Articles by Marco Fioretti

• Issue 328 - Tutorial: Open Doc Format -
  
• Issue 327 - Tutorial: Auto-generate ODF docs -
  
• Issue 325 - Tutorial: OpenStreetMap: JOSM -
  
• Issue 324 - Tutorial: OpenStreetMap: editing -
  
• Issue 323 - Tutorial: OpenStreetMaps basics -
  
• Issue 199 - Roundup: Instant messaging -
  
• Issue 190 - Roundup: Alternative Web browsers -
  
• Issue 189 - Tutorial: Macros - Libre Office -
  
• Issue 188 - Review: Opera Developer 24 - Marco Fioretti tries out a cool internet browser that has returned to the Linux kernel for the first time since July 2013.
  
• Issue 187 - Coding Academy: Bash: Shell programming - Marco Fioretti introduces programming in the shell – a way to make your computer work for you that anyone can try.
  
• Issue 186 - Roundup: Low-resource distros - Absolute Linux, CrunchBang, Elive, Manjaro, Puppy
  
• Issue 185 - Tutorial: Notes: store and collaborate - Marco Fioretti shows you how to use two open source tools to create your own Evernote-like system for collaborative work online.
  
• Issue 185 - Roundup: Wiki platforms - Media Wild, Dokuwild, Foswiki, PmWild, TiddlyWild
  
• Issue 182 - Tutorial: Calibre: Build an ebook server - Marco Fioretti shows how to share your whole digital library so your ebooks can always be at your fingertips, wherever you are.
  
• Issue 180 - Tutorial: OpenStreetMap - Learn how to contribute to this fantastic open source mapping project.
  
• Issue 180 - Tutorial: Set up a static website - We explain how.
  
• Issue 179 - Roundup: Video editors - Avidemux, Kdenlive, LiVES, Openshot, PitiVi
  
• Issue 179 - What on Earth: Tor - A guide to the free software system for surfing the web anonymously.
  
• Issue 178 - What on Earth: What on Earth is Qt5 - Marco Fioretti delves beneath the glossy exterior of the latest release.
  
• Issue 177 - What on Earth: Rust - The programming language from Mozilla that has the potential to make the web more powerful
  
• Issue 176 - Roundup:  Collection Managers - Find out the best way of keeping your stuff in order
  
• Issue 176 - What on Earth:  Open vSwitch - discover the wonderful world of virtual networking
  
• Issue 175 - What on Earth: Pump.io - Get started with open social networking.
  
• Issue 174 - Roundup: Anonymising distros - Worried about your privacy online? Take a look at these three anonymising distros to help you stay safe.
  
• Issue 174 - What on Earth: OpenColorIO - Get the lowdown on the open source system that keep all the colours in our digital movies crisp, bright and beautiful
  
• Issue 173 - What on Earth: Mir - Discover the controversial display server from Canonical.
  
• Issue 172 - What on Earth: Tizen - We present another Linux-based smartphone OS.
  
• Issue 171 - Roundup: Image editors - We look at five of the best image editors
  
• Issue 170 - Tutorial: Digikam: work together - Cooperate to share the work of managing a large collection of photographs.
  
• Issue 169 - Tutorial: OwnCloud - we introduce a free software alternative to Dropbox, Flickr and many others.
  
• Issue 169 - What on Earth: WebRTC - It promises to bring real time communications to the web, but what is it?
  
• Issue 163 - Roundup: Gallery managers - Want to put pictures on your website? We check out five of the best applications to help you do just that.
  
• Issue 160 - What on Earth: OpenCL - We present an open graphics standard that may make many applications run faster than they do today.
  
• Issue 159 - What on Earth: OStatus - We explain how the entire world wide web can become one open, interoperating social network
  
• Issue 156 - What on Earth: Dracut - We introduce a new way to make your Linux box boot faster
  
• Issue 155 - Roundup: Roundup: Project Planners - Linux can help project planners, thanks to DotProject, GanttPV, KPlato and TaskJuggler
  
• Issue 154 - Tutorial: Grub 2: A guide for beginners - We explain the first things you should now about the new standard bootloader for Linux.
  
