Inkscape 0.47 by Nathan Willis – Totally solid release with lots of new cool tools and functions

The free open source vector graphics editor Inkscape has released an update packing several new features, new tools, effects, and improved SVG compliance. Version 0.47 is available for Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows, as well as source code. Ubuntu users can also add the Inkscape Testers package archive to automatically upgrade.

Insckape ScreenShot

TOOLS

Inkscape users will immediately notice one new tool added to the toolbox: an eraser. The eraser can do two things: delete entire objects (paths, shapes, etc.), or erase parts of objects by cutting through them with a Boolean “subtract” operation, slicing the paths it encounters.

The Pen and Pencil tools have gained some new features, including a polyline mode to draw multiple line segments together, a paraxial mode to draw lines restricted to the coordinate axes, a sketch mode that averages multiple strokes together, and support for vector-based “stroke shapes” to enable the user to draw tapered, natural-looking lines.

Inkscape’s new Eraser tool slices through paths with a boolean subtract operation

The Tweak tool has been expanded, so that it can now “sculpt” whole objects in addition to nodes on a path — pushing them around like a brush, attracting or repelling them around the mouse cursor, and applying jitter, rotation, and blur.

The Text tool sports several editing improvements. The first is a built-in spell checker, sure to be a lifesaver to many. The second is support for common text-editor keystrokes like page-up and page-down, which will make editing text-heavy documents easier.

Finally, the Node tool can now be used to edit masks and clipping paths, in addition to regular paths. A new type of node, “auto-smooth” allows you to create shapes that automatically smooth out as they are edited.

EFFECTS

Several new path effects add more creative options. “Sketch” transforms an object into the appearance of hand-drawn lines. “Hatches” simulates shading with hatching marks. “Von Kotch” creates fractals. “Knot” turns a simple curve into simulated knotwork by hiding curve intersections. “Construct Grid” creates a grid system based on three nodes (origin point, x- and y-axis markers). “Envelope Deformation” allows you to deform an object by directly manipulating the sides of its bounding box. “Ruler” draws regular, ruler-like marks onto a path. “Interpolate Subpaths” automatically creates a series of paths morphing between a start shape and an end shape.

Demonstration of Inkscape’s new “sketch” and “hatches” path effects; both are highly configurable: the settings for “hatches” are shown

The most talked-about new effect, though is Spiro Splines. Based on mathematical work by Raph Levien, splines are a new type of path that behave like springy metal rods, automatically smoothing to minimum curvature between their nodes. There are no control point “handles” as with Bezier curves. Spiro Splines can be created with a path effect, or with a new spiro spline mode for the Pen and Pencil tools.

Also, an important change system-wide is that all path effects can now be applied to groups, not just to individual paths, and to individual faces in 3-D boxes. Multiple path effects can be assigned to objects, and path effects now work with the Pen and Pencil tools (i.e., the effect is still applied as you continue to add to the drawing).

EXTENTIONS

“Extensions” is a new menu item holding Inkscape plug-ins written in Python — in previous releases, these extensions resided in the “Effects” menu, which provided some confusion with path effects.

New extensions include utilities to generate 3D polyhedra, Cartesian and Polar Coordinate grids, horizontal and vertical guides dividing the canvas into segments, blank calendar pages, and even paper-box foldouts.

Some other interesting additions include the “Alphabet soup” extension, which creates randomized letter-like glyphs resembling unusual alphabets, “Convert to Braille,” which generates dot patterns (2D images only; not raised Braille) from text, and “Draw from Triangle,” which creates geometric objects and performs geometry calculations based on triangles.

Some of Inkscape’s new extensions and drawing modes, including “Alphabet Soup,” “Convert to Braille,” “Polar Coordinates,” and “Foldable Box.” On the left are paths created with the Pen tool’s paraxial mode and spiro spline mode

Other extension utilities add path extrusion, path scattering, interpolation of object attributes, and complex re-stacking. A JavaScript extension allows you to embed JavaScript attributes in a drawing, which will be useful for SVGs exported to the Web. Inkscape does not contain a JavaScript interpreting engine, however; it only preserves the JavaScript for export.

SVG SUPPORT

Several improvements were made to Inkscape’s ongoing implementation of the full SVG specification. First is file-size reduction by optimizing the CSS properties and path data written to file — for example, if an object has the “stroke:none” property specified, Inkscape can skip the inclusion of numerous stroke property settings that would take up needless space.

Inkscape also preserves the (script) tag, although as with JavaScript, the application itself does not yet implement SVG scripting. Inkscape also supports the W3C’s official SVG Test Suite, so you can run compliance checks for any SVG features you are curious about.

This release also adds support for reading and rendering SVG Fonts, so that font designers can use Inkscape as a font design tool. This feature was added by a student working with Inkscape as part of Google’s Summer Of Code internship program.

