Software Download: March 2012

How to Become a Software Engineer

Software Engineering was recently listed by Time Magazine as still being the #1 career for pay/stress load. In spite of all the media hype about offshoring of these type of jobs, it's still a job that's in high demand. This article is for those considering Software Engineering as a career path.

Steps

High School Preparation

You must love programming! If you're in junior or senior high, and you haven't yet explored programming, do so. If you're not interested in math or science to begin with, you should probably explore other options.
Get all the math you can in high school. Try to advance to college level math before leaving high school, you'll need a ton of math to complete any Computer Science program and Engineering program.

College Curriculum

Plan on getting a degree. With all the success stories of college drop outs becoming billionaire CEOs in the 90's, there is a certain lure that "as long as I think outside the box and have outstanding problem solving and programming skills I don't need a four year degree". It's difficult for entry level software engineers to obtain a position without a four year degree.
Qualify your degree by what you want to do. If your love is game design and you wish to enter that industry as a game programmer, you'll need a Computer Science degree. If you want to work for IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Google, etc., then a Computer Science degree may be good for you. If you're looking to work for a non-technical corporation building mostly business applications, consider a degree in MIS (Management Information Systems) or one of the many business technical degrees now offered. This type of degree is best for most, because it provides management and general business skills and doesn't focus on a lot of information that will not be useful to most.

Extra College Curriculum

Supplement your classwork with personal research. Search job boards and note what technologies are hot and buzzing. The colleges simply can't keep up with everything, so you'll need to buy additional technical books and teach yourself.
Unless you're planning to get your foot in the door through an intern position, try to find side projects while in school. No one wants to take a risk and hire someone fresh out of school without projects under their belt. Internships are great at taking care of this problem, but unfortunately a lot of students can't land an internship or do so only to discover they would prefer to work elsewhere. The only way to give yourself options is to find some non-classroom work to put on your resume.
Develop contacts with software engineers. If possible try to develop some software projects under their guidance.

The Difference Between Engineer & Programmer

Understand that software engineering is not the same as programming. Every software engineer knows how to program, but not every programmer is a software engineer. Here's the principal difference between the two:
- Software engineering is typically a group effort, with differing and often fluid roles and responsibilities for the group members.
- Engineering projects have timelines, release dates, and considerable interaction between people responsible for its various components.

Warnings

Be prepared for a rollercoaster ride. The industry is always changing and your self-education will never end. If you don't enjoy teaching yourself new and complex things often, change majors now.

Steps

Get a good Unix distribution. GNU/Linux is one of the most popular for hacking but GNU Hurd, BSD, Solaris and (to some extent) Mac OS X are often used.
Learn some popular programming language until you reach a more or less satisfactory level. Without this, you cannot contribute code (the most important part of any software project) to the free software community. Some sources suggest to begin at once with two languages[1]: one system language (C, Java or similar) and one scripting language (Python, Ruby, Perl or similar).
To be more productive, learn Eclipse or some other similar integrated development tool.
Learn version control (CVS, Version control is likely the most important co-operation tool for shared software development. Understand how to create and apply patches (text difference files). Most Free software development in the community is done creating, discussing and applying various patches.
Find a suitable small Free software project which you could easily join to get experience. Most of such projects now can be found on SourceForge.net. The suitable project must:
1. Use the programming language you know.
2. Be active, with recent releases.
3. Already have three to five developers.
4. Use version control.
5. Have some part you think you can immediately start implementing without modifying the existing code too much.
6. Apart from the code, a good project also has active discussion lists, bug reports, receives and implements requests for enhancement and shows other similar activities.
Contact the administrator of the selected project. In a small project with few developers your help will usually be immediately accepted.
Carefully read the rules of the project and more or less follow them. The rules of the coding style or necessity to document your changes in a separate text file may first appear ridiculous to you. However the purpose of these rules is to make the shared work possible - and the most projects do have them.
Work in this project for several months. Listen carefully that the administrator and other project members say. Apart programming, you have a lot of things to learn. But if you really do not like something, just go away to another project.
Do not stick with the underground project for too long. As soon as you find yourself successfully working in that team, it is time to look for the serious one.
Find a serious, high level Free software or Open source project. Most such projects are owned by GNU or Apache organizations.
As we are doing a serious jump now, be ready for the far cooler acceptance. You will likely be asked to work for some time without direct write access to the code repository. The previous underground project should, however, have taught you a lot - so after several months of the productive contribution you can try to demand rights you think you should have.
Take and do a serious task. It is time. Do not be afraid. Go on even after you discover that the task is lots more difficult than you initially thought - in this step it is important not to give up.
If you can, apply with your serious task to the Google's "Summer of Code" to get some money from this adventure. But just do not care if the application is not accepted as they have far less funded positions than really good hackers.
Look for a suitable conference happening nearby ("Linux days" or something similar) and try to present your project there (all project, not just the part you are programming). After you tell you are representing a serious Free / Open source project, the organizers frequently release you from the conference fee (if they do not, the conference is likely unsuitable anyway). Bring your Linux laptop (if you have one) and run demos. Ask the project administrator for the material you may use when preparing your talk or poster.
Search the web for announcement about the install party happening nearby and try to join it first time as a user (watch for all problems and how hackers solve them) and next time as an installer.
Complete the task, cover with automatic tests and contribute to the project. You are done! To be sure, try to meet some hackers of the project physically and have a glass of beer.
For better understanding, look into real example of the development history for a Free Software project (above). Each raising curve represents a contribution (lines of code) from single developer. Developers tend to become less active over years but the project frequently even accelerates as new people join. Hence if you already come with some useful skills, there are no reasons why the team would not invite you.

Video

Tips

If you still do not trust yourself enough, start from some part of code that you think is missing and can be written from scratch. Changes in existing code are much more likely to attract criticism.
For the beginning, select a class, module or some other unit under which nobody is very actively working at the moment. Working together on the same class or even function needs more skills and a lot of care from all sides.
Before asking any question about the working rules inside the project, try to search for the answer in the project documentation and mailing list archives.
The employers of some hackers seem motivated enough to allow contributions during their working time (usually because the institution uses the Free/Open source program that the hacker is developing). Think, maybe you can get at least part of the needed time this way.
Always continue the hacking you started. Does not build, does not run, crashes? There are reasons for everything and if you have source code this usually means that you can force the system to do whatever you want, especially with the help of the web search. This rule has its limits, but, indeed, never yield easily.
Only say you are a hacker after some true hacker community recognizes you as such.

Warnings

If you plan to meet Free software hackers eye to eye, always leave your Windows laptop at home. Mac OS is tolerated somewhat better, but also not welcome. If you do bring your laptop, it must run Linux or other operating system that they consider as "Free software".
If your mail client supports html messages, turn this feature off. Never attach documents that only proprietary software (like MS Word) can open properly. Hackers understand this as insulting.
While the word "hacker" sounds with respect in the most of the academic environments, for some uninformed people it may associate with breaking into security systems and other computer-related crimes that a different social group (crackers) do. Unless you are ready to explain, look to whom are you telling this word. Real hackers as they are meant in this article never join programming activities that seem for them illegal. First, they are proud of following the hacker ethic. Second, the law violations are not necessarily better paid.
Do not volunteer to the company-owned projects that are not releasing some parts of they code under approved Open Source license. In such cases the really important parts of the project are likely to stay behind the closed doors of the owner, preventing you from learning anything useful.
Do not start from small code optimizations, extra comments, coding style improvements and other similar "small-scale" stuff. It may attract far more criticism than any serious contribution. Instead, collect these into a single 'cleanup' patch.
Avoid asking any question related to fundamentals of programming or programming tools. A Free software programmer's time is valuable. Instead, discuss the basics of programming in communities for amateur or new programmers.
For the same reason, never expect an older hacker to write a detailed description of your task or even provide any kind of supervision for you. While open source projects may have a lot of strict rules, they usually work along the lines of what is known as extreme programming in the programming methodology.
In the informal meeting like beer event of the project to that you have never contributed any code you will have unpleasant feeling of being highly ignored. Do not worry, some hackers are great friends later, after you earn respect with your code.
Do not begin from starting your own project, unless you want to stick in a proud loneliness for ever. For the same reason, do not start from the attempt to revive the abandoned project which has already lost its previous team (see why).
Your hacker status in the project community reflects your present more than your past. In particular, if you want a recommendation from the project leader or anything the like, ask till you are still actively contributing.
Big Free software projects, especially around GNU domain, do not treat your job as your personal matter. After you get or change the job in a software - related company, they ask your employer to sign certain agreements [2] that these may or may not sign. This can force to select the project with looser requirements.
In cooperative world of Free software you code and in rare cases even all project of your group may be unexpectedly replaced by some other contribution. Examples of large scale overwrites could be the now forgotten Harmony or more recent history of GNU Classpath, for instance. Mature hackers say "welcome" and take benefits of the new code becoming available - there is just no better way to react. This, however, does not come naturally and must be learned. See an example of such an attitude.

