| November 3, 2012
No comments

15 Great Open Source Creative Tools

GIMP (Mac, Linux and Windows)

GIMP is one the most versatile graphics manipulation tools. It has some of the most amazing image manipulation tools such as Layers, Brush, Cropping and other tools and plugins similar to Adobe Photoshop which is the commercial leader. Read more about GIMPs features here.

Free Creative tools

MyPaint (Mac, Linux and Windows)

MyPaint is a cool digital painting app. It is simple, fast and lets you focus on the art rather than the software. Download it here.

Krita (Linux, Windows)

Krita, the full-featured painting application for digital artists with natural looking brushes and other tools.

Darktable (Mac, Linux)

Darktable lets you process your Raw and JPG images. It has some of the advanced image processing features such as color correction, tone correction etc. Detailed feature list is here.

Inkscape (Windows, Linux, Mac)

Very good vector illustration tool similar to Adobe Illustrator or CorelDRAW. Free and very capable tool for designers. It is very easy to edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps and much more. Inkscape has an aim to maintain a thriving user and developer community by using open, community-oriented development.

Calligra Flow (Linux)

Calligra Flow is great diagramming tool similar to Microsoft Visio. Free and great to use. It can open Visio files too. Check it out here.

Scribus (Windows, Linux and Mac)

Scribus is an Open Source program that brings professional page layout to Linux/UNIX, Mac OS X, OS/2 Warp 4 and Windows desktops with a combination of press-ready output and new approaches to page design. Scribus is an alternative to Microsoft Publisher, Adobe InDesign, FrameMaker etc.

free creative tools

Audacity

Audacity is the best sound editing and recording software tools out there. Highly capable, downloaded and recommended.

Hydrogen

Hydrogen is an advanced drum machine for Linux. It’s main goal is to bring professional yet simple and intuitive pattern-based drum programming.

free creative tools

Mixxx (Mac, Windows and Linux)

Mixxx is a top notch DJ software, has everything you need to start making DJ mixes in a tight, integrated package.

Blender (Windows, Linux and Mac)

Blender is the free open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating systems. Blender has some of the advanced modeling features and it is commercial grade.

Synfig Studio (Linux, Mac and Windows)

Synfig Studio is a free and open-source 2D animation software, designed as powerful industrial-strength solution for creating film-quality animation using a vector and bitmap artwork.

image

Pitivi (Linux)

Pitivi is a free, intuitive and feature rich movie editor for the Linux desktop

Kdenlive (Linux, Mac)

Kdenlive is afree open source video editor.

Sparkleshare (Linux, Mac and Windows)

SparkleShare is an alternative to the popular DropBox, Google Drive kind of file sharing services, free and open source. You can setup where to sync etc.

 free creative tools

Category: Alternatives, Dev & Productivity Resources, Open Source | Tags: , , , ,
| October 21, 2012
No comments

Innovative Android Based Cameras

Android has been fueling quite a bunch of innovative products, mobile phones, tablets and now, Cameras. Android which Linux based has tremendous capabilities and can scale as a real time operating system as well.

Here is a list of latest top end innovative cameras that are running Android OS.

Samsung Galaxy Camera

This advanced Camera has 3G/4G and WiFi connectivity. This is quite amazing and innovative for a Camera. This seriously pushes cameras storage capabilities with advanced image processing capabilities out of Camera.

The Galaxy Camera is a 16.3MP compact camera with a 4.8in LCD touch screen running the Android operating system. It runs the latest iteration of Android (Jelly Bean), and is available in two versions - a 3G + Wi-Fi model and a 4G + Wi-Fi variant. This makes it the first ‘connected camera’ to offer more than just Wi-Fi connectivity.

Nikon S800C

Nikon recently introduced the first COOLPIX that’s also an Android™ smart device. Superior optics, telephoto zooming, a high resolution image sensor and much more, meets the endless possibilities of the Android OS and Wi-Fi connectivity. Capable of taking exceptional photos and Full HD videos, offers edit, style and share them easier and faster than ever before. It runs on Android Ginger bread and comes with a decent 10X zoom lens.

Innovative Android Camera

Polaroid has also been working on next generation Android Cameras with its Polaroid SC1630 running Android, 16MP sensor. However, it has not yet made a big news.

Via DPReview

Category: Gadgets | Tags: , , , , ,
| September 11, 2012
No comments

Ten Free Cloud Computing Platforms- as-a-Service for Developers

If you are a developer and looking for cloud computing platform services where you want to host your software for free then the choices are many. Depending on the web application frameworks you have used in your development, the migration to cloud computing platforms can be done with very little efforts. Many of them offer free services up to certain limits and you would need to pay only if you use beyond the free limit.

1. OpenShift

OpenShift-Logo

OpenShift is Red Hat’s free, auto-scaling Platform as a Service (PaaS) for applications. As an application platform in the cloud, OpenShift manages the stack so you can focus on your code. OpenShift is an application platform in the cloud where application developers and teams can build, test, deploy, and run their applications. OpenShift takes care of all the infrastructure, middleware, and management and allows the developer to focus on what they do best: designing and coding applications. OpenShift takes a No-Lock-In approach to PaaS by providing built-in support for Node.js, Ruby, Python, PHP, Perl, and Java. In addition to this flexible, no-lock-in, language approach, OpenShift supports many of the popular frameworks that make a developer’s life easier including frameworks ranging from Spring, to Rails, to Play.

For more information check here.

