OpenOffice 3.1 has been around quite sometime and now there is an updated version 3.2 just released on Feb 11th, 2010. Many companies like Oracle (earlier Sun), Red Hat, IBM etc have worked on this community driven Office Software suit. Great features and extra stability have been introduced post OpenOffice 3.0.  Here is our review on OpenOffice Calc, a worthy alternative to the most popular Spreadsheet software, Microsoft Excel.

Popularity: 52% [?]

Sometimes, you need to protect sensitive data from others opening it. Sometimes, friends have this annoying habit of opening files on your laptop or something that might embarrass you. Even company confidential files need to be protected. This will be helpful incase you lose your laptop or something. So, there are so many reasons to encrypt files, folders or even the entire partition for that matter. There are so many utilities. Most famous of them is AxCrypt. We’ve been using it for quite sometime. It is tried and tested by more than 1.5 million across the globe. AxCrypt is Open Source and Free. Very simple to install and use. It integrates seamlessly with Windows to compress, encrypt, decrypt, store, send and work with individual files.

Popularity: 48% [?]

The open source Qt development toolkit is a popular choice for cross-platform development. It provides native-looking widgets and tight integration with the underlying platform on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. Qt applications that are written in C++ are easy to compile and deploy across all three platforms, but what if you don’t like C++? I prefer Python, a dynamic programming language with a richly expressive syntax and exceptionally powerful support for introspection.

Fortunately, there are cross-platform Python bindings for Qt. The downside, however, is that packaging PyQt applications so that they can be deployed to users on Windows and Mac OS X is an immensely frustrating and arcane process. I declared victory last week after spending several hours battling with MacPorts and distutils. Now that I have unlocked the toolkit’s dark mysteries, I can show you the hidden secrets that will allow you to achieve mastery of the alchemical art of cross-platform PyQt application deployment.

First, you’ll need access to each platform for which you want to build redistributable packages. The easiest way to accomplish this is to use a Mac and either triple-boot or virtualize Windows and Linux. The initial setup process for Mac OS X will require a lot of very heavy compilation, so you are going to be in for a world of pain and a very long wait if you try to do this on a Mac mini.

Popularity: 7% [?]