EDITING

Many new changes involve the user interface and enhancements to the editing behavior — starting with a new timed auto-save feature that prevents work loss by automatically saving documents in the background.

Improvements to working with grouped objects include changes to the “Combine” and “Convert Text to Path” operations. Combine now works on groups of paths as well as on individuals. “Convert Text to Path” now generates a group of paths (one created from each letter), instead of the previous behavior — a single path composed of all of the letters. Cloning objects is also improved; it is now possible to re-link clones that had previously been de-linked from their originals. A new visualization highlights cloned objects when the original is selected.

Snapping behavior has seen a major overhaul. The UI displays a small “cross” visualization when a snap is about to occur (giving the user warning), there is an option delay setting to require a hover time before snapping (to avert accidental snaps), and Inkscape can be configured to only snap at the node nearest to the mouse pointer (to simplify snapping drawings that include a large number of nodes). Snapping can also take place not just to path nodes and guides, but to masks, clipping paths, intersections, page borders, midpoints, handle points, and other locations. The new snapping behavior is configurable through a new snapping toolbar.

Inkscape’s rewritten snapping feature includes visual indicators, adjustable delay, and a snapping toolbar from which individual snap points can be activated or deactivated

In addition to those changes, there are numerous small enhancements for general editing, such as use of the system-wide clipboard, a shell mode that enables Inkscape to be called from scripts, more configurable guide-lines, the ability to edit linked-in bitmap images in an external editor, and completely themable icons, thanks to the adoption of the freedesktop.org icon theme standard.

All in all, 0.47 marks yet another solid release from the cross-platform, free vector editor.

BY NATHAN WILLIS

Other Resources:

Inkscape Tutorials

Plugins, Scripts and templates

Inkscape Wiki – documentation, about and more.

Planet Inkscape - what the Inkscape community is blogging about

Inkscape Wikipedia Page

Openclipart.org excellent free Clip Art in SVG. (Worldlabel sponsors Clip art of the Month)

Our Worldlabel howto on designing  Business cards with Inkscape

Pixel2Life Inkscape Tutorials

35 Great Inkscape Howtos

If you want to keep tabs on your deadlines, you don’t need a fancy project management application — often, a simple spreadsheet can do the job. To see how, let’s create a spreadsheet that tracks task deadlines, shows the current status of each task, and highlights scheduling conflicts. In the process we’ll learn a few useful Calc techniques.

To keep things simple, we’ll create a separate sheet for each month, with three columns: Task, Deadline, Days left, Status, and Conflict. The Status column might hold values such as “In Progress” or “Completed.” Depending on the current status, the cells in the Days left column will display either the number of days to the deadline or “OK.” If the deadline for the task has passed but the article’s status is not “Completed,” the Days left column will display “OVERDUE,” making it easier to quickly locate unfinished and overdue tasks. Finally, we’ll use the Conflict column to identify scheduling conflicts: if two tasks have the same deadline date, the Conflict cell of the offending task will display a “CONFLICT” warning (ideally, the spreadsheet should mark both conflicting tasks, but I’m still working on how this can be done).

The key elements of what we’ve described are two formulas in the cells of the Days left and Status columns. Let’s take a look at the Days left formula first:

IF(DAY(B2)-DAY(TODAY())<0 AND (D2<>”Completed”);”OVERDUE”;IF(D2=”Completed”;”OK”;DAY(B2)-DAY(TODAY())))

To better understand how that works, let’s break it into several logical parts. The formula itself is based on the IF function, which uses the following format:

IF(Test; The_value; Otherwise_value)

In our case, the test part checks whether the number of days is less than 0 (i.e., whether the deadline has passed) and the status is not “Completed.” If both conditions are met, then the value of the D2 cell (the Days left column) is set to “OVERDUE.” Otherwise, the formula runs another IF function that sets the value of cell D2 to “OK” if the article’s status is “Completed”; otherwise it sets the value to the number of days left to the deadline.

Now on to the formula used in the Conflicts column:

IF(COUNTIF(B2:B31;B2)=1;”OK”;”CONFLICT”)

This formula uses the COUNTIF function to count the cells containing the same date as the B2 cell. If the count is 1 (meaning that only one article is scheduled for the specified date), then the formula set the value of the E2 cell to the “OK”; otherwise it sets the value of the cell to “CONFLICT.”

Once you’ve specified both formulas for a single row, you can apply them to other cells in the Days left and Conflicts columns by selecting the cell with the formula and dragging the selection handle over other cells in the row.

Calc scheduling spreadsheet in all its beauty.

Although the spreadsheet is ready to go, there are a couple of things you can do to make it more efficient and easy to use. For starters, you can turn the cells in the Status column into a drop-down list containing predefined values. To do this, select the Status column and choose Data -> Validity, and select List from the Allow drop-down list. Specify status items in the Entries field and press OK.

 Specifying conditional formatting options.

