Open Office will recognize Microsoft documents and open them, but the reverse is not true. It is, in many ways, a fairly versatile suite of programs. Although OpenOffice.org requests donations of time or cash, the program can be downloaded for free. This is a definite advantage in a week when the world seems to be full of unexpected expenses!

While it is a little clunky when compared to Microsoft, the Open Office suite offers a viable alternative for the budgetarily challenged user. I found very little difference when using the text editor; the spreadsheet was quite reasonable-except for a couple of sort features. The database program seemed to me about as comprehensible as any database program. (Not my personal area of expertise-maybe someday...) The presentation software proved easy t o use, quite versatile. Open Office Math is completely beyond my personal comprehension. I squeaked through my college math classes, and breathed a sigh of relief when I put them behind me. It looks really interesting though-lots of equation-type stuff. Very nice.

I was delighted with the drawing tool. For years, I have put up with Paint (better than nothing), and various budget photo editors. Of those, JASC was probably the best; but when my trial down-load (and the class I was taking) ended, the funds weren't available for the full edition.
Open Office also offers the ability to export files as pdf.

In short, Open Office is a fairly versatile suite of editing and presentation tools. It is a viable alternative to more expensive programs suitable for keeping home office records, writing essays and a variety of other tasks.

First Things First

The first step is to pledge allegiance to the Republican Party. This type of technology in the hands of a Democrat could significantly alter mankind as we now know it. You must also acknowledge that if your relationships suffer due to continued use of this program as karaoke - defined as uttering sounds that may or may not sound like the words of the songs - I am not liable. And last, but not least, you must promise that occasionally you will leave a nickel or a dime in the coin return chute of any vending machine so that it will create a small sense of joy to some random person who will find it at some point in the future! Who doesn't smile when they find extra change in the return? And the world could use more smiles.

Let's Get To Work

The following steps will show you how to manually add lyrics to your songs. Before we head off to the internet, open your Windows Media Player (WMP). Right click next to the "Now Playing" tab at the top of the player and enable the "show classic menu" option. You can uncheck it later if you prefer not seeing it but we are going to use the menus often enough to keep it visible for now. These instructions I am giving you assumes that you have the latest version of WMP installed. (Version 11) If you are not sure, click the help button and click on "About Windows Media Player". This will tell you what version you have installed. If it is an earlier version, I suggest that you upgrade to WMP 11. It is so much better than the earlier versions.
Now click the "Play" option at the top and go down to the "Lyrics, Captions, and Subtitles" option and click "On if Available".

1. Find a Web site that catalogues song lyrics. Most will let you copy their lyrics without jumping through any hoops. Highlight the text of the lyrics and then either right click and select "copy", or use Control+C. Make sure that no other parts of the page get highlighted accidentally. You only want the text. Here are four Web sites where you should be able to find your songs and they are user friendly.
   
   
   • http://www.elyrics.net/
   • http://www.lyricsmode.com/
   • http://www.musicsonglyrics.com/
   • http://www.oldielyrics.com/
   
   Here is a cool little known secret: If you take the main word of a ".com" website such as "oldielyrics" in the fourth website I listed above, and type it into your address search bar and then hit Cntrl+Enter, your computer will add the http://www. before your word and .com after your word.}
   
2. Open your WMP and click on the Library tab. Find the song you just copied the lyrics for and right click on it. (Fig. 1) Highlight the "Advanced Tag Editor" and hit enter. This will open the "Advanced Tag Editor". (Fig. 2)
   
3. Select the "lyrics" tab, choose a language, select the "add" tab, click in the blank text box and paste your lyrics by either right click and select "paste" or Control+V. (Fig. 3) If you stop at this point, you will have "static" text that does not scroll as the song plays. If you want the scrolling text, click on the "Synchronized Lyrics" button just below the text box. You will see that the lyrics are now loaded with each line having a time value next to it. This value represents exactly when each line of lyrics will be visible on the WMP.
   
