LibreOffice
LibreOffice is an open source suit of programs for office use. Writer (word processor), Calc (spreadsheets), and Impress (presentations) are very similar to Microsoft Office, Excel and PowerPoint respectively. Their other offerings; Draw, Base, and Math are also interesting tools.
Draw is for creating diagrams and flowcharts.
Base is a database front end aimed at being easy to understand, even for those new to databases.
Math is designed to be used within other programs in the LibreOffice suit to format scientific mathematical formulas, however it can be used on its own.
Images
Gimp
GNU Image Manipulation Program
Gimp is a free and open source image editing program which handles tasks from photo editing, drawing and creating graphics. It is raster based which means it uses pixels as the structure. It handles tablet input with controls based on pen pressure. There are numerous plugins available for various tasks, developed by the community. For programming users, there is the ability to automate some processes using Python.
InkScape
Open source vector creation
InkScape allows for creating vectors – infinitely scalable images – used for logos and other branding in both print and web. Vectors are different from pixel dependent rasters, as they store their shape as mathematical formulas. This means there are obvious borders to sections, they don’t blend in the same way. However, the benefit is they don’t become pixelated at any size.
Video
Blender
3d animation
Blender is a free and open source 3d animation tool. Models created in this program can be used for many applications including video games, video, and simulation. Blender can handle the process from start to final product, and can also function as an editor for captured video. As there is a lot that you can do with it, Blender has a very steep learning curve and is difficult for new users.
The following three programs are covered in more detail in my post about video.
OpenShot
Video Editing
A user-friendly drag and drop, multi-channel, video editing program. Allows you to gear your output to various formats, including those aimed at web platforms like YouTube.
OBS Studio
Screen capture and live streaming
A powerful tool for adding together multiple recording sources in-screen. Allows you to format the placement of a webcam insert while capturing your screen.
Aegisub
Captioning
A tool for timing captions to video. Allows you to see exactly where the audio starts and finishes. It also provides helpful warnings if the number of words in a time period is too great.
Library Tools
MarcEdit is a data-manipulation tool which can manipulate MARC records. It was developed by Terry Reese as part of a database cleanup project he was working on at the Oregon State University. It handles MARC8 and UTF-8, and can be used to translate records between encoding formats.
This is another data cleaning tool. Publicly accessible data can be messy, particularly when the data is entered without authority control. You can navigate through data by bringing up cells which contain particular text using the text facet. It also allows you to edit particular cells so that the data will be combined. This feature can also be used to make data more readable, by replacing acronyms or abbreviations with their full version.
Data matching is another feature of OpenRefine. You can add content via a URL based on the content in a column.
Web
These web based tools are the ones I understand the least. However, I’m in the process of figuring them out so I’ve included my current understandings of them here.
While this website has been built using WordPress.com the company, I have also messed around with WordPress the application. WordPress requires another program to run (I used WAMPserver outlined below) but once you have that, all you need is a URL and hosting to have complete control over your website. The interface is very similar to WordPress.com, however you get more control over CSS and the addition of plugins for particular features. (For example, it would be possible to add a lightbox feature where images enlarge within the website when clicked instead of redirecting to another page.
WAMPserver is a Windows specific software stack – a single application which uses multiple program inputs to provide a service. WAMP made up of an operating system, web server, database and programming language; Windows, Apache, MySQL or MariaDB, and PHP, Perl or Python respectively.
This is one of the primary administration tools used with MySQL, particularly for Web applications. It was written in the programming language PHP.
MySQL is an opensource database. It works with other programs which provide GUIs (graphic user interfaces) for ease of use. It has an opensource option and an enterprise option for businesses. MySQL is used by many big names on the web including Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
Susannah Bourke 