FSM Newsletter 16th of October 2006

FSM Newsletter 16th of October 2006


Mon, 2006-10-16 06:00 -- admin

Welcome to another of Free Software Magazine’s fortnightly newsletters. Our newsletters aim to let you know what’s happening on our site and with the magazine. Through these newsletters we’ll keep you up-to-date with new content, competitions, new features and more. Please note: we have lots of exciting developments coming up in the near future, so take a little time to catch up with us. And as always enjoy!

General announcements

So, if you’ve been to the site in the last few days, you might have noticed that we have a new feature... polls! That’s right, you can now vote on all those free software related issues that are near and dear to your hearts. So get in there and show us what you think! Please remember that you must log in to be able to vote! In other news, we are having a bit of a celebration here at FSM this week - we’ve reached the dizzy heights of pagerank eight in Google’s pageranking system! This means that we’re stepping out with the heavyweight sites... and we owe it all to you. Thanks to all of our contributors, readers and supporters - it’s you guys that make us so popular!

Latest content

Getting bored with 3D desktops? I’m definitely not! - Mitch Meyran follows up his last two blog installments with more help and info. on 3D desktops.Read more...

Good can prevail when evil is... lazy... - Bridget Kulakauskas writes about how complacency won’t keep you on top. Read more...

Baby steps with the GIMP: Making a web banner using the gimp - Rosalyn Hunter navigates us through each step of making a web banner. A good starter tutorial for beginners. Read more...

5 ways to save on your monthly software rental bill in the year 2056 - Scott Carpenter gives us a sobering look into a future where proprietary software and IP laws rule the world. Read more...

Latest content continued...

Free software and my birthday beyond the thunderdome - Rosalyn Hunter reflects on how lucky she is to live in a non-post-apocalyptic world with free software - phew! Read more...

Why (most) medium sized free software projects are doomed (or, IBM said “no”) - Tony Mobily talks about how hard it is to make it as a medium sized free software project. Read more...

Editorial: On “making it” - Tony Mobily, EIC, would like to thank you all for helping to get the magazine where it is today from where it was two years ago. Read more...

Set up a free software IRC client in less than 5 minutes - Ever wondered how to set up ChatZilla? Robin Monks tells you how. Read more...

Reformation of a Visual Basic programmer II - Scott Carpenter talks about why it’s uncool to use VB - not cos it’s lame, but cos it’s not free. Read more...

Latest book reviews released

**Foundations of Ajax by Ryan Asleson and Nathaniel T Schutta** Terry Hancock looks into Ajax - the hot new thing in web design. Read more...

**Beginning Ubuntu Linux: From Novice to Professional by Keir Thomas** Bridget Kulakauskas goes from novice to professional with Ubuntu Linux. Read more...

Book competition announcement for this fortnight

This week we are giving away a copy ofJPro Perl Parsing by Christopher M. Frenz AND a copy of Ubuntu Linux for Non-Geeks by Rickford Grant.

All you need to do to enter is check out the latest book competition announcement on our blogs page.

GOOD LUCK!

Thanks go to _Apress and No Starch Press for providing these fantastic prizes._

Winner of the book competition from last fortnight

Still to be announced.

Please post comments to let us know what you think and don’t forget to log in so that you’ll be in the running to win the latest book competition

This fortnight’s poll

Our very first poll asks a pertinent question - what do you think we should call free software? We might call it free software here at FSM but what do you think it should be called and why? There usual choices are there, and so far, “free software” is streaking ahead... so come on and vote, people! And don’t forget to comment on why you voted the way you did!

Please remember, if you want to VOTE you MUST LOG IN!

Reminders

Comments

Your comments on articles, issues, and blog entries are very welcome. They provide other readers with insightful suggestions, further information, and the feeling that they are not alone. They also provide our authors with the feeling that they are being heard. Please comment wherever possible and don’t forget to log in so that you’ll be in the running to win the latest book competition.

Avatars

Avatars are a great way of expressing your personal identity, whether it be a photo or an image that you feel represents the you you want to be. Read more about avatars here. To add an avatar: log in, go to “my account” in the menu on the left, go to the “edit” tab and scroll down to where it says “Upload picture”. Now, hit the browse button, find the image on your computer that you want to upload and go to the bottom of the page and hit the submit button. That’s it; you now have an avatar image.

Donate

As you might know already FSM is a low profit project with all funds raised going back into producing the fine magazine you can download for free.

Think about how much you would normally have to spend buying a magazine of this quality. We provide it for free! If you only gave us $5 per year it would really help us to keep going.

Your donations will help us to continue spreading the word about free software and producing more fantastic issues.

Contacting us

If you’d like to contribute to FSM: read our Write for us page. Then send your proposal to proposals@...

If you have some feedback for us about our site or its content, then drop us a line at input@...

