Calibre, on the other hand, is also a Qt application, but does a better job (because of its icons, to be honest), of fitting in, but it has a complicated, powerful interface and is a lot more than “just” an eBook reader.  If you’re looking for a simple eBook reader that’s available for Linux, as well as Mac OS X or Windows, Lucidor is a great choice.

Lucidor is an ePUB reader.  It won’t convert your LRF files to MOBI, or your HTML to ePUB, but for simple reading of books in ePUB format, it’s fantastic.  It has basic library functions, and even has a few different ePUB sources, so you can download books right from its interface.  But first we need to install it.

Installing Lucidor

The first step is to head over to the Lucidor website.  Here you can read up on Lucidor to get a better idea of if it’s right for you.  When you’re ready, click the Download link at the top of the page.

Once the download page loads, click to download the installer of your choice.  For this article we’ll be using the Linux version, but you can also grab the Windows or Mac installer (or the source code).

Note: For Linux users, the .deb file is for Debian/Ubuntu, while the .rpm is for Fedora/OpenSUSE/Mandriva users.

Once downloaded, run the installer to install Lucidor.  You can use a GUI program or install it from the Terminal.

When the installation is done, you can delete the installer file, and should find Lucidor in your Applications menu, under Office.

Go ahead and open it; it’s time to use it to read some books!

Reading ePUB Files With Lucidor

When Lucidor Opens, you’ll see its main window.

The main window is simple, yet still manages to include easy access to your Bookcase, allows you to browse catalogs, read from the Newsroom or the User Manual, and even browse the Web.

Note: It would also, if we’d used it previously, include a link to our most recently read ePUB.

To start using Lucidor, click the Open the Bookcase link.  You’ll see a familiar 3-pane interface, with your Bookcase in the left column, the list of available books above on the right, and below, information about the highlighted book.

To add a book to your Bookcase, click the Add Book link.

A standard file picker will appear.  Choose the ePUB you want to add to Lucidor.  You can find good quality, free and legal ePUB files from Project Gutenberg and ManyBooks, as well as other places on the Web.  Here we’ve added a copy of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, from Project Gutenberg.

By default, Lucidor only uses the author or book title to organize your collection, but you could also use the publisher.

To get more information on a particular book, highlight it, then click the Properties link.  A new window will appear, showing you all the pertinent metadata embedded in your ePUB file.

When you’re ready to read a book, highlight it, then click the Open Book or Open Book in New Tab link.

You can navigate through your ePUB by hitting the space bar (to move down one page), or by using the up and down arrows (to scroll up and down through the book).  When you come to the end of a chapter, click the Previous or Next buttons in the lower right corner.

Do More Than Read Books With Lucidor

In addition to reading ePUB files, Lucidor does allow you to download them from a few places on the Web.  To access these features, choose the Bookcase tab, but then click where it says Personal Bookcase to reveal a menu with other options.

In addition to Project Gutenberg, Google Books, and Smashwords, you can use Feedbooks, which has access to hundreds of free, public domain ePUB files, all ready to be downloaded, right from inside Lucidor.

Finally, you can create your own ePUB files from Web feeds, using the Newsroom feed from the main Lucidor page.  This is an experimental feature, but by entering in the URL for a feed (such as for a blog), you can create a news feed inside Lucidor itself.  The service scans your feed URL, grabbing text, pictures and links to videos.  You’ll need Internet access once you’ve saved the book to view videos, but the full text will always be available.

You will also find that Lucidor – even when reading from a saved version of your feed, recognizes that it originated from a feed and asks if you want to update it, which would pull in new posts.

Also, a single feed actually has the capabilities of being a bundle.  Simply add multiple feeds, and they will be aggregated together.  In this way, you can read up on a single topic, all from the same feed.  As mentioned, this is experimental, but seemed to work pretty well.

There’s more to Lucidor than would appear at first glance.  It is a great reader, but is more than just that.  No, it can’t interface with your eBook reader like Calibre can, so if you need that feature, use Calibre.  For basic reading, Lucidor is great.  Lucidor is available for Linux, as well as Mac OS X and Windows.

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If you have ripped a lot of CDs or purchased music elsewhere, chances are your tags may not be correct. Manually editing mp3 tags is not an option if you have more than a few hundred files, and chances are you will make mistakes.

