The Web brings the ability to disseminate high-quality materials at almost no cost, leveling the game. This is changing the culture of how we think about knowledge and how it should be shared and who are the owners of knowledge. Still MIT's and Harvard complete online courseware may be free, yet an MIT or Harvard degree still costs upward of $198,000. College tuition has gone up more than any other good or service since 1990, and our nation's students and graduates hold hundreds of billions of dollars in outstanding student-loan debt.
That's why the architects of the education 2.0 model predict that traditional universities will find themselves on the wrong side of history, alongside newspaper chains and record stores. "If universities can't find the will to innovate and adapt to changes in the world around them," professor David Wiley of Brigham Young University has written, "universities will be irrelevant by 2020."
If you buy or reinstall a new PC, you want it to be productive right now. In addition to the OS, you want a basic tool-set of low cost applications and no-compromises. This entry is the first of a series of articles on which we aim to offer application tool-sets tailored for specific needs.
This first entry focuses on 'core' applications used in general by most consumer and small business users. Please visit us again for other interesting editions.
Office Suite - We had already commented on the word processors on a previous article, but we cannot mention core applications without covering and office suite. If you want the leading edge technology, we recommend OpenOffice (Windows, Mac, Linux). However, if the potential of corporate backed support is important for you, then you should look to IBM's Lotus Symphony (Windows, Mac, Linux). Notice that in both applications we recommend using the word processor, spreadsheet and presentations applications only. The Drawing application is not to the level of specialized tools.
Images - Use Irfanview (Windows only) for simple image viewing, cropping, reizing and image format conversion (90% of what we do with an image is one of these). Together with the Plugins, it can read and convert to almost every image format under the sun. You might want to use Aviary Phoenix (Windows, Mac, Linux) for actual image editing. Notice that Aviary Phoenix is a web application. However, we are including it here because no other free desktop application provides this type of simple and powerful editing.
Notes taking (journal) - Evernote (Windows, Max, iPhone and Linux via web) is the best tool in this area as it seamlessly synchronizes your desktop notes with the web, and make them available in your iphone whenever you need them.
PDF management - Generate your PDf files by printing using the doPDF (Windows). Then, open them using PDF-XChange Viewer, which is more powerful than Adobe Reader.
Video and multimedia player - VLC (Windows, Mac, Linux) plays almost every video and audio format, in addition to supporting several multimedia tricks. It can even load subtitles from a text file, and be controlled via ethernet from another computer (for Home Automation).
IM Client - If you need to stay communicated with partners, customers and others, Pidgin (Windows, Mac, Linux) might be the best solution for you. Pidgin supports connecting several social protocol and servers (Gtalk, Yahoo!, etc).
Social Clients - TwitterDeck and Seesmic are both very good tools to monitor and post into both, Twitter and Facebook accounts. These two applications require the installation of Adobe AIR (Windows, Max, Linux).
This list the roundup of core office tools. Notice that we tried to be as platform independent as possible, as you do not need to be locked into a specific OS to be productive.
Do you have other favorite applications? Please register and let us know via the comments below.
La combinacion de Google y codigo abierto es mortal “para la competencia”. Android se basa en kernel de Linux y ha sido desarrollado por Google y Open Handset Alliance. Google anuncio que ya han liberado el 100% del código fuente de Android. En el sitio de Android encontraran una enorme cantidad de código y instrucciones de los requerimientos, compilacion e instalacion.
Los desarrolladores pueden encontrar todo el código de Android acá. Esto incluye el núcleo de Linux, la plataforma de aplicación, el sistema de bibliotecas, de gráficos y expresión de reconocimiento de las bibliotecas, y aplicaciones como el navegador, marcador, y administrador de contactos.
While the Apple iPhone has not conquered the corporate Information Technology official ranks, users are already taking advange of the many applications that it has to offer. Here is a list of useful applications for small, and not so small business users.
Evernote - This tool is not exclusive for the iPhone. Actually, that is what makes it so useful. Evernote allows you to keep an access your notes, pictures and other information wherever your are. You can access your notes using a web browser, the Windows or OS X programs, the iPhone or the Blackberry. Anything that you capture in one device is accesible one the other ones. And because it has character recognition, you can find pictures even by searching the text inside of them. Ideal for searching scanned or photographed business cards. So, have important reference information is good, but being able to share with all your field force is much better. Evernote allows you to keep separate notebooks. In one of these notebooks you can store the most current price list, the list of out-of-stock products, reference information and even pictures of your products. And, whenever you refresh the price list, all your sales force will also get the new version of the price list - no need to discriminate between price list versions as it happens when you use e-mail.
If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants. - Isaac Newton
Some people equate open source to free of payment software, but this not necessarily true, nor the most important aspect of the open source movement. Actually, all business people know that "there is nothing like a free lunch". Even when software is free of license cost, there is at least an implicit cost of implementation.
No importa que tan buena sea su oferta de productos o servicios, eso solo representa la mitad de su negocio. Sus clientes forman la otra mitad. Y ellos esperan un servicio de alta calidad, continuidad en los servicios y sobre todo, que su compañía funcionen como una sola unidad. Nada irrita más a un cliente que tener que repetirle a un representane de servicio lo que le dijo a otro.
Es por eso que el uso de tecnología al manejar su cartera de negocios es esencial. Afortunadamente, independientemente del tamaño de su negocio, hay una solución apropriada para usted. Haga click sobre 'Read more...' aquí abajo para explorar estas opciones.
Lot of people see this cloud model as the Future of computing "In theory back to the mainframe". MS Office 2010/Sharepoinrt is on it, Linux , etc. Like it or not, it will happen. Maybe not now, maybe not tomorrow, but IT will happen. We won't say good-bye to all of the peripherals (for example, Music Players), but with access to our stuff from ANYWHERE in the World we'll stop using most of them. Right now, It's not a viable option for normal users, but in the future we'll find replacements for the software we all need.
business users.