SpringPublisher: Design & Print Flyers, Business Cards, Letterheads [Freeware]

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SpringPublisher is a freeware desktop publishing application for Windows. The application lets you easily create business cards, flyers, postcards, letterheads and other artworks within a few minutes.

Quality free software for creating business cards, flyers, postcards and letterheads are very sparse. Professional desktop publishing applications are normally very costly. But SpringPublisher comes here to fill in the void. With its powerful multilayered editor and lots of templates, your desktop publishing task becomes easier. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Productivity/ Organization, Windows

Oracle Donate’s OpenOffice.org to Apache Foundation, TDF Responds

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Oracle has recently announced that they are donating OpenOffice.org‘s assets to the Apache Software Foundation.

Oracle continues to demonstrate its commitment to the developer and open source communities, said Luke Kowalski, vice president, Oracle Corporate Architecture Group, in the press release. He continues The Apache Software Foundation’s model makes it possible for commercial and individual volunteer contributors to collaborate on open source product development.

Welcoming the move, Jim Jagielski, president, The Apache Software Foundation said, We welcome highly-focused, emerging projects from individual contributors, as well as those with robust developer communities, global user bases, and strong corporate backing.

Everyone seems to be winning through this move but still there is one vital question. Why not The Document Foundation instead of The Apache Software Foundation? [Read more...]

Filed Under: News and Updates

BleachBit: Cross-Platform Utility To Clean Up Linux, Windows System

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BleachBit is an open source cross-platform system clean-up and privacy application for Windows and Linux operating system. Windows users do have the option of CCleaner, which recently got updated to support Internet Explorer 9 and Firefox 4. But what about Linux users who need to clean their Linux machine? Well, that’s where BleachBit comes in to fill the void. And the good thing about it is, it’s also available for Windows users alike.

BleachBit has added several new features to its latest version that make it an even better utility for removing unneeded/unnecessary files from your computer. On Linux systems, BleachBit can now remove swap files (in addition to swap devices). The Windows version has added the option to remove Windows Update uninstaller including hot fixes and Internet Explorer patches. It’s well worth checking out the full list of features. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Linux, Utilities, Vista, Windows, Windows 7

LibreOffice 3.3.2: Open-Source Alternative of Microsoft Office

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LibreOffice is a fork of the popular open-source office suite, OpenOffice. LibreOffice is a free power-packed Open Source personal office productivity suite for Windows, Macintosh and Linux. It provides six feature-rich applications for all your document production and data processing needs: Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, Math and Base. LibreOffice is a free software office suite developed by The Document Foundation. The Document Foundation maintains LibreOffice release schedule thanks to a growing and vibrant community of developers. Its developers’ goal is to produce a vendor-independent office suite with ODF support and without any copyright assignment requirements. The name is a hybrid word with the first part Libre, which means free (as in freedom) in both Spanish and French, and the English word Office.

The Document Foundation has recently announced the release of LibreOffice 3.3.2, the second micro release of the free office suite for personal productivity. The latest update improves the stability of the software and sets the platform for the next release 3.4, due in mid May. The community of developers has been able to maintain the tight schedule thanks to the increase in the number of contributors, and to the fact that those that have started with easy hacks in September 2010 are now working at substantial features. In addition, they have almost completed the code cleaning process, getting rid of German comments and obsolete functionalities. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Apple, Linux, Microsoft Office, Productivity/ Organization, Windows

Portable Linux Apps: Find All Your Favorite Linux Applications In One Place

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My regular readers knows how much I am fond of portable applications. After all why I will not? See, there are many advantages of portable apps. You can easily carry them around in your USB flash drive or portable hard drive and use them even if the computer does not have them installed. Till now, I have mostly talked about Windows compatible portable apps.

Thankfully, I have found a website known as “Portable Linux Apps” or PortableLinuxApps.org for satisfying my thirst for Linux platform compatible portable apps. Portable Linux Apps is a free web service that hosts a collection of many useful Linux applications.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Linux, Tips and Tricks

Universal USB Installer: Make Linux Live USB Flash Drives with Persistent Storage

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I triple boot my system with Windows XP, Windows 7 and Ubuntu but I also like to test other Linux distributions. Most of the time, to test the other operating system and distributions, I use VirtualBox or VMware to virtualize them. But for those Linux distributions that offers Live CD/DVD option, I use my USB flash drive to test them live. This saves me time as I don’t have to first configure the virtual machine and install the Linux distro to test it. In my previous articles, I covered two softwares, UNetbootin and Multiboot USB Menu that helps me to make the distros ready to be booted directly off my USB flash device.

Another, very good utility that helps me create persistent storage on my flash drive is Pendrive Linux’s Universal USB Installer. What I meant when I said “persistent storage”? It means that you’ll actually have some permanent storage space in your flash drive to save things like your files and preferences, instead of having a clone of your disc image in your flash drive. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Linux, Tips and Tricks, Utilities, Windows

How To Boot Multiple ISO from USB using Multiboot USB Menu

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Multiboot USB menu developed by PendriveLinux.com helps a user to easily boot into multiple ISO files from a USB flash drive. Multiboot USB is a very easy to use application that helps you format and prepare your USB drive to boot into multiple supported ISO disk images.

At present Multiboot USB supports a number of Linux distributions like Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, DSL, etc. and other ISO that helps in carrying out administrative and system tasks like Memtest86+, Parted Magic, Ultimate Boot CD, etc. The complete list updated by the developers is available at this page. The page also provides direct download links to the ISO it supports. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Linux, Tips and Tricks, Windows

Email Client Mozilla Thunderbird 3.1 alpha (Lanikai Alpha 1) Released

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Mozilla Thunderbird is a very popular desktop email client. Thunderbird email software was recently updated by its developers, Mozilla, to version 3. The update brought many new features and notable changes like better email account integration and configuration options, global search option, etc.

The next version of Thunderbird will be version 3.1 and the first alpha release, codenamed “Lanikai Alpha 1” confirms this. Mozilla has asked interested users to test the new alpha release version of the email client and give their opinion. The developer has also warned anyone from installing the email client in a productive environment as it is an alpha version that can contain bugs and other performance issues. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Apple, Email, Internet, Linux, Windows