Tech@work

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Adobe corner

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Industry connect

A deeper perspective of the real picture. From industry representatives themselves

Time to spend
We're used to consuming free software and services and have taken many of these for granted. However, we also do have a responsibility in sustaining several of these noble services
Anoop Verma
readersletters@thinkdigit.com

Donationware
Spybot www.safer-networking.org/ en/index.html
A malaware attack is every PC users worst nightmare. But many of us are often forced to forgo the protection, because anti-virus systems cost a bomb. However, now there is an alternative for users who wish to save their hard earned money, while doing something to protect their system from sudden attacks. The alternative is Spybot, a free and efcient tool to protect your PC. No one is obliged to give anything to Spybot; however, you can contribute to the cause by making small donations. This is how a punch line on the Spybots home page goes, If you don't feel like donating for software, think of it as buying us a drink! If anything, you have to give these guys a credit not just for creating world-class software, but also for their superb sense of humour.

whenever they need to groove to a tune. That way you end up saving valuable disc space. The system will support music les of these types - MP3, OGG Vorbis, Flac and WMA.

t is difficult, if not impossible, for anyone to take a comprehensive conspectus of Internet, for the simple reason that the web-space continues to expand at an unimaginably explosive pace. Internet has percolated into every segment of life, making it imperative for us to be Internet savvy or risk being out of tune with latest happenings and trends. Our list of bookmarks keeps growing, as we discover new places and new software tools on the web that have the potential to enhance the quality of our lives. An unprecedented amount of information and services is available for free at the click of a mouse. Many of these web-based entities consciously avoid the advertisement route for funding of their operations. They prefer to depend on donations. The message you get is that the focus is not on raking dollops of cash, but in providing genuine service. Maybe we should start donating as a gesture of support for the Good Samaritans, who are behind the free software and websites. In most cases, making donations is easy; you can transfer funds online in a secure manner. Of course, you are not obliged to make a donation, but if you do, then you garner the satisfaction of rewarding someones good work. What follows is an overview of websites and software that are not supported by any kind of fees or advertisements; their only source of revenue is donations.

Zemanta
www.zemanta.com
For many of us blogging has now become a way of life. But coming up with coherent, informative posts, which

Socso
sockso.pu-gh.com
If you are deeply into music, then it is time you had your own music server. Enter Socso - the free Java based application, which will create a home music server for you in a matter of few steps only. After that your PC will become the medium through which music can be streamed, so that others around the world can happily tune in by using myriad web based technologies. The system can also prove benecial when you have too many computer systems working at your home or ofce - you can have all the music les stored in one computer, while the other PCs and laptops can connect to it,

are embellished with pertinent images and links, can turn out to be a cumbersome chore. How about having your own assistant to help you with your blogging activities! What you are looking for goes by the name of, Zemanta. This wonderful software is compatible with some of worlds most popular blogging platforms, including Wordpress, Flickr, etc. Once you have installed it, as a plug-in to your favourite browser, Zemanta will work quietly in the background to ensure that you get easy access to relevant information pertaining to the blog post you are creating. Even if the software is for free, you can always pitch in with a donation.

Scratch
scratch.mit.edu
How about trying to create some animated cartoons, small video games or other

102 Digit | September 2010 | www.thinkdigit.com

GNU Project

Open source licence

Richard Stallman initiated the GNU Project in 1984 with the aim of developing a sufcient body of free software by involving a team of volunteers around the world.

An open source licence is a copyright licence for computer software that allows users to modify and redistribute the original source code without having to seek permission from the original author

Touched by tech

interactive artworks! You can do all this, even if you dont know a bit of Flash and coding. All you need to do is visit this site: http://scratch.mit.edu. Scratch has a set of innovative tools through which people without any computer programming skills, and that means a vast majority of us, can create animations. Just download the free software from the site and get started. With its comprehensible menu based system, Scratch is eminently easy to use. You can either upload images from your own computer or you can use the ones that already exist in the Scratch library.

which can be read on your PC, notebook, iPad, iPhone or any other portable device. Project Gutenberg could easily have made money by showing advertisements to users who access it for downloading free books. However, it continues to be a non-prot organization, which survives on donations. You can donate via your Paypal account or by sending a check or money order to the websites registered address in USA.

have a default rate of less than 3%. In 97% of the cases, the lenders got their money back. Kiva is a charity and not a broker, so you dont get any interest on the money you have lent; what you do get is the feeling of having done something to help a fellow human being. Till November 2009, Kiva has facilitated loans of more than $100 million.

MoodTurn
www.moodturn.com
When you are totally stressed about one thing or other, a tryst with MoodTurn might go a long way in helping you calm down. This is a website that promises to turn your mood by playing soothing music, which conjures visions of sublime nature, while visuals of a natural scene are playing on the screen. Developed by a 24-year-old Ramunas Geciauskas, who happens to be a computer programmer based in Lithuania, MoodTurn has already become a source of succour to thousands of stressed out employees. Once you have imbibed the soothing visuals and sounds, dont forget to reward the efforts of Ramunas Geciauskas, the man behind MoodTurn, by making a donation.

Internet Archive
www.archive.org/index.php
Ah nostalgia! Reminiscing the good old days is such an enjoyable way of passing time. How about reminiscing the websites, as they were two years or even a decade ago! What did Google look like 10 years ago, a period of time when the Internet was still in its Stone Age era? Only Internet Archive has the answer. The mission of the Internet Archive is to back up the entire Internet. As of now, it has more than 3 petabytes of information in its servers, thats 85 billion Web pages. A mind-boggling number, you have to agree! This website too relies on donations. You can donate through your credit card or through Paypal.

FastStone
www.faststone.org/index.htm
The advent of the digital age has surely made it easy for us to go on an imagecapturing spree. So how many of these

Craigslist
www.craigslist.org
The classieds out here are divided into different categories. So if you are looking for a job in Bangalore, then you go to the Bangalore section of the website and there you have to browse through the jobs category. Much of the service that you get out here is free of cost, and the website is not averse to receiving donations from users. So if you have had a success through a Craigslist post, then you might go ahead and donate a small amount as a gesture of thanks.

Kiva
images are of really good quality! You may not be able to shoot like a pro, but there are other ways by which you can enhance the quality of your pictures. For instance, there is the software called FastStone, which does just about everything you would expect from an image viewer. You can crop, resize, x red-eye, adjust image tone and do much else. All this is available for free. However, if you wish, you can donate any sum that you can afford to spare.

www.kiva.org
This is one of those websites, which are dedicated to letting you pick up the role of a Good Samaritan. Out here you can do some micro lending of your own and contribute to the cause of alleviating poverty. There are so many people around the world who are in need of sums as small as $25; Kiva introduces you to them. As of now the website claims to

Zwaggle
www.zwaggle.com
The truth is that most of us own items, which might not be of much use to us anymore. However, we have no idea how to donate these items to people who might be in need. That is where websites like Zwaggle comes in. Out here you can log in and nd ways of giving away your superuous items to the needy denizens of the world.
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Free Websites
Project Gutenberg www.gutenberg.org
This is the website where e-book editions of over 33,000 books are available for free. The rigmarole of logging in and registering yourself has also been done away with, so you can just open the website and start downloading the e-books,