This is the first of a few articles that will highlight some of the tools/gadgets/gizmos that I find useful. I’m starting off with one that’s almost essential. External USB hard drive adapter. Recently, I’ve been looking for something a bit leaner than your typical usb -> hard drive converter. Yes, I’ve carried something like this for large (3.5″) hard drives to appointments. The idea is if you need to transfer data from an old pc to a new one, put the old drive in an external adapter and copy away.
Tag: Mac
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Rhapsody welcomes other operating systems
There was a time when you had to download Windows-only software to access Rhapsody (an online music service owned by real networks.) However, that has changed. It’s a move that I’m glad to see as a linux user, but just in general it makes sense that they can open it up to anyone with a web browser.
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Online music locker
The Oboe service has launched. It’s a project that Michael Robertson of Mp3.com and Lindows/Linspire fame has been building interest in for the last 6 months or so. (Maybe a bit longer). The idea is that for a $39 per year subscription you can have an unlimited amount of space online to store your music files (.mp3, .wma, .ogg or .acc are autodetected in download links by the firefox plugin.) Then you can stream them anywhere. What’s interesting about the browser plugin is – let’s say you’re buying a track at the web site of whichever online music store, an icon appears next to the download link, you click and it “sideloads” the file into your online storage locker (bypassing the step of downloading to your pc, then uploading to the storage locker.)
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SVG editing under linux with Inkscape (Or on Mac, Windows or other Unix)
DesktopLinux has the news of a new release of Inkscape, an open source SVG editor for Linux, Max, Windows and Unix.
The program boasts capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand, CorelDraw, and Xara X, which also use W3C standard SVG file formats.
I’ve used Inkscape before and I’m not big into drawing graphics, but it’s VERY full featured. The new version is 0.43
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How effective is the MediaMax copy protection?
One of the sub-stories in all the Sony DRM mess of the last month with the XCP copy protection was that it was really an ineffective way of preventing copying of music anyway. In other words, you could press shift while inserting the cd to avoid the installer, then other programs could access the cd/allow copying without the software installed, other OS’s could access the disc and rip the tracks. In other words it wasn’t very useful toward it’s objective of preventing copying…
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VNC or Tightvnc for remote pc access
I was surprised to do a search and find that I haven’t mentioned tightvnc before (or even merely VNC as a useful tool.) Ok – here’s the scenario, you need a way to get remote pc access, or remotely view a desktop, maybe it’s a Windows machine and you’re using a Mac? Or Maybe it’s a Mac and you have a linux desktop? Or a Linux server from a Windows machine? Most of the time in the Windows to Windows remote control area the choice becomes either Remote Desktop, or PCAnywhere. There are other options though. One that I’m particularly found of is TightVNC, which is an implementation of the VNC protocol (VNC stands for Virtual Network Computing).
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Open Source Word Processor Roundup
Newsforge has a comparison up of three open source word processors. Abiword, Kword and the beta release of the write component of OpenOffice.org 2 are compared in this review. Abiword and OpenOffice.Org should both be available for Windows or Linux (or Mac) and Kword is primarily Linux (Mac OS X packages are available though.)
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More on Wireless networking security
Sunbeltblog has a flurry of posts today. This one muses on wireless networking (in)security. One of the points that they make is that there are “acceptable” levels of security depending on your circumstance. In other words, if you’re miles from nowhere and feel comfortable with WEP (which is breakable) fine.
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Adobe Acrobat vulnerabilities….
According to The Register among other sources, there is a vulnerability in all Acrobat and Reader software prior to the following safe release numbers: Windows and Mac Reader users please install 7.0.3 or 6.0.4 to be fixed (all other 7 series and 6 series versions are vulnerable). Acrobat users on Windows or Mac should update to either 7.0.3, 6.0.4 or 5.0.10 (again, any other 7.x 6.x or 5.x version is vulnerable.) Linux and Solaris reader users should upgrade to 7.0.1 to be secure.
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AJAX threatening Windows?
Long ago there was talk about the desktop not meaning anything anymore and that software would be delivered through the web. Well, it looks as though AJAX has brought that closer to reality. Wired news takes a look at where things are in the arena. Explains what Ajax is and what makes it so meaningful. ( Google Maps is one site that uses “AJAX”).
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