4. Below this, you will see the same information graphically. Sometimes the WMP errs on the exact time to display each line. If this is the case click the value in the time column, select "edit" and then type the new time value. (Fig. 4) You can check how accurate it is by hitting play and watching when the red lyric bar crosses over the time bar. You can also edit the lyrics to add or change words in each line. If you need to add a whole line, hit add, type in the new line of lyrics and then assign it a time value. When you hit enter, it will insert itself in the correct place.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

Figure 4

Speech Recognition

Basic navigation on MS can be done by voice command instead of your mouse.  You can also dictate text by using your own voice.  Speech Recognition will have to be installed if you haven't already done so.

How to install Speech Recognition

1. Click the Tools menu.
2. Click Speech and following instructions for installation. 

Once Speech Recognition has been installed you must train it to recognize your voice and your commands.  You can do this by: 

1. Click Control Panel.
2. With windows in Classic view, double click Speech.
3. In Category view click Sounds, Speech, and audio devices.
4. Click Speech.
5. Follow directions to train Speech Recognition.

* On some computers, double click Speech then Train Profile button. Then follow directions.

In order to use Speech Recognition, you will need to use the Language bar.  If your Microsoft Word does not show the Language bar you will need to display it.

To display language tool bar

1. Click start.
2. Click Control Panel.
   With control panel in classic view, double click Regional and language Options.
3. In category view, click Date, Time, Language and regional Options.
4. Click Regional and Language Options.
5. Click Languages tab.
6. Click Details.
7. Click the Language Bar in the Text Services And Input Languages box.
8. Click Show The Language Bar On The Desktop.
9. Click OK on all open dialog boxes.

The language bar will now be displayed on your desktop. 

Hide language tool bar

You can hide the tool bar when it is not in use by clicking the minimize button at the far right on the language tool bar. 

Restore language tool bar

To restore the language tool bar, click the language indicator button in the status area.  (The letters EN inside a small box.)

Listening to your written work

Once you have finished your article, you will want to proof read it.  The speech option is a handy tool once you have checked your spelling.  Hearing your text read aloud helps to find errors, errant words, and punctuation mistakes.

To use speech

1. Display the language tool bar.
2. Click Speak and Microsoft Word will begin to reading aloud your article.

 

Apart from this, it also comes with some handy presentation features. You can view them as a slideshow, with your own comments. Equally, you can display multiple pictures as part of picture collage, as multi-exposure, or a picture pile of some description.

Its image editing, admittedly, is probably not as comprehensive as you will find in a commercial package. But, it is still good, with all the basic fixes like crop, straighten and contrast. Plus, effects are available with soft focus, sharpen and color saturation amongst numerous available.

If you are seeking greater image editing options, then Paint.Net is an alternative worth consideration. While it has the more traditional display, it has a greater number of special effects you can use to alter the photo. Particularly novel are its artistic effects, which can change your photo to resemble more of an oil painting, ink sketch or pencil sketch. Likewise, you can make numerous adjustments to such aspects as hue saturation, contrast etc. Color levels can also be tinkered with.

Aside from the photo editing features, Paint.Net also has paint and artistic features, which can allow for more artistic editing. You can paint, draw, or add shapes.

GIMP is not a package I have tried. However, it is stated that this is a free alternative to PhotoShop - one of the best commercial products. Such is the status of the freeware, that it has its own website.

It boasts features such as a customizable interface, photo enhancement, barrel distortion and digital retouching. All sounding very impressive, in addition to good hardware support and multiple platforms supported from Linux to Mac OS X. It also has documentation available on site.

The best thing about these 3 photo editing packages is indeed the freeware factor. They are not shareware limited to 30-day trial periods. Any limitation of one package is probably overcome by the other free alternatives, and collectively they surely must equal the value of a commercial product. So, browse, download and enjoy these freeware software, the best free photo editing has to offer.

Microsoft Word offers a neat feature that will translate your Microsoft Word document into a variety of languages. It is as simple as load, select the language and translate. Now, not being able to speak all of these languages myself, I can not tell you whether or not it does an adequate job or not, but it looks pretty good on the screen. So keeping that information in mind, make sure you proof read any documents that have been translated before you email them or send them to your colleagues, friends or business associates.

Here are the exact steps you will need to take in order to accomplish this task. Once you read how it is done, you will be amazed as to how easy the process can be. You can also take Microsoft Word documents in another language and translate them into your own native tongue.

