The Island of Overlooked Software

Welcome to Street Tech's year-end guide to some software that doesn't suck.
The idea here (initiated in Shop Talk, our conferencing area, by Street Tech Irregular Bruce Dykes) was to create a guide to overlooked and more generally useful Free Software offerings than the usual high geekitude offerings.

Two types of licenses are listed. "Free as in speech" means it is free to use as you want, copy, modify, redistribute, but it's not necessarily free of charge. "Free as in beer" means free of charge (Like: "Hey, everybody, FREE BEER!)

Each review is ranked with a "Geeklevel" from 0 to 3, 0 being Aunt Millie-level technical depth, and 3 being software best operated after dark under the influence of caffeine.

All of this software is for the Windows platform, and is available, either from the sites linked or from Tucows, Download.com, or your favorite software repository.

Open Office
License: Free as in Speech
Geeklevel: 1
It reads MS Office documents as well as needed, but it really shines when asked to export documents to HTML or XML. I haven't given its HTML editor a spin yet, HTML-kit (see below) fits me like a glove, but I mean to give it a go in the very near future.

HTML-kit
License: Free as in Beer
Geeklevel: 2
In the words of The Simpsons' Comic Shop Guy, "Best HTML editor ever!" Almost. It's not WYSIWYG, but then again, neither is the Web. But it does make it easy to work with networked documents via FTP and WebDAV. Better still, it knows about PHP, so you can load and edit your PHP source in the same environment, though it doesn't provide the same sort of development facilities, such as advanced debugging tools, that you would get from a dedicated IDE. It's also extensible with plug-ins, so it can learn about Perl and Python, and Zope's DTML. Add to all that built-in tools such as HTML Tidy, a very shallow learning curve, and helpful auto completion and online HTML references, and you have a winner.

7-Zip
License: Free as in Speech
Geeklevel: 0
A fairly straightforward replacement for WinZip. It looks a lot more utilitarian, but not intimidating, and in exchange for the chrome, you get support for just about every archiving format imaginable. It drops in place of WinZip very nicely indeed, adding itself to context menus where expected.

Mame32
License: Free as in Speech
Geeklevel: 1
Mame32 is the Win32 version of the of the MAME (multiple arcade machine emulator). For added geekitude, grab yourself MAME32k, with Kaillera, network know-how that lets you play multiplayer games such as Gauntlet over the Net. But note: In order to play these classic arcade games, MAME32 requires images of the ROMs for these machines. Though images of such ROMs are readily available on the Internet, you're only legally allowed to use them if you actually own the ROMs in question, either by way of owning the machine, or the logic boards from the machines. However, let that not deter you, as clones of the games are also readily available and perfectly legal to use.

Orbiter Space Flight Simulator
License: Free as in Speech
Geeklevel: 1
It's a space flight simulator with a complete map of the solar system and several spacecraft from popular fiction, such as Space: 1999's Eagles. If it weren't so simple to install and run, it would certainly rate a higher Geeklevel.

Python + Pythonwin
License: Free as in Speech
Geeklevel: 3
Python is a scripting language, one that's easy to learn, easy to read, and easy to write. In Windows, the premiere Python development environment is PythonWin. When you first start using PythonWin, the first question you ask is: "Are you sure I don't have to pay for this?"

Trillian 0.74
License: Free as in Beer
Geeklevel: 1
Though not quite as swank as its non-free big brother Trillian Pro, Trillian 0.74 represents the harmonious union of Instant Messaging standards previously at odds with each other. Trillian consolidates messaging from MSN, AOL, Yahoo!, ICQ, and good old IRC, into one slick app, and eliminates all that buddy list clutter. That means you have fewer windows to hide when your boss is prowlin' the Cube Farm. It's fully skinnable, it'll import your buddy lists from your old IM apps, and there are no banner ads, popup windows, or spyware included. http://www.trillian.cc/

Mozilla 1.2.1
License: Free as in speech and beer
Geeklevel: 0-3
From basic Web browsing to email to advanced XUL applications, Mozilla beats all comers. Uncheck one box in the settings, and Aunt Millie will never complain about popup ads again. Teach her how to right-click, and she'll begin to avoid non-popup ads as well.
http://www.mozilla.org

SequoiaView
License: Free as in Beer
Geeklevel: 1
"Where did all the disk space go?" SequoiaView gives you a map of your drive contents, based first on size, then on type. There are quite a few display options, and you can drill down into directories for detailed views.

