Savouring Open Solaris

Open Solaris


Thanks to the virtual box, I got to sample Open Solaris. Yes, it is not the latest, greatest version but it is the only image I could find for the Virtual box.

I love the azure blue background. The GUI and the layout have a striking resemblance to Ubuntu Linux. The distro comes with firefox, thunbderbird and a number of games and many of the other applications found in Linux distros. One other gizmo on Open Solaris a windows-like task manager. Well, for now, I'll stick to Linux, Mac and Windows

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Freemind: A great mind-management tool

Freemind
I discovered a bit late in life that I was a visual person, thanks to my discovering mind mapping. Mind mapping is a brainstorming technique discovered by Tony Buzan and then evangelized by Michael Gelb.

The synopsis of this technique is that one starts with a main theme that he puts on the centre of a blank sheet of paper or, if you are using software, the centre of the screen.
 Next, you expand on the theme by adding branches(nodes)  and naming ideas on the branches. You continue the process as long as necessary or adequate. Mind mapping works on the premise that the mind does not think linearly or with words. It thinks in pictures and with thoughts that come randomly.

Mind mapping seeks to synthesize right brain creative thinking with left brain creative thinking. As far as I could tell, mindmapping works well, atleast for me.

At MIT I used Mindjet which was more than adequate for me. Then I discovered Freemind which is a decent open-source cross platform alternative(It is built with Java). Freemind is easy to use and has a great set of features like the ability to add images to your nodes which is a key to great mind maps.

With Freemind one can also export the file into several formats including image, xml, pdf and open office types. Mindmapping has saved me many hours of effort and pstimulates creative solutions quickly.

If you are new to mindmapping, try using Freemind and see if it works for you. Do you have a favourite mind mapping tool? Please share your ideas on this subject in the comments. I'd love to hear from you.

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Exploring music-media centers: Songbird

SongBird
In my previous post, we saw some two awesome media centers, Boxee and XBMC. However, when one needs to organize only music files on  one or more drives connected to a computer or or one's laptop and also have the ability to access music from Internet streaming sites  for music, then music media centers like Songbird may be worth looking at.

Songbird was once called the iTunes killer. However, it did not live up to the hype. It is still a worthy contender to iTunes and others in its own league like DoubleTwist and Winamp.

Songbird is an opensource, cross-platform music mediacenter/organizer that can run both on Linux and Windows. Included with the music-center are tools to buy music from 7digital Music store,listen to  Shoutcast radio and mashtape, a tool  to download music and artist information. Songbird has tools to import and export music lists, support for iTunes and can play a variety of audio formats including mp3, vorbis, flac, wma and aac.

Songbird offers discography, album information, etc. for songs played in a neat interface that also includes a search feature.Other features include the ability to create smart playlists and watch folders .  Songbird also comes with development tools to build custom plugins or add-ons for enhanced functionality.The songbird website has several add-ons one may use to customize her installation of Songbird.

One setback I have found with Songbird is that I cannot mount network drives on  Linux. On Windows mapped drives perform badly with Songbird. This means that songbird can only access media files on internal and external drives connected to a local computer. All in all, Songbird is a decent media manager that could be better.

Here are some more articles on Songbird.

Songbird 1.2 Integrates into iTunes and iPods

Songbird 1.1 Grabs Album Art in One Step, Runs Lighter and Faster

Killer Add-ons Make Songbird So Much Better

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