Every once in a while, I find some software that I really think is useful, and that other people could use if they knew it existed. Lately I was looking around and stumbled on a couple of data visualization packages (for Linux, both FREE), both of which seem to be pretty cool, and a freeware SSH program for Windows. Read on to get more info on all of them…

The first couple of programs I found for data visualtion are called OpenDX and ParaView. Paraview is based on the VTK graphics tool kit. OpenDX has been developed by IBM and looks kinda like LabView.

I’ve played with both, and I think that OpenDX is really cool – it has some tutorials and data sets to play with, and great 3-D graphics to boot. ParaView was kinda flakey (since I was using the binary Linux install, no doubt), but I am sure that would be fixed if you installed a pre-compiled version specific to your flavor of Linux. OpenDx was similar, but after installing the correct version, it was smooth sailing from then on. CHECK these programs out! Get open dx right here , and get paraview right here .

Am I forgetting something? Oh yes, here is a good SSH client for windows (free, of course): http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html. You’ll also find a version of scp and sftp (also free!) for windows.