emudir

Cory Doctorow is a sci-fi author and commentator, who is usually to be found in his capacity as co-editor at boingboing. His most recent essay collection, Context covers a diverse set of topics, trying to reconcile the “freemium” nature of the Internet (something we’re strongly in favour of here at emudir) and the need for creators to benefit from their hard work (we all have to eat, right?) What’s more, it is itself a “freemium” product, being a Context, is a Creative Commons licensed free download, as well as purchasable as a physical book.

This give-away model has also inspired Jan Rubak to do a similarly CC licensed audiobook reading of the book, just as he did with Doctorow’s previous book, Content. With not only the author’s permission, but also his thanks. Which is nice.

If you enjoy the book, you can either buy it directly, or donate a copy of either Context or Content to a school or library (which we would highly recommended, by the way).

Context
Homepage: http://craphound.com/context/
Download the book: http://craphound.com/context/download/
Download the audio book: http://www.archive.org/details/CoryDoctorow-Context

Content
Homepage: http://craphound.com/content/
Download the book: http://craphound.com/content/download/
Download the audio book: http://www.archive.org/details/CoryDoctorow-Content_268

Now here’s a lovely thing. If you know of one piece of romantic poetry, it’s probably number 52 from Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese. You don’t? Really? Are you sure? Well, it goes like this:

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, — I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! — and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

And if you didn’t, well, you probably know the reference from either Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, or perhaps from Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown.

Anyhow, there’s a very beautiful 1904 volume available at the Internet Archive. You can have it as a PDF of full colour scans, black and white, text, or in DjVu, Kindle or Daisy format.

Download page: http://www.archive.org/details/poemsbyelizabeth00brow

We’ve all got PDF creators now. Libre Office and IBM Lotus Symphony can both create PDF files, and there’s an element of importing PDFs in Libre Office as well. But the job they do – well, let’s put it this way, the document might look OK, but the styles are hard to modify, and it’s just not quite right…

Enter Nitro PDF’s “PDF To Word” converter. You can either use the service online for free, or download it as a (paid for) desktop application – which adds support for directly coverting other file types to PDF, batch conversions, and so on. …read more »

“The Art of Caricaturing“. This 1941 book, written by Mitchell Smith, is a fascinating read in its own right. Not only is it fun just to look at – most of the caricatures raise a smile in their own right, even if Kaiser Wilhelm II is a distant memory by now – there’s a wealth of practical information in here. …read more »

If you find the traditional look and feel of LibreOffice (aka OpenOffice) to be a bit old-fashioned, or perhaps you only use its core word processor, presentation and spreadsheet components and want a more integrated “feel” to the suite? Or even perhaps you’re considering making the move to free/open office suites, but management still want the backing of a major organisation behind the software? Then perhaps it’s worth considering IBM Lotus Symphony.

Symphony is essentially a cut down version of Libre Office, with the usual plugin handling abilities present, as well as the three core modules. However Symphony’s user interface has been greatly customised using Eclipse, and is designed to present all your documents in tabs in a single interface. While this declutters the Windows taskbar, and for those used to suites such as Microsoft Works, simplifies everything a great deal, for the power user this might present a problem.

However for the road warrior who needs to work with Microsoft Office formatted documents, and to work on their own documents, spreadsheets and presentations, Symphony’s integrated approach bears thought. The large gallery of free clip art and document, spreadsheet and presentation templates available on the Symphone website makes the mouth water as well.

The choice between the two offerings is simple – if you need the database, the math module or the drawing module, you’ll need Libre Office. If, however, you simply work on corporate documents (and even export them as PDF, or digitally sign them), and you really feel that you need your main office suite to be underwritten by a major corporation, then you might consider that Symphony is for you. Libre Office, after all, is still in beta, while Symphony is always based on the latest stable release of Open Office. This does mean some of the newer features may not be available – but if you care enough to be running the stable rather than development version of Libre Office, you wouldn’t be getting those functions anyway.

Personally, I keep both installed. Libre Office is incredibly stable, but I like Symphony’s user interface. And with Libre installed, I still get the modules Symphony doesn’t provide. It’s all good. Please note that to download you’ll need to have either an IBM ID (which is free to register), or provide your name, email address and country to download.

Note: we are listing this as freeware because, although based on open source and free software components, the end licence is a proprietary IBM non-warrantable one.

One of the most maxims of project management is the 5 Ps: “proper planning prevents poor performance”. And one of the easiest ways to plan out a project is a Gantt chart, which details each phase of the project, what needs to happen before it starts, and what depends on each step. And that’s where Gantt Project comes in. …read more »

Mind mapping, as developed by Tony Buzan since the 1960s, is used widely as a note taking tool for business, a revision tool to aid memory, and as a general tool for organising information. …read more »