I LOVE FREEWARE!!! I recently co-founded a small business and was in need of a graphic program to create a logo. We didn't have a lot of start-up capital and so we were in need of FREEWARE! I found 2 applications that were key in making our logo and adding graphics to our website. The first application I would like to boast about is Inkscape. You can find this wonderful software at http://www.inkscape.org/ .

This is basically an alternative to Adobe Illustrator. It may not have absolutely all the bells and whistles that Illustrator has, but it can get the job done. It got our business up and running with a logo and graphics. There are tutorials all over the web, even You Tube videos on Inkscape.

The second application I would like to boast is GIMP. You can find this awesome software at http://www.gimp.org/. It is a great photo editing software used as an alternative to Adobe Photoshop. Just as I mentioned with Inkscape, it may not have all the bells and whistles as Adobe Photoshop, but again, it will get the job done. There are also many tutorials, and videos on the web concerning GIMP. All graphics on this Blog have been developed with GIMP.

These 2 FREE applications can work hand in hand while trying to create and or edit graphics. I hope you find these applications useful, at least you will save close to 2 grand, I believe between Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, the customer would be 2k out of pocket. ENJOY!

Okay so it's been sometime since I blogged, I'm slacking, what can I say......I recently had an issue with Adobe Captivate 3 in which I could not use the native or built in preview to preview my project. I could view it in Internet Explorer, but for some reason the native viewer would not work. I looked all over the web for a solution and found absolutely nothing. After calling Adobe support, between not understanding a word the support staff was speaking and being forwarded in circles I got frustrated. I got so frustrated that I rebuilt the computer, luckily we had a Symantec Ghost image, so the rebuild was not so bad. Once the PC was rebuilt I loaded up Adobe Captivate 3, created a small video clip and attempted to preview in the native viewer. To my surprise, it didn't work. I was dumbfounded, and then I decided to make sure I had the latest version of flash player and shockwave were installed, and still no luck. It turns out that the latest version of Adobe Flash Player, version 10.xxxx is not compatible with Adobe Captivate 3. Shocker! Their developers must speak the same language as their support people and nobody understands what they are saying, so the developers for Captivate 3 and Flash cannot understand each other, hence the two applications don’t play nice together. Either that or the QA department has gone on strike. You would think that Adobe products would be compatible and backwards compatible. Low and behold if you downgrade Adobe Flash player version from 10 to 9, the issue will be resolved.

Would you like to convert any file to PDF format but don’t want to pay hundreds of dollars for Adobe Acrobat Professional? PDF ReDirect is a free windows tool that can convert any file such as a Microsoft Word Document, or maybe an Excel Spreadsheet into PDF format. After you install you will notice a PDF ReDirect printer in your list of print queues. When you are ready to convert your file, just click File ? Print and choose the PDF Redirect printer. Then you will choose your destination folder in the left pane, and choose a file name in the bottom pane, then click save. Its very easy to use and as usual it is completely free. Download your copy at http://www.exp-systems.com/PDFreDirect/Downloads.htm?1.

Calling all Nubie Web Developers! In case you haven't heard, XAMPP for Windows is an Apache distribution that basically installs and configures your web server. This is covered under the GNU licensing model. Let me tell you, it is not easy to install an Apache web server and it gets harder if you want to add MySQL, PHP and Perl. It comes with the following:

• Apache HTTPD 2.2.9 + Openssl 0.9.8h
• MySQL 5.0.51b
• PHP 5.2.6
• PHP 4.4.8
• phpMyAdmin 2.11.7
• FileZilla FTP Server 0.9.25
• Mercury Mail Transport System 4.52

Now in my experience, (I am a "Jack of all trades" master of none because I like to dabble in a lot of things) designing websites and setting up web server, it is very hard to install the web language of your choice such as PHP and configure it with Apache, then you add MySQL in the mix and you are out of luck. This is all setup and configured for you so that when you are done with your 5 minute installation you just upload your PHP, or HTML site and away you go! Download your copy today at http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-windows.html.

After looking at all these windows freeware tools, we need to have a little bit of fun. A little bit of freeware for windows fun that is..... Thanks to Buziol Games Soft for creating the ever so awesome Mario Bros. game, freeware version for Microsoft Windows. This installs on just about any version of Windows, including Vista, plus has both full screen mode and minimized screen mode for "when you are at work"....oops did I say that out loud? I don't think I will be able to pry my wife away from my PC now! This is great, the graphics are very decent, the sound is great. The actual download is at http://www.download.com/Mario-Forever/3000-7435_4-10344976.html. It appears that their website is not yet complete, but they are posting updates. So strap on your wrench and help Mario defeat that evil Bowser guy and save the princess.

