Here’s a list of extensions that another user has found useful… See the site at Everything Else
Archive for the 'Going Opensource' Category
I’ve found this site useful for tips on good extensions for Firefox. Check it out…
There’s a great site over at http://www.opensourcelist.org that will eventually have a database of opensource applications for Windows. It is the evolution of the site at http://www.jairlie.com/oss/suggestedapplications.html, which currently has more applications listed on it. This will be ported over to the opensourcelist.org site when the developer is finished with coding the site.
So the existing link is: http://www.jairlie.com/oss/suggestedapplications.html
The future link is: http://www.opensourcelist.org
The existing site has the following categories listed on it:
Major categories
- Internet
- Media
- Games
- Educational
- Utilities
- Advanced / IT Professional
- Misc
One of the major factors I’ve come across that stops small businesses from switching over to a free Linux based operating system is that most of the mainstream small business accounting packages like MYOB and Intuit Quickbooks are not natively compatible with with Linux (i.e. the won’t run on Linux easily).
There is, however, a number of open source accounting packages for the Linux platform.
Here is a list of the major ones I have come across. I’ll update this list from time-to-time.
- First up is GnuCash. Find out more from Open Source Accounting Software | GnuCash
- Next is a package called Quasar. It’s available from Linux Canada
… yes, you can set up any of these applications up to handle GST
For the last few years both Quickbooks and MYOB have been enforcing hardware dependant product activation and re-activation. They also maintain the right to cease supporting the re-activation of software versions that are not current. This could mean that in 2007 when you try to reinstall your Quickbooks 2004 software onto the new office computer you won’t be able to activate it—forcing you to dish out another lot of cash for an upgrade. Not nice.
Many people are pissed off about this situation, yet we should not forget that we do have a choice. Programs like the free accounting packages listed here are one way to side-step these draconian measures.
Please post comments to this message if you try out any of these applications and let me know what your views are.
I recently upgraded Ubuntu 5.10 to 6.06 (from Breezy release to Dapper release). The upgrade went well, once I ironed out a few issues. I have found, however, that I was unable to browse the windows xp computer on my network. When trying to browse the network I would get this error:
smb:/// is not a valid location
The odd thing is that I was able to print to shared printers on the WinXP machine. I was also able to browse the Samba shares on the Ubuntu machine from the WinXP machine. I was not able to browse the network from Ubuntu though.
I searched high and low on the internet for some answers and very little useful help was forthcoming. I eventually found one key tip that fixed this issue simply and without any further mucking around editing configuration files (which was all to no avail).
The trick the worked was to install the package called libgnomevfs2-extra
I installed that and voila, problemo solved. If you get the “smb:/// is not a valid location” error then try this out and let me know if it fixes it for you.
You can install this package using the built in Package Manager or using the apt-get command at the command prompt.
Core Force is a free, community-orientated firewall security solution for Windows 2000 and XP.
It is vital to have a firewall running at all times if your computer is access a network or the internet. The number of free firewall products has diminished greatly in the least year or two as security software companies buy up their competition and cease offering the free versions of software these companies use to make available.
Check out Core Force
I recommend to all my clients that they use Firefox as their number one web browsing software.
Firefox is free, relatively secure (compared to Internet Explorer), has hundreds of fantastic “extensions” (easily installable add-ons) which bring a wide variety of new features to it should you want any of them, great support for tabbed browsing, and much more.
Using Internet Explorer is in my experience a real chore now that I am used to using Firefox. If you make regular use of the internet then I recommend trying Firefox and the various extensions that suit your needs and wants.
The most generalised Extensions I recommend in list of importance (and generalised through to more specialised) are:
- Mr Tech Local Install
- Tab Mix Plus
- Spellbound (spell checker) — At this time (May 24th 2006) I recommend getting the development version
- PDF Download
- AdBlock — note: AdBlock Plus 0.7.0.1 causes memory leaks with Firefox 1.5.0.3 (and earlier 1.5 versions) so AdBlock (not PLUS) is recommended)
- Resize Search Box (a simple but useful tool that fills a gap in the Firefox feature set)
- Customize Google (if you are an avid Google user—this lets you customise that way Google behaves for you)
- Download Manager Tweak (some handy tweaks for the way FF handles download management)
- GoogleBar Lite (if you use Google a lot and want the Google bar I recommend getting this lite version rather than the full one)
- FlashGot (if you download things this tools makes it easier)
- XE Currency Converter (if you do currency conversions more than now and then. I am not sure where the development site is for this)
- FeedYourReader (if you use a news reader application like Feedburner)
- Gmail Manager (if you use Gmail)
- Send by email (a useful tool if you like to send pages or selected content by email. Presently FF does not have this feature by default. Odd, but true)
- JustBlogIt (if you write blogs but want to use the interface that comes with your blog)
- Scrapbook (for collecting information and organising it)
- Performancing (if you maintain one or more blogs this is a great firefox integrated desktop editor)
- Deepest Sender (as an alternative to Performancing — try them both and decide which you prefer)
- BlogJetThis (if you use the BlogJet desktop blogging program if comes with this nice extension)
- Paypal Send Payment (useful if you often make paypal payments to people.
Those are the extensions I find most useful. There are many others though—get them here.
You can get Firefox from http://getfirefox.com.
Happy Firefoxing…
Here’s a great list of free software for Windows.
Of course you could just switch to Linux where just about any app you might want is free, but for those of us that still like to use Windows it is also possible to do a lot of neat things at little or no cost.
Please be aware that quite a few free applications contain spyware, adware, or other forms of malware. I suggest checking into any program you decide to download (by searching for something like “spyware adware [app name]” on google). Therefore investigate each one with caution initially. Once you know its clean then go for it.
Enjoy
Spellbound is a great little extension for Firefox. It gives you spell checking support in any area you might type out text into a web page (such as this blog entry I am writing). I’ve been using it for a year or so now and find it to be an excellent solution for this requirement.
If you use Firefox and Spellbound you will have noticed that it was disabled when Firefox updated to 1.5.0.1 or 1.5.0.2 or (as of today) 1.5.0.3 — assuming you allow these auto updates to go ahead. If you would like to continue using Spellbound and Firefox then try out the development version of Spellbound. It seems to work just fine and it also has new features such as spell check as you type (it will underline misspelled words as you type, much like MS Word does).
Before installing this I suggest you first uninstall the existing version and restart Firefox. Not doing this may cause complications.
You can get it from this site http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=351130&start=0 and click on Install Spellbound Dev
Or just click this link to install it now http://exchangecode.com/spellbound/downloads/spellbound-dev_20060108.xpi
(this is current as of May 5th 2005 which is approximately when Firefox 1.5.0.3 came out)
You will need to tell Firefox to TRUST this download source. You’ll see a bar appear at the top of your browser window stating a download was blocked. Just click on OPTIONS and tell it to trust the source. Then click on the download/install link again.
With the check as you go feature, you can SHIFT-Left click on the misspelled word and it will show you the suggestions. Neat.
Happy Firefoxing…
Jonathan
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