| OldVersion.com ~ Computing is governed by the sign of Aquarius and its ruler Uranus, like astrology too. Thus, especially when it comes to intangibles such as computer software, there is a constant emphasis on development and the latest point release. Yet there have been many instances where the next update was really more of a downgrade. Watch Windows itself, for example. |
| Online Converter ~
You may never need this website. But if you do, you’ll be extremely glad you stumbled over it. It allows you to convert between different file formats, online and for free. Documents, image files, archives, ebooks, audio, video and more are supported. You don’t need to install any software, making it completely cross-platform and useful across a range of devices… |
| Open Source Astrology ~ SourceForge has faced poor publicity lately, but serves as a premiere resource for those keen on developing open source software under Linux, Windows and Mac OS. Here is a search based on popularity for the Windows platform that is easily adjustable to your own needs. These projects are in various stages of development; yet each is entirely free. |
| Orrery Movie ~ I would be remiss not to mention this Flash movie that is doing the rounds at the moment. To be fair it is far from a precision instrument for measuring planetary positions, but it is a beautiful piece of work nonetheless. There are two versions I've seen and this is the earlier one, because the latter revision doesn't work out so well. |
| OSBoxes ~ These days, there aren’t too many excuses for not testing your software under the whole gamut of browsers and operating systems. Windows still prevails on the desktop, while Linux is dominant on servers and mobile platforms, disregarding a minority who have failed to notice their Apple device runs a costly version of Unix, that is contractually free of charge. |
| PCjs Machines ~ The reality of personal computing has existed just long enough, for an improbable sense of nostalgia to coagulate around the hardware and software of way back when. Especially the latter: since the machines of yesteryear, are swiftly stalled nowadays by even basic tasks. This site, lets you boot a range of historic systems. Windows 1.01 anyone, on 640K RAM? |
| Pick *a* Star Motivational Oracle ~ Say you don’t want a full astro-consultation or to ask a personal question, based on your individual birth data directly. You have read your free horoscope for this week, month and year but need a quick fix, a pithy piece of cosmic wisdom to help you on your way. Try the Pick *a* Star Motivational Oracle, new from Astrologywizard.com… |
| Planetarium Software ~ Aimed at astronomers, good planetarium software helps you pinpoint the constellations whatever the weather and saves you wrestling with your telescope. Here you’ll find a vast selection from the long forgotten to the actively maintained, from the free to the commercial and for a range of operating systems, that includes hand-held devices. |
| Planet Watcher ~ Home to a dynamic astrology chart that updates when you visit or refresh the page. You can also move forwards or backwards through time and customise the planets or aspects that you want represented. You are generously allowed to feature either a dynamic or a fixed chart of you own choosing on any website you handle, using an especially prepared widget. |
| Playing with Canvas ~ This week I’m showcasing a neat star field made using the new <canvas> tag, proposed as part of the forthcoming HTML5 standard, but already implemented by all the major browsers with the exception of Internet Explorer. This enables you to draw graphics using just Javascript, promising a real alternative to Adobe Flash… |
| PrintFriendly ~ Modern web pages often cannot be printed easily. They are built to be viewed online and many developers, either don’t care or are keen to discourage you, from messing with their creation. This useful site strips out the text content from any web page, allowing you to preview it and delete anything superfluous, before either printing or saving it as a PDF… |
| Project Honey Pot ~ Unsolicited bulk email or spam, is a big issue. In 2009, Microsoft estimated 97% of all email to be unwanted, although this figure had decreased to around 70% by 2013. Measures to stop spam are legion; Project Honey Pot aims to gather information about those harvesting email addresses and spamming them, updating their statistics in almost real time. |
| Puffin Browser ~ Not long ago, developers were encouraged to work with Adobe Flash. Sites that have been around a few years often extensively used this technology, until Apple unilaterally decided not to support Flash under iOS. However, you can still enjoy the tutorials on *this* website by downloading the Puffin Browser for your mobile device. It’s free and trashes Safari, after all. |
| Repl.it ~ While it isn’t quite perfect yet, the young team behind this website have a mission to make computer programming a more accessible proposition. And they are doing a great job, allowing those learning to program the opportunity to try out different programming languages, with the aim of finding those they like without the need for setting up a time-consuming test environment. |
| Rosicrucian Calculation Program ~ The Rosicrucian Fellowship again, after last week’s mention of the free astrology references on their website. Once more, I’m not endorsing any set of beliefs, but if you’re after a free Windows program that can handle the essential calculations for all the most important astrological techniques, you may just have pinpointed your goal. |
| Rubular ~ A regular expression is a sequence of characters forming a search pattern, used mainly for matching text data in computer log files for example. A good regex is hard to construct and Rubular, an editor written in the Ruby programming language was such a help recently when I needed to produce my own, I wanted to give it a mention and help spread the word. |
