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20 Most Popular Open Source Software Ever These days, you can quite easily buy a brand-spanking-new computer and install all the software you need for free, using applications offered under the Open Software License. You can get a free image editor, a free sound editor, a free word processor, media player, file archiver, PDF creator… the list goes on and on and on. While some of these free apps do not offer quite the same level of polished functionality as their commercial rivals, others far exceed the capabilities of everything else on the market. Below, we take a close look at the cream of the crop: 20 invaluable and indispensable open source applications that you really should be using, if you’re not already. The vast majority of them are cross-platform and absolutely 100% free! You’re bound to find several that are perfectly suited to your needs.

1. WordPress

WordPress is the world’s most popular blogging platform, used by a staggering 202 million websites. As simple or as complex as you want it to be, WordPress is supported by a wide array of plugins which can be used to transform a standard blog into anything you could possibly desire. Besides blogs, WordPress can be used as a straightforward content management system to power anything from an e-commerce site to a social network.

2. Magento

Magento, used by 30,000 merchants, including Samsung, Nespresso and The North Face, is the world’s fastest growing e-commerce platform. Magento Community Edition is offered for free under the Open Software License. The Enterprise Edition, for which you have to pay, offers features like multi-store capability, store credits and gift cards, out-of-the-box.

3. Mozilla Firefox

Firefox currently accounts for 24.43% of the recorded usage share of web browsers, but this figure is on the rise. Already the browser of choice for most web professionals, Firefox’s popularity is growing thanks to its vast selection of third party add-ons, which let users tailor their browsing environment down to the finest detail.

4. Mozilla Thunderbird

With its speedy searches, built-in RSS feeds, strong security and superb add-ons, Thunderbird has to be the best, free email application available. If you’re prepared to spend some time tailoring your email environment with add-ons, you’ll absolutely love it, but it’s probably not ideal for complete novices.

5. FileZilla

FileZilla is a hugely successful, cross-platform FTP client. It’s also available as a server, for Windows only. Created in January 2001 by Tim Klosse as a class project, FileZilla has gone on to become the 5th most popular download of all time from SourceForge.net.

6. GnuCash

GnuCash provides a great, free alternative to paid-for accounting software. Designed for personal and small business use, it offers bank account, stock, income and expense tracking, in addition to double-entry accounting.

7. Audacity

Music software like Cubase and Logic Pro can be incredibly expensive, which is why an increasing number of people are turning to Audacity, a free, cross-platform sound editor. Users can record and edit live audio; cut, copy, splice and mix sounds; and convert ageing tapes and records into digital format.

8. GIMP

Just like sound editors, industry standard image editing software is prohibitively expensive for a lot of people, but GIMP provides a free alternative. It performs every major function you could desire, except for, vitally, CMYK separation functionality necessary for prepress work.

9. OpenOffice

With the ability to create text documents, spreadsheets, presentations and databases, OpenOffice is an accomplished rival to Microsoft Office, which clearly influenced OpenOffice’s design. Microsoft Office users will feel completely at home and find that OpenOffice performs just as well, if not better.

10. VLC

At last count, VLC media player had been downloaded 300 million times. Unlike some paid-for alternatives, VLC supports practically every audio/video codec and file format. The most recent VLC release also offers live recording of streaming video, frame-by-frame advancement and superb speed controls.

11. Handbrake

Handbrake rips/converts DVDs to MPEG-4 for playing back on your iPod or archiving. It doesn’t have the ability to decode DVDs, but can do so if you have VLC, which includes a DVD encoder, installed on your computer.

12. Pidgin

Pidgin is the ultimate, free instant messaging tool. It provides you with one window through which you can simultaneously interact with different people, whichever instant messaging platform they’re using.

13. Freemind

Freemind is a terrific mind-mapping tool, which lets you get all your thoughts down as quickly as possible with the use of icons, shapes and colors. Besides the ordinary nodes and links, you can add hyperlinks and even documents to your maps.

14. Notepad++

Reliable, customizable, intuitive and free, Notepad++ is the most popular Windows-based CSS editor around. It offers everything: syntax highlighting; folding and auto-completion for CSS, C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, SQL, HTML, XML and PHP; multi-file viewing; tabbed editing; zoom in/out; and bookmarks.

15. 7-Zip

7-Zip is an extremely popular file archiver for Windows, which, although free, outperforms Winzip. It can unpack the vast majority of archive formats and can create TAR and GZ archives, commonly used on Unix and Linux systems, as well as its own 7z format, which easily outshrinks ZIP files.

16. Blender

Blender is a 3D content creation suite which can be used for everything from modeling to skinning, particle simulation, animating and texturing. Unlike some other free apps in this list, Blender has not been designed to “imitate” other 3D graphics software, which means it takes a bit of getting used to, but once you’ve familiarized yourself with all the shortcuts, you’ll be hooked.

17. PDFCreator

Windows users can consider PDFCreator a credible rival to Adobe Acrobat. Creating PDFs is as easy as printing, literally, as once installed, you can select PDFCreator as your printer, letting you create PDFs from practically any application.

18. Calibre

According to Calibre, it’s the “one stop solution to all your e-book needs”. I’m inclined to agree. Besides letting you catalogue and manage your e-book collection, sorting, tagging and commenting on them as you please, you can download content from the internet and convert it into e-book form.

19. TrueCrypt

TrueCrypt really is the best free encryption program around for anyone worried about their security. It offers 11 algorithms for encrypting your files, as well as a comprehensive help manual, which gives advice on complex password creation, hidden volumes and erasing encryption giveaways.

