Vocal | Open Source Podcast Manager

"Vocal is a podcast manager that aims to do what similar, and well intentioned, apps fail to: do one thing and do it well.

While it’s not the first to try and serve the needs of podcast users, its developer, Nathan Dyer, hopes to avoid the ‘clunky, bloated [and] unnecessarily complicated’ flaws of current options."

LibreOffice 4.3 upgrades spreadsheets, brings 3D models to presentations | Ars Technica

"LibreOffice's latest release provides easier ways of working with spreadsheets and the ability to insert 3D models into presentations, along with dozens of other changes.

LibreOffice was created as a fork from OpenOffice in September 2010 because of concerns over Oracle's management of the open source project. LibreOffice has now had eight major releases and is powered by "thousands of volunteers and hundreds of developers," the Document Foundation, which was formed to oversee its development, said in an announcement today. (OpenOffice survived the Oracle turmoil by being transferred to the Apache Software Foundation and continues to be updated.)

In LibreOffice 4.3, spreadsheet program Calc "now allows the performing of several tasks more intuitively, thanks to the smarter highlighting of formulas in cells, the display of the number of selected rows and columns in the status bar, the ability to start editing a cell with the content of the cell above it, and being able to fully select text conversion models by the user," the Document Foundation said.

For LibreOffice Impress, the presentation application, users can now insert 3D models in the gITF format. "To use this feature, go to Insert ▸ Object ▸ 3D Model," the LibreOffice 4.3 release notes say. So far, this feature is available for Windows and Linux but not OS X."

From Ars Technica

First Ubuntu Tablets To Launch This Autumn

For about three years, sensing the move from the desktop to the mobile device, Canonical have been making Ubuntu more tablet-friendly. Now we hear that tablets (and smartphones) are due to ship with Ubuntu OEM soon.
I've been a fan of Ubuntu for a long time, and if you'd like to try it out to see how easy-to-use free software operating systems are, you can do it online here: http://www.ubuntu.com/tour/en/ (Tip: full-screen your browser and it's like you're running it natively on your machine.)

Building the XO Learning Tablet | www.morphoss.com

This is a great project that I'm keeping an eye on: a kiwi company that has built a management interface for Android tablets. The big features for educators are parental controls, app curation and deployment, all of which will help educators who want an alternative to iPads, but also want a way to manage multiple devices and stay sane.



"Freeing an idea by One Laptop Per Child, based around a graphical design by The Fuse Project, Morphoss has spent the last year developing & building the user interface and related software for the XO Learning Tablet.

The project to build the XO Learning Tablet was a complex and demanding one, requiring us to delve deeply within the Android OS in order to provide parental controls, support tracking of usage by multiple children. Outside of the direct user interface development we also built web-based administration software to help OLPC track the inclusion and classification of over 100 third-party educational applications. At the same time we also contributed code and translations back to the free software community for a number of projects which are used within the product.

We're proud to have been a part of this process and look forward to continuing to work with One Laptop Per Child as the tablet revolution evolves and develops.

Visit http://www.xotablet.com/ for more information."

Cinelerra | Open Source Video Editing

"Cinelerra is a professional video editing and compositing software. It is designed for the GNU/Linux operating system. It is produced by Heroine Virtual, and is free software distributed under the GNU General Public License. Cinelerra also includes a video compositing engine, allowing the user to perform advanced compositing operations such as keying and mattes."

http://cinelerra.org/

GimpFX Foundry | free scripts to expand GIMP

"This set contains different scripts for the creation of effects such as the old picture, lomography, image stylization, creation of all possible meshes and frames for pictures. It also contains scripts that significantly extend GIMP options when working with layers.
The set includes a huge number of scripts for work with image color; there are the scripts for total picture editing, creation of inner shadow, picture sphere and many other effects." [1]
(Link)

Geeqie | free image management software

"Geeqie is an image viewer that makes navigation of images easy. Images can be viewed full screen, and a slide show function allows automatic changing of the displayed image.
Geeqie is an image manager, with complete copy, move, rename, and delete functions available at the press of a button. Find the right image with the search feature. Image collectors can free up space with a function that finds duplicate images.
The one thing Geeqie is not, and never will be, is an image editor. However, Geeqie paired with an image editor, such as the Gimp, can be a very powerful combination."

(Link)

Arduino | open source programming and micro-controller

"Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It's intended for artists, designers, hobbyists and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments. Arduino can sense the environment by receiving input from a variety of sensors and can affect its surroundings by controlling lights, motors, and other actuators. The microcontroller on the board is programmed using the Arduino programming language (based on Wiring) and the Arduino development environment (based on Processing). Arduino projects can be stand-alone or they can communicate with software running on a computer (e.g. Flash, Processing, MaxMSP)."

(Link)

Longomatch | open source sports video analysis

"LongoMatch has been designed to be very easy to use, exposing the basic functionalities of video analysis in an intuitive interface. Tagging, playback and edition of stored events can be easily done from the main window, while more specific features can be accessed through menus when needed. Flexible and customizable for all kind of sports Flexible and customizable for all sports LongoMatch can be used for any kind of sports, allowing to create custom templates with an unlimited number of tagging categories. It also supports defining custom subcategories and creating templates for your teams with detailed information of each player which is the perfect combination for a fine-grained performance analysis"
(Link)

Pencil | open source animation and drawing software

Update:
@ibeardslee has pointed me to a forked, updated version of this software called Pencil2D, which appears to be a better option than the link I give below.
(Link)
"Pencil is an animation/drawing software for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. It lets you create traditional hand-drawn animation (cartoon) using both bitmap and vector graphics. Pencil is free and open source.

