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.align="left"
<img src="http://i119.photobucket.com/albums/o158/galigio/blogilo_logo_zps3pmqrnq1.png" align="left" width="160" height="105">
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! 
Conky is one of the most powerful and versatile system monitors for Linux desktops. It allows you to monitor and display all the information about your hardware, top processes, network, emails and more. At the moment more than 300 different feature has been built for Conky and searching on the web you always find the perfect feature already developed by someone.
– Installation on Ubuntu:
in Terminal run: sudo apt-get install conky
– Configuration:
In Terminal run: sudo nautilus
Go to File System: /etc/conky/conky.conf
Save a copy of the original conky.conf in another location and open the original file with Gedit Text Editor
First of all change: own_window yes to own_window no
Choose your preferred alignment (some samples below…):
alignment top_right
or
alignment middle_right
or
alignment bottom_right
Play with: update_interval 1.0
and change the interval value till you find the right ratio to obtain the best speed for you (in my case it was 0.80).
Add this line to eliminate any flickering:
double_buffer yes
but, on some computers, all the icon on your desktop will be hidden and you need to use (move) the mouse to discover them if you will not add this parameter: own_window_type normal
Add, as last line (or in other position if you prefer):
${color red} ${cpugraph} to have a clear graph about cpu (obviously you can choose the color you prefer)
For automatic start of Conky at startup, please follow the following instructions:
Run Startup Applications in System –> Preferences
Click on Add and save after updating the following instructions
Name: Conky
Command: /usr/bin/conky
Restart Ubuntu to check your new Conky “applet”
Link to Conky: http://conky.sourceforge.net/
For more info about Conky’s variables: http://conky.sourceforge.net/variables.html
Find online some pre-compiled Conky configuration files, searching, for example, on: http://gnome-look.org
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.
Computer Borders 