You might also want to spice up the spreadsheet by applying conditional formatting to the cells in the Days left and Status columns. For example, you can specify conditional formatting that displays the “OVERDUE” warning in red bold font on a yellow background. To do this, use the Stylist (press F11 to evoke it) to create a new style using with the described formatting and save it as “Overdue.” Select then the first cell in the Days left column and choose Format -> Conditional Formatting, and specify the following condition:

Cell value – is equal to – “OVERDUE”
Cell Style – Overdue

In a similar manner, you can specify conditional formatting for the cells in the Conflicts column. To make data entry easier, you can use two extensions: DataForm (http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/DataForm) </a> and Date Browser (http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/RiessDateBrowser). The former adds a data entry form that makes it easier to enter data in cells, while you can use the latter to quickly enter a date in a cell in the Deadline column using the Date picker pop-up window.

That’s all there is to it. Obviously, this solution doesn’t rival a dedicated project management application, but it can help you to keep track of your tasks and deadlines with a minimum of fuss.

BY DMITRI POPOV

Take a look at our free PDF planner Pro

Is it too early in the year for next years calendar? We had a few request from our viewers for a fillable 2010 calendar, so here it is. Start organizing for next year now.

Check out our free, fillable and printable PDF document template 2010 calendar with notepad! It has the features you need to keep your life on track on calender pages that are a fully printable 8.5″ x 11″. Please also check out our PDFplannerPRO, a fillable printable planner, organizer, diary and more! If you need our 2009 Calender, go for that as well!

Features at a glance:

• Customize with your own logo or image
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• Print the complete calendar or specific pages
• Notepad for each month
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Instructions For Inputting Your Data:

Click on month in Contents menu within the calendar to jump to desired page.

Insert your own image – Place cursor on Worldlabel.com logo and click; a Select Image File window will pop up; choose the desired file from your computer. Images must be about 4 inches w x .75 inches. Once you choose a file, it will automatically populate the template.

More Tools: – Fonts: If you want to change the font type, size or color, (as well as bold, italics, etc.) select Control +E if you’re using a PC or Apple + E on a Mac. A toolbar will appear giving you additional text properties. Select “More” in the font properties toolbar for paragraph alignment and more.

• Select Control + 5 to reduce/increase line weights.
• Select Tools > Typewriter > Show Toolbar > fill in the blank areas in the PDFplannerPRO with your desired information.

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PDFCalendarPRO 2010

Screen Shot

If you rely on computers to help you get things done in your personal or professional life, then you’re probably on the lookout for useful applications that will help you stay on top of things. Recently, we took a look at productivity tools for the KDE desktop, but there are plenty of options out there for the GNOME desktop, too. Here are a batch of tools designed with GNOME users in mind.

Tomboy — This is one of the best note-taking apps you’ll find anywhere. It helps track the random bits of info you collect throughout the day and organize it into searchable data. The most recent version also previews a new online note synchronization feature that syncs and shares your notes across multiple computers.

Evince — Everyone needs a reliable document viewer and Evince is just the ticket for GNOME users. It features a robust search that displays the number of results found within a page and highlights them, and uses thumbnail shots of pages so you can jump around quickly in a document. Evince can open encrypted PDFs, and printing is a snap thanks to its GNOME/GTK printing framework.

Evolution — Here’s a full-featured email, address book, and calendaring suite designed specifically for the GNOME desktop. It’s got everything you could hope for in a personal information manager, and then some: a to-do list, support for iCal, user-defined filters, a strong spam catcher, and the ability to easily manage multiple email accounts.

Gnumeric — If you need to track inventory, manage graphs and charts, or crunch numbers, then a good spreadsheet application is a must. Gnumeric helps you plot, graph, analyze, and manipulate all types of numerical data. It will even read and import spreadsheet files created in Microsoft Excel.

GnuCash — If you’re looking for a way to track your finances, you can’t go wrong with GnuCash. It’s one of the most popular personal and small-business accounting software programs for GNOME — and with good reason. It handles reports, graphs, invoices, scheduled transactions, and even double-entry accounting. It’s powerful enough to manage your entire business, but approachable enough to use as a simple checkbook register and bank account tracker.

gLabels — We’ve talked about printing labels from the desktop before but gLabels is so handy that it bears repeating. This free app for GNOME lets you print all kinds of labels and business cards from your laser or ink-jet printer using one of the templates that’s included in the large collection. Don’t see what you need? Then create your own using the template design wizard.

By Lisa Hoover @twitter.com/lisah

If you run a business, finding an efficient system for managing invoices is critical for sustaining a positive cash flow. Here’s how you can create an easy invoicing solution using OpenOffice.org Writer and Calc.

By Dmitri Popov

CREATING A DATA SOURCE

First, you need to connect OpenOffice.org to an address book that contains your customers’ contact data. OpenOffice.org can talk to numerous address book formats, including the address book module of the Mozilla Browser Suite, which is an open source software package available for a variety of platforms. Better yet, OpenOffice.org also includes a wizard that allows you to easily set up a Mozilla-based address data source.

