Open source software's - You can't Resist !

Few weeks back I posted a list of must-try open source software's. Taking that forward, here is a list of other open source software's that are very handy and work really well. Once you start liking open-source software's you will never look on PAID software's.

RSS Readers

RSSOwl
RSSOwl is one of many open source RSS readers. In other words, it enables you to use one program to keep track of the content of a lot of different blogs, news sites, stock tickers etc. If you have a laptop, it’s preferable to using sites like Bloglines, Google Reader, Netvibes etc; but if you’re on a desktop, a web-based feed manager might be better.
Two other products that you also try are - RssBandit, BlogBridge


File Transfer

Filezilla (Replaces WinFTP)
If you have ever had the need to transfer files from one computer to another, you know what I am talking about. This is a quick, easy to use application that does file transfers, and that too sweetly :-)

Editors

Keynote
If your job involves taking notes and organizing them, this is the killer app for you. Even though the product will have no new feature addition (the author is hard pressed for time and can't work on this product), it serves the job well as it is. The cool feature set includes organizing your notes in a tree / hierarchical format and password protecting them.

Freemind
Freemind is a “mind mapping” software program. If this doesn't make you say "Wow", there is something wrong with you (just kidding!). In simple words, it enables you to brainstorm and link ideas together quickly and easily. You create "maps" of ideas/concepts similar to what you would do on a whiteboard.

Notepad2 (Replaces Notepad)
Notepad2 is a replacement for the traditional Windows Notepad and adds a lot of features: multiple documents; line, word, and character counts; text highlighting of tags. For Linux users, you can say its like a graphical vim user interface.


Media Player / Rippers

MusikCube (Replaces WinAmp, iTunes)
MusikCube is easily the best choice available for a music organizer and player. It organizes your mp3s, makes it really easy and really fast to find them, and allows you to make some incredibly clever smart playlists. It is very close to a amarok version for windows.

Handbrake
Just load your DVD disc in your drive and boom this software will take care of all your ripping needs. You can rip DVDs and save them on your laptop and enjoy movies on your trip / vacation. Currently the windows version of the product needs more work, but otherwise the product works like a charm on Max-OS and Linux.


Safety, Security and Encryption

KeePass
KeePass is a program that securely stores and manages the gazillion passwords we all use on a daily basis. Over a period of few years, everyone ends up having hundred's of username and passwords and keeping track of all becomes cumbersome. KeePass keeps them all for me and keeps them safe.

TrueCrypt
TrueCrypt enables you to store files securely. You can create space on your hard-drive and store files there or convert a memory stick into a strongly encrypted data storage device i.e., store personal data without having to worry about its security. Sample cases can include keeping your accounts, bank statements etc.

Miscellaneous Utilities

PDFCreator (Replaces Adobe Acrobat)
PDFCreator creates a virtual printer on your computer and if you print a document to this virtual printer from any program, creates a PDF of that document that can be read on any computer with Acrobat Reader on it. You don't need to shell out money for Adobe Professional or any other utility when this sweet utility does the same job for you totally free !

GnuCash (Replaces Microsoft Money or Quicken)
GnuCash is a slimmed-down version of Microsoft Money and Quicken packages, but it contains all of the features a user wants for managing money. The interface is incredibly simple, but the software has a lot of punch.

Online Indian Music - Radio Teentaal

I recently discovered Radio Teentaal, a web-radio dedicated to "100% Indian music". The cool thing is - it works perfectly in Linux :-)

Currently the radio is being streamed from Paris, certainly no surprise that it is being streamed from some western country, since such kind of bandwidth is still not really affordable/available in India. It was surprising that I could not find anything interesting / similar from UK, US, Canada or another English-speaking country with large NRI community.

Anyway, they play the latest popular Bollywood beats, no commercials, no interruptions, not even the self-advertisement jingles. Just pure music, at 128kBps stereo mp3. They also have a 64kBps version if you cant enjoy the high bandwidth.

Creating playable DVD discs

Adam Pash has a very detailed and useful post about the software DVD Flick. It lets you write any video file to DVD discs so that you can play them on your TV. In simple words, it lets you burn those DVDRip / Divx / Xvid files that you have downloaded to a DVD disc to be enjoyed on your TV :-)

Key Features
- Free (Open source)
- Transcodes AVI, MPG, MOV and WMV files to MPEG-2 and burns your DVD in one shot.
- Lets you easily configure chapters and add sound tracks and subtitles.
- Lets you write the final project to ISO files.

