The Network - Open Source

Free Video Format Converter for OSX

nospam@example.com (Allison) — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 12:35:42 -0700

If you use a Mac for video work, then one of the issues you might face is format conversions. While Quicktime does well with some formats, sometimes it is a hit and miss proposition. So a company named Leawo provides tools for this purpose. I have not had the opportunity to try this out yet, and while it's not open source, it is free. They have a Pro version which costs a few dollars, but if you already have editing tools, it might be overkill.

Anyway, here's the link to the free version. I'll post an update with a review once I have a chance to try it out.

http://www.leawo.com/free-mac-video-converter/

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Make Gimp Run Like Photoshop

nospam@example.com (Allison) — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 00:04:09 -0700

I rarely use Gimp, the free image editing program, as I prefer to use Photoshop. However, Smashing Magazine has a nice tutorial on techniques to supercharge Gimp so that it has more Photoshop-like features. In fact their tutorial is titled Handy Tweaks To Make GIMP Replace Photoshop.

You can view the article by clicking here.

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The Issue of Copyright Grows More Extreme

nospam@example.com (Allison) — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 14:57:25 -0800

Article Link

The issue of copyright has become one where something has to give. The RIAA (major record labels) have been engaged in threats of lawsuits against common web users for several years now (often with dubious evidence of infringement), have shut down some P2P companies, want the right to decide how computers and electronic gadgets are designed, and have succeeded in getting the US government to setup a Copyright Czar in the Office of the President.

Conversely, content creators are facing a rapidly changing landscape full of the unknown, but also with the possibility of being able to create and distribute their own content for very little cost. What's rapidly vanishing is the need for the old style distribution systems that built up concepts such as major record labels.

So there are legal battles going on in the copyright area which indicate that technology innovation is causing a major disruption to business models which worked well forty years ago, but which now are disconnected with the capabilities brought about by the internet and open source software.

It is against this backdrop that the RIAA counterpart in France, the SPPF, is considering filing suit against SourceForge for hosting open source P2P software downloads. Yes, you read that correct. Open source software. Not music, but legal software.

According to a report in TechDirt:

Finally, and most bizarrely, SPPF is also suing SourceForge, which is just a hosting platform for open source developers. The problem there (according to SPPF) is that SourceForge hosts the open source Shareaza file sharing app. It would appear that SPPF did so little research in figuring out who to sue, that it seems to think SourceForge is somehow responsible for Shareaza, rather than just hosting it.

What do you think about this? Good? Bad? Something else? Let us know.

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Free Photoshop and Gimp Brushes

nospam@example.com (Allison) — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 09:41:00 -0700

We all like freebies, and we have decided to make a list of free Photoshop and Gimp brush sets. Photoshop brush sets are compatible with Gimp 2.4 and higher, so you can use these in both or either program.

If you have more that you would like to add to this list, leave a comment with the location of the brush set and we will add them to the list. Here's the list, enjoy:

Grunge Brush Set Click Here

Clouds Brush Set Click Here

Snowflakes Brushes Set Click Here

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Gimp 2.6 Released: Ready to Compete with Photoshop?

nospam@example.com (Allison) — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 19:40:34 -0700

The new version of Gimp, the free open source image editing software package, has been released to the public. The big question about Gimp is whether or not it is ready to compete with Adobe Photoshop for high end applications. The answer to that question is getting closer to being positive, although there are still many things that Photoshop can do at the high end that are not yet in the Gimp toolbox, e.g. Content Aware Scaling.

That said, Gimp 2.6 adds a number of feature which make it quite acceptable for the vast majority of users for photo and image editing. Certainly when considering the price differential between Gimp and Photoshop CS4, one really should give Gimp 2.6 a close look before deciding to buy Photoshop.