Things You'll Need

Linux. Many Free software projects are either more complicated to build under Windows or do not build properly at all. This is especially true for the advanced projects, devoted to the programming of mobile phones, minature computers, USB keys and other amazing devices.
A computer with relatively good Internet connection. If you want to keep the dual boot with Windows, a second hard drive or partition for Linux would be a good solution.
Basic knowledge of at least one programming language and a strong intention to learn more. The most popular languages currently seem to be C and java.
Considerable amount of time, at least 5 hours a week (a typical hardcore hacker contributes as many as 14).
While the formal education in informatics would make your way lot easier, you do not need it as a mandatory condition and no any real hacker community will ever ask you. Hackers judge about each other by one's hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position. However at least 60 % of hackers that watch you patches do have the "right" university degree and will not allow you to do any nonsense in the project.
During the last steps (conference and install party) you would benefit from your own laptop. However it is not good for working at home, so only buy it if you can afford the second machine.
The described path of becoming a hacker needs at least about two years to be completed.

Steps

iPod Classic

Ask your friends to burn you CDs. Having your friends burn you mixes of songs you request (or even just ones they think you'll like!) is a great way to get free music.
Check the iTunes Store for free music. The "Free on iTunes" section at the bottom of the page features songs, apps, books and more that you can download without paying. Click the "See All" link for even more selection. The picks are updated once every week or so.
Find free music sites. There are a number of sites like designed to help new artists expose the public to their work, or that host music in the public domain licensed through Creative Commons. Wikipedia has a list of these websites; The Internet Archive is also a good, non-profit source.
Subscribe to music podcasts via iTunes or iPodder.
Use a P2P client. Some examples are Limewire (although this can give you viruses on your computer), Soulseek and musicjacker.
Use a torrent client. Torrent clients like BitTorrent are an alternative to P2P clients.
Download or record music off of Youtube or MySpace. Most popular artists have Youtube and Myspace accounts, as well as indie artists and those just starting out.
Use a Shockwave Flash (SWF) decoder. It's possible to legally rip songs from websites in some jurisdictions. In some places, though, this may be illegal—be aware of the rules in your area.

iPod Touch

Take advantage of WiFi with free music apps. Apps such as Pandora, iHeartRadio and Last.fm allow you to stream free music on your iPod according to taste preferences you set up. You can download the apps directly to your iPod by accessing iTunes via WiFi.

Warnings

Using P2P programs will more than likely infect your system with malware. Learn how to use torrents as an alternative.
Torrents are not a guarantee that the files you download are virus-free.
Be aware that thousands of people are sued every year for illegal downloading and copyright infringement.

Things You'll Need

iPod
iTunes or an equivalent program

Steps

Navigate to a website hosting a free online beat maker. There are may beat making applications on the Internet. The user interfaces and available features vary widely from site to site. Perform an Internet search for "online beat maker" to find websites hosting free online beat making applications. Choose a link from the search results, and open the web page to access the beat making application.
Experiment with the features and controls provided. The layout and controls vary from site to site. Take some time to familiarize yourself with each application before you begin making beats.
- Locate the track editing timelines. Typically, users will find a series of 4 to 8 track editing timelines. Together, the editing timelines serve as the canvas for creating your beat. This is where you will map out and arrange each beat. The editing timelines often run horizontally across the page, with a series of controls located on the left side of the screen.
- Identify the different drum sound options available. Look for a pull-down menu located at the beginning of the editing timeline containing a variety of drum sounds and samples. These sounds typically include elements of a contemporary drum set, such as the snare drum, base drum, toms and cymbals. Other sounds, such as conga drums, claps, cow-bells, wood-blocks and many others, are often included in the list of available sounds.
- Locate the controls for adjusting the tempo, swing and volume. Typically, these controls are situated on the far left of each editing timeline. In some instances, these controls may be located in the menu bar. Experiment by adjusting these controls to become familiar with the beat making application.
Create a test beat. Once you have familiarized yourself with the different features and sounds available, you can begin creating your own beat. Some applications use a drag and drop interface that allows you to place different samples at various points on the editing timelines.
- Choose a drum sound and drag it into the first timeline. Choose another drum sample and drag it into to one of the empty timelines. Be sure to separate the 2 drum sounds in time, so that each beat plays at a different time.
- Click the play button to activate your beat. Some online beat makers will begin playing automatically, while others only will cue the beat until the play button is clicked. Click the play button if your beat did not begin playing after you dragged the sample into the editing timeline. You should now hear the beat you created playing the selected sample sounds.
- Experiment with different sample sounds and different placements within the editing timelines. Once you can hear your beat playing through your system's speakers, you can begin experimenting by changing the sample sounds, and their positions within the editing timeline. When you become comfortable with adjusting the sound, tempo and placement of samples within each timeline, you will be able to compose an unlimited number of different beats online.

