Computer Software

Copyright 2007 by Stephen Vermeulen
Last updated: 2007 Aug 30
 A collection of information about various computer software packages that have come to my attention over the years. For computer software that addresses the needs of digital photography see my Digital Photography Software page.
  • 2007-Aug-30: Bookworm, sort of a solitaire version of scrabble
  • 2007-Aug-30: LinuxDisk technology, coming soon. More from Mountain View Data.
  • 2007-Aug-30: OpenAdapter is a project to supply free database interconnection technology
  • 2007-Aug-30: Dungeon Master returns in Java! Now I can loose another month of my life... And now there is FreeCiv too, an implementation of Civilization II.
  • 2007-Aug-30: tomcat and java servlets on Apache
  • 2007-Aug-30: Freeware database systems, including SleepyCat , PostGres , MySQL. And then there's the open source to the SAP database engine
  • 2007-Aug-30: JXTA, a peer-to-peer (P2P) framework for JAVA
  • 2007-Aug-30: the new windows XP hash system to reduce piracy
  • 2007-Aug-30: the Mozilla project
  • 2007-Aug-30: JPEG 2000 image compression is starting to show up (in mid-2001!)
  • 2007-Aug-30: NewOS , yet another free OS
  • 2007-Aug-30: the Doomsday algorithm for calculating days of the week
  • 2007-Aug-30: FreeGIS mapping software and data
  • 2007-Aug-30: Screen savers and pets and computer catnip
  • 2007-Aug-30: Nero cd burner software from Ahead Software
  • 2007-Aug-30: there is now a free CORBA ORB , from the guys you brought you VNC
  • 2007-Aug-30: and speaking of VNC this site has a VNC on a floppy project, though its not been updated for some time
  • 2007-Aug-30: and there is also the Tight VNC project which is attempting to make a VNC that uses less bandwidth
  • 2007-Aug-30: how does the Windows XP activation stuff work?
  • 2007-Aug-30: gaming gets interactive with this fight pad from Thrustmaster
  • 2007-Aug-30: reptile, perhaps the next step in peer-to-peer file sharing?
  • 2007-Aug-30: fyuse is not like reptile, rather its a roll-your-own portal system
  • 2007-Aug-30: Here is a Slashdot article on what good open source Windows software is available
  • 2007-Aug-30: Ability Office is another suite of office products, Slashdot covered it here
  • 2007-Aug-30: distcc is a program to allow one to distribute c/c++ compiles over several machines
  • 2007-Aug-30: pdfFactory from FinePrint.com is an alternative tool to create PDFs that could be used instead of Adobe's much more expensive Acrobat.
  • 2007-Aug-30: The Boa web server, a newish light weight server
  • 2007-Aug-30: the PC Phone Home tracking software for lost or stolen computers
  • 2007-Aug-30: DOSBox a project to allow DOS games to run under newer operating systems
  • 2007-Aug-30: wayV is a gesture based GUI system for Linux, and the author is porting it to Windows too
  • 2007-Aug-30: Paragon Partition Manager is a disk partitioning tool (resizing, conversion...)
  • 2007-Aug-30: EMule has the ability to download a single file from multiple sources, thus distributing the load
  • 2007-Aug-30: XviD, a free implementation of an MPEG-4 codec (a free version of DivX)
  • 2007-Aug-30: BitTorrent a distributed file transmission system. Some more information about this. In May'05 BitTorrent started to introduce a new version that is trackerless. Distributed bittorrent.
  • 2007-Aug-30: Could Rodi replace BitTorrent?
  • 2007-Aug-30: Blender is a 3D rendering package, now with raytracing. There's even access to it through python.
  • 2007-Aug-30: Cygwin a development environment for Windows
  • 2007-Aug-30: GCC the GNU C++ compiler, the C++ FAQ Lite, the C FAQ, Boost a site for C++ libraries, Standard C Library documentation, The GNU C Library documentation, strmode(3) returns archive flag state, see also chflags. Real Quick C++ guide. C++ in Action, a book by Bartosz Milewski is available on-line at Reliable Software, along with a tutorial on Win32 programming
  • 2007-Aug-30: A large collection of links about C++ from Robert Davies
  • 2007-Aug-30: Two new approaches to spam filtering, Markovan and Dobly (a noise reduction type) algortihms
  • 2007-Aug-30: The FireBird relational database project
  • 2007-Aug-30: Building a virtual office with open source software
  • 2007-Aug-30: Octave is a Gnu package (see here) like Matlab for working with mathematics. SciLab may be another. Maxima is another. Design Science makes MathType, which is an upgrade to Equation Editor component in Microsoft Word, and some other things, including the ability to create MathML.
