The beta bandages are off, and the full public version of online presentation creation and management software Sliderocket looks pretty good. The PowerPoint competitor (in the cloud) will let you upload and import PPT files, Flash animations, spreadsheet data for charts as well as images, audio and video assets — then share them amongst coworkers. The Flash-based webapp is pretty slick, and you can add Flickr and YouTube content as well as purchase stock art from a Fotolia and PresentationPro. You can deliver your presentation online or download a standalone player. Sliderocket is free for a single user, with 30-day tryouts for potential paying customers. So for you bullet-slingers out there, are you ready to give up your desktop software for this presumptive online replacement?
Sliderocket [via TechCrunch]A partnership with Telstra has long meant that the nearest McDonald’s outlet is a useful location for emergency Wi-Fi, but it’s also meant that you have to pay for the service. That will all change next March, when McDonald’s rolls out free Wi-Fi in its stores, reports Karen Dearne at AustralianIT. Unsurprisingly, the service will be filtered to screen out objectionable content, but if it’s free you haven’t got much reason to complain. Admittedly, Fast Food Nation and Super Size Me may have put you off Maccas altogether, but sometimes pragmatism beats food politics.
Maccas to provide ‘clean’ internet service [AustralianIT]Every time a new Ubuntu release hits servers, so do thousands of Ubuntu users aching to get their hands on the latest and greatest release. The influx of traffic generally causes server crashes, which means you have to wait that much longer to upgrade. To help you avoid this problem altogether, the TorrentFreak weblog details how to use BitTorrent to upgrade to the newest release—Intrepid Ibex—set to release in a day or two. When everything’s all said and done, you can still upgrade using apt-get dist-upgrade—it’ll just handle the update over BitTorrent instead of hitting the Ubuntu servers, so your update should run much more smoothly. Want to know what to expect from the upgrade? Check out our first look at Intrepid Ibex. Use BitTorrent to Upgrade to Ubuntu ‘Intrepid Ibex’ [TorrentFreak]
Click on the “Show Details” link at the top of any feed inside Google Reader, and you’ll get a bar chart of how often new posts arrive, and how many you read—this is in addition to the overall subscription information you can get by hitting the Trends link on the top of the left sidebar.
Windows only: Free application Ashampoo Burning Studio Free is yet-another CD and DVD burning utility. Ashampoo handles virtually any burning need, from music CDs and video DVDs (Blu-ray support included) to data discs. It also supports burning compressed and encrypted backup discs. Granted, there are already plenty of burning utilities already available, but for anyone who remembers how difficult it used to be to find a free app to handle this sort of thing (i.e., not Roxio), the more options the merrier. For a look at the flip side of the coin, check out the Hive Five Best DVD Ripping Tools.
Ashampoo Burning Studio Free [via gHacks]Windows only: Freeware application gMote is an attractive, full-featured mouse gesture utility. We’ve covered a lot of mouse gesture apps in the past—like previously mentioned Mazzick—but as CNET’s Download Blog points out, gMote’s dual-pane interface makes it one of the easiest to use gesture apps around. gMote can hold your hand through making your first gestures if you’re a new user, and it supports well over 30 different actions. As an added bonus, gMote also prompts you when a new gesture you’ve created matches too closely with an existing gesture, so your gestures stay distinct. gMote is a free download, Windows only. gMote requires no installation, so you should be able to carry it on your thumb drive, too.
gMote [via CNET]Free universal capture application Evernote has updated its iPhone application, adding offline viewing of “Favorite” notes and significant speed improvements. Not familiar with Evernote? Check out how you can expand you brain with Evernote—whether you’ve got an iPhone or not. If you do, be sure to grab the latest Evernote from the iTunes App Store.
While it’s not the most full-featured image editor you’ll ever use, Pixlr makes it fairly easy to do some sophisticated (and unsophisticated) things with images online. The Flash-based web app has an impressive set of tools, from a text engine that can use nearly any font available on your computer to layers and filters for masking and effects, respectively. Incredibly, there’s even a multilevel undo! You can import images from your machine or via URL, or paint something up yourself, and either way save it to your desktop. It’s fun to play around with, though quickly frustrating if you’re used to more powerful tools. But it sure beats MS Paint! Original photo by Mike G.
PixlrWindows/Mac/Linux (All platforms): The latest beta of Audacity, the open-source, all-purpose audio editor, integrates the FFMpeg tool to allow working with Windows Media, MPEG-4 and Dolby Digital (i.e. M4A and AC3) files, along with a lot of other new features for its fans. Those with FFMpeg already installed only have to locate their avformat-52.dll file in the Import/Export preferences setting to enable the (beta-level) support for non-standard files. Those without will get direct download links to the needed package in Audacity’s preferences window. One neat new feature on the editing end is sound-activated recording, which is definitely helpful for grabbing sounds from other apps. Audacity 1.3.6 beta is a free download for Windows, Mac, and Linux systems. Audacity 1.3.6 beta [via Download Squad]
Flickr’s streaming videos are concise, higher-quality than similar vid-sharing sites, and hard to download using web-based converters. Orbit Downloader, the runner-up to our readers’ five favourite download managers, can grab the FLV file from a Flickr video and drop it wherever you’d like, and the software’s maker has posted a short tutorial on how to pull it off. Orbit doesn’t seem to work with Chrome all that well, but users of IE, Firefox, or Opera should have no trouble getting their files. How to Download Flickr Video Free [Orbit Downloader via Webware]
