PortableApps.com

Their tagline is "Your computer, without the computer."

PortableApps (http://portableapps.com/) is a free open source platform that allows you to carry multiple applications around on a flash drive. The basic Portable Apps suite comes loaded with a web browser (Firefox), email client (Thunderbird), and office suite (Open Office), as well as calendar/scheduler, antivirus, audio player and more, all preconfigured to work portably. Just drop it on your portable device and you're ready to go.

A large number of optional applications are available as well - ALL free and open source - from digital Bibles to Audacity audio editing software and the GIMP Image editing program.

It allows you to carry around the files and documents you are working with too, so that, for instance, images you are editing using GIMP, or music you are listening to using Coolplayer, are stored on the same Flash drive as the PortableApps platform.

PortableApps takes mere minutes to set up, loads quickly, and is easy to use and personalize. A full list of apps it supports is available at: http://portableapps.com/apps.

Convert PowerPoint to Flash

ISpring (http://www.ispringsolutions.com/)is a cool, free little add-on to PowerPoint that allows you to convert PowerPoint into flash files (.swf) so they can be inserted into web pages, Moodle, and any other platform that uses Flash content. It adds a tab (shown below) to the PowerPoint "Ribbon," or toolbar


It also allows you to easily insert Flash movies into PowerPoint slides, and YouTube videos as well.

An example is shown below. It is the the PowerPoint that will accompany the "Using Connect" Connect session on Sept. 2, from 9 to 10 a.m.. For more information about attending this session, contact me at Jeffrey.Wood@colostate.edu.

20 Free Flash Galleries

These 20 Free Flash Galleries provide an almost overwhelming set of tools to allow you to build an on-line Flash slidehow for photos and other images. The formats vary from the conservative to the whimsical, and are geared toward varying degrees of technical literacy. So, read the blurb describing the gallery, and explore the one that makes the most sense to you. Some of them use on-line photo galleries like Flickr, Picassa, and Photobucket, others rely on manually loading the images or using scripts downloaded to Photoshop or GIMP. Documentation is provided with every gallery.

Here's a Flash slideshow for the 4-H Truck Giveaway made by Darrin Goodman using Airtight Interactive's Autoviewer. A screenshot is below.



Here is a demo family album I made using Airtight Interactive's SimpleViewer and Photoshop. Cute! A screenshot is below.