BBT Webmasters

Free software

Admin — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 16:03:58 +0000

Free does not have to mean illegal these days. A lot of freeware software is not only free but on a par with the paid for versions. You can upgrade to paid versions in some cases to give you better functionality however most give you the full monty straight out of the box. Lets be honest we are all watching everything we spend so why should we do the same for our software. You will be glad you did.

Email

I gave up using MS Outlook when I ended up with nothing but problems. I now use Thunderbird. You can download it for free and I would recommend that you download the dictionary (British English dictionary) and the calendar feature. It takes a little time to get used to the slightly different interface but other than that it is the most stable email client I have come across.

Browsers

You do not have to stick to the Internet Explorer that you have been left with on your PC or laptop, there are now a number of really good browsers available all for free. My favourite is Firefox but you can have Safari, Opera and Chrome.

Office

You do not have to use Microsoft Office, I now use Open Office. A few more are listed below:

OpenOffice.org	Complete professional freeware office suite, with professional word processor, spreadsheet, etc. (50 – 70 MB). Versions available for Linux, Windows, Solaris and Max OS X.
Portable Open Office	A fully functional edition of OpenOffice.org optimized for use on an external USB drive. More specifically, you can connect the USB drive to another computer (which does not have Open Office installed), and run it directly from the USB drive without needing to install Open Office on that computer.
Siag Office	Free office suite for X-Windows (Unix): contains a spreadsheet, a word processor and an animation program.
KOffice	Office suite for KDE (K Desktop Environment, Linux). Includes KSpread, KPresenter, KChart, KImage, KIllustrator, KFormula and KWord.
Neo Office	A set of office applications (including word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, and drawing programs) for Mac OS X. Freeware, open-source; based on the OpenOffice.org office suite.

Happy Birthday internet

Admin — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 15:32:59 +0000

Yes the internet has reached the big four zero this week, not that you will be seeing notices on road junctions or roundabouts wishing it a very happy birthday. I wonder if the pioneers at ARPANET had any idea how big and important the internet would get?

Who Built the Internet?

In the very early days of computing, the first mainframe computers were enormous and had whole buildings or rooms dedicated to their welfare. Today, the thought of a world without desktop computers is inconceivable and what would we do without instant messaging, email and cloud computing. None of these would have existed if it was not for the Internet.

In the 1960’s, getting computers “to talk” to each other and exchange data through a “packet-switching network” was considered impossible. Today, packet switching is the way data is routinely sent back and forth over the Internet.

It works by chopping the data into packets, and these are sent through the network. When they arrive at their destination, packets are reassembled into data that is recognizable by the recipient computer. This enables many data streams to move simultaneously through the network. If we didn’t use packets, all of the data being exchanged would be scrambled in transit and no one would understand the information.

A small group of computer scientists got together to build the first packet-switching network in 1969. Their attempt involved just four computers, and after the requisite number of failures, as any IT person will tell you, they were successful. Little did they know that they had just given birth to the Internet.

In its infancy, the network was called Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET). In the 1970s, when a thaw in the Cold War was about as likely as the devil learning to ice skate, the military was concerned about how to safeguard its data during a nuclear war. The generals heard about the success of the 1969 network, they decided to build on it. It then was rolled out to universities and other government institutions and so the Internet spread.