Tips

Some consumers may want to download prerecorded beats with which they can then sing along or add vocal tracks. There are many websites that offer prerecorded beats, often including accompaniments, for purchase and free download.

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Best Free Software For Your Netbook

When you get a netbook, you are going for a portable discounted computer. Since this machine is cheap, you really don't want to have to spend more than the netbook itself in software. This is why using free software for your netbook makes the most sense. Find out what the best free software is for your netbook so you might know what to try today.

Open Office is one of the best free office suites to put on your netbook. This is better than paying for a full license of Microsoft Office which is just too expensive to justify using on your netbook. You can also use online alternatives like Google Docs or Zoho and do your document work in a browser. Also, even though these are free they are just as good as the paid ones.

If you have a need to edit photos on your computer there are two great programs to use. The Gimp is one that can be installed to your system. It's a bit difficult to manage on a netbook screen cause of limited space but it will work. One you can use in a browser is called Pixlr. This helps you edit photos online in your browser. If you are doing a lot of photos then make sure you have enough ram for your computer.

Get your malware and virus protection for free. The best to use are AVG which is good for one computer and Malwarebytes to fight off what AVG doesn't cover. These two programs together typically protect computers against most problems. Both don't require a yearly fee helping you save some money.

DropBox is an amazing program to use on your netbook. The free version gives you a few gigabytes of data storage that you can sync between computers. This is very useful for netbooks since you can sync documents between this machine and your main machine.

Get an all in one instant messenger program. You can use desktop clients like Pidgin or Digsby. Use online clients like Meebo as well.

VLC player is the best option for playing your media. It will play just about any format and uses limited resources. It's a great option for your netbook.

When you have a netbook, you need some free software to put on it. Find out what some of the best free software is out there for your netbook. Doing your research will get you the best free software and one that will work with your netbook.

Best Free Software For Your Netbook

Get an all in one instant messenger program. You can use desktop clients like Pidgin or Digsby. Use online clients like Meebo as well.

VLC player is the best option for playing your media. It will play just about any format and uses limited resources. It's a great option for your netbook.

5 Free Software Tools For Content Creation

It's been said many times before, but the single most important thing for driving traffic to your site is content. Good, solid, unique content is what will attract visitors, invite backlinks, and help you to rank well with the search engines.

It doesn't matter if you're creating blog posts, ebooks, reports, articles, podcasts, software or videos, your content is what will attract visitors to your site, and convert them into subscribers or customers.

Now, creating content will take a little bit of effort, but the great news is you can do all this with free software. Of course you could spend thousands of dollars on high end tools if you want to, but the free ones I recommend here will be more than enough to get you started.

Open Office for text based content
Open Office is an office suite similar to Microsoft Office. It has a word processor and spreadsheet along with several other tools such as an image editor and database. What we want it for however is for creating reports and ebooks. The reason Open Office is so powerful is that it has native ability to export any document to PDF. That means you simply type up your ebook or report and hit the export button and bam, you have a product ready to sell or give away!

Nvu for web pages
Nvu is a WYSIWYG HTML editor. It allows you to create and edit web pages without knowing any HTML code. You simply design and edit just like you would edit a word processor document, and Nvu writes all the HTML code for you). The option of getting your hands dirty with the HTML is there for those times when you need to do some tweaking, but for the most part you can get away with leaving that up to the software.

GIMP for images
GIMP is an acronym for Gnu Image Manipulation Program and essentially it's an open source 'Photoshop'. You'll turn to this software when you need to edit or prepare images for your website, or create an ebook cover, or put screenshots into a report. It's a very powerful piece of software which is capable of doing a lot more than you'll probably ever need it to. Don't let the complexity put you off however, just learn the basic functions you need and this will be a real workhorse application for you.

Audacity for audio
Audacity is used for recording and editing audio. Whether you're doing an interview, product review, podcast or testimonials for your sale page, Audacity is quick to learn, easy to use and produces great results. Just plug a microphone in, hit record and you're away.

Camstudio for screen video
Video is by far the most powerful medium to get your message across, and it's fast becoming the most popular method of distributing content on the web. Until quite recently, producing and publishing video on the Internet meant expensive software, specialist equipment and high end hosting accounts. Not any more though... Camstudio is free, and easy to use. Just a few mouse clicks and you can record whatever you're doing on screen along with a voiceover and let your visitors watch over your shoulder to give great tutorials and reviews. Combine this with Youtube hosting and you have a winning formula for low cost video publishing.

5 Free Software Tools For Content Creation

So there you go, 5 free tools for creating killer content for your online business.

5 Free Software Tools For Content Creation

So there you go, 5 free tools for creating killer content for your online business.

Must Have Free Software for Geeks

Are you a techie? Love gadgets? Computer expert? Like hacking and tweaking software and hardware? You're a geek. Believe it or not, you're pretty much like me. Okay now, let's not fight over the definition of a geek.

Here's a list of software (all free) for geeks, according to me. You can download each by clicking its name:

Firefox/Chrome: These top dogs in the web browser world are not only recommended for everyone, but also they are a geek's playground. If you use Internet Explorer and you consider yourself tech-savvy, think again, then think again, and think until you've got one of these browsers installed.

Notepad++: It's another must have tool for a geek. The Notepad included in Windows is fine. It's simple, full-featured for web design and it has everything a normal person needs. But you're a geek. You should have Notepad++. It has color coding assistance when you're web designing, it has more features and whatever you can think of. Oh yes, and it's open-source.

Dropbox: Wow, the perfect file synchronizing tool. It's the ultimate choice (especially for geeks, once more) for sync and backup. It's not completely free, but there are not many limitations. The free account gets a decent 2 GB of online storage, which you can expand with a fee, but I never felt a need for it. You can also get an extra 250 MB for completing the tutorial, and more free space with the instructions here. Dropbox is magical. You can upload any type of file, no matter what size (unless it exceeds the size on your account), and best of all, it behaves like any other folder on your computers, with the added functionality on constantly synchronizing.

7-Zip: WinZip is so old fashioned. It even isn't free. 7-Zip is little, light, and open-source, making it completely free. Windows comes with a fine file extractor. But it cannot extract the newer, better compressed file types. 7-Zip expands the capability by integrating with your OS and it can extract almost all kinds of compressed files. It's the ultimate compression utility.

µTorrent: Hey, come on, torrents are not illegal. It all depends on what you're downloading. Torrents can be very useful for downloading large software, and if you are a geek, you need to know torrents. µTorrent is the best torrent app out there. You need to have it. You may need it when downloading large open-source stuff, like OpenOffice, or large versions of Linux (see, I talk about only free software here).

TeamViewer: How can a geek live without this? TeamViewer, if you've never heard of it, is a remote access and remote support software. You can use it to impress friends, and/or help them when they're in trouble and need some of your geeky expertise. It's free for commercial use, and there are no limitations. When you have TeamViewer, you can easily tell the person on the other side to download a smaller version (or the full featured one) and you'll be able to use their automatically generated user ID and password to log in to their computer and find out the problem. I, personally, have never used it for remote access to my computer.

GIMP: The free open-source GNU Image Manipulating Program. This is arguably the best free photo editing tool and is (even more) arguably a good Photoshop alternative. Okay, Photoshop fans, don't clobber me for that. The only catch is (no, it's free, and full-featured) it has a slight learning curve. You may find Paint.NET better if you're not so much into photo editing (which I use most of the time).

CCleaner: The geek's choice in computer clean-up utilities. It can clean up all the gunk Disk Cleanup cleans, plus much of the stuff other apps leave behind. It can also clean the registry and work from a flash drive without any problems, for use on others' computers.

So, these were the very basic freeware a geek must have in his/her arsenal for everyday computing. Did I miss something important? Throw it into the comments, and I may add it into the list.

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HR Software Streamlines Your HR Department

Perhaps you have heard about HR software and been privy to the praises that it receives from so many businesses. Perhaps you have wondered how software for HR could benefit your business, especially if it is a small sized one. In fact, you might even have wondered if this type of software is beneficial only to larger businesses rather than small ones.