  • 2007-Aug-30: The GIMP now has a version for Windows as well as Linux
  • 2007-Aug-30: A history of all the GUIs that have been developed for various platforms
  • 2007-Aug-30: Sonic makes DVD authoring software
  • 2007-Aug-30: Pump modeling software
  • 2007-Aug-30: The BBC has started an open source project to develop a better-than-MPEG2 video codec called Dirac, here is an update on Slashdot.
  • 2007-Aug-30: FreeCache is a website caching system (aimed at large files - greater than 5MB) intended to help reduce the load on small capacity sites
  • 2007-Aug-30: WordPress is a web publishing system, here is an overview of some of the other systems
  • 2007-Aug-30: The OpenCD is a set of prebuilt open source software for windows.
  • 2007-Aug-30: Entering accented characters (for foreign languages)
  • 2007-Aug-30: PolyBytes makes various things including an imageviewer called PolyView, as well as a programmer's library for reading and writing graphics files.
  • 2007-Aug-30: PC Demo creation software
  • 2007-Aug-30: Apple's Rendevous technology allows devices to autoconfigure over a TCP/IP network using standard basic protocols.
  • 2007-Aug-30: PaintShop Pro v8 is a good image editing package
  • 2007-Aug-30: Software to extract short sequences from long MP3 recordings
  • 2007-Aug-30: The BBC's open source video streaming software called DIRAC
  • 2007-Aug-30: What online software replacements for desktop APPS exist now?
  • 2007-Aug-30: 321 the makers of CVD copying software have been wiped out. But DVD Shrink are following on in their footsteps.
  • 2007-Aug-30: Coral P2P cache
  • 2007-Aug-30: Liberated Games is a site that is dedicated to games that used to be commercial but have since been released for public distribution
  • 2007-Aug-30: AbiWord versus MS Word a detailled comparision
  • 2007-Aug-30: Using a Gmail account to host a blog site
  • 2007-Aug-30: Sybase is releasing a free version of their database software
  • 2007-Aug-30: IrrLicht is an open, free, platform independent high performance 3D rendering system, discussed here on Slashdot
  • 2007-Aug-30: You Don't Know Jack About VOIP is discussed here
  • 2007-Aug-30: The VOIP Insurrection another VOIP artical is discussed here
  • 2007-Aug-30: NASA's WorldWind a viewer that allows you to zoom into anywhere in the world from outerspace, discussed here
  • 2007-Aug-30: Google launches their desktop search engine, great news, but what is Google's business plan here? Are they going to supply Google Adds to your desktop? Or is it to get you used to running Google software so that you're ready to buy their next big thing when it comes out? It also seems unlikely to me that this implements all the algorithms of the full web searcher, otherwise its just a matter of time before its disassembled and Google's secrets are known to all. One possible issue with this is that it subverts windows security.
  • 2007-Aug-30: ZoneMinder is a security camera monitoring application for Linux
  • 2007-Aug-30: A review of Microsoft's first anti-spyware tool
  • 2007-Aug-30: Exeem, a P2P system based on BitTorrent has gone into public beta test (Jan'05), see BitTorrent.net for more links. Based on this artical one probably would be advised to try eXeem Lite instead.
  • 2007-Aug-30: Mar'05: BitTorrent version 4 has been released
  • 2007-Aug-30: Gnumeric a free spreadsheet for UNIX and Windows
  • 2007-Aug-30: DocuDesk makes a low-cost PDF writer
  • 2007-Aug-30: Trolltech releases QT 4.0, a cross-platform GUI development toolkit, discussed here on Slashdot.
  • 2007-Aug-30: VirtualDub is a free video editing package
  • 2007-Aug-30: Jecology, a simple ecology simulator somewhat reminiscent of the original game of life
  • 2007-Aug-30: ABC Amber Conversion & Merging Software makes a large variety of file format conversion programs, including some quite specialized ones (such as PDF to image file conversion).
