Save Thousands Using FREE Open Source Alternatives

Every year, commercial software companies come out with expensive upgrades or new software that they want people to buy. I believe that the majority of people and businesses do not need to spend the hundreds, if not thousands of dollars these companies are seeking. A great alternative to these expensive programs, that a lot of people and businesses are not aware of, is open source software.

Dictionary.com does a good job of defining open source: pertaining to or denoting software whose source code is available free of charge to the public to use, copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute.”

There is a lot of FREE listed in that definition! The software is free of charge and we are free to make any changes to it that we see fit. Of course to make the changes; you either have to know programming or know somebody that does.

A lot of people shy away from open source software; due to concerns about security and support. They think “if it is free, how stable and secure can it be compared to its several hundred dollar counterpart, and will I be able to get support”. Most free software that is released has community support. If you have any questions or problems with the software that you can’t find in the documentation all you have to do is hop on their forum and ask a question. You will usually get an answer the same day or next. I have even gotten answers on open source forums in less time than I have had to wait on hold for “Peggie”. I believe that most open source software is very secure compared to their commercial counterparts. With commercial companies, the software code is locked so nobody other than the company that created it can look at it and modify it to correct any problems it may have in security. With open source software, the whole internet community can collaborate on the software and as soon as somebody finds a flaw or security risk they can submit a change that will be updated shortly.

Companies and individuals are not the only ones that can benefit and save money with free software. Governments are currently saving millions of dollars by replacing their expensive commercial software with open source programs. The city of Munich, in Germany, is currently in the process of switching from Microsoft’s Windows operating system to an open source version of SuSE Linux. Venezuela passed a law (Decree 3390) mandating a transition to open source in all public agencies. The government of Peru has voted to adopt open source software across all of its offices, the reason they gave for the switch was “to ensure that key pillars of democracy were safeguarded”. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts adopted the OpenDocument standard for all of its offices. The United States White House moved its website to servers using the free operating system Linux and the free content management software Drupal in 2009. This is just a sample of the governments that have switched over to open source completely or partially to save money.

The next time you go to lay down your hard earned cash for a piece of software that is going to be asking you for some more money in a year or so when it gets upgraded, remember open source software. Here is a small list of some of my favorite free programs next to their expensive counterpart. If you need these programs you could save $2,500 or more.

Free Alternative / Expensive Commercial Version

OpenOffice / Microsoft Office $119.99 to $499.99 starting at $349.99 if you want database functionality.

GIMP / Adobe Photoshop $699 Scribus Adobe InDesign $699

Inkscape / Adobe Illustrator $599

Ubuntu / Windows 7 Ultimate $219.99

To read more about these FREE programs and to find more freebies, check out the BestFreeNet.com.

Save thousands of dollars by using the freebies we have found that are capable of replacing expensive commercial products.

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Is Anybody Compliant With the EU Cookie Law Yet?

The pending deadline date for compliance with the now infamous EU Cookie Law has left many website owners in a state of confusion. Serious lack of official direction and implementation advice has already, even at this early stage, created a myriad of bewildered site owners wondering what to do and how do it. For all the fever surrounding the topic most of the questions people are asking are basically:

- What is the EU Cookie Law

- Do I need to comply?

- How do I comply?

- Who has complied so far?

- How is the EU going to locate compliant and non-compliant sites?

- What is actually going to happen if I don’t comply?

Much has been said already about the first 3 of these questions and there is plenty available online to digest.

Our concern in this article is to consider the last 3 questions.

So, who has complied so far? This is one of the most asked questions at this point, and is naturally being asked more and more as the official deadline approaches. There are two main reasons people are concerned with this. The first is because with the lack of official clarity about how to comply people are looking to other sites (preferably large high-profile ones) to show how they are complying and then copy that same process on their own site. After all, very few sites are armed with lawyers and deep programming resources so they will look toward the leaders and early implementers to show then the way to satisfactory compliance standards.

