Product Reviews
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2024 is coming to an end and many dedicated IT, Technology, Online software- hardware privacy focused websites are preparing to publish their 2024 product reviews for the upcoming year 2025.
I am suggesting and start this thread to be the space where users share links to their favorite products and their reviews:
either hardware or software cell phones, computers, browsers, cloud storage services, search engines, encrypted email providers, password managers, note taking tools, VPN services, secure instant messaging apps and the like...
Users may want to post their own reviews which are always welcome as well as heated debates provided that it remains within the forum etiquette and rules.
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I like free and open source and FOSSIFY suit is one of my favorites among Android apps in the play store. It is private and open source.
It has the following apps in the suit:
fossify calendar
fossify keyboard
fossify file manager
fossify notes
fossify gallery
fossify voice recorder
fossify music player
fossify clock
fossify camera
fossify launcherI used all of them and currently using 5 of the above. My favorite is calendar. I have looked for a calendar app for a long time but fossify calendar is the best coded one and works and syncs flawlessly with caldav. Contrary to many android apps in the market, fossify calendar has a all year simple event list option which makes it indispensable for me
My preferred feature in Vivaldi is the calendar which I use on a daily basis and fossify calendar is even more important for me as it is installed on my phone and I mark even the simplest reminder in it, covering my calendar needs with Vivaldi being the go to application on the web.
I like GMX organizer and apart from Vivaldi's local calendar option it syncs perfectly my gmx calendars. I just love it! Vivaldi, my gmx organizer and fossify calendar (android) Honestly if Vivaldi calendar was available in Android, I wouldn't look for any other application.
I would recommend wholeheartedly fossify suit to any privacy conscious android user.
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Roundcube is underrated: (see screenshots below)
I see many pass by here to gain some level of ''reputation'' in order to be granted the mailbox with Vivaldi.net domain. It makes me smile when I see a new community member working on solely to increase points in order to arrive at the finish line and get the inbox they long for.
It also makes me smile when volunteers and mods tirelessly keep responding to that question that has been asked ad nauseam. 'When do we get that mailbox?'
Roundcube is underrated by many and I really like it to the point where I think this mailbox below and its basic functionality should be considered as the gold standard of emailing and anything beyond would just be the ice on the cake.
Roundcube is georgous. Neat. Easy to understand and easy to organize. It gives the provider a lot of flexibility. It is compatible with mailvelope for PGP, it has everything you can expect from a mailbox.
Calendar is awesome. So clean as interface and easy to operate. (Please see the screenshots below.)
Settings come with verity of options with a vivaldi link for help:
https://help.vivaldi.com/services/#webmailFilters work seamlessly. Composing, sending, receiving emails are very smooth process.
The only issue with Vivaldi mail is the encryption. User can encrypt end to end via PGP however emails sit on Vivaldi servers without encryption (encryption at rest) One of the well known email providers that specializes on anonymity, privacy, encryption and data economy also uses Roundcube and I can assure you Vivaldi Mail's interface is way better than Posteo's.
My personal opinion is that Vivaldi mail domain is becoming more more popular amongst young users and I think it should be serviced as a paid option provided that encryption is improved. This of course requires additional developers who understand encryption as this domain doesn't forgive many errors.
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Voilà the solution for your bookmarks scattered in this browser or that - here and there: https://app.raindrop.io. It is an all in one bookmark manager. I thought it might come handy in these challenging times
It is free and open source with unlimited bookmarking and securely keeping books, songs and articles where ever you came accross surfing the web. Entries can be filtered and tagged. You can group, re-group the bookmarks. It also helps you find the duplicates. Secure and private ! (my all time keywords) Cloudbase architecture. export / import. available as browser extensions. reminders. upload files! No ads - no trackers and has mobile apps.
sample view
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Another free self hosted and open source product is less known Psono password manager. https://psono.com/
Based in Tiergartenstr. 13 91247 Vorra Germany and developed by Sascha Pfeiffer. Free tier is unrestricted and has access to all futures including TOTP. free TOTP access is a rare functionality among PW managers. Psono has it for free.
It is available on both PC (MacOS, Windows, Linux) and mobile devices (iOS, Android) It is Vivaldi compatible via Chrome store.
Psono has the following futures:
It encrypts data locally before sending it to servers and stores in Psono vault. You can access offline. It has password generator, password sharing, multifactor authentication, encryption at rest, autofill, Password syncing across all devices, multi account support , secure notes, bookmarks, PGP encryption ( encrypts and decrypts PGP messages) API keys, file, link and password sharing, password breach detection. You can store TOTP secrets in Psono and let it generate the necessary codes and you can also store credit cards.Best thing about it the developer himself responds your questions if you send a message. There was a time I tried this PW manager but because I was not used to it, I gave up due to its perceived complexity for a causal user. Sascha Pfeiffer contacted me and asked me to make an appointment via calendar and that he would explain where I stumbled. I was humbled by this gesture. I recommend to everyone.
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@Pathduck said:
'' *In case anyone's interested I've been maintaining a script for converting video to GIF/APNG/WEBP, including lossy encoding for WEBP and some useful arguments like clipping and palette generation:https://github.com/Pathduck/vid2ani
https://forum.vivaldi.net/post/803805This is a fork of an existing repo but I have improved it and added support for APNG/WEBP. I have also converted it into a shell script (only tested in Bash...)
I think using a script + FFmpeg is much faster and allows for more control than using any web UI for this, and no waiting for queueing or having watermarks inserted in your images.* ''
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@Catweazle said
PS. The best for editing, optimizing gifs, video to gif, convert formats, etc. is ezgif https://ezgif.com/
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@iqaluit, at least as online tool. There are several utilities to convert video to gif, also eg.Lunapic can do it, but the conversion is always limited, because a 2MB mp4 can easy be converted but with an >100 MB gif as result, almost impoosible to share or host (reason why gif is often replaced with a much smaller webm file).
Because of this ezgif only admit the conversion until 30 sec (Lunapic max.100 frames) apart to adjust the gif, compressing and resizing it to more reasonables MBs. -
filen.io cloud storage
Secure, zero-knowledge and client-side encrypted.
10 gb free- affordable lifetime options. I have more than one account to support the product because I believe the product deserves recognition and the people behind it a small group of honest, hard working enthusiasts.Link contains filen review,. It is somewhat accurate based on my experience with the prodiuct
https://www.cloudwards.net/review/filen/ -
Topic for software recommendations and reviews
https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/114/big-and-powerful-but-free?page=1
