Klavaro - Free touch typing tutor for linux

If you are a heavy web user or a general computerholic, significant amount of your tasks are done using a keyboard and i am sure that most of you, use just the index fingers to do most of the typing. Though i have seen some people typing really fast with just their index fingers, it is frankly a very unproductive way of typing. So it would be worthwhile to learn to use all your fingers for typing and to not look constantly at you keyboard. This is called touch typing. If you are a linux user here is good software too get started with touch typing.

Klavaro
It is a free touch typing tutor for linux systems. Small in size but you will be amazed to see so many features packed in it. Some of the important features are

• Supports mostly all the languages you can think of.
• Supports a wide range of keyboard layouts.
• You can also customize the keyboard layout
• Shows progress charts to review your performance.
• Very simple layout and free of unnecessary options which you will seldom use.

If you are a ubuntu user, just type "klavaro" in the software centre and install it. To download it for other distros Click Here to visit their website.

Free Android IRC client

Internet Relay Chat has been one of the most important mode of communication on the Internet from the beginning. The basic technology has seen very little change through all this years but the its importance has never declined. I personally am a big fan of irc and my irc client is always on, mostly taking logs of the channels i like. But sometimes it gets tiring siting in front of the screen for hours while some interesting discussions are going on. This is where your android phone can be very useful. Laying back with your android irc client running you can follow the discussions for hours. So here is one of the popular irc client for android phones.

Foobar2000 - Free alternative to Winamp and windows media player.

The software world is filled with different audio players. Most of you must be using Windows media player or Winamp because they are popular and most widely used. But popular doesn't always mean better. There are many audio players with better features and usability. One such audio player is Foobar2000.

Foobar2000

Foobar2000 is a free audio player. One of its main feature is the easy to use, user interface. It has all the basic features of a good audio player like

• It supports a wide range of audio formats like MP1 MP2 MP3 MPC AAC Ogg Vorbis FLAC / Ogg FLAC WavPack WAV AIFF AU SND CD
• Easily customizable user interface.
• Ability to read archive files without decompressing them.
• Open architecture supporting third party components.
• Windows media streaming support.

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Change mp3 Player's Firmware to Open Source Rockbox

Are you bored with your mp3 player's outdated firmware and want to try something new? Are you not satisfied with the sound quality of the mp3 player or are you bored by the same themes and looks of the screen of the mp3 player ?. If yes then Rockbox is the solution to all of the above problems.

Rockbox

Rockbox is a open source alternative for your default mp3 player firmware. You can add rockbox without actually removing the original firmware. Here are some the main features of Rockbox

•  Rockbox supports a wide range of audio formats like  MPEG-4 AAC(-LC/HE/HEv2 profiles) AC3 (raw or RM container) WMA Standard WMA Professional Speex Cook ATRAC3 WavPack hybrid files Ogg Vorbis MPEG audio layers I-III (MP3/MP2/MP1) Musepack FLAC WavPack Shorten Apple Lossless Monkey's Audio TTAwav AIFF
•  It provides many playback enhancement features like Gapless playback Crossfading ReplayGain 5 band fully parametric equalizer Variable speed decoding CrossfeedOTF playlists True random shuffle Custom UI themes Dynamic PlaylistsStereo recording FM radio, including FM recording Remote control Digital S/PDIF input/output Last.fm support Cue sheet support Changeable selector bar Album artSleep timer
•  It provides many additional Plug-ins like  JPEG viewer Rockboy Game Boy emulatorZXBox ZX Spectrum emulatorDoom WAV to MP3 encoderWAV to WavPack encoderMPEG video playerPictureFlow, an album art viewerVarious gamesMusical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI)

To view the list of supported devices and to download it CLICK HERE

Free ebook management and conversion software (CALIBRE)

There is no greater teacher then books. So in today's multimedia dreamland, books will never loose their presence. But it does not mean that they have not changed with time. Today like music, books too have adopted to the digital world. The PDF format has greatly helped in this process. Devices like amazon's kindle with the e-ink technology have marked the beginning of a new era. But unlike other forms of multimedia, there are very less software related to Ebooks. Not many of them are famous or widely used, but from them the software which stands out is the ebook management software "CALIBRE".

Free mind mapping software ( FreeMind )

I know this is a bit off the blog's subject, but i could not resist myself from telling people of this great software. Many of you must be familiar with the mind mapping techniques. If you don't, in general mind mapping means to arrange information in visually structured manner which can be used to organize ideas and information to make it easier to study and make decision based on them. If you want to know more about it click here to see the article on Wikipedia. It is a bit less known concept, but is very popular with people in managerial jobs, but this doesn't mean that the general public has no use of it. We can also use it in our daily lives to organize things, like a housewife can use it to remember where all the important things are placed in the house etc this is just a general example the real use of mind mapping is only limited by your own imagination. There are many fancy mind mapping softwares, but most of them are expensive, true they offer some unique features, but frankly i think general people like you and me would not need them. A great freeware like FreeMind will be more than enough for learning and using the mind mapping technique.