Pollux is a low-cost solution to your music tagging problems. It is a very small application that costs $10 per year to use, and does a great job of updating your music’s tags. It works with iTunes, so all you do is fire up your iTunes library, select the songs you want to tag, and choose Tag Selected iTunes Tracks from the Pollux menu in OS X’s menu bar. Pollux uses the track’s fingerprint to identify it and tag it appropriately.

This is what the iTunes library looked like before we started Pollux.

Pollux went through the tracks we selected one at a time, and applied the correct album art, title, artist, year, track number, and even lyrics. The status screen shows you what track Pollux is editing. If you hide the status screen, you can choose to use Growl notifications on OS X.

This is what the iTunes library looks like after Pollux applied the correct album art and tags.

One of the best things about Pollux is that if the tracks are not tagged correctly once Pollux applies its changes, you can always use Pollux to revert to the original tag information.  Select the files you want to revert and choose Undo Tagging of Selected Tracks from the Pollux menu. Pollux will undo all of the changes it made.

Pollux will save you a lot of time and energy by doing what iTunes (and other music management applications) still cannot do. It will clean up your entire collection, and provide you with more accurate tags than you started with.

If you have thousands of mp3s you need to update, Pollux will do it in the background for you, and you can always undo incorrect changes. It will also automatically update new tracks you add to iTunes. Pollux is available for Windows and OS X, and you can try it out on 20 tracks for free.

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Of course, some of these tasks are already automated for you.  Providing you have a decent security software package, the virus and spyware scanning are already covered.  You may have a program that routinely checks for excessive temporary files, and cleans accordingly.  Perhaps you even have a program like Diskeeper to help stave off file fragmentation.

Each of these types of programs has a practical purpose on your Windows computer.  However, in order to view information on what all of them are doing, you have to go to each application and view the current activity or historical log files.  The average person may not keep tabs on each program.  Sometimes it helps to have a good overall picture of your computer so you know where to shift your focus.

Every so often, a program comes along that is helpful in getting you the information you need in short order.  PC Matic’s (found here) free scanning routine, rather the trial version of PC Matic, does a very good job of showing someone the inner workings of their Windows computer.  This scan looks over many aspects including the amount of junk files on your computer, security threats, missing hardware drivers (if any), and a host of other areas.

When you open up PC Matic, the only clickable area is the Free Scan, illustrated by a large gear shaped icon.  This is where you begin the assortment of scans run against your computer.

In this test sample, the scan took just shy of six minutes to complete.  Keep in mind, PC Matic does not run a very detailed spyware type scan during this process, just a high level, quick scan (so it is not a substitute for your current anti-virus or anti-spyware software).  Additionally, depending on the size of your registry, the amount of temporary files you have, and the overall speed of your computer affect the duration of the scan.

When the scan is finished, you will be presented with a dashboard covering all the sections of your computer that were scanned.  On the left hand side of the dashboard, you have a brief Summary area, Security, Performance, and Disk results.  Other than the summary box, any of the listings in the three other boxes are links to more information.

The colored boxes indicate one of four things.  Green mean the test passed without issue, blue is simply information, yellow is a warning, and red needs immediate attention.  Looking over the dashboard further, on the right hand side you will notice the Other and Reports areas.

One of the nice features of PC Matic is that each clickable item contains further explanation regarding the presented data.  For instance, if you were to click on the High Security Threat Test, you will see a list of potential or actual threats.

Paired up with this list is a brief summary of the data, or actions to be taken.  This may help alleviate some of the confusion people run into when running applications like this.

Moving on from the security section, one area to pay particular attention to is the Registry Test.  When you click on this link, a list of registry errors is shown.  If you notice a large amount of entries, they, among other things, can drag down your computer’s performance and should be addressed.

Perhaps you are having issues with certain hardware, such as a video card.  Even if you are not, if the Drivers test comes up red, you should look into it.  In this section, any hardware that is not up to date with current drives files, will be flagged red here.  Should you need to reference the driver version, it can be located under the Driver Details column.

No scanning utility of this type is complete with a temporary files (junk files) scanner.  PC Matic is no exception.  Clicking on the Junk Files Test will navigate you to the Junk Files section.  When you click on one of the red arrows, a list will drop down and display the folders where the unneeded files are currently residing.

