Information Tech Basics I
Computers can be an invaluable tool for assisting paranormal investigations. The hardware, and underlying operating system will be covered in another article. For purposes of this information, it is assumed that you are using a relatively recent laptop, and a recent version of Microsoft® Windows...
Software (the programs installed by you) can often be an overwhelming and challenging prospect for the paranormal researcher. Often, researchers will find themselves spending too much of a budget, as well as too much time and effort trying to add computer systems to paranormal research and collaborations. Some handy tips are...
- Keep it simple - Most likely, you don't need every single add-on feature that various versions of software might provide. With some creativity, you can normally use the existing tools in a given application without upgrading to the "gotta have edition". This can save your organization significant resources from exorbitant IT costs.
- Standardization - standardization is a policy where you try to make sure that data created or modified by an application on one PC, will/can be shared by other members' PC's or even by people outside the group. For instance, a picture in a special format, might not be able to be viewed by someone else. Always try to stick to the "tried and true" formats, such as the JPeG standard. Pretty much every PC on the planet since 1980 has the ability to view a JPeG-encoded picture. Documents - Saving documents as a text file may not look as pretty as a star-studded Word document, but if you are looking to just share textual data, there's not really any point in saving it as a word document. If you must have specially formatted documents, consider PDF™ formats, as anyone can download a suitable viewer from www.adobe.com for FREE. If you need to have office software, consider downloading the OpenOffice suite, as it is a pretty good clone of Microsoft® Office, and it's completely free as well.
- If it's expensive, most folks can't afford it - Not all paranormal research groups have massive funding like TAPS, and as such remember to always think of your fellow researchers. Remember: collaborative research goes a lot further.
- Free doesn't mean "generic" - Just because software doesn't cost money, that doesn't mean that it lacks features of its commercial counterparts. We spend a lot of time researching software, and it's uses in a research environment. Often times people are conditioned to thinking that if it doesn't cost money, then it's useless. That is simply not true. Also, the applications listed below are know and tested to be both spyware and ad-free.
Excellent Free Software
Free software can help manage cost overhead within organization, and in most cases, prevent them from having to pirate illegal software. A good place to start is installing and reviewing the following applications for your testing...
- Adobe® Acrobat Reader: Adobe's PDF's (Portable Document Format) have become the defacto standard for publishing documents. As a result, any document can be published in this format and can be read from virtually any computer and operating system from the past 14 years...
- Audacity®: Audacity is something akin to Cool Edit® and other sound editing software. Audacity is a one-stop application for editing and reviewing sound clips aquired during an investigation. It can even be used to turn a laptop into a sound recording device that can be reviewed on the scene.
- Open Office: A popular productivity suite that is similar to the Microsoft Office suite, that contains a word-processor, a spreadsheet application, a database app, and image editing software.
- The GIMP: Arguably the most popular free image editing software that contains almost everything that Photoshop® (The world's most popular image editing software) has, and some features that Photoshop® doesn't.
These will help you get your SOHO (Small Or Home Office), mobile command center, or administrative branches of your organization up and running, without spending a dime. Open Office will allow you to create word processor documents, spreadsheets, and even presentations that are compatible with the Microsoft Office Suite.
Places to find free, legal software:
