Category Archives: freeware tip

Get Kindle for PC to Ubuntu (if you really don’t like Calibre)

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.

Computer Borders on Facebook

1 Reply

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!

DupeGuru: potente applicación para encontrar Archivos, Música y Fotos duplicados

4 Replies

Hoy os quiero hablar de un aplicación disponible en 3 diferentes formatos. se llama DupeGuru . Me parece una de las aplicaciones mas practicas y sencillas para encontrar: Archivos, Fotos o Canciones repetidas. Desde la propia pagina Web es posible descargase la que se necesites; es disponible para Windows, Mac OS X y por supuesto Linux ( 32/64 bit ) para usuario Debian/ Ubuntu es posible descargar directamente el paquete .deb e instalarlo en un par de click. Con esta aplicación podremos ver los archivos que tengamos duplicados y gracias a los datos que vienen incluidos será posible decidir cual nos interesa guardar y cual eliminar para recuperar espacio y tener mas orden en nuestro PC. En la pagina de descarga es posible elegir cual de las 3 aplicaciones se quiere descargar según nuestras necesitad. En la misma pagina hay disponible otras aplicaciones: MoneyGuru, PictureGuru y MusicGuru. La primera es una aplicación especifica para mantener controlada nuestras finanzas y las otras son aplicaciónes especificas para mantener organizada nuestra colecciones. En fin, os animo a probarlas porque yo ya lo he echo y tengo que decir que merece la pena.
Descarga DupeGuru

LuckyBackup: Copias de Seguridad Sin Complicaciones

Leave a reply

En estos días he estado buscando un programa que permita hacer Copias de Seguridad y que sea de uso practico, sencillo y muy intuitivo. Después de ver varios programas me he decantado sin lugar a duda para LuckyBackup. Para instalarlo es posible directamente desde los repositorios de nuestro sistema (Ubuntu y derivados) o directamente desde su propia Web y bajar la ultima versión 0.4.4 . Yo he instalado esta ultima versión y tengo que confirmar que es el mejor programa de Copias de Seguridad que he encontrado hasta el momento. LuckyBackup es muy fácil de configurar y permite efectuar diferentes sincronizaciones y mantener a salvo nuestros datos y todos los archivos. También he echo diferentes pruebas pasando carpetas a memorias USB, Disco Duro Externo y Disco Duro Interno, todo sin ningún problema (Descarga LuckyBackup).

Como arreglar la conexión de red en Kubuntu 10.04

Leave a reply

Hace unos días tuve un problema con mi Kubuntu 10.04 y la conexión de red. Cuando fui por apagar el PC, en lugar de apagarlo le dí a hibernar por error y cuando fui otra vez a encenderlo no tenia conexión de red disponible. Mirando en el icono que informa respecto a la conexión de red tenia un único mensaje que decía: Gestión de Redes Desactivada. Por tanto que yo intentara de buscar la forma de activar el gestor de redes, no encontraba nada y ninguna opción disponible. Después de varios intentos tuve que ponerme a buscar en la Web con mi portátil para ver si encontraba la forma de solucionar el problema. Afortunadamente encontré que el problema surge en cuanto se apague el PC de forma instantánea o como en mi caso por hibernar, por esos motivos parece que NetworkManager no borra el archivo de estado y cuando se vuelve a reiniciar el PC se genera este error. Para solucionar el problema hay que escribir una serie de comandos en el Terminal para borrar e archivo y volver a reactivar el Gestor de Redes. Os añado las líneas de comandos porque puedo garantizar que es una solución realmente efectiva:

sudo service network-manager stop

cd /var/lib/NetworkManager/

sudo rm NetworkManager.state

sudo service network-manager start

Rediscover Prism by Mozilla (Ubuntu, MAC and Windows tips)

1 Reply

In 2007, when Prism was launched, there were some enthusiastic reviews about this application. Then the widget era began and Prism popularity decreased. Anyway, Prism is still a powerful application for all that people who desire to run their more often used web application saving RAM and CPU resources. Prism, based on XULRunner, is multi platform, easy to use and very flexible. To use it on Ubuntu you can launch the Terminal and type:

sudo apt-get install prism

or using the Synaptics Package Manager (System —> Administration —> Synaptics Package Manager). Then go to Applications —> Internet —> Prism and a small windows appears. Now, fill in all the required information: the web application URL, the name you prefer, settings and do not forget to click on the Desktop shortcut option. At this point you will find a new rough icon on your Desktop with the name you chose. The first time you use it, with the right mouse button click on it and go to Properties —> Permissions and Allow executing file as program. If you want to change the icon you have to click on it (with the right mouse button), go to Properties —> Basic and choose your favorite icon clicking the icon on the upper left corner. If all are steps are annoying for you, it is possible to use Prism as add-on for Firefox. In this case, on Firefox, go to Tools —> Add-ons —> Get Add-ons and type Prism on the search bar. You will install Prism as a simple add-on for Firefox. Now, you can automatically generate a Prism application just clicking on Tools —> Convert Website to Application when you are in the web application page.

