Matt Vapor’s Blog

In the last few weeks I have discovered a great little game which I have been pouring a lot of my spare time into… I love it! Its called Super Tux and it is a clone of Super Mario with a flavor of Tux - the Linux mascot.

” SuperTux is a classic 2D jump’n run sidescroller game in a style similar to the original SuperMario games. ”

Its available on most common platforms including Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Unix (BSD)

You can download it here

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Well a few weeks ago I managed to fork out for a new Intel MacBook, I have always been a fan of Macs, but not their price, however that has somewhat changed within the last year due to the introduction of Intel based components.

Since I have been using it for almost a month now I thought I would share some of the little free gems I have found along the way, and hopefully help out of the fellow Mac comrades out there

First of all, I had to start off with a browser. Mac OS X 10.4 came with Safari, but I have become accustomed to FireFox and its abundance of extensions, so if your use to that, you will wanna grab FireFox.

Next is FileZilla a great little FTP app, I have been using this on Windows and Linux systems so it is great that they also ported it to Mac, if you use all or some of the three OSs mentioned and dont want to go to the effort of looking for a different app for each system FileZilla is the one for you!

Microsoft Messenger… Ergh I know, “Why Microsoft on a Mac!?” you might say, well I havent come a cross a replacement that I like, I have seen Adium and a few others and I am not keen on them… some habbits are hard to break

Juice is a great podcast downloader, I am not keen on how iTunes downloads my podcasts, yes I know I am very fussy

Want to remove a program? Well dont just delete it! Thats what I was told and I grabbed a cool little app called AppDelete, not only does it delete the app it also removes all traces off it!

Come across any other Mac Freeware you can’t live without, then please let us know!

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Full Circle - the Ubuntu Community Magazine have announced their second issue.

It contains :
* Kubuntu install step-by-step
* How-To : Install Ubuntu on Intel Mac Mini, Virtual Private Networking,
Learning Scribus part 2 and Ubuntu for your Grandma!
* Review of System76 Darter Laptop
* Interview with GRAMPS developer
* Letters, Q&A, MyDesktop, MyPC, Top5 and more!

http://fullcirclemagazine.org/issue-2/

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Have you ever wanted to have a DVD converter which ran on Windows, Linux and Mac? The answer is here

HandBrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded DVD to MPEG-4 converter, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows.

Supported sources:

• Any DVD-like source: VIDEO_TS folder, DVD image or real DVD (encrypted or unencrypted, but protection methods other than CSS are not supported and must be handled externally with third-party software)
• PAL or NTSC
• AC-3, LPCM or MPEG audio tracks

Outputs:

• File format: MP4, AVI or OGM
• Video: MPEG-4 or H.264 (1 or 2 passes or constant quantizer encoding)
• Audio: AAC, MP3, Vorbis or AC-3 pass-through (supports encoding of several audio tracks)

Misc features:

• Chapter selection
• Basic subtitle support (burned into the picture)
• Integrated bitrate calculator
• Picture deinterlacing, cropping and scaling
• Grayscale encoding

Credits

HandBrake uses a lot of (L)GPL librairies from the Linux world:

• liba52 (AC3 decoding)
• libavcodec (picture cropping, scaling and deinterlacing, MPEG-4 encoding)
• libdvdcss (CSS decryption)
• libdvdread (DVD navigation)
• libfaac (AAC encoding)
• libmp3lame (MP3 encoding)
• libmp4v2 (MP4 muxing)
• libmpeg2 (MPEG-2 decoding)
• libogg (OGM muxing)
• libsamplerate (audio resampling)
• libvorbis (Vorbis encoding)
• libx264 (H264 encoding)
• libxvidcore (MPEG-4 encoding)

Visit the HandBrake Download Page to Download

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Thanks to Phil at the Australian WebWorker I came a cross an interesting post calling for beta testers. The project called Whisher is hoping to set up a free global WiFi system using users existing WiFi hardware.

Whisher are asking for the beta testers to be:

• be knowledgeable in WiFi technologies and networking, we’re not asking for gurus, but we need people who know what an SSID is
• have at least one laptop computer with WiFi, be it a PC with Windows or a Mac. A desktop with a USB or PCI WiFi adapter is also good.
• have at least one WiFi access point or router, and be knowledgeable in its configuration and management.
• be willing to test a software application and report frequently and consistently using an online bug tracking platform (don’t worry, it’s dead easy to use!).

If you are interested in signing up to try this then feel free to visit their blog post calling for beta testers.

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HTTrack is a free (GPL, libre/free software) and easy-to-use offline browser utility.

It allows you to download a World Wide Web site from the Internet to a local directory, building recursively all directories, getting HTML, images, and other files from the server to your computer. HTTrack arranges the original site’s relative link-structure. Simply open a page of the “mirrored” website in your browser, and you can browse the site from link to link, as if you were viewing it online. HTTrack can also update an existing mirrored site, and resume interrupted downloads. HTTrack is fully configurable, and has an integrated help system.

WinHTTrack is the Windows 9x/NT/2000/XP release of HTTrack, and WebHTTrack the Linux/Unix/BSD release. See the download page.

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Have you ever wanted to remove Windows components like Media Player, Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, MSN Explorer, Messenger…
How about not even to install them with Windows ?

nLite is a tool for permanent Windows components removal and pre-installation Windows configuration. After removal there is an option to make bootable image ready for burning on cd or testing in virtual machines.
With nLite you will be able to have Windows installation which on install does not include, or even contain on cd, the unwanted components.

Features

• Service Pack Integration
• Component Removal
• Unattended Setup
• Driver Integration
• Hotfixes Integration
• Tweaks
• Services Configuration
• Patches
• Bootable ISO creation

Visit here to download

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“Want to listen to internet audio programs but can’t when they are scheduled? This program lets you create your own custom online audio anytime, anywhere” well thats what Juice’s website says.

This is one of the first true cross platform podcast receiver I have seen and let me tell you it works great!It runs on Windows and Mac and a Linux version is on the way. I use it to get all my podcasts… even the Chaser’s War on Everything Vodcast.

Visit Juice to download!

While its downloading heres what Juice says it has to offer:

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Have you ever had a picture that you have needed to resize quickly but have had to muck around with bulky imaging programs to get it done? Well theirs and easier solution, and its called VSO Image Resizer.

VSO Image Resizer resides in the Windows shell and is accessible by right clicking on any image file(s) you want resized. You can also run VSO Image Resizer as a stand alone program.

Heres a list of its Key Features:

* Convert between different graphic formats
* Configurable compression/resolution ratio
* Support file formats: Jpeg, gif, bmp, tiff etc
* Support Digital Camera RAW formats: Canon .CR2, Nikon .NEF , .MRW Minolta
* Handle single picture or batch mode
* Customizable templates for renaming files
* You can add your own watermark file
* Reduce size photos perfect for web publishing/share photos by email
* Integrate in windows explorer or works as a stand-alone application
* Fast processing
* Import directly from your memory cards
* Save history of destination folder
* Variable options and settings for advanced users
* Multilingual support (available languages…)
* Optimized for Windows 2000 / XP / Vista

Visit the VSO Image Resizer to Download.

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Nvu’s Website expresses that “Finally! A complete Web Authoring System for Linux desktop users as well as Microsoft Windows and Macintosh users to rival programs like FrontPage and Dreamweaver. Nvu (which stands for “new view”) makes managing a web site a snap. Now anyone can create web pages and manage a website with no technical expertise or knowledge of HTML.

It is extremely easy to use and does come with many of the features which Dreamweaver and Frontpage boast… but best of all it is free!

Visit Nvu’s download page to grab a copy for your operating system!

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