The good news is that HR software is beneficial for small businesses as well as large ones, although there are some companies that will not find this type of software useful in any way. They might not see the necessity of the software based on the fact that keeping track of their employees working hours, deductions, and so on is not an issue they feel they need to address. On the other hand, many businesses would disagree and this fact is attested to when one considers that many companies do make use of software for HR.

If your company is not a large one, but does employ a few staff members, you will need to keep track of the hours that they work as well as calculate payroll at the close of the pay cycle. To do so requires a sound knowledge of the process as well as when it comes to accurately making tax deductions and so on. This is a very time consuming task, made all the more so if you are also responsible for the day-to-day operation of your business, fulfilling tasks that should be filled by competent employees.

This is when HR software can really be of benefit, because it will enable you to carry out the HR functions in a quicker and more efficient way. This is achieved due to the all-inclusive functionality of the software programs, although there are some differences among them.

Some software for HR programs only offer payroll and attendance functionality while others are more in-depth, covering all the aspects of your staff. This means that you can access the info of a particular employee effortlessly and quickly, making it possible to integrate new employees into the system, or update information on current employees in a much quicker time and with less difficulty.

Because of this, it is clear why software for HR can really help a business owner to devote his time and energy to other aspects of the business. Of course, it makes good sense to consider what your goals are regarding your business before you make a decision regarding which HR software system to purchase.

For instance, you should consider whether you will be expanding your business or not. If you do intend to do so, you should ideally choose a system that will suffice once your company has grown. This means you will not need to purchase another software package. On the other hand, perhaps you are content to have a small, intimate business, in which case a simple software package for HR would be the more advisable option to choose. This will offer you payroll and attendance functions and so help you to streamline your business all the more, ensuring greater efficiency.

Need of Testing Services for Bug-Free Software Project

The importance of software testing can not be ignored at any level of the development process. The reason is because it helps to identify the potential risks at an early stage that can affect the development process at later stages. Even when you desire to meet the project deadlines and want to make it live, it is important to test the software thoroughly to meet targeted users' expectations.

Depending upon the time and requirement, manual software testing and automation software testing tools are widely used to ensure higher productivity from the software project. Moreover, you will be able to create a distinguished image in the market for providing scalable, flexible and robust software applications.

Many software development companies provide testing and maintenance services along with their specialized development services. It is important to consult with software developers about their development plan so as to expect bug-free software project.

The main aim of testing stage is to identify the bugs and glitches that can hamper the performance of applications for the user. The quality assurance tests which are recommended to carry out at each stage ensure better product quality for the users. It not only helps in identifying and solving the bugs but also helps in saving time and money, which makes it cost-effective to a great extent. In addition to this, testing of software also helps to assess the actual time of its release.

Usually, businesses rely on in-house development team to do the testing process. This is usually done to detect problems for a better output. However, inexperience and biased behavior of in-house employees always neglect the importance of strict testing procedure. Therefore, these are outsourced to software developers who work in accordance to the clients' requirements in order to provide the best end-result in the software development industry.

If you are also in need of software testing service, you do not have to struggle much for finding a suitable development firm for your specific requirements. The competition among businesses for developing robust software applications has given rise to several software companies in this sector. You can take out little time to search for a company that has adequate experience, expertise and skilled team to conduct your work with care.

This will save a lot of time and money which would have spent on hiring and training in-house employees, and setting up a department to run these important steps of the software development project. Once software testing is outsourced to software development company, you can invest your saved money for business expansion.

Best Free Software For Photo Editing

Easiness in editing the photos is one of the most beneficial things offered by digital photography. With the help of some new advanced technology, people could easily edit their digital photos in order to enhance the beauty of the captured images or to make them a bit different. In editing their photos, people need to have photo editing software as a supporting program. If you need more references on free photo editing software, you will have some of them in this article.

Picasa
This certain software will only work well with Windows operating system. This is a certain kind of Google application that offers extreme easiness and convenience to its users. It allows you to edit and manage the photos easily with some useful editing tools, such as cropping, adding special effects, adjusting brightness, and many more. The best offer given by this software is its ability to create online photo album instantly and share it after you have done editing the photos.

GIMP
GIMP, stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program, is in the second position. This open-source image editor is very popular among people who are interested in photo editing related to its easiness. It allows you to handle composition as well as image authoring and retouching without any significant difficulties. Besides, this software will also work well for several operating systems. This software also gives you easiness by providing several different languages that you can easily select based on your most preferred one or based on your mother-tongue one.

