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We webloggers are collectively turning the World Wide Web into one superintelligent global brain.
Michael Anissimov
Sir Tim Berners-Lee
Thomas Burick
Hal Daume III
David Heller
Marco Koch
Bob Mottram
J.M. Pratt
Eric Ringger
LM Squires
Ting Qian
Oliver Wrede

I've been working on a project called Appleseed, which is sort of a distributed version of MySpace/Friendster, but is turning out to be an amalgamation of gmail/flickr/myspace/livejournal. It's been slow going, but it's starting to pick up the pace, it's just been hard having to work full time and do this in my offtime.

That said, I'm disappointed that, with all of these social network oriented sites popping up, and all these new technologies being explored by commercial enterprises, that the open source community hasn't stepped up to the plate and offered free alternatives. Gmail? Flickr? Del.icio.us? Myspace?

I know the open source community can build reusable software that's as good or better than any of this, so why haven't we? Why are we still using SquirrelMail?

When you switch desktops, you see all the windows minimising and all the ones for the next desktop un-minimising

Then you're using some really crappy virtual desktop software (the PowerToy is known to be... well... toy; I've never tried the ones in the drivers, simply because they are feature poor).

I highly recommend either VirtuaWin or DeskWin. I've used both and prefer the former, although I haven't used the latest version of the latter.

Are they perfect? Nope. I've had apps get "lost" and become unrecoverable -- usually when they go off and become unresponsive to Windows messaging while on another desktop (the biggest offender on my work desktop is Outlook). But that's pretty rare with VirtuaWin (the main reason I prefer it).

especially when "taskbar grouping" is turned on, the interface is completely unsuitable for someone who has a large number of apps running.

So disable it. It's easily done. And, frankly, you're simply wrong. I prefer a virtual desktop method myself, but I have coworkers who regularly have 20+ programs open and have no issues with switching between apps efficiently. It's all a matter of what you're used to. I suspect they would find virtual desktops to be a pain; frankly the one thing that perpetually annoys me about any virtual desktop software is the redraw time on them compared to simply switching between apps on the same desktop. And yes, I've used virtual desktops dating all the way back to tvtwm.

There is no such thing as anonymous file sharing.

These guys don't agree.

I've looked for it, but I never found a powertoy for virtual desktops from MS for Windows 2000. The one for XP didn't even do what I was used to have with KDE.
One thing that comes as close as possible to real virtual desktops is Virtual Dimension, which I've been using now with Windows 2000 and XP. (another is the shareware goScreen)

Because you have been programming in perl for "eons" you should also know the perl community while really respecting TMTOWTDI also takes to calling out bad code. There is more than one way to do it does not mean there is no wrong way to do it. Passing out garbage code like that hurts more than helps. You could always go and hang out with Matt (Matt's Script Archive). Then again pass enough junk like that out and you may get your own version of: Not Matt's Scripts (NMS Project). Bottom line -- toss out junky code and deal with the comments calling the the blue sky blue.

I played around with "3ddesk" for an evening or two. http://desk3d.sourceforge.net/screenshots.php (It's very smooth in real life, unlike the animation)

Anyway, it was neat and all, but I never use it. It's quicker to just use the menubar switcher. It's a good way to impress your friends though. I imagine MS's deal is similar -- looks neato but doesn't really help you out.

In addition to the applications that I added (some I wrote myself), there is this one note about "testcd" that I have discussed in my blog.

From what I can tell, if "testcd" does not come out right for a livecd linux, there is the _possibility_ that the cd may not boot on all 386/586/686 boxes. I have tried to get my remaster right, so it passes "testcd" with a 100% score, so to speak. One would need a Knoppix cd, and one that boots when you want it to.

Here is the latest recap of some of the features in my remaster.

There are automated scripts to use when remastering the CD. One copies the cd, the other prepares an iso after changes are made to the master-copy.

I left out the fact that I have emelFM in there, I use it all the time.

Enjoy the screenshots:

Juice (formerly iPodder) is pretty much the go-to standard... or at least it was until iTunes added podcasting support. Personally I use iTunes and only because it integrates much better than iPodder ever did, but that's entirely a personal choice.

As far as Podcasts go here are some of my favorites:

Coverville : An excellent podcast devoted to covers. Always excellent.

Reel Reviews Radio : Short (and the occasional Cinephile long-form) discussions of various films. The subtitle of "Films Worth Watching" probably describes it best. Sometimes I've found stuff that I've overlooked other times it proved to be the kick in the pants that I needed to finally get around to watching something I've been interested in.

The Dawn and Drew Show : I like it personally. Then again, I also loathe Howard Stern so there's no easy decisions to be made. Free-form discussion by a husband and wife team where he's the straight man and she tends to be effusive and offensive (well... to some I guess).

The Tim and Tony Show : Two guys talk about various sexual topics. About the same intellectual level as Dawn and Drew.

The Apparat Programme (Podcast at http://feeds.feedburner.com/Apparat , info best found at http://www.warrenellis.com/ : Influential British comic writer Warren Ellis' occasionally posts new entries in his podcast which is basically just music that interests him.

They Might Be Giants Podcast : Well... if you're a fan it's an excellent podcast for Their music. Then again they've always managed to heavily experiment with new forms of music delivery.

I prefer conky over torsmo. It's a fork, with many new features.

I'm the only App and Web(intranet -php/mysql / internet -jsp/Oracle) developer

If you're already running php/mysql, surely you can take something from SourceForge as a fully functional solution!

My favorite podcatcher is BashPodder, a minimalist bash script that uses wget to grab enclosures for you. Fast, light, stable, easy to modify. I typically use an iPod shuffle which I charge overnight, so one can also make a script to check if it is mounted, copy or move files to it, and run iPod Shuffle Database Builder.

For better reccomendations, you might give us an idea of which OS you're using, if you have always-on internet, whether you'd prefer to grab content at least once a day or manually (with or without having to manually launch a program or to have a background service/daemon running at all times), and other features you would like in your pod catcher.

I've written a script in Perl called Piddlepodder. Just copy the XML feed URL into the feeds file, set it in cron, and forget about it. I've got lots of feature request that eventually I'll have time to put in there.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/piddlepodder

Hope this helps!

For convenient podcast downloads for NON-iPod MP3 players, try iTunes + iTunes Agent.

iTunes
http://www.apple.com/itunes/

iTunes Agent - use any MP3 player with iTunes
http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=54 9637

My Morning Playlist
Nature Podcast (science journal)
http://www.nature.com/nature/podcast/

NPR 5-minute News Summary
NPR Health & Science
NPR Technology
http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_directory.p hp?type=topic

Democracy NOW! (news - better than NPR in some ways)
http://democracynow.org/podcast_help.shtml#feeds

Diggnation (latest general blog news from digg.com)
http://revision3.com/diggnation

This Week in Tech (weekly tech news)
http://twit.tv/podcastinfo

Security Now! (tech/security news)
http://www.grc.com/SecurityNow.htm

President's Weekly Radio Address (comedy)
http://weeklyradioaddress.com/

and I used to listen to Ricky Gervais (comedy), but he charges $$ now.
http://www.rickygervais.com/podcast.php

You neglect the fact that many Linux distributions now rely on bittorrent in preference to other protocols. Centos comes to mind.

In these cases, I use ctorrent. Very small, non-gui.

One of my favorite podcasts is Escape Pod. Well worth a listen to. I also enjoy NASA's podcast as well as Space.com's. I also listen the the DragonPage shows as Mur Lafferty's two shows (I Should Be Writing and Geek Fu Action Grip). As for my environment; well, I have a Creative Labs Zen Nomad XTra which my wife bought me for Christmas a couple of years ago. Since I use KDE as my desktop environment, I use KZenExplorer to hook up to it, and KPodder as my aggregator; it downloads the feeds into specific directories in my home directory, and I can just drag and drop them to my MP3 player. KZenExplorer is available for Kubuntu through the multiverse repositories, but I had to install KPodder from source.

Apple iTunes & iPods are the dominant software & hardware audio players, but not everone has an iPod or wants to use Apple iTunes. If you do not use Apple iTunes, then you might like to check out Juice Receiver [1]. Juice uses RSS feeds to download podcasts to your computer. Juice is platform-independent, so you can use it from virtually any computer and play the files on any MP3 device. If you need assistance with it, then see the Juice FAQ [2] and the Juice User Guide (PDF) [3].