Go to File > Wizards > Address Data Source. In the Address Data Source Wizard, choose Mozilla/Netscape and then select which address book you want to use (you can choose between Collected Addresses or Personal Address Book). Give the data source a name and choose a path where it will be stored. Make sure that you select the option, “Yes, register the database for me,” then click Finish to close the wizard.

Tip: You can also use the Wizard to connect to other data sources containing addresses. For example, to connect to the Thunderbird address book, select the Other data source option, press Next, click on the Settings button, and then select the Thunderbird Address Book from the Data type drop-down menu.

Now you can launch Writer. To connect to the created Address book data source, choose Data Sources from the View menu or press the F4 key. This opens the Data Sources window. Double-click on Addresses (or click on the plus icon next to it). Double-click on the Tables title and select Personal Address Book to view it as a table.

CREATING A INVOICE TEMPLATE

An invoice must have at least two parts: the address fields and a table containing the invoice data. The address part consists of fields (think of them as placeholders), which will be filled in automatically by OpenOffice.org using the data from the created data source.

You can add fields to the document in two ways. The easier way is to click on a column title (e.g. company, first name, or last name) and drag it onto the desired location in the invoice document.

The second method is a bit more complicated, but it essentially does the same thing. Choose Insert > Fields > Other, click on the Database tab, and select Mail merge fields in the Type window. Choose Address > Personal Address Book, select the field you want to insert, and click the Insert button. Click Close after you’ve added all the necessary fields.

The next step is to add a table that contains invoice items such as description, prices, subtotal, VAT (or tax), and total sum. Choose Insert > Table to create a table. To define a calculation for the subtotal cell, place the cursor in the B7 cell and press F2. In the calculation field, enter the following calculation: <B2:B6>.

This calculation means that the contents of the B7 cell is the sum of the cells from B3 to B6. The calculation for the B8 cell (Subtotal) is =sum(<B7>*25/100) (assuming that VAT is 25%). Finally, the total calculation is =sum(<B7:B8>). Check whether the calculations work correctly by entering a couple of invoice items and examining the subtotal, VAT, and total results.

If you want the invoice to automatically calculate the due date in the payment due field, you can use the following calculation: =days(<b1>+n), where B1 is the cell that contains the invoice date and n is the number of days.

You may also want to format numbers in the price column as currency. Select all cells in the column by clicking on them while holding down the Shift key. Choose the Number Format command from the Format menu. In the Number Format dialogue box, choose the appropriate currency and define formatting using the provided options. Finally, save the created invoice document as an .ott file (OpenDocument Text Template).

CREATING AND PRINTING INVOICES

With all these pieces in place, you’re ready to create and print invoices. To create a new invoice, open the template. Press F4 to open the Data Sources window if you haven’t already done so. To fill out the fields with the address data you want, select the appropriate record row in the table and press the Data to Fields button. Save the resulting invoice as a Writer document.

When you press the Print button or choose File > Print, you are prompted to choose whether you want to print the form letter. Choose No, and if you don’t want to see the prompt window again, tick the “Don’t show warning again” check box. Don’t worry, you will still be able to print the invoice, you will just bypass the whole form letter printing procedure.

Finally, to make the solution complete, you need to create an invoice managing system that will help you keep track of invoices and their status.

CREATING AN INVOICE MANAGER

Start by creating a new spreadsheet that will be your tool for managing invoices. To keep track of all invoices, create a column that contains links to the invoices stored on your computer.

To insert a link to a specific invoice, click on the A1 cell and choose Hyperlink from the Insert menu. Select the Document option in the Hyperlink dialogue window, then enter the path to the invoice in the Path field. In the Text field, enter a descriptive name for the invoice, such as the invoice number number and title. If you leave this field blank, Calc will insert the full path into the cell. Click Apply and then Close.

<p>Now that you have all your invoices in one place, how do you know which ones have to be mailed or have already been paid? You need to add a status column with color codes. First, use the Stylist to create three cell styles: To be sent, with a red background; Sent, with a yellow background; and Paid, with a green background. You can, of course, choose whatever background color you like.

Click on the cell B1 and choose Conditional Formatting from the Format menu. In the Conditional Formatting dialogue window, define three conditions as shown in Figure 1. The specified conditional formatting will be used to apply one of the defined cell styles, depending on the cell’s contents.

Now that you’ve defined the conditional formatting for one cell, you need to do the same for all the cells in column B, or at least some of them. To do this, click on the formatted cell B1, click on the black handle in the lower right corner (the cursor changes to the hair-cross), hold the mouse button down, and drag the handle down. If the defined formatting works properly, the result should look like the one in Figure 2:

Tip: Instead of entering the status manually each time, click on a status cell and press the Ctrl-D key combination. This gives you a drop-down menu containing all previously entered items. </p>

<p>To make the invoice manager even more useful, you can add a feature that will mark overdue invoices. To do this, simply add a Payment due row (column C) and add a function to the cells in column D.