Here are some of the new features in Gimp 2.6:

Ability to Pan Beyond Image Border Scroll Beyond Border illustration

It is now possible to pan beyond the image border, making image window navigation much less constrained. It is no longer a problem to use the edge of a brush on the edge of an image while being zoomed in, and one can adapt the canvas to any utility windows covering parts of the image window.

Scroll Beyond Border Feature

Improved Free Select Tool

The freehand select tool has been enhanced to support polygonal selections. It also allows mixing free hand segments with polygonal segments, editing of existing segments, applying angle-constraints to segments, and of course the normal selection tool operations like add and subtract. Altoghether this ends up making the Free Select Tool a very versatile, powerful and easy-to-use selection tool.

Free Select Tool

Brush Dynamics

Brush dynamics let you map different brush parameters, commonly at least size and opacity, to one or more of three input dynamics: pressure, velocity and random. Velocity and random are usable with a mouse. The Ink tool, that supported velocity before, has been overhauled and now handles velocity-dependent painting much better.

Brush dynamics have enabled a new feature in stroking paths. There is now a check box under the "paint tool" option, for emulating brush dynamics if you stroke using a paint tool. What this means is that when your stroke is being painted by GIMP, it tells the brush that its pressure and velocity are varying along the length of the stroke. Pressure starts with zero, ramps up to full pressure and then ramps down again to no pressure. Velocity starts from zero and ramps up to full speed by the end of the stroke.

Brush Dynamics

Under the Hood - GEGL

Important progress towards high bit-depth and non-destructive editing in GIMP has been made. Most color operations in GIMP are now ported to the powerful graph based image processing framework GEGL, meaning that the interal processing is being done in 32bit floating point linear light RGBA. By default the legacy 8bit code paths are still used, but a curious user can turn on the use of GEGL for the color operations with Colors / Use GEGL.

In addition to porting color operations to GEGL, an experimental GEGL Operation tool has been added, found in the Tools menu. It enables applying GEGL operations to an image and it gives on-canvas previews of the results. The screenshot to the right shows this for a Gaussian Blur.

GEGL Tool

Photoshop CS4 is still the gold standard for image editing, Gimp 2.6 offers a great package at the right price. You can download the new Gimp for free by clicking here.

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Gimp and Free Photoshop Filters

nospam@example.com (Allison) — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 23:03:59 -0700

Filter plugins greatly improve the capability of Photoshop, but Gimp users have fewer choices. One option to try is to use Gimp User Filter to run Photoshop plugins.

I can't guarantee that it will work for you, but it is free so it won't cost you anything to try and see if it will configure on your Gimp install, and if it does work it would make Photoshop filters usable for you in Gimp. Which will also allow you to benefit from the next tip.

For those who own Photoshop, there are tons of free filters. You can find those by visiting clicking here.

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Gimp: PC Magazine Review

nospam@example.com (Allison) — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 17:47:08 -0700

Click for Article

PC Magazine has a new review of the Gimp image editing program. The review itself is rather short and sweet, with the primary comparisons being made between Gimp and Adobe Photoshop Elements. In that regards I suppose it is fair to compare Gimp to Photoshop Elements instead of comparing it to the much more powerful Photoshop CS3 Extended program. Nonetheless, the review does ding Gimp for perceived shortcomings when compared to Photoshop Elements. It should be pointed out though that Gimp is a completely free program, and Photoshop Elements, while far less expensive than its bigger brother, will still cost you a bit of money.

I have both Photoshop CS3 Extended and Gimp on my computer, and I confess that my primary tool is Photoshop. However, that is largely because I do a lot of work with Illustrator, Flash, Dreamweaver, and Fireworks, so Photoshop fits in well with that workflow. I also use Aperture 2.1, but all that said, I find Gimp to be a powerful program, and if you don't want to spend the money on the commercial competition, it's a decent stand in.

