Software

Turn Any Printable Document into a PDF

If you use Openoffice.org or run a Linux operating system, saving any document as a PDF is easy. There is also a plugin for recent versions of Microsoft Office that can do this. But what about exporting web pages, or documents created by other software? For this you will need a “Print to PDF” driver. [...]

Sharing Large Files

A friend and I recently ran into a little problem: we wanted to share files with each other, but the files in question were larger than could be sent via email. Sure you can mail a CD, or meet up for coffee with a USB drive, but those options require both time and trouble.

Enter Drop.io. [...]

Update on Changing Times

For those who found my previous post about Microsoft and business models interesting, here is an article of interest. Microsoft is developing a new non-Windows operating system designed to meet the demands of Cloud Computing. Don’t expect the death of Windows anytime soon, though; it takes a long time to transition to new technology (Microsoft’s [...]

The Times, They are a-changin

Several factors have contributed to a recent surge among big-name companies in supporting open-source software. Chief among these is the increasing importance of interoperability in a Web 2.0 world. This is true across the board, from big-business capitalism, to the little-guy blogger, to governments around the globe–the world needs its data in transparent patent-free formats.

Microsoft [...]

Firefox 3 and the Colbert Bump

According to Google Analytics, at least 5 people downloaded Firefox 3 due to my post. Apparently, however, my contribution to Firefox’s World Record was fairly meager. The fabled Colbert Bump had far more impact. The Mozilla Foundation (the company behind Firefox 3) has provided precise measurements of the effects of the Bump, but are apparently [...]

Zotero 1.5 Preview Released

For those who use the excellent bibliographical software Zotero, a major milestone is in the works. The 1.5 release will support, among other features, keeping a full copy of your bibliographic database, which can be accessed by and synced with any of your computers, regardless of Operating System.
The latest release is still in development, and [...]

Firefox 3.0 Released!

The much anticipated release of the excellent web browser Firefox 3.0 is available for download. Curious what all the fuss is about? Wondering if you should switch from Internet Explorer (you should, by the way)? Check out the discussion here and here for the best Firefox analysis. Wondering what’s new? Check out this list or [...]

Take your OS with you

Technology like this has been available to hackers in the Linux community for a long time, but it looks like the excellent people at Fedora are taking things mainstream. Imagine: your entire computer in your pocket. Looks like I have a new weekend project!

Why Open Source?

Many potential readers of this blog may be unfamiliar with the concept of “Open Source” software. There are a variety of possible definitions (depending on your preferred open source licensing schema), but what essentially qualifies software as being Open Source is the availability of its underlying source code for reading and editing. Why is that [...]

Zotero: An Introduction, now with SBL support

If you have not already downloaded Zotero, the free, open source bibliographical reference manager for Firefox, now would be a good time. It now supports the cutting edge Firefox 3, and, for all those interested in writing papers in biblical studies, there is now an extension that produces SBL-compliant citations and bibliographies.
Installation is easy enough. [...]