My FREE Software Favorites

Rather than a list of links which I'd have to keep updated, below you find a list of the pieces of FREE software which I find most useful in my educational endeavors. Please search for the titles (I recommend Google) and download those that interest you.

All software is for Windows unless otherwise noted. Palm software is at the bottom.

Animal I-Class: “Software” that helps you to intuitively learn how to classify animals. The web version is viewable elsewhere on this website, and the enhanced CD version is available, too. Really great stuff. The reviewers say:

“Animal I-Class is wonderful! Not only did it help my children to learn to tell the difference between a salamander and a chicken, but it also paid my mortgage and saved my marriage!”-- housewife in Dearbone, MI.

“Inarguably the most important piece of software to have ever been created. With more ingenuity like this, we'll be guaranteed to win the space race! And as a bonus, it freshens and whitens, too!”-- paid endorsement.

Seriously now, folks-- Animal I-Class was initially the impetus behind the whole educational thrust of ScenicOregon.com, instead of the site being just a picture gallery. For the production of Animal I-Class I garnered the cooperation of NOAA (think NASA of the sea!), the National Aquarium in Baltimore, and many scientists the world over, and also won an educational technology grant of $1000. You really oughtta check it out!


OFFICE ALTERNATIVE

OpenOffice.org: Also available for Mac OS X. This is a real gem-- a complete office suite that will open, edit, and create files compatible with MS Word, MS Power Point, and MS Excel. You also get a very nice drawing program, and lots of other useful items. Most of this website was created on OpenOffice and its predecessors.

Anfy: This is a group of Java effects for you website images, all wrapped up into one. I list it here because I use it for presentations, to do things that Power Point won't: Namely, you can have an expansive, complex image (for example, a concept map with nice pictures on it), and be able to zoom in on any portion dynamically (smoothly, without steps-- just like zooming a lens) and pan around the whole image. In this way you can crawl around a concept map-- neat! That particular effect is called “zoompan”.

Mozilla Firefox: This is a great web browser with a few really big advantages over MS Internet Explorer:

1. It is much more safe and secure than Internet Explorer

2. It is a “tabbed” browser, which means that you can load up many different pages at once, each on its own tab, then you just click on the tab for the page you want to view. This really speeds up research, because you can load up several different links, and view the finished ones while the others are still loading.

1. It is easy to add many great features through free “extensions”. One of my favorites is “Quick Drag 'n Go”, which allows you to load up any link on the page in a new tab just by clicking and dragging it a little to the side. Really nice for Google, eBay, etc.

Mozilla Thunderbird: As Firefox is to Internet Explorer, so Thunderbird is to Outlook Express. What I like about this email client (besides being a lot more safe and secure than Outlook Express), is that you can set up multiple accounts (both POP and IMAP), so you can do all your email checking in one place (even your AOL and Compuserve email!).


MACS AND WINDOWS PCs GETTING ALONG TOGETHER

If you're a teacher, like me, then its a good chance you're stuck in a “Mac Only” building. Here's a few tools that might help you keep your sanity (or help you lose it, if you prefer!):

Basilisk II: Ever wish your Windows PC could just change into a Mac for awhile? Well, with this Mac emulator, you can run actual Mac operating systems and software! I used Basilisk in producing the CD version of Animal I-Class, which is compatible with both Macs and PCs. Very useful, but be forewarned: Setting up Basilisk II is not for the faint of heart, and it will only run software that will run on NON-PPC (non-PowerPC) Macs. Additionally, unless you get a special version of Basilisk II to work, it won't run any OS later than 8.1. Still, it can be worth the effort.

Hfv Explorer: Ever create a floppy on a Mac at school, then have your Windows PC not only fail to read it but tell you that it needs to be “formatted”. That's because your floppy is Mac formatted! Oh, what to do now? Never fear, Hfv Explorer is here! This bit of software will let your read, write, and create Mac formatted floppies on your Windows PC! (If you download Basilisk II, be sure to get this one too-- you'll need it!).

Bootcamp (for Mac OS X Leopard and higher): This bit of Mac software lets an Intel-based Mac (everything they make, now days) install and run Windows natively (not as an emulation). This way you get two computers in one piece of hardware, a Mac and a Windows PC.



GRAPHICS

MS Gif Animator: If you'd like your pictures to move, this is handy.

Irfanview: A very powerful graphics viewer, converter, and manipulation program-- with batch capability, so you can edit hundreds of images in a jiffy! Not a replacement for, but rather a great complement to something like Photoshop.

Noiseware Community Edition: The bane of low-light, high-speed digital photography is the same as that when you use very fast film-- grain (in digital photos, it is called “noise”). The Community Edition version of Noiseware is free, but worth a million bucks for how well it eliminates “noise” in your images!



ASTRONOMY

Cartes du Ciel: A very full-featured planetarium program, and much more.

Virtual Moon Atlas: A great way to identify that crater you saw, or explore the surface of the moon without a telescope. Lots of actual photographs.

