Holy Gang Member?

Gang members unlikely Catholics? A Texas teen says she has been forbidden to wear Rosary beads around her neck in school because local police say they are a gang symbol. Tabitha Ruiz was stopped by security guards at her high school in Dallas last week and told to take off the silver and ruby beaded Rosary, a gift from her mother. "Lately they [gang members] have been seen wearing religious jewellery such as the Rosary, so it is a factor," said Kevin Janse of the Dallas Police Department. (Source: Foxnews.com)

Boost your compute with free software! "David Lim's" blog, Auckland, New Zealand.

If you own a PC, chances are high that you've already reached deeply into your pockets and parted with sizeable sums of cash for applications that can be downloaded for free.

Think of any application you're ever likely to need and chances are that there's a free version available online. After hours spent slaving over a hot keyboard, I've tracked down a treasure trove of online freebies for your computing pleasure.

DIGITAL PHOTOS

Picassa

Available free from picasa.google.com, there's not much Picassa can't do. Able to manage huge photo libraries, tagging and finding photos you forgot you ever had is almost effortless. Getting rid of red-eye and do other photo corrections: Total cost nada. Creating online albums and making slideshows, sticker price, Free. Doing digital photography with Picassa: Priceless - even if its free.

The Gimp

If your image editing needs are a little more extreme, get the Gimp   it's way cheaper. Whilst you could plunk down several hundred bucks for a commercial photo editing app, try dropping into gimp.org and downloading the industrial strength open source photo editing app.

VLC

There are a million different digital video formats and until the advent of VLC, playing these needed multiple video player applications and a cluster of different video codecs. Not with VLC media player, which plays a multitude of audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...) as well as DVDs, VCDs and a multitude of other streaming formats.

PRODUCTIVITY

Open Office

Shrink wrapped office software needn't cost a bomb. Open Office does the full office monty including word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics and databases. These are no lightweight apps either, with the word processor able spell check, do complicated layouts and read Microsoft Word files, there's a lot to like about Open Office, especially its ultra low (free) price. Get your very own copy of Open Office here.

Thunderbird & Lightning

As sweet as scoring a free full function Office software suite may be, being truly productive requires access to an industrial grade email app. Thank goodness for Thunderbird. Rock solid and Fully customisable, Thunderbird allows you to organise mail, RSS feeds and newsgroup folders whilst allowing messages to be tagged so you can stay on top of a bulging email in-box. Mozilla's best feature however is its zero dollar price tag.

If Thunderbird has one downside, it's the lack of an integrated calendar for scheduling appointments and meetings. Lightning takes Mozilla one step further by adding calendaring directly into Thunderbird, allowing you to easily perform email-related calendaring tasks.

Cute PDF

Acrobat files may have become the de facto standard for electronic documents, unfortunately until now, creating .PDF formatted files was a pricey undertaking. Thanks to a freebie called CutePDF Writer, nearly any Windows application capable of printing is now able to create PDF documents.

MULTIMEDIA

SongBird

If you're looking for a powerful music library management app and are tired of your current music running like a bloated dog, try Songbird for size. Its a free download and is an open-source music player on steroids. With support for a growing number of MP3 players, Songbird also has robust music playlist management features and a growing library of plug-ins for customisability.

MediaPortal

Unless you're lucky enough own a Media Centre-equipped version of Windows Vista, converting your PC into a full-blown, music and movie playing media hub used to be a tricky undertaking. Not any more however thanks to MediaPortal, a free download that'll make your PC/TV a fully fledged media centre capable of letting you to listen to music, watch videos, DVDs and record live TV.

LastFM

More than just a free app, lastFM is a great way to listen to and discover new music online. Once you've registered, download the free lastFM application, which will keep your Last.fm profile updated with what you've been listening to on your PC or MP3 player. As Last.fm learns more about the music you like, the more it'll dish up thats close to your musical preferences.

SYSTEM UTILITIES

Ccleaner

If your system has slowed to a crawl, don't despair, download Ccleaner, a fantastic PC decrapifier and give your machine a quick spring clean. Able to identify and clean stray files, cookies and other accumulated digital detritus, Ccleaner can make a huge difference and best of all, its a freebie.

Disk Keeper Lite

If your PC is still running like a sloth on valium, chances it could be suffering from a fragmented hard drive. As information is moved on and off your PCs hard drive files become "fragmented", slowing down the process of accessing data. Disk Keeper Lite re-organises files and free space back into contiguous blocks, greatly speeding things up.

Undelete Plus

Ever nuke a file only to later regret it? Undelete Plus is a free utility that'll undelete files even if they've been emptied from the recycle bin. Undelete Plus borders on being idiot-proof to drive and will scan any selected drive to present you with a list of recoverable files.

Google Military-Controlled Satellite Reaches Orbit, We Don't Feel Lucky

According to the company, the GeoEye-1 satellite is the highest resolution commercial satellite orbiting the planet right now. It reached orbit yesterday, but in reality, it's not an ordinary commercial satellite: it's fully controlled by the Department of Defense's U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. And two guys named Larry and Sergei.

Part of the US National Geospatial Intelligence Agency NextView program, the SUV-sized GeoEye-1 launched yesterday in a Delta II 7326 rocket from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California—without exploding. Hours later, GeoEye's ground station in Norway confirmed that the rocket had delivered its payload right on target. The satellite was alive, fully armed and operational on its 423-mile orbit above the Earth.

Built by General Dynamics, the GeoEye-1 is equipped with a next-generation camera made by ITT. This camera can easily distinguish objects 16 inches long, with 11-bits per pixel color. In other words: this thing can see the color of your shorts. It will be up there, looking at your pants every single day, the time it takes for it to complete one orbit. And it will keep doing that for more than ten years, its expected life.

Of course, there's nothing new here until you notice the huge Google logo on the rocket, signaling the fact that Sergei and Larry own the exclusive rights to the GeoEye-1 images. Yes, no other company will be able to access this information, only Google. And they will be there, available for the public in Google Maps and Google Earth.

But don't fret, tin-foil hatters, because Google won't be able to access the highest resolution images because of US government regulations. Sure, the other guys will, but then again, their big bad satellites can see closer than this one. Still, you can rest safe that your underpants will be safe from public scrutiny. For now. Unless you do like me and keep flashing them around. [GeoEye, Wikipedia, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency via Cnet]

Solar Powered Car Attempts to Circle Globe as Slowly as Possible

Another day, another golf cart size, three-wheeled solar-powered car with style ripped from the 1980's. At least with this one, the Solar Taxi, there's a record at stake, as Swiss "adventurer" Louis Palmer is taking the car on a trip across the planet without using a drop of gasoline. He'll be the first to do it, and we're hoping his example will inspire more alternative energy cars (hopefully a few have that elusive fourth wheel). The 35 MPH top speed is going to be a tough sell with us Yanks. Palmer, my man, haven't you heard? Women and men alike get hot and bothered by power and speed.

The Solar Taxi gets its juice from a $5,000 solar panel trailer provided by German company Q-Cells. Weather permitting, the trailer provides the Taxi with 60 miles of oompf. Longer runs are powered by a pair of $15,000 250-lb. recyclable batteries from Zebra Battery. They store energy from the sun and from whatever electrical socket Palmer can find at night (it's just like searching for a socket at a conference, but bigger, and people will still manage to trip awkwardly over the cord).

Altogether, Palmer said the rig gets about a 200 mile range between charges. As of this weekend, Palmer and his crew had traveled 27,000 miles across 28 countries, so that's a lot of stop and go driving—or is that charging?

The trip is scheduled to conclude in December, but Palmer won't be finished just yet. He's also in the middle of planning an 80-day solar powered race around the world for sometime in 2009. [ABC News]