Free Software Magazine, verry nice

You are interested in the free software movement (open source software) and you have tried using some type of Linux operating system (if not, check out DistroWatch and try Linux you just might like it). I personally feel that finding a good software guide for Linux can be challenging and Linux Magazines at Chapters are not the cheapest. So a great option is the FreeSoftwareMagazine which focuses on tutorials on how to use popular open source software for Linux and even Windows. I find that the articles in the magazine are well written and very interesting. For the price of $0 you can't beat the value for an electronic version. Also if you really like an issue you can get a hard copy from Lulu.com for $8.99 an issue. Enjoy..

Boxing Day Flyers On-line - Canada

If you are looking for the Boxing day deals on-line visit RedFlagDeals. By now most of the flyers have been posted for:

- Future Shop Flyer
- Best Buy
- Dell Canada

and much more.

Enjoy..

What are website mashups?

The concept of a website mashup is very recent and has been growing at a steady pace. So what is it? In simple terms, it's a way to combine website content from one or more websites together and the result is a new website that offers a new way of looking at the content and the correlations between it. The most popular mashup out there is to use Google maps service and combine it with other useful data to map something interesting. For example, MapSexOffender allows you to search for sex offenders using google maps based on street / city / state and area code in the US.

So what this site is doing, it's taking a public database of sex offenders and crossing it with google maps to provide people with a new website service.

Another interesting site is a weather website called WeatherBonk that allows you to select a city using google maps. Once the city is selected, the site will retrieve live web-cams from the internet that will give you a live shot of the cities different areas.

Google is one of the most popular ways to create a mashup website, but there are many other sites that allow you to use their content in many ways like Amazon for e-commerce, Flickr for images, and many more.

A website that I found that is a gateway to the most popular mashups on the web is ProgrammableWeb, it contains links to a lot of great mashup websites.

Local Flyers On-line

The site FlyerMall has been a favourite of my for a long time and it keeps getting better. I'm sure a lot of people know about this site, but here is my review of it just in case you don't know.

The main feature of this site is the ability to view 90% of the major store flyers you get in your mailbox weekly in Ontario for free ON-LINE. I wish the site actually allowed you to opt out of getting the paper flyers (save some trees), but I don't think that will ever happen. By having all the flyers in one place, you can compare prices between all the stores and hopefully save some money.

Other features that I don't use as often

• Free Classified Ads Section
• New Products Section - highlights new products in flyers
  
• Food Recipes Section
  
• Entertainment Section - advertises bars, attractions, clubs in Ontario
• Store Openings - new stores opening in Ontario

I hope you benefit from this site as much as I have. Enjoy!

Staying spyware free on the Internet

We have done it before and we keep doing it, downloading free software that contains spyware, malware, and deceptive adware. This type of software tracks your online browsing and feeds that information back to shady marketing groups. It also slows down you computer and eventually you're forced to spend hours trying to clean up your computer.

You end up spending money on software that should keep your computer safe from this type malicious software, but chances are it won't keep you 100% safe. The number of websites going up each day that are trying to trick you into downloading spyware grows at an alarming rate. So what else can you do to stay ahead?

An organization that calls itself StopBadware.org is a "Neighbourhood Watch" campaign aimed at fighting malicious software. You and everyone else in the world that has been infected with malicious software can report websites that are spreading malware to StopBadware.org by submitting your malware story.

Everyone can benefit from this greatly, because before downloading anything you can go to StopBadware.org and run a URL search to see if the website you're downloading software from has been reported by anyone in the world for spreading malicious software. This will not keep you 100% safe, but it's another prevention step you can take to keep your computer spyware free.

So who is behind this organization?

This initiative is led by
- Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society
- Oxford University's Oxford Internet Institute

Also several prominent tech companies are supporting this initiative
- Google, doesn't need an introduction
- Lenovo
- Sun Microsystems
- Consumer Reports WebWatch

If you use Google as your search engine, they are now presenting people with a warning before they visit websites that have been reported to StopBadware.org

Word Processing, Spreadsheets and Presentations Online..

Internet website technology is evolving at a very quick pace and many companies are looking to deliver new software applications on-line to everyone. Applications that usually run on your computer like spreadsheets, word processing, presentation creation are moving online.

What do you benefit from when using these applications online?

• The ability to edit your documents from anywhere, as long as you have an Internet connection and a web browser


• Share your document with co-workers / friends and collaborate together to finish your document


• Give your presentations online to your customers which saves you time from flying to your customers site to give the presentation

At this time it's free to use all of these services which is nice, but can you trust these companies to keep your personal information private and secure. I say nothing is 100% secure, if it's sitting on a server that is connected to the internet. It's really up to you to contact the company and find out:

• How they are keeping your document information secure?


• If your data is lost or stolen, is the company responsible? Will they compensate you in any way?


• Read the privacy policy, will they share information about you and your documents with anyone?

I have tried the services of ThinkFree, the company allows you to create WORD, EXCEL and POWER POINT compatible documents online. They give you 1 Gigabyte of space online to store your documents. When you edit your documents, the look and feel is exactly like working with your desktop applications. You can share your documents with friends or the whole world by posting the document on DOC EXCHANGE. ThinkFree does version control for you, so if you would like to backup to a older version of your document you can. Now on the technical side, the application you use to create your document with is a Java Applet that is downloaded to your computer on initial use (you won't need to download it again). You will need to have the Sun Java Run-time environment downloaded to your computer, which is almost guaranteed that you do since a lot of websites today use this technology. Once downloaded the performance is allright on wireless. I imagine it would be faster if I was connected over ethernet to my router (actually I'll do that test and provide more feedback). Also I really would like to see a "File -> Exit" command in the Power Edit mode, just to make the exit more like a desktop application. Clicking on the X to close the Window doesn't leave me with a comfortable feeling that the file was closed propertly.

