Are you starving for information or “really new news”? Why don’t you try to use wordpress.com as search engine? This feature, normally not well-known by many people, let you to dig deep into all the blogs hosted on wordpress.com. Just type a keyword and you will be able to find related news into all the posts or comments in just few seconds. Easy to use and reliable for all that people (like me) who still believe in blogs as ideas incubators. 
If you want to improve your Google searches you can find many useful queries on internet and, if have time, you can also attend a specific Google free course.
But just few people know that there are specific queries available for Gmail.
I found some of them casually when I need to search some specific, old emails into my accounts some days ago. Then I discovered that Google itself published a complete list of all the possible queries accepted by Gmail.
I warmly suggest you to spend some minutes reading and exploring all the queries because they are really useful when you use Gmail in a professional way.
Here, I just want to sum-up some of them that, in my experience, are the most common you can use when you are becoming crazy looking for a specific email you sent or received.
The powerful feature is represented by the possibility to mix the different queries to create super-queries that can intercept the “wanted” email or documents in a less than a second.
Time
after:2010/10/24 before:2011/09/24
Here you are defining the time range and Gmail will show all the emails sent or received between the two specified dates.
From or To
from xyz@zyw.com to:xyz@zyw.com
Where xyz @zyw.com is the email address you are focusing on.
from:tom OR from:Luis from:tom OR from:Luis -meeting
In this case you are looking for an email from Tom or (plus) Luis but it hasn’t to contain (- minus) the word “meeting”.
Bcc or CC
bcc:xyz@zyw.com cc:xyz@zyw.com
Where xyz @zyw are specific email addresses you are looking for.
Filename
filename:invitation filename:(jpg OR jpeg OR png) filename:(doc OR docx OR pdf) filename:invitation(doc OR docx OR pdf)
Subject
subject:meeting
Attachment
has:attachment
Spam
in:spam
And you check into a specific folder. In my case: the Spam folder
Larger or Smaller
larger:25MB smaller:250MB
Some complex query examples:
from:xyz@zyw.com filename:(jpg OR jpeg OR png) to:xyz@zyw.com filename:(doc OR docx OR pdf) from:xyz@zyw.com filename:invitationfrom xyz@zyw.com to:xyz@zyw.com filename:(doc OR docx OR pdf) subject:meeting after:2011/10/24 before:2011/11/24 in:spam subject:meeting
If you are a fan of the design proposed by Apple for most of its operating systems, particularly Mac OS X, then there are a couple of things that you should take into consideration and some simple steps to follow. Therefore, you are advised to read the following information carefully in order to achieve the expected outcome in the shortest time.
There are two free pieces of software that can transform your Ubuntu desktop into one that looks identical to the one of Mac OS in no time. The Ubuntu version is called Macbuntu. First of all, you will need to install this program onto your local hard drive. Here is what you need to do for this step:
- If you are using Ubuntu 10.4 Lucid Lynx, you will need to open a new terminal and type the following lines into it:
$wget https://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/macbuntu/macbuntu-10.04/v2.2/Macbuntu-10.04.tar.gz -O /tmp/Macbuntu-10.04.tar.gz
$tar xzvf /tmp/Macbuntu-10.04.tar.gz -C /tmp
$cd /tmp/Macbuntu-10.04/
$./install.sh
- On the other hand, if Ubuntu 10.10 Maverik Meerkat or a similar version is installed in your system, you will need to use a different version of Macbuntu, which can be accessed by typing the following:
$wget https://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/macbuntu/macbuntu-10.10/v2.3/Macbuntu-10.10.tar.gz -O /tmp/Macbuntu-10.10.tar.gz
$tar xzvf /tmp/Macbuntu-10.10.tar.gz -C /tmp
$cd /tmp/Macbuntu-10.10/
$./install.sh
During the install process, you will be provided with the chance of choosing between different options. These are usually dependent on the different ways you wish your desktop to look like. Most of the choices will be based on your visual tastes, so make sure you choose according to them.
Finally, whenever you need to uninstall this special package for some reason you can follow the same procedure described above, with just an exception. Instead ./install.sh you will need to use the ./uninstall.sh command.
Sopcast represents one of the most popular technologies for live TV streaming, being based on the famous p2p system. However, until recently, there was no version of this software for Ubuntu and Linux in general. But now every single user can enjoy live TV right on their desktop or laptop computer with this absolutely amazing program.
In order to install Sopcast on your machine, here is what you need to do:
1. Open a new terminal. This is a classic step and is used in most of the installation processes you will encounter in Ubuntu.
2. In order to add Sopcast to Synaptic (the package administrator software integrated into Ubuntu) you will need to type the following command:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jason-scheunemann/ppa
3. The next step is related to the update of the sources list. This can be done with the following command, which needs to be typed into the same terminal in order to achieve the right effects:
sudo apt-get update
4. Now you will need to run Synaptic in order to finalize the process. This is usually done through the System menu (System -> Administration -> Synaptic). Alternatively, you can use the following simple command:
sudo synaptic
5. Look for the Sopcast package and install it. A very important step at this point is to not forget about all its dependencies. If you do not install everything, then Sopcast will not run correctly or not at all.