  • 2007-Aug-30: A list of programs that can be run directly from a USB drive.
  • 2007-Aug-30: Online Pokerbots may take over the game
  • 2007-Aug-30: A review of 29 structured drawing programs
  • 2007-Aug-30: The state of Massachusetts is mandating that all file formats be open
  • 2007-Aug-30: WinRAR is another file archiver and compressor program, similar in function to WinZIP
  • 2007-Aug-30: Slashdot discusses the email infrastructure for 1 Million accounts (that's going to be a lot of spam!)
  • 2007-Aug-30: DAZ Studio, free 3D animation software from DAZ
  • 2007-Aug-30: MayaVi, a data visualization package written in Python
  • 2007-Aug-30: Anvil Studio, is a music editing package that has a free core and a number of commercial add on modules
  • 2007-Aug-30: SeaMonkey, a project to continue the development of the Mozilla browser
  • 2007-Aug-30: A good collection of links to useful software and documentation from MrBass
  • 2007-Aug-30: A Slashdot review of: Learning GNU Emacs, 3rd Edition, Debra Cameron, James Elliott, Marc Loy, Eric Raymond & Bill Rosenblatt, ISBN 0596006489.
  • 2007-Aug-30: The Zimbra Collaboration Suite, is an Exchange replacement
  • 2007-Aug-30: Text-only gaming is still alive and kicking
  • 2007-Aug-30: How-to: Stream almost anything using VLC, from Engadget. VLC is a cross-platform media player and streaming server
  • 2007-Aug-30: The Glide file sharing service went live 1-Dec-05
  • 2007-Aug-30: A Slashdot review of The TCP/IP Guide: A Comprehensive, Illustrated Internet Protocols Reference, by Charles Kozierok, ISBN 159327047X.
  • 2007-Aug-30: Portable OpenOffice is an installation of OpenOffice on a USB drive that allows you to run the software from the USB drive without having to install anything (discussed here on Slashdot).
  • 2007-Aug-30: Rounding algorithms, boring but surprisingly diverse
  • 2007-Aug-30: Microsoft has a list of all the companies that partner with it in the area of Virus control.
  • 2007-Aug-30: CNet suggests dumping Norton and moving to Trend PC-cillin for virus scanning and protection
  • 2007-Aug-30: Avast! makes a number of anti-virus products that get good reviews, including a free for home non-commercial use package.
  • 2007-Aug-30: DivX Codec's for Windows and MAC are available here
  • 2007-Aug-30: AVSMedia sells video format conversion software, as well as a pretty decent video editing package (which includes the ability to include still images and do simulated pans and zooms within them). They have a fully functional try-before-buy version that just puts a logo in the middle of the output, so its easy to test to see if it will work for you.
  • 2007-Aug-30: www.winpcap.org the home for WinPcap, the Windows Packet Capture Library
  • 2007-Aug-30: Ethereal, a network protocl analyzer that uses WinPcap. In June'06 this changed its name to WireShark.
  • 2007-Aug-30: Slashdot discusses ways to set up SSH tunnels
  • 2007-Aug-30: XULRunner, this is a runtime package that can host XUL+XPCOM applications. There is a tutorial here.
  • 2007-Aug-30: XDesk is a multiple virtual destop for Windows, allowing you to have several different workspaces, each with its own set of windows open at the same time. Even works with multiple monitor PCs, for those who really like to work on a lot of things at once. This Slashdot artical discusses some other alternatives.
  • 2007-Aug-30: SCTP is a new transport layer protocol (like UDP and TCP) but with advantages over both (including support for multi-homed devices and redundancy and failover), discussed here on Slashdot.
  • 2007-Aug-30: ImageMagick, is a free image manipulation program it is described in: The Definitive Guide to ImageMagick, by Michael Still, ISBN 1590595904.
  • 2007-Aug-30: CutePDF is a free PDF writer. Pdf995 offers a fairly low cost solution for PDF creation.
  • 2007-Aug-30: AjaxWrite, a word processor delivered over the web and run in your web browser using Ajax, discussed here on Slashdot
  • 2007-Aug-30: The Freenet project has introduced (Apr'06) a new version that includes a more stealthy approach to setting up peers.
