The LibreOffice Suite consists of six separate applications. Comparing it to Microsoft’s Office product, you get the following applications.

Writer = Word
Calc = Excel
Base = Access
Impress = PowerPoint

They also have Draw, a program the lets you build sketches and diagrams and Math is an equation editor. The suite maintains compatibility with all competitors file formats. You can import or save from Word, Excel and PowerPoint. The application is open source and licensed under the LGPL. What that means for you is that it is free. Other handy features, such as a built in PDF creator allows you to save documents in a format that anyone can easily read.

So, if you looking for a Microsoft Office alternative or just need a simple word processor, this could be your solution. Learn more at http://www.libreoffice.org

Favorite Apps

Yoono Web

Our favorite social network application. Easily add and interact with all of your social networks in one place. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and many others are available. Update your status, comment, and share easily with pop-up options dependent on the social network. You can even post status updates to all networks at once.

Remember The Milk

Our favorite task list available with a single click.

Google Books

Easy access to Google’s online book store. Buy new books, find free books, create your own catalog.

Favorite Extensions

Adblock Plus

Blocks ads using the same filter from Firefox. Also allows you to selectively view ads. If you add our site as an exception we would be very grateful : )

Awesome Screenshot

Allows you to capture the visible portion of a web page, a selected region or the entire web page. This screen shot tool also has great tools for making notations using common drawing tools. You can save the image locally or share the finished image.

Goo.gl Shortener

An easy way to shorten URLs using Google’s URL Shortening service. Handy for making URLs tiny for posting status updates etc, where your text length is limited.

Google Similar Pages

We just love this extension. With a single click, this extension will suggest pages that are similar to the page your are currently viewing. Surprisingly accurate and useful.

IE Tab
The traditional way of viewing pages in Internet Explorer directly in Chrome.

Incredible Start Page

While, we like Chrome’s new tab page, this extension ups the ante. Incredible start page organizes all of your bookmarks from your bookmarks toolbar and apps in a large window. It also shows recently closed sites and all bookmarks list.

Take a look at the extensions and apps in the Chrome store. https://chrome.google.com/webstore?hl=en-US

Apple Logo | CC

Just this morning, Apple’s cute little update notifier popped up from the systray. Install Safari. No. Update Itunes and Quicktime. OK. The install has been running for over an hour. Just what the hell are you doing to my system. What on earth requires your install to take this long. This install does have to download a 74.28MB file to start with, so I should cut it some slack right? NO WAY! I can download an entire movie in a fraction of the time that this install takes. What else is it doing? Install probably needs to unpack files from the install file. That might take a couple of minutes. I needs to copy files to the right locations. It might even need to update Windows registry or .NET. But, a hour? The computer is a quad core with 8 gigs of ram. Maybe I don’t have enough system resources.

Furthermore, you make me install Quicktime, which is like the evil step child of video applications. The only thing I can do with the free version of Quicktime is play files, which it does very poorly. The freely available VLC is super fast and can do way more than play those pesky Quicktime formats.

Let’s get to Itunes itself. It seems like a necessary evil if you have any intention of using the app store. It is also guaranteed to be SLOW. Don’t even think about putting your music files on a network drive. The program usually responds like a poorly written Visual Basic application, seizing at every opportunity it gets. Don’t get too click happy, it heard you, it just isn’t responding.

We love Apple hardware, we are even big fans of OS X, we are NOT fans of your software ports for non-apple computers. Wake up and treat all of your customers with a little respect.

Install still running…

The browser is just plain fast. Whether it is faster or not, we aren’t sure, but it certainly feels faster. The interface is lean and stays out of our way, giving us more room to actually view web sites. Downloads show as an icon at the bottom where the status bar is in most applications. The implementation is beautiful and once again limits the clutter on the screen. When you install the application it asks what search engine you would like to use by default. They don’t even default to Google. Unreal! To search within Chrome, you can still use the Ctrl-E keyboard shortcut or simply type your keywords directly in the URL box. What about language translations? No need to install a plugin or extension. Chrome asks if you want to translate the page any time you visit a page that doesn’t match your default language.

If you want other options, The Chrome Web Store is growing daily. You can find everything from games to productivity extensions. Just visit chrome.google.com/webstore to find whatever suits your fancy.

About the only thing missing from this browser is Firebug, our favorite tool for debugging and evaluating web sites. Chrome does have developer tools which are getting better by the day.

Take a few minutes to give this browser a try. www.google.com/chrome

The Columbus Public Library has a relationship with Overdrive as do many public libraries across the country. Unfortunately, Overdrive distributes most books in epub format. The Kindle does not support this format. To get the book onto your Kindle you need to convert it to a format that the Kindle can read. The Kindle does support the Mobi format and you can easily convert the file using Open Source software.

To get the book, you will need a few things.

1. Your Library card
2. Adobe Digital Editions
3. Overdrive Media Console

We suggest downloading and installing the software before attempting to checkout an ebook from your library. Once the software is installed, you can access Overdrive from your library’s web site or by visiting Overdrive directly. Even though the ebooks are digital, Overdrive still limits how many copies are available. So, much like the real library you may have to place a hold on a popular item. Once a book is available, you will be able to add it to your cart and start the download.

You have downloaded the book and now need to convert it. The software of choice is called Calibre.

After installing Calibre, it will run you through a wizard when it first runs. The wizard is very clear and self-explanatory. To convert a book, you will need to add the book to Calibre before you can convert it. Once you have added the book, select it in the middle view and click convert. That’s pretty much it. It will create a Mobi file which you can copy to your Kindle or optionally email to yourself through Amazon’s service.

So, you might have had a problem. It might tell you that the download is protected and cannot be converted. Overdrive protects many of its books with DRM and will prevent Calibre from converting the book. The solution is to remove the DRM, however, this is against the law.

DRM or Digital Rights Management is protected in the United States under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This laws makes it illegal to remove copy protection. We personally find this law ridiculous, but we must warn you that it is indeed against the law.

So, if you still want to remove the DRM, you can easily find the tools on the internet. The easiest to find is a set of scripts for a scripting language called Python. To use the scripts you will need to install Python as well as a cryptography module.

Tools

1. Python
2. PyCrypto
3. Ineptkey.pyw (Windows) or Ineptkeymac.pyw (OS X) Search on Google
4. Ineptepub.pyw Search on Google

Because of the DMCA, we cannot host the inept files. You can easily find them by searching for them on Google. Links are provided above.

Install Python, then the crypto module. Once, Python is installed, you can run ineptkey.pyw by simply double clicking on it. This program will create the keys file, called adeptkey.der.

To remove the DRM from your ebook(s), you first run the ineptepub.pyw. This will open a window with three options. It will most likely have the key file already populated. The remaining two are the input path and output path. The great thing about this tool is that it will remove DRM on multiple books at the same time. Just put them all in one directly and set your input path to that directory. Set the output directory to a folder where you want the ebooks without DRM to be saved. Lastly, click the Decrypt Whole Directorybutton and wait for it to finish.

That’s it. After you have removed the DRM, you can simply go back to Calibre and convert them to your format of choice. Have fun playing with your new Kindle.

Intel’s AppUp might just be your fix. Intel has created both an application center as well as an app store to provide small applications to Windows. Many of the popular apps from Apple’s App Store are available here as well. Take for example Angry Birds, the physics based game is now available. While targeting NetBooks, you can run the application on any computer that has a supported operating system.

The application center is available for Windows XP, Windows 7 and Moblin. You can find the installer on their main page. http://www.appup.com/

Once you have installed the AppUp application you need to register. You do not need to register a credit card if you are only going to download free applications.

The AppUp store is friendly enough. While it doesn’t have the polish of the Apple app store, it is functional. Installing applications might prompt you with a User Access Control window asking whether you want this application to modify your system if you are running on Windows 7. This can be somewhat cryptic since the applications being installed aren’t named with the application’s title. You can click on the “show details” drop down at the bottom of the window to get more details on the application.This should include the Intel AppUp name somewhere in the path to the download.

After installing the application, you simply click on the applications icon in the My Apps tab.

Please leave a comment if you have a favorite application.

Profile Switcher

Installing this extension first will make trying out some of the new extensions painless. You may not be aware but Firefox allows you to create multiple profiles. This allows you, for example to create an profile for everyday web browsing and maybe another social networking, and maybe another for web development. You can create and load profiles from a command line, but this extension makes it truly painless. It adds a couple of options to create new profiles as well as open previously created profiles.

Once you install this extension, create a profile to test your new extensions without messing with your default profile.

Download Them All

Download multiple items without the pain of saving each one individually. This extension has built in filtering allowing  you to quickly narrow the content that most interests you. For example, click the jpg checkbox then quickly download all jpg images on the page with a single click. Need to download all pdfs? No Problem. Additionally Download Them All has renaming options, increases download speed, and can pause and resume downloads.

Download Helper

A handy tool for downloading videos from many sites including YouTube. You can then extract audio from the video streams, view them on your TV etc.

All In One Gestures

Interesting extension to allow gesture based navigation. You can modify any gesture and add new ones to handle your specific needs. Out of the box, the gestures work by holding the right mouse button and dragging in a single or multiple directions.

Simple Navigation
- Click and drag left navigates to the last page you viewed
- Click and drag right navigates to the next page
- Click and drag up opens a new tab
- Click and drag up opens a new window

More Advanced
- Click and drag up and then down reloads the current page
- Click and drag right, down, left and up opens page in full screen

All In One Sidebar

Organizes many common windows as sidebar panels. Downloads neatly tuck out of the way along with addons, history etc. Vastly improves usability by limiting needing to open windows or leaving windows open while operations finish.

Delicious Bookmarks

Recently there has been a lot of people talking about the demise of Delicious.com. Yahoo has indeed put the company up for sale, but hopefully someone will be willing to take ownership of this fantastic web site. This extension allows you to quickly save and access your bookmarks from the site. Bookmarks are available regardless of what computer you are working on or where you are located.

WebMail Notifier

Not only supports GMail but Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL and many more. Supports multiple accounts and notifies you of new messages as they arrive. Extension is small and out of the way, residing in the status bar area.

Password Exporter

Short and simple, the extension adds options to allow exporting and importing passwords. This allows easily moving your passwords between computers. We should not, that there are extensions that sync passwords across multiple computers, but we just aren’t that trusting.

IE Tab

Good old Microsoft. Love or Hate them, they still have the most widely used web browser in most locations around the world. Web developers are certainly aware of this and often modify their pages to display properly in IE and sometimes fail to make them look correct in other browsers. You might also need to use ActiveX Controls which only work in IE. Regardless of the reason, this extension allows you to open a page inside of a tab of Firefox or open the current page outside of Firefox in IE itself. Very handy extension.

Quick Translator

Very lightweight translation tool. Resides in a small icon in the status bar at the bottom right of your browser or a toolbar icon. Quickly translate selected text or the entire page to the language of your choice. Best translation extension we have found.

Bug Me Not

Cool and easy extension to get you past nagging registration screens. Many web site allow free access but require that you register. This invariably results in more email that you don’t want or need. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way past the process? This extension is your solution. Just install and go to a web site that requires registering before using. Assuming that the site is big enough to be in Bug Me Nots database, you can simply go to the login page, right click on any of the form fields and selected “login using Bugmenot”

Yoono

Here is your social butler. This extension creates a sidebar that contains all of its controls as well as display screens. Support for Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, Foursquare, FreiendFeed and others allows you to never be far away from your social contacts. Truly a full featured social application.

Shorten URL

Shortens the current page’s URL to a short URL that can be used on services such as Twitter that limit the amount of text you can send at one time. Supports more than 100 different services. Bit.ly is our favorite.

Digg Toolbar

If you are a Digg user than this is self explanatory. Simply connects you to the Digg web site allowing you to Digg new stories or see what is popular on Digg.