The second reason people want to know who has complied is because many experts have speculated in other articles that the EU is [link]most likely to go after higher profile sites after the deadline. Therefore there is an unspoken expectation that larger traffic sites are going to implement compliance sooner rather than later because they are most immediate risk, and that until they do the medium and smaller sites probably have less to worry about. Whilst this is not necessarily true it is the case that often lawmakers will go after larger corporations at first to make an example and encourage others to fall in line quickly for fear of suffering the same fate.

Given these facts one would probably expect that the top tier sites in the various EU countries are already well on their way to compliance by now. One would expect…

Interested in discovering this we collected a cookie list of the top 25 UK sites and checked out what they were doing with cookies in the browser.

Here is the compliance list:

google.co.uk

bbc.co.uk

ebay.co.uk

amazon.co.uk

dailymail.co.uk

guardian.co.uk

telegraph.co.uk

thesun.co.uk

hsbc.co.uk

rightmove.co.uk

barclays.co.uk

argos.co.uk

independent.co.uk

national-lottery.co.uk

barefruit.co.uk

lloydstsb.co.uk

tripadvisor.co.uk

autotrader.co.uk

digitalspy.co.uk

groupon.co.uk

santander.co.uk

orange.co.uk

mirror.co.uk

theregister.co.uk

next.co.uk

As it turns out not a single one of them is EU Compliant! Why not? Well, they all created permanent cookies, some of them third party cookies, and did not ask for consent. Even worse we only checked th e homepages! Now, This doesn’t mean that these large site will not comply before the approaching deadline, but it does paint a fairly grim picture of the current state of things. If the top 25 sites are not yet there, what about the top 50, or 100, or 1000? After gathering more data it turns out that not a single site in the top 150 is compliant. In the end out of the total 17,904 audited UK sites in our research so far only 53 are compliant. That is a very low and pathetic statistic: 0.3%!

What does all this mean? Well, first it means that if you are not compliant yet then it would seem you are in good company. If the previously stated premise that the lawmakers will go after larger sites before smaller ones is true then there is clearly going to be some time until they work their way down the list. On the down side, there is no large commercial site to look toward for answers about how to implement and get compliant.

The facts are not very comforting for anybody trying to make sense out of the cookie law. All they do is highlight the current confusion and leave us with more new questions than answers. The most interesting thing we have to ask is whether these larger sites are going actually implement compliance at all? Are they all waiting for somebody else to make a move, or are they just going to play a waiting game with legislators? This brings us to our other earlier question: what are the law makers going to do when the deadline passes if 99% of the top 1000 EU sites have all not bothered to comply with their law?

Whatever the answer to these questions one thing is for sure: the future days are going to be interesting to watch how the law is (or is not) implemented, and what the EU is going to do about it for those who do not comply.

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Design a Website for iPad Applications and Grow Your Business

How to monetize your website in a big way

Website offers unlimited possibilities to improve business productivity and leverages the explosive growth of mobile industry. iPad has emerged as the new channel of communication to the end users – a paradigm shift from desktops. Migrating your website to iPad presents innumerable opportunities for business to boost productivity. You can read eBooks on portrait and landscape modes using the iPad tablet. You can also publish apps directly without waiting for App Store approval, which saves lot of time and money. Whats more – you can read news, access e-mail and play games without connecting to the App Store

Why iPad

iPad delivers a captivating touch experience to end users with its wide screen of a computer and functionality of a smartphone. Apple has sold 25 million iPads in little over a year since its launch in April 2010. iPad has a 9.7 inch LED backlit Multi-touch interface with a pixel resolution of 1024 X 768, a faster 1 GHz A5 dual-core processor, light and slim with a thickness of 8.8mm, front and rear facing video cameras, smartcover, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and 3G, AirPlay, AirPrint, Video Mirroring, and offers HDMI connectivity. iPad offers plenty of opportunities and possibilities to developers exploiting iPad’s high performance, usability, and portability to create flexible business solutions and high quality applications

Why should you migrate the entire web content to iPad platform

Converting a website for iPad tablet offers the larger iPad tablet touch experience to users, who can just interact with the web and bring a smooth navigation experience never seen before. When you convert your website to iPad, users can browse faster, work offline, get push notifications, track locations, integrate social media, and can do much more. iPad web apps can be designed with beautiful interfaces and finger-friendly layouts and options for various verticals like business, eBooks, games, multimedia, tools, and more

