The Best Things In Life Are Free(ware)

The best things in life are free, or so Janet Jackson tells us. In the case of communications, Ms. Jackson sings the honest truth. I love freeware (that’s ‘free software’ to most of us), and it’s not just because I’m a thrifty Scottish lass with penny-pinching tendencies.

For example: your minister wants to put sound bites of him or herself speaking alongside their quotes in news releases. They expect you to do this in-house because your branch has a digital audio recorder, so they’ll record and you just toss it on the website, right?

Wrong. Our standard computers don’t have audio editing or mp3 conversion programs, and most budgets don’t have room for the cost of professional software. The solution? Audacity, popular freeware used by audio-bloggers worldwide. It’s safe, easy to use, doesn’t take up much room on your hard drive and costs nothing.

The magic of freeware like this is that it is both easy on the budget and it is often open source. That means anyone can tweak and extend the program to meet their needs. Once they’ve improved the code, those new bits of software become add-ons and voila! A whole new caliber of program evolves, often better than the best money can buy.

How does freeware apply to government? There are several reasons why the OPS restricts its workforce from being able to download and install executable files – a lot of freeware comes bundled with spyware, adware and in a few cases, viruses. Too many security holes and calls to the help desk for unsupported software would wreak havoc on our network; not to mention legal tangles such as warranty disclaimers, limitations of liability and dodgy data collection policies.

Judiciously used, however, freeware can extend the power of an office – particularly a communications branch – far beyond the reach that a tight fiscal budget would normally allow.

I’m not going out on a limb by suggesting this deviation from the “you get what you pay for” mentality: MGS has my back. Their ONline website endorses a wealth of open source Common Tools. Its cornucopia of recommended no-cost programs range from Mozilla’s sweet tabbed web browser, Firefox, to the shiny new collaboration tool, Plone.

Personally, I’d crown Google as the reigning monarch of freeware. With a host of top-notch free programs including Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and the marvel that is Google Earth, there’s no end to their dominion.

Google’s free photo editor, Picasa, features astonishingly clear, functional and intuitive design. I recommend its use in any communications branch where staff take digital photos at ministry events and need to crop, brighten and re-size them. Why burden creative services or the webmaster with Photoshop requests when you can do it yourself?

There’s no such thing as a free lunch; but use a little caution, consult your IT folks and you can dig in and enjoy the freeware buffet. Bon appetit!

Pirate Planet = Star Wars?

Wow, you can totally tell this show was filmed in 1978, with Douglas Adams cracked out on the heavy influence of “A New Hope”. There are Star Wars references ALL OVER the goddamn script and some of the visuals are similar as well. I don’t have time to write them all down for you, you’ll have to go rewatch both and make your own notes, but here are a few stand-outs. I’m sure we can all agree on some general plot parallels involving a part-mechanical, helmeted megalomaniac who wants to destroy planets being used as a puppet by a more powerful, shriveled malevolent overlord. Can’t we?

1) The grey uniforms on the Captain’s men look a lot like those worn by Imperial Army Officers.
2) The flying cars and cityscapes look really familiar. Wish I could find a screenshot, but you’ll just have to trust me on this. (I do love how the Doctor lures the guard away from the flying car with a trail of Bassett’s licorice allsorts. I also enjoy the many references to his love of candy, wine gums, etc. in this episode.)
3) At one point, K-9 is tired and says “batteries mine exhausted nearly are” and “recharge I imperative it is”. Hello, Yoda-dog!

Looking forward, Part Four features a scene in the Tardis where the Doctor is explaining his fantastic plan to Romana, and there’s an image straight out of “Ringu” on the monitor behind them.

Semi-relatedly, my favourite Tom Baker quote (about “The Talons of Weng-Chiang”): The BBC is very good at period drama but not very good at giant rats. Truer words were never spoken, Tom. They’re not so hot at green bubble-wrap insect beasts (Ark in Space) or yellow psychic trippy brain waves and force fields (Pirate Planet) either.

Also semi-relatedly, Douglas Adams’ first cameo appearance in “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” (episode 42) is remarkably similar to ‘s cameo appearance in “Robocop: Prime Directives”. Observe: