Archive for the ‘Open Source’ Category

Sebastian Anthony at Download Squad provides a guide to Ten must-have Google Chrome extensions. If you’re using the open-source Google browser, you may want to check out this article. Here are his top five:

1. WOT (Web Of Trust)
2. Evernote Web Clipper
3. Feedly
4. Google Wave Notifier
5. Shareaholic

Today I presented a talk on Next-Generation Libraries at the Online Information Conference in London, England. Here’s a slidecast of my talk if you’d like to check it out.

If you’re using Chrome, the open source Web browser by Google, you may want to check out the latest article from Josh Catone at Mashable. 6 Killer Google Chrome Extensions for Social Media Addicts lists popuar and useful plugins for using social media sites as well as lists some of the best places to find other extensions. Here are his recommended six extensions:

1. Gmail Checker
2. Chromed Bird
3. Twitter Ticker
4. Micro Last.fm
5. TPGoogleReader
6. Facebook Notification Checker

This week I have assigned students in my Open Movements course the task of self-archiving their final papers in either E-LIS or DList, both disciplinary repositories for the LIS field. So in the spirit of that assignment, I archived a recent article which I wrote for The CyberSkeptic’s Guide to Internet Research in May, 2009. It’s titled 6 Steps to Publishing a Scholarly Online Journal (for free!) and it details how to create your own open access scholarly journal online.

Google has announced that it is making 1 million public domain books from Google Books available for free download in the EPUB format. “EPUB is a free, open standard supported by a growing ecosystem of digital reading devices”, so users will be able to view these books on their mobile devices. According to ReadWriteWeb, Google had previously made this massive EPUB collection available to partners Barnes & Noble and Sony, but never to users before last week’s announcement.

Sam Dean at OStatic gathers up 8 Resources for the Mighty Drupal Content Management System. His list includes resources for getting started with Drupal, interviews with Drupal insiders and educational podcasts and videos.

Marc Beja at The Chronicle of Higher Ed’s Wired Campus reports on a new social tagging initiative at Dartmouth College which challenges players to beat the clock as they add metadata to library images for free.

“Ms. Flanagan, a digital-humanities professor at Dartmouth College, is creating an Internet-based game in which users create descriptive tags for library images to improve searching through the library’s database. Although the program will be tested at the college’s library, Ms. Flanagan says the game will be open source and available for others to download and build upon.”

Lisa Hoover at OStatic puts together a list of open source applications and resources “for everything from note-taking to scheduling classes projects”. Here are a few of the applications listed in A Toolkit of Back to School Open Source Apps, be sure and check out the full post for the rest:

• Lyx
• Task Coach
• Luminotes

Sam Dean at OStatic rounds up five free online books to help newbies get up to speed with OSS with 5 Free Online Open Source Books for Beginners. “They introduce basic concepts for getting started with Linux, Firefox, Blender (3D graphics and animation), GIMP (graphics), and the OpenOffice suite of productivity applications.”

Thomas Trappler, Director of UCLA Software Licensing writes for Educause Quarterly about Is There Such a Thing as Free Software? The Pros and Cons of Open-Source Software. This excellent article discusses key issues such as when it makes sense to use OSS, managing OSS effectively, and making contributions to OSS projects. It’s a must-read for organizations thinking about choosing an open source solution.

“Today’s higher education environment is marked by heightened accountability and decreased budgets. In such an environment, no higher education institution can afford to ignore alternative approaches that could result in more effective and less costly solutions. Open-source software (OSS) can serve as a viable alternative to traditional proprietary software (PS), but to ensure that OSS is selected and deployed effectively requires:

* Understanding the OSS licensing model
* Knowing how to determine when it makes sense to use OSS
* Managing your OSS use effectively”

ReadWriteWeb puts together a guide to 7 Free Alternatives to Photoshop With All the Bells, Whistles, Filters, & Layers. This helpful post provides test photos comparing what can be accomplished with each of these tools as well as a quick run-down of what each application includes and lacks.

Lisa Hoover at OStatic blogs about Five Open Source Apps For Writers and Authors. These programs help authors do everything from manage multiple storylines, develop scripts, format academic papers, and create newsletters.

via What I Learned Today

Sam Dean at OStatic puts together a list of Over 40 Free, Must-Have Open Source Resources ranging from OpenOffice to digital music managers. Open source applications are organized into the following categories:

• Digital Music, Video Graphics and Multimedia Resources
• All Things Firefox
• In Our Linux Toolboxes
• For Developers
• Apps and Resources for Them
• In Need of Open Source Work?

via What I Learned Today

Last night Google announced that they will be releasing an operating system based on their Chrome Web browser. They will open-source its code later this year.

“Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we’re already talking to partners about the project, and we’ll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.”

Trent at The Simple Dollar puts together a quick guide to free software alternatives to Amazon’s 25 bestsellers. I use many of these including WordPress, Audacity, and OpenOffice, but found some new ones I’d like to try out including:

• AVG Free (instead of Norton AntiVirus)
• LiveMocha (instead of Rosetta Stone)
• QuickBooks Simple Start Free Edition 2009 (instead of QuickBooks Pro)