Category Archives: tools

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

How to obtain a free digital signing service for your personal documents

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Sooner or later you need to digitally sign a document. If you have never done it before it’s only a matter of time, you will need a digital signing service sooner than you can imagine. The problem is represented to be ready without being obliged to spend money for it.

You will find different offers online and many trusty companies will try to convince you that their offer its the best but many of them limit your possibility to freely sign documents when you really need.

During my tests I tried a bunch of them and, for my experience, just few worth any attention.

In particular I was positively impressed by hellosign and Adobe Echo Sign. They are both interesting but hellosign offers something more. I mean you have not to spend a cent for both but Abobe limits the number of documents you can free sign to just 5 documents each month. If you are not used to digitally sign your docs this limitation doesn’t represent a problem but, trust me, when you will begin you soon need more than 5 free signatures a month.

HelloSign also allows you to upload an image file with your handwritten (and, of course, scanned) signature or create a new one choosing between some different fonts. You have no limits for signing documents but you can send only three signature requests a month (enough for my present necessities). Moreover, you can browse into the hellosign Documents folder and find all the documents you have signed before.

On the other hand, Adobe Echo Sign request more personal information when you sign-up for the service and, as we already underlined, it limits your experience to just 5 activities a month.

Try them and let us know if you have already found a better, free, online service to digitally sign your documents. Good luck!

How to manually mount USB drives on Ubuntu

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The first time I had this kind of problem was when I was trying to create a bootable USB drive and a pop-up windows appeared informing me that “you must first mount USB drive /dev/sdc1 to a mount-point. Most distributions will do this automatically after you remove and reinsert the USB drive”. I had never had this matter on Linux because, normally, all the USB drives are immediately recognized and mounted but there is always a first time….

After some googling I discovered that a specific program dconf-editor could help me to check the Linux settings and to consequentlyresolve the situation.

First of all you need to install dconf-editor on your Linux so you have to open a Terminal and type:

sudo apt-get install dconf-tools

After the installation you launch dconf-editor (for MATE environment it’s into the System Tool menu) and navigate it to media-handling:

org –> gnome –> desktop –> media-handling

Now you have to be sure that commands automount and automount-open are both flagged.

If you discover that they are already flagged, its necessary to manually create a mount point using the Terminal.

Open a Terminal and type:

df -H

to see the mounted disks. If you are not able to find the USB drive that you want to mount then type:

sudo fdisk -l

and you’ll see all disks (mounted/unmounted).

Now you are able to know the right drive identity (e.g. sdb1, sdc1, sdd1) that your OS assigned to that specific drive. Memorize it and start to create the mount point:

sudo mkdir /media/newusb

where “newusb” is the mount point name you want to assign to your USB drive.

Then type:

sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /media/newusb

where “sdb1” is the drive identity we found before and “newusb” the mount-point name you choose.

That’s it, now your USB drive has a mounting point and you can use it (in my case I was able to create a bootable USB drive usiing Unetbootin)

You can find some extra useful tips about mounting USB drives at the Ubuntu community.

How to dig more information on Wikipedia using Google

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Wikipedia contains many information about million of topics but each single thematic page doesn’t contain all the possible info or links about that specific subject. In fact some other details about a topic, or related to it, can be in other parts of Wikipedia not linked to the main topic.

In my experience, sometimes you can find some really interesting details about a topic if you simply use a Google query as:

site:en.wikipedia.org “Chet Baker”

Where the topic is “Chet Baker” and it is searched by Google into the entire Wikipedia.org website. If you deeply peep the results you can now find some information not contained in the “Chet Baker” page in Wikipedia.

These tip is really simple but I think it could be useful for journalists, data miners or for all that people who are not satisfied by a simple Wikipedia search.

Do you really need to buy a scanner?

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If you work in an office where many document are daily processed you will appreciate one quick tip about using Google Drive as a on-the-go scanner. As you certainly know you can set Google Drive to always convert documents into Google Formats when you upload a new one. You can also decide to automate the process and Google will automatically convert the files without asking you again about it but, for my experience, it’s more more flexible and useful to define the conversion parameters every time I decide to upload a new document. For this reason I ticked the “Confirm settings before each upload” option in the upload menu.