Click on the cell D1 and press the Function Wizard button. Use the Function Wizard to enter the following function: =IF(AND(C2<TODAY()-5;B2=”Sent”);”OVERDUE”;” “). This means that if the payment due date is less than the current date minus 5 days and the status of the current invoice is Sent, then the invoice will be marked as OVERDUE. Use the formatting trick described above to apply the function to other cells in column D, and your invoice manager is ready to go.

By Dmitri Popov

Visit Worldlabel.com and check out the selection of Laser Labels and Inkjet Labels

1. Aviary – a powerful suite of design tools, including a full featured vector and image editor, as well as a color palette generator and custom filter and effects tool. All this horsepower runs from your browser. Laugh while you put the $300 you saved by not buying Photoshop in your pocket.

2. Pixlr - a basic image editor that allows you to quickly and easily edit images all from your browser window. Built on Flash, you will need a Flash plug in to get it to work. Pixlr is perfect for resizing and basic editing needs.

3. Photoshop Express – Adobe hits it out of the park with Photoshop Express. This web image editor is a lot of fun and has most of the tools you’ll need to get your photos ready for prime time. It has fun graphics to decorate your images, the tools to resize, crop, tweak colors and exposure, and correct red eye. It has a slick interface and is very intuitive touse. It gets the basics right and provides enough bells and whistles to make this a very solid choice for beginner and pro alike.

4. Picnik – easy online image editor with all the right tools to remove red eye, apply effects, and tweak color levels on photos. The site has tools to suit both the beginner and advanced user. You can also pull photos straight from any of several photo sharing sites including Flickr, Picasa Web Albums, Facebook, Photobucket, Webshots. For more advanced features, you can upgrade to the premium level which will set you back about $25.

5. FlauntR – creative suite with a bunch of tools allowing you to do image editing, add neat photo frames and embellishments, effects, color matching and cool mobile wallpaper creator for mobile phones. Profilr, a tool devoted to tweaking the correct size for your favorite social network sites profile photos, is bookmark worthy for its own sake. Requires registration to use.

6. FotoFlexer – decent online image editor with many tools including the ability to retouch photos, add text, shapes, and work in layers. The site is overrun with ads and has features you may think twice about using, including glitter text, animated shapes, and funky filters. Still, it is very easy to use and there are no registration hoops to go through to get started. Just upload a photo and start creating.

7. Splashup – with a sleek user interface, Splashup takes a professional approach to image editing. The tools are robust including a font leading tool (hint: l e a d i n g), layers, filters, brushes and integration with your web cam. If you’re familiar with using *cough* Photoshop, you’ll like Splashup. The ad placement is unobtrusive and the site has a more grown up feel. It also plays nice with the leading photosharing sites like Flickr, Picasa, and Facebook. No registration required to get started, Splashup lets you jump right in.

8. Pixer.us – great basic image editor with no ads and no fuss. The tools are super easy to use and feature sliders to help you manipulate your image changes. The site focuses on the basics such as resizing, color enhancement, rotating and flip and offers some special effects. There aren’t a lot of bells and whistles but sometimes it’s just better that way. Pixer.us does the basics just right and there’s no registration requirement to play.

9. SumoPaint - a full featured editor that has all the right tools including layers, shapes, clone stamp, various brushes, magic wand, etc. The user interface is not intuitive but once you figure out how to upload a photo and then find it in your gallery, you’ll be good to go. The site is geared more for users who are adept with more sophisticated software editing suites.

10. Pixenate - nice basic image editor especially for the beginner. Has easy to use interface and includes tools to help you reduce red eye, crop, resize, rotate, adjust colors and add zany graphic decorations.

Bonus tool: Skitch – For Mac only, Skitch is a terrific image editor that is dead simple easy to use and will easily become one of your favorite apps. You can easily resize images, snap ascreenshot, annotate with circles and arrows and text, drag for easy saving on the desktop, and post images online with Skitch.com. Note: this image editor is a desktop app but it’s so addictive we wanted to include it in your arsenal of image editing tools.

Here’s our top ten of photo editors. Did we miss one? Let us know what your favorite is.

By Dolores Parker

There’s no question computers make our lives easier, especially with all the productivity tools available today. If you use the KDE desktop, then you may already know that there are many wonderful productivity applications designed especially for KDE. Let’s take a look at how some of these apps can help you streamline your work and stay organized while you get things done.

by Lisa Hoover

Koffice This is a must-have suite of apps that comes bundled with KDE and has a little something for everyone. KWord covers all your word processing needs while KSpread and KPresenter help you create spreadsheets and slideshow presentations. Koffice also includes a host of other tools like Kchart for creating graphs and charts, Kugar to generate business reports, and Krita, an image manipulator similar to Photoshop.

