Barcodes efficiently speed us through supermarket checkout lines, but the technology is also useful for totally different applications. An inexpensive barcode scanner can help you organize your private library, CD, or DVD collection.

Open source developer Tobias Oetiker, in his presentation at the USENIX LISA conference in San Diego, described how he could help one thousand Windows users at Swisscom.com speed up their computers.

When an Internet provider goes down, users suffer. Alternatively, users can immediately switch to another ISP. We’ll show you a Perl script that can help you reconfigure your computer to make the switch.

A trick that anybody can learn lets you determine the day of the week from the date. We’ll apply some Perl technology to discover whether the method is reliable.

The Vim editor supports Perl plugins that let users manipulate the text they have just edited. Complex functions can be developed far faster than with Vim’s integrated scripting language.

If you have grown tired of manually correcting color-casted images (as described in last month's Perl column), you might appreciate a script that automates this procedure.

Nagiosgraph, an extension of the Nagios monitoring software, is available as version 1.0.0. The program merges the performance data from the Nagios plug-in and presents them graphically on a webpage.

In many cases, whole series of digital images need the same kind of modifications, which forces the photo-grapher to repeat the same steps time and time again in GIMP. Have you ever considered retouching in Perl?