For those who like ebooks, Calibre is a great program that was created to manage pretty much any aspect of your reading files.

The list of features is pretty extensive:

convert files from and to epub, mobi, LRF and supports input of several other formats including PDF, html, odt, rtf amongst others;
syncs to mobile reader devices (seems [...]

Posted in Office, Utilities No Comments »

For quite a while now OpenOffice has been promising the ability to import and edit PDF files. Although not released with the program itself, you can grab the Sun PDF Import extension to do just that.
This extension is in beta and is available multi-platform for Windows, Linux and MacOS X systems.
Tests that I ran were [...]

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After a recent exchange of ideas about Abiword on identi.ca, I decided to take a closer look at it again. Although OpenOffice is currently my office suite of choice, it is a bit bloated and slow. So, what does Abiword have to offer?

It is blazing fast;
works in Windows and Linux;
has all the main text editing [...]

Posted in CD and DVD, Office No Comments »

Migrating from a proprietary licensed mindset into open source can be perceived as a pretty challenging task. It is incredibly common for me to see that branding power often blinds people in a way that the functionalities of a software are disregarded in favor of the comforting sound of a brand name.
What does all that [...]

Posted in Office, Tips 1 Comment »

GanttProject is currently what I’m using for my project management duties. Why?

it is multi-platform (works on Windows, Linux, and MacOS X);
simple to use;
open source;
allows me to manage well dependencies, resources and milestones.

The main drawback is that it is Java based so a bit slower to run than other native programs.
If you enjoyed this post, make [...]

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If you like to support open standards format, here is a (at least for me) new discovery:  .epub.
If you like open standards and ebooks, support the spreading of .epub. This file extension is a mixture of three open standards OPS ( Open Publication Structure ), OPF ( Open Packaging Format) and OCF (Open Container Format), [...]

Posted in Mobile, Office, Standards, Tips, Utilities No Comments »

Don’t think Visio is the only application out there to create diagrams and workflows, Dia is an excellent alternative!

With Dia you can easily create relationship diagrams and with the several object styles it has, you’re able to do some more technical work such as UML diagrams, flowcharts, and chronograms. Although the default format you can [...]

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I got a new phone and was terrified about the manual work that would be needed to sync all of my contact details. But then I thought, we’re in 2008 so there must be an open source way of doing this!!
Funambol MobileWe did the trick perfectly! Funambol allows syncing over the air emails, contacts, calendar, [...]

Posted in Mobile, Office, Web services 2 Comments »

While trying to make my productivity life easier on my machine, I started searching for a program that would allow me to have a 2-way sync between my desktop and RememberTheMilk. As I’ve mentioned before, Evolution does only 1-way sync to my favorite task management web application.
So, searching away in the vast world of the [...]

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On my computer (unfortunately) I’ve always had a dual boot setup. For my email, calendar, and contact management Thunderbird was my favorite pick. Was until I had a closer look at Evolution.
Why have I now switched?
1) Thunderbird is email and contacts only, so there is the need to install Lightning or Sunbird to get calendar [...]

Posted in Office 9 Comments »