IrfanView
This is the third position of the most popular free photo editing software. This software gives you easiness in editing images with some basic editing tools. Similar with Picasa, this software will only work with Windows operating System. The best feature offered by IrfanView is its ability to edit and to print the photographs easily.

Those are the top three free photo editing software that you can choose to support your work. Surely, other than those three programs, you can still find many more options such as PhotoPlus 6, Pixia, ImageForge, or Adobe PhotoShop Album Starter. You can just choose the best software that supports you the most.

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30 Free Software Tools For Good Writers

It's true that talented writers can live with a pen and paper and go on to write masterpieces of their own. However, it doesn't hurt to have some great tools to assist them with their work. Believe it or not, there are some great freeware tools that all writers can use. I've personally used most of the software discussed here, and also included those with favorable reviews. Whatever they are, it would be smart to use them not only because they're free, but because they do a good job as well.

THE TOOLS:

1. Open Office - an open source application that can be used as a Word Processor. It can also be used to create spreadsheets, presentations, and databases. One good thing about this is that it can operate together with Microsoft Word.

2. Stickies - an electronic Post-It that has many features. You can change the pad's colors and even set-up an alarm to open a note. This software is simple but highly effective.

3. RoughPad - a word processing program specifically created for writers. It offers three writing modes that offer three specific formats: screenplay, stage or radio play, and normal writing.

4. Tree Pad - a great software that allows writers to organize their data well. It helps control notes, researches, addresses, and data by outlining them in a "tree" structured format on a separate window while viewing details on each subject beside the tree outline. It's very effective and time-saving.

5. yWriter Novel Software - helps break novels into scenes and chapters, and helps keep track of a writer's work.

6. PageBreeze - a free visual (WYSIWYG) and HTML tag/source modes that creates websites instantly. This is a must for promoting a writer's work on the internet.

7. Photo Razor - a simple tool that re-sizes photos without cropping them.

8. Edit Pad Lite - advanced Notepad that includes tabs, view in web browsers, conversion to Unix and Mac, and many others. Notepad has now become less boring.

9. Sonar - allows a writer to keep track of submitted articles.

10. Xmarks - keeps Mozilla, Internet Explorer, and Google Chrome bookmarks conveniently in one location. It can be accessed anywhere.

11. W.O.T. / McAfee Site Advisor - W.O.T. offers website ratings and reviews for safer browsing on the Internet. Another option is McAfee Site Advisor. W.O.T., however, is more comprehensive.

12. Text Block Writer - a virtual index card program. They are ideal for those who like to use index cards when organizing their researches.

13. Coffee Cup Wizard - makes it easy to zip and unzip files.

14. FoxIt Reader - a better alternative to Adobe Reader. It offers most of the features of Adobe Reader without the memory bloats.

15. WordWeb - offers dictionary and thesaurus references that can be used offline as well as online.

16. GNU Aspell - spell checkers that also suggest possible replacements for misspelled words.

17. Bibus - creates bibliographic databases that can be inserted in OpenOffice and MS Word documents.

18. Creativity Portal - unleashes creativity through its Imagination Prompt Generator. It is also good for brainstorming creative ideas.

19. Word Count Plus - counts the number of words, spaces, letters, and punctuation marks on a document.

20. Book Form 1.0 - reformats a text document into pages that can be printed and put together in book form.

21. Efficient Diary - a great tool for writing journals.

22. Efficient Calendar Free - an excellent time management tool that has a lot of similarities with Microsoft Outlook.

23. Simple To Do - helps writers prioritize their "Things To Do" list and arrange them in "tree style."

24. Pandora Data Recovery - easily recovers accidentally-deleted files.

25. Mindomo - helps writers brainstorm and mind-map ideas.

26. Talking Alarm Clock - reminds a writer to go back to work (or whatever it is they need to do) by using animated icons.

28. Instant Boss - a timer that not only measures work periods but also coffee breaks as well.

29. Screen Grab (Mozilla Add-On) - captures what's on the screen and allows them to be used as images.

30. Malwarebytes (Free), Superantispyware (Free), Avira/Avast Antivirus (Free)/ Microsoft Security Essentials, Spyware Blaster (Free), and Zone Alarm (Free) - works as a powerful team in preventing and removing viruses, spyware, malware, and many others. Web surfing has become much safer, thanks to them.

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