Kontact If you need a way to manage your contacts and schedule, you can’t go wrong with Kontact. This personal information manager can manage individual and group calendars, address books, task lists, and even help you schedule meetings. Kontact supports several different groupware servers and is available in 25 languages. If you only need calendar and scheduling functionality, try KOrganizer.

KMail A strong email client is a necessity these days to cope with overflowing inboxes and unending streams of spam. Kontact’s email module, KMail, helps you manage POP3 and IMAP mail, with SMTP support. It features an integrated spellchecker, a search tool and strong filter abilities. Integration with Kontact allows you to share email folders with ease.

Akregator In the “old” days, we used to have to visit individual blogs and Web sites to check news or read new posts. The most efficient way to keep up with all your favorite Web sites now is with a feed reader. Kontact’s feed reader application, Akgregator, collects posts from RSS/Atom-enabled Web sites and displays them in a simple, easy to read format. It even notifies you when you have unread feeds.

KNotes Sometimes its the little things that make life easier. Bundled with Kontact, KNotes functions just like the paper version of sticky notes so you can leave reminders on your computer’s desktop, even when Kontact isn’t running. You can change the font and background color to easily categorize your notes, and even drag them into your calender to instantly create an event. For really important reminders, set KAlarm to display nagging pop-ups on your screen or play a sound to get your attention.

KMyMoney Whether you need to keep track of your personal or your business finances, KMyMoney has the tools you need to reconcile your bank accounts. It supports multiple types of accounts, allows fine-grained categorization of expenses and income, and easily exports / imports QIF files.

KTimeTracker To keep track of how much time you spend on your daily tasks, use KTime Tracker. Use it casually to make sure you’re managing your time as efficiently as possible, or use it while you work to keep track of billable hours. KTimeTracker will export your time history as a comma-delimited text file so it’s readable by billing and invoicing applications, and even associate tasks according to the desktop you’re using.

By Lisa Hoover @twitter.com/lisah

There are lots of good tools in the Free Open Source Software world for capturing and editing video, but common to making almost any movie is a basic understanding of the steps to building a good story using a storyboard editor. This article will help you take the very first step toward creating a movie by using the very simple storyboard video editing program called Kino to create a story.

Kino was born to tell stories

Creating even a short movie can become very complex very quickly, so it’s important to keep in mind what you are doing and how it all fits into the bigger picture of making your movie. Kino is a primarily a simple storyboard non-linear video editing program with some compositing capabilities, as opposed to tape-to-tape linear editing or more complex non-linear compositing software such as Cinelerra, The Open Movie Editor, or KDEnlive.

Before computers, movies were edited by actually cutting film tape. That process was called linear tape-to-tape editing. It required careful planning, because editing was destructive, since actual segments of tape were cut. It was “linear” because the inserted tape segments were literally attached to preceding and following segments to form a continuous whole.

Computers allow us to do non-destructive, non-linear editing. We can easily incorporate all kinds of music, still pictures, and video into a single movie. We can also separate out the video from the audio, and substitute still images or other video segments while the audio from the first track continues to roll over those newly added elements. Those new elements are called “assets” and the process of adding new elements is called “compositing.”

But newbies can become frustrated with complex compositing software, such as Final Cut Pro or Cinelerra or the Open Movie Editor because the user interface throws lots of options at the user, thereby confusing them. The advantage of starting out with Kino is that it has a very simple user interface. Here is a screenshot of the Kino interface (slightly modified by kSnapshot):

Kino’s simplicity allows you to develop the basic skills of putting together a story, so that you can later use a more complex tool such as Cinelerra or KDEnlive or the Open Movie Editor to add other assets, such as stills, transitions, music, and other video clips. Plus, compared with the hefty price tags of some of the non-Free applications like Final Cut Pro at $1,299.00 USD, Kino starts looking very inviting, indeed. At today’s prices for RAM and hard drives, you could build a monster rendering machine for the price of the non-Free video editors!

Kino has a few drawbacks. It will only accept .dv files. It is not suitable for adding lots of assets of different formats, and it has limited transition effects available. For those things you would use a more powerful compositor like Cinelerra or KDEnlive or The Open Movie Editor. But for speed and simplicity of building your story, Kino is hard to beat. The Digital Tipping Point crew has used Kino for sharing rough edits and all of our 1,229 five minute “source code” video posted to the Internet Archive’s Digital Tipping Point Video Collection has been rough-edited with Kino. Kino is capable of industrial work.

The purpose of this article is to walk newbies through the basic process of capturing and rough-editing your video to create a story using Kino.

