Archive for the 'Software' Category

Music from Windows 98 and XP

April 11, 2008

I’m always surprised at the creativity of others.  In this case, someone took the sounds from the Windows 98 and XP operating systems and made music!  Don’t believe me?  Try it!

[from CNET News.com]

Can I End These Processes?

April 10, 2008

If you’ve ever used the Ctrl-Alt-Del command, you’ve probably seen the Windows Task Manager and most likely the tab for open applications.  If you click on the second tab, Processes, you’ll see a number of programs that are currently available and may be working.  Ever wonder what these were and if you should/could end some [...]

Filtering Report for San Jose Public Library

April 5, 2008

In February, Sarah Houghton-Jan, Digital Futures Manager for the San Jose Public Library, wrote a report on filtering for the city commissioners. She has since posted the report, which compares three filtering packages — CyberPatrol, FilterGate, and WebSense.
The report includes information on how filtering is done, a description of the methodology, the findings (both [...]

Microsoft Gives Free Software to High School & College Students

April 4, 2008

DreamSpark, a program from Microsoft, provides Visual Studio 2008 Professional, Windows Server 2003 Standard, Microsoft Expression Studio, SQL Server 2005 Developer, and XNA Game Studio to high school and college students in 11 countries, including the United States.
Students will be asked to verify their student status initially and every 12 months.  Those 18 years and [...]

Scriblio

March 9, 2008

Some of you may remember WPopac, a proof of concept project from Casey Bisson.  He wanted to see if it would be possible to run the public access catalog through blogging software, e.g., WordPress, thereby bringing some of the blogging functionality to the catalog.
Since then, he has been working with a few others to create [...]

Microsoft Word 2003 to 2007 Interactive Guide

January 13, 2008

If you’re like me, I was upgraded to Microsoft Office 2007 and am still trying to remember where some common commands are.  Microsoft has an interactive guide.  It opens a screenshot of Word 2003; you click on the function you need to find in Word 2007; it opens a screenshot of Word 2007 and shows [...]

Office 2003 SP3 Blocks Older File Formats

January 6, 2008

Update:  Microsoft has made it easier to unblock the blocked file formats.  There are three methods, one of which is a downloadable update that automatically re-enables all the blocked file types.
[from CNET.com]
Service Pack 3 for Microsoft Office 2003 blocks many older file formats. These include:

Corel Draw, .cdr
Some Lotus files, .wk1, .wk3, .wk4, .wks
Powerpoint files [...]

Library Software Manifesto

January 6, 2008

Roy Tennant has written another post for the Tech Essence blog — it’s the Library Software Manifesto.  In it, he divides responsibilities into three areas:

Consumer rights — what libraries should expect from our vendors
Consumer responsibilities — what we should expect from ourselves
Shared responsibilities — what libraries and vendors should expect from each other

It’s an excellent [...]

OpenSocial

January 5, 2008

How many social networks do you belong to?  The three I use are MySpace, FaceBook, and LinkedIn.  What is frustrating to me is that more and more social networks are cropping up and my friends and colleagues are all in different networks.  Does that mean I need to be in all of them?  I have [...]

Discounted MS Office for College Students

November 8, 2007

Although done in an unorthodox way, Microsoft is providing a large discount for college students that would like to purchase Office Ultimate 2007. If you have an email address with the domain “edu” from a US educational institution and are actively enrolled with at least .5 credit hours (and can prove it), you can [...]