Free MS Project alternatives

What is MS Project?

MS Project or any Project Management Software will help the project managers to create plans, assign resources to tasks, track the progress of the work, and manage budges and workloads.  The following is the description taken from Wikipedia:

“Project creates budgets based on assignment work and resource rates. As resources are assigned to tasks and assignment work estimated, the program calculates the cost equals the work times the rate, which rolls up to the task level and then to any summary tasks and finally to the project level. Resource definitions (people, equipment and materials) can be shared between projects using a shared resource pool. Each resource can have its own calendar, which defines what days and shifts a resource is available. Resource rates are used to calculate resource assignment costs which are rolled up and summarized at the resource level. Each resource can be assigned to multiple tasks in multiple plans and each task can be assigned multiple resources, and the application schedules task work based on the resource availability as defined in the resource calendars. All resources can be defined in an enterprise-wide resource pool.”

Below are the three alternatives I found.

 

OpenProj: OpenProj is a free open-source project management solution.  This is the first one I found and even I read some blog posts stating that small companies are using this software successfully as an alternative to MS Project.  OpenProj is available in Windows, Mac, and Linux versions.  Site also says that OpenProj has been translated into French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Swedish, Finnish, Galician, Persian, Russian, Korean and Chinese.  Even, my brother selected this for his projects.  It is just 6 MB approximately.

 

Open Workbench: It is also an open source free software available for only Windows.  Site states that one lakh project managers are successfully using it in their project managements and it is powerful alternative to Microsoft Project.  Download count on their homepage also showing nearly 2,000,000 downloads.

 

KPlato: It is a Linux alternative for MS Project available as a component in KOffice.  It only works on Linux distributions.  It is still in development and bugs persist.  It takes some time for it to evolve into fully functional project management software.

Free stock photos/images for your website or blog

I often see people copying images from other websites and blogs freely without permission.  They are not aware that copying image from other websites is illegal.  You can be sued and/or your site can be taken down for doing so.

So, when you need an image to put in your blog or website, either you need to purchase one from stock photo selling websites like Getty Images, iStockphoto, etc. or find free ones.  Before going into free resource details, I want you to learn about different licenses like public domain, creative commons, etc.

There are a few good sites where you can get high quality pictures for free.  Below are the three best sources I use for all my needs.

 

Stock.Xchng:  It is my favorite site to get quality images for my work.  There are around 4 lakhs of royalty-free images available on SXC.  Don’t forget to browse through Hall of Fame, Most Commented, and Most Downloaded images from the drop down menu below the SXC logo.

 

Flickr:  It has millions of photos you can use for your site or blog with attribution.  Flickr photos are tagged with Creative Commons licenses.  Use the advanced search to find the image you need.  Don’t forget to select the license at the bottom.  Browse photos by license here.

If you find a photo you really need and there is no license mentioned, you can always mail the owner asking permission to use it on your site.  I was working on a tourism site and I searched for the photos on Flickr.  I found high quality pictures on Flickr, but there were no license details mentioned.  I sent mail to the owners asking for the permission and they happily allowed me to use it in my work.  They just wanted to know where I was using them.

 

Picasa Web Albums:  Picasa is also a good place to search for images with Creative Commons attribution.  Go to Picasa Web and on the top right corner, you will see a search box.  Search for the image you are looking for and then clock the “Show Options” on the top left corner.  At the bottom, you can see a section called “All licenses”  Choose the one of three licenses available according to your needs and you are done.

Now, I think you got an idea where to search for free images for your website.