How to capture your footage

Kino does not capture from USB, and so you will need to have access to a camera or tape deck that has IEEE 1394 (firewire). Most cameras and tape decks have 1394 ports. For the Digital Tipping Point film, I am using a “prosumer” Sony PD-170 camera that initially cost about $4,500.00 and a Sony DSR-45 tape deck that cost a similar amount; but I have also captured video from a cheap consumer camera by Canon that cost less than $300.00 USD. I am using Ubuntu Hardy, but I have used Ubuntu Gutsy and Fiesty with equal success, as well as openSUSE 10 and higher. In each case, the procedure was the same for capturing video, and it was dirt simple, either using Kino or the command line.

Kino is a wrapper for dvgrab when it comes to capturing video. To start the capture, simply connect your camera or tape deck via the 1394 cable. If you are using a camera, make sure that the camera is turned on and is in VCR mode (as opposed to camera mode).

Start Kino either by mousing to it or by typing kino at the shell prompt. You will be presented with Kino’s default screen, which is similar to the first screenshot above, except without the picture of the teacher or the thumbnails. On the far hand side of your Kino screen, you will see tabs for various functions. Click on the capture icon:

You will now be presented with Kino’s capture window. It will be black in the middle, with VTR (video tape recorder) buttons below the black window that will allow you to do the following: turn VTR control of the attached camera or tape deck on or off (the AV/C button); start video capture (the capture button, whose red light will illuminate when you click it to start capture); stop video capture by clicking the “stop” button; capture a still image by clicking the “still” button; and mute the sound during capture by clicking the “mute” button (not recommended, as it is much easier to strip sound out later than add it later).

Once you have turned on VTR control of your camera or tape deck, look near the bottom center of your screen, and you will see the typical icons to control the tape in the machine!

Those buttons will, in order, allow you to do the following: play; pause; rewind; fast forward the tape; move to tape; move to the start of the scene; or move to the previous frame, next frame, or the end of the video. Hovering your mouse over those buttons will, of course, give you a clue as to their purpose.

Before clicking the “capture” button, be sure to type in a valid path for storing the video as it is captured. Type the path name in the field labeled “File” just below the “capture” button.

By default, dvgrab, running under Kino’s GUI, will chunk out your video capture into 1 GB files for every 4.51 minutes of video. Those are huge video files, do plan your file storage accordingly!

If you so desire, you can also capture video from the BASH command line with this command under Ubuntu:

$ sudo dvgrab –format raw [filename]

Choose your path carefully

There is an art to choosing a path for saving your video! Kino offers you the option of saving your work as XML files as you edit, and I highly recommend that you do so. Saving your work as XML files will open up a whole new world of potential collaboration with others on your team, as long as they have the same original video and the same relative path. Think about the best method for saving your XML files. Do you want them in a separate directory from the raw .dv files Kino will produce, or do you want them in a separate directory?

For the Digital Tipping Point project, we are creating and saving four types of files, and I would recommend that you do the same thing if you have adequate hard drive space, due to the large amount of time and processing power consumed by rendering and compressing video. We save four types of video files: the orignal captured .dv files; the rough-edited .dv files; the .kino files; and the compressed video files, which are each stored in separate paths, respectively:

/home/username/capturedDV

/home/username/editedDV

/home/username/SMIL

/home/username/transcodedMPG_OGG

Unless you know that you are going to toss your work shortly after creating it, you will want to save yourself the time of re-rendering and recompressing work by saving each of the steps of your work. With the magic of XML, you can tuck away your edits in XML files and instantly call up your past edits, or your colleagues’ edits, simply by clicking on the files in Konqueror or Nautilus and opening them with Kino. This is a huge time saver, as a uniform system allows you to automate the process of rendering and compressing video.

You will also appreciate an orderly file structure as you get deeper into your editing, because you will make lots and lots of revisions, and you will want to know where you stored your work. The beauty of XML means that you will be able to mix and match your work without consuming endless gobs of hard drive space with unnecessary rendering of edits that could be saved in these tiny XML files.

The Kino GUI’s main features

The Kino GUI is almost self-explanatory for creating a storyboard of your video, but a newbie will appreciate some tips. After capturing your video, load it by clicking the familiar “open” icon in the upper right hand corner, or by clicking File > Open. (Note that if you already have a video loaded in Kino, clicking open will cause Kino to dump your current video file. More on this later).

Once you have opened your video, you will notice that a thumbnail appears on the left hand side of Kino window. Note that the bar dividing the main kino window will allow you to shrink the main Window so that you can get more information on the thumbnails, such as the paths and file sizes for those thumbnails.

Kino’s GUI is smartly and simply structured around the editing of “scenes.” When you load a single video file, you will probably have only one “scene” in the file, depending on how you shot the video in that file. Below the main Kino window is a time line with a triangular arrow indicating where you are in the video. On my Ubuntu screen, pictured below, the triangle is orange. By grabbing this triangle with your mouse, you can quickly advance through the entire video file.

Below the time line is the now familiar VTR menu of buttons for playing, rewinding, and fast-forwarding the video. Below the VTR menu, from left to right, are the following: the properties menu, which gives you a read-out of the size and format of your file; a clock, which allows you to monitor your video in frames or a variety of time formats (I switch back and forth between the “clock” setting and the “frames” setting, depending on my needs.) To the right of the clock setting is the duration read-out, which will give you the total time of your video.

