In Internet marketing or basically any online or offline marketing business, sooner or later, you will have to work with graphics and images.

It could be in the form of opt-in boxes for web pages to header and footer graphics or simply adding images to your web pages or cover graphics for your ebooks. But, at some point you will need to release the artistic genius inside.

So, if you are like me and still waiting for a release date on the artistic genius, let me introduce you to Wilber! Wilber is the familiar mascot of the free and open source software that is the topic of the day, G.I.M.P.

GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.

GIMP has the capabilities to be used as a simple paint program up to image format converting and expert quality photo retouching. GIMP is available to run on GNU/Linux (i386, PPC), Microsoft Windows (XP, Vista and Windows7), Mac OS X, Sun OpenSolaris and FreeBSD. GIMP also has user manuals availble in several languages.

GIMP is designed to be extensible through the use of plug-ins and extensions. Over 100 are currently available in plug-in registry. There is a plug-in for most anything you will need to do from beginner to expert. These ranging from simple tools to animations and some even run scripting through Scheme, Python, and Perl.

By-the-way, all of the images used in this series on free and open source software tools have been rendered through GIMP. Primarily in resizing and reformatting to .gif. File formats supported include bmp, gif, jpeg, mng, pcx, pdf, png, ps, psd, svg, tiff, tga, xpm, and many others.

To save disk space, any format can be saved with an archive extension such as ZIP, GZ or BZ2 and GIMP will transparently compress the file without you needing to do any extra steps.

And thanks to the transparent virtual file system, it is possible to load and save files to from remote locations using protocols such as FTP, HTTP or even SMB (MS Windows shares) and SFTP/SSH.

The current stable version of GIMP is 2.6.11. When you download GIMP for the first time, while you are on the ‘Downloads’ page, be sure to download the user manual in your particular language.

Also, scroll down to the middle of the page under the source files and download the GAP (GIMP Animation Package) and the GIMP Help files. This will get you off to a good start and you can further extend your capabilities through the plug-ins registry as you progress.

GIMP is often compared as, ‘the closest thing to Photoshop’. I run both programs and find GIMP to be not only the much more user friendly of the two, but in some ways, more extensible. The only thing that I find particularly lacking in GIMP is the ‘Action’ scripts Photoshop uses for creating covers for ebooks, reports, boxes and etc.

These actions work very quickly to create those images, which is a time saver. However, very similar results can be obtained using GIMP with the correct plug-ins, such as GAP and ScriptFu.

All this makes for another excellent tool for your Internet marketing toolbox of free and open source software. And one that I am sure that you will enjoy using, even if only for creating awesome gift cards for friends and family.

Also, here are some GIMP videos to help straighten the learning curve for your new tool.

Next time we will add some audio to your visual Internet marketing with another free and open source software tool, Audacity!

Till next time!

Technorati Tags: free and open source software, GIMP, graphics, image manipulation program, internet marketing, Photoshop

As a part of our Internet marketing businesses, we create websites, sales
pages, landing pages, confirmation pages, products, etc. that look great
on our local machines. But, how do we get them up to our web hosting
server for the whole world to see?

In your web hosting cpanel file manager, you have the ability to upload
files to your server. The major drawback with this the limited file size
that be transferred. Not to mention how slow the process can be.

So, how do you get all those large files transferred in a timely and secure manner? Enter FileZilla!

FileZilla is a free and open source FTP(file transfer protocol) desktop
client that is easy to use and secure as it supports FTP, FTP over
SSL/TLS (FTPS) and SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP).

FileZilla is cross platform, it runs on Windows, Linux, *BSD, Mac OS X
and more. Plus it is available in many languages and has right-to-left language support.

Some of FileZilla features include a pause and resume functions an can
transfer files larger than 4GB with configurable transfer speeds. A powerful site manager and transfer queue. FileZilla has a tabbed user interface and drag and drop support.

Basically, you can do everything you can do through the cpanel file manager right from FileZilla. You can add and delete files and folders. Create new directories and even overwrite existing files.

For example, you can download the latest version of WordPress, unzip the
file and upload the entire file to your server in about 11 minutes. Then go back open the wp_content folder and add your themes and plugins right
through FileZilla.

There is also a FileZilla Server client available, that only runs on Windows, if you want to share files and images.

Once set up, it takes about a second for the site manager to connect to
your server and you are ready to go. All you need for set up is your server ftp account address and password. FileZilla does the rest. It will
even locate the ftp port on the server, in case you don’t know what it is.

When we return, we will discuss another free and open source software tool to add to your Internet marketing toolbox, an HTML editor called Kompozer.

Technorati Tags: file transfer protocol, FileZilla, free and, ftp, internet marketing, Internet marketing businesses, open source, secure

If you do anything in Internet marketing or Affiliate marketing, you receive the majority of your downloads in the .zip or .rar file formats.

Let’s say that you are new to all this and here you have all these ZIP and RAR files you’ve just downloaded from one of the many giveaway or PLR sites. You’re thinking, how the heck am I supposed to get the stuff out?

Windows has a built in extractor for the .zip format, but it doesn’t speak RAR. What’s more, you can’t view the contents of the file, you can only extract it to your desktop or another folder. What’s a poor home business owner to do?

