Freeloader Friday Download of the Week

Media on the Go

We are beginning to see the world of pro-level Open Source media applications mature. As they become more popular, the benefits of their free source code are becoming evident. This week we have a collection of new portable versions of some Open Source's best applications. As a bonus, we have a couple previews of good things to come in free multimedia applications on the Mac.

Portible Apps

Through the ever cheaper phenomena of Flash memory, the following applications can be installed to a pocket-sized drive and used on any OS X Mac without being installed on the Mac. These apps are content to live and run right from removable media, making any Mac you can get your USB drive in to yours.

Portable Gimp is one of the best-loved Open Source media applications. Now you can take it on the road, however the Mac you'll run it on must have X11 installed. Ditto for Portable Inkscape, Gimp's vector drawing counterpart.

We know about Portable Firefox and Thunderbird. Now you can enjoy XULtastic web designing on the go with Portable NVU.

But of course, if we what to cut to the heart of media, we want video and audio. Watch and listen to a plethora of media formats with Portable VLC. For recording and mixing on the closest Mac you can find, grab Portable Audacity.

Coming Soon

Yesterday Google announced a free 3D authoring environment (for PC, Mac version coming soon). If you don't want to wait, you can download a free 8 hour trial of the Pro version of Sketch for the Mac.

NeoOffice is a OS X-friendly rework of OpenOffice. NeoOffice 1.2 is based on the 1.x version of OpenOffice, however an early release of the 2.0 version is available now - for a fee. The free download comes at the end of next month. Of course, you are welcome to compile the source yourself now, for free.

You can forget reinstalling all your favorite apps on each Mac you touch. Ahh, the freedom.

Brian

  


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