Consider the following scenario. You maintain a blog using WordPress. This open source blogging platform is patched on a regular basis to correct bugs and security faults. Notification of software updates is essential for maintaining the security and integrity of your blog. Content and blog software configuration information could be compromised by a hacker who exploits known security flaws. To stay informed of software patches you can either visit the developer site regularly, subscribe to the developer blog RSS feed, or login to your WordPress installation and manually install patches — WordPress does not maintain a patch notification mailing list.

What if you are on vacation or away from the office for an extended period of time? Winnowing through RSS feeds or visiting the WordPress developer blog will not be convenient. What if you could have RSS updates from sources specified by you emailed to you? Emails could be pushed to your mobile device or to an account you would check daily.

FeedMyInbox is a free service that aggregates feeds published in RSS, XML, and ATOM formats and emails them directly to you. The service is summarized on the FeedMyInbox Web site:

FeedMyInbox is a very simple service that attempts to bridge the gap between feeds (RSS, XML, Atom) and email. Only 3% of computer users are familiar with how feeds work, and are using feed readers to get up-to-date information from their favorite sites. We don’t think the other 97% should be left out in the cold, so now you can subscribe to a feed with your email address.

Using the service is a four step process:

1. Visit http://www.feedmyinbox.com/
2. Enter a Web site URL of the site you want updates from
3. Enter your email address
4. Press the Submit button

You will receive an email asking you to click a link to confirm that you are opting in to the FeedMyInbox service.

Book cover design for Chris Anderson's "Free - The future of a radical price".

Wired Magazine Editor in Chief Chris Anderson’s new book Free was released on July 7, 2009. The publisher’s summary of the title indicates that “in Free, [Anderson] makes the compelling case that, in many instances, businesses can profit more from giving things away than they can by charging for them”.

Anderson is distributing copies of the new title for free in eBook, MP3, and audiobook format. For those of you who love the feel of a book in your hands, printed copies of Free are now available for sale too. I plan to enjoy listening to the free audiobook version from Audible during my commute.

Anderson also wrote the bestseller The Long Tail — about how niche markets delivering unique products can be made available to consumers through online stores.

To download your copy of Free, visit: Get a free copy of “Free” by Chris Anderson

I wanted to keep a list of a few of my favorite free OS X applications on my blog — so that when I perform system maintenance or OS reinstalls in the near and distant future it will be easy for me to download and install software that I have come to use on a daily basis.

So, without further ado, here are a few of my favorite free OS X applications. Links to the developer’s Web site are included. A description of the application from the developer’s site is also provided as a general overview of what the application does.

