Morning Tech Talk - Saturday: The Best In Free Open Source Software

We normally take the weekend off from our tech-centric blog posts. However, since everyone is kind of stuck indoors for today, we figured that we could supply some interesting techie reading material. So, grab your cup of coffee or hot chocolate, and gather round...

Open Source software is what it sounds like, software that is basically open for our use. The following applications are availbale for download by clicking on the associated link. These applications are fantastic, stable releases of popular software, but use as you see fit.

Firefox - Firefox is a fantatstic web browser! It's small, fast, and can do everything your old web browser could do and more. Best part, you don't even have to replace your current browser, just download and install. You can import all of your favorites as boomarks and start surfing.
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/

GIMP - GIMP is an Image retouching and editing tool. GIMP has tools used for image retouching and editing, free-form drawing, resizing, cropping, photo-montages, converting between different image formats, and more specialized tasks. Animated images such as GIF and MPEG files can be created using an animation plugin.
http://www.gimp.org/

LibreOffice - The LibreOffice suite includes a word processor, spreadsheet, graphics editor, slideshow creator, database and math formula writer. It is designed to be compatible (up to 99%) with other major office suites, including Microsoft Office. This office suite is a great alternative if you do not have Microsoft Office. 
http://www.libreoffice.org

Inkscape - Comparable in many ways to Adobe Illustrator, Inkscape is an open source vector graphics editor designed to make it easy to edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps, and more. The software can also export to formats including PostScript, PNG, and SVG.
http://inkscape.org/

Audacity - For those who need to work with audio, Audacity is free, cross-platform software for recording and editing sounds. It can import, export, and manipulate sound files in virtually every common format.
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

KeePass - Frustrated having to remember tons of passwords? You need to check out KeePass! This is an open source download that spares you from having to remember a multitude of passwords. Instead, you can use the software to store passwords in a heavily secured database with top-tier encryption. Then, all you must remember is the master password to the database itself.
http://keepass.info/

Gallery - Gallery is a Web-based photo album organizer designed to deliver an intuitive way to blend photo management seamlessly into your own website. Features include geotagging and batch editing support.
http://galleryproject.org/ 

Magento - Magento, used by 30,000 merchants, including Samsung, Nespresso and The North Face, is the world’s fastest growing e-commerce platform. Magento Community Edition is offered for free under the Open Software License.
http://www.magentocommerce.com/download

Thunderbird - With its speedy searches, built-in RSS feeds, strong security and superb add-ons, Thunderbird has to be the best, free email application available. Similar in functionality to Outlook, Thunderbird offers address book and folder management abilities. 
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/

FileZilla - FileZilla is a hugely successful, cross-platform FTP client. It’s also available as a server, for Windows only. Created in January 2001 by Tim Klosse as a class project, FileZilla has gone on to become the 5th most popular download of all time from SourceForge.net.
http://filezilla-project.org/

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Bob Johnson is the Manager of Information and Technology Services at the Emma S. Clark Memorial Library.