  • 2007-Aug-30: SketchUp, in Apr'06 was bought by Google and a free personal version has been released. This is a 3D model design package that offers integration with GoogleEarth.
  • 2007-Aug-30: A Slashdot artical discussing free virus scanners.
  • 2007-Aug-30: Engadget examines the best videoconferencing software.
  • 2007-Aug-30: Eraser, is a secure file, directory, free space and entire disk erasing (wiping) package.
  • 2007-Aug-30: A listing of a number of free disk erasure tools (and links to some of the commerical packages)
  • 2007-Aug-30: Inkscape, an open-source, SVG-based, vector graphics editor, runs on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux
  • 2007-Aug-30: Mozilla's Thunderbird Mail FAQ answers some questions about backing up and migrating email files between versions. The format of the actual mail files and folders has not changed in a long time, so you can quite easily bring in files from previous versions (even old versions of Netscape) for use. Moving address books between profiles is discussed here. Backing up and restoring a Thunderbird profile (which contains all the settings and data for a user) is pretty stright forward, and is discussed here. the idea is to find the user's profile directory and copy it (when Thunderbird is not running) then to restore it one just needs to put it on a convenient drive and change the profiles.ini file to point to the restored directory.
  • 2007-Aug-30: Momento, is a package for making DVD movies out of still photographs, it includes the ability to add audio tracks, transitions between slides and simulate motion effects.
  • 2007-Aug-30: Xara Xtreme is a vector drawing package (for graphic artists) that is available in a low-cost ($79) Windows version and a open-sourced Linux version
  • 2007-Aug-30: IsoBuster, is a utility that will allow you to extract files from within CD and DVD ISO image files, among other things.
  • 2007-Aug-30: Test TCP (pcattcp.exe) is another port to Windows of the ttcp UNIX application (Microsoft uses its own version called NTttcp for a lot of network performance benchmarking), its useful for doing quick sanity tests on network performance issues (such as figuring out if your switch and NIC are agreeing on full versus half duplex), its very easy to set up (no install appart from copying a couple of files to the machines under test is needed) and quick to run.
  • 2007-Aug-30: Performance Tuning Guidelines for Windows 2003 Server, the html version from Google's cache. This talks a bit about additional registry settings that might need applying to Windows to make a gigabit LAN really perform well. This sort of tuning is also discussed here.
  • 2007-Aug-30: matroska.org, the home of the open standard audio/video container called Matroska - usually files of this type are given an .mkv extension.
  • 2007-Aug-30: Google's "Slack" is a software distribution system that they use to distribute software across their servers
  • 2007-Aug-30: CoolUtils.com makes Total Image Converter and a host of other file conversion and manipulation utilities (video, audio, office documents, PDF, ...)
  • 2007-Aug-30: OpenDocument is now (Dec'06) an official standard
  • 2007-Aug-30: Why upgrading to Office 2007 might be a bad idea
  • 2007-Aug-30: Docvert, a web service that converts MSWord format doc files into Oasis OpenDocument and HTML, behind the scenes it is using OpenOffice and Abiword to do the conversions.
  • 2007-Aug-30: VioLet Composer, open-source music composition software, this works with both PCM and wavelet sound processing. Discussed here on Slashdot. Another similar thing is modplug.
  • 2007-Aug-30: Mixing the Lightning calendaring extension for Thunderbird with the Google Calendar
  • 2007-Aug-30: Mathematica version 6 was released in May'07, this is a remarkable piece of software for those who are doing mathematical or numerical research. Discussed here on Slashdot. The Wolfram Demonstrations project is and interesting place to look for examples of its use.
  • 2007-Aug-30: Slashdot reviews: Windows PowerShell in Action, by Bruce Payette, ISBN 1932394907.
  • 2007-Aug-30: Slashdot discusses speach recognition packages
  • 2007-Aug-30: Should software for work take design cues from video games? Discussed here on Slashdot.
