While browsing the web I came across the following infographic put together by Starmedia which tells the a story of software piracy (it's difficult to gauge how accurate the stats are given they are taken from a select number of sources). The historical overview is pretty useful for newcomers (or people born after the late 1980s).
Who'd have thought Windows XP would be more popular to download than Vista or Windows 7? Having said that, it's not as popular as Mac OSX Snow Leopard (no serial code required) or Lion. Photoshop still rules the nest as the most sought-after software (see my earlier caveat) despite being a jewel in the Adobe crown. They themselves refer to the 'Photoshop trademark is [being] one of Adobe's most valuable trademarks'. Despite rampant piracy (because of?!) its position as the desktop image manipulation software for professionals and aspiring designers is entrenched and must make Adobe a tidy sum.
There are lots of great free tools for helping student with their studies. Here are a few I recommend. These all work on PC and Mac unless explicitly stated
Dropbox is like having a magic pocket for computer files. It's like a spare USB stick in the cloud. Never lose a file again. It's great for backing up essays! Check out the video below:
Like Dropbox, Evernote is a tool that works across multiple devices like laptops, desktops, PDAs and Smartphones. It helps you grab material (like text, images, webpages, etc) from the web and organise it effectively. It's an excellent tool for researching. It even works on popular smart phones (eg iPhone, Android, etc) helping you make audio, photo and text notes. Here's an example:
Twitter is a micro-blogging site which lets uses post and share short messages via its website, third party software, smartphone apps and even SMS text messages. Twitter can be integrated into lots of other sites and tools. Students can use it follow interesting people and network with others. Depending on how you use it, it can be a terrible distraction or an excellent way of meeting new people and making useful contacts.
Click this link to find a few university feeds that you might find useful:
Delicious is a great tool for keeping track of all those websites and pages you visit and want to bookmark for later. It builds social media features in too (eg sharing and networking with others). You can tag posts by keywords and bundled them together and assign them a web address. If you own your own computer, you can install some plug-ins to your browser for fast bookmarking. Check out the video below for more info:
