Armchair astronomers and space freaks listen up! The amazing developers behind Stellarium have accomplished quite some amazing things. Used by many real planetariums for their projection showings, Stellarium is an amazing feat of open source software development, giving the user a realistic, 3D sky on a desktop environment, allowing users to enter coordinates, browse the night sky or even beam it onto your ceiling before going to sleep. The educational usage and possibilities of this is amazing and I for one am considering purchasing an HDTV projector simply to see Uranus on my ceiling at night!

Download: Stellarium - Open source planetarium for your computer

For many, using open source software is about equivalent to breathing, but for most, we need certain commercial software in order work, easy communicate with family or even to sometimes surf the internet. But that’s quickly changing. As the quality levels of many open source projects begin to soar and more and more developers are opening their software up, the need for certain commercial software is rapidly diminishing. Still lost? Well, let osalt.com help you find your way. Collecting links, descriptions and explanations to some of the best open source apps this side of the www, osalt guides you through the process of open sourcing your Windows XP, Mac OS X or Linux machine with ease, offering you open source alternatives to some of the largest commercial software in existence.

Read more: Open Source Alternative

MacLibre is a nifty little open source application for Mac OS X, developed at Google’s recent Summer of Code. Consider MacLibre to be the quality control of open source Mac apps, providing Mac users with a pre-selected list of applications available for quick and easy downloading through the use of MacLibre’s internal bittorrent client. More open source applications are being added quite often, naturally after passing MacLibre’s vigorous testing and quality assurance requirements.

Read more: MacLibre

ScatterChat is a new multiple IM chat client which is created specifically for non-technical political dissidents and activists, workers requiring a high-degree of privacy and security in their business, or privacy advocates wearing tin hats. ScatterChat is based on GAIM, currently only supporting Windows XP, with OS X and Linux distributions coming shortly. The client offers support for most of the major world-wide chat networks from AIM and ICQ to Gadu-Gadu, SILC, Zephyr and Jabber, offering heavy-encryption methods for authentication, chatting and file-transfers. ScatterChat uses 2048-bit ElGamal and 1024-bit DSA for encryption setup and authentication. For each individual conversation, ScatterChat will generate a new 256-bit AES message key, a 256-bit SHA-1 HMAC key, a 256-bit nonce, and a 256-bit AES file transfer key. The client is also immune to replay attacks, supports PFS (Perfect Forward Secrecy) and features limited message deniability properties. The creators of ScatterChat are currently looking for help with localization efforts, translating the documentation into Arabic, Chinese and Farsi as well as technical help with ports to various other platforms (openBSD, FreeBSD, Ubuntu packages, etc). Disclaimer: The use of heavy encryption is not exactly shined upon by many governments, so use of this software is most definitely at your own risk.

[ScatterChat | ScatterChat feature list]

While I tried resisting writing a list post, I just couldn’t resist talking about my favorite apps for Mac OS X. I have several Macs, and I couldn’t stand working on them without having the following apps (and so many more) installed immediately. Naturally this isn’t the only apps I find to be necessary to my OS X workflow, only 10 of my favorites, I’d be happy to know some of yours ;)

10. Fetch Art
I have tens of thousands of MP3s, naturally ripped from my personal CD collection, and thus it’s always a nightmare to organize and move my MP3s around while still keeping the cover art images in-place. Enter Fetch Art, a nifty little script which scans the ID3 tages of your songs in iTunes and automatically downloads the appropriate track’s cover art directly from Amazon.com with pretty good accuracy. (License: Donationware)

9. UnRarX
UnRarX is a GUI application that uses the unix command line apps ‘unrar’ and ‘par2′ to let you expand rar archives, as well as restore corrupted and/or missing archives using par2. Handy for those who download binaries often from newsgroups, you know who you are. (License: GPL)

8. MacPAR Deluxe
Following number 9 comes another newsgroups favorite, MacPAR Deluxe. MacPar is a mighty powerful utility which is primarily for ensuring error-free transport of data from ‘par’ and ‘par2′ files. It’s features include full support of the ‘par 1′ and ‘par 2′ standards, verification, recovery and automatica unrar of parity files, including visual representation of the current status of all files contained with an archive. It’s also capable of launching an external unpacker in the rare case it’s unable to unpack the archive on it’s own (see #9). (License: Donationware)

7. Quicksilver
Quicksilver has appeared on just about every list associated with Mac OS X software, so naturally it had to appear here. Quicksilver is everyone’s favorite Finder-replacement and has become so integrated into my daily workflow, that I couldn’t imagine using a Mac without it being installed. (License: GNU GPL)