Pencil is not intended to mimick web-oriented vector-based animation software such as Flash. Its main purpose is to make traditional animation. Neither does it try to rival commercial software targetting the professional animation sector. Pencil is intended to be a simple programme enabling anyone to make 2D animation."
(Link)

Drupal | open source community & content management platform

Drupal is an open source content management platform powering millions of websites and applications. It’s built, used, and supported by an active and diverse community of people around the world.
Use Drupal to build everything from personal blogs to enterprise applications. Thousands of add-on modules and designs let you build any site you can imagine.
(Link)
Drupal's Video Module (with a few other tweaks) turns Drupal into something approaching Youtube as a video sharing site.

Clementine | free music and audio file player

"Clementine is a modern music player and library organizer. It's a multiplatform music player, inspired by Amarok 1.4, focusing on a fast and easy-to-use interface for searching and playing your music.

Features:

• Search and play your local music library.
• Listen to internet radio from Spotify, Grooveshark, Last.fm, SomaFM,Magnatune, Jamendo, SKY.fm, Digitally Imported, JAZZRADIO.com,Soundcloud, and Icecast.
• Search and play songs you've uploaded to Google Drive.
• Create smart playlists and dynamic playlists.
• Tabbed playlists, import and export M3U, XSPF, PLS and ASX.
• CUE sheet support.
• Play audio CDs."

(Link)

Pinta | open source paint program

Pinta is a free, open source drawing/editing program modeled after Paint.NET. Its goal is to provide users with a simple yet powerful way to draw and manipulate images on Linux, Mac, and Windows.

(Link)

Calibre | ebook management software

calibre is a free and open source e-book library management application developed by users of e-books for users of e-books. It has a cornucopia of features divided into the following main categories:

• Library Management E-book conversion 
• Syncing to e-book reader devices 
• Downloading news from the web and converting it into e-book form 
• Comprehensive e-book viewer 
• Content server for online access to your book collection

(Link)

UFRaw | raw image editor

"UFRaw (which stands for Unidentified Flying Raw) is an application which can read and manipulate photographs in raw image formats, as created by many digital cameras. UFRaw used to be available both as a stand-alone program and as a GIMP plugin. However, since UFRaw-0.19, the GIMP plugin is no longer officially supported. As a stand-alone program, UFRaw can be invoked with a graphical interface, or as a command line batch processing utility.[1] UFRaw reads raw images, using dcraw as a back end, and supports color management via LittleCMS, allowing the user to apply input, output, and display color profiles (see also Linux color management). Thanks to dcraw's versatility, UFRaw supports nearly all of the numerous raw image formats used by digital camera manufacturers." [1]
(Link)

Dia | Diagram editor

Dia is roughly inspired by the commercial Windows program 'Visio,' though more geared towards informal diagrams for casual use. It can be used to draw many different kinds of diagrams. It currently has special objects to help draw entity relationship diagrams, UML diagrams, flowcharts, network diagrams, and many other diagrams. It is also possible to add support for new shapes by writing simple XML files, using a subset of SVG to draw the shape.

It can load and save diagrams to a custom XML format (gzipped by default, to save space), can export diagrams to a number of formats, including EPS, SVG, XFIG, WMF and PNG, and can print diagrams (including ones that span multiple pages).

Xmind | mind-mapping software

"XMind is a brainstorming and mind mapping software tool developed by XMind Ltd. of Hong Kong. The program is intended to assist users in capturing ideas, organizing various charts, and share them with collaboration. It supports mind maps, Ishikawa diagrams (also called fishbone diagrams or cause-and-effect diagrams), tree diagrams, organization charts, and spreadsheets. It can be used for knowledge management, meeting minutes, task management, and GTD." [1]

Besides the Mind Map structure, XMind also offers Org-chart, Tree-chart, Logic-chart, and etc. These charts will play an important role in some circumstances. For example, Org-chart can show the company/department/team structure clearly. Logic-chart is very useful in sorting the reasons. More important, all these charts can be used within one map! Every branch can have the most proper structure, even every topic. [2]

Freemind | mind-mapping software

"FreeMind is a free mind mapping application written in Java. FreeMind is licensed under the GNU General Public License. It provides extensive export capabilities. It runs on Microsoft Windows, Linux and Mac OS X via the Java Runtime Environment.

As with other mind mapping software packages, FreeMind allows the user to edit a hierarchical set of ideas around a central concept. The non-linear approach assists in brainstorming new outlines and projects as ideas are added around the mind map. As a Java application, FreeMind is portable across multiple platforms and retains the same user interface, causing some amount of variation from the common interface on each platform." (Wikipedia)
(Link)

Mahara | ePortfolios

Mahara is an open source ePortfolio and social networking web application originally created by the government of New Zealand. It provides users with tools to create and maintain a digital portfolio of their learning, and social networking features to allow users to interact with each other. Mahara content management system provides users with blogs, a resume builder, a file manager and a view creator - a tool to help users create arrangements of their content in a particular way for others to see.

The eportfolio site http://myportfolio.school.nz, provided by the New Zealand Ministry of Education, free-of-charge for all New Zealand schools, is powered by Mahara

VLC | Media Player

This is the Swiss Army Knife of video players. It will play just about anything you can throw at it:

"Simple, fast and powerful media player:

• Plays everything: Files, Discs, Webcams, Devices and Streams. 
• Plays most codecs with no codec packs needed:
• MPEG-2, DivX, H.264, MKV, WebM, WMV, MP3... 
• Runs on all platforms: Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Unix... 
• Completely Free, 0 spyware, 0 ads and no user tracking. 
• Can do media conversion and streaming."

(Link)