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Archive for July, 2006

Filezilla FTP client

Published by
Ken
at 30 July, 2006 in Utilities & Drivers. 1 Comment

FileZilla Filezilla has nothing to do with Mozilla or the numerous “-zilla” out there. It is an FTP (and SFTP) client (there is also a Filezilla FTP server).

Beside web browser and email client, FTP client is probably one of the most used net-applications.

But unlike web browser and email, there are far more choices for FTP programs around. Commercial, sharewares, freewares/open source, some with really long history. Do you remember WS_FTP? A quick search shows that it is still around. It was very popular once but not many people seems to be using it now. And there were CuteFTP, SmartFTP, just to name a few.-

Personally I had not try alot of FTP clients. There might be another good Open Source FTP client around that I am not aware. However Filezilla had served me well for a few years now and I will gladly recommend it.

If you are using an unregistered or cracked copy of shareware FTP client, give your conscience a break. consider switching to Filezilla, an opensource alternative.

Continue reading ‘Filezilla FTP client’

Popularity: 100%

Still zipping? 7-zip it

Published by
Ken
at 28 July, 2006 in File Compression and Utilities & Drivers. 5 Comments

7ziplogoStill using WinZip, WinRAR or some commercial archive? Try 7-Zip. It is opensource and free.

Do not be deceived by the name which may make it sounds like it is yet another Zip clone and only read zip file. 7-Zip introduces a new format called 7z and also supports ZIP, CAB, RAR, ARJ, GZIP, BZIP2, Z, TAR, CPIO, RPM and DEB format.

The 7z format produces very good compression ratio. Compression ratio is the ratio of the difference between the compressed file size and the uncompressed file size to the uncompressed file size. I had been using 7-zip for a good few years now and the format consistently beat other format like zip (worst), rar or even tar.bz2.

The one drawback of 7z is that not many people know or use the format. So I cannot, for example, email a .7z file to a friend. My friend probably get an “Unknown file type” error. But this should change soon. Expect to see more programs supporting the 7z format. WinRAR already support it and so does a number of compression utilities.

Continue reading ‘Still zipping? 7-zip it’

Popularity: 15%

Create PDF file for free with PDFCreator

Published by
Ken
at 20 July, 2006 in Business & Productivity. 3 Comments

PDF is a standard format that is used different platforms and languages.

However many businesses are still under the impression that they require expensive software to generate PDF documents.

Each time I send a friend a document in PDF format, they will ask if I have a copy of Adobe Acrobat and they can use it to convert a few documents to PDF.

What they do not know is I actually use an open source program called PDFCreator to create it (print to be exact, read on to see how).

Continue reading ‘Create PDF file for free with PDFCreator’

Popularity: 9%

From Pegasus Mail to Thunderbird to GMail

Published by
Ken
at 18 July, 2006 in Chat & E-mail. 1 Comment

Email must be one of the most used application on any business computer today. And what better way to start introducing free software than with email program.

For years I resisted Outlook, choosing to stand by Pegasus Mail. Pegasus is showing sign of age. The development is slow and for a long time it was not able to handle Chinese.

ThunderbirdI moved to Thunderbird when 0.8 came out. It was able to handle Chinese in UTF8 which was what I needed badly.

It wasn’t easy for me as well. Pegasus had been my email companion for almost 9 years before the switch. There are so many automated filters, identities, and preference that just works. If it’s not broken why fix it?

Thunderbird is useful if you download email to you local PC or notebook and read the email offline.

GMailThunderbird did not last long. Mail started to appear in my GMail folder in October 2005. After trying out briefly, all my incoming email are now handled by GMail.

GMail is great if you are constantly online. It takes care of spams at the server end which mean you do not need to download all the spam before you can filter it.
Continue reading ‘From Pegasus Mail to Thunderbird to GMail’

Popularity: 9%

Exporting Pegasus Mail to Thunderbird

Published by
Ken
at 17 July, 2006 in Tips & Tutorials and Chat & E-mail. 2 Comments

An article written a while back. I no longer use Thunderbird as my primary client. I spent quite a bit of time figuring out so thought it will be useful for anyone migrating from Pegasus Mail.