One, not so known, feature is represented by the internal Google OCR that is able to read text also contained in jpg files. This means that you can simply take a picture of the text you want to modify and Google will convert it into a text file in few secs. During some test we made, a medium quality photograph is more than sufficient to have good results with Google OCR.

To activate this feature don’t forget to put a tick on the “Convert text from PDF and image files to Google documents” option and to specify the document language when you upload the jpg files into your Google Drive.

Get power on pdf files and modify them on the fly with pdfmod (PDF Mod) and PDF Editor on Ubuntu

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Since its invention, the pdf format has been the most versatile standard to share documents with a fixed layout. Everyday we share, read and create a lot of pdf files but sometimes we would like to modify them to create “new” personalized version more suitable to our needs.

For example, sometimes you need to extrapolate just a page from a pdf files or you want just to create different versions of the same file with few variations for your colleagues. For all these purpose pdfmod is the right solution for you.

Pdfmod has not been developed for some years because the versions we were able to find for Linux were the 2011 ones but, for what we know and tested, it still runs on all main platforms as Linux, Windows and OSX. Pdfmod is a little bit different from other similar programs because it allows you just to modify the pdf file changing pages order, deleting pages or adding new pages from other pdf files. It also allows you to change some main metadata (title, author, keywords and subjest) of your pdf file in just few clicks and, of course, you can save the modified copy of the original pdf file.

These features could be basic for more sophisticated people but I can assure you that, if you have the need to do this kind of work different times in a week, pdfmod is the software you will use more often. Installation on Ubuntu is very simple, you just have to open a terminal and type:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:pdfmod-team/ppa

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install pdfmod

and you will find a new PDF Mod launcher into the Accessories menu.

To get complete power on your pdf files we suggest pdfedit (PDF Editor) which allows you to “break” protected pdf files and modify them. To install pdfedit, use Synaptics Package Manager or the Ubuntu Software Center.

Don’t forget, when you use pdfedit you just have to open the “target” pdf file, save it using the Flatten feature you find into the Tool menu and open again the “new” file to modify it without any restriction.

Easy to install and simple to use, in few words the above described programs worth a try!

Remastersys: the easy tool to backup your PC or to create a personalized Linux (Debian – Ubuntu) distribution

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Everyday we improve the OS we usually use adapting it to our specific needs. Consequently, we are worried about major OS upgrades between one version to another because we know that bugs could affect our installation and indirectly corrupt our saved data. Usually backup software are the right solution for data but, if something goes wrong, we have to reinstall all our OS and reconfigure it. Better, we have to spend many hours to download and configure all the single software we had installed into our original OS.

This is always but annoying and time-wasting. To avoid this specific problem we can decide to install Remastersys on our Linux distribution and use it regularly. Remastersys is very simple to install. For example, if you use Ubuntu, you have just to download its pgp key and save it into the Home folder then you can go to Synaptic Package Manager –> Other Software –> Add and enter the apt line specific for your Ubuntu version:

deb http://www.remastersys.com/ubuntu precise main

deb http://www.remastersys.com/ubuntu quantal main

if you use quantal.

On Synaptic Package Manger go to Edit and click on Reload Package Information then look for remastersys. Now you have Remastersys launcher under System –> Administration.

Remastersys has a very intuitive menu and you will be able to powerfully use it after just few tests. Please, remember to set-up Remastersys using its Customize –> Configure menu and you avoid any beginner mistake. If your iso will be bigger than 4GB, and you want to save it in to a FAT disk, you have to back-up documents, pictures, videos, etc.. separately because FAT formatted disks don’t allow files bigger than 4GB.

Important, if you are creating a ISO to distribute it to friends, don’t forget to not include personal folders, documents or your sensible data. Enjoy it and, if you want to share with us your personal Debian – Ubuntu distribution, add the specific download link into a comment to this post!

Repair GRUB on IBM Thinkpad – The best Linux solution

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When you decide to add another OS to the usual OS on your PC you can potentially damage your grub package. The Grub (GNU GRand Unified Bootloader) is the “soul” of you hardware, the program which allows your PC to find the OS during the boot-up.

Today we will not discuss about the old and new malware that are able to influence the GRUB but we will focus our attention on how repairing your computer when you see grub rescue> on your black screen…

The first solution you can find on internet is a detailed command solution but it was unfortunately usefulness in my case because my PC was not able to correctly accept the insmod command. Consequently I decided to use a portable rescue CD-USB to fix the matter.

Normally, if you use an Ubuntu derived OS, you can use Boot-Repair and it will semi-automatically fix your Grub problem in just few minutes. In any case, it is moderately easy but you have to be 100% sure about what HD partition you want to repair. As usual, this wasn’t my case. I had to find something more generic -in term of serviced OS- but effective.

At the end I bumped into the Boot Repair Disk. I had just to burn the free iso on a RW DVD and I could start to test it on my “out of service” laptop. The Boot Repair live CD is a wonderful tool! As soon as you boot up the live CD, Boot Repair guides you to the best possible solution. You have just to follow the suggestion on the screen and, in few minutes, the Boot Repair Disk is able to fix the Grub and to perfectly restore your computer.

Easy, Fast, Effective!!

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

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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

How to install Android on a Nook Color using a Linux OS – Practical Tips

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First of all, I wanted to test one of the latest version of Android 4 but I didn’t want to spend money for a new device so I decided to use/sacrifice the Nook Color that I used rarely because I am a Kindle enthusiast.

Secondly I didn’t want to void the Nook warranty or permanently modify its ROM.

Last but not least I never pretended to discover a new way to modify the Nook but just find the most simple and practical tutorial into internet.

After some hours of internet surfing I found some interesting commercial solutions (e.g. n2acards) and a lot of good tutorial posts and my final choice was one by xda-developers.

I bought a class 4, 8 GB micro SD card and I followed the detailed instructions described into the xda-developers post…, but I had some practical problems because I didn’t read carefully all the text.

The xda-developers tutorial is really well done and full of right information but, as for my experience, it is best to focus your attention on some few points/steps.

In particular:

– you have to create a bootable micro SD card using these commands on Terminal:

sudo fdisk -l

(in this way you will discover the right address of your SD card, in my case was “sdc”. Pay attention! If you choose the wrong address you risk to wipe your hard disk)

sudo dd if=generic-sdcard-v1.3-CM7-9-10-larger-Rev5.img of=/dev/sdc

where generic-sdcard-v1.3-CM7-9-10-larger-Rev5.img is the the image file you find in the xda-developers webpage and sdc the right address of your SD card

– when you download the three necessary “software”, be sure to choose the right one for the CM you have chosen. I mean: if you choose to install CM 9 you need gapps-ics but, if you prefer CM 10, gapps-jb is the right software for you. If you don’t use the proper file, you will have this type of “error message” when you boot your new Android:

Unfortunately, Google services framework has stopped

Unfortunately, Setup Wizard has stopped

Adding the zip files suggested on the xda-developers guide you are now ready to test the Android 4 on your Nook. During the first boot up the Linux software on the SD card will inflate the proper files creating all the right folders and compiling the libraries. To complete this step you will need about 8/10 minutes and, at the end, the Nook will automatically shut down.

In my case I installed CM 10 and during my first boot-up, after I completed the installation, I was not able to use the Android Keyboard and I read this error message on the screen:

Unfortunately, Android keyboard (AOSP) has stopped

Luckily, I was not the first user to have this kind of problem and I read the right tip into another xda-developer blog. I had to come back at the beginning of the Tutorial and change the gapps zip file to an older version, more precisely the 2012-10-11. After this, the new installation the Android 4 run properly on the Nook Color.

For my experience, the Android 4 on the Nook Color is slowest than I supposed but it is not so slow to force me to come back to an older Android version. When I installed a couple of free apps, Startup Manager and Memory Booster, the speed improved and Android was more fluid.