The first thing you need to do is open up Microsoft Word. When Microsoft Word appears on the screen it will default to a blank document. It doesn't make much sense to show you how to translate a blank document, so we will need to load a document with plenty of text on it first. So go ahead and open a Microsoft Word document that you have previously created. If you do not have one, go to Wikipedia and copy some text into the blank template that was loaded when you first opened Microsoft Word. It doesn't matter what the information is in the document, the important thing is to actually have something to translate.

At the top of the screen you will see menu options labeled, “File”, “Edit”, “View”, “Insert”, and so on. Click the menu option labeled, “Tools”. Below that a submenu will appear. Choose the option on the submenu that says, “Language”. From there another submenu will appear and you will want to choose the option that says, “Translate”.

On the right side of your screen you should now see a window that says “Translation”. The “from” box will default to your current language. Select the language you want to translate your document into by selecting a language in the “To” box. Once you have chosen the “To” language, click on the green arrow.

A window will appear with your translated documented. Simply copy and paste this translated text into a new Microsoft Word document and whoala! Your job here is done!

As you can see it is a very easy process that takes less than a few seconds. However these few seconds can help you immensely when trying to communicate with colleagues in a global marketplace.

Launchy 2.0

Launchy indexes the programs in your start menu and can launch your documents, project files, folders and bookmarks. If you download Launchy, you can simply forget about start menu, the icons on your desktop and file manager.

Download it from here.

TurnOff

TurnOff enables you turnoff your computer at a specific time. With it, you can set your computer to either hibernation mode or standby mode at a specific time.

Download it from here.

TimeRecorder

TimeRecorder enables you remind of anything what you did in one day or one week. With this you can set exact time for everything; as it can alarm periodically there is no chance of forgetting. But you can run it only 45 minutes continuously.

Download it from here.

OneClick Cleaner 1.00.712

OneClick Cleaner is a free disk cleanup tool. It scans and cleans junk files on your computer. It is very simple to use and easy to install or uninstall.

Download it from here.

Kampachi 1

Kampachi allows downloading files easily. With this, you can download a folder of files from any apache server that has options indexes turned on.

Download it from here.

URL Organizer Free 1.4

URL Organizer allows you to store and manage a large collection of URLs (up to 2000). You can add, delete, edit and re-name URLs. It supports three different web browsers. But you need to register to use it which costs nothing.

Download it from here.

RAMBooster 2

RAMBooster monitors usage of RAM and CPU. It helps to run your PC faster and smoother and you won't have to reboot your PC often. It supports RAM up to 9999 MB.

Download it from here.

Strange 0.5

As the name suggests it is really strange. Strange shows a gallery of Clifford Attractors. You can find many sets of coefficients to produce different images. This freeware is licensed under GPL.

Download it from here.

TyphoonPassword 1.0

TyphoonPassword is a free password manager. It supports all browsers and lets you store all of your passwords in one secure program.

Download it from here.

EatCam Webcam Recorder for ICQ 2.0

EatCam Webcam Recorder records webcams to AVI files and helps you to watch whenever you want. With this you can record both audio and video streams (audio from any source like microphone or speakers). This Webcam Recorder enables you replay your favorite moments.

Download it from here.

Veoh Video Downloader 3.11

Veoh Video Downloader helps you to download several files at the same time. With this you can save videos from Veoh to your PC, iPod, Mobile, PSP etc and save them into several formats like .avi, .mpeg, .wmv and .flv files.

Download it from here.

Orca Browser 1.1 Aplha 3

Orca was made by the owners of Avant Browsers. This web browser was designed based upon Firefox 3. Orca supports for about 20 languages and has many excellent features like Ad Blocker, Proxy server, Auto Filling forms, Mouse Gestures etc. It is said to be faster than Firefox and Opera. As it is the latest browser we have to wait for some time to know its efficiency.

Download it from here.

4Neurons Magnifying Glass 1.0

4Neurons Magnifying Glass is a high quality magnifying tool that magnifies advanced image zooming. This tool increases readability by displaying the magnified portions of the screen that are smooth and sharp.

Download it from here.

Umopit Aura 2.6.5.113

Umopit Aura brings nature sounds (birds, wind etc.) closer and you can enjoy a relaxing forest sound collection. Other features include alarm clock and muting time.

