Alpha Core

Are you having problems in Windows Vista to get rid of a directory with limited access permissions an installer or uninstaller did a bad job on? Maybe some program created some files with very restrictive permissions? Then here are 3 easy steps to take total control over them. Read more

This article is part of a series of posts containing software that I’ve come to think of as being the best free and open-source ones around at the moment. Check the table of contents for the other articles in the series.

In this article I’d like to list some network and internet tools that deserve some attention. Anything from general every-day-use tools to more advanced analysis software goes in here. Here’s some of the better software out there: Read more

Although the basic idea to offer people a choice what software to use for browsing the internet is not bad at all, forcing Microsoft to bundle Mozilla Firefox (as well as Google’s Chrome, Apple’s Safari and Opera) with their operating system Windows, which gets shipped with Internet Explorer (IE) right now, is completely over the top. The situation was revealed in Microsoft’s quarterly filing with the Security and Exchange Commission. Read more

This article is the third in a series of posts containing software that I’ve come to think of as being the best free and open-source ones around at the moment. Check the table of contents for the other articles in the series.

In this article I’ll list some system tools that I would like to give some attention. These are the ones that come in handy when things go wrong, or that keep things in order in the first place. Either that, or they perform a general-purpose task that I could be without. Here’s my selection: Read more

It’s not the next Sony AIBO/QRIO and it doesn’t include batteries. I’m talking about Electric Sheep, a free, open source screen saver created by Scott Draves, run by thousands of people all over the world. When computers “sleep”, the screen saver comes to life and the computers communicate with each other over the internet to share the work of creating morphing abstract animations known as “sheep”. The result is a collective “android dream”, an homage to Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. You could call it a global computer-generated art project. Read more

This article is part of a series of posts containing software that I’ve come to think of as being the best free and open-source ones around at the moment. Check the table of contents for the other articles in the series.

This time I’d like to list some image, audio and video viewing/manipulation applications that I would like to recommend. I want fast and light-weight viewers that open my files immediately but powerful full-featured editing tools for the more complex tasks: Read more

Already for a while I’m thinking about presenting a series of posts containing software that I’ve come to think of as being the best free and open-source ones around at the moment.

I know that there’s often a lot of alternative solutions, not necessarily worse than the ones I suggest here, but I’ll try to limit myself to one main title for every need. I have these applications installed and use most of them very often.

In this article I want to list my favorite productivity and office-related applications: Read more

If you’re not a software developer, this article will bore you immensely and it is therefore ill-advised to continue reading. If you are a software developer, it will most likely bore you as well, but at least you’re used to it then. Read more

Most people are quite familiar with Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.), but have you already heard of OpenOffice.org?

It is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose. And yes, you also can open and save Microsoft Office files with it. Read more

Pidgin is a multi-protocol instant messaging (IM) program that allows you to use all of your IM accounts at once. You can talk to your friends using your Live Messenger, ICQ, Yahoo! Messenger, Google Talk, IRC and other accounts without the need to have lots of individual clients installed.

Today I also uninstalled mIRC (an IRC client) because I have no need for it anymore. Thanks to Pidgin (formerly named Gaim), I can now hang around on my favorite chat channels and get popup notifications when my nickname gets mentioned without needing an extra program to clutter up my system.

Pidgin is free software (GPL). For more information, visit the official website.