PCLinuxOS Magazine Looks at Applications
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Filen: Generous End-To-End Encrypted Cloud Storage
It's rare to find someone in computing circles who has not heard of Dropbox. If you're one of "those" people, Dropbox is a cloud-based file sharing program. Simply place files into the dedicated Dropbox folder (usually in your /home directory), and the files will be available on all of your other devices that also have Dropbox installed. The files will also be available to any other user with whom you've invited (or given access to).
The "free" Dropbox account grants you 2GiB of storage space, and that has been a constant since they first appeared on the scene 15 years ago, back in 2008. "Upgrade" options for Dropbox do exist, but the "next tier" of storage space available is 2TiB, with nothing smaller available. As you can imagine, the 2TiB of storage is rather expensive for individual users … but wouldn't be such a big issue for corporate users and IT departments. For personal accounts, the 2TiB plan will set you back $9.99 per month, or roughly $120 per year. Business plans are even more expensive. You have to admit that there's a HUGE gap between the 2GiB free accounts and the 2TiB paid accounts.
Dropbox hasn't been free of controversy or its share of criticisms. In fact, there's a whole Wikipedia page devoted to listing all of those controversies and criticisms.
Here at The PCLinuxOS Magazine, we have used Dropbox ever since I became the magazine's editor back in 2009. We use it to share necessary files between those of us who do the magazine production and layout every month. It is handy for that purpose, since "we" are spread out all across the globe.
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Repo Review: VokoscreenNG
VokoscreenNG is an advanced, yet easy to use screen recording application with many features. It provides multiscreen recording support, webcam integration, time scheduled recording, a built-in video player and more. It is a new and rewritten version of an older screen recording application known simply as Vokoscreen, and seems to provide much improved performance.
The interface is reasonably easy to use, although perhaps a little confusing at first to navigate. From the left side panel, you can access the main screen recording page, camera options, mouse cursor options, screenshot page, keyboard shortcuts, and video player page. You can navigate through the tabs at the top to access different settings on the current page. The controls at the bottom of the screen allow you to start, stop, and pause recording, play back the last recorded video, take a screenshot, and open the output folder. VokoscreenNG also provides a system tray icon from which you can easily start and stop recording, and enable a few other options.
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Repo Review: Zim
When I prepare an article for our community magazine, I follow an old-school approach; I gather information from an assortment of online sources, taking notes with pen and paper. Then I try to organize my notebook sheets in a logical way before creating an outline and typing my rough draft in a word processor. As an experiment, I have begun to explore the world of digital note-taking to see if it might be more efficient and flexible for my workflow.