On Windows or MAC we suggest to download the standalone package directly from the official web page or install Prism as Firefox add-on following the same steps we described for Ubuntu. If you use the Prism standalone package you have to decompress it in your favorite location. For Windows users: when you set up a new Prism application, try the tray menu option but do not forget to click on the Desktop shortcut or you will not be able to find again the application after you close it.

In my experience, Prism is really useful with all the Google web applications, with Zoho services and Pandora. Try and enjoy it!

A brief but useful video about using yahoo.com (and others) through WebMail on Thunderbird 3.1 (Windows version)

Leave a reply

How to read yahoo.com (and many others) email accounts on Thunderbird 3.1 (Ubuntu and Windows tips)

1 Reply

Many on line email providers don’t allow you to use their accounts with POP email clients such as Thunderbird 3.1. To solve this “matter” we have a couple of possible solutions: FreePOPs and WebMail. Today, we will discuss about Webmail that we tested on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and Windows XP. WebMail is substantially a Thunderbird’s add-ons but it is not featured by Mozilla. Using this add-on you are able to manage Yahoo, Hotmail, mail.com, GMail, Libero, and AOL email accounts. The installation is similar in Ubuntu and Windows; on both, you have to install the core WebMail add-on and restart Thunderbird then you can add all the other components (Yahoo, Hotmail, etc..) you prefer. Then you have to modify the Thunderbird server settings following the instructions provided by WebMail:

POP
Server Type : POP
Incoming Server: localhost
UserName : username@domain

SMTP
Server Name: localhost
UserName : username@domain

Do not forget to set the Connection Security to None.

Only on Ubuntu, you need also to manually modify the incoming and outgoing ports because when you use Thunderbird through WebMail on Ubuntu, you will have a “could not connect to server local host; the connection was refused” message. This problem can be easily solved substituting the default ports on both WebMail add-on and Thunderbird ports:

– Thunderbird —> Edit —> Account Settings. Highlight the account you want to manage and go to Server Settings. There you can modify the POP Server Mail port setting it to a number bigger than 1000 (in my case I put 1250). Then go to Outgoing Servers and Edit the SMTP account you want to modify (I changed the default port to 1025).

– Thunderbird —> Tools —> Add-ons —> WebMail —> Preferences and put the same port numbers you have set on the previous step.

All this because ports below 1024 seems to be blocked on Ubuntu (if you know why, please post a comment).

For security, restart Thunderbird and it will immediately download and send your emails. Last but not least, if your on line email account is not supported by WebMail, do not forget to try FreePOPs.

How to protect your profile and emails on Thunderbird 3 (Ubuntu and Windows instructions)

Leave a reply

On Thunderbird, the only way to be 99% sure nobody will read your emails is to save your profile on an encrypted folder (or disk partition) using e.g. TrueCrypt but if you are not concerned that you are under surveillance, you can simply use a quick and useful trick that allows Thunderbird to ask for the Master password every time you launch it.

In Ubuntu you have to follow two different steps. First of all, go to Edit —> Preferences —> Security —> Passwords and create your Master Password. Secondly, go to Edit —> Preferences —> Advanced —> Config Editor (click on “I’ll be careful, I promise”). Then in the filter bar, type password and change the parameter for mail.password_protect_local_cache to True. The next time you will launch Thunderbird nothing will be displayed (old and new emails) before you insert the correct Master Password.

If you are using Thunderbird on Windows you have to modify mail.password_protect_local_cache going to Tools —> Options —> Advanced —> Config Editor (click on “I’ll be careful, I promise”). Then, as for Ubuntu, in the filter bar type password and change the parameter for mail.password_protect_local_cache to True.

Dear Readers: Computer Borders is back!

Leave a reply

We need to apologize to all of you because we promised weekly posts and then we took quite a long hiatus. We didn’t mean to be gone for so long, but life got strange, and so on and so forth. But now we are back, and we would like to apologize with all you.

On a more positive note, though, we just checked our reader’s statistics, only to see that we still have almost 200 daily readers. And, believe us, we are shocked! Thanks for waiting our return, everybody.We decided to change something on our blog. First of all we will not duplicate our posts in the Linux and Freeware pages but we post them just in the homepage. In this way, we will have some posts in English and other in Spanish… it is not orthodox but…. why not? We dare!

We would like to know what you all think of the blog so far. What would you like to read? Leave us plenty of criticism in the comment sections. And, you will see a weekly post, starting Monday!