PCGen
License: Free as in Speech
Geeklevel: 1(technical) 3(content)
PCGen is a character generator and manager for D20-based roleplaying games, written in Java. This one damn-near broke the Geekmeter!

Dark Tower
License: Free as in Beer
Geeklevel: 2
Way back in the '80s, Milton Bradley cashed in on the then-current fantasy craze by publishing a board game called Dark Tower, whose most notable feature was a giant plastic tower in the middle of the board with a microprocessor that controlled the game's events, as opposed to dice or cards. Copies of the game fetch around US$80 on eBay, but all you need is Java support to run this software version. And if you already own the game, but your tower is busted, you can use it in place of the tower and use your gameboard.

Blogger
License: Free as in Speech
Geeklevel: 1
If you don't know about Blogger or weblogs, you're either dead or an AOL user. With free hosting and almost no set-up, Blogger is a great introduction to online DIY publishing.

BlogThis!
License: Free as in Beer
Geeklevel: 2
Blogthis! is a contextual menu for Blogger users with Windows. It allows you to select a blurb on a webpage, right-click, and instantly create a pre-formatted blog entry that can be immediately published. It's one of the Blogger power tools that the whole world should know about. Soon you'll be posting so many links in your blogs that you'll never actually write anything again!

WiFi Freeloading
Geek Level: 2
License: Free as a Pizza (that you buy with somebody else's credit card).
The proliferation of WiFi networks has left many dense urban areas with full and free WiFi coverage, just waiting for a resourceful person to tap into. Some of these networks are even intentionally left open as part of the open-access movement. All you need is an 802.11b card and some "sniffing" software to see where the closest free access point is. Best part -- everytime you tap into a free access point (AP), or provide a free AP for your neighbors, you're throwing a monkey wrench in the business plan of Starbucks!

Froogle
Geek Level: 1
License: Free as in there are only supporting text ads
Googles new beta purchasing engine. Scours the Web for things that look buyable. You can limit your searches by cost. If they only parsed XML, they could change the shape of the Web almost overnight. (courtesy of Metafilter)

PhotoMesa
License: Free as in Beer
Geeklevel: 1
"Honey? Who's this redhead, and what is she doing with that great Dane?"
PhotoMesa is a Java-based photo browser, that gives you a zoomable view of all the photos on your hard drive. Knowing what's on your hard drive is the first step to avoiding potentially embarrassing questions like the one above.

ZoneAlarm
License: Free as in Beer
Geeklevel: 1
ZoneAlarm is a firewall. What's a firewall and why do you need one? Like the firewall in your car, an Internet firewall creates a barrier between your desktop and computer environment, and the Internet at large, where wily hackers lurk to steal your credit card numbers and and plant virii and trojans on your computer. While ZoneAlarm is running, you can limit what programs on your computer can access the Net, and you can limit any incoming traffic you like. The stock settings work well for most things, and a decent amount of flexibility is offered in the free version, but they offer a commercial version with even more options.

Ad-Aware
License: Free as in Beer
Geeklevel: 1
Is your computer running noticeably slower? Are you getting pop-up ads from sites that really don't need to run pop-ups to make money? You've probably got some ad- or spy-ware installed on your system. Usually bundled with software downloads, and most notoriously with file sharing applications such as Kazaa, adware places adverts into websites that never asked for them, and serves up pop-up or pop-under ads merely to annoy. Spyware reports your surfing habits back to its parent servers so your they can better target ads to you based on the websites you're visiting. Ad-aware finds and eliminates these programs. Like Zone Alarm, above, Ad-aware is available in a free version, and a feature-added pay version.

Proxomitron
License: Free as in Beer(?)
Geeklevel: 2
Pop-ups, annoying audio, animations, banner ads, and, most perniciously, those pop-up ads that dress themselves like Windows dialog boxes. All these can be stopped with the Proxomitron. It can even force pop-ups to have all the browser buttons they're supposed to have. The only problem is, in the words of the author: "I admit I've designed for the unrepentant system tweaker," and it does take some familiarity with your browser software to get it to use the Proxomitron. But it has an abundance of configuration options, which, when tweaked correctly, can even fool the notorious anti-leech site.

[Reviews by Bruce Dykes, Jordan Running, Tim Tate, Nate Heasley, and Mark Crane]

Gareth Branwyn -[Monday, December 23, 2002]
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