• 7zX – “7zX is a file archiver with high compression ratio. Compression ratio results are very dependent upon the data used for the tests.Usually 7zX compresses to 7z format 30-70% better than to zip format, and 2-10% better than most of other zip compatible programs.7zX currently supports tar, zip, gzip, bzip2, UNIX compress, 7z, s7z and various kinds of segmented archives.”
• Adium – “A free instant messaging application for Mac OS X that can connect to AIM, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo, and more.”
• AntiRSI – “a program for Mac OS X that helps prevent RSI (repetitive strain injury) and other computer related stress. It does so by forcing you to take regular breaks, yet without getting in the way. It also detects natural breaks so it won’t force too many breaks on you.”
• Apimac Timer – “a complete and professional stopwatch, alarm clock, countdown and clock utility for Mac OS X. “
• Blender – “is a free open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating systems”
• Carbon Copy Cloner – “Clone, synchronize, backup. Schedule and forget it.”
• Celestia – “a free space simulation that lets you explore our universe in three dimensions.”
• Changes Meter – “Do you need to check a web page or a local file frequently, looking for changes in them? You know it’s boring, error prone and a real waste of precious time.Several web sites offer RSS feeds, but they do not necessarily cover the type of information you are looking for and there aren’t many tools to check local files. Changes Meter does this exact job and it will notify you with a colorful, useful and unobtrusive pie chart icon on the menu bar.”
• Coconut Identity Card – “a small app that reads out where and when your Mac and your iPod were built by Apple.”
• Cyberduck – “an open source FTP, SFTP, WebDAV and Amazon S3 browser.”
• Disk Inventory X – “a disk usage utility that shows the sizes of files and folders in a special graphical way called treemaps.”
• DotMatrix – “easily make pop-art using your web or iSight camera”
• Electric Sheep – “Electric Sheep is a free, open source screen saver created by Scott Draves. It’s run by thousands of people all over the world, and can be installed on any ordinary PC or Mac. When these computers “sleep”, the screen saver comes on and the computers communicate with each other by the internet to share the work of creating morphing abstract animations known as “sheep”. The result is a collective “android dream”, an homage to Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?.”
• FileSync – a free utility for copying files in multiple folders/locations to an external or network drive.
• GrandPerspective – “a small utility application for Mac OS X that graphically shows the disk usage within a file system.”
• GridWars – “an extremely fun shoot-em-up game developed by Marco Incitti “
• Halo Demo – “an online multiplayer demo of the first person shooter many consider to be the best. Hours of fun can be had by playing the demo and mastering the Blood Gulch map.”
• HandBrake – “an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded DVD to MPEG-4 converter.”
• HexEdit – “a hexadecimal file editor for the Macintosh. The most widely used editor of its kind on the platform, HexEdit can handle file sizes of up to four gigabytes with ease, yet has memory requirements of less than a megabyte (with colour turned off). It can also compare files for similarities or differences.”
• Integrity – “an powerful utility for finding broken links on large Web sites.”
• Paparaazi! – “a small utility for Mac OS X that makes screenshots of webpages.”
• Plasma Pong – “a really impressive real-time fluid dynamics version of Pong created by Steve Taylor. Sadly, it is no longer available online.”
• Quicksilver – “A unified, extensible interface for working with applications, contacts, music, and other data.”
• Rember – “a front-end GUI to the ‘memtest’ command line memory testing program. This application will allow the user to select the number of test loops, as well as the amount of memory to test. There is a ‘Log’ tab that will allow the user to monitor memory testing. The user can toggle a ‘verbose’ switch to limit the amount of output.The user can choose to quit Finder and other applications.Defective memory can cause computers to malfunction, crash, and behave in a variety of ways which can sometimes baffle end users and computer technicians alike. Apple provides hardware test CDs with most of their products, and there are some third-party utilties for Mac OS X which perform memory testing. In my experience, these tools have not always been able to quickly and efficiently diagnose memory problems. Rember has been designed to simplify the testing, and diagnosis of these problems.This software is free, and is covered under the GNU GPL. Please read accompanying “COPYING” file for more info.”
• Permanent Eraser – “provides an even stronger level of security by implementing the Gutmann Method. This utility overwrites your data thirty-five times, scrambles the original file name, and truncates the file size to nothing before Permanent Eraser finally unlinks it from the system. Once your data has been erased, it can no longer be read through traditional means. “
• Pixer – “a little application that helps you to scale (or rotate, add pad and, crop) PNG, JPG, Tiff, PSD , BMP or PICT images in batch.”
• SiteSucker – “a Macintosh application that automatically downloads Web sites from the Internet. It does this by copying the site’s Web pages, images, backgrounds, movies, and other files to your local hard drive. Just enter a URL (Uniform Resource Locator), press return, and SiteSucker can download an entire Web site.”
• TextWrangler – “is a powerful general purpose text editor, and Unix and server administrator’s tool”
• Think -a small application that lets you focus on one application at a time using an illumination panel and backdrop.
• ThinkingRock – “a platform independent Java application for Getting Things Done (GTD) – the action management methodology and best-selling book by David Allen.”
• Time Tracker – “Track the time you spend on projects with this simple and easy-to-use application. Divide your work into projects, and split each into individual tasks.”
• viJournal – “designed as an analogue of the good old-fashioned page-a-day bound diary – the kind you buy in a stationer’s. You write your entries under dated headers and save them collectively by month and year.”

You can grab my Twitter feed here.

To provide some background, I have thousands of bookmarks that I have collected. My bookmarks include links to articles about design, software and hardware reviews, technical how-to(s), product manufactures etc. These links have been gathered while researching solutions for friends, colleagues, and clients. When a conversation comes up where someone is looking for solution ‘x’, I can recall, go back, and find options for them to choose from.

As my bookmarks grew and grew they became a management nightmare. I had links at home, on laptops, at work, and archived from computer crashes and OS rebuilds. I began having challenges with keeping everything all synced up.

The solution I have found that works best for me is an open source tool named SiteBar. You can sign up to have SiteBar store up to 500 bookmarks for you. Or, you can download and install the SiteBar server software on your own server. Once you have created an account (either via SiteBar or your own installtion) you can choose to make your bookmarks public, or not. You will also want to install the SiteBar FireFox extension that enables you to access SiteBar right from your web browser. The interface is Web 2.0 enabled. You can right click to modify link properties, e-mail them to friends and more. The interface is also skinable.

Finally, the characteristic that distinguishes SiteBar from Google bookmarks is that you can store your information where you choose to. Your information is not retained on a third party server unless you choose for it to be store there. I really value the option to store bookmarks on my own server.

I have been using Sitebar for nearly a year now. It has become a part of my daily workflow and provides an easy way to access my favorite sites and online resources from any workstation.

‘Elephants Dream’ is the result of almost a year of work, a project initiated and coordinated by the Blender Foundation. Six people from the Blender user/development community were selected to come over to Amsterdam to work together on an animated short movie, utilizing Open Source tools only.

Downloadable files related to the Elephants Dream

The Elephant’s Dream web site features:

• High Definition and standard downloads of the animation
• Background information about the project
• Soundtrack and high resolution image downloads

How Elephants Dream was created

The animation was created using open source software called Blender.

Blender is [the] open source software for 3D modeling, animation, rendering, post-production, interactive creation and playback. Available for all major operating systems under the GNU General Public License.

Budding 3D animators, modelers, and texture designers have a unique opportunity: to purchase a DVD containing the original movie, as well as all of the source materials and original files. The DVD also includes the original script and story boards.