How many of you would like to record radio streams, or edit an MP3, or maybe record some music across several different tracks, edit it, and then publish and export to MP3 or WAV file? Audacity provides all this functionality to you. It is also great for converting cassette tape to MP3. Or if you are old enought to remember Vinyl Records and 8 tracks, you can convert them to MP3 and or WAV files to be burned to CD or copied to your MP3 player. Audacity has an easy user interface, many different effects to add flare to your recording. You can download Audacity @ http://audacity.sourceforge.net/. If you are going to be exporting to MP3 you will need to download the lame_enc.dll from http://www.dll-files.com/dllindex/dll-files.shtml?lame_enc. Once you download you can place the DLL in your favorite DLL storage area, then when you export your first MP3 from Audacity, it will ask you if you want to locate the lame_enc.dll, then you just point the path and presto you will be making MP3s. Now there is a derivative of Audacity called CleanSpeech which is a free alternative to other audio editors that are oriented for preparation of music, sermons, lectures or any type of recording. It is derived from Audacity, with simplifications and enhancements aimed at improving the clarity of speech and streamlining preparation by an automated process. Here are a couple scenarios where CleanSpeech is appropriate: 1. A church has backlog of sermons they want to make available for distance listening such as SermonAudio @ http://www.sermonaudio.com/main.asp. 2. Schools have backlog of recorded classroom lectures they want to upload to their website for distance learning. You can download CleanSpeech @ http://audacious.sourceforge.net/.

Looking to customize your new Vista PC?

Themes4Vista.com is a great place to start. You can begin by downloading a free theme and changing the look and feel of your desktop. There is a patch that is necessary to change your theme, but it is provided to you directly from the Themes for Vista site. You can also download Gadgets for your desktop. Gadgets can spruce up your desktop, or provide PC information, maybe the time or a calendar, but they are a definite must have. This site also provides free screensavers. Screensavers are the icing on the cake when it comes to desktop customization. I used to be an old "plain jane" kind of desktop user, your typically nerd that had no background and screen saver was set to "none". However memory is so cheap now, and even though your system memory might get a little more utilization, its just an excuse for you to go out and upgrade your RAM. This is a great website providing things at my favorite cost, FREE. Download your free themes and gadgets at http://themes4vista.com/ for your Vista PC today!!

I must admit that I am very thankful of the person who thought of the idea of remote desktop administration. I mean, I don't have to get off my rear to drive over to troubleshoot somebody's computer problems. Here are 3 methods used to connect remotely.

The first one I will talk about is CrossLoop which is obviously free. This is a really cool program, it allows your client, customer, or friend to create a code, then you type in the code on your side, and wammo you are remote into their PC. This is great but both parties, have to have the software downloaded and installed, so if you customer doesn't know how to do that, then you are out of luck. You can download CrossLoop at http://www.crossloop.com/

Method 2 which is also free, is Remote Desktop Connection. This comes with Windows XP. You can find it one of two ways, the easy way first is to hit Start --> Run and type mstsc, the other method is to click Start --> All Programs --> Accessories --> Communications --> Remote Desktop Connection.

This will bring up a window like you see above, then you just type in the computer name or IP address and click connect. If you want to use Remote Desktop Connection to connect to a computer across the WAN, then you will need to add a port forwarding rule to your router for port 3389 and assign it to the PC's IP address you want to forward the request to. You should then be able to type in the address to your router's WAN interface, not private interface and connect right into your PC. You might ask, "what if I want to RDP into more than 1 computer on a single network, but don't have assigned IP address?". The answer is simple, there are 2 ways to do so. You can setup as mentioned above, and once you are connected to your remote computer, you can open up another Remote Desktop Connection and connect to your PC from within the LAN. Basically a remote desktop connection within a remote desktop connection. The other method is to modify the following registry entry (PLEASE USE CAUTION WHEN MODIFYING YOUR REGISTRY, IF AT ALL POSSIBLE CREATE A BACK UP OF YOUR REGISTRY BEFORE MAKING MODIFICATIONS.) HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\WinStations\RDP-Tcp\Port Number, change this value to 3390 or something unique. Then on your router be sure to create a port forwarding rule to the IP address of your remote PC and use 3390 as the port, lastly when you connect to your PC, be sure to type in your remote routers WAN interface IP address plus a colon and then the port number i.e. 160.34.233.98:3390 in your Remote Desktop Connection window.


We have yet a third method for connecting remotely. LogMeIn is all web based except for the client you have to install on your remote PC. Basically you go to logmein.com and create a free account. You can have up to 1 remote connection for free which is really cool. The connection is all encrypted, and also will use windows pass through authentication instead of prompting you for more than one password. You can create your free account at http://www.logmein.com/.

All three flavors of remote desktop administration are really good. I tend to go with the built in XP Remote Desktop Connection because it is already built in, but the other 2 alternatives are definitely worth a try.