• Issue 154 - What on Earth: What on Earth: BrowserID - What`s the easiest way to prove who you are online? BrowserID wants to be the answer.
  
• Issue 153 - What on Earth: UEFI - A new boot interface that could stop Linux booting in the future
  
• Issue 152 - What on Earth: X.org - What draws your Linux desktop? One of the oldest open source projects around, that's what.
  
• Issue 150 - What on Earth: OAuth - We explain how you can save time and stay secure by authorising websites to work for you.
  
• Issue 146 - Review: BlueGriffon - Ambitions of becoming a professional web designer? Here's a new web editor that could help you.
  
• Issue 146 - Roundup: Lightweight window managers - On test: Enlightenment, FVWM, Openbox, Ratpoison, Window Maker
  
• Issue 145 - Coding Academy: Learn the basics of Perl - Who says venerable scripting languages are boring? Have a play around with Perl and discover just how useful it can be.
  
• Issue 144 - Roundup: Graphical plotters - On test: Grace, Jgnuplot, KAlgebra, KmPlot, Kayali
  
• Issue 144 - What on Earth: Zeitgeist - Why keep records of what you do with your computer when somebody else can do it for you? We introduce Zeitgeist.
  
• Issue 143 - Roundup: File managers - On test: 4Pane, Dolphin, Nautilus, PcManFM, Rox-Filer, Thunar
  
• Issue 143 - Tutorial: ExifTool: Sort your pictures - Badly organised photo collections can induce enough stress to make you sick. Thankfully, we've found the cure.
  
• Issue 142 - What on Earth: Wayland - We investigate the pros and cons of a new way to draw the Linux desktop, which will start appearing in popular distros this year.
  
• Issue 141 - What on Earth: Unity - We explain the new desktop environment that you'll love - or possibly even love to hate - in the coming year.
  
• Issue 140 - What on Earth: Silk - We explain how your next KDE desktop will try to cram the whole of the internet inside your monitor.
  
• Issue 139 - What on Earth: OpenSearch - Here's a new web standard to smooth interaction between search engines and clients for more relevant results.
  
• Issue 130 - What on Earth: MicroXwin - This new and snappy windowing system could be music to the ears of embedded Linux developers...
  
• Issue 129 - What on Earth: SPDY - We purrsuade spead freak Marko to slow down long enough to tell us how Google is going to rewrite the web to make Lolcats even faster.
  
• Issue 125 - What on Earth: Telepathy - We explain how all the pieces of your desktop - and indeed anybody else's for that matter - can talk to each other in real time.
  
• Issue 123 - Tutorial: Photos: Digitise your snaps - Do you have boxes full of photographs waiting to go into your computer? We show you how to do that and get your cupboard space back.
  
• Issue 122 - Feature: Gnuplot - Gnuplot is more than a simple plotting program - it can even draw graphs for you while you sleep.
  
• Issue 122 - What on Earth:  Social desktop - Even if you shun Facebook and MySpace, your desktop might well be on its way to making a socialite out of you yet.
  
• Issue 122 - Tutorial: ODF: Pull data out of OpenOffice.org - We show the easy way to process OpenDocument Format data from spreadsheets, text documents and more with just a little code...
  
• Issue 121 - What on Earth: APML - A novel way to let websites know what interests you.
  
• Issue 121 - Tutorial: OOo: Automate your work - We reveal how to create a slew of OpenDocument invoices and multiple choice tests automatically to save you from monotonous chores.
  
• Issue 120 - Tutorial: OpenOffice.org: Automate slideshows - After looking at spreadsheets, we explore a way to have your computer create slideshows for you.
  
• Issue 119 - Tutorial: OOo: Automate spreadsheets - We show you how to transform obscure raw numbers into normal spreadsheets with charts and formulas that will look good in any office.
  
• Issue 117 - Roundup: Newsreaders - On test: Gnus, Knode, Pan, SLRN, Thunderbird, XPN.
  
