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Addi – A MATLAB clone for Android phones and tablets

2011-10-25T20:52:25Z

Back in May 2010, The Mathworks released MATLAB Mobile which allows you to connect to a remote MATLAB session via an iPhone. I took a quick look and was less than impressed since what I REALLY wanted was the ability to run MATLAB code natively on my phone. Many other people, however, liked what The Mathworks had done but what THEY really wanted was an Android version. There is so much demand for an Android version of MATLAB Mobile that there is even a Facebook page campaigning for it. Will there ever be anything MATLABy that fully satisfies Android toting geeks such as me?

Enter Addi, an Android based MATLAB/Octave clone that has the potential to please a lot of people, including me. Based on the Java MATLAB library, JMathLib, Addi already has a lot going for it including the ability to execute .m file scripts and functions natively on your device, basic plotting (via an add-on package called AddiPlot) and the rudimentary beginnings of a toolbox system (See AddiMappingPackage). All of this is completely free and brought to us by just one man, Corbin Champion.

It works pretty well on my Samsung Galaxy S apart from the occasional glitch where I can’t see what I’m typing for short periods of time. Writing MATLAB code using the standard Android keyboard is also a bit of a pain but I believe that a custom on-screen keyboard is in the works which will hopefully improve things. As you might expect, there is only a limited subset of MATLAB commands available (essentially everything listed at http://www.jmathlib.de/docs/handbook/index.php sans the plotting functions) but there is enough to be fun and useful…just don’t expect to be able to run advanced, toolbox heavy codes straight out of the box.

Where Addi really shines, however, is on an ASUS EEE Transformer. Sadly, I don’t have one but a friend of mine let me install Addi on his and after five minutes of playing around I was in love (It even includes command history!). Some have pointed out to me that life would probably be easier with a netbook running Linux and Octave but where’s the fun in that To be honest, I actually find it much more fun using a limited version of MATLAB because it makes me do so much more myself rather than providing a function for every conceivable calculation…great for learning and fiddling around.

Addi is a fantastic free MATLAB clone for Android based devices that I would heartily recommend to all MATLAB fans. Get it, try it and let me know what you think

5 iPad Apps for Saving and Viewing PowerPoint Presentations

2011-10-12T23:58:49Z

When you receive a powerpoint presentation in your Mail app in iPad, the only option is to either open it with a third-party app or print it. There’s no options for saving it for future reference.

I was recently thrust into this situation when my high school-aged daughter’s photography teacher sent me notes for a future test via a few powerpoint presentations. I wanted to save this to my iPad so that I could help my daughter study. Reading it through the Mail app just seemed so clunky, and I didn’t want to have to save this email for the entire school year. I needed to find an app that would allow me to save these powerpoints within my iPad. Apparently, there are apps for this.

Note: In your mail app, it only show four apps in the list of possible exporting choices. This doesn’t mean that there is only four possibilities. It is just that it only shows four choices. The others can be found by scrolling up and down through the list.

1. Evernote

The almighty Evernote seems to be able to do everything, including saving and viewing powerpoint presentation. At times, it seems like the only thing it won’t help you with is balancing your checkbook. Documents can be created and moved around, and synced wirelessly across the different devices. It can also handle viewing and storing your powerpoint presentations.

One disadvantage is that the presentation is viewable as slides that are connected in one long “roll.” It’s not viewable like a regular powerpoint presentation.

2. DocAS Lite

DocAS Lite is another great multi-tasker. Along with using the Mail sharing function to import a powerpoint presentation, they can also be imported from various other sources, such as iTunes, FTP, DropBox, Google Docs, etc. While other types of notes can be marked up, the powerpoint presentations are read only. Again, it’s viewable in a long “roll.”

3. DocBrowser Lite

DocBrowser Lite is typical of many other iOS mobile file viewer apps out there. It’s basic, but functional. Powerpoint presentations, as well as other types of files, can be imported through the Sharing option in email, and can also be imported directly from URLs. It, too, shows the powerpoint presentations in a long “roll.”

4. SaveAll

SaveAll works much the same as DocBrowser Lite with a few notable additions. It also includes an in-app browser. If you are importing a powerpoint from a URL, instead of going to a standalone browser and copying the URL , you can just view it within the app. Additionally, it can play other types of media, such as movies and audio.

5. Keynote app

While it’s not free, the Keynote app is the definitely the best for handling powerpoint presentation in iPad. This is also the only one that opens the powerpoint exactly the same as the desktop version of Keynote.

It has a “play” option where you can have it move from slide to slide, instead of just being in one long “roll.” Additionally, it is “editable.” The text and graphics can be edited within the powerpoint. It will also allow you to create your own keynotes and export them as powerpoints.

If you are just looking for ways to save and view powerpoint presentation, spending $9.99 for the Keynote app could be an overkill. If you’re looking for more features, like the ability to create and edit slides, spending the $9.99 is the way to go.

5 iPad Apps for Saving and Viewing PowerPoint Presentations originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)
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4 Best Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) Websites For All The Latest News

2011-10-08T00:31:26Z

I have made it no secret in my previous article about MMA Podcasts that MMA is my favorite sport. While podcasts are great for entertainment, due to the turnaround time from recording them to listening to them (if you don’t listen live) the information is not as up to date as reading about it on a blog with a full-time staff checking out what is happening at all times. These sites have exactly that. They also have journalists who aren’t afraid to dig in and find out the really hard to get information that fans are looking for.

Mixed Martial Arts is a very fast-moving sport with constant fight announcements, injuries and other news to report. So to be a good MMA publication, their journalists have to stay on top of things, and these websites are the best at doing so. If you cannot get enough MMA information, these are the websites you need to be checking at all times, so you never miss a punch.

MMA Junkie

This is by far my favorite mixed martial arts website. They publish an obscene amount of stories every day, and they are always incredibly accurate. There are some occasions where other sites beat them to the story, but that is because MMAJunkie always makes sure to fact check and call the parties involved to make sure they are not just reporting on rumor, but real facts.

Not only do they offer up to the minute news, but they also offer some great features and thought-provoking articles. Their “Fight Path” series comes out weekly and covers an up and coming fighter, and tells a little about their story and where they come from. It’s a great way to learn about some fighters who might make it to big shows someday.

There is a reason MMA Junkie has won the World MMA Awards “Best Media Source” category three years in a row, and it is simply because they are the best.

MMA Fighting

MMAFighting is another great website for MMA content. Their writing staff are top-notch, and they offer some of the best interviews and video content on the Internet. They probably have the most famous MMA journalist in Ariel Helwani on staff, and he brings some great video interviews to the website.

Their news is not as fast as MMA Junkie, but their articles are just as well written, and just as well researched. They are more feature driven, and they bring sides of the fighters out that you won’t see anywhere else. That being said, because of how well-connected Ariel is, they break some inside stories that no one else gets.

Bloody Elbow

Bloody Elbow is an MMA blog in the purest sense. They are usually one of the first to break news stories, but their fact checking might not be at the same level as some of the other sites. They are not afraid to report on rumors, but they are smart enough to let readers know what they are reporting is a rumor.

Bloody Elbow is part of SBNation, which means you can