Simple step guide -
1. Download and install DVD Flick
2. Configure settings - (size of media, NTSC/Pal, ISO or Burn to DVD)
3. Add the video files and configure chapter duration
4. Burn / Create.

Posts for this week

Author - Sharad

News roundup for this week. My list of must-read articles.

• Encrypting you instant messages with GAIM
  To keep instant messages - between you and your wife/girlfriend from office or potential investor about your stealth startup - secure and away from prying eyes.
  
  
• Hiding data in image files - easy steganography tools
  The digital equivalent of invisible ink is steganography software, apps that embed files and data inside other files, hidden from everyone who doesn't know any better.
  
  
• International calls for local charges
  All free calls was a recent service that opened out of Iowa. You can make calls to over 30 countries just by dialing to their number. In short -
  
1. Dial 712-858-8094.
2. Listen to instructions in Mandarin, Spanish and English.
3. Dial 011 followed by country code and number. No sign up, no fees, no hidden charges, unlimited call time. Guranteed privacy
   

Which is the best IIT ?

Author: Sharad

A question that amazes almost everyone who either aspires to join IIT or has some contacts there. A question that runs high in debates among students. A question that might never have a definite answer. A question that is perennially debatable.

Even though this topic might not be in the best interest of me, I would surely like to give a shot at this one and see how judgemental I can be.

A quick start - Top JEE ranker's joining IIT in 2006. Source PanIIT.

IIT Bombay	46
IIT Delhi	28
IIT Guwahati	0
IIT Kanpur	20
IIT Kharagpur	0
IIT Madras	6
IIT Roorkee	0

Even though this might not be the best criteria to judge - it still reflects something very concrete - the choice of top 100 ranker's. Definitely there must have been something that influenced the decision of 46 students to join IIT Bombay. Was it totally a regional effect i.e. more students made it through JEE from the region in and around Bombay? My instincts tell me that cannot be the case. It still wouldn't have resulted in 0 admissions to IIT-G, Kgp and R. Geographically speaking, central position of Bombay along with the fact that is the financial capital of India indeed helps in attracting better students. This does explain why fewer students might prefer to go to Kanpur, but then should the numbers have been so different for Delhi?

So what other criterion's can one use to differentiate between the IIT's? I don't wanna digress into discussing (bashing) the rankings that sites like Rediff, Times of India or India Today publish. Some one suggested that rank them on research output. (Wikipedia's article on IIT says - IITs fall short in many parameters that are considered for educational rankings. The criteria for ranking(ranking methodology) prominently include internationally recognised research output, in which the IITs do not achieve notable success.)

I took a little inspiration from true-it-is journal and realized it would be useful to use Google scholar to measure this. The steps I used were like this. I typed in the following queries "Indian Institute of Technology" "Madras" -Chennai and then "Indian Institute of Technology" "Chennai" -Madras and eventually "Indian Institute of Technology" "Madras" "Chennai". The same technique for "IIT" "Madras" -Chennai and so on. I added up the number of hits - so that measures just plain quantity. I scanned the first page (only) and noted down the largest number of cites that I saw on any paper. For Roorkee I included University of Roorkee in my search. Here's what I found out -

Campus	Number of hits	Max. citations
Delhi	23,420	343
Bombay	19,870	835
Madras	17,320	312
Kanpur	14,660	2227
Kharagpur	13,300	376
Roorkee	6023	59
Guwahati	1460	17

The top 4 IITs look quite similar with IIT D topping the list with 23k hits. IIT-K even though has very few hits compared to IIT-D, it still ranks first in the maximum number of citations - a whooping 2,000+ citations. More importantly, it brings forward the truth that IIT-R and IIT-G have to work real hard !

Nevertheless, there are many many other factors that need to be considered for developing a more comprehensive listing. Based on what I evaluated - Bombay is marginally ahead of Delhi, closely followed by Madras.

Disclaimer: This ranking has nothing to do with the fact that I also studied at IIT Bombay. The views are my own and should be taken with a pinch of salt, if you may so desire!

More links
True-it-is
Rediff 2005 list
Economic Times
CBS 60 minutes (Put Harvard, MIT and Princeton together, and you begin to get an idea of the status of IIT in India. )

Crappy Websites

I must be surfing over few hundred web sites daily. A lot of them are very popular. Even though the numbers say that these websites are doing very well, their interface makes me feel YUKS! Can't these sites afford a decent designer? Here's a quick list.

