Welcome to the Fast-Air Tech Talk newsletter. The Tech Talk newsletter is a free service for all Fast-Air customers. Please feel encouraged to suggest newsletter topics.
While much software is free in price, often there is a hidden price to pay. Examples include data mining, spyware, malware, and vendor lock-in. Rarely is the source code for such software available for review or auditing. This type of software is called proprietary or closed source.
There is software that is free in price without hidden agendas. The software is free to study, change, or improve because the source code is available. The source code can be freely audited for security flaws and exploits. This category of software is commonly known as open source or free/libre software. The word libre is French meaning liberty.
Most software users are not interested in studying or modifying source code because they lack the training and experience. Yet many people can code and they do provide improvements. This makes for better software for everyone.
Generally, almost overwhelmingly, this makes for more trusted software.
In this day and age of rampant data mining, spyware, malware, and vendor lock-in, there is much comfort in knowing that qualified people can review the code to ensure such shenanigans are not part of the software.
That the software is high quality and free in cost is proverbial icing on the cake. All of these programs are free to download, free in price, and used by people all over the world.
There are many more such apps. There are many online tutorials and training videos about using these apps.
A friendly reminder from the previous Fast-Air Tech Talk: do not download from untrusted sites. Preferred download links are available for all of the following apps, being embedded directly in the app name in this newsletter.
Probably the most widely used app these days are web browsers.
Also common are mail clients.
Available for Thunderbird is a calendar extension called Lightning.
For people wanting to combine the web browser and mail client, there is the Seamonkey web suite. Seamonkey is from the Mozilla folks and basically is Firefox and Thunderbird merged into one app.
PDF/Document reader.
Office suite.
Photo and bitmap image editors.
GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program)
MyPaint
Krita
For those who tinker with Photoshop, a professional photographer has written an excellent article about migrating from the expensive Photoshop to the free GIMP.
Illustration/Vector graphics.
3D Graphics/Animation.
Desktop publishing and page layout.
Instant Messaging.
Music and audio player.
All purpose media player.
SMPlayer includes a nice add-on for browsing Youtube. Both SMPlayer and VLC can play videos from any web site without using the problematic and exploit-prone Flash web browser plugin.
E-book library manager and converter.
Audio editor and recorder.
Music scoring.
Music Disc Jockey.
Music analyzer.
Video editors.
Music Transcoder (convert music and audio files).
Advanced text editor.
HTML editor.
2D Computer Aided Drafting (CAD).
File archiver.
FTP file manager.
Personal finance, small business accounting.
Both HomeBank and GnuCash import OFX, QFX, and QIF files.
Genealogy.
Anti-virus.
Password manager.
System file cleaner.
Virtualization.
Planetarium.
Multimedia and home theater center.
Clip art, free of copyright and other statutory restrictions.
Learning management system (LMS).
Manage classroom computers.
Personal/private cloud for sharing data and files.
Collaborative authoring and editing.
Collaborative spreadsheets.
Collaborative groupware (email, calendars, notes, tasks, etc.).
Interactive Whiteboard
Would you like to view and experiment with this free software? Stop by the Fast-Air office. A demo machine is available with much of the aforementioned software already installed.
Technical trivia: Ada Lovelace is credited as the first person to write a computer algorithm — in 1843 for Charles Babagge’s mechanical Analytical Engine. She is therefore recognized as the world’s first known computer programmer. While Babbage focused only on numerical calculations, Lovelace envisioned computing capabilities that now define modern computers.
Next issue: Reducing Bandwidth Usage with Videos.
How about a nice sunny day on a warm Caribbean beach?
- Free Gift Phishing Scams (Notice 2020-001) - January 15, 2020
- Tech Support Phone Scam (Notice 2019-001) - March 14, 2019
- VPNFilter Router Malware (Notice 2018-007) - May 30, 2018