If you are interested in advertising on our site, or in our magazine or newsletter, you can find more information on our Advertise page or send an email to advertise@...

If you need help with your account for any reason, please send an email to helpdesk@...

Please add “freesoftwaremagazine.com” to the ends of the email addresses above. Sorry for the inconvenience but spammers make this necessary.

Thanks

Thank you for subscribing to Free Software Magazine. You are a part of a growing community who help to raise the awareness of, and educate new users in, the joys of free software. Without you we would not have this community and without you we would not have a magazine. Happy reading!

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Author information

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Most forwarded

Interview with Dave Mohyla, of DTIDATA

Dave Mohyla is the president and founder of dtidata.com, a hard drive recovery facility based in Tampa, Florida.

TM: Where are you based? What does your company do?
DTI Data recovery is based in South Pasadena, Florida which is a suburb of Tampa. We have been here for over 10 years. We operate a bio-metrically secured class 100 clean room where we perform hard drive recovery on all types of hard disks, from laptop hard drives to multi drive RAID systems.

Anybody up to writing good directory software?

Since the very beginning, directories (of any kind) have had a very central role in the internet. (I have recently grown fond of Free Web Directory. Even Slashdot can be considered a directory: a collection of great news and invaluable user-generated comments. As far as software is concerned, doing a quick search on Google about software directories will return the free (as in freedom) software directories like Savannah, SourceForge, Freshmeat and so on, followed by shareware and freeware sites such as FileBuzz, PCWin Download Center and All Freeware (great if you're looking for shareware and freeware, but definitely less comprehensive than their free-as-in-freedom counterparts).

Interview with Mark Shuttleworth

Mark Shuttleworth is the founder of Thawte, the first Certification Authority to sell public SSL certificates. After selling Thawte to Verisign, Mark moved on to training as an astronaut in Russia and visiting space. Once he got back he founded Ubuntu, the leading GNU/Linux distribution. He agreed on releasing a quick interview to Free Software Magazine.

Is better education the key to finding better software?

I read David Jonathon's article Anybody Up To Writing Good Directory Software? the other day, which got me thinking about software directories in general. As David mentioned, many of the software directories one finds when doing a quick google search are free as in beer, not as in freedom. But what interests me is the software directories that already exist, providing a combination of both free as in beer software, and open source software. Sites such as Freeware Downloads and Shareware Download don't advertise themselves as providing free as in liberty software, but each of them have a good selection of open source software available... if you know where to look.

Most emailed

Free Open Document label templates

If you’ve ever spent hours at work doing mailings, cursed your printer for printing outside the lines on your labels, or moaned “There has got to be a better way to do this,” here’s the solution you’ve been looking for. Working smarter, not harder! Worldlabel.com, a manufacture of labels offers Open Office / Libre Office labels templates for downloading in ODF format which will save you time, effort, and (if you want) make really cool-looking labels

Creating a user-centric site in Drupal

A little while ago, while talking in the #drupal mailing list, I showed my latest creation to one of the core developers there. His reaction was "Wow, I am always surprised what people use Drupal for". His surprise is somehow justified: I did create a site for a bunch of entertainers in Perth, a company set to use Drupal to take over the world with Entertainers.Biz.

Update: since writing this article, I have updated the system so that the whole booking process happens online. I will update the article accordingly!

So, why, why do people and companies develop free software?

More and more people are discovering free software. Many people only do so after weeks, or even months, of using it. I wonder, for example, how many Firefox users actually know how free Firefox really is—many of them realise that you can get it for free, but find it hard to believe that anybody can modify it and even redistribute it legally.

When the discovery is made, the first instinct is to ask: why do they do it? Programming is hard work. Even though most (if not all) programmers are driven by their higher-than-normal IQs and their amazing passion for solving problems, it’s still hard to understand why so many of them would donate so much of their time to creating something that they can’t really show off to anybody but their colleagues or geek friends.

Sure, anybody can buy laptops, and just program. No need to get a full-on lab or spend thousands of dollars in equipment. But... is that the full story?

Fun articles

Santa Claus - the most successful open source project

It dawned on me the other day, as I was shopping for the dozens of gifts it seems I have to buy every December, that Santa Claus is the most successful open source project in history. (Bridget @ Illiterarty would agree with that). Santa Claus is essentially a marketing development that is embodied by everyone who stuffs a sock, gives a gift, hosts a dinner or wishes Merry Christmas over the holiday season.

Most emailed

Editorial

When I first started thinking about Free Software Magazine, I was feeling enthusiastic about the dream. I had Dave, Gianluca, and Alan willing to help me, I had established members of the free software community willing to help me out, I had writers volunteering their time and energy for free, and I had a generous offer from OpenHosting for servers, all before I'd proved myself. There was a sense of excitement in the air, and I thought maybe, just maybe, I could make this work.

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