The latest version of Cygwin 1.5.24-2 is released. This version release fixes only one bug that was introduced in the previous version, 1.5.24-1, of non-functional on XP 64-bit and 2003 Server 64-bit editions operating systems.

Many may not have heard of Cygwin. Basically, Cygwin is a Linux-like environment for Windows. It consists of two parts:

• - A DLL (cygwin1.dll) which acts as a Linux API emulation layer providing substantial Linux API functionality.
• - A collection of tools which provide Linux look and feel.

Except for Windows CE, Cygwin works with all recent, commercially released x86 32-bit and 64-bit of Windows operating systems. (Note that official support for Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows Me will be discontinued with the next major version (1.7.0) of Cygwin.)

Although the application emulates a Linux environment, however it is not a way to run native Linux applications. To run Linux-based applications, users will always have to build from source to allow it to run under Windows, and also to take advantage of the Cygwin functionality.

Installation Link
Cygwin 1.5.24-2

AudioFlash is a free streaming audio recording software. The application allows users to quickly and easily add audio on to websites by creating MP3 compressed audio files and a set of Play, Pause and Stop buttons (SWF Flash). These flash-generated audio enables visitors to have complete control over the background music.

Once your audio and buttons have been created, users can copy and paste the generated HTML into another webpage or use the built-in FTP client to upload everything as-is to the server.

Features

• * Use it to record information to help sell your product or service
• * Create multiple answers to frequently asked questions
• * You can create audio tutorials for school or college class
• * Explain a problem more clearly for technical support
• * Create online audio information products you can sell
• * Use it to create podcasts on your chosen subject
• * Record audio notes on new tricks and techniques for software programs and upload them to your server, so you never forget them

Users have a total control on the output of the audio recording. For instance,

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ExactImage is an open source image processing library. Compared to other image processing library, such as imagemagick, this library enables image processing task to be speed up at least 10 times faster than the latter.

This library file is coded in C++, simply for the reason of speed. In the library, several new algorithms are explored and implemented, such as descreening, descewing, data-dependent triangulation scaling and others. In one way or another, it is considered to be a unified state-of-the-art algorithm. The included codecs take C++ STL std::istreams and std::ostreams allowing library users to implement their own data sources and destinations, such as in memory locations or network transfers.

Currently, ExactImage supports the following image formats:
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Finally, Paint.Net 3.0 has gone out of beta and released. Designed and developed at Washington State University with guidance from Microsoft, Paint.NET, a student project programmed in C# and GDI+, is a photo and image editing tool designed for computers running Microsoft Windows XP or Windows 2000. Currently it is maintained by some of the alumni that originally worked on it.

Bringing powerful features to the desktop, such includes a myriad of special effects, plug-in extensibility, and layer manipulation, to enhance the image editing process. Digital photographers and artists can enhance their images with features and effects such as levels adjustment, cross-layer cloning, anti-aliased tools, motion blur, and red eye removal.

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Windows users who occasionally access SSH will know what PuTTY is about. Basically, PuTTY is a free implementation of Telnet and SSH for Win32 and Unix platform, and consists of a xterm terminal emulator, and is a stand-alone application.

It is really handy especially if you are running under a Windows environment. Before you attempt to use PuTTy, make sure you read the Legal Warning announcement.

LEGAL WARNING: Use of PuTTY, PSCP, PSFTP and Plink is illegal in countries where encryption is outlawed. I believe it is legal to use PuTTY, PSCP, PSFTP and Plink in England and many other countries, but I am not a lawyer and so if in doubt you should seek legal advice before downloading it. You may find this site useful (it’s a survey of cryptography laws in many countries) but I can’t vouch for its correctness.

Use of the Telnet-only binary (PuTTYtel) is unrestricted by any cryptography laws.

So, make sure you are using it legally.
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You won’t imagine this. I just love GNU nano. I have been using it ever since I first got to use Linux. I started off with vim, but I’m not really keen on learning all those hotkeys, so eventually I fell back onto Pico. Pico text editor is really wonderful, providing users with an easy-to-use interface. Sadly, there are a little problems, but finally nano came along.

Being an official GNU package, nano is certainly the package to use for anyone who enjoys text mode commands.

Key Features

•   More Pico compatible by default
•   Smooth scrolling (-S flag)
•   Bracket matching (Meta-])
•   nanorc support
•   Color syntax highlighting
•   Search and replace history editing
•   Customizable quoting string (-Q flag)
•   Append/prepend from write file menu
•   Write selected text to file (^O after ^^)
•   Multiple file buffers (-F flag)
•   Mac/Dos/NoConvert file format (-M,-D,-N)
•   Saved search/replace history (-H flag)
•   Backup files (-B flag)
•   Insert output of command (^X after ^R)

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This is another plaintext editor that I would like to introduce. Tired of your notepad from Microsoft Windows? Or any other previous notepads that I have introduced so far? Perhaps, you might want to try Notepad++ 4.0, a free source notepad replacement, as well as a code editor.

This application supports several programming languages, running under the Microsoft Windows environment. Based on the Scintilla edit component (a very powerful editor component), Notepad++ is written in C++ with pure win32 api and STL (that ensures the higher execution speed and smaller size of the program). Furthermore, it is under the General Public Licence (GPL), thus it is free for download.

Currently, the project is developed by a single-handedly a person, thus it is possible that some bugs and missing features might exist. Nonetheless, there is always a forum available for users who are interested to find out more or post their feedbacks.

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Following Joe Cheng’s comment on Live Writerfox 0.3, I then realised the existence of Blog This for Firefox, developed by Microsoft development team. Blog This for Firefox is a pluin (or extension) that adds a button to Firefox which starts a new Windows Live Writer blog post, prepopulated with content and title from the current web page.

Users can blog the whole page or just from selected snippets. This extension also interacts with other registered plugins to parse and structure web content where appropriate. It allows users to blog quickly about specific interesting topic without having to start any other stand-alone application.

The latest release is known to be compatible with Firefox version 2.0.0.1. According to Joe Cheng, Blog This has a couple of advantages over Live Writerfox.

…it preserves a small amount of formatting from the original HTML (bold, italics, headings, paragraph breaks, etc.–but not fonts and colors) and links and images, whereas I believe Live Writerfox strips the HTML all the way into plaintext….

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When it comes to operating system, which type is portable? That goes without saying, Linux. Now, live Linux versions have been pre-configured and available for USB flash pen drive. From which, user can simply boot the operating system directly off the thumb drive. Isn’t that amazing!

The following applications are available for USB Pen Drive Linux.

1. USB DSL – USB DSL Embedded
2. USB Knoppix – USB Knoppix 5.1.1
3. USB PCLinuxOS MiniMe – USB PCLinuxOS MiniMe Full
4. USB PCLinuxOS + SLAX – USB MiniMe + SLAX
5. USB SLAX – USB SLAX v1.0.0
6. USB Ubuntu – USB Ubuntu 1.0

After all, you won’t really need a large USB drive. A decent 128MB or 256MB USB drive is well sufficient to power up Linux.