software

I was getting my hopes up about Microsoft’s new Virtual telescope — I’m fairly sure I recently saw a presentation about it amongst the TED Talks podcasts I download. As I recall, it looked pretty fabulous. (Ah, yes: Roy Gould & Curtis Wong: WorldWide Telescope)

Microsoft has launched WorldWide Telescope, a free tool that stitches together images from some of the best ground- and space-based telescopes. …

“Users can see the X-ray view of the sky, zoom into bright radiation clouds, and then cross-fade into the visible light view and discover the cloud remnants of a supernova explosion from a thousand years ago,” explained Roy Gould, a researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

But of course there’s a catch:

To use the new system, users need to download WorldWide Telescope from the web. It only runs on Windows operating systems.

Here’s something new in the system requirements though:

…Windows XP Service Pack 2 or Windows Vista …

Macs must run Windows OS

In spite of the general annoyance that I’m going to have to crank up Windows when I get onto my MacBook Pro later today, it’s kind of nice to see Macs listed under Windows requirements.

The BBC article goes on to mention the Google Sky feature in Google Earth (I don’t often remember to look at it), and Stellarium, my main go-to application for stargazing:

Other applications have been available for longer.

For example, Stellarium is a free open source tool that gives people a chance to access more than 210 million stars, in addition to planets and moons.

The project was launched in 2001 by Fabien Chereau, a Research Engineer at the Paris Astronomical Observatory, and is used in many planetariums.

Like WorldWide Telescope the software allows users to record and play their own tours of the Universe.

[Via : BBC NEWS | Technology | Virtual telescope opens night sky.]

Earlier this morning I looked at the latest Astronomy Picture of the Day — a photo of one of Saturn’s moons: Ancient Craters of Southern Rhea. I realised that such photos are now ‘commonplace’, almost ‘ordinary’. Certainly I take it for granted that I’ll see a new photo like that every day.

And yet, they are anything but commonplace and ordinary.

It’s only some 50 years since Sputnik became the first artificial satellite to orbit our planet, when we first saw our home from the outside. Now we routinely view objects that are hundreds, thousands and even billions of light years distant, some of them from up close. That’s amazing, not ordinary.

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Open Source software is more collaborative, and anyone with programming skills can see how it’s put together, contribute code, improve on what’s there, add features they think are missing. Because it’s wide open, it is generally available free of charge.

Your computer probably came loaded with a bunch of software, and then maybe you bought some more. If you own your own computer, or belong to a community group though, you can probably use whatever software you choose.

If you work in a government department or large corporation the IT support people probably lock down your computer and prevent you from installing or using anything they don’t approve.

Open Source Software

Because commercial software generally costs money it’s usually ‘locked up’ so that those with programming skills can’t get into how it works. The source code is usually a closely guarded secret.

Open Source software though is different: it’s more collaborative, and anyone with programming skills can see how it’s put together, contribute code, improve on what’s there, add features they think are missing. Because it’s wide open, it is generally available free of charge.

Alternatives to costly packages

For example, you may like to try out NeoOffice or OpenOffice.org software instead of Microsoft Office.

If you need to create PDF files, PDFCreator allows Windows users to print straight to PDF. (Mac users — this is already built in to Mac OS X.)

Wikipedia has a fine list of open source software packages.

Start your search there, or look at a reputable software listing site such as Versiontracker.

Beware downloading software from sites that have huge discounts on commercial software: they are likely offering pirated (stolen) software and may add a hidden surprise in the form of a virus or other malware along with the download.

Written for and reproduced from CommunityNet Aotearoa Panui, June 2007, and may have been modified from the original.

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Excellent! On checking my copy of Photoshop CS3 I find I’m allowed to install it on both my Macs. I just can’t use both copies of Photoshop at the same time. Fair enough.

Since setting up the MacBook I’ve been trying to keep the system on it as slim and lean as possible. It’s a bit of a pain to have to keep updating two sets of software.

· I love software that does allow me to install it on both machines I’m using though: applications such as NetNewsWire and Mars Edit, and those that let me buy a family license at minimal extra cost, such as OmniWeb and OmniFocus.

Hmmm, sidenote: I like to check facts when I’m blogging. It would be so good for applications to make their license terms easily available, perhaps from the Help menu or something …

I’ve been ‘doing without’ Photoshop on the MacBook since I started using the laptop, but have finally broken down. It’s just too much of a nuisance to have to wait till I’m using the MacBook Pro, to shuffle files to and fro, to have to remember where I’m up to in a process.

I’ve tried some alternatives, and while some, such as ImageWell would work superbly for other people, they just don’t do what I need. This morning I had an image I’d prepared yesterday on the other machine — adjusting exposure and so on — and had then saved out as an optimised jpg for the web. Except that along the way I hadn’t noticed that the file size was too high.

Adjusting and re-saving a jpg is a big no-no on account of degrading the image quality, so I really needed to go back to the original and adjust and optimise again. I couldn’t see a way for ImageWell to handle the exposure changes.

So now the MacBook is just a little bit ‘heavier’, but I’ll be able to work much more easily with images. Thanks, Adobe, for the sensible licensing terms.

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