2. Google App Engine

Google_App_Engine_Logo

Google App Engine is a platform as a service (PaaS) cloud computing platform for developing and hosting web applications in Google-managed data centers. Applications are sandboxed and run across multiple servers which enables you to build web applications on the same scalable systems that power Google applications. App Engine applications are easy to build, easy to maintain, and easy to scale as your traffic and data storage needs grow. With App Engine, there are no servers to maintain. You just upload your application, and it’s ready to serve to your users.Its Easy to Get Started, Automatic Scalability with The Reliability, Performance, and Security of Google’s Infrastructure. Currently, the supported programming languages are Python, Java (and, by extension, other JVM languages such as Groovy, JRuby, Scala, Clojure, Jython and PHP via a special version of Quercus), and Go.

For more information check here.

3. Heroku

heroku-logo

Heroku is a cloud platform as a service (PaaS) supporting several programming languages. Heroku, one of the first cloud platforms, initially supported the Ruby programming language, and later added support for Java, Node.js, Scala, Clojure and Python and (undocumented) PHP. The base operating system is Debian or the Debian-based Ubuntu in the newest stack. Heroku lets app developers spend 100% of their time on their application code, not managing servers, deployment, ongoing operations, or scaling.

For more information check here.

Other free Cloud Computing Services that offer Platform as a service are the following:

4. Cloudify

5. Cloud Foundry

6. AppFog

7. dotCloud

8. Joyent

9. OpenStack

10. phpfog

Category: Alternatives, Dev & Productivity Resources | Tags: , ,
| July 6, 2012
One comment

Free Panorama Software – Stitch Photos Easily

Panoramic photos can be amazingly beautiful, covering a wide area that gives nice perspective. Adobe Photoshop is one of the best professional photo editor that has free hand panoramic photo stitcher. However, there are good free tools that let you create similar, nice panoramic photos. Please do try them and check their capabilities.

Hugin

Hugin lets you assemble a mosaic of photographs into a complete immersive panorama, stitch any series of overlapping pictures and much more. See more here

Free Panorama Tool

Windows Live Photo Gallery

Using Windows Live Photo Gallery, you can stitch several photos together to create a panorama. This is a great way to capture photos of landscapes and other subjects that are too large for a single photo.

See more here

PhotoSynth

PhotoSynth is an app for Windows Phone and iOS. It makes it easy and fun to capture and share interactive panoramas of the places, people, and events.

See more here

Dermandar

Simple but effective Panorama tool.

See more here

Image Composite Editor

Microsoft Image Composite Editor is an advanced panoramic image stitcher. Given a set of overlapping photographs of a scene shot from a single camera location, the application creates a high-resolution panorama that seamlessly combines the original images.

See more here

PanoramaPlus

Stitch your photos together quickly and easily with PanoramaPlus Starter Edition.

Free Panorama Tools

See more here

POS Panorama Pro

Pos Panorama Pro allows you to create panoramic images from series of overlapping photos with just a few mouse clicks

See more here

Clevr

Clevr is a seriously easy way of creating and sharing panoramic photos for free.

See more here

Category: Freebies | Tags: , , , , ,
| June 14, 2012
No comments

Beyond Siri: Top Voice Assisted Apps for Android & iPhone

Since 1995 we have seen the voice assistance taking new levels as the technology grew along starting from text-to-speech to Natural language understanding. During 1995 what started as a virtual telephone assistant using the text to speech technology enhanced to the virtual concierge using the speech recognition technology during 2000-2010. Year 2011 is when we saw the virtual search assistant using the speech recognition technology, Google introduced voice search. The coming years, 2012 to 2015 is going to be the new era of your lifestyle buddy, a new UI that understands natural language. With Apple’s successful launch of its Siri technology in 2011, voice-activated mobile virtual assistants (VAs) have crossed the chasm into mass-market deployments. With the help if Apple’s Siri Technology success in 2011, voice activated  mobile virtual assistances have enabled users to complete their tasks like search, dialing or texting via voice commands. 

Beyond Siri, here are top 10 virtual assistance ( voice assistant) apps in terms of downloads since their launch.

1. Voice Search ( Android ) by Google

image

Downloads: 109 million & Revenues: 0

2. Vlingo Virtual Assistant ( Android ) and Voice App (iPhone) by Vilingo Corporation

Download 8.2 million & Revenues: 0

3. Iris (Android) by Dexera

Downloads: 4.4 million & Revenues: 0

4. Skyvi (Android) by Blue Tomado

Downloads: 1.9 million & Revenues: 0

5. Assistant (Android) & Skeaptoit Assistant (iPhone) by Speaktoit

image

Downloads: 1.7 million & Revenues: 57 thousand USD

6. AIVC – Free & Paid (Android) by YourApp24

Downloads: 1.4 million & Revenues: 57 thousand USD

7. Car Home ( Android ) by Google Inc

image

Downloads: 1.2 million & Revenues: 0

8. Dragon (iOS) Search by Nuance Communications

Downloads: 1.1 million & Revenues: 0

9. Jeannie ( Android ) and Voice Action ( iOS ) by Pannous

Downloads: 1.1 million & Revenues: 665 thousand USD

10. Everfriends ( Android ) by i-Free Innovations

Downloads: 0.7 million and Revenue: 0

source: http://www.visionmobile.com/blog/2012/06/infographic-beyond-siri-the-next-frontier-in-user-interfaces/

Related Posts with Thumbnails
Category: Dev & Productivity Resources, Mobile, Tech Reviews |
« Older Entries   Recent Entries »