[1] http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/
[2] http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/faq/index.php
[3] http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/docs/JuiceUse rGuide.pdf

Apple iTunes & iPods are the dominant software & hardware audio players, but not everone has an iPod or wants to use Apple iTunes. If you do not use Apple iTunes, then you might like to check out Juice Receiver [1]. Juice uses RSS feeds to download podcasts to your computer. Juice is platform-independent, so you can use it from virtually any computer and play the files on any MP3 device. If you need assistance with it, then see the Juice FAQ [2] and the Juice User Guide (PDF) [3].

[1] http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/
[2] http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/faq/index.php
[3] http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/docs/JuiceUse rGuide.pdf

Apple iTunes & iPods are the dominant software & hardware audio players, but not everone has an iPod or wants to use Apple iTunes. If you do not use Apple iTunes, then you might like to check out Juice Receiver [1]. Juice uses RSS feeds to download podcasts to your computer. Juice is platform-independent, so you can use it from virtually any computer and play the files on any MP3 device. If you need assistance with it, then see the Juice FAQ [2] and the Juice User Guide (PDF) [3].

[1] http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/
[2] http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/faq/index.php
[3] http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/docs/JuiceUse rGuide.pdf

• Cinecast is an excellent movie review podcasts the IMO beats the snot out of Ebert & Whoever (of course you can catch their podcast as well.) RSS Feed
• Keith and the Girl still stands as one of my regulars, although not for everyone, but very funny. RSS Feed
• Coverville is a wonderful high production values music podcast that features only covers of songs. I love it. RSS Feed

As for RSS feed readers/podcatchers (another hated word mashup), I still use the original Juice receiver (previously called iPodder). It has plenty of flaws, but every time I give other feed readers a try I always come back to it. I still haven't found one that will synch with my iRiver correctly. I use the new version of WinAmp for that.

I don't know why everyone always recommends using iTunes. I abhor their podcast interface and always get confused as it dumps me in and out of my library, search, back to their store, etc. Hate hate hate!

• Knoppix, live linux boot CD ("rescue"), http://www.knoppix.org/
• Unix Rosetta Stone, table to convert linux vs bsd vs unix, http://bhami.com/rosetta.html
• GNU screen, switch between shells in one login, priceless via ssh, http://www.gnu.org/software/screen/
• GNU stow, simple package management for ANY posix system, http://www.gnu.org/software/stow/
• vim, not vi (I depend on ^P and a real undo history, note emacs is not so great for sysadmins who need quick changes on dozens of architectures), http://www.vim.org
• sudo, especially when giving a group permission as a non-root user as in my /. post groups + sudo can allow installation rights , http://www.sudo.ws/
• wiki, which tells people how to do things without bugging the sysadmin, (any wiki is good, I use mediawiki), http://www.mediawiki.org/
• CVS/Subversion, note changes in important configuration files (cvs is for older Unixes that can't run svn), http://subversion.tigris.org/
• rdesktop, remotely log into windows Remote Desktop/Terminal Services, http://www.rdesktop.org/
• fail2ban, drop traffic to attacking IPs (ie, failed logins) for small intervals, http://fail2ban.sourceforge.net/

Thanks for the heads-up. But I was really hoping that you got the name Conky from Pee Wee's Playhouse, as opposed to Trailer Park Boys.

Somehow, I shall struggle not to hold it against you.

No. http://conky.sourceforge.net/aboutconky.html

• emacs
• grep
• perl
• sed
• svn
• xml (manipulate XML from the command line)
• tar
• ssh (this one is fun: "ssh server tar -cf - directory | tar -xv")
• for (built-in bash command, one-line scripts from the command line are very useful)
• lsof (what processes have open network ports? why can't I unmount that disk?)
• wget
• ping
• telnet (test SMTP, HTTP, etc servers by hand)
• nmap

Netcat - I use it for almost everything network related and I'm not a networking guru.

Give up on MCE and run MediaPortal, which is basically Xbox Media Center for Windows. (Go to sourceforge to download it without beating up their likely-anemic webserver.) I just downloaded and installed it so I could actually give some useful information - I use an Xbox as my media center, so I run XBMC. It's true that the fan is way noisy but the video output is very high quality if you are still on an old school video output device, as I am.