Download it from here.

PreWarn 1.6

PreWarn enables you start other programs with a simple click. If you start another program through PreWarn, PreWarn will pop-up a message window with a warning. Then, there are certain buttons with which you have to choose whether the requested programs should be started.

Download it from here.

DRI stands as the title says for Dynamic Range Increase. Normally a digital camera can't capture the whole contrast spectrum of a scene like our eyes. Depending on how well it's sensor is made it can capture more or less contrast, but it's always less than our eyes can. Even my DSLR for 700€ can't capture the whole contrast like my eyes, but it can at least capture more contrast than my small compact camera.

Making a DRI Photo means to put multiple exposures of the same photo together and only use the well exposed part of each. On this way you can get beyond the contrast of every digital camera. Of course, the more contrast your camera can capture the less work you have.

Photos Suited for DRI

Photos for DRI should be taken with a tripod so they match 100% exactly onto each other. You can also use freehand photos, like I did in this guide because I didn't had no better ones, but then you should use a panorama align tool like Hugin to match them over each other. This is also the reason why my photos are looking a bit uncommon.

Other things you should be aware of is that your photos must not contain any movement because if you lay them over each other the movement doesn't match, except your camera can take all different exposures at once. Even the wind can mess a picture up if you have trees or grass or other wind sensitive objects in your photo. I had luck with my ones, it was a silent day. Moving clouds can also be trouble.

Needed Software

I would suggest you GIMP because I'm used to it but I think every image software that supports layers and partial transparency for these will do. Don't wonder why my GIMP looks a bit different than the normal version, I've used GIMP Photo based on GIMP 2.4.3 but don't worry, I'm not using any thing that isn't included in the normal GIMP 2+ versions.

If you want to use freehand photos I would suggest you also Hugin so you can align them to each other. Normally it's made for aligning panorama parts together but it does a good job for DRI aligning too.

Making the DRI

Now let's get started, for this DRI guide I will only use 2 different exposures. You can use more but I'm not done with learning how to do that the correct way, most of my DRI's with more than 2 parts are not really good and only most of my 2 part DRI's turn out well.

Loading the Photos

First load your photos into GIMP. The easiest way is to open the underexposure and load the other exposure(s) with "File > Open as layers (Ctrl + Alt + O)". Alternatively you can just drag them onto the opened darkest photo, they will get loaded as layers that way too.

Correct Order

The order is important for this guide, you need to order the exposures starting with the lightest on top going down to the darkest at the bottom. To do that you can Shift + Click the eye on the left of a layer to only show this layer. Then find out if its the darkest, the lightest or something between and drag it either on top of all other or below all others or where ever it should be. As you can see on this screen shot: I'm dragging with the left mouse button the layer that got the eye, which shows it's the only visible, below the other layer cause the one I'm dragging is the dark one. The other one is the lighter one. The black line shows where the layer will land when I release the left mouse button.

This screen shot shows the 2 layers,on the left the lower and darker one, on the right the upper lighter one. I cut the half away from the lighter one so I can show you that they match together. You don't need to cut your photos yet.

Getting it DRI

Now that you have correctly ordered your photos we can make the unneeded parts transparent. To do this, right click the lighter layer and click on "Add layer mask".

Then the "Add layer mask" window will appear where you select "Greyscale copy of layer" and check the "Invert mask" checkbox.

This is also the reason why the lightest photo needs to be on top, the inverted greyscale copy will make all parts of the picture transparent depending on their luminance. This means that the lighter parts will be full to nearly full transparent while the darker parts will be nearly to full non-transparent.

This is where the simple DRI guide ends. Of course you can get even more out by optimizing the layer mask and using more than only 2 exposures but these are things I have to learn my self first. But compared to the base photos the result isn't bad. It's a simple but still nice DRI photo.

I hope this guide will help you to make some nice DRI photos too.

The last page shows the final DRI and the split screen from before so you can compare them.

Thanks for reading.

Google Earth

Google Earth is probably the most-well known app on this list. Similar to Google Maps, it allows you to explore the planet. You can view our planet from a world scale, or zoom in close enough to see your own house. Another feature is the terrain, which can be viewed in 3D.