Last but not least, and this is a particularly interesting test, is the top ten largest files on your computer.  Though you may not use the results of this test at all, this section is worth a look.  Odds are, the largest files on your computer are system files like pagefile.sys, and other files with dollar symbols in their names.  Granted, these are ones you do not want to delete.  When you do locate one you wish to remove, hover the mouse pointer over that file to see its location on your computer.

Once again, this version of PC Matic is simply a free trial scan.  The actual product, should you click on the Fix All link, is $49.99 for a 5 license version.  The scanner itself is a good way to find issues on your computer without the need to purchase the paid version.  There is a good chance your software tool set includes programs to fix these very issues.  If nothing else, the PC Matic scan is a good starting point to create a “to do” list for computer maintenance.

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So what’s the big deal? It’s actually really big! Basically, Microsoft will be competing with the likes of Kaspersky, Norton, and other major anti-virus players. They are also making it free, which means AVG, Avira, and all the other free anti-virus guys are going to be getting some serious competition.

Good thing for consumers? You bet! Firstly, Microsoft will hopefully be able to integrate Security Essentials better with Windows Firewall and Windows Security Center. Security Essentials will protect against viruses, spyware, trojans, worms, and other malicious software.

First, the annoying parts about trying to download and install Microsoft Security Essentials on your computer! Yes Microsoft always makes a simple download into a fun 100 clicks ordeal!

• Must use Internet Explorer to download the file
• Must have a Microsoft Live account or Hotmail account
• Must install an ActiveX plugin in order to download the file

And, of course, there will be several pop-up windows along the way! After about 5 minutes of clicking, I was able to get the beta installed! Whew! I’m hope that using the program is not this hard.

Once installed, you’ll see a new blue and grey castle icon on your desktop and in your sidebar. Double click it to open up Microsoft Security Essentials. First, you’ll need to update the virus definition files in order for real-time protection to be turned on.

Automatically, your computer will be scheduled for a scan at 2 AM every morning. You can manually perform a Quick, Full, or Custom scan from the home page.

The software will run in the background and notify you if there is any kind of malicious software detected. According to testers, it seems like Security Essentials is able to detect a good number of trojans and viruses.

Under Settings, you can change the schedule for scanning, the real-time protection options, and also setup any file, folder, process, or file type exclusions. I really like the fact that you can exclude so many different types of objects.

Under Advanced, you can also set an option to scan removable drives, such as USB flash drives when running a full system scan.

Overall, Microsoft Security Essentials is very easy to use, not a memory hog, and seems to be able to detect a large number of viruses, trojans, and spyware. It’s definitely a lot better than Windows Defender, which I personally thought was horrible. Give it a shot, there are a limited number of beta testers allowed! Enjoy!

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Great! Now what do you do? Make them install Office? Probably not a very good idea. A better option would be to use the Internet to your advantage! Luckily, there are many great online tools that let you view Office documents for free.

It’s not the best solution, but in a emergency situation where you simply don’t have any time, it’s pretty darn useful!

View Docs Online is a nifty little website that lets you view the most common types of documents in a very simple and fast way.

Here’s what you can do with View Documents Online currently:

• View your documents online using any computer that is connected to the Internet without any additional software downloads, etc.
• Share your documents via email, social networking, forums, etc.
• Convert any document into secure PDF format

Currently, the online service supports the following formats for viewing online: PDF, XLS, XLSX, DOC, DOCX, PPT, PPTX, PPS, PS, TXT, RTF, ODT, ODP, SXW, SXI, and more.

Simply click on the Browse button to choose your file and then click View Document.

Note that you can also paste in a URL that directly points to a file stored on a server, which saves you from having to download the file to your computer.

Overall, in my tests, the software was able to load up all the documents I threw at it. The only thing I noticed was that the formatting was not exactly the same as in my original documents, but I guess that it to be expected.

Another nice feature is the search box. Just start typing and it will automatically highlight all instances in the document for you with convenient Next and Previous buttons! You can also switch to Tile mode to quickly see all pages in a document.

So next time you need to view a document on a PC that does not have Office or Adobe or Open office, check out View Docs Online. Enjoy!

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