When things are free, the price is always right. That’s one of the great things about open source software, and many open source applications are now so mature that they compete very directly with proprietary alternatives. Here are three open source applications that you may not use, but may even be preferable to proprietary alternatives. They’re all available for the Mac, Windows or Linux.
Dimdim for Online Meetings. Dimdim is widely regarded for its ability to host online meetings including up to 20 people–for free. The latest version of this free, open source application added many new features including letting you record your meetings and share playback URLs.
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FairSoftware, one of the TechCrunch 50 finalists, is up and running and accepting alpha participants (although it’s marked as alpha, registration is open to anyone). The company hopes to give entrepreneurs yet another function they can outsource: that of actually providing a corporate and governance structure. It’s an interesting notion, though I’m not 100% convinced that it will make sense for the average small software project (though in theory you could use their structure for any company, right now it’s tuned for those selling software online).
After you set up an account with FairSoftware, you can create as many projects as you like. Each project has participants, and you assign shares to them to indicate their share of the profits. There are mechanisms for share vesting and voting on proposals, as well as payroll and sales tracking – the idea is that you form your team, you build your product, and you sell it via FairSoftware: you can have a purchase button on your own site, but all sales must go through FairSoftware, who take a cut (9.9%) of each sale to cover their expenses and profits.
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Love it or hate it, iCal comes with the Mac OS X operating system, so I’m always on the lookout for how to use it better.
Once Google added synchronization support for iCal back in July, I did integrate the basic scheduler into my web work, but I always found it cumbersome to add events quickly. For a while, I actually found it easier to just create events in my Google Calendar since I already had my browser open. Then I stumbled onto FlexCal, a freeware utility that’s not glitzy, but does the trick.
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While users and non-users alike do a fair amount of grumbling about Windows Vista, many of us use it. Those of us who do have also typically learned that customizing Vista is essential for everything from how the interface behaves to improving battery life on portable computers. In this post, I’ll cover a couple of free ways to exhaustively optimize Vista.
Tweakguides offers a couple of really exhaustive guides to optimizing both Vista and Windows XP. Dubbed Tweaking Companions, even if you’re already familiar with these guides, the Vista Tweaking Companion has been steadily updated since I last mentioned it and is worth getting in its new version. There is also now a paid Deluxe Edition, which I haven’t yet tried, but the free version is very good.
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We always like a good utility here at WWD. But we like it even better when two of our favorite utilities start working well together. That’s the case with 1Password and Dropbox: if you’re storing your passwords (and other confidential information) in 1Password, you can now use Dropbox to keep those passwords synchronized across multiple computers. Here’s how.
The first thing you need to do is install 1Password on all the computers where you want to keep the same passwords. (Yes, this only applies to OS X users at the moment – though it seems that you can at least view the password file contents on a Windows box if you know the master password). Next, you need to step up to the most recent beta version of 1Password: open Preferences, go to the Updates tab, and turn on “Include Beta versions”. Then click the “Check Now” button and upgrade your copy of 1Password to the current beta. Remember to do this on all of the computers where you’re running 1Password.
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I said it once, and I’ll say it again. I love Twitter. WWD has been talking about using Twitter as a professional tool for quite some now.
I use Twitter daily and often, almost always from my laptop on the Web, occasionally from Twhirl if I want to post to one of my 5 accounts other than my main one, sometimes from my mobile phone and once in a while from my iPod.
Twitter is my watercooler as I work solo from home (or a local cafe) in Alaska. It is my finger on the pulse of social media and things happening in the Lower 48. It is my way of touching base with friends, acquaintances and people who I’d like to get to know better.
Looking at my Twitter account over the last few weeks, I also saw distinct ways I used Twitter in my work proving once and for all that Twitter is not just chatter but a useful business tool.
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A couple months back Mike and Aliza shared 10 More New Ways to Make Money Online, a topic which is seemingly always a popular one. One of their great tips was the selling of freelance support online. At the time, they mentioned Copilot and Bomgar as potential outlets for this but I wanted to take a moment to also remind everyone about CrossLoop.
I’ve talked in the past about the secure CrossLoop client and the CrossLoop Marketplace as a means to promote your business, but some recent updates have made it an even more compelling place to advertise your services and acquire new clients.
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A few months back I wrote about PortableApps.com, a site where you can get a whole slew of useful software applications–most of them open source–in one free download. This site has become especially popular with people who like to tote a lot of applications on a USB thumb drive. For now, though, PortableApps.com delivers Windows applications only. For the many Mac-based readers here, MacLibre is an equivalent site.
At MacLibre, one free download gives you a bushel of free open source applications for Mac OS X. You can view the various download options here, and you’ll see from the footprints of the downloads that you can easily put your applications on a portable drive.
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Web Work 101: How To Escape The Cubicle