Google Earth can also display 3D buildings, places of interest, country borders, roads, weather and tons more. Add-ons can be downloaded from the website. They range from Air Traffic to Real Time Earthquakes and more. Google Earth also has a function that allows users to view the sky.

Celestia

Celestia is a program that allows you to browse the universe in three dimensions. From the Earth to the distant reaches of the Milky Way and beyond, you can explore Planets, Moons, Solar Systems, Suns and even a few of the satellites that orbit Earth. What makes it different from other Planetarium software is the fact that you're not confined to the Earth's surface.

Another great feature is that it is expandable. If the 100,000 star and planet catalogue is not big enough for you, they have a huge range of expendables, ranging from Spacecraft and Planets to fictional solar systems and the Death Star. If you love astronomy, you'd be mad to miss this program.

Stellarium

Stellarium is an Open Source project from SourceForge. It is basically a planetarium, and you can look at the sky at any time, date or year, and see where the stars and planets are going to be. All this can be viewed from a variety of different landscapes, and you can zoom in to see planets in more detail.

Other Programs to Try

NASA World Wind

Orbiter Space Flight Simulator

Other Astronomical Software

Disk Cleaner saves your hard disk space by cleaning your computer from temporary junk files. As it is small in size and no installation is required, you can keep it in your USB drive and use to clean tracks on public computers too.

Advanced WindowsCare

Advanced WindowsCare is a free system optimizer to increase the windows startup speed. It also enables you to load applications faster.

Startup Inspector

Startup Inspector scans all programs that are in the Windows Startup Folder. It also provides information regarding spywares, viruses etc, thereby you can remove unnecessary startup programs to enhance the startup speed and PC performance.

Spyware Terminator

Spyware Terminator is an excellent spyware scanner and cleaner. It protects users from unknown and malicious spywares as well as scans and removes spywares and viruses.

Auslogics Disk Defrag

Auslogics Disk Defrag is very helpful in preventing system slowdowns, PC crashes and slow startup and shutdowns. It also improves computer performance and stability.

TeraCopy

T

TeraCopy is a free system optimizer speeds up local file transfers on windows. It can resume broken file transfer, skip copying of files in case of error and check CRC checksums of files. You can observe the improvement in local file transfers by downlaoding it.

eBoostr

eBoostr allows you to use an additional drive like USB or hardisk as a performance boosting cache of Windows XP, so enjoy the feature of ReadyBoost of Vista without upgrading to it.

Eusing Free Registry Cleaner

Cleaning a registry once in a while enhances the speed of Windows. This Free Registry Cleaner is safe and simple to use. It restores previous registry with a simple click.

Daemon Tools

A virtual drive software thing. Great if you don't want to have to keep changing CDs. Using .iso instead of actual CDs makes the shouts of terror from scratched or lost CDs non-existence.

ImgBurn

A piece of software for burning and creating .iso files. Very user friendly and easy to handle.

RocketDock

A dock software that CAN do a lot of things, but if you just want it to be an application launcher it sits fine as well. I like it because you don't have to have it do everything for you, and it takes up a miniscule amount of RAM.

Launchy

An application launcher program. It is incredibly easy to use, and looks nice as well.

Winamp

A little bit old news here, but I just started using it seriously. It's a very nice lightweight program, and once I got used to the controls, it made me happy to be able to have my computer rest gently while playing music. Also, there's almost endless customization.

WordWeb

A nice little dictionary application that lets you easily look up words you don't know. I like it because it works outside of browsers, and lets me not have to open up a new tab just to look up a definition. It also has many different dictionaries to choose from.

Revo Uninstaller

A piece of software that lets you feel better about lazily uninstalling things. It gets rid of some of the "leftovers" programs tend to leave behind. My friend would use this to uninstall shareware, so the trial period magical would expand infinitely.

That's all I think that is REALLY good. The bits I left out are either Windows features, Yahoo Widgets, and Trillian. Yahoo Widgets aren't that great, I just like having some things being able to pop up when I press certain keys. Trillian is just my personal preference, it's nothing that amazing. The Windows features are pretty nice, but no one needs to hear about something they're probably aware they already have.

I hope this can be useful to a frantic wanderer. I know I could've used this.