I had a blast at SXSWi this year. You couldn’t tell we are coming off the worst recession in decades because the city was buzzing with tons of energetic entrepreneurs and attendance this year was way up.  I stopped by the Facebook Developers conference (via UStream) for a brief moment but lost interest so I headed out to the parties (via Leo Laporte’s live stream). The Mashable party was buzzing and there were a ton of cool people from as far away as Romania (Yola.com) and South Africa. A smart woman from South Africa said that the flight was 32 hours to Austin. Of course Pete Cashmore was there with Robert Scoble and Molly Wood from CNet. Pete said that he had to book the venue for the party 1 year in advance. I followed Leo to Gary Vaynerchuk’s party where Gary was passing out 100 bottles worth of wine and Kevin Rose showed up. The talk of the conference was not Four Square or Gowalla, but rather Leo Laporte’s crowd surfing at the Digg Party.

So I wasn’t actually at SXSWi this year but it was fun to live vicariously through Leo Laporte’s live stream and following people on Twitter. Hopefully I can make it out to Austin in the next few years.

Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/mager/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Here is a really useful article from the New Horizons Colorado blog. Check out New Horizons in Bellevue, WA for courses on computers and software.

Although free software has been around for longer than personal computers, it is only recently that the open source community has produced programs that combine commercial-level functionality with commercial-level ease-of-use. Today, it is possible to run your computer without buying a single piece of software, and to do it 100% legally. Open-source software is software which is freely distributed and for which the source code (the underlying program) is available. There are a number of reasons why someone might develop open-source software, ranging from the desire to sell services such as support or customization (the Gillette model—give away free handles to sell razor blades), on down to such altruistic purposes as the love of programming. Whatever reason the programming team may have for releasing their application as open-source, what is important to the end user is that the software is free and trustworthy (with open code, anyone can find any irregularities in the program).

Web Browser: Mozilla Firefox

http://www.mozilla.com

This is the modern incarnation of what was, for most of us, our first browser—Netscape. Mozilla is fast, efficient, and extremely compatible (it even runs Microsoft Silverlight sites like Netflix Movie Viewer).

Media Viewer: VLC Media Player
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Are you looking for a player that plays pretty much every format available and does it well? VLC’s the one for you. It’s fast, small, and easy to use. How good is it? I use iTunes to figure out what file I want, then open it in VLC to actually watch it. Here’s a bonus: if you want to turn your “non-copy protected” DVD movies into files that you can store on your computer and watch on VLC, use Handbrake (http://www.handbrake.fr/) to convert them.

Photo Editing: GimPhoto
http://www.gimphoto.com/

The GNU Image Processor (hence the name “GIMP”) has been around for a while and has gradually been gaining a user base, especially in the face of the escalating cost (in terms of money and computer capacity) of Adobe Photoshop. An enterprising user redesigned the interface to make it feel more like Photoshop and renamed it “GimPhoto”. It is perfect for home users or small business users who do not require CMYK output (if you do not know what it is, you do not need it!).

Office Suite: OpenOffice.org
http://www.openoffice.org

Currently on version 3.2, OpenOffice.org has just about everything you would need in an office suite, and is free. It looks and feels a lot like Microsoft Office and can read and write files in Office format. It also tends to run a little faster than the Microsoft applications.

PDF Creation: PDF Creator
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/

If you just need to turn documents into PDFs, this is the tool for you. It installs as a printer driver and does that one thing very well. Please note that during the installation process, it gives you the option to install a Browser AddOn which is a co-branded toolbar. You may want to unselect this option.

Operating Systems: Linux http://www.linux.org

Although the vast majority of users will choose to run these applications on a Windows PC, it is also possible to use a free and open-source operating system: Linux. The vast majority of the applications listed above will run on Linux, as well. More information on this process can be found at Linux Online Inc.’s site at http://www.linux.org/dist/download_info.html .

Games

Frets on Fire – http://fretsonfire.sourceforge.net/ (similar to Guitar Hero)

AssaultCube – http://assault.cubers.net/ (free multiplayer first person shooter)

LinCity – http://sourceforge.net/projects/lincity/ (city building simulation game)

PokerTH – http://www.pokerth.net/ (Texas Hold ‘Em with computer or online multiplayer)

Glest – http://glest.org/en/index.php (3D Real-Time Strategy – similar to Age of Empires)

WinSudoku – http://sourceforge.net/projects/winsudoku/ (no description necessary)

All of the above games are free and open-source. Many are comparable in quality to applications that would be purchased, as opposed to the typical “freeware” game that can be downloaded from most sites.

Photo source http://www.sxc.hu/profile/speedy2

This article has been republished with permission from the New Horizons Colorado blog.

Should we embrace technology or be wary of it? asks Kevin Kelly.

I sometimes find myself so awed by new innovations, like the iPad, that I don’t stop to think whether I need another computer device. My Kindle after all has been sitting on a shelf gathering dust for the past 5 months. Does my addiction to following 450 people on Twitter mean I spend less time following my family and friends? Does being able to timeshift television save us time by eliminating commercials, or mean we end up watching more television because we never have to miss a show? Does technology make us happier?

Kevin Kelly took a sabbatical from technology to bike across the country and explore his relationship with technology. Here’s his Ted Talk: