Adapted from a comment (that I made anonymously, d'oh!) on ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
karathephantom's jrnl. Thought others might have some interest in these recs, too. Please link, circulate, repost, remix, whatever.
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Free and legal software that does all kinds of multimedia and texty stuff. All open-source, all available in Windows versions (some also available on Mac, most also available for Linux, though for there I would add - SuperTux! A side-scrolling SuperMario clone with penguins, yay!) (ETA: SuperTux is available for Windows and OSX now, too - you totally need it! http://supertux.lethargik.org/). You can find more via SourceForge, which is a great repository of open source software:
VLC Media Player - http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
Will play any audio or video format you throw at it. Disc, file, whatever. A number of public librarians I know use this on their public computers, because whatever a patron is trying to view or listen to, VLC can play it.
Sometimes you have to install a codec, but it's as easy as installing a program.
VirtualDub - http://www.virtualdub.org/
A good stripped-down open source program for video editing, but it's not the most full-featured thing ever, so it wouldn't support, like, vidding. Serious multimedia creation still, I think, usually needs proprietary software. I've mostly used it for clipping, extracting audio, and rotating vids I took with my camera sideways.
GIMP (the Gnu Image Manipulation Program) - http://www.gimp.org/
Like Photoshop, but free and legal. As full-featured as Photoshop about two versions ago. Slightly different interface, but if you give it a couple of days, the adjustment is easy even for a longtime Photoshop user.
Inkscape - http://www.inkscape.org
a vector image editing program (like CorelDraw or Illustrator). Most MSOffice clipart files are vector art - which is infinitely scaleable without loss of print quality. This is a good tool for making posters, flyers, other one-page layouts.
Incidentally, http://openclipart.org has open source and public domain clipart that you can legally use with any program and modify easily with Inkscape.
Audacity - http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
Great audio recorder, mixer, and editor.
OpenOffice.org - http://www.openoffice.org
Completely free and open suite of Office software. Interoperates pretty well with Microsoft. A little different interface, so if you've already got the MS Office suite, you might not want to switch. I use it happily, but know it has irritated a few of my friends who tried to switch.
Any academic (student, prof, whoever) totally needs citation management software. If you haven't used it before, citation management software is very cool specialized database software that saves and indexes things you might use as references in a paper - articles, webpages, book citations, youtube videos, you name it. Then when you go to write the paper, months or weeks later, you have the stuff recorded (there's nothing worse than going to cite something only to realize you already returned the book to the library!) And it formats your citations for you, into lots of different citation styles like MLA, APA, Chicago, etc.
I recommend Zotero (http://www.zotero.org/), a really full-featured program that is a browser plugin for Firefox, and that integrates with MSOffice and OpenOffice to help format the citations in papers. By default, Zotero stores snapshots of webpages, and can link to files saved on your hard drive - I know folks who use it as their main bookmarking tool, too.
There are also Creative Commons licensed images, findable under advanced search on Flickr, that are legal for reuse and remix in almost any situation without having to worry about complicated fair use questions that come up for images out of books or off other websites. There's even open music (and more music), and video (Al Jazeera, linked there, has the best collection of high qualiy CC-licensed video I know of) out there - free and legal to reuse in many situations without having to worry about fair use or other copyright issues. Think there might be another post to write on understanding Creative Commons licenses, and how and when to use CC-licensed stuff!
Why yes, I am passionate about open content and open source software! However did you guess?
karathephantom's jrnl. Thought others might have some interest in these recs, too. Please link, circulate, repost, remix, whatever. -------------------------------------------------------------
Free and legal software that does all kinds of multimedia and texty stuff. All open-source, all available in Windows versions (some also available on Mac, most also available for Linux, though for there I would add - SuperTux! A side-scrolling SuperMario clone with penguins, yay!) (ETA: SuperTux is available for Windows and OSX now, too - you totally need it! http://supertux.lethargik.org/). You can find more via SourceForge, which is a great repository of open source software:
VLC Media Player - http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
Will play any audio or video format you throw at it. Disc, file, whatever. A number of public librarians I know use this on their public computers, because whatever a patron is trying to view or listen to, VLC can play it.
Sometimes you have to install a codec, but it's as easy as installing a program.
VirtualDub - http://www.virtualdub.org/
A good stripped-down open source program for video editing, but it's not the most full-featured thing ever, so it wouldn't support, like, vidding. Serious multimedia creation still, I think, usually needs proprietary software. I've mostly used it for clipping, extracting audio, and rotating vids I took with my camera sideways.
GIMP (the Gnu Image Manipulation Program) - http://www.gimp.org/
Like Photoshop, but free and legal. As full-featured as Photoshop about two versions ago. Slightly different interface, but if you give it a couple of days, the adjustment is easy even for a longtime Photoshop user.
Inkscape - http://www.inkscape.org
a vector image editing program (like CorelDraw or Illustrator). Most MSOffice clipart files are vector art - which is infinitely scaleable without loss of print quality. This is a good tool for making posters, flyers, other one-page layouts.
Incidentally, http://openclipart.org has open source and public domain clipart that you can legally use with any program and modify easily with Inkscape.
Audacity - http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
Great audio recorder, mixer, and editor.
OpenOffice.org - http://www.openoffice.org
Completely free and open suite of Office software. Interoperates pretty well with Microsoft. A little different interface, so if you've already got the MS Office suite, you might not want to switch. I use it happily, but know it has irritated a few of my friends who tried to switch.
Any academic (student, prof, whoever) totally needs citation management software. If you haven't used it before, citation management software is very cool specialized database software that saves and indexes things you might use as references in a paper - articles, webpages, book citations, youtube videos, you name it. Then when you go to write the paper, months or weeks later, you have the stuff recorded (there's nothing worse than going to cite something only to realize you already returned the book to the library!) And it formats your citations for you, into lots of different citation styles like MLA, APA, Chicago, etc.
I recommend Zotero (http://www.zotero.org/), a really full-featured program that is a browser plugin for Firefox, and that integrates with MSOffice and OpenOffice to help format the citations in papers. By default, Zotero stores snapshots of webpages, and can link to files saved on your hard drive - I know folks who use it as their main bookmarking tool, too.
There are also Creative Commons licensed images, findable under advanced search on Flickr, that are legal for reuse and remix in almost any situation without having to worry about complicated fair use questions that come up for images out of books or off other websites. There's even open music (and more music), and video (Al Jazeera, linked there, has the best collection of high qualiy CC-licensed video I know of) out there - free and legal to reuse in many situations without having to worry about fair use or other copyright issues. Think there might be another post to write on understanding Creative Commons licenses, and how and when to use CC-licensed stuff!
Why yes, I am passionate about open content and open source software! However did you guess?
