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Tracking programs, new tools with web feed reader

The latest trend is on-line services with user-generated content

THIS EDITION of NetSpeak draws attention to a few Net resources that enable you to update with the latest utilities and other programs being released across the Net.

A feature that makes people engage with the Net is the availability of a wide spectrum of free/shareware programs. Depending on one's requirement, it is always possible to find one or more suitable packages. Hundreds of new programs for solving a wide range of issues are generated every day.

Therefore, finding the ones relevant to your needs is a challenging task.

Several software repositories that host links to developers' web sites, with a short description of the programs featured, are in place. Most of these provide web feeds for users to easily track the latest programs available on them with the help of a web feed reader.

The software download site CNET Download.com (http://www.download.com/) is popular among netizens. The service lists programs under various categories that include audio/video, business and Internet. For different categories separate news feeds are available.

The on-line service DownloadSquad (http://www.downloadsquad.com/) features details of the latest free programs posted on the Net. The tools/programs described on this service can be viewed separately on different OS platforms such as Windows, Linux and Macintosh.

Another software repository worth a mention is Softpedia (http://www.softpedia.com/), created for hosting links to both commercial and free programs.

Portable freeware collection (http://www.portablefreeware. com/), discussed in the past, is a good on-line resource for tracking the latest portable programs being developed.

Software repositories such as Sourceforge (http://sourceforge.net/), Freshmeat (http://freshmeat.net/) and FSF Directory (http://directory.fsf.org/) are some of the places worth a look for the latest information on free/open-source programs.

Apart from the repositories mentioned above you may check out services such as Freeware Files (http://www.freewarefiles. com/) and Simtel (http://www.simtel.net/welcome.php) and the like.

Almost all these services feature content created by a company or a group. Creation of on-line services with user-generated content is the latest trend. Such services are being attempted on the software repository front also.

The on-line social software list, MyProgs (http://myprogs.net/) is a wonderful example of such a product. The service helps a netizen post links to programs of his choice for sharing them with others.

While posting the software details, the user can put the link under a category of his choice using the service's tagging feature. At present the service is quite active and you will find new postings almost every hour.

As already mentioned, most of the services discussed above offer web feeds.

For efficient use of this facility, collect all the feeds from the several repositories, combine them into a single feed with a web feed merging service (like Feedshake-http://feedshake.com/).

Now use the composite feed obtained thus in your news aggregator. This will facilitate your tracking the latest content available on these services from a single web page.

Regular readers of this column need no introduction to Wikipedia, the on-line encyclopedia, with content contributed by people worldwide using the Wiki technology.

Linpedia

The success of Wikipedia led to the creation of several Wiki-based services. The latest among such products is Linpedia (http://linpedia.org/index.php/Main_Page), a Wiki based encyclopedia, generating knowledge-base for the open-source operating system Linux.

Yet another Wiki site stumbled on by this author is Thinkwiki (http://www.thinkwiki.org /wiki/ThinkWiki), a Wiki Web providing details on the IBM laptop `Thinkpad.'

J. MURALI

E-mail the author at: jmurali@gmail.com

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