This is a decent repository of applications and many of their previous versions. It is a nice resource if you are either using some old hardware or if you prefer the previous version of a particular program.

http://www.oldversion.com

One of the things I love the most about Open Source and the Internet in general is that there is always new and amazing stuff to discover. I recently discovered two new software projects that, I think are really awesome.

In the spirit of this I decided to take a moment to put together a list of my (current) five favorite Open Source projects. These are not listed in any order of importance.

DokuWiki

This is a great wiki software package that you can just drop into a web folder and start using. I like because it is so easy to get up and running without dealing with complicated configuration.

http://www.splitbrain.org/projects/dokuwiki

Gparted

This is the best disk partitioning utility I have found. You can just download an ISO and burn it to a CD and then boot from that and manage all kinds of disk maintenance tasks. It has a nice graphical interface and runs completely independent of operating system software (outside of the fact that it is booting a simplified Linux system straight from the CD).

http://gparted.sourceforge.net

OpenOffice.org - NeoOffice

This is one of my old favorites and one the most successful open source projects to date. It is a productivity suite much akin to Microsoft Office. It is better in some ways and not quite as good in others, but on the whole is a great alternative.

NeoOffice is the native version for Mac OSX, however OpenOffice.org is working on a native Mac version (which I think will put NeoOffice out of business).

http://www.openoffice.org
http://www.neooffice.org

Tango Desktop Project

This is a project put sponsored freedesktop.org. It is a project that is trying to take the different distributions of Linux and the different window managers on Linux and get them to use a standard set of look and feel icons so that a person can move between versions of Linux and still get a familiar user experience.

I think this is a very important thing when comes to wider Linux adoption by users. The other part to this is that these icons can be adopted throughout the world and not just on Linux, bringing the whole tech sphere closer together from a user perspective.

http://tango.freedesktop.org

Ubuntu

This is one of my favorite distributions of Linux. It is very well constructed and organized from a geek perspective, but also it seems to install and work very easily for the Linux newbie (on most computers). Although, I have to contribute its geek appeal to the fact that it is Debian based. My user experience with it has just been great; better than I have ever had with any other Linux distributions.

It is also a very progressive and successful in bringing Linux acceptance to a higher level. One of the biggest things it has achieved recently is that it has been picked up by Dell and offered as a cheaper alternative to Windows Vista in the new computers they sell.

http://www.ubuntu.com

I heard of this resource the other day on one of the Linux podcasts I listen to. It is a version of the Google search that only pulls in results from websites focused on Linux. It is a nice feature and it seems interesting that there is a Google Linux search, however there isn’t a Google Windows or Google Mac search.

http://www.google.com/linux

This is a great place to search and find information on music, musicians, composers and more. One of the cool things is that you can listen to samples of the things you find. It really seems to have just about everything listed here. I tried searching for new stuff, old stuff, film composers and even local artists and I couldn’t trip it up (I even found information on a band some people I knew in high school were in).

http://www.allmusic.com

Thanks to Evan for sending this one to me.

The link for this week is a resource I use to find out information about files I don’t recognize (in email attachments or random system files on my computer). They have a fairly exhaustive list of file types that you can search for by the extension. It will tell you what the file is and what programs they are used for.

http://www.filext.com

As a side note, an extension for a file is the three or four letters at the end of a file’s name right after the last period.

I just watched (as I understand it) the first public combined interview of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. It was in front of an audience at the D5 conference. Which is a conference put on by the Wall Street Journal. Now I am not normally a fan of these mainstream conferences because they tend to very investor controlled. However on the same token an interview like this would have never happened without major funding backing it.

Anyway, the interview itself also suffered from mainstream quality of the event, however I still thought that both Bill and Steve said some very interesting things and had a very good line of dialog. And what was really interesting was how the mentality that they projected in person very much embodied the cultures and focuses of their respective organizations. Even in such mature and large organizations there singular influence still controls the values and focus.

The one point that Steve Jobs made that I really agreed with and latched onto was that in the next five to ten years the big innovations are going to happen with specialized devices (like cell phones and tablets) over the traditional desktop or laptop computers.

The one thing that Bill Gates said that I really agreed with was when they were being asked about the idea of the Internet and the browser destroying the traditional software market. He said that those Internet based applications may be the more visible aspect of modern computing, but it will be because the ‘localized’ software will be more transparent. In the sense that the user will still be relying on the localized operating system to function it just will utilize more natural things like speech and visual recognition over traditional WIMP (windows, icons, menus and pointing devices (mouse)) interaction from the user.

I also thought that the interviewers were more disruptive and cumbersome to the dialog of the interview than they were guiding and contributory. Such that at different times both Bill and Steve would fundamentally ignore what one of the interviewers said in order to expand on a thought or topic that they raised between themselves. I know that these interviewers were working in a very restricted environment, with controlled and noncontroversial questions to pull from, but they really seemed to fail in just basic discussion facilitation.

It is a quite interesting discussion to watch. It is even comical to watch how the two would respond to certain thoughts and statements with facial expression and body language but then cool their heads to maintain the professional and friendly atmosphere of the situation.

The full video and transcript is available on the conference follow up website:
http://d5.allthingsd.com/20070530/d5-gates-jobs-interview

The full video is also available on YouTube (I used these because the player on the main website does not play on the Wii):
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10