The secret is creating scenes

Kino is great because its GUI quickly and easily lets you separate one scene from another, so that you can re-arrange those scenes to create a story. Click on the “Edit” tab on the far right hand side of your Kino Window to make sure you are using the most simple of the two Kino editing interfaces. The other interface, the “Trim” tab, allows you more detailed control, but it is also more confusing for new users.
After clicking on the “Edit” tab, look at the the top center of your Kino window for two icons which look like | symbols with arrows point toward and away from the | symbol. Those are your primary tools for creating scenes in Kino:

By hovering your mouse over these arrows, you will see that these buttons allow you to separate scenes and merge a scene to a following scene or scenes. As you separate scenes, thumbnails appear on the left of your screen; as you merge them, the thumbnails disappear. Likewise, as you create scenes, a white break will appear on the timeline, as shown in the screenshot above of the orange triangle.

If you want to add more video, you will need to look in the upper left hand side of your icon bar for these icons, called the Insert Before and Insert After icons, respectively. Clicking on those icons lets you insert new video before or after the “current scene.” The current scene is also highlighted in the thumbnails section to the left of your screen.

Watch your video, and take notes!

Create your story by watching your footage in Kino and then taking detailed notes on the start and stop times of footage that is interesting to you. Write it out on a separate piece of paper or on a word processing program on your notebook as you watch Kino on your desktop machine. Re-arrange your notes to create the outlines of your story, and then use those notes as the guideline for moving your thumbnails around by dragging, dropping, and deleting scenes with your mouse. You can map your keyboard to do most of this work, but in the beginning, you will want to depend heavily on your mouse, because it is such an intuitive way of controlling the Kino interface.

Special effects come second!

Kino will allow you to add music and create special effects such as adding music or fading your audio levels up or down, or creating transitions such as wipes, dissolves, or by pixelating or zooming your video, but don’t make the mistake of getting caught up in tricks before you have a story. Audiences are now fatigued with special effects. They have seen it all and so they are jaded.

The runaway success of “Slumdog Millionaire” in the March 2009 Academy Awards shows that audiences expect a good story line. By contrast even a great special effects movie like “Batman: The Dark Knight” succeeded not so much because of the special effects, which audiences expected and took for granted, but rather because the story of Keith Ledger’s Joker character was so compelling. By spending time with ordinary pencil and paper and the simple storyboard editing GUI of Kino, you can lay a good foundation to tell a story which will move your audiences.

by Christian Einfeldt, Producer, the Digital Tipping Point

Need Laser Labels for all your CD’s and digital media!

Use Worldlabel’s standard business card stock to print

Another quick and easy way to create business cards is using AutofillPDF-labels. Here all you have to do is select an image which will automatically populate the template, and then type in your information > press tab to finish populating the format.

Fonts: If you want to change the font type, size or color, (as well as bold, italics, etc.) in the AutofillPDF-labels, select Control +E if you’re using a PC or Apple + E on a Mac. A toolbar will appear that will provide you with additional text properties. Select “More” in the font properties toolbar for paragraph alignment and more changes as desired.

If the front of your refrigerator is your household’s central command, you have hi-tech organization alternatives available for active families. Cozi.com is a Web app for families that has been highly reviewed by several sites such as Better Homes and Gardens and Parents magazines.

Completely free and Web-based, Cozi has several features active families can use to stay connected, organized and informed about everyone’s activities. The calendar, shopping list and family journal are nice productivity features to help you keep on top of all the details without having to carry your fridge around with you or take sticky notes everywhere.

During the brief sign up process, you input the member names of your household. When you log in, the calendar displays members’ names with their own personal color code. The color corresponds to each family member’s respective events and appointments. Inputting events is quite easy. You just click on the person’s name and the event is created in their color.

There is a list function so you can keep lists in a centralized location and send them to your phone or PDA. Now you can keep track of your shopping, chores, tasks, etc., in one place. If you’d rather, you can call a toll free Cozi phone number and your list will be read to you.

To keep in touch or update family members with reminders, you can text or email right from the Cozi home page. If you’re not in front of your computer, you can use your mobile phone to retrieve information in two ways: either by dialing Cozi’s phone number and using the voice menus, or by dialing a short code number and sending a text request.

The Family Journal is basically a blog feature where you can take notes and attach photos. It’s a nice way to keep a record of life’s hectic activities so everyone can see and comment.

There are a few download tools that are helpful such as the calendar gadget, which works in your Google Desktop Sidebar. It lets you view upcoming family appointments and quickly add new ones right from your desktop. Another option is the Outlook toolbar for those families who use Outlook for their calendar.

While Cozi is ad supported, the interface is clean and uncluttered. It works with Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox Web browsers.