6. Text Wrangler
I was a huge fan of UltraEdit on the PC, but that was then, this is now. I needed a powerful, yet affordable text editor for coding, and in walked Text Wrangler. Text Wrangler is an extremely powerful text editor, suitable for Unix and server administrator’s, HTML-pushers, and scripters alike. Best of all, it’s from the creators of BBedit, THE text editor for hardcore text editing on a Mac AND it’s free! (License: Freeware)

5. Fugu
I don’t know anyone who prefers using FTP over a much more secure system, such as SCP or SFTP. I’ve personally shut down FTP completely on any servers I’ve administered and required all users to transfer files using SCP (WinSCP on XP or Fugu on OS X). Fugu is a GUI which eases access to OS X’s built-in Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP), which is similar to FTP, only the session is entirely encrypted and is much more secure than normal FTP. Fugu also allows SCP file transfers, as well as session saving and a Finder-like interface for interaction. (License: BSD-Style Freeware)

4. Firestarter FX
For those still burning their CDs you must get Firestart FX. A pure Cocoa burning application, it’s one of the few, if not the only, burning applications for the Mac which allows duplication of all kinds of CDs, as well as burning VCDs and SVCDs. Oh, Overburning! Who can forget, it’s the only burning app I’ve found which supports overburning, a staple of burning applications on the PC. (License: Donationware)

3. Little Snitch
Anyone who’s recently switched to Mac knows the problem that spyware and adware are for Windows users. I’m the type of person who likes to see how my software is using my internet connection. Whether calling home or reporting usage statistics, I want to know. Little Snitch enables the user to find this information out. Running natively within the operating system, Little Snitch informs the user when an application wants to connect to the internet and where it wants to send the information to, allowing the user to deny or approve this request. Very powerful, nice small footprint. (License: Commercial $24.95 USD)

2. Conto
Tracking bank accounts and finances isn’t a strength of mine, but Conto is a nifty little freeware application that eases that task for me. Providing a powerful finance tracking system, complete with graphing abilities, support for different currencies and strong encryption, Conto is an extremely powerful free application. (License: GPL)

1. MySync
Keeping Macs on a LAN in sync is not always a fun OR easy task. MySync makes this an easy task, allowing automatic detection of other MySync “nodes” running on your LAN (via Bonjour), automatic sync scheduling, SSL encryption, and syncing capabilities for Address Book, Safari bookmarks, and iCal. (License: Open beta - for now)

Can you imagine travelling to visit family, sitting down at their computer, starting up any web browser and having complete and secure access to your desktop, including your applications, messages and information? I sure can. Enter the idea of WebOS, a research project by various universities, which has resulted in the creation of EyeOS. EyeOS is an open-source web desktop environment, enabling the user to setup their own small (and easy) EyeOS server (a public server is also available) at home which they can then remotely connect to from virtually any internet-connected PC. Set it up with the many EyeApps available and the user is then able to easily and remotely access email, documents, files, photos, and much much more. This is known as the WebOS, a rich and powerful remote operating system available to the user from any location. Still a little rough around the edges, with a 1.0 release approaching, EyeOS is trying to simplify and revolutionize the way we interact with our data and the internet.

[EyeOS | EyeOS Public Server]

Object-oriented and open-source programming language, Ruby, is considered by some to have a part in revolutionizing web development (led by variant Ruby on Rails and subsequently AJAX on Rails). Created in 1993 by Japanese computer scientist Yukihiro Matsumoto, Ruby is well-known for not only being extremely powerful, but also extremely easy and accessible to developers from all camps (especially fans of PERL, Smalltalk and maybe even Python). Those interested in giving Ruby a go should check out this short and sweet, 15 minute hands-on tutorial, all taking place within your web-browser of choice.

[Ruby hands-on tutorial | Ruby entry @ Wikipedia | Ruby on Rails]

The Participatory Culture Foundation has announced the release of the Democracy internet-TV platform’s latest and greatest version (0.8.4.1), addressing many stability issues, adding some new codecs, and cleaning up the interface a little more, among other fixes. But man, what a version number. For those who do not know, Democracy is an internet-television browser, using a built-in RSS reader to display and download video-based content channels using bit-torrent technologies. The ability to grab podcasts, videocasts, video blogs and bit-torrent video feeds are present, and the video player can also be used as a Quicktime replacement, so you can re-watch season 2 of Lost, while downloading the latest episode of Rocketboom in the background. Best of all, it’s free (as in speech, as the slogan goes), open-source and works wonderfully under OSX.

[Get Democracy]