The install is done through a Windows Installer file with a .exe stub which I ignored. There is a configuration utility that [optionally] scans for your files, sets up weather and TV listings, and remote control configuration. (It supports four remotes, forget which now, but Hauppage is one of 'em.)

I made a quick run of the program just now and it seems to work. So, go get it, and forget about MCE.

I certainly wouldn't want to host my project at a place called Source Forget. I think you mean http://aterm.sourceforge.net/

Indeed, I do. The typo was actually copied directly from the linked article. I guess I should have checked the links first. Ah well.

I certainly wouldn't want to host my project at a place called Source Forget.

I think you mean http://aterm.sourceforge.net/

Torsmo is dead and has been for some time. I'm the main dev for Conky, a continuation of torsmo with all its features plus other goodies. See for yourself @ http://conky.sourceforge.net/

I only counted 6.

Torsmo
http://torsmo.sourceforge.net/

ImageMagick
http://imagemagick.org/

Aterm
http://aterm.sourceforget.net/

Root-tail
http://www.goof.com/pcg/marc/root-tail.html

Quod Libet
http://sacredchao.net/quodlibet

Transmission
http://transmission.m0k.org/

Why don't the GTK developers make an output-to-Quartz to go alongside their output-to-X11? No help from Apple required.

Oh nevermind, someone already started it: http://gtk-quartz.sourceforge.net/

Of course! And if you'll miss MS Office, there's something to remind it to you.

Speaking of OSS, could you enlighten us as to how being an Apple user is incompatible with OSS and what a select few people running XP has anything to do with Apple and OSS other than the fact that the software will be a OSS project?

As for Apple and the OSS communityHere are a few links for you:

Apple's involvement with OSS.
Freshmeat OS X projects
Source Forge Projects

That's why there's fluxbox

There's the Fangs extension for Firefox (which doesn't actually speak). IBM Homepage Reader has a free evaluation download. JAWS screen reader has a demo version (if I remember correctly it expires after half an hour of use, then you have to reboot to use it again). Safari can be used as an aural browser. EMACSpeak can be used as an aural browser (in conjunction with EMACS-W3), and was the first (to my knowledge) to support aural CSS. However, it's only really any good if you have a hardware speech synthesiser - its software support depends on an old, obsolete library that is hard or impossible to get hold of these days. Opera has an aural mode.

Actually, that list surprises me somewhat. A couple of years ago, it was just JAWS, IBM, and EMACSpeak if you could get it to work. The past couple of years have really improved matters.

It depends on why you are testing really. If you are doing it for legal reasons, you're probably okay testing in just the aural browser that's most convenient for you. But if you are doing it for a genuine attempt at compatibility, you'll need to test in JAWS, it's the most popular by far.

It's quite a pain to use demo versions when you are only trying to make your websites more compatible with them. The best thing to do if you can't justify buying them is to develop a website so that it works without images, Javascript or CSS, and then test in the aural browsers, writing down everything that doesn't work quite right. Then fix up what you need to, and keep your notes to hand the next time you develop a site (i.e. write a "style guide" for your code).

My favourite online game from the mid 1980s is Sopwith 3. The old graphics honestly don't bother me.

http://sopwith3.sourceforge.net/

Try it with a friend over the internet today. Keys are: ,./
s h
zx
b spacebar

Actually, I disagree. As someone who can draw 300 spams a day (managing multiple domains), I'd say Gmail is subpar. In my experience Yahoo is better, and the Bayesian filtering on my desktop is a lot better. Also, when I was using Gmail it had false spam identifications for me often enough (1 or 2 per week) to be really annoying.

Maybe it is something about the composition of emails that I get, but Gmail is not a system I'd recommend as a spam trap. To be fair, it does seem to handle most of them correctly, but if spam filtering is large concern then better alternatives exist.

BTW, what has Google ever given back to the OSS community it depends on to supply Linux, MySQL, Python, etc.?

Google using Linux doesn't make it more viable; it demonstrates Linux's existing viability in a very high-profile way.

I'm not even a Linux fanboy, but really: do your research.

BTW, what has Google ever given back to the OSS community it depends on to supply Linux, MySQL, Python, etc.?

Google using Linux doesn't make it more viable; it demonstrates Linux's existing viability in a very high-profile way.