Well I haven't seem to find a "freeware" package that I don't like. I happen to be in the market for some video capture software particularly desktop capture software in order to create documentation. I did a Google search for Camtasia alternative, and to my surprise found CamStudio. I downloaded the application, and WOW! This thing does just what I need it to do, you can record a fixed region, full desktop, or a custom region. You can move the region on the fly. The program creates the movie in a .avi file however you can convert it to SWF which creates the html file for you. This software is AWESOME! I definitely recommend it. In fact I read a little about the new applications that are in development....and yes they are free too! You can download at http://camstudio.org/ , and I know that the software is free, but if your not financially handicapped, like I am, I would recommend donating some money to this developer. In fact I am going to link to CamStudio's blog under the "my links" section on the right hand side of my blog which will have news updates. Thanks CamStudio and keep up the hard work, and thanks for making it FREE!

Sysinternals Utilities are various applications to aid in troubleshooting issues with computers, specifically in Windows platform. I am a desktop support tech, and must say that these free utilities are AWESOME! They are a must have for your troubleshooting tool belt. There is a utility called PSEXEC.exe which can remotely send commands on a remote PC with a specific set of credentials, SDelete which securely overwrites your sensitive files and cleans your free space of previously deleted files using this DoD-compliant secure delete program, there is even PSINFO.exe which obtains information about a system or remote system such as software installed. There are network utilities that include ShareEnum.exe which scans file shares on your network to view their security settings so you can proactively close security holes. There are many more utilities not mentioned. Check out the website http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb545027.aspx you can download these individually or wrapped up in one package. If you place the .exe’s in your c:\windows\system32 or c:\winnt\system32 folder, you can execute these via command line with out typing in a path.

Looking for a good Anti-Virus application? There are many selections out there, and quite frankly I would only recommend less than a handful of these especially since most of them have an annual service fee. AVG is "in my opinion" an excellent AV program. I have been using AVG for about 7 years, and have always recommended it to home users. It has always been free to home users. In fact, at one point I had to AV programs on my work laptop, I had AVG and CA ETrust. Now I'm not trying to deface ETrust, because it is a good AV program, but it is not free. To my surprise, AVG found a virus that was not picked up by ETrust. The company I used to work for paid millions of dollars to CA for this product including maintenance and all the licensing fees, but AVG the free application saved the day. AVG is Windows Vista compatible, I have been running it on my Vista Home Premium PC for quite some time now, and hasn't failed yet. Give it a try, what could it hurt, after all it's free. You can download your copy at http://free.avg.com/.

Okay, so I know this is a "freeware" critic blog, but this issue has taken me several cycles to figure out. There wasn't much on Google that I could find, so I decided to blog my fix. Here is the issue, in Microsoft Word 2007 I would click on the office button --> Prepare --> Properties in order to see metadata and instead of seeing the metadata I got the following message "The Document Information Panel was unable to load." It turns out that Word uses an InfoPath DLL to make this function work. The name of the DLL is IPEDINTL.DLL. In my case the DLL was missing hence the error message. After replacing the DLL, it functioned just fine. For some reason some of the "%systemDrive%\Microsoft Office\office12\1033" file folder was installed in another location.

Okay, I got off to a rough start getting the motivation to write the actual first evaluation blog. I decided to evaluate the OpenOffice.org Suite. This is basically an alternative to Microsoft Office Suite. MS Office 2007 has various versions pricing from $400.00 to $680.00 per Microsoft Office product website. You get a suite of 6 applications with OpenOffice.org suite. Writer which is similar to MS Word, Calc is similar to Excel, Impress is similar to PowerPoint, Draw is similar to Visio, Base is similar to Access and Math which is an application designed to create mathematical formulas. All this for free??? YES! This application is run under the GNU Lesser General Public License which means its free to download, use, modify and distribute. Not only that but the download is pretty painless as long as you have broadband, 128 MB downloads in no time. The setup is MSI based which means its pretty easy. The best part is you can save your documents as .doc files, your spreadsheet files as xls, and your slide presentations as .ppt. It doesn't appear that OpenOffice.org suite has incorporated the new .docx and .xlsx file format that is native to MS Office 2007. You have to understand that the GUI and other minor functions may not be as smooth as MS Office, however, the price outweighs the negative aspects of this application. I give this application a big thumbs up, download and install it. You can download your copy at http://download.openoffice.org/index.html. This is a great Windows freeware catch!

Okay, here is official first blog. In my blog, I will be evaluating freeware for Windows then provideing a freeware review. Most of you know what freeware is, however, incase you don't know, web-o-pedia defines it as the following: "Copyrighted software given away for free by the author. Although it is available for free, the author retains the copyright, which means that you cannot do anything with it that is not expressly allowed by the author. Usually, the author allows people to use the software, but not sell it. "
Basically free is always the right price for me. I will also look and evaluate open source freeware for Windows platform and providing a freeware review. I by no means take credit for any of the software I evaluate, so if there are any copyrights on names and or functions with in programs, all credit goes to the author.
Okay with out any further delay lets take a look at our first freeware for Windows review.........