How to leverage web apps for iPad

Web is an open medium and is independent of device or browser. Web apps can be previewed on an iPad and users can just use their everyday apps like email, calendar, etc. in an effective way. Moreover, web applications can be optimized utiilizing iPad’s features like multitouch, gestures, etc. so as to deliver world-class iPad apps on 9.7 inch screen that flawlessly works to surpass your expectations and enhance web apps functionality

Benefits of converting your website to iPad app

Offline data

Do you have problems in showcasing your products in web apps at conferences with an unstable WiFi? You can make your web apps go offline with a click, and boom it right on the iPad. It is fast and works perfectly, ready for you to give a business presentation on the go. Now you can host web apps and don’t have to update your larger files, videos etc. in your iPad every time

Social sharing

With iPad web apps, you can make your social interactions engaging to boost your business needs. iPad apps provides solutions to businesses in unlimited ways to improve contacts and make online social life vibrant through iPad supported social features like photos, videos, IM, GPS, calendars and video conference

Location-specific services

By using GPS/location-based services for iPad apps companies can monetize a slew of interactive mobile location features like geo-tagging, geo-social, and geo-advertising. Geo-location services enable users to store and analyze geographical information visually

Push notifications

You can integrate push notifications which seamlessly connects your web apps with iPad over the air. It is a powerful tool which complements your web apps with a clean and easy-to-control list of your notifications

Tablet Commerce

Expand your mobile strategy with iPad targeted apps which allows users to view catalogue, buy products and have them delivered. Commerce-enabled iPad web apps enable retailers to manage their products online and personalize for users enhancing their mobile experience

The author is a Social Media & Content Strategist at Anubavam, a web and mobile development company offering website to ipad app conversion services for organizations ranging from small and medium to large enterprises. We are focused in converting a website to iPad app seamlessly, providing a roller coaster ride for our team of iPad designers, who can fit the web content with the screen resolution. We utilize an array of automated tools and techniques to render a website on the iPad offering two different layouts, portrait and landscape modes and pinch-to-zoom features providing improved user experience.

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The Booming Demand for Hardware and Networking Experts

Hardware and networking is an industry which experienced a major hype over the last decade, ever since the IT boom. Even after several years, and despite thousands of students who have graduated as trained hardware engineers since then, there is still a burgeoning demand for such professionals in the industry. The reason for this is the upsurge of multinational companies along with small-scale businesses which require computers in order to function efficiently.

Every company saves on the number of employee hours required for completing a particular task by the use of computers. Computers improve the speed and accuracy of the work immensely. They have indeed changed the work culture in the business sector considerably. Companies now have an array of computers which operate in an interconnected manner.

A hardware and networking expert has a number of responsibilities. First of all, they design how the computers will be arranged and placed in the company. They assemble the various components of the computer systems together so that they function properly. Most importantly, they connect the various computers to each other so that files and information can be shared amongst the employees. This is very important for the internal communication in the company.

Another primordial duty of hardware and networking professionals is to set up the user accounts and passwords for all the employees. The security of personal information is a prime consideration for this purpose. Since many applications required in the business may need the use of the internet, setting up a LAN (Local Area Network) connection is usually necessary.

The job of a hardware expert is not finished with the completion of the installations. Regular troubleshooting and maintenance of the hardware is also their responsibility. In addition, these professionals also train the new employees on how they should use the system. These ample numbers of duties merit why networking professionals are the backbone of every business. Even small-scale companies which cannot afford to hire a team of permanent engineers for their computers, call for such services whenever required.

A lot of institutes offer degrees and diplomas in hardware and networking. This is a major change since the times when this education was considered only as vocational training. This profession requires both skill and knowledge. A degree from a reputed college adds an additional feather to a student’s hat and ensures a satisfying job experience.

Hardware and networking are the most integral part of computer technology in the present day world.

Jennie Kakkad is an inspiring writer who beholds about 5 years of content writing experience. She strives to provide articles and blogs that satisfy your desire and accomplish your purpose. Her process of delivering a credible output involves various stages like research, understanding, judgment, analysis, and creation.

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