{"id":1039,"date":"2018-08-19T21:21:04","date_gmt":"2018-08-19T21:21:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.revolutionsincommunication.com\/viscomm\/?page_id=1039"},"modified":"2020-01-14T23:21:42","modified_gmt":"2020-01-14T23:21:42","slug":"newmedia","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/viscomm\/newmedia\/","title":{"rendered":"Software overview"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><b>SOFTWARE BASICS <span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Computer software is a generic word for the electronic instructions that run inside the hardware of a computer, and it comes in two basic flavors:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"ul1\">\n<li class=\"li3\">The\u00a0<span class=\"s1\">operating system<\/span>\u00a0(Microsoft Windows, Apple OS X, Unix,<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>GNU)<\/li>\n<li class=\"li3\">The <span class=\"s1\">applications<\/span><span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span>that perform the useful tasks such as word processing, image editing and desktop publishing (MS Word, Adobe Photoshop, Scribus, etc).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"p1\">In the good old days of early computing, between the 1970s and the 2010s,<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>you would buy an application on a set of disk drives, then go through an installation routine, and after a while you could run the application to perform the task you wanted.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">But as you probably know, there have been big changes over the years in the way computer users acquire and employ software.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">These days, software is delivered via internet and it is often run over the internet. This is the \u201csoftware as a service\u201d idea, which is part of an evolving system of<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> \u00a0<\/span>cloud computing. So, as a result, you can&#8217;t can buy Photoshop as a package from Adobe any more. <span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span>Photoshop is sold by the month as a subscription service for your computer, at about $10 to $30 a month.\u00a0 Others, such as Corel Paintshop Pro,\u00a0 still sell as separate one-time installations for about $70.\u00a0 And still others, like Gimp, are free.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><b>Free Software<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">How do small start up companies compete against industry giants like Adobe, Apple and Microsoft? Until recently,<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>only a few companies dominated the field, and software could be very expensive. <span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span>Adobe Photoshop, for example, cost over $500 for a one-time install only a few years ago.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\"> But\u00a0 there is also <\/span>free or low cost software that can do basically the same thing as Photoshop or Microsoft Office or most of the other categories of applications.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">There are free software applications for virtually every tool that was once sold by the big software companies. Many of these do not have all the \u2018bells and whistles\u2019 as the commercial software packages, but they are useful and are based on a community system that is often ahead of commercial software developers. <span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0Sometimes they use a &#8220;freemium&#8221; business model, which means they offer the basic product for free but then sell add-on units at a premium.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">This book \/ study site will cover the use of both free and commercial software.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>A comprehensive list of free software is found\u00a0 here:<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/List_of_free_and_open-source_software_packages\">https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/List_of_free_and_open-source_software_packages<\/a><span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<h3><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SOFTWARE BASICS \u00a0 \u00a0 Computer software is a generic word for the electronic instructions that run inside the hardware of a computer, and it comes in two basic flavors: The\u00a0operating system\u00a0(Microsoft Windows, Apple OS X, Unix,\u00a0\u00a0GNU) The applications\u00a0that perform the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/viscomm\/newmedia\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"full-width-page.php","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1039","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/viscomm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/viscomm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/viscomm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/viscomm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/viscomm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1039"}],"version-history":[{"count":30,"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/viscomm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1039\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1950,"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/viscomm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1039\/revisions\/1950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/viscomm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}