With that out of the way, here's what the reviewer thought:

GIMP still lacks many niceties offered by commercial programs. There's no image or album organizer, which is a real strength in Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 (beta) and is also included in the Serif and Corel editors. There's no tool for quickly stitching panoramas together, either, nor are there built-in printing modules for rapidly creating greeting cards and the like. And the application contains no quick links, like the ones on Shutterfly or Flickr, for sharing photos on popular Web services. All these features are pretty much standard these days, and all are available in competing programs from Adobe, Corel, and Serif.

Fair point, Gimp on its own does lack a photo browser. However, the author fails to mention that there are open source alternatives, such as Blue Marine, which specifically is:

blueMarine foundation is very similar to existing applications such as Adobe Lightroom or Apple Aperture: a photo browser, which can be explored in different ways (by folder, by calendar, by tags, by galleries). This is just a core upon which different modules can be plugged in. The aim of blueMarine is to fully support the photographic workflow, even before the photo shoot (for instance, trip planning supported by maps) and beyond print or archival. For instance, an ornithologist usually manages field notes about the bird observed and photographed: directly binding them to photos and maybe GPS positioning data is much better than keeping a separate Excel sheet.

While blueMarine appears to be still fairly raw, leaving it out of the Gimp conversation doesn't seem fair. Open Source does have a photo browser option, and while it might not be as sophisticated as Aperture or Lightroom, it does exist.

blueMarine Screenshot - Click for Fullsize

Next, the PC Magazine review says:

Performance, too, can lag that of the competition. Some filters didn't process as quickly as I would have liked. And few respond in real timeâ€”so you don't see the effect on an image until you release the mouse button. As a result, you usually have to make multiple attempts until you get just the effect you want. Modern, for-pay applications such as Elements and Paint Shop Pro usually preview changes in real time. You'll find the lack of preview a real annoyance if you plan to use GIMP for a lot of fiddly edits.

This is a valid point, however it should be noted that the review is not for the latest version of Gimp as the author points out (the review is on version 2.4.7 and version 2.5.3 is currently in development and may address some of these issues).

GIMP is a powerful tool in the hands of an experienced user or developer, and it delivers broad support for building graphics and images (it can even open and save Vista icons!). But despite the progress the developers have made in making the program more intuitive, neophytes will still find the learning process arduous. So GIMP is essentially for those who enjoy poking around a program and primarily want to do fine-tuning on photos (although the lack of a preview makes this somewhat hit-or-miss). It's not for the weekend shutterbug who wants to quickly edit, share, and organize shots (programs from Adobe, Serif, and Corel are much better at that). On the other hand, given the irresistible price, many may find the extra effort worthwhile.

This is probably a fair point, but keep in mind if you're a Second Life designer, you may also find Gimp useful. At least it's free, so the price shouldn't stop you from at least giving it a go.

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Gimp on a Mac: How to Run it

nospam@example.com (Alice) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 17:33:34 -0700

We're receiving a lot of inquiries about how to run the photo editing software Gimp on a Mac. While our tutorials have all been done on Vista and XP, we didn't include any specific information about Macs and Gimp, so this post is to help alleviate those issues. So, here's what you will need to do.

First, you'll need to make sure something called X11 is installed on your Mac. X11 allows you to run a large number of unix applications from inside OSX, and Gimp is one of those applications. You will find X11 on your OSX installation DVD, and if you have installed it, it will appear in your Utilities folder:

Open up the X11 program in that folder, and it will launch a program that will look like this:

Click for Full Size

Now go to your Applications folder (assuming you've installed Gimp already) and launch Gimp. The result should look like this:

Click for Full Size

That's it. You can now run Gimp. Let us know if you have any questions or if you get stuck.

IDC: Growth Areas

nospam@example.com (Allison) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 12:46:47 -0700

IDC Site

Research firm IDC is reporting that some of the following areas are enjoying growth, this despite a lackluster economy in general and a banking system in disarray (which as an aside, we predict that the next decade is going to belong to tech, information tech, medical tech, and green tech), and an oil industry that is out of control.

