Other Cool Software

Yesterday I posted about some cool software that you should be aware of–namely Firefox and OpenOffice.org. Today I want to let you know about a couple of other cool software programs and web sites.

The Gimp

First, I was alerted to a graphics program called the Gimp. It is part of the aforementioned open source movement. Gimp (www.gimp.org) is a replacement program for Adobe Photoshop. I downloaded it yesterday and in the limited testing I did, I found it to be (1) feature rich, and (2) different from Photoshop. It doesn’t have the same interface or tools, but when I took a few minutes to experiment, I figured out that it does pretty much everything that Photoshop does that I know how to do. Which isn’t to say it does everthing that Photoshop does. But I could use it as a Photoshop replacement.

LaunchCast

Second, my brother Rick alerted me to LaunchCast, a personalized radio station you create at music.yahoo.com. When I say “personalized” what I mean is it lets you rate music, then it plays music specific to your ratings. I really like it. I actually upgraded to LaunchCast Plus, because I reached my limit on 600 songs in one calendar month on my personalized station. For the most part, the program is pretty good at recommending new music. I have rated over 1000 songs, so that probably helps. So props to Rick for letting me know about that. (If you want to add me as an influencer (if you upgrade to Plus), my Yahoo! ID is paulpehrson.)

Trillian

The third program I wanted to let you know about is called Trillian. It is a generic instant messenger that will log into AIM, ICQ, Yahoo! Messenger, and MSN Messenger all at the same time. That way you only have one contact list for all your messenger accounts, and you only have one window open. I also like that there is no advertising in the main messenger window, and I like the tabbed conversation view.

Ok. That is all for today. I’m off to Provo where I will have dinner with Christina and Jonathan at Keith and Karen’s house. Karen is a relative on the Urie side, and she served in Korea. She offered to make Jonathan a Korean dinner. That should be really interesting. I’m looking forward to it.

7 Responses to Other Cool Software

  • gryffinkat
    Have you ever heard of Audacity? It is an audio editing program, and I really like it. I don't use it for that much, but it's very simple for the things I do -- pulling clips, sometimes cleaning out background noise, changing tempo, pitch, or volume. It works with mp3, wav, and ogg files, and you can export to any of those. That's been really handy for me when I've lifted something from an mp3 file and then exported it as a wav so that I can use it for my system sounds.
  • Anonymous
    Paul, you know what I also really like about your blog is that when I am finished making a comment, I can go immediately to google and look up any big words you may have used or stuff like that
  • Paul
    Ok. What totally makes me laugh about that quote is this: we were watching American Idol on Tuesday (it is the only show we watch on TV), and Simon used some word (I can't even remember what it was), but I turned to Christina and said, "And everybody in America reaches for the dictionary to figure out what Simon just said..."
  • uryy4me
    Just so you know, now everyone in America is watching Simon. I know one who isn't!
  • Paul
    Okay, maybe I should have said, "America reaches for it's collective dictionary..."

    Or something like that.
  • Anonymous
    Are you dead? I sure hope not. But 5 blogless day????
  • Paul
    Ok, you're right. I'll blog in an hour or so :)