This is basically all you need to know if you want to install Sopcast on your machine. Whenever you need to run the player you can find it in the Application menu -> Multimedia -> Sopcast. You will surely enjoy the great variety of the channels available for every user through this system.
The following system recovery tools will be useful to you if you are facing problem of data loss or if your system is simply crashing. It is advisable to burn copies of these tools much before any disaster strikes.
Open Source and Free approach:
G4L aka Ghost for Linux is one of the system recovery tools that is mainly a cloning and hard disk and partition imaging tool. This tool is similar to “Norton Ghost”. The images created are compressed optionally and transferred to a FTP server instead of opting for cloning locally. Ideally, of the several tools described above it is advisable to use the most suitable tool for your needs. The tool that will be most useful during a crisis like a crash or server failure will be a better tool.
The Ultimate Boot CD is one of the system recovery tools which will be very helpful when you want to run CDRom-based diagnostic tools thereby consolidating as many diagnostic tools into one bootable CD as possible. Since you can now boot from USB memory devices a script you can run “Ultimate Boot CD” from USB memory stick and a script on the script on the CD will enable you to boot newer systems from your USB sticks. This is many steps ahead than many of the other recovery tools. Moreover it gives you the flexibility of booting your system with a USB memory stick.
Knoppix is one of the system recovery tools which is essentially a bootable CD with GNU/Linux software. It ensures automatic detection of hardware and supports a wide range of devices like sound cards, most of the graphic cards, USB and SCSI devices and other peripherals. It can be used as an educational CD, a Linux demo or for system recovery purposes. Alternatively it can be used as a commercial platform for software demos. There is no need to install anything on the hard-disk as the CD is capable of storing 2GB of software installed in it. Thus this tool is a truly multi-purpose recovery tool.
Proprietary solutions:
O&O Disk recovery: This software tool scans every portion of your hard-disk, digital camera or memory card for lost files. It is so effective and reliable that it is possible to reconstruct data even when files systems have been destroyed or formatted. More than 350 types of files like music formats, word documents, movie, graphics, Excel workbooks, photo and access databases can be recognized, reconstructed and restored.
SuperDuper is one of the system recovery tools makes recovery effortless as it creates a completely bootable backup effortlessly. The strengths of this software are that it is user-friendly, easy to use with a built-in scheduler that it makes backup automatically. Moreover it performs well independent of the processor that is both on Power PC Macs as well as Intel PCs. It is particularly useful when your software application with the latest update is not working or when your hard drive begins to make noise. It is also very handy when you want to restore a stable copy of your system though you do not want t lose your existing system files or cases like this. 
Several open source tools have evolved in the past and have become popular with the developers too. These tools have gained popularity not only because they come free but because of the ease to work with and the features. First let us see some code editors:
- Aptana: It is a free, JavaScript focused development environment, cross-platform and open source for building Ajax applications. It supports HTML, JavaScript, CSS languages, FTP/SFTP and has a powerful JavaScript debugger that can help in troubleshooting your code.
- Eclipse : It is an open source software framework written mainly in Java. It is an integrated development environment consisting Java development toolkit (JDK) and compiler (ECJ) for developing applications in Java. Developers can extend its capabilities by installing plug-ins such as development toolkits for other programming languages written specifically for eclipse software framework. Language packs for over a dozen languages are available.
- JEdit : It is a programmer’s text editor which has many hundreds of man-hours of development behind it. It is a java-based solution and a cross-platform product which can work on many operating systems like Windows, VMS, UNIX, OX/2 and Mac OS X.
- NVU : It is a web authoring system for Linux desktop users, Macintosh users as well as for Microsoft windows and is a competitor for similar products like Dreamweaver and Frontpage. Nvu actually means new view and makes managing a website very easy. Now even people without knowledge of HTML or technical expertise can create web pages and manage a website.
- Quanta Plus : It is a web development environment with a lot of features and is highly stable. Quanta has a vision of achieving maximal user extensibility through the best architectural foundations, best, efficient design and natural use of code.
We shall see other tools in other posts.
Amazon’s Kindle a popular portable e-book reader device, lately made Kindle for PC application that allows you to download and have books on your computer rather than having a portable e-book reader device. There’s only Kindle Windows version but the nice thing is you can have this application in Linux.
This is tested in Ubuntu 9 running Gnome. You can use different version of Linux, but first you must have Wine HQ installed to you computer. Then download the EXE file of Kindle for PC application in Amazon.
Install this with Wine HQ software loader and proceed to the normal installation, the same thing that you do in Windows environment.
Note:
- At your first run you won’t see anything at all
- Configure Wine first and add Kindle for PC as an application and make it run in Windows 98 mode
- If it won’t work, change to other mode
- When it opens successfully you have to input you Amazon email add and password to register the software.
But, please, don’t forget that if you prefer open source software, you can directly use Calibre, a powerful free software we posted a while ago.
We decided to begin this year publishing our semi-new Facebook Page and to re-stylish, just a few, our right side bar. We hope to meet you on Facebook and, again, Happy New Year!
