Carputers News and Computer Tips

Aibek writes for the makeuseof.com blog:

Want to send a short email to a friend and get it delivered to his/her cell phone as SMS? If you know your friends’ phone numbers and the carrier they are on then you can easily send emails to their cell phones directly from your email program. 

Here’s how: Free Email To SMS Gateways (Major US Carriers)

If you know the phone number but not the carrier (cell service provider), here’s another method.  Gizmo allows sending up to 80 characters from their web page to any mobile phone for free.

Edit 11/28/2008:

Here are some other services that do this:

The techFAQ website has a page dedicated to computer-to-SMS messaging.

txtDrop.com offers computer-to-SMS via web and desktop. 

Edit 01/19/2009:

Txt2day will send free text messages to almost any major cell phone provider in the world.  It’s 100% free, with no gimmicks!

Google has dropped StarOffice from the Google Pack, with no explanation as to why.  This is a shame.

There are, however, other free alternatives to MS Office available.

For those of you out there that simply must have MS Office, have a look at Microsoft’s Ultimate Steal program – Office 2007 Ultimate for $60 if you have (or know someone who has) an email address that ends in .edu.

Following three years of continuous improvement, OpenOffice.org has now released as of this week the landmark version 3.0, with a host of new features.

OpenOffice.org 3 is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more.  It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose.

Follow our previously posted directions for making OpenOffice.org 3 save in Microsoft-compatible file formats by default.  The procedure is still the same for this new release. 

Edit 12/21/2008: 

OpenOffice.org 3.0 is now also available as a Portable App, which will run directly from a USB drive.

Mary Hunt writes for Woman’s Day:

As much as I love the word (free), I have to admit it makes me suspicious…  But every now and then an exception comes along that’s truly free-no strings attached, no hidden agendas. Here are my favorites, and all you really need is an Internet connection to go online. 

She has several of our favorites listed, from free software to services to free business cards… 

A few weeks ago, Clif from the FreewareWiki wrote a fine post about the Lupo PenSuite.  We’ve been fans of this collection of portable applications for some time.  

Clif mentioned in his post that he found it difficult to create his own menu entries in the Lupo menu system.  We added SoftMaker Office 2006 to our copy of the suite, and took the opportunity in doing so to create a tutorial slideshow (which we’ve embedded below) on how to add a portable application to the Lupo PenSuite.

 A full-screen version of this presentation is available here for those that are interested.

We’ve posted several free games links in the past.  Here’s one more - WoobaGames…

Edit 12/23/2008:

AMOG features 95 Old School Games You Can Play Online.

Edit 01/09/2009

PC World’s Matt Peckham blogged about how to Download Dozens of Commercial PC Games Free.

Edit 02/10/2009:

ExtremeTech put together a list of The 20 Best Free PC Games.

Google released a beta version of Chrome, a new web browser, today.  More information and details can be found here.  They say:  

Google Chrome is a browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier. 

Lifehacker has screenshots and first impressions.  We’ve downloaded it and have been experimenting with it as well.  It is minimalist, and there are some features missing that we’d like to see, but it is a beta (test) version, after all.  As with most all of Google’s offerings, we suspect that it will only get better as development progresses.

Edit 09/05/2008:  

The Google Operating System blog has a great Google Chrome Tips entry…

Edit 09/08/2008:

Lifehacker has posted the most excellent Power User’s Guide to Google Chrome.  The Techie Buzz blog has the Ultimate List of Tips and Tricks for Google Chrome.

Edit 09/12/2008:

Concerned about Google Chrome and your privacy?  Want to know how (and when) Google Chrome communicates with google.com?  Here are straight answers…

Edit 12/21/2008:

Google Chrome is out of beta with V. 1.0. 

An update to the Lotus Symphony 1.0 release came out this week.  According to the release notes, features have been added, the suite’s memory footprint has been reduced, and there are several bug fixes.  Check it out!

Edit 10/18/2008:

The Symphony Blog lists more “how-to” videos for Lotus Symphony users. 

Edit 11/29/2008:

Lotus Symphony 1.2 was released on 11/04/2008.  The Symphony Blog lists what’s new.

Edit 01/19/2009:

The Washington Post says that IBM Lotus Symphony is an Excellent-and Free-Office Suite in an article they published today. The article’s source is a mini-review written for PC World magazine by Preston Gralla.

The TechMixer blog recently posted a good list of free CD and DVD burning programs for use on Windows.  We’ve used all of the listed programs on several different Windows PCs with no problems or issues.

Our personal favorite,  BurnAware Free Edition, isn’t on the linked list above.

Edit 10/18/2008:

The Smashing Downloads blog lists 5 Free Smashing CD/DVD Burning Softwares for your perusal and use.

Edit 12/20/2008:

The makeuseof.com blog lists The Best, Free Alternatives to Nero CD/DVD Burner.

Edit 04/29/2009:

Download Squad lists 5 great free CD and DVD burning apps for Windows.

Courtesy of Google, we now have a custom Windows Freeware Search Engine.  Here’s a preview:

It can also be found at the top of our Links to Free Software page.  It has been customized so that the search starts with all of the freeware sites that we’ve linked to on that page and in this blog.  If you have a specific need for a program to perform a particular function, or if you’re just curious as to what’s available, give it a spin.

As always, please contact us if we can be of assistance.  We’d be happy to help!