Featured items
- Firefox
http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/
- The best available Web browser, with tabbed browsing, popup blocking, good CSS support; offered along with
Thunderbird user-friendly email client. Recommended by Wall Street Journal and Forbes. See my
Web browsers page in the
Internet software section for more detail.
- OpenOffice.org
http://www.openoffice.org/
- Open-source freeware office-suite alternative can open, edit, and save MS Office file formats, and runs on Windows, Linux, Mac platforms. See my
OpenOffice transition pages in this section for more.
- Computer recycling
http://earth911.org/recycling/computer-recycling-reuse/
- Key in your zip code and see a list of local places you can recycle your old computer. Some of them sell recycled and wiped computers that were replaced by businesses.
- One Laptop per Child
http://www.laptop.org/
- A program to supply $100 laptops to children in the developing world for educational purposes; apparently the program has collapsed with the withdrawal of Intel's participation.
- Anthro Corporation (Tualatin OR)
http://www.anthro.com/
- This line of modular ergonomic workstation furniture is hard to beat for versatility, quality, and strength, if you can afford them. A few years ago I specified a basic AnthroCart for a client here who wanted the best, and she was a little skeptical, at least until it arrived. After that there were no more doubts.
- Free Download Manager home page http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/
Free Download Manager
project page http://sourceforge.net/projects/freedownload/
- When I first downloaded 65MB OpenOffice 1.1.1 in May 2004, I tried several download managers (DMs) and had problems with all of them. Things seem to have improved. FDM really delivers on expectations: you really can stop a download, shut down, and resume later when convenient. FDM works with Windows 9x through XP and Vista, Internet Explorer 5.0+, and Firefox. See my
download managers page for more on FDM and DMs in general.
- 7-Zip home page
http://www.7-zip.org/
7-Zip project page
http://sourceforge.net/projects/sevenzip/
- Open source freeware compressed-file utility. Windows XP, Mac OS X, and recent Linux versions all have basic native support for the ZIP-format compressed files which are common on the Internet. 7-Zip has nice OS-shell integration, an included command-line version you can run from a DOS prompt, and support for multiple archive formats. If you're going to do anything with open-source free software, you should probably get 7-Zip. Because it exists and supports multiple formats, some people in the open-source world think it's okay to release files for Windows users in TAR/GZIP formats, and even in 7-Zip's native *.7z format.
- CutePDF Writer
http://www.cutepdf.com/
- This free utility installs like a print driver and creates PDF files; great for PCs without a physical printer attached. You can "print" from any program to Acrobat PDF files on disk, which you can print later if you need to, on any PC with a printer and free Acrobat Reader. Especially useful for documenting online purchases and other significant Web transactions. Formerly "CutePDF Printer."
- SETI@home
http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/
- " ... a scientific experiment that uses Internet-connected computers in the
Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). You can participate by
running a free program that downloads and analyzes radio telescope data." There are several voluntary distributed computing projects like this now. The analysis program runs like a screensaver, when your PC is running but otherwise idle. Work units upload/download once every 24 hours. You can participate using a dialup (modem) account.
- PawSense (TM)
http://www.bitboost.com/pawsense/
- You can catproof your computer. PawSense discriminates between "cat-like typing" and human typing, and can play your choice of annoying sounds to help influence your furry friend to stay away.
- The Jargon File
http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/
- Formerly published in print by MIT Press as The New Hacker's Dictionary: often hilarious definitions of ancient and modern hacker jargon or "Hackish." Here's an
alternate Jargon File site in case the first one doesn't work.
- whatis?com
http://whatis.techtarget.com/
- Interesting glossary of IT terminology. More focused on serious definitions of terms in current use (the Jargon File includes more humor and ancient mainframe jargon).
- Fractint home page
http://spanky.triumf.ca/www/fractint/fractint.html
Fractint homepage mirror
http://spanky.fractint.org/www/fractint/fractint.html
- Fractint is an outrageously sophisticated, copyrighted freeware, fractal graphics generator that supports dozens of fractal types, deep zooming, rotation, mapping, color cycling, palette switching, and lots of other wierd stuff. Fractint has been in continuous development by multiple contributors since at least 1988. It has no functional usefulness whatsoever, except demonstrating fractal mathematics, making pretty pictures, causing your PC to break a sweat,* and proving how good the contributors are at efficient number-crunching. Fractint is still a DOS program with a keystroke-only interface, which will take you like five minutes to learn, but it runs fine on Windows.
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- Wikipedia:
Mandelbrot set
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbrot_set
- The best-known fractal, pictured at right; sometimes called "the thumbprint of God." This fractal is the graph of a set of points in the complex plane whose boundary is literally infinitely complicated. You can click the image to see a 4K larger version. The first two GIF files I used here are really small and transmit fast because they are monochrome, with only two colors. Fractint running in full color is much more spectacular; here's a
180K GIF example (1024×768 pixels).
- Open Directory Project:
Chaos and Fractals
http://dmoz.org/Science/Math/Chaos_and_Fractals/
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