I'm not even a Linux fanboy, but really: do your research.

http://wcuniverse.sourceforge.net

The vast majority of the books I own have their Dewey number printed on the copyright page right along with date of publication and edition.

Those that don't, I can assign a Dewey number based on the subject matter. Hmm, math...500. Physics, 530. Here's a fairly nice breakdown you can use for just the main numbers.

Now your books are in order. Want to be able to look them up? Someone already suggested the card catalog--a tried and true old system. It works. Or, if you insist on using a computer system, how about one of the available free and/or open source solutions? There are many more available online if you search.

Jim

Tried DOSBox??

This would bother me. I type over 90 wpm, but my handwriting is completely illegible to myself and anyone else. Since I am post-postgraduate degree, going back to 3rd grade penmanship is not an option.

I am far more efficient at taking notes in Freemind (http://freemind.sourceforge.net/ and capture what I need. Freemind allows me to organize while typing without having to format a document, so it allows me to ponder the concepts as well, rather than just acting as a stenographer in a notetaking situation. I work in the medical field, so understanding deep and detailed concepts presented at meetings and lectures is a daily occurance to me.

In client meetings and pro-ed lectures, I type my notes, then am able to go back and hyperlink relevant reseach, answers to questions, weblinks, etc. I can then output to an outline format, and start producing my status updates/ actions list/ proposal/ content paper /TPS report/ etc straight from my notes.

I would like this professor to provide evidence that passive listening beats out active learning in the classroom. As far as students web browsing and IMing instead of paying attention in class... well, a) shut down the wireless b) engage students suspected of not paying attention or c) let them fail exams or the class outright.

LibraryThing works great for inventory purposes, especially with a library as large as the querent states he has. (I personally have over 2000 books entered into LT at this point.) Using tags for location purposes is another great idea, and there are a good many LT users already doing that. As for open format, no, the software running it isn't open, but a CSV datadump of one's personal library is available. I have a spreadsheet on the home computer and on the PDA so I can make sure I don't buy books twice.

However, the poster's still going to have a mess of books. Taking them all off the shelf to catalog the things is a good start, but he needs to know where to find them. I'd sort them on the shelves by subject matter, then size, then by author and title. Then use LT or whatever tag-supporting cataloging software to tag locations of the books once they are on the shelf.

I admit I was using OpenBiblio before, which does meet the OP's requirements for an open program and will do all those nifty cataloging and locating things except, perhaps, for cooperation with the barcode scanner--but it's more for actual library use and may just be a bit too in-depth for your home user.

When I set up my home library a few years ago, I used Thokbook from
http://thokbook.sourceforge.net/ - it had a simple installation and a
fast command-line interface. I finished all forty of my shelves in one
day, and that included some unpacking time.

Please consider joining Bibliophile on sourceforge, which is a collection of a lot of the other open source literature management software. The effort is fairly informal, but we'd like to share tools for importing, exporting, and cross-site searching.

(FWIW: I'm involved with refbase)

Please consider joining Bibliophile on sourceforge, which is a collection of a lot of the other open source literature management software. The effort is fairly informal, but we'd like to share tools for importing, exporting, and cross-site searching.

(FWIW: I'm involved with refbase)

This is a good example: http://sourceforge.net/projects/slashcode

Two MySQL databases for handling multiple media types... typically used for lending systems, but can also be used just to manage your catalog.

DPL (Distributed Library Project) http://www.thoughtcrime.org/software/dlp/ or http://sourceforge.net/projects/dlp - This is the software distribution page for the Distributed Library Project, a website which creates a distributed library of people's books, videos, and music. The project is an experiment in creating community and sharing information within a town or city.

OpenDB http://opendb.iamvegan.net/ - The Open Media Lending Database (OpenDb) is an extremely flexible application to catalogue all sorts of things including DVD, VCD, CD, VHS, GAMES, BOOKS & Laser Discs. Anything that you can collect and lend, you can catalogue with this system. The OpenDb allows you to add new types, by describing them in system database tables designed for the purpose.

Yeh, but webkit will only partially compile on windows, and not at all on linux.

huh? you can run it on linux pefectly fine. http://gtk-webcore.sourceforge.net/ you can even set galeon to use webcore instead of Gecko.