E-Musings Mon Immorata

Wisdom in Drips, Drops and Drools P2P (peer-to-peer) isn't just about illegal music downloads; there's a wealth of free content available. And many clients too. But watchout as few don't have embedded spyware. Plus a first look at Mozilla Sunbird standalone calendar and task application You've been reading the nuggets of wisdom I impart. And have decided to junk your pirated copy of Microsoft Outlook for Mozilla Thunderbird. You have also discarded Internet Explorer for Firefox. Or possibly have chose the compleat Mozilla suite because you prefer all your applications -- web browser, email client, IRC chat and an HTML editor -- in a single bundle. But the one application you've really missed is a calendar. But your quest now ends.

The Mozilla Foundation has released an early Beta of Sunbird. This is the stand alone version of the Calendar component available as a Mozilla/Firefox/Thunderbird plug-in. However some beta testers have reported configuration issues. Sunbird supports both events and tasks. The interface is quite detailed. And you can define the task/event's name, location, start and end times, if the event/task is private or public, and if an alarm is required. Alerts can be sound events, a pop-up box, email notification, or a combination of these. Calendars support the iCal standard although this is still incompatible with Outlook. But you can export scheduling information as a .CSV file. iCal is fully web-enabled and users with access to a WebDAV-compatible server can publish their calendars. If you are interested in Sunbird, download a copy (6 MB). Or just read the FAQ. I have yet to check out Sunbird as its large download size dissuaded me. Coupled with some recent experience with buggy beta software. Instead I downloaded and installed the Thunderbird Calendar extension. That is available as a Tools menu sub-item and open in a new window. As promised in an earlier edition, I did check out EverNote. However the software still seems very unfinished. And definitely not (yet) worthy competition for Microsoft OneNote. Which if I recall in Beta was far more complete and usable. I find the ever-scrolling roll approach to recording data snippets a nightmare. As there's no easy way to save data directly from a web browser. Or from the Windows Clipboard. Yes, you can drag 'n drop or copy-paste content. But that's not the same thing. And while EverNote does capture a reference link to the source document, I was unable to activate the link. I prowled the EverNote forums and found that lots of what would-be 'killer' features have yet to be implemented. EverNote supports the Windows Clipboard. But has issues correctly parsing text dropped from Firefox and Opera. In comparison I still prefer Cogitum's Co-Citer software. Even though the latter works only with IE, or with a browser like MyIE2 or Maxthon (make sure to enable IE plug-in support). The software's free for personal use. You can define categories. And although each citation is stored in a proprietary database format, records can be exported to HTML, text, and to email. The OpenOffice.org team is working to releasing the next version of this premier open-source Office Suite. The OpenOffice.org 2.0 code base Beta (current build 1.9 m62) is looking more like Microsoft Office 2003 than ever before. Read the detailed release notes for more on the changes. OpenOffice.org is available as a single download. As well as BitTorrent seeds. P2P is most commonly used to download (and share) illegally distributed MP3, CD audio, DVD movies and software warez. There's an incredible wealth of absolutely free media content available online. Even I am amazed by what I've been missing. And as usual it's taken me a while to get on the P2P bandwagon. But now that I'm interested I dived straight in. And spent the better part of the past week testing out several of the Windows clients. Unfortunately, most of them like Limewire and Kazaa include active spyware components. I narrowed down my favorites to 3 applications. Ares Light is a free file sharing program that you can use to share, and exchange images as well as audio, video, software and documents. Transfers are affected through the Ares peer network. The client also supports IRC chat. And you can also host your own channel. Ares however doesn't work too well with firewalls. WinMX is another free (for now) P2P client that supports networks based on OpenNap and Napster protocols. This is available as a (slightly unstable) Beta that doesn't crash. But often lockups while downloading. Forcing an application, and in extreme instances a Windows restart. However I find the open-source Shareaza a pretty neat tool. This includes an integrated media player. And it can also double as a generic file download client. The Internet Archive is a massive project whose spiders dig into every corner of the Internet. You can access the ghosts of web sites past from the Wayback Machine. But this archive also holds an incredible collection of independent ebook libraries, including Million Book Project, Project Gutenberg. As well as Ibiblio.org Ebooks and the Digital Book Index. There's also lots of open-source audio and video file downloads from bands as diverse as the Grateful Dead, Benny Goodman and Little Feat. Another great resource of free content is the Creative Commons site that features links to content from acclaimed artists like Roger McGuinn (ex-Byrds) and Giberto Gil (Latin music icon). That's enough for this week from me. Now's its time for you to go forth and explore. Stay Safe! Click Here to Email Me