• Issue 116 - Roundup: Project planners - On test: GanttProkect, KPlato, OpenProj, Planner, TaskJuggler.
  
• Issue 116 - Feature:  The tragedy of the commons - The Creative Commons is full of potential for artists everywhere - so why is most of it untapped? Let's find out...
  
• Issue 113 - Tutorial: Media: Karaoke and cartoons - We explore a little-known corner of the Inkscape universe and take a crash course in karaoke compilation.
  
• Issue 113 - Tutorial: Postfix: Build an email server - Who says that only big corporations can have a fully customised email system? Here's how to build your own...
  
• Issue 112 - What on Earth: GIS - We explain the power of geography-enabled databases and why you should use them.
  
• Issue 112 - Tutorial: Geotag your photos - Get your holiday snaps and add geographical information galore.
  
• Issue 112 - Tutorial: Multimedia tips - We introduce a promising editor for RAW digital pictures, enliven your desktop and help you let the whole world know what you're listening to.
  
• Issue 111 - Roundup: Getting things done - On test: Basket, Chandler, Emacs Org-mode, GTD-Free, Kontact, MonkeyGTD, ThinkingRock, Tracks
  
• Issue 111 - What on Earth: DjVu - Here's the format that can save all our scrolls and movie posters...
  
• Issue 111 - Tutorial: Multimedia: HDR and DigiKam - We kick off a multimedia tips series with news from DigiKam, the Icecast music server, LMMS and a cute time-waster from Blender.
  
• Issue 110 - Roundup: Live CDs - On test: Damn Small Linux, Fedora, Mandriva, OpenSUSE, Puppy Linux, Sabayon, Slax, Ubuntu
  
• Issue 110 - What on Earth: FPGAs - Fiddling with apps, operating systems and even assembly language is passe: here's the next frontier for hackers.
  
• Issue 103 - Review: Navicat 8 - Want a cross-platform admin front-end for MySQL? Web-based interfaces not flexible enough? This might be the tool you need.
  
• Issue 90 - What on Earth: OpenID - Don't know who you are any more? All you need is a URL...
  
• Issue 87 - Tutorial: Konqueror: Be a power user - Don't you love it when you find a fiver in a pocket, or some pesto in the back of the fridge? Here are 30 hidden gems from Konqueror...
  
• Issue 81 - Tutorial: DansGuardian: Set smart filters - Tired of the distractions that you, your staff or your children find online? The censorial Marco Fioretti has an open source solution to help you set up flexible, sophisticated content filters for the web.
  
• Issue 75 - What on Earth: OpenDocument - We introduce the new format for office files that's making waves in Brussels and Boston.
  
• Issue 72 - Roundup: PDF readers - You read PDF files every day - so it would be silly not to use the best software out there: Rated: Acrobat Reader, Evince, GGv, GPdf, KGhostview, KPDF, Xpdf
  
• Issue 72 - Tutorial: Perl functions and modules - Part 4: Not all scripts must be built from scratch. Marco 'Prefab' Fioretti shows you how to reuse code.
  
• Issue 71 - Tutorial: Perl: Flow, files and reports - Part 3: Here we introduce techniques for sophisticated Perl scripting.
  
• Issue 70 - Tutorial: Perl: Sort your code - Part 2: Scared by abstruse Perl operators and regular expressions? Even more scared of the word abstruse?
  
• Issue 69 - Tutorial: Perl: Variables and operators - We explain Perl's scripting components in episode 1...
  
• Issue 68 - Tutorial: Shell: Exit codes and flow control - Marco helps you to come out of your shell and structure your code for group projects.
  
• Issue 67 - Roundup: Email clients - Rated: Balsa, Evolution, KMail, Mahogany, Mutt, Pine, Sylpheed, Thunderbird
  
• Issue 67 - Tutorial: Shell: Arrays, dialogs and Images - In which teacher's pet Marco adds weight to Nick's argument that the console CAN do graphics, with a lesson for creating an image gallery.
  
• Issue 66 - Tutorial: Shell secrets - Part 2: Time-saving tips for modifying and processing text from the command line.