These may be early signs that the economy is going to change, and that tech is going to retake the growth position that it held in the pre-Bush years. Here are some of the things that IDC is highlighting:

Apple posts growth nine times the industry average. Takes #3 spot in the US market

Apple executes its market strategy better than any other company. It's consistent in its message, that message is always out there, and it markets to the niches that are most relevant to it, particularly people with disposable income who can afford to buy its products.

That audience will help Apple weather the U.S. economic slowdown better than most computer makers. It's catering to folks with money who are immune to the downturn, so that's good in the short term, maybe even in the medium term.

In the longer term, their global share is still small, around 3%, so the opportunity to take that higher is enormous. Apple's brand is highly recognizable around the world, and now that you have growing middle classes and growing disposable incomes in places like China and India, there will be huge opportunities for Apple.

Overall PC shipments grew 30 percent year-on-year and about 15 percent higher than IDC's initial forecast

Total PCs shipped in the first quarter reached 280,000 units due to strong consumer demand especially for laptops, according to IDC.

PC shipment grew 30 percent year-on-year and about 15 percent higher than IDC's initial forecast, according to a copy of IDC's Quarterly PC tracker obtained by INQUIRER.net.

IDC noted strongest growth in the notebook market, with the entry of more affordable models and small form-factor laptops like the Asus eePC.

Lastly, Open Source

The majority of average company revenue (63 percent) is from software products, with 30 percent from services; revenue from hardware and the resale of third-party products and services is negligible. These vendors are truly software vendors.
The majority of revenue from OSS (59 percent on average) is from subscriptions. In fact, 10 of 21 respondents generated 100 percent of their OSS revenue from subscriptions.

The average OSS revenue from Windows-based products (35 percent) is less than OSS revenue from Linux-based products (54 percent), which is not reflective of the installed base in mainstream enterprises.

On average, revenue from North America represents 62 percent of total OSS revenue, while Europe represents 23 percent.

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OpenSim and Microsoft: Beware

nospam@example.com (Allison) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 11:30:27 -0700

Article

Before you decide to take the plunge into OpenSim, be aware of a couple of facts. One, it's based on Microsoft technology. That's okay except for fact number two, which is that Microsoft wants to control the information about your avatar from grid-to-grid by using its repackaged Passport technology.

The OpenSim infrastructure is built with Microsoft's .NET framework. Ultimately this means that OpenSim will be tied to Redmond instead of truly being an open framework. That's not to say that OpenSim code isn't open source, but rather, that the framework on which it is built (.NET) is not truly open. But the more disturbing development is that Microsoft wants users to use their old Passport technology (renamed Windows Live ID) as the means to control avatar information.

While you may shrug this off, keep in mind that having one provider monitor your every move, monitor what you buy, who you talk to, even what you say, is not the ideal situation, and certainly runs counter to the idea of Open Source. While we do have a similar situation at present with Second Life and Linden Lab, the stakes are greater in the Microsoft scenario because the Windows Live ID is designed to follow you on the entire web, something which large providers such as eBay rejected some time ago:

Microsoft's technology for identity-management on the Internet in the form of Passport took another major beating today when eBay announced that they are discontinuing their support for it. Users of eBay would not be able to use their Passport Ids to login to eBay starting late January. This news comes just after a few months another major online portal in Monster.com dropped support for Passport from their online job website.

The answer to the identity problem really should be in an open, neutral standards framework, as opposed to being owned by a single corporation. To that end we support the use of OpenID and recommend it for rollout of any new grid deployment and/or new web services. In our estimation, placing ID management in the hands of Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, or any other private corporation is a risk to you and your business.

as OpenSim continues to gain traction, tying Microsoft technology into OpenSimâ€™s code increases the pool of developers allied with Redmond. And if OpenSim takes off, a Windows Live ID-based avatar identity gives Microsoft a leg up against the identity management tools offered by Google, Yahoo, and OpenID.

