Category Archives: freeware tip

Blogilo: the Linux blog client to create new posts on your local computer

Yes, I know! Talking about Blogilo is not an hot news but the “recent” version 1.1 (according to the Help Menu in Blogilo software) has added some new features and something has changed. Some years ago, when I tested Blogilo, I thought that this software was a good “concept” but it lacked of too many features as compared with e.g. online WordPress.com platform. With version 1.1 these lacks have been reduced and now Blogilo becomes interesting if you are looking for a software that could be used daily for offline posting.

Blogilo now has less bugs than in the past and it is possible to write posts with just few seldom crashes. The user interface is intuitive and after the installation you spend just few minutes for adding and setting your blog. The positive thing is that Blogilo works with all the main blog platforms and it could be considered as one of the most complete blog client for Linux.

The matter is that blog platforms evolve quickly and Blogilo, as all its competitors, seems to be slower than many of them. In fact, it could happen that some up-to-date features are immediately not supported and you have to manually modify your post and adding them directly through the host website (e.g. WordPress).

One of the most annoying problems I continue to have with Blogilo is about wrapping text around the image/picture I am used to put at the beginning of every post I write. It is a simple matter to solve but at every post I have to manually change the html code.

As for my experience you have two different ways to solve this isssue.

The first is to edit the image/picture after you inserted it into the post and add the value “allign” selecting the right options in the Advanced Menu (why the Advanced Menu is not available when you insert a new image/picture?).

The second (faster) is to go to the Html Editor tag into Blogilo and add this code at the end of the image <img> tag:

align="left"

For example writing this post I added:

<img src="http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o158/galigio/blogilo_logo_zps3pmqrnq1.png" align="left" width="160" height="105">

Simple to solve but really annoying when you have so little time to dedicate to your blog….

To sum up it is possible to affirm that Blogilo really contains all the features to write a blog but if you need something more professional you have to spend some hours, after the installation, to learn how to find the right solutions for your specific needs.

———–

References:

http://blogilo.gnufolks.org

http://www.echoecho.com/htmlimages08.htm

Keep Calibre always updated! Correctly manage your digital library and new e-book formats

1 Reply

Library 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!

WordPress as search engine

Leave a reply

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.

Gmail advanced searching: how to create a powerful query to catch a “wanted” email – Computer forensic

Leave a reply

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

Video – Install Macbuntu on Ubuntu 11.04 by seaner992

Leave a reply

How to Make Your Ubuntu Desktop Look Like the One of Mac OS

2 Replies

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.

How to: Use Google Music for Android by CNET

Leave a reply

How to Install Sopcast for free live TV in Ubuntu

2 Replies

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.

System Recovery Tools: a possible cross-platform approach through open source and proprietary solutions

1 Reply

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.

Open Source tools and applications for web developers

Leave a reply

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.