I have also tried the services of Google, which allow you to do word processing and spreadsheets online. The Google application is a true web application, meaning you don't have to download anything to use it. The features are not as rich as ThinkFree but one feature that I liked (not included on ThinkFree) is that you can export your documents in PDF format which is good (I stand corrected; you can export to PDF in ThinkFree, thanks jcrow). Google also gives you lots of space to store your files.

One last service that I almost tried but didn't is Zoho , they allow you to do word processing, spreadsheets and online presentation just like ThinkFree. I didn't try it because of their privacy policy..

With whom we share Information

We have partners/affiliates/resellers for specific products and services. We may share generic aggregated demographic information with our business partners/affiliates/ resellers and advertisers. This is not linked to any personal information that can identify any individual person. Your name and email address may occasionally be shared with our business partners/ affiliates/resellers in connection with our products/services and any use of your personal information by such business partners/ affiliates/resellers will be in accordance with this privacy policy. We do not share the contents of documents, to-do list and other data related to Zoho account maintained and stored by us with any third party.

Which doesn't mean you shouldn't try their service, as long as you're comfortable with their privacy policy.

These companies are doing something right because Microsoft is moving their Office Suite online as well. Initially it's free (during beta period) but then it's $29.95/month.

Here is an interesting article from Business Week Magazine on the strategy of Microsoft for the on-line Office product.

Searching for your dream apartment / home in a major city?

Paul Rademacher, 2006 Young Innovator award winner from MIT has created a website that uses Google maps and Craiglist apartment rental and home for sale listings to help you find your dream home. This website shows how two great Web technologies have been put together to make home searching a very easy and fun experience. Take advantage of this great site HousingMaps.com, it will save you lots of time from searching through newspapers.

What are investors looking for in Technology today?

You're sitting around thinking of the next greatest idea you can pitch to investors and get that startup dream going. What would an investor be interested in today?

Business 2.0 magazine has decided to help us with the following article "The 20 smartest companies to start now" which lists exactly:

- The investors
- The business idea they are looking to invest into
- How much $$$$ they are looking invest
- Email of investor, if you are ready to jump in and throw your pitch at them

Good Luck!!!

Maybe it's time for a change...

So you're a Windows user that uses the computer for the following tasks:

a) Browsing the internet daily
b) Checking your email
c) Chatting with friends online
d) Working with documents , spreadsheets and presentations
e) Watching videos and playing music
f) Working on your digital photo album
g) Updating your personal blog / business website
f) Doing schoolwork / research

You are interested in other software programs but the costs are just too high. The new Microsoft Vista windows version is going to be released soon, but you're just not looking to spend 200+ dollars for a new version with a few more bells and whistles.

What are your other options if you are looking for a change in your home computer experience. Well you have two very good options:

a) Novel Linux Suse 10
b) Ubuntu Linux 6.06

Both are complete Linux-based operating systems (your Windows programs will not run on these), freely available with both community and professional support. With each of these operating systems you receive all the software required to do the tasks described above and more. On top of that you'll have access to all software updates for free.

Before making the switch I would suggest that you go to the above websites and read about Linux and the world wide community behind it. Also both of these Linux environments have "Live CD" versions. This means that you can download a full version of the software put in on DVD and run it without removing Windows. This is a great way to try out all the software before deciding on switching.

If you have any questions, let me know and I'll try to answer them.

Did you ever want to attend a famous lecture at MIT?

But you never did, because you never went to MIT, the plane tickets was too expansive to fly in for the weekend and simply you don't have the time. Well, you can attend a public lecture from MIT right from your couch. Technology school MIT has created MIT World, a free and open site that provides that provides on-demand video of significant public events at MIT. Lectures from some of the world's brightest people are at your fingertips.

I sat in on the Invention and Innovation: Emerging Technologies that Will Change the World: The Inventor View. It was interesting to hear Steve Wozniak (one of the founders of Apple Computers) talk about the characteristics of a good invention in the 21st century.

Call from your PC to a landline for free in US/Canada

Skype is a program that allows you to establish phone voice communication between two computers. So If you want to talk to your friend in England and he has Skype software loaded on his computer, you can talk to him without paying any long distance charges. The latest offering from Skype is that you can call any landline phone in the US or Canada for FREE from your computer until the end of 2006. This feature is already available in your skype software if you have already downloaded it. If you have not used skype yet, I suggest you give it a try. Visit www.skype.com

First Time Users

When I tried this feature the first time, it kept telling me that I need to buy SkypeOut credit to make a call. This is not really true, all they want you to do is agree to their SkypeOut end user agreement. To get past this issue, all you have to do is the following:

1) Under Help menu select Buy Skype Credit (Don't worry you won't buy anything)
2) Log into your account on the Skype website
3) Under My Services - SkypeOut select the Buy Skype Credit link
4) Select to buy the 10 Euro credit (you're not really buying it)
5) On the next page select the currency that suits you best when on the skype website and select to go to next step
6) On this step, read through the Terms of the SkypeOut service, click on agree if you agree to the terms.
7) Once you accept the service agreemnt, skype will send you an email with a confirmation number. Just click on the confirmation link in the email to activate SkypeOut service.

That's it you're done, now you're able to make calls from Skype to landlines and cell phones anywhere in US and Canada for FREE until the end of 2006. To make your first call:

1) select the Dial tab in Skype
2) enter your telephone number you're calling starting with +1
3) I still have not figured out how to get the + sign working from the skype dial, so I just type it in myself into the telephone number input box at the bottom of the skype window.