Celestia: This program lets you explore a mathematically correct solar system and to view any object in it from any location at any time. You control your motion, the rate at which time passes, and just about everything else. The models of the planets and moons are actual photographs. Even the star positions in the background are accurate. Whats more, you can write a script for it to follow automatically. Elsewhere on ScenicOregon.com you can find scripts I've written for Celestia.

Orbiter: In many ways similar to Celestia in the mathematical rigor it applies to rendering the solar system, but the emphasis here is on orbital mechanics-- you pilot a spacecraft through all phases of spaceflight: launch, orbit, deorbit, traverse to other planets, docking, landing, etc. It is all done very realistically. You can reenact lunar missions and see what it is really like to undock the space shuttle from the ISS and land it on Earth.



INTERNET SECURITY

Zone Alarm: A firewall. Industry reports indicate that a computer hooked up to the internet without a firewall will be attacked by an invasive program within twenty to ninety minutes. My personal experience has shown this to be true.

AVG (grisoft.com): An active anti-virus scanner-- scans your outgoing and incoming email, too! A paid-for version is available with an integrated firewall.

Spybot Search and Destroy: Another type of invasive program (spyware) likes to “phone home” and send your personal information back to the program's origination. Most virus scanners don't detect these-- Spybot will eliminate many.



SYSTEM TOOLS

IZArc: A handy way to decompress just about any archive (for example, ZIP files), or to compress them.

Reg Cleaner: Keep your system registry nice and tidy-- removes a lot of what Add/Remove Programs leaves behind.

X-Setup: Hundreds of system tweaks made easy. Also a good way to break your system, if you don't heed the warnings it provides.

ProcMon: For those of you using Windows 98 or Me, this great little program lets you see what is really running and sucking up your system resources, to control the priority at which programs use those resources, and to terminate stuck programs.

Programmer's Notepad: A text editor with search and replace, and the ability to highlight syntax in a variety of programming languages. Makes editing HTML a whole lot easier.

BK ReplaceEm: Let's say you've got 500 documents, and you need a few lines of text in each one altered the same way-- this program will do it for you in seconds! Very handy for batch editing HTML files for your website.

FileZilla: If you're going to do your own website, you'll likely need an ftp client to upload your files to your site. This is a good free one. There's a also a commercial one I like called Fetch, and it is free to educators if you ask.

PALM: MY FAVORITE FREE PROGRAMS FOR THE PALM PDA

Idea Pad: Easily make concept maps on your Palm, then export them as outlines or images to your desktop computer.

Small Basic: If you own a Palm, you probably know that you can find free software for the Palm to do just about anything. But once in a while, nothing I can find does exactly what I need, so using Small Basic, I just write my own Basic program to do it. Elsewhere on ScenicOregon.com, you can find a few simple Small Basic programs I've written.

Launcher III: This program lets you take every application on your Palm and organize them into categories that you create, with each category assigned a tab. Now, when you want a program, just click on the tab for it's category, then click on its icon. Great for when you've got a lot of software loaded.

Switch5: This program let's you access a list of favorite applications and the most recently used applications with a simple swipe of the stylus-- then just click to launch. Also handy for switching back and forth between to applications, effectively keeping both open!

CutPaste5: Gives you three clipboards to switch between-- cut, paste, and switch all with simple swipes of the stylus.

myKbd: For the T|X, shareware but many functions continue to work after the expiration. Replace the DIA (the software keyboard that pops out) with other keyboards, and change the buttons on the status bar. I hate the tiny keys on the standard Palm keyboard, so I created my own skin for myKbd. Click on the image to download the skin, but you'll need to install myKbd to get it to work.



SkinUi (from PalmPowerups.com): Change the appearance of the Palm interface (how the buttons look, color of text, etc.), with lots of cool transition effects. I've created my own skin for use with SkinUi called Midnight Cobalt. Click on the image to download the skin, but you'll need to install SkinUI to get it to work.



DBCacheTool: This handy little application clears the DBCache either automatically, or on command as a DA (see about DA's below). This allows some programs to run that wouldn't otherwise, and makes your Palm more stable-- sort of like restarting your PC, only on a Palm, the DBCache doesn't clear out on a soft reset, so this tool is necessary to accomplish the task. Another application handles the heap memory (which is different than the DBCache) on Palms so that more memory is available to programs to run: UDMH (from PalmPowerups.com-- not free, but is inexpensive).

PalmPDF: View Adobe Acrobat .pdf files on your Palm card without converting them! You should also get UDMH for this to run really well.

DA Launcher: DA stands for Desktop Accessory, and a DA is a tiny program that runs by itself in a portion of your screen while your main application remains open! This way you can do any task you can find in DA form (for example, use a calculator or timer, enter a ToDo item or look up a phone number, and much much more) without leaving your currently open application. You just swipe to open the DA, then tap to dismiss it. Here are a couple of my favorite DA applications:

1. EZ Convert DA: Quickly convert units of measurement.

2. AK Utilities DA: Quickly access time and date, battery condition, memory remaining (both RAM and on the card), power off, display brightness, lock, and soft reset. Handy if, like me, you've dropped your Palm too many times and broken the power on/off button.

3. Zdic_DA: Create your own dictionaries and have them handy. I use it for translating languages, etc.