Free alternatives to Adobe Creative Studio

I found an interesting post about this topic. It is amazing that the open source "movement" is able to offer such a great alternatives and in many cases for free. Here you have the list and links:

1. Photoshop: The Gimp; Paint.Net
   
2. Illustrator: Inskape
3. DreamWeaver: KompoZer
4. Flash: Synfig
5. InDesign: Scribus
6. AfterEffects: JahShaka
7. SoundBooth: Audacity

DVD regions

I'm a fan of Original (enemy of piracy) and because of that I buy original software, music, books and also DVDs.
But I have a problem, I received some DVDs from US and they can't be played in a DVD player set for a different region. I live in Europe and the zone I have set on my computer's DVD player is region 2.
In the case of Windows Media Player or Itunes it is easy to change the region and switch them to the one you need to see your DVDs, but the switching process can be used only five times!
After that the DVD player will be locked permanently. Today my kids wanted to see a very especial DVD for zone 1 so I had to try to solve the problem and I found a solution that in 2 minutes solved the problem. It is a free software called "Remote selector". You can read about how to use it and even download it from this page: http://www.gromkov.com/faq/faq2004-0063.html
As owner of Original DVDs I think it is of good use to have right of using the DVD wherever I am and no matter the player. I see on the stores some players that are region free so I think the usage of software like Remote Selector is legal. In any case you would like to make your own research. I found an article in Wikipedia that is interesting to learn more about this issue.

Competition for Wikipedia: Citizendium

Wikipedia is certainly one of the most interesting and important places where to stop on the Internet. The idea of having a place on the web where members could freely edit and add contents is some kind of revolutionary idea and trend.
Citizendium wants to solve some of the problems many critics showed about Wikipedia and that is about the quality of the contents published there.
Competition is always good for the consumers so Citizendium should be welcome. But is always smart to be critic on the contents we get from any media: newspapers, web sites, magazines, etc. It's always healthy to cross information from different sources in order to create a personal opinion.

Adobe Creative Suite CS2 and Windows Vista

If you are thinking to upgrade to Windows Vista and you have installed Adobe Creative Suite CS2 think twice. Adobe is not recommending you to do so.
In a document released by Adobe they said:

"While some of its components, including Adobe InDesign CS2, Illustrator CS2 and Photoshop CS2, install and run under Windows Vista with only minor known issues, other components such as Acrobat 7.0 Professional do not support Windows Vista,".

Creative Suite CS3 will run on Windows Vista and Intel based Macs.

The new Adobe Creative Suite CS3 will be on the market in a few days from now! Exactly on March 27 at 3:30 p.m. Eastern Time. Click here to know where to go online to see a live web cast of the event.
If you want to learn more about what will change on Photoshop CS3 here you have a good new.
News.com article here.

Mozy review part I

I received the chance to evaluate the version of Mozy.com back up service for Mac. The setup process was very simple. The software detects automatically all what you would like to backup, pictures, files, settings.
I have the free version so I have 2GB of space available for backing up. The problem is that only in pictures I have 5GB! Thats a problem because then it means that I should select just some of the pictures or files. Of course they have a version that is "unlimited" but you must pay for it.
Just now I'm backing up 70MB, I have an ADSL line with 750 MBPS for upload but I see that the process is not so fast. The 7oMB will take 4 hours to upload. This is not so bad... if you think that you need bandwidth for your normal use and Internet browsing.
I can see also that the uploading or backing up process is not using so much from my MacBook resources and thats great!
I can see also that the transfer speed is going faster while more time passes.

You can try it now clicking here.

The most important ITC conference in Slovenia

All the preparatives for the Microsoft NT Konferenca 2007 are being set. It will have more than 2000 ITC professionals and business decision makers from Slovenia. Around 700 Slovenian companies will participate.
This year I'm expecting a very interesting event because Microsoft will show more about the new Exchange Server, Office System 2007 and of course Windows.
If you understand slovenian language visit http://www.ntk2007.si/

More tools for free backup!

Hello!
I still don't have the chance to use it because it is still not available for Mac. But I will propose a test in the office :)
In the mean time you could use it and let me know your opinion!

Free services: How to use the best out of free email accounts?

There are 2 services I'm using for information storage. One is Gmail and the Other AOL mail. Each one offers 2GB at least for storage.
Here is the tip:

1. I use an email address in the office. That one is the most important for me. I also use one Hotmail for personal messaging, I have this account since 1997! the only problem is that until now I don't get the 2GB of storage!
2. When I want to backup any email and attachments I just forward it to my Gmail account.
3. I made a rule on the Gmail to automatically forward all incoming emails to my AOL mail account. (Click here to learn how to do it)
   

That means that I centralize into those 2 backup accounts all what I think is important. If one service is not available is very possible that the other is.
Of course those accounts are also helpful to subscription to some newsletters that I don't want to receive to my job's email.

Very bad for WebTrends!

Tips for you all.... don't use the service of "free trial" from Web Trends. This is my personal opinion.
Some weeks ago I registered to the trial. And I made a mistake: I let them my credit card information. Yes they said that finishing the trial they will proceed to charge for the next 30 days period.
But I received an email telling that I need to activate the trial. It sounds logic to me that if the trial is not activated... it is not running the time period (14 days). But anyway and without any email notification they charged my credit card 35 US$. And in the billing notification I see that they charged for the period of February... even for the days of the trial.
I know the software is very good. But the approach they have to the customers is really bad.
I received a message from them telling me that they will not charge anymore my credit card and that my account is canceled (requested by me). But I payed them 35$ for doing nothing! and that gives me no right even to use the service for 30 days or something!!!!