This month, we look at free projects as a replacement for Flash and Java. Both Flash and Java are so widespread that you can’t realistically do without them, so it’s a pity that both are released under proprietary licenses. The community has started to remedy the situation.

Working in the shell has many benefits. Pipelines, redirectors, and chains of commands give users almost infinite options.

Intel’s PowerTOP analysis tool helps optimize power usage and shows you the power guzzlers hiding out on your operating system.

Today’s digital multimeters can do more than measure current and voltage. Multimeters also measure capacity and temperature. An inexpensive multimeter can talk to your PC via the serial port, and simple Perl scripts let you read and visualize data in neat charts.

We look at the Wwwoffle proxy server, the Rubrica contact data manager, the eSvn GUI-based SVN front-end, and the MDB Tools converter.

Liferay is a powerful and easily customizable CMS that is ideal for community collaboration – once you get it configured.

When tackling something complex, such as a foreign language or Vim commands, digesting small bits of knowledge might be more effective than consuming a super-sized meal of information. This month’s Perl column gives you a method of serving up knowledge snippets by email.