The answer, is 7-Zip. 7-Zip is a high compression ratio file archive tool in 7z format with LZMA and LZMA2 compression. 7-Zip is licensed under the GNU LGPL with the unRAR code under a mixed license, GNU LGPL and unRAR restrictions. For ZIP and GZIP formats, 7-Zip provides a compression ratio that is 2-10 % better than the ratio provided by PKZip and WinZip.

Yeah, I know, what the heck does all that mean? Well, it means that this is one slick puppy. You can double click on a .zip or .rar file; view the contents of the file; view the contents of .zip files inside the .zip file; open the .html pages from inside the .zip and more.

7-Zip integrates into the context menu, also. So, you can right click on a .zip and perform several functions from there. Such as, extracting the file at the current location, like your desktop. Or extract the file into a newly created folder.

7-Zip supports these formats: Packing / unpacking: 7z, XZ, BZIP2, GZIP,TAR, ZIP and WIM.

Unpacking only: ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, CramFS, DEB, DMG, FAT, HFS, ISO,
LZH, LZMA, MBR, MSI, NSIS, NTFS, RAR, RPM, SquashFS, UDF, VHD, WIM, XAR and Z.

7-Zip has localizations for 79 languages and strong AES-256 encryption in
the 7z and ZIP formats. What more could you ask for?

Now let’s say that you have created a cool new product and need to distribute it. You just put the information files into a folder, use 7-Zip to compress the the folder into a .zip file and upload it to your server and you’re ready for action!

All this boils down to a very handy and functional piece of free and open source software that you will find very useful in your online Internet marketing business.

Next up, we will discuss how to securely store the gazillion or so
passwords you have with free software , KeePass Password Safe.

Later!

Technorati Tags: 7-zip, affiliate marketing, file archiver, free and open source software, internet marketing, online Internet marketing business

My first experience with a full office suite was Office 2000, the latest and greatest from Microsoft. It had everything you could want and more. Plus it had the html web editing software FrontPage as part of the offering. I worked with it for a time and then said, “Ok, what else have we got?”

StarOffice Suite came out in the mid- 1980s and Sun Microsystems acquired the software from StarDIvision, a German company, in 1999. Soon after, October 2000, OpenOffice was born.

An open source software very similar to StarOffice, OpenOffice lacked many of the features of StarOffice. However, it was still a good choice and had begun a following of programmers who were moving fairly quickly with improvements and additions.

Over time, with Sun Micro support, it became a very popular choice of open source office software. In 2007, many companies found that it was more cost effective to integrate OpenOffice in their businesses than it was to acquire Office 2007 and train their employees to use it.

Oracle purchased Sun Micro this year and continues to be the primary supporter. But, along the way others have joined the group, including Novell, RedHat, RedFlag CH200, and IBM. Not to mention over 450,000 people from around the globe have joined the project. Is that a support team or what?

OpenOffice is a complete office suite. It includes the components Writer, Base, Calc, Impress, Math and Draw, with each component having its own unique features.

Writer is the word processor, as you probably guessed. It comes with pre-installed templates and fonts, as you would expect. But, it also integrates with Google Docs and SOHO and can export your newly created works of art directly to PDF.

On the main website you’ll find a link to extend OpenOffice’s capabilities. Remember the 450,000 people I mentioned earlier? This is where you will find the works of many of them.

Look around and you’ll find just about anything you can think of to add function to your creative talents. There’ everything from fonts and template packs to forms and MySQL connectors. Plus, there is a built in Extension Manager to check for updates.

OpenOffice is available in several languages and operating systems. You’ll find them all on the download page.The current version is 3.2.1 with a Beta 3.3.0 RC 8 available, but still being tested. You know the rules; only download a beta version if you know to expect bugs. That’s why it’s a beta not the full version.

OpenOffice can open, read and edit Microsoft Office documents and saves documents in the International .odt(open document text) format.

You know how I said, “I love it when coders get together?” Well, recently I ran across another program called OxygenOffice Professional Office Suite. Now guess what, these folks have collaborated with the OpenOffice team to create an enhanced version of OpenOffice that includes clipart, templates, fonts and VBA support.

Open up Writer and go to Tools and in the dropdown select ‘Gallery”. There are all kinds of clipart in there. Such as cars, trucks, plains, people, animals,architecture, chemical formulas, Cisco media and clocks. You just find the image you’re looking for, drag and drop into your document. Then you can resize, add sounds or macros and play them back.

Now, just so you know, I have OxygenOffice Pro and Office 2007 on 2 of my systems. And I tried out Office 2010, and frankly, I like Office 2007 better of the two. There is an add-on for Office 2007 to export to PDF or XPS. But it does notwork with Office 2010, since Microsoft came up with a PDF creator.

So, there is one more tool for your Internet marketing toolbox. Give OxygenOffice a try and see what you think. I believe you’ll like it. And, of course, it’s free and open source software also.

Happy 10th Birthday OpenOffice! Thanks to all who participate in the project to provide us such a fine tool.

Next up, we’ll talk about the free and open source high compression file archiver, 7zip.

Till we meet again!

Technorati Tags: FrontPage, internet marketing, Office 2000, office suite, open source software, OpenOffice, OxygenOffice Professional, StarOffice, Sun Microsystems