Hackosis

Adeona is open source software to system used to securely and privately track the location of your Windows, Mac, or Linux laptop.

What makes Adeona stand out, even from proprietary solutions, is it’s ability to securely transmit the location data preventing 3rd parties from also gathering the information.

Keep in mind that Adeona is still in beta, so don’t expect a perfect program just yet. Please do report any bugs that you might find.

Installation methods differ between operating systems so be sure to read the download instructions.

One interesting question from the FAQs:

Can I install this on my girlfriend or boyfriend’s computer and track her or him, and perhaps get pictures of them while they’re doing certain activites?

Yes. Like all technologies, Adeona has the potential for being abused. However, if you are malicious enough to want to do the above, there is probably other software available out there more suited for your needs. (We won’t provide links to these more malicious tools.)

Adeona seems to be a good solution to give you a piece of mind that if your laptop gets stolen, you might have a chance to retrieve it.

If you have any other suggestions for software to track your stolen laptop, please let us know in the comments as always.

iTunes

Easily one of the greatest media players available today, iTunes offers music, movies, and a music store, all blended together. Make a playlist, add songs to your iPod, watch a new movie that just released. iTunes is a fantastic experience for any Mac (or PC) user. And guess what? It’s waiting for you at the bottom of your screen. (Mac only :D)

Mozilla Firefox
The Browser That Has It All: Firefox has security, speed and new features that will change the way you use the Web. Don’t settle for anything less.
 

Adium
Adium is an awesome Multi-Client Instant messaging service for Mac OS X. The user interface is neat and simple, and it works great! Very easy to add ALL of your Instant Messaging accounts to one easy-to-use environment!

VLC
Goes with Flip4Mac and is a good player for non-mac media codecs
 
 

Perian
Perian is a free, open source QuickTime component that adds native support for many popular video formats. Good replacement for VLC.
 

Quick Silver
QuickSilver is “A Unified, Extensible interface for working with appliations, contacts, music and other data” and completely free.
 

smcFanControl
smcFanControl lets you control your fans manually to make your MacBook(pro) or Mac mini run cooler.
 

Flip4Mac
Got a weird video from your Windows friends? Well this will allow you to play virtually any video codec!
 

Transmission
Transmission has been built from the ground up to be a lightweight, yet powerful BitTorrent client. Its simple, intuitive interface is designed to integrate tightly with whatever computing environment you choose to use. Transmission strikes a balance between providing useful functionality without feature bloat. Furthermore, it is free for anyone to use or modify.

DropBox
A sleek file syncing program. Multi-platform syncing with a web interface for access everywhere.
 

If you have any other suggestion of things that are missing or in the wrong place please start a discussion by commenting below.

This list was pulled from apple.lockergnome.com on 7-17-08 and I take no credit for it.

Freenet is a relatively new P2P project in which members act similar to that of a cluster, donating hard drive space and bandwidth. It is similar to the Tor network in the fact that connections are encrypted and re-routed through other members of the network.

What’s different about Freenet is that you also dedicate parts of your hard drive for file storage. What is even more interesting is that you have no control over what is stored in your ‘data store’. Less popular files are deleted to make room for more popular files. The files are encrypted so that you ‘might’ not be held responsible for what lies within your data store.

Freenet is not only for storing files, but also allows you to create Freenet websites called ‘Freesites’. Also usenet, email, and more is possible on the Freenet.

Freenet is open source and runs anywhere Java runs. Windows, Linux, or Mac should work fine. After installing the interface is accessible through a web browser. Remember, Freenet is still in alpha stage so there may be some bugs.

Read more and download at the Free Network Project website.

Open source, cross platform Vidalia is a Tor GUI that runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac.

Simply put, Vidalia makes it really easy to setup, configure, turn on and off, and configure relays for the Tor network. Complete with bandwidth graphs and network maps, Vidalia should have everything you need to get started and stay on the Tor network.

After installing Vidalia, it is as simple as pointing your browser’s proxy setting to 127.0.0.1:8118 to start using the Tor network.

You can even choose which country to originate your connection from. Don’t get too frisky now. ;)

Vidalia Homepage | Vidalia Downloads | Vidalia Screenshots | Vidalia Support

pdftk is an open source, cross platform PDF super manipulator. This goody allows you to split, merge, rotate, decrypt, encrypt, watermark, change metadata, attach files, detach files, repair, and more.

From the site:

“If PDF is electronic paper, then pdftk is an electronic staple-remover, hole-punch, binder, secret-decoder-ring, and X-Ray-glasses. Pdftk is a simple tool for doing everyday things with PDF documents.”

pdftk is command line only, so you might want to check out the examples for syntax. If you aren’t into command line, there are some GUIs available.

Get the full scoop along with package installers at the pdftk site.

By using a nifty Perl script, written by Peter Willis, we can download Mp3s from projectplaylist.com.

Save the file with a .pl extension, and give it executable permissions — chmod u+x getppmp3.pl.

You need to have Perl installed sudo apt-get install perl. After that it is as simple as executing the script with a search string like so:

You might be surprised at what it finds…

NOTE: This is for experimental purposes only for the purposes of learning how the Perl programming language works. Just as the Perl script states, I hold no responsibility for the actions you take with this script.

Open source, cross platform Métamorphose is an extensible mass files and folders renaming application with tons of options. Some examples of use are inserting numbering sequences at the begining of existing filenames, removing all spaces, removing all non-alphabetical characters, converting filenames to all lower case, moving first 3 characters of name to end of name, renaming MP3s like “number_title”, and more.

Métamorphose Homepage | Métamorphose Download | Métamorphose Screenshots

Cross Platorm BitNami provides ’stacks’ to install web applications specifically for your operation system automatically. Applications are available such as Wordpress, MediaWiki, Drupal, and phpBB.

NOTE: Infrastructure stacks are not required for application stacks.

A list of stacks are downloadable from the BitNami downloads page.

About JDiskReport:

Learn what is taking the most space on your hard drive with JDiskReport. JDiskReport is freeware and cross platform.

This program kills previously mentioned WinDirStat. Take a look at the screenshots below; what is even better, it lets you drill down on everything in the graph display, displays specifics about file details and locations, and lets you choose between different types of charts and tables.

From the site:

JDiskReport enables you to understand how much space the files and directories consume on your disk drives, and it helps you find obsolete files and folders.

The tool analyses your disk drives and collects several statistics which you can view as overview charts and details tables.

This is ad-free uncrippled no-charge binary multi-platform software that never expires.

JDiskReport Screenshots:

JDiskReport Homepage | JDiskReport Download | JDiskReport Features

{ via Lifehacker’s 2007 Guide to Free Software and Webapps }

Open source, cross platform Buddi is aimed at individuals with little to no financial experience.

From the site:

Buddi is a personal finance and budgeting program, aimed at those who have little or no financial background. In making this software, I have attempted to make things as simple as possible, while still retaining enough functions to satisfy most home users.

image via link

Buddi Links:

Buddi Homepage | Buddi Plugins | Buddi Screenshots | Buddi Downloads dontstealmyrsshackosis