Week 7 Lecture Posted by Sarah:):) , Monday, September 28, 2009 at 6:26 PM, in

In this lecture we talked about open source software. Jason gave this lecture and showed us a site where we could download free applications which work just as well as the ones you pay Microsoft for. Open source software opens the code up to everyone, which means the general consumer can improve the software by tweaking the code. They can then share this with the public, thus making all software a constantly updated tool for consumers. There are also online communities for open source software where the creators of these can come together and discuss their ideas etc.

http://www.freewaregenius.com/ is a website specifically for software packagaes that perform small specific tasks. People wouldn't normally profit from these if they tried to sell them as they are performing tasks that do not suit everyone. The only problems are you have to manually update the software and it is an easy target for viruses to attack.

For this lecture I have to download some free software, use it and then comment on my experiences.

I downloaded Songbird, which is an open source music player which integrates its content directly with the internet. I like to use www.lastfm.com and I can listen to the radio directly through my music player. I find that iTunes has a lot of problems and although Songbird has a few problems that need ironing out, I am confident that people will recognise these and tweak the code to improve the software. You have many options for appearance, organisation and management, web browsing etc. You can find similar artists or even display lyrics while you are listening to a song. People can create their own add ons and put them on the website to share with people, so I will definitely be checking back on a regular basis to see how I can update my music player. I'm sure any add ons that iTunes may introduce would not be free and so readily available. It processed my songs really quickly too, a lot better than iTunes where I would be waiting around for ages. Songbirds growing popularity is only serving to improve the quality of the software, with people keen to tweak the program to make it better for all.