Category Archives: News

A list of the best free online University courses in USA and UK. Some tips to choose between them, successfully attend only the best ones and create your aside University career without spending a cent!

Today opportunities

During the last two years the number of free online University courses exploded on the web. Today it is possible to attend prestigious courses by important USA and UK Universities and receive a final certification without spending a cent.

The good news are that these courses are interesting, well structured and you have a real possibility to increase your knowledge if  approach them in the right way.

The first time you look for the free online University courses you are disoriented by the number and the many different topics they cover. The problem is to make the right selection in order not to waste time and energies for something you (and you career) don’t actually need.

How to select the right courses

1- Make a first selection between courses choosing only that are really interesting for you
2 – Check if you will receive a participation certificate if you complete the course
3 – Honestly evaluate your real, deep, interest for the courses that will not provide any written certification. I mean: “Do you really think that they will increase your knowledge and will be determinant for your career or life?”
4 – Don’t overestimate your capacities. Read very carefully the required background to attend the courses
5 – Don’t underestimate the time you need to attend the courses and do all the “homework” and the suggested readings
6 – Finally, select two (or more) courses and “Create” your free aside University career. Try to choose courses that have logical and “career path” connections between them. The important thing is what you are really learning on particular related topics you consider important for your career, not the number of disordered certification you can write on your resume.

A list of free online University courses in USA and UK

1- https://www.coursera.org/

2 – https://www.udacity.com/

3 – http://gtmooc.com/how-it-works/

4 – http://www.udemy.com/

5 – https://www.edx.org/

6 – https://6002x.mitx.mit.edu/

7 – http://www.powersearchingwithgoogle.com/course

8 – https://code.google.com/edu/security/index.html

Please, add a comment to this post to inform or recommend other courses we have not mentioned here!! Thank you! AddThis

“Unemployee of the year” a worldwide contest for young people by Unhate

Usually I try to don’t promote commercial brands on my blog. Just sometimes I break this rule when I think the technology or the benefits could worth people attention. Today is one of that rare cases. Since few days, Unhate (a foundation directly related to Benetton) has created a special contest reserved to all people around the world. To participate you must be between 18 and 30 years old and you must not have a job yet. The best 100 projects will be funded with € 5.000,00 each. If you want to send your project or if you just want more information you have to visit the Unhate website. AddThis

Michael Moore, Oliver Stone Back Julian Assange In NYT Op-Ed by Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mobileweb/2012/08/20/michael-moore-oliver-stone-julian-assange-nyt_n_1813747.html

Recovering deleted files from USB disks on Ubuntu

Everyday we use USB keys to transfer data without transmitting them through the t. The USB keys and portable disks are small, light and their data capacity allow us to move in privacy huge files. This idyll sometimes is broken by a fatal mistake: we unintentionally delete an important file. Normally, if we are smart we recover the erased file in the Trash but in other situations when we realize the mistake we had made is too late.

In this circumstances is very import to stop to use our USB key or portable disk till we are able to use a good software for data recovering. On Ubuntu you have a wise number of dedicated software that can do this job for you, the most powerful run on Terminal as testdisk, foremost, and scalpel but you can also use a “minimal GUI” software as PhotoRec.

PhotoRec is very intuitive to use and it is able to recover many data formats from jpeg to db. After you install it using Synaptic Package Manager or the Software Center you can launch it in Terminal with:

sudo photorec

Immediately a GUI Terminal interface appears and you have just to follow the instruct  ions you visualize on your monitor.

Using the arrows and the Enter keys you have to:

1 – Choose the USB device from where you want to recover the data

2 – Select the partition table (usually Intel)

3 – Specify the partition table

4 – Select the right filesystem where the data were stored

5 – Decide if you want to try the data recovering from all the free space

6 – select the directory where you want to store the recovered data. IMPORTANT: do not store the recovered data on the same USB key you are scanning for recovering

7 – Wait till PhotoRec finishes the recover operations.

PhotoRec is fast and, during our tests, we were able to recover almost the 100% of data. Not bad!!! AddThis

Merry Christmas

Sendoid: share your file through torrents

The first time I read about sendoid.com I was really interested about the services offered by this site. In fact, the possibility to share files with my friends regardless dimensions through a torrent protocol appeared to be very useful.

Unfortunately, in my personal experience the results are not so positive as promised by Sendoid.com. When you decide to try it, you can choose between the online version and the desktop widget built on the Adobe AIR technology. The widget installation is easy, graphically nice and simple to use. Furthermore, the online interface is very well structured in few clicks you are able to “build” the torrent url to share your file directly from you PC to other people through torrent protocols. For this reason, if you decide to use the online version, you are not allowed to close the webpage with the url because it is the “door” to keep the torrent working.

The first problem is that the data are not protected by https and you can only decide to add a password to your file. On the other hand, with just one click you can decide to share the file with more than a person.

The second, big, problem you have with Sendoid is the transfer speed because, in my tests, the service was not so competitive in terms of timing. A light 160MB ISO needed more than 20 minutes to complete its transfer from my computer to another located in a near city. Unfortunately I was not able to understand if this specific problem was related to the ISPs or to the sendoid service but I obtained the same results in different extra tests I decided to try with similar files.

To conclude I decided not to use sendoid and now I am looking for another program or website which could offer similar features. Please, if you have something to suggest, do not hesitate to add a comment! AddThis

Try Lib-Ray: “Sintel” Lib-Ray PROTOTYPE v0.2

The following text comes from: http://www.archive.org/details/sintelLib-rayPrototypeV0.2:

‘The Sintel PROTOTYPE of the Lib-Ray free/open fixed media format for high-definition video without DRM or other “anti-features”. Since it is a prototype, it comes with no guarantees about stability or compatibility, but it is best viewed using Google’s Chromium web browser in full-screen mode on a system with a 1920×1080 “full HD” screen. Some features do not yet work even on this configuration, however, as they require elements of HTML5 that are not yet implemented. Because it’s a short movie, the ISO is relatively small (2.1 GB), and it will fit easily onto an inexpensive single-layer DVD-R disk”.

More details about the project are also available from the Lib-Ray site: http://lib-ray.orgAddThis

Setting up File Sharing Between Windows, Linux, and Macs with Samba! by NixiePixel

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Samba: share Linux Folders with your windows machines by technoblogical

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Another way to share files between Ubuntu and Windows

This tutorial will show you another way to share and to access the network share folders between Windows and Ubuntu machines. When file sharing is enabled, both systems can access files and folders on any of the PCs. Users with accounts on Ubuntu systems will also be able to access the content directly from your home.

1. To begin, you will need to log on to your Windows operating system. Click ‘Start’ -> search for ‘Network and Sharing Center’ and click on it.

2. Access the ‘Change advanced settings sharing. ” option.

3. Enable file sharing and backup as well.

4. At this point, you need to switch your operating system to Ubuntu. Once you log in, click on ‘Ubuntu menu -> System Tools ”

5. Then select ‘Ubuntu Software Center. ”

6. Find and install ‘Samba‘. This software is required for a better compatibility between the two operating systems.

7. After Samba is installed, you should go to ‘System → Administration –> Samba’.

8. Then click ‘Preferences -> Server Settings’.

9. Write the name of the workgroup you set for your Windows PC(s). If you do not know the exact name because you did not set it, the default name for Windows Workgroups is set to ‘WORKGROUP‘ (capitalizing is not required, however, since Windows is generally not case-sensitive). AddThis