Ubuntu comes pre-installed with a wealth of apps - covering almost every task you need to do, while still managing to fit on a CD. Are you ready to discover some pretty cool Linux apps that don’t get the attention they deserve? Let’s check them out.
You can easily install any of these apps using the ‘Add/Remove Applications’ from the upper panel.
Midori is a web browser that uses the well-known WebKit rendering engine, providing quite a speed bump from Firefox and standards complying page rendering. Midori is currently packaged into Xubuntu and features include tabs, bookmarks and customizable search engine box. The browser is extensible via Javascript.
Your Mac’s built-in iSight can do more than just let you play with Photo Booth and allow your friends to see you when you’re chatting. With the right software, your webcam can transform from merely being a toy to a useful tool.
Gawker is a free application which your iSight uses to create time-lapse movies. As with all time-lapse movies, it uses a collection of photos taken within an interval (every 10 seconds, for example) and combines them to form a video.
Due to the popularity of my first article regarding free alternatives to commercial Mac applications, I’ve decided to roll out a second part, shining the spotlight on more free applications for MakeUseOf’s Mac adopters. I hope you’ll like these applications just as well as their commercial counterparts, maybe even more since they’re free!
Jing is a screen-casting program which has come a long way since it first started. Their current version is pretty impressive because it integrates sharing to Screencast.com, Flickr and uploads to any FTP; you’ll automatically get a download link which you can share with your friends (something like Skitch). It does everything iShowU does and it even records from the microphone. The one thing it doesn’t allow me to do is adjust the video output quality. But hey, it’s pretty decent for a free app.
There I was, hopping up and down in my room when a friend barges through the door.
“What are you doing?”
I stop and don’t really know what to say. Maybe if I keep silent he’ll forget about it.
It doesn’t work. He keeps standing there in the doorway with that strange look on his face.
“I was er….kinda….rubbing the frost away, you know?” I stutter.
The strange look doesn’t disappear. Then he sees my computer monitor.
“Yeah. It does look a little bit frosty”, he says and starts waving his arms.
Who wants to be famous? Oh of course you do. You’d be lying if you said you didn’t stand in front of the mirror when you were younger with the hairbrush as your microphone mouthing the words to Rick Astley or Shaking Stevens. We all have visions of being a pop star or a TV personality. We all want to be someone better than we really are. That’s human nature.
The good news is that if you have a webcam, a fairly fast internet connection and some spare time on your hands, Yahoo gives you the chance to set up a free live video channel on the net and the ability for others to view your channel.
There are so many things you can do with a webcam or camera hooked up to your computer. You can do anything from take a picture to film a movie. There are many expensive programs that replaces elaborate hardware video and audio mixers but with the power modern personal computers contains, there is little reason to spend the money or learn these applications.
Maybe you want to use your webcam for multiple things at once, maybe you want add graphics, or maybe you want to have the ability to switch between multiple video sources such as a video capture of your desktop. If so, there are applications that can accomplish this.
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