Here is nice piece of software for creating tutorial or presentation movies. It is particularly well suited for creating tutorials for software and can capture screenshots. The user can add explanation boxes and record voice messages. Output formats include Flash, PDF, HTML and stand-alone executable. It runs on both Linux and Windows. It is free, but it is not Open Source. Read more about WINK on About.com's Graphics Software site.

The Gnome application Ekiga, version 3.2.5, with full support for the SIP and H.323 protocols has been released. It includes features like call forwarding, call transfer, call hold, instant messaging, and text chat. It uses advanced audio quality (Wideband codecs), including echo cancellation. Besides the capability of making voice and video calls to other computers, it is possible to make calls to regular telephones and receive calls from regular telephones.

Unlike Skype, Ekiga is a Linux native. It is free, released under the GPL license, and can be downloaded from the Ekiga web site.

While most software development, web page design, etc. nowadays is done using graphical user interfaces, experienced UNIX/Linux people appreciate the simplicity and efficiency of the powerful text-based tools available on those platforms. If you are familiar for example with one of the powerful text editors, such as Emacs or VI, it is very easy to work remotely (over the Internet or intranet) on other computers using Telnet or SSH connections. Read more...

ImageMagick is a free and open source software package for modifying and creating images. Unlike graphics packages such as The GIMP that provide tools for manual creation and manipulation of images, ImageMagick is meant to be used by programs to generate and adjust images automatically. Interfaces are available for many programming languages, including Ada, C, C++, Java, Lisp, Pascal, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, and Tcl/TK. It can also be used from the command line. Read more...

KompoZer is a WYSIWYG editor for designing and maintaining web pages. WYSIWYG, pronounced "we-see-wig", stands for "What You See Is What You Get", which means that the page that you look at while you write and edit, looks just like the way the page will look when it is viewed through a web browser (as opposed to writing HTML code where you have to guess and test how it may look). Read more...

In addition to the Software Development Kit (SDK), which was released a couple months ago, the Android team has now also released a "Native Development Kit" (NDK). The SDK allows developers to write software for Android devices in Java. The system is designed for platform independence, so that no or little adjustments are required to run the same applications on different devices. The NDK on the other hand enables Andoid developers to access native code, which in general is not platform independent, but may be more efficient in some cases. More details and download information for the SDK and NDK is available at the Android web site.

Setting up web sites has been an effective way for groups and organizations to publish information to the world. A click on a link is typically all it takes for somebody to access that information. Maintaining that information however is not quite as simple, especially if more than one person provides content and makes updates to the web site. Read more...

Is it time to buy an e-book reader? The technology of e-book readers has made a big step forward this year. With the release of Amazon's Kindle 2 we are getting close to the kind of electronic alternative to books that people had envisioned for a long time. Read more...

The Virtual Box software is a virtualization system that makes it possible to run one operating system inside another operating system. For example you can use it run MS Windows from within Linux, or you can run Linux from within MS Windows. Read more...

The Linux kernel developers have recently released kernel version 2.6.30, which you can probably soon find in your favorite Linux distribution. While most users don't bother to look under hood of their Linux system (where the kernel is), it is instructive to review the latest performance tune-ups that will help us all move faster in the future. Read more...