• Rediff.com - The famous indian portal which was considered as India's best website. Alexa rating currently ranks it at 78! The user interface for the website is crappy to say the least. On the front page, the total news worth a normal user's attention is less than 10% of the area. Remaining 90% is ads! Can you believe it? Next in line are the glossy ads. The site is so colorful that you are blinded by the sudden light from the gazillion ads (ok kidding!), but its still a very bad UI. Even though they have upgraded the email space to 1GB, but the moment you start typing in your username, a popup appears. Well what the heck is that for. Noticed right now that a pop-up appears even when you load the site (this was instantly blocked by my firefox, so didnt notice it earlier). I am not sure why people actually end up going to such annoying sites. More links - linuxreviews

• Timesofindia.com - It suffers from the same problems. Slow interface, too many shiny ads and the bitter truth - absolutely crappy news. Well technically, they have all the "masala" news (bollywood star's liaison's, the latest innovation that happened 6 months back (yaah as if no one knows about it), political scandals etc.) but speaking of anything worthwhile is probably not on their agenda.

• Sulekha - I am not sure if I should be writing about it. Just for the heck of it, I complained online about the site and their user-interface. Surprisingly they replied back and wanted my suggestions on how to improve the look and feel of site. Well let's see how they go about it. Their website does not work across different browsers. The ads are more shinier and glossier than those on rediff. Lot of spam ads/ messages posted on their site (I know its a tough problem) to clear out those, but for a site which has over 10k hits everyday, this should be a no-brainer.

If people know of any other famous sites that are equally crappy, please let me know :)

Recommended guide for Open Source Software's

People often come up to me and ask for advice on software's that could help them with their daily activities (browsing, antivirus, media players etc). In all likelihood, I advice an open source software for two simple reasons - they have infinite value for money (a very good software for NO money), they have been tested by millions of user and their development is always ongoing - in simple words, any bug or feature that you think/want/desire can and will be added to the software :) Here is my recommended list -

Web Browsing
1. Firefox - (Replaces Internet Explorer)
Firefox makes it to the top of the list, so no points for guessing that its the MOST recommended software. Compared to any other browser - it is much faster, lightweight (wont consume 100% of your CPU), simpler, stops annoying popups and has tons of amazing plug-ins that can make surfing the web a real pleasure. Switch to Firefox now !


Antivirus
1. ClamWin (Replaces Norton Anti-Virus or McAfee)
ClamWin is a smart anti-virus software that is fast, easy to manage and unobtrusive (wont eat up your CPU and make it slow) while keep your system free of viruses. So why pay for Norton or McAfee anymore?


Email Client
1. Thunderbird (Replaces Microsoft Outlook)
Thunderbird is an email client that has the main features desired in any email client or software for that matter - rich (full) feature set, lightweight, fast, a very good spam filter, and last but not the least protects you from those ridiculous phishing attacks by clearly indicating which emails send you to a bogus website. With a new plugin you can even get Gmail like UI for thunderbird.


Word Processing / Office Suites
1. OpenOffice (Replaces Microsoft Office)
Instead of paying for Microsoft Office, one should try OpenOffice. It includes very nice replacements for Excel and PowerPoint (and workable replacements for Access, Word and other Office elements).

2. Abiword (Replaces Microsoft Word)
A very effective replacement for Microsoft Word (who wants to pay for M$?). It is very fast compared to Word and includes pretty much every feature that I one desires in a word processor, plus saves and operates on lot of different file formats.


Photo Editing / Graphics
1. GIMP (Replaces Adobe Photoshop)
GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It is feature rich, solid and free ! So now why pay exorbitant amounts for Photoshop anymore !


Instant Messaging
1. Gaim (Replaces AIM, Windows Messenger, Yahoo Messenger etc.)
A very simple instant messaging program that allows you to be on AOL Instant Messenger, Windows (MSN) Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and Google Talk simultaneously with one program. There are other programs that do the same work, but Gaim is simple, fast and more reliable.


Video Player
1. Mplayer (Replaces Windows Media Player, Quicktime, RealPlayer, etc.)
One player to rule them all! Plays anything under the sun. Use its keyboard shortcuts and you will never use any other player ever ! The most interesting is use of arrow keys to move within the video. The plain MPlayer has no GUI (graphical user interface) and can be a little tricky because of the command line hassle. My recommendation is to go with MPUI.

2. VLC Media Player (Replaces Windows Media Player, Quicktime, RealPlayer, etc.)
Similar to MPlayer, plays all media formats and has a clean, simple interface.

Update: The second list of MUST-try open source apps is here.