Category Archives: Computadoras
Keep Calibre always updated! Correctly manage your digital library and new e-book formats
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As you know, Calibre is a powerful tool that allows you to easily manage your e-book library. It also allows you to back up the e-books that you buy online and to transfer them to other devices when your e-book reader is out-of-order.
Sometimes the problem is that e-book formats evolve rapidly and new versions have been “recently”created. For this reason I personally suggest to update Calibre very often because new version have, obviously, the most updated plugins and consequently support new formats.
The Calibre website has a good download section where you find easy instructions to update your e-book reader on almost any OS. In my experience, usually you spend less than 6-7 minutes to update Calibre and the advantages you have worth the time you spend.
Moreover, if you have problems to read an e-book on the last version of Calibre, check the file format (in my case was .azw3), launch Calibre and go in Preferences → Behaviour. Then, be sure that the file format you are trying to open/read is correctly activated into the list you find there. Enjoy your reading! 
Including a Ubuntu Machine into a Windows Domain
One of the great problems of interoperability between Linux and Windows has been the impossibility of Linux systems for joining a Microsoft Windows network. Subsequently, several standards to achieve this were developed over the years (see Samba), but they were far from offering normal user the chance to achieve this easily.
The infrastructure of many companies around the world, of all sizes, also relies on the use of a Windows domain. In all companies, one priority always stands out. That is to reduce information costs and expenses. Because of this, many of them have opted for the use of computers with Linux operating systems. But in many cases their integration into Active Directory environments was a problem.
Recently, a new tool was created to facilitate the full integration of a Linux system in an AD environment. And as far as today, it seems very promising. Thanks to likewise-Open5 (http://www.likewiseopen.org/), the difficulty of integration is almost null.
The following lines will illustrate the inclusion of Ubuntu in a Windows domain via likewise-Open5.
Installation
Likewise-Open5 Installation process is very simple. It can be done both through the graphical environment and command line. We will use the second variant. Therefore, a new terminal window must be open, in which you specify the following command:
sudo apt-get install likewise-open5
This command should resolve all the dependencies necessary to prepare the machine to be integrated in the Windows domain.
Adding a new machine
To actually add the machine, specify the following command in the terminal window:
sudo domainjoin-cli join domain used
Where DOMAIN is the area used for integrating the machine, and USER is the username that has the corresponding rights. You will be asked for your user password, and once successfully logged in, you are officially added the desired machine. 
Installing YamiPod on Linux: a multi-platform, very versatile iPod Manager
YamiPod is a freeware application to efficiently manage your iPod on Linux. It can be run directly from your iPod and needs no installation. It also has extra features such as rss news and podcast support, remove duplicates, easy notes editor (with multipage support), songs synchronization, playlists export, a built in music player and much more. It has been translated in 12 languages.
On Linux, the installation is really simple:
- have at least one song on iPod
- copy the libfmodex audio library to /usr/lib (you need root privileges). You’ll find this file in the package you’ve downloaded
- mount your iPod somewhere inside /mnt or /media with read/write access
- make sure you have the df command installed, which is usually part of any standard linux distribution.
To run YamiPod just double-click on YamiPod’s binary.
Using YamiPod is also so simple when you want to Copy Music to iPod: Drag&drop files into the song listbox. You can even drag and drop folders, YamiPod will add all valid music files found in sub folders.
In the window that will appear you’ll be able to assign song information (title,album name, artist…) for each single file or setting them for every file ticking the All checkboxes.
In Playlist tab you can select:
- Destination: select a playlist where to add all dragged songs.
- Lyric filename: how lyric should be named.
- Create playlist from folder: this will add all songs in a folder to a playlist named as the folder. For example if you dragged a folder called Music with 2 subfolders: 70’s and 80’s containing various files. Files in 70’s will be added to a newly created folder called 70’s. Files in the other folder will be added to a playlist called 80’s.
In Advanced tab you can select:
- Auto capital first letter: will titlecase all song tags.
- If duplicated: what to do if song exists on iPod.
- Get song info by path and filename: if your song tags are missing but you named and placed your song following a particular order, you can tell YamiPod to get song tags out of filename a path.
Tips:
Holding SHIFT while dragging will add songs to currently selected playlist. If you’ve selected multiple songs to add you can quickly edit next (previous) song information by pressing ALT+down (up). 