  • 2007-Aug-30: Tuning your Firefox with the about:config system
  • 2007-Aug-30: LyX, a GUI frontend to TeX
  • 2007-Aug-30: BitPim is a program that allows you to view and manipulate data on many CDMA phones
  • 2007-Aug-30: SnapSync from FutureDial will synchronize data between your cell phone and computer
  • 2007-Aug-30: A discussion of the Microsoft Office 2007 .bin file format
  • 2007-Aug-30: The POV-Ray raytracer program
  • 2007-Aug-30: The Cygwin project brings a UNIX API to Windows, which allows easy porting of UNIX tools
  • 2007-Aug-30: An XWindows server for Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP using Cygwin
  • 2007-Aug-30: Eclipse is a generic Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
  • 2007-Aug-30: Spheres of Chaos and Streamer from Iain McLeod
  • 2007-Aug-30: MAME the arcade game emulator project
  • 2007-Aug-30: DMS - a Dead Man's Switch for your PC
  • 2007-Aug-30: The XEmacs programmer's text editor
  • 2007-Aug-30: Free Byte has a convenient list of the various free paint programs that are available currently.
  • 2007-Aug-30: CD Anywhere, from VCOM, allows one to load CDROM images onto a hard drive and then run them as if the CDROM was inserted into a drive.
  • 2007-Aug-30: GNU Radio, implements tuning and decoding of signals in software
  • 2007-Aug-30: BZFlag is an open sourced, free, multi-player tank shoot-em-up game
  • 2007-Aug-30: Netswitcher is a handy tool for laptops (low cost too) that will reconfigure the network settings for you when you move a laptop from one network to another.
  • 2007-Aug-30: Geodesic makes some software development support tools (like Great Circle) that look for memory leaks and such. We recently had very good success with this package at work, in fact we turned to it when Purify consistently failed to work. If you are writing complex software that is programmed in multiple languages (ours uses C++, FORTRAN and JAVA) and interacts with an object database (such as ObjectStore) this might be worth a try. I have used a similar tool from Rational Software called Purify, though over the years this has got harder and harder to run (probably because the program we are running it on has got bigger and bigger). GlowCode also makes a package for code profiling and leak detection that sounds promising, and it is a lot more reasonably priced than Purify and GreatCircle. If you are doing development with Java, then OptimizeIt is an excellent tool to have. This was written by VMGear and later picked up by Borland. This Slashdot article also includes some freeware memory leak references, such as this page which has further references.
  • 2007-Aug-30: AbiWord is a free word processor with more of what Word or WordPerfect have to offer
  • 2007-Aug-30: And OpenOffice is reviewed here
  • 2007-Aug-30: And Star Office has just reached 6.0
  • 2007-Aug-30: SOT Office 2002 is another alternative to Microsoft Office
  • 2007-Aug-30: ThinkFree Office is another low-cost alternative to Microsoft Office.
  • 2007-Aug-30: Globe Productive is a office productivity suite that started on BeOS and is now being ported to Windows, hopefully it can free us from Microsoft's incredible bloat-wear. Its reviewed here by Ars Technica, and has been Slashdotted here. It has a very attractive "family license" which lets you install it on all your computers at home and even on you machine at work! According to this Slashdot article it is going to be GPL licensed.
  • 2007-Aug-30: Wolfram Research the authors of Mathematica, its not cheap but may save you a big head ache. I wonder if they wouldn't sell a lot more of these if they had a more "normal" price for the software?
  • 2007-Aug-30: TinyApps.org trys to publicise small (i.e. floppy disk sized) apps for the PC
  • 2007-Aug-30: WinImage is a disk imager for floppies (and other disks) rather like the old DMS from Amiga days
  • 2007-Aug-30: Arkeia has network backup software for mixed Unix/Windows networks
  • 2007-Aug-30: The Watcomm C++ and FORTRAN compilers are going open source
  • 2007-Aug-30: FAX software from SmithMicro
  • 2007-Aug-30: NewTech Infosystems makes CD burner and backup software
  • 2007-Aug-30: a comparision of some RDBMS products
  • 2007-Aug-30: A book called Thinking In Python is online
  • 2007-Aug-30: Python for the Palm Pilot
  • 2007-Aug-30: Cross Platform Packaging software
  • 2007-Aug-30: CD Recordable FAQ
  • 2007-Aug-30: Easy CD Creator 5 burner software from Roxio
  • 2007-Aug-30: WinOnCD CD burner now owned by Roxio
  • 2007-Aug-30: RecordNow MAX CD burning software that includes DVD capability
  • 2007-Aug-30: CD-R IsoBuster freeware


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