20. Ubuntu

Named after an African philosophy of community, sharing and generosity, Ubuntu is a free operating system for Linux that’s quick and easy to use. Recent figures suggest that around 50% of Linux users have Ubuntu installed. With its focus on usability, Ubuntu comes with OpenOffice, Firefox Empathy, Pidgin, GIMP and other tools pre-installed.

Author : Tom Walker

Tom is a designer and writer who works with a UK based online shop specialising in Epson printer ink, toner, paper and other printing accessories. You can read more of his writing on their blog.

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Tweeting has has become a common way to communicate for a lot of people. If you’re a Twitter addict or just starting to become one you’re not alone. Being stuck looking into you computer screen to be able to communicate with your new twitter friends on the other hand may put your life on halt so why not tweet, make new friends etc. on the move?  There are free iPhone apps available today that are great and will compensate OK for not having a 24” screen and a worn out keyboard. This post cover 5 of the best free options to take twitter with you where ever you go.

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The iPhone has evolved as an extremely useful tool. Whether you are running a business or a blog, there are apps to make your life all that much easier. I am going to show you what I think are the top ten most useful apps for bloggers. Please leave a comment and share your favorite iPhone Apps.

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Portfolio websites and blogs are critical for freelance designers to build an online presence and to tease potential customers to buy their services. Many designers have learned this and this means the competition is hard. That is why portfolios simply need to be awesome and stand out from all the others to be noticed and generate business. An important aspect of portfolios is presentation of the designers work and this is where slideshow applications comes in handy. They look good, improve usability and gives visitors to the portfolio simple access to the material being presented. This post brings an overview of more than 25 excellent slideshow solutions to enhance your portfolio.

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Most blogs is started by individuals working hard to produce quality content to attract readers. This is not an easy job for one person why successful bloggers quite often invite gust authors to contribute. This is not a bad idea at all and may significantly improve the quality and potential of a blog as new ideas, more knowledge, more writing muscles will attract more readers. Starting of with guest authors most bloggers simply receive the articles by mail and publish them. This works OK and full control is maintained. On the other hand it is not the most efficient way to get things done. Wordpress allow you to invite other authors into the back end and still keep things under control and with the right plugins in place managing multiple authors become easy and almost fun.. Having authors in your Wordpress system provides several advantages for you, your authors and your readers. Let’s see why and what plugins can do for you.

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Blogging is essentially about reaching out to people, readers and followers to deliver a message, opinions, knowledge, taking lead etc. Writing great posts, being a SEO guru, sharing links etc. is well known tricks but not enough any more. Most bloggers have realized that social networks is where the modern “www sapiens” “party” all day long sucking up as much screen radiation as possible while connecting with virtual friends and peers. Getting someone attentions requires some kind of presence and showing up to the “24/7 online cocktail party” certainly may help you. Why not attend the “party” from within your favourite blogging tool – Wordpress? You don’t even have to leave the dashboard…! OK probably it is not that simple but a few plugins for Wordpress may significantly help you get more out of social networks, attracting more traffic and followers.

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Writing new entries online using your weblog’s control panel can be complicated and time-consuming, especially if you want to format your text or insert many images. Even though most modern blogging and cms systems have great WYSIWYG editors they are simply not as responsive and efficient to work with as a good old desktop style application. This post provides a list of desktop client blogging tools that have potential to make your blogging easier, more fun and faster. If you’re serious about blogging and haven’t checked out any desktop clients yet this is the time to do it!

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Whether you’re about to open your first online shop or you’re considering changing the ecommerce platform you’re currently using, you’ll find all the information you need below. We take a look at the 15 most popular eCommerce platforms, breaking each one down into its respective pros and cons. There is a wide choice available, so it’s vital that you do your research before choosing which one is right for you. Most share a basic set of functions, but offer a couple of unique features on top.

As well as offering a diverse range of features, ecommerce platforms are offered for a diverse range of prices. Many are free, while others can cost tens of thousands per year. Very generally speaking, those which you have to pay for not only offer the best support, they require the least programming knowledge to install and run. Take a look at the 15 below and select the one that’s right for you, your business and your customers.

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Successful on-line businesses and experienced marketing professionals know it and they use this knowledge to be at the fore front. Email marketing is relying on one of the oldest Internet technologies and yet is one of the most powerful ways to reach people, generate leads  and eventually earn money. Unfortunately because it works the email channel is not only used by people with good intentions. This means that delivering value and building trust before pitching is very important and that even getting emails though to your subscribers can be hard. Software companies have realised there’s a need for tools to help us be successful with mail marketing and some of them are really mature and worth using. This article cover some of the best on-line email marketing solutions available and hopefully it will help you find the right tool – more tools will be added soon – share your opinion, experience and favourites.

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Twitter has become one of the largest and most active on-line social networks ever existed. The way Twitter works makes it ideal for being heard and getting a message out to thousands of individuals. Unfortunately it is not as simple as it sounds. On Twitter you need to earn the right to be heard, meaning you need followers and you need to make an impact on them to avoid being ignored or un-followed. Some people describe Twitter as a huge never ending cocktail party where people come and go from all over the world. In my opinion the analogy is quite good because it is fundamentally the same rules for human interaction that apply. Even thought there are no direct face to face contact on Twitter you will be noticed if you’re active, take initiative, bring something to the table and avoid sitting quiet for yourself in the corner. Problem is – even if you’re a natural talent in communication and networking it is a though job (if not impossible) to interact personally with thousands of followers. This is where tools can come in handy to assist you. Don’t think tools can replace your personal interaction and trust building though. Lets take a look at what Tweet Adder can do for you.

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