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