Since moving from Pegasus Mail to Thunderbird, the old mail had been tucked away. Today I needed a very old email in the old Pegasus archive to recover an old account password. A good excuse to take the time and export all the old mail to Thunderbird.

There are 2 ways to do it

  1. copy mail folders
  2. use IMAP

The first way is fine if there is not may folders to export. Unfortunately that was not my case. It took a great deal of frustration before I decided to go with the second way.

Here’s how.

Continue reading ‘Exporting Pegasus Mail to Thunderbird’

Popularity: 25%

Official support of QQ in Gaim

Published by
Ken
at 13 July, 2006 in Chat & E-mail, Related elsewhere and Editorial. 0 Comments

From Accepted Summer of Code Projects at Gaim.

Tim Ringenbach is mentoring Mark Huetsch on this project to bring QQ support to Gaim. QQ is an extremely popular IM network in China, but doesn’t have much of a foothold in the rest of the world.

This is a big plus for Gaim and QQ users.

“Extremely popular” is not even close to describe the usage of QQ in China. To many Chinese, QQ is the Internet. Many user do not know how to use the web browser but is totally at ease with QQ.

Suffice to say if you are in China and without QQ, you are out of the conversation.

There is already a hack using OpenQ to suport QQ in Gaim for a while. However it is often broken when QQ release a new version. QQ as a proprietary platform make every effort to be as incompatible as possible.

Looking forward to this.

Popularity: 14%

Free development softwares alternatives

Published by
Ken
at 12 July, 2006 in Editorial. 0 Comments

Beside business applications, I will also be looking developers’ softwares are tools. The term developer is use boardly to include not only programmers but also HTML designers, document writers, designers and other related functions.

Since these group of people are typically more savvy, my angle will be more of sharing and exploring ideas, tips and experiences. This is something new I’m trying.

First another quick round up of free softwares that I am using and where the commercial strongholds are still to be broken.

Category Currently using Free? Open Source? Alternative
Programming PHP Y Y
Programming Perl Y Y
Programming Ruby Y Y
Version control SVN Y Y
Version control client TortoiseSVN Y Y
Code editor Vim Y Y
SSH Putty Y Y
SFTP/FTP Filezilla Y Y
IDE Eclipse Y Y
Webserver Apache Y Y
Webserver package XAMPP Y Y
Compare/merging Winmerge Y Y
Design IDE Dreamweaver N N Nvu
Photo/Graphics Gimp Y Y

Anything else I missed?

Popularity: 4%

Free desktop applications roundup

Published by
Ken
at 12 July, 2006 in Editorial. 2 Comments

This is a list that I had complied. A quick round up of free/opensource softwares I am using and where the stronghold of commercial softwares are still to be broken.

If you have any good suggestions for the few unknown (?), please leave a comment.

Category Currently using Free? Open Source? Alternative
Web browser Firefox Y Y  
Instant Messaging Gaim Y Y  
SFTP/FTP client Filezilla Y Y  
Text Editing Notepad 2 Y Y  
Graphic viewer Irfanview Y N ?
Vector graphic Illustrator N N ?
PDF writer PDF Creator Y Y  
CD Writer WinXP builtin N N ?
Password management KeePass Y Y  
Anti-virus ClamWin Y Y  

Popularity: 56%

Welcome to Free Biz Ware

Published by
Ken
at 7 July, 2006 in about Free Biz Ware. 0 Comments

Hello there, thank you for coming by Free Biz Ware. My name is Ken and I am a small business owner. Here I will be sharing my experience in using free and opensource software in the office.

Free Biz Ware is a regular column introducing free and/or open source business softwares. Although the focus is on office softwares, I will also be covering personal productivity softwares and utilities for the desktop.

One feature unique this site is the evaluation of the softwares’ usability in an international, multi-language environment. Since my business is in China, it is a must that softwares support English and Chinese.

Feel free to share any experiences you have too. I’m looking forward to learn from you.

Popularity: 47%