LibreOffice vs. OpenOffice! What’s the difference?
Since the end of September 2010, a group of German OpenOffice volunteers left definitively the project to join the The Document Foundation and develop a fork version of the famous free productivity platform now controlled by Oracle. After 
just few months we have LibreOffice: a (more or less) new cross-platform productivity software based on OpenOffice version 3.3 beta. We compared both the free suites and apparently we did not notice particular differences in features and tools. Also the graphic interface is similar between the two platforms and the buttons position is the same. At the moment LibreOffice supports less languages in its Linux and MAC OS X versions and it is not compatible with Solaris based PCs. Both the productivity platforms are able to use the OpenOffice extension library. Consequently, it is clear that it’s too early to notice relevant technical differences between the two competitors but, for sure, something will show off in the next versions. In fact LibreOffice has been created to guarantee a vendor independent office suite which can be developed with no copyright software chunks. The goal is prestigious and we can only say, Good Luck LibreOffice! 
How to manage podcast and RSS reader on Firefox!
This week, in our Linux Page (in Spanish), we posted some lines about editing and changing the feed/podcast reader on Firefox when you have previously chosen a specific program to automatically subscribe to podcasts. If you are using Firefox 3.5 on Linux, you can simply go to Edit -> Preferences and type Feed in the search bar. At this point you have a button menu with all the different options; we suggest to select the Preview in Firefox one. If you have an older version of Firefox that does not allow you to follow the above path (or for some reason, by default, you prefer the most difficult way) you have to open a new Tab and type about:config in it. After a brief warning message you can type Feed in the location bar and find the browser.feeds.handler line. At this point it is necessary to change the value field to Ask and next time you will decide to subscribe a podcast you will free to choose your favourite program. We hope this few lines could be useful and easy to execute for you all!
How to solve a bug in Imagewriter (write a.img file on a USB device)
This week in our Linux Page (in Spanish) we posted a brief suggestion about a problem (better a bug) we found when you used Imagewriter. In fact we tried to write an image on a USB key but it stopped different times reporting in “Details”, as last information /dev/sdh successfully unmounted; where sdh was obviously our USB key. First of all, using (System – Administration) Synaptic Package Manager, we tried to reinstall Imagewriter but only after some time on internet we solve the mistery… For some reasons Imagewriter runs better if the .img file is as near as possible to the Home folder. In our case we copied the image file on the User folder after the Home and in the next test we made we successfully wrote the file on sdh (our USB device). We hope this simple tip could be useful for some of you!
SmartViper: an online search engine to better analyze and improve your website!
Today, in our Freeware Page, we posted a brief review about SmartViper, an online search engine which allows you to analyze your website and all the similar sites built by your competitors. SmartViper is very simple to use: you can directly insert the web-address of the site you want to analyze or a keyword to find your direct competitors and find datas related to their websites. SmartViper has a double goal: you can study deeper your site and try to improve it or find the “winning” features your competitors use to predominate. SmartViper generates complete and interesting reports which are full of links to its blog where you can learn more about developing some peculiar characteristics of your website. Something to try!
How to estimate the value of your blog or website: $timator
This week, in our Linux Page (in Spanish), we posted a brief review about $timator: an easy to use website which allows you to better understand the value of your blog or other website. $timator is able to give you a good quaotation af yhe hipothetic value of a website calculating its ranking on search engines, social networks and volume of visitors. If your blog/website is a good one you will spend some minutes waiting $timator results but it could be a good tool for a first value test before buying a website. Recommended!
How to create free different local telephone numbers linked to your Skype identity: Ring2Skype
This week, in our Linux Page (in Spanish), we posted a brief post about Ring2Skype. Ring2Skype is a new free service which allows you to create local telephone numbers linked to your Skype user-id. After filling in few datas you get a telephone number in 31 different countries. In your email you will find a welcome letter with a summary of all the data of your new Ring2Skype account, your new telephone number and an extension to share with your local contacts. In this way, a person located in a different country could call you spending just for a local call. On the other hand it is possible to create more local telephone numbers so all your contacts in different countries could be in contact with you as if you are living in their same city. Recommended if it will remain free also in the future!
Computer Borders 