Gadget Wisdom

We recently started experimenting with QEMU. QEMU is a generic and open source machine emulator and virtualizer.

As an emulator, it can run operating systems and programs made for one machine on another. It currently can emulate the ARM processor(used in routers and other embedded network hardware), SPARC, PowerPC, MIPS, and more are coming.

As a virtualizer, it can create a virtual computer than can run a complete operating system on it. There is an optional drive available to enhance speed.

QEMU runs on the command-line under Windows and Linux-based computers, but pops up a window or a full-screen display for the operating system it is virtualizing. We have used QEMU to experiment and test bootable CDs. These CDs boot a complete operating system and are often used for diagnostic testing on computers.

You can find the latest version of QEMU for Windows here.

To try QEMU out, get a CD image of a bootable CD in iso format, and run the following command:

qemu -cdrom [iso filename] -boot d

That will boot whatever iso you want in a virtualized window.

We’ll have more on QEMU in the future, but it is a great way to experiment with Linux and other operating systems, if you want to try them without major alterations to your system. For more information, try the QEMU on Windows wiki.

This question was put to us recently by an educator who wants to show certain Youtube videos in her classes but cannot rely on a working internet connection. These simple instructions are courtesy of Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

Try vixy.net - it will allow you to download Youtube videos directly as a standard video file or even audio-only. It is somewhat limited in the formats though. We’d prefer an Xvid option. Xvid is an open-source alternative to DivX. 

For a free program you can install on a computer and run…try Super…

Finally, if you want to put them on a DVD, Amit offers a bit more advice(Although we generally go the Linux route) and instruction.

For those of you looking for free fonts, check out the EquippedCreative’s Ultimate Free Font Roundup. It has links to various free font websites. Since fonts are a subjective thing…we can’t tell you which one you’ll like.

We are always looking for free and open-source alternatives to software that we would rather not pay for. Since keeping track of such programs is hard…we recently located Osalt.com…Open Source as Alternatives. Given a common piece of software, ie Photoshop…it will produce a lost of alternatives…ie GIMP.

Certainly useful…although it makes little judgement on the quality of the applications. That is up to you.

We’re always on the hunt for free stuff. Lifehacker was nice enough to point us to a site which has put together a package of free software with an installer on a CD. Software for Starving Students.

It includes some games, utilities, productivity…etc. Some of the programs we may be reviewing later.

Some say that with the prevalence of cell phones and internet telephony, that landlines are dead. We aren’t quite sure about that…but technology is continuing to enhance the old system.

Craigsnumber, apparently created with the goal of allowing those posting on popular site Craigslist to provide a phone number that will keep them anonymous, offers a temporary extension, although with limited area codes, that will be forwarded to your real line. You can specify the length of activation. Certainly a simple and uncomplicated service. Lifehacker has more details.

There are alternatives, of course. Freedigits.com offers a free VoIP phone line with a random US number. Their goal is to encourage you to go with them for paid service, but there are no strings attached to their free offer.

Another option is Grandcentral.com, which also offers both a free and a paid service. Their philosophy is one phone number…for life. Their free service offers three phones, caller ID, the ability to switch phones in the middle of a call, custom ringtones while waiting for you to pick up, the ability to record any call with a single button press, as well as SPAM blocking. The free service has a limitation of 100 minutes a month of calls received through them. It doesn’t offer any service not offered elsewhere as add-ons to other paid services, but it is a good option for some. Lifehacker reviews it here.

If none of these options work for you…you can always just pay for VoIP service. Just remember, despite our skepticism about customer service…if you give them money, they are supposed to help you. If you don’t…they have an excuse not to.

In the old days, the Browser Wars were when Microsoft Internet Explorer competed with Netscape Navigator for the browser market. Each would diverge farther away from each other…create HTML functions and tags unique to that browser.

It created quite a mess for the Internet. Netscape threw in the towel, but its heir, Mozilla Firefox, continues to hold a share in the market. Recently, Firefox unveiled its version 2.0, as Internet Explorer released the long-awaited IE7.

Internet Explorer 7 has a simplified interface which leaves more workspace than its previous incarnations. It implements tabbed browser, a longtime popular feature on Firefox. It implements a unified search box and RSS feed integration, long part of Firefox.

Both Firefox 2.0 and Internet Explorer 7 boast improved security features including new phishing protection to prevent visiting spoofed websites. When IE7 is used in the upcoming Vista release, it promises a protected mode that isolates it from the rest of the OS for security protection.

IE7 is a major improvement to the Internet Explorer browser. However, much of its improvements are playing catchup to the Firefox features that have proven too popular to ignore.

Firefox 2.0 has the same list of features, plus improvements to their tabbed browsing, a session restore feature allows a complete restore of a terminated Firefox session. inline spell checking, improved plugin management, as well as other improvements make Firefox the better of the two despite the higher market share Internet Explorer commands.

We don’t recommend chucking IE completely. It can still be very useful for sites that stubbornly refuse to open in Firefox. Of course, there is an extension for Firefox that allows you to open any link in an IE window embedded inside a Firefox tab, called IE Tab. Wait…perhaps you can discard IE entirely if you want…

CutePDF is a third-party software package for the creation and manipulation of PDF files. Several of these products have come onto the market as Adobe’s Portable Document Format(PDF) becomes more and more popular to offer alternatives to Adobe Acrobat.

CutePDF offers a free product, the CutePDF Writer, which uses a Postscript to PDF converter, for example Ghostscript(A staples on UNIX-based systems) to create a virtual printer that turns the printer output of any program into a PDF. There is also an optional free addon that requires you to install adware in order to use it. However, the Writer itself has no such strings attached.

For those of you who want to eliminate the free Adobe Acrobat Reader there is the Foxit Reader from Foxit Software.  Adobe Acrobat Reader is a bloated and slow program which installs resident on your system, using resources even when not being used, and requires you to wait through a long splash screen to pull your file. Foxit Reader allows you to read and print PDFs. There are addons for the reader that cost money. They allow annotation, saving PDFs to text files, etc. Foxit also offers a Creator and Editor which are available at a charge.

For the simple creation and viewing of PDF files, these two pieces of software work.