Free Softwarefor Busy People

Mohammad Al-Ubaydli

First Edition

Idiopathic Publishing ∙ Cambridge, UK

Free Software for Busy People

by Mohammad Al-Ubaydli

Published by:

Idiopathic Publishing

Cambridge, UK orders@idiopathic.comhttp://www.idiopathic.comCover design by Buthaina FakhroArtwork for the six characters by Todd Groesbeck Copyright (c) 2005 Mohammad Al-UbaydliPermission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify thisdocument under the terms of the GNU Free DocumentationLicense, Version 1.2 or any later version published by theFree Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, noFront-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of thelicense is included in the section entitled "GNU FreeDocumentation License".Whilst the advice and information in this book are believedto be true and accurate at the date of going to press, neitherthe author nor the publisher can accept any legalresponsibility or liability for any errors or omissions thatmay be made.Unattributed quotations are by Mohammad Al-UbaydliISBN, print ed. 0-9544157-3-6First printing 2005Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the BritishLibrary

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All brand names and product names used inthis book are trade names, service marks, trademarks, orregistered trademarks of their respective owners. IdiopathicPublishing is not associated with any product or vendormentioned in this book.

About the author

Mohammad Al-Ubaydli is a Bahraini doctor andprogrammer who uses IT to improve healthcare.In 2000 He graduated as a doctor with a first-class degreefrom the University of Cambridge. His research project,ImmunoSim, won the Fulton Roberts Immunology Prize.Since then, he has continued to combine his medical andcomputing knowledge. This included developing thesoftware for Project Palm at Cambridge University, whichallowed medical students to share their learning usinghandhelds (www.cbcu.cam.ac.uk/handhelds).He co-founded Medical Futures Ltd, which launched theMedical Futures Innovation Awards in 2001(www.medicalfutures.co.uk ). The awards have raisedawareness amongst doctors of the process of using theirideas and inventions to improve healthcare. The event alsoraises money for UK hospitals.During his first year of clinical practice, he was able tolecture and consult on the use of handhelds in medicine. Hewrote the book “Handheld Computers for Doctors”(www.handheldsfordoctors.com) in 2003. He is now aVisiting Research Fellow at the NCBI (National Center forBiotechnology Information

†

– www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) inBethesda, MD, USA.