Songbird is an open-source customizable music player that's under active development.

We're working on creating a non-proprietary, cross platform, extensible tool that will help enable new ways to playback, manage, and discover music. There are lots of ways to contribute your time to the project. We'd love your help!

Version 1.0 of songbird has great support for shoutcast radio stations and the ipod under Linux, Windows and Mac.
I would highly recommend songbird if you are using a iphone or Ipod 5th Gen and above, under Linux it just plugs and plays no more iTunes for me at long last. One of the top must have apps "iTunes" can be removed from my list and replaced with an Open Source option. 

www.getsongbird.com

Our November 22nd 2008, and Dec 27th 2008 Meetings, will be cancelled, Our next meeting will be in 2009.

I would like to thank everyone for the support of the WCUG it has been a good year, We hope 2009 will be another great year for the site. 2009 also brings our one year anniversary. In 2009 we would like to see the site expand and grow with new members and great new user articles, If anyone would like to Submit an article please feel free to do so via the "User Menu" - "Submit Article" any computer related articles are always welcom, the theme of the articles are mostly Open Source and free software or services, We would like to know about any projects like these and anything relating to computering in wiltshire will always be of great intrested to our members.

Again Thank you all.

Make it your, New years resolution to recommend WCUG to a friend for 2009.

Sumopaint is yet another example of how Online Applicaiton Cloud computing applications are taking the web and computing world by storm. It has many of the advanced features of Photoshop like dropshadows, non destructive layer editing, glows, type, overlays. The interface is very much like photoshop so you will feel at home right away, If you are coming from GIMP you won't find the interface to hard to use either. Check it out and feel free to post any comments in the forums about your experiances. 

Sumopaint Homepage
Launch Sumopaint in new browser window

Dropbox is a great service it is by far the easiest way to share and store files online, the software offers high level AES-256 Encryption and runs on Windows, Mac & Linux.

Its free to use, Once installed a small Icon on the toolbar offers setup and configuration, Now simply put a file into the dropbox folder and watch it sync to your free online storage or other computers with the same dropbox account, the services has fast and intelligent file management, just what we have been waiting for.

www.getdropbox.com

Wordia.com Is redefining the Dictionary, they are taking the Dictionary to the next level.

They offer video definitions for many words, If the word is not yet listed, why not get your webcam out and make a quick video, the site seems to be build on Open Source Joomla, and is 100% free for users and contributers. Great for kids of all ages, check it out now and learn something new with this great new web 2.0.

They also have a youtube channel, here are a few examples of Wordia Videos.

Ameliorate

Alopecia

andLinux is a complete Ubuntu Linux system running seamlessly in Windows 2000 based systems (2000, XP, 2003, Vista; 32-bit versions only). This project was started for Dynamism for the GP2X community, but its userbase far exceeds its original design. andLinux is free and will remain so, but donations are greatly needed.

andLinux uses coLinux as its core which is confusing for many people. coLinux is a port of the Linux kernel to Windows. Although this technology is a bit like running Linux in a virtual machine, coLinux differs itself by being more of a merger of Windows and the Linux kernel and not an emulated PC, making it more efficient. Xming is used as X server and PulseAudio as sound server.

andLinux is not just for development and runs almost all Linux applications without modification.

andlinux.org

I found out about this from The Fresh Ubuntu Podcast I have not had much time to test it yet, But it does work well, its worth a look if you are intrested in Linux and have a little time to play around, but not the time for a full switch to Linux.

This does not show off a lot of the Advanced features of the Linux desktop but it does show you some of the cool things that Linux can do. Highly recommened for web developers.

The Sysinternals web site, a part of microsoft technet team, has released a small utility called "Desktops"

This utility is very lightweight, just "64kb" and uses almost no resources at all. It adds the Linux style virutal desktops to a windows PC
effectively giving you four times the normal desktop space, Its a free utility available for download here.

The Yellow Drum Machine

A great little robot project, the machine navigates around, collecting data and avoiding obstacles, until it finds something "worth playing on" Once found it will get into place and play some beats! Fantastic idea, see the video below.

What it does? Basically:

• Navigate around, collect some data, avoid obstacles, until it
• Finds something "worth playing on" (a single isolated object or a wide flat surface that it can find an angle onto)
• Snakes into place
• Plays some beats on what it have found, and samples this, checking it has a "good sound"
• Based on data collected in the area, and sample just made, then compose a little rhythm, and plays this along with the sample.