Despite the fact that the amount of users who use Linux and the ones who would like to make a switch to free software is constantly increasing, the great majority of people still deal with Windows OS and the most important programs (MS and other paid ones) they need. For example, MS Office is so popular that it’s hardly possible to find a significant amount of users who don’t work with it at all, though there are a lot of decent (some of them are absolutely free) alternatives to use. Thus all the formats of documents used in Windows apps are so widespread that the first thing which should be taken into account by the developers of alternative software is compatibility.

For justice’ sake we should mention that one of the most important reasons why people don’t use MS Office’s counterparts consists in the fact that they just simply don’t know much about them. But what would you do, if you had the opportunity to use a very multifunctional application that is free of charge? Most likely you would like at least to try this program in order to compare it with MS Office and find out how nice it is. In the given review we are going to discuss the most popular alternatives to MS Office to help you find the one that will correspond to all your needs. But before we go ahead with that let’s see what a word processor is.

A word processor (or document preparation system) represents computer software used for the composition, editing and formatting of any sort of printable material. At the very beginning a word processor referred to a stand-alone office machine, popular in the 1970s and 80s, but nowadays modern word processors represents computer applications with user-friendly interface which provide the opportunity of WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editing; most of them allow users to work not just with text, but images, graphics and tables as well. Here you can learn more about word processors.

As you probably understand Microsoft Office is the most popular and commonly used word processing system, however it’s so expensive that not everybody may afford to buy it, especially home users who rarely need all the functionality it offers. That’s why a lot of people and companies tend to switch MS Office to much more affordable or even free applications which provide very decent functionality. As it was mentioned before we are going to review the best MS Office’s counterparts available on Linux, thus helping you to change your OS without the risk of losing any functionality.

Here are the word processing programs to discuss:

• OpenOffice 3.1
• AbiWord
• KOffice

Today the Opera Software company has formally introduced a new technology, Opera Unite. According to the developers, Opera Unite can do the server from any computer. Using this feature, you can communicate with other users directly avoiding usage of online services and applications. This technology allows better control for private data usage in the public domain. Users also have remote access to their computers with any other dеvice equiррed with a modern web browser.

Opera Unite Services are based on the same standards as the Web sites. It simplifies the creation of new applications, based on Opera Unite. Opera Unite technology is available in a special version of Opera browser 10, which is available for free download at Opera Labs.
The Opera Unite Services works right in your browser. This time users have the following free services:

• File Sharing. With this application you can grant access to files on your computer to other users. In this case, don’t need to pre-load these files to the specialized online services. You must select on your local disk folder, and Opera Unite generate a direct link to this folder.
• Web Server. This service allows you to run a website from your computer. Just choose to local disk folder with the files the web site and allow access to it from outside.
• Media Player. Media player provides access to the music of the user wherever they are located and from any computer. Just choose the folder with the music collection in MP3 format and allow access to it. You can open the direct link of Opera Unite in any browser.
• Photo Sharing. Now you can share photos directly from your computer without sending the files to online services. You must select the folder of photos on a local disk, and the application form a gallery of thumbnails. Full photos are downloaded by clicking on the thumbnail.
• The Lounge. With this service you can organize chat with your friends right on your computer. Friends may join the conversation by clicking on the link directly, without having to register with any online service. Depending on the plants, just tell them the password to enter the chat room.
• The Fridge. This service makes it possible to attach a note to the virtual refrigerators friends. You can exchange messages with them in safe mode and in real time.

Here is the screenshot of this page:

This service will allow easy file sharing for users without experience. Also there is nothing to install and remote access can be set up with any operating system. That’s another great tool from Opera Software: I like their browser and of course, Opera Mini…

Nowadays almost everybody knows about the existence of Linux. There is a very decent amount of people who use it as a primary or secondary OS; however the great majority of users are still not enough familiar with it. Though there are a lot of different reasons for that (most of them are subjective ones), we are not going to discuss them, because there is a plenty of information concerning that topic in the Web, so if you want to know what the advantages and disadvantages of using Linux or Windows are, you can easily find them out.

As far as the given review is concerned its intended audience includes the ones who would like to try Linux in order to form a personal opinion about it. Fortunately there is an extremely easy way to do so – Linux Live CD.

A Live CD (or DVD) represents a CD (or DVD) that contains a bootable operating system providing you a unique opportunity to run it as a usual fully functional OS without actually installing it. Generally all the live CDs include an installation utility so a user can easily install the system if he/she wants to; still before the user proceeds to an installation a live CD does not alter the operating system or files already installed on a computer’s hard drive. Thus it represents a kind of a “test drive” that helps you to see Linux in action with no risk of making a mistake, because as soon as a computer is rebooted it returns to its initial state.

Although being a “test drive” is a great feature of Linux Live CDs, it represents nothing but just one of the most important features which should be emphasized. The other purposes of using a Linux Live CD are:

• Removing viruses
• System recovery
• Checking the compatibility of a particular hardware configuration
• Making a drive image
• Testing new versions of software
• Providing a high-security environment for a guest and etc.

As you can see there are a lot of things you can do with that, so it’s a pretty multifunctional tool.

At this point we can go ahead with the most popular and easy-to-use Linux Live CD distributions, so you would be able to decide which one is the most convenient for you. Here is the list of the distributions we are going to talk about:

1. Ubuntu 9.04
2. OpenSUSE 11.1
3. Fedora 11
4. Linux Mint 7
5. Knoppix ADRIANE 1.1
6. Mandriva Linux One

Nowadays the great majority of Internet users are familiar with Wordpress which represents the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world. Being started in 2003 by a small group of people at the moment it’s used on hundreds of thousands of sites and seen by tens of milions of people every day.

One of the greatest things about Wordpress, in addition to the fact that it’s absolutely free, is the feature of being completely customizable, thus giving the opportunity to use it for almost anything.

Since the appearance of the first version (0.7 on 27th of May, 2003) WordPress has been constantly updated introducing a lot of different improvements and offering greater functionality each and every time. Starting from the Version 1.0 most of the releases were named after well-known jazz musicians. After 1.5 release WordPress seemed to have something people really liked and it started to experience some fairly rapid growth (in a period of one year – from 2006 to 2007 – the amount of downloads increased in more than 2,5 times).

The last version – 2.8 “Baker” version named in honor of noted trumpeter and vocalist Chet Baker – representing the main topic of the given post was released on June 10th, 2009. Let’s check what new features and improvements of this release are.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a well-known fact that many Internet users would like to create their own websites and start to earn money in the Web, but at the same time the great majority of them don’t want to learn HTML, CSS, PHP and different technical aspects of web page production. Although learning of all the mentioned things is very important; nowadays it’s possible to create a website even if you have no idea about them at all. So how you can do that? The answer is by using website builders.

Generally all the website builders are divided into two types:

1. Online Website Builders: represent online tools or SaaS (Software as a Service) provided by web hosting companies which help users to build and publish the websites without learning something.
2. Offline Website Builders: represent the software which runs on your computer and helps you to create pages for a website offline, so you can publish them on any host you want.

In the given review we are going to discuss the Online Website Builders because they are generally easier to use, so almost every single Internet surfer can use them to build quite decent websites. In fact the only thing you need while using an online website builder is to be a little bit Internet experienced, know how to use your mouse and be ready to create something.

Despite the fact that online website builders are very easy to use, it doesn’t mean that they should be used just in case you want to create a basic personal web page; if you need to create a professional business website or even a design free (not template based) website they can be helpful as well. That’s why some of the professionals use online website builders to save time and easily maintain the websites. Another reason why a pro may decide to use an online website builder is that some of these tools provide users with the source code.

Let’s take a closer look at the major advantages of Online Website Builders:

• it’s a really fast way to create a website
• no need to have any skills or programming experience
• the opportunity to use your tool from any system (any OS, any browser and etc.)
• «what you see is what you get» tools (WYSIWYG)
• the ability to save money (generally such tools are pretty cheap or even free)
• everything you need in one single place
• quite a significant amount of templates to use

GoPlan 2.0

GoPlan is an online project management and team collaboration platform that has been recently released. Before we start discussing given solution I would like to emphasize that it strongly differs from everything we reviewed before. In fact it’s an application that is really funny. You can hardly find a serious company that might use this service, but small groups of developers, designers and young people may consider it as a perfect tool to use on a daily basis. There are just the things you need, nothing else – as simple as possible.

