emudir

For those of us who started our computing careers with Unix, or a Unix variant, or who were introduced to the system at university, some time in the 1980s, you will have been introduced to the joys (or evils?) of the editor vi. While idiosyncratic, there’s no doubt that vi is, like its predecessor TECO and the like, an extremely powerful text editor. However, it’s a “love-or-hate” program, with idiosyncratic key combinations that must be learned before you can do any real work.

Vim – “VI iMproved” – clones vi very nicely, and responds in the same way any vi afficionado would expect. It also adds a nice Windows GUI to it, with lots of mouse support …read more »

Here’s a clever little piece of software, and it really works well at what it does.

Have you ever got a wireless router for your Internet connection? Most Internet Service Providers give them out these days, but you can still buy slightly-better-than-average ones from electronics shops. And most laptops include wireless these days, so almost everyone uses it.

But one of the first things they recommend you do is to give your wireless network a secure passcode. Which is fine – unless you make it so secure you forget. So what happens when a friend comes to visit from out of town and wants to use your Internet conection on their laptop – and you’ve forgotten your network key? …read more »

We’ve been using Firefox here at Emudir Towers for years, ever since the dim and distant days of version 1.0. But the latest version – released just a few days ago – adds some useful and exciting features. …read more »

Forgive us for going on about graphics programs, having featured both GIMP and Serif Photo Plus in the not-so-distant past, it’s probably not time for another one yet. So… here’s a graphic editor.

While you groan away, here’s some things to like about Paint.Net. Despite being Windows only (and requiring .Net 3.5), it supports layers, contains an automatic updater (which, in a moment of what can only be described as clear thinking, good design and sheer sanity, can be made to install the update once you’ve finished using the program), and a plethora of effects. …read more »

For any C++ programmer, the integrated development environment or IDE is the tool they spend most of their time using. And while commercial tools such as Microsoft Visual Studio are popular with commercial development houses, the problem is that they are frequently limited to a single platform. …read more »

Every so often, my PC gets a problem. This one was quite serious, however – more so than usual. Basically, the network stopped working altogether. Not good. So, as usual, out came the setup CDs. And when it came to graphics software, I thought – why not have a look what else is free?

And then I thought of this. Serif give away free Starter Editions of their graphics suites. Specifically, I’m going to look at Photo Plus, the starter edition of which is available from their site.

Essentially, it does pretty much everything that you would expect of a modern piece of graphics editing software …read more »

You may, or may not, have seen an interesting article about one chap deciding to save a load of BBC websites before the BBC delete them in the name of “saving money” (something people are dubious about as the BBC do have form for deleting important and interesting stuff and only asking questions later.

But how did he do it for so little money? …read more »

Have you ever tried to safely remove a USB flash drive and been told it’s in use? Well, if you have – and especially when that flash drive contains that one really important PowerPoint presentation you’ve got to give in five minutes’ time – you’ll know how frustrating (or even career-threatening) that message can be. Short of turning off the PC, or pulling the drive out anyway and risking losing everything on it (and yes, that has happened to me a couple of times), you’ll need Unlocker.

Unlocker has what they call a “shell extension”, which means that you can use it without a main window of its own, you just use it by right clicking on what you want to unlock. …read more »

CD Burner XP is a freeware CD, DVD, HD-DVD and Blu Ray burning program for Windows. Not only can it burn compilations to disc, it can create ISO images as well as burn them (useful if you just downloaded a Linux distribution for your other computer, for example). …read more »

Did you know you can run your entire business on free software? Oh yes indeed you can. And one of the key tools you can use to achieve global market domination is CRM, and here is one of the premier tools: Sugar CRM.

Sugar CRM is pretty much a pure customer relationship management suite, and so covers quotations, projects, document storage and customer interactions. It’s a robust, reliable suite that is used by quite a few big customers – like Coca Cola, AVIS, the insurance company AA and even the government of the State of Oregon.

One of the comforts of using it – for an organisation – is the dual licensing and paid support. Not only does this give you access to additional functionality that is not available under the GPL, but also allows you access to support technicians, and the usual helpdesk benefits associated with doing business on a commercial level. And of course, with the system being open source, not only is it easier to support internally (because your technicians can see what it going on), the product would also survive a collapse of the parent company because the source code is availble – something that is often written into corporate contracts requiring expensive escrow source code deposit services.

Sugar CRM has an open source, community edition, as well as a paid support and full commercial support option. It works on a variety of databases, so if you’re a MySQL or a SQL Server house, you’re covered. Which will keep the support people happy, no doubt.