Shahid Online - Tech Corner

Yes, you heard me. To celebrate this festive season, SoftMaker has made their excellent alternative to Microsoft Office freely available. On top of this they will donate to charity with every download. With such a commendable act, why not contribute towards a good cause and try out an Office alternative. So head over to Load and Help ( http://www.loadandhelp.de/home-en.html ).

As they did last year, once again Apple has released their "iTunes 12 Days of Christmas" app for users of iOS (iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad) to treat their customers with seasonal freebies. So expect free games, music, videos and more between 26th December and January 6th. There's already a nice freebie (for some) when you first download it. Just so you know that I'm not kidding, here's the link to the app: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/itunes-12-days-of-christmas/id406478317?mt=8&affId=1896249 Btw, the app itself is free...

I have been a keen user of Ubuntu for some time now, and have to admit that this distribution has improved by leaps and bounds. However, what I do honestly miss on windows is... Dreamweaver. Some will swear by it, some will swear at the mention of its name. But for me, it is a very powerful tool when used correctly. Such a very popular and powerful web design and development tool is available on Windows and Mac OS, but not Linux. If you would just consider, Adobe has already supported the platform with their Adobe Reader and Adobe Air. Why is Dreamweaver not available? It just seems that there's not such a huge call for it so they just don't see the need to put in an effort for another platform. One chap at Adobe suggested to use Dreameaver under wine , but it doesn't work so great. There is an alternative to wine which, according to a user on the forums, works flawlessly - Crossover . However, the former option is not free, so some may be dissuaded where they woul...

Yes. It is long overdue. So here's another for the bookmarks: bit.ly (http://bit.ly) An absolutely brilliant tool for shortening a URL. Particularly when sharing long links to websites in your blogs, tweets and emails. Need I say more?

After a long silence I'm back. Since I've landed my new lecturer role I have been busy creating Schemes of Work, Lesson Plans and researching ways to increase resources for students so they may have a better learning experience. In fact, it is the former of the items that this article relates to. The first obvious question is why? Well, the college that I am in provides tuition for international students, who have given up a lot to come here and study. Many of these students are struggling to find work to support themselves during their studies, so if they require resources "free" is a keyword. These type of resources, that I refer to here, are mostly concerned with software. So let's get started. OpenOffice.org Students will be using Writer for all their courses, Calc for subjects relating to maths, economics, accounting, etc, Impress for subjects that require students to present. There are a number of reasons for selecting this application: It is open sourc...

Recently it dawned upon me how much Twitter is actually used and how much people like to Tweet. Whether it's a notification of how often your friend likes to break gas or seeing what your local MP is doing (which is nearly updated every two months) it's something that everyone enjoys. In fact, I'm getting into the act and cannot resist the temptation of looking a tweets every day on my iPhone. I'm just a bit slow on updating it myself. There are a number of apps for mobile phones that allows you to Tweet on a regular basis. Here's some that I found: Seesmic (for Desktop, Blackberry and Android) Twitterific (for Mac, iPad and iPhone/iPod TweetDeck (for Desktop, iPad and iPhone) Echofon (for Mac, Firefox extension and iPhone) For some (who are enjoying the Android operating system or adding funk to the business life with the Blackberry) the choice is obvious. There's more out there for desktop and web-based services. For me, I'm settled with Twitterific ....

With all the fuss dying down about Adobe Creative Suite 4 and all the designers getting used to it, there is new furore about the upcoming release of CS5. Woah. The global launch will take place on Monday 18th April 2010 More info from cs5launch.adobe.com

Who would have thought that an independent contractor in the 1980s would have created the foundations of a revolutionary technology, which changes the way we live? It all began in the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), in Switzerland, when Tim Berners-Lee proposed and built a database of people and software models that can be shared over the Internet using the HyperText. By the end of 1990s, he created the set of elements that build a web page and its access, HTTP and HTML. In fact he also created the first browser - WorldWideWeb. The rest, you can say, is history... with a large commercial undertaking and the growth of servers across academia then the world Now, there exists well over 80 million websites and a growing user base - hundreds of millions. So it's happy 21st birthday to the Web. Celebrate good times.

Most probably the best website you cannot go without is TechRadar ( http://www.techradar.com ) When it comes to latest gadgets, they are sure to have a review and an in-depth look at them, as well as latest news all tech. A brilliant website that should be among your bookmarks.

With the initial rumours of Apple contending against the Tablet market, and then the possible name, I did not feel much excitement as there were questions as to what innovations can take place in the market. Then the iPad was launched and it received a luke-warm reception, echoing Microsoft's ailment of Windows Vista. After looking at the reviews and in-depth reports I still remain unconvinced of the usefulness of this latest offering. Here are a number of reasons as to why: It does not run the full Mac OS, but the phone OS. The limitation: multi-tasking and you are restricted to the App Store for applications The lack of storage. The iPad comes in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB, which begs the question of future expansion. At the very moment I am using a Tablet PC with 64GB storage and am already struggling to store all my pictures and music. Lack of expansion. That's right, there's no USB ports, no Flash card support and no built-in webcam. There goes video conferencing. Accessoris...

A hectic start to the new year. People having problems with their routers, hacked accounts and miscellaneous computing tidbits has kept me busy. After reading an article on T3 about online banking , got me thinking about security. It is amazing that people still reuse old passwords everywhere, most of them fairly easy for a hacker to break. Not only are consumers facing such grief, many corporations who let people choose their own passwords are (in a way) prone to an attack of some sort. Because, when left to their own devices, their choice of passwords are not very strong. So it is in this vain that my choice of a recommended site is PC Tools' Password Generator . This tool is absolutely brilliant at generating strong passwords and also presents phonetics to the password in case of misreading. Check it out at: http://www.pctools.com/guides/password/ Happy securing.