Despite its simplicity it has some really nice features to be mentioned:

• Customizable interface (you can change the themes and your company’s logo)
• Pretty nice calendar that syncs with your external calendar applications like iCal and devices like the iPhone
• Tickets feature (familiar to software developers and customer support companies): make it easy to track issues on a given project. Goplan integrates a fully featured issue tracking solution
• Documents Tab: maintaining a repository of assets for each of your projects. The image gallery makes it easy for designers to have an overview of their concepts.

As I emphasized before this application should be compared to the other ones we discussed. I decided to write a small review about it just because I found given tool very simple, nice and funny. It’s a really joy to use it.

Let’s look at the screenshots made from the user account.

Read the rest of this entry »

Projecturf

Projecturf is a web-based project management solution that has quite a significant amount of features to help you better manage your projects. Extremely nice and thoughtful design makes it a snap to learn and easy-to-use for both your personal and professional needs. Large icons on the top of the screen represent the navigation that is pretty simple, as each interface icon leads to a corresponding area, which in turn is divided into two or three tabs for different needs.

All plans are loaded with all the features (the difference is just the amount of projects you can manage), so you don’t have to worry about paying more for different add-ons and extras. In addition to the great interface there is another nice thing you will like for sure – no storage limits. It really offers unlimited storage on all paid plans. This means that when you need to share large amounts of files, you won’t be faced with storage restrictions or constraints on the number of files you can upload.

Read the rest of this entry »

ZOHO Projects

Zoho Projects is an online project management tool to collaborate and execute projects easily. It provides a great deal of features for a collaboration and project management: creating tasks, assigning ownership, setting deadlines and tracking milestones, a clear view of projects’ status, a time sheet for calculating the exact number of hours put in by each of your project members, a central forum for your team to discuss and upload project related files, Gantt charts and etc.

A nice thing about ZOHO Project is that there is a way to create a FREE account. Of course, there are some limitations but as it’s mentioned on the official web site it should be considered as a “starting point for Online Project Collaboration that is ideal for schools, freelancers, consultants and individuals”. So if you would like to check it right away, here is the page you should visit. But before you go ahead with that make sure you watch demo videos in order to understand the way it works.

In addition, it has pretty simple, but still attractive, interface. Let’s check some screenshots made from ZOHO Projects User account.

The Dashboard:

Read the rest of this entry »

AtTask

AtTask (@task) represents very nice solution for all knowledge workers to collaborate and accomplish the work most essential to the enterprise. This tool gives executives and managers the ability to increase productivity and reduce costs by helping bridge the strategic vision and objectives of their portfolios with project execution.

One of the things that really attract attention from the very beginning is AtTask’s Client List. It’s hardly possible to find another company that would have similar client list. Here are just some of the clients: Apple, Adobe Incorporated, Amazon.com, Hitachi, Toyota, Volvo, the Walt Disney Company, Fujitsu, McDonalds and etc.

Read the rest of this entry »

Nowadays every single company that manages multiple projects needs to have some kind of system in order to keep track of everything; otherwise it will be really hard to run business. In addition to that if a company provides different services, has a decent amount of subcontractors and employees, using a special system to collect all the data and track the tasks is the only way to succeed.

Fortunately at the moment there are a lot of different project management tools available, which were created with the only purpose to help your team collaborate, stay on task and succeed at the project. Generally they can be divided into two major groups:

1. Online PMTs represent software as a service and can run from both your company server or manufacturer’s one (in this case you pay for monthly subscription)
2. Offline PMTs are installed on individual computers

In the given review we will discuss the online solutions due to the fact that they are much more popular and have quite a significant amount of advantages in comparison with the offline ones.

Here are the main advantages of the Online Project Management Tools:

• the opportunity to access the project from anywhere you have access to the Internet
• no need to install something on your PC (no backups, no reinstalling and etc.)
• any online solution can be used with any operational system (Windows, Linux, Mac OS and etc.)
• a better customer support service (you can use online chats)
• remote capabilities (you can use PDAs and iPhones)

There is no doubt that Online Project Management Tools are very multifunctional; thus by using them you can fullfil a lot of different tasks among which the most important ones are the followings:

Read the rest of this entry »