StumbleUpon Toolbar

Another Toolbar, this one for StumpleUpon. Same as Digg but for the StumbleUpon web site.

Have more must have extensions for Firefox? Leave us a comment.

My problem, is that coming from a PC background, I have often wanted to Ctrl-Alt-Delete my way to the task manager to kill an unruly application or process. When I queried my friends none of them could tell me how to force quit an application from the keyboard. They all suggested going to the finder and selecting force quit from the menu. The problem is that some application freezes makes it difficult or impossible to get back to the finder.

Solution came just yesterday via How To Geek. They have an article on 20 OS X Keyboard Shortcuts that include two shortcuts to massage my way out of frozen application hell.

Accessing the force quit menu is as simple as pressing Opt-Cmd-Escape at the same time. Nice

Force quitting the active application is also possible by pressing  Shift-Cmd-Opt and Escape for three seconds. This will automatically kill the active application without needing to go through the force quit menu.

Go to How To Geek to read more on their great list of useful Keyboard Shortcuts for OS X.

The reality is that simple microfiber clothes work much better with no cleaning solution necessary. Microfiber towels can be purchased virtually anyplace and don’t require soap or chemicals to work. Just rub the screen with a clean dry microfiber cloth until clean. Done. If your microfiber cloth gets dirty, just throw it in the laundry with the rest of the clothes and you are ready for your next cleaning job.

Save yourself some money and buy a microfiber cloth and use it to clean all of your electronic screens. It will work whether you have an old laptop screen, shiny new iPad or maybe an older iPhone.

Today, we are going to tackle a common problem with the cymbals involving the cord. To test whether this might be your problem, simply go into practice in Guitar Hero or Rock Band so you can get visual feedback on your drums. You should be able to press the wire to one side while drumming on the cymbal. You might find that pressing one direction results in your cymbal magically working again. To fix this problem you can buy replacement cables from several web sites. If you are more inclined to fix it yourself, then read on.

Mini stereo phone plugs are either meant to accept 2 or 3 wires. You can use either for this fix, but the wire coming from the drum kit only has two wires. We bought a replacement mini stereo phone plug from Radio Shack for less than $4.00.

Now for the hard part. Convince yourself that the game doesn’t work as is, so it isn’t likely that you will damage it further. Take scissors, side cutters or your cutting instrument of choice and cut the end off of the cymbal connector. This is the part that plugs into your cymbal and what you will be replacing. You will then need to remove the insulation( the rubber coating) from the wire for about 1/2 an inch. The video below shows a clever way to strip the insulation without cutting into the shielding wires. You can try to use normal wire strippers, but this method seemed for more accurate. What is left looks like a silver wire. There are many individual wires around the outside of another coated wire. All of these wires will be twisted together to make the wire for the sleeve. The center wire needs to have some insulation stripped from it as well so that it can be soldered to the pin of the connector. Don’t get carried away here. Just strip about half of the amount from last time, or about a 1/4 of an inch. You want to try to prevent these wires from touching after they are soldered. They will create a short if they touch.

Once you have your wire prepared, you will need to slide the connector cover onto the wire. We taped this away from the end of the wire to prevent it from falling into our work. Lastly, we will solder the wires onto the pins. The shielding wires should be twisted together at this point forming what looks like another wire. This wire will be soldered onto the sleeve pin. This pin is most likely on the right hand side and might be longer than the other one. If you look carefully, the pins are fairly easy to identify. The tip pin connects to the center of the connector. The sleeve pin is an extension of the sleeve on the outside of the connector. The center wire will be soldered to the tip pin.

So to clarify. Tip pin = center wire, Sleeve pin = shielding wires that have been twisted together.

A Tip. Soldering is much easier if you tin both the wires and the connectors.

Below is a video detailing this process. In this case, they have a three wire cable, but you can simply ignore the shielding in this case. It gives good detail on tinning the connectors and wires. It also shows the method mentioned above for removing the insulation. All in all, this isn’t a hard fix and should take less than 30 minutes.