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OpenSim vs. Second Life

nospam@example.com (Allison) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 10:27:38 -0700

If you haven't heard about OpenSim, you soon will. If you read this article then you will have definitely heard about it. Linden Lab is getting competition from an open source alternative known as OpenSimulator. You may already be aware that the client side of Second Life is open source, however the server side is still closed source. As an alternative, OpenSimulator (OpenSim) project participants have created and implemented a Second Life compatible server side architecture for deploying custom grids which are compatible with the Second Life client.

Of course there are a number of possibilities, questions, issues, and everything in between, but it's clear that Linden Lab faces an interesting dilemma. Do they find a way to open source the server side of SL while still being able to grow their business, or do they try to do battle with the OpenSim movement? The former would surely blunt the growth of OpenSim in its current incarnation (assuming that Linden Lab didn't place cumbersome restrictions around the release of the server side code) and could lead to a market explosion of the 3d web. The latter would be more of an arms race to see who could add features the fastest. History would seem to side with private companies in the latter case, but it's not a given.

One advantage to OpenSim at this moment is that it is expandable by anyone who has the wherewithal to deploy a grid. This scenario could lead to an Apache-like growth of the 3d grid, making Second Life irrelevant. One possible downside for OpenSim is that it is built on the .NET framework, which could limit its acceptance and growth. The real weapon right now though lies in the lap of Linden Lab. If they decide to open up their server code, OpenSim probably becomes an entry on Wikipedia and vanishes, or OpenSim becomes the Second Life server code. On the other hand, if Linden Lab chooses to fight it out with OpenSim, all bets are off.

Here's some screenshots of OpenSim:

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Gimp Plugins Registry

nospam@example.com (Allison) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 17:05:35 -0700

Click Here for Registry

One of the software packages we track on this site is Gimp, not only because it is free, but because it is a nice alternative to Adobe Photoshop. While we use and like Photoshop and other Adobe products, Gimp is quickly becoming the go-to source for image management for a number of users.

One of the things you might not be aware of, however, is that there is a fairly robust set of plugins for Gimp, and they are collected in one place called the Gimp Plugin Registry. While these might not be Nik Plugins, many of them are of high quality, and the price is right.

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Free Video Editing Software: Jahshaka

nospam@example.com (Allison) — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 20:40:03 -0700

Click Picture to Download

Here's a free video editing suite that is cross platform. Give it a try if you're interested in machinima and let us know how well it works for you.

The developers say:

"Imagine if you could...

- Edit with flexibility and speed
- Create Effects in real time
- Animate with unlimited features
- Paint and design on moving video
- Create music with all the tools the pros use
- Work in any format at any resolution

...all while sharing files, projects and clips with users on your network or around the world, and all using a single, open source application where the code is yoursâ€¦ that runs on practically any workstationâ€¦

Jahshaka v3.0 will let you do this, and much more. Jahshaka was written from the ground-up to work in different environments, and lets you use the tools you need to get the job done in real time. Thanks to the power of OpenGl and OpenMl you can do this on anything from PC's to Mac's to high-powered Sgi workstations and not have to worry about mixing video, audio and graphics card, installing custom hardware and drivers, or spending millions of dollars for high end speed, power and functionality"

.

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Free Fonts

nospam@example.com (Allison) — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 15:20:00 -0700

Here are some links for free fonts:

http://www.freetype.org/

http://www.dafont.com/

http://www.thibault.org/fonts/

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Free Software: Scribus, Gimp Companion Software

nospam@example.com (Allison) — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 15:10:00 -0700

Click to Download

Scribus is an open source desktop publishing software that integrates with Gimp. It is available for Windows, Macs, and Linux. Scribus is an open-source program that creates what they call "press-ready" output. Scribus supports "professional publishing features, such as CMYK color, separations, ICC color management and versatile PDF creation."

Scribus is completely free.

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