Audacity - free alternative to Adobe Soundbooth, Audition and WaveLab

Sound editing is a very important part of any multimedia project. Now-a-days sound editing has become very easy and frustration free, thanks to the sophisticated sound editing softwares, which makes the work of the sound editor lot easier and productive. But most of the commercial sound editing software are costly. They may be a better option for professional sound editors but for normal multimedia geeks who just need to do some tweaking of sound, it is not worth the money. But don't be upset there are lots of free sound editors for normal users who just need to do some tweaking and sound enhancing. Here is one such software.

Free Open-Source screenshot tool

Screenshots are very important in articles and tutorials to show practical uses. The most common method for taking screenshot is by pressing the print screen button and then pasting it in Ms-paint. This is ok if you need the screenshot of the full screen, but many times you may just want to take screenshot of  a region or part of the screen. To accomplice this you may have to have a image editing software. Now this can be very tiresome if there are too  many screenshots, lot of productive time is wasted. This problem can be easily solved using a professional screenshot tool. Here is one such open source tool.

Greenshot
Greenshot is a free and opensource utility software to quickly take screenshots of the screen or part of the screen. It is optimised for maximum productivity. You can later add text or crop the image.Greenhost can be also used to easily annotate, highlight or obfuscate parts of the screenshot. Its a boon to the technology writers and bloggers.

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Create Wi-Fi Hotspot on Windows 7 using Connectify

Today mostly everybody owns a PC or laptop and majority of them own more than one PC or laptop. Now one of the main problems with multiple computing devices is sharing the Internet connection. One of the excellent solution to this problem is to create a Wi-Fi Hotspot, which can enable the multiple computing devices to share Internet without mess of wires and routers. So here is a small and very useful software which can be used to create a Wi-Fi hotspot on Windows 7 in no time.

LIGHTWORKS (Free alternative to Sony Vegas and PowerDirector)

Now-a-days mostly everybody owns a video recorder, be it in the form of cam-corder or a cellphone. Hundreds of videos are shot using this devices, this videos are raw and need some editing and finishing touches and for that you need a good video editing software. There are wide range of video editing software out there in the market, but they are too costly and are of no use to individuals who want to do just basic editing. It will be stupidity to waste so much money on the high-end programs like Sony Vegas and Adobe PowerDirector for basic editing of home videos. Mostly all windows users will be familiar with the in-built Windows Movie Maker but i personally feel it inadequate because it does not support all the formats, Crashes many times, can't save big files and the video quality is also not that good. So here is a free video editing software which has recently been shifted to open source.

VIRTUAL BOX - EASY TUTORIAL FOR BEGINNERS

VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization  product for enterprisea as well as home use. In simple words it is a computer within a computer. It uses resources from your computer and forms a virtual PC in your computer. Of course its features can't exceed that of your real computer. You can do everything that you may normally do on your computer, you can load CD, connect to the Internet, use your removable drives like pen-drives etc. It is very useful to test new OS that you may be thinking of installing or test unstable programs or softwares which may harm your computer. It is a boon for those who create or study viruses and malwares as it is completely stand alone and doesn't let any bad effects to affect your real computer. It is also useful for amateur hackers to practice their new learned skills without jeopardizing the computer. It is completely free to download and can be used for no cost. Here is a basic step by step tutorial for beginners to get started with Virtual-box.

Free Softwares From PIRIFORM (Donationwares)

PIRIFORM is a company which develops softwares for Windows. It allows the user to download the softwares for free, in return asking them to make donations if the user liked the software. the piriform package includes the following amazing softwares.

OPEN OFFICE (free alternative to microsoft office)

Are you  fed up of  using the large and costly Microsoft office and want to try something more small and free 'open office' is the best solution for you.
OPEN OFFICE is a leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentation, database,  graphics and many more.it is very easy to use and is available in many languages, it stores data by default in the opendocument file format
but can also read and write  from other common office software packages like Microsoft office. it is regularly updated with improving new features

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Personal note :- I am a great fan of the open-source project and advice everyone to try them. Now talking about openoffice it is one of the most famous and useful open-source office suite software, i myself use it and find it most satisfactory for my daily uses. Yes it may not have complicated features like Microsoft office but it balances that with providing its own unique features which other office suites lack.

IMGBURN (free alternative to NERO)

cd/dvd burning softwares are used on a regular basis and we are so obsessed by nero that we dont even care to try some another burning software. nero is not a cheap software the latest version of it NERO 9 is costing around 80$, offcourse it contents many features but for regular non professional users the nero package is of no use so here is a freeware which can satisfy all the needs of a non professional user for free

IMGBURN
imgburn is a light weight cd/dvd/hd dvd/blue-ray burning application though a freeware it has all the latest features like.

• it supports making and writing of all types of images and can even make images from the files on the hard drive ,very handy while making bootable cd.
  
• can write all types of latest disc type like hd dvd and blue-ray.
• checks the cd after writing to see if its readable also has a option to compare the newly written cd with the image to ensure the data written is correct.

it is easily configurable and very user friendly.

try it
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GIMP - ONE OF THE BEST FREE SUBSTITUTE FOR ADOBE PHOTOSHOP

GIMP is a free GNU image manipulation software for image editing, retouching and finishing.


GIMP is mostly used for

• resizing, editing, croping photos.
• combining multiple images.
• converting a image from one format to other format.
• GIMP can also be used to create basic animated image in the GIF format.

                                         
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