clarify complex menu option intentions
  • Add option to enable saving of documents with non-visible changes
  • Added Quickstarter for Unix builds (enabled only in distro builds)
  • Fix synthetic small caps resizing factor to improve look and interoperability
More  new features in the version 3.3 are available at http://www.libreoffice.org/download/new-features-and-fixes/. The Release Candidate 3 is available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.The release candidate is not intended for production use.

Jan 9, 2011

Zim-A Desktop Wiki

 Many people who search the web for a particular topic on web find it difficult to organize the small peices of information they encounter. For example, if you are a working on a project and you depend on searching on web for information about the project. You come across small pieces of information from various websites and want to note them in a simple, easy to mangage and editable way. Word processing tools like word MS word or Open Office Writer is not an approprite tool for this kind of work. Although there are small note taking appletes like StickyNotes, there are good only to note small information bits like phone number,email,address,etc,. One solution to this kind of problem is the Zim- A desktop wiki.

Zim brings the concept of a wiki to your desktop. Store information, link pages and edit with WYSISYG markup. Creating a new page is as easy as linking to a non-existing page. Pages are stored in a folder structure, like in an outliner, and can have attachments.
This tool can be used to keep track of TODO lists or ideas, to take notes during a meeting or to draft any other kind of text (blog entries, important mails, etc.). Unlike word processing tools like Writer,zim has a clean interface without any clutter of additional menus.

you can also embedd images,takes screen shots using the plugins,insert special characters,text from a file,attach a file.
Each notebook consists of a set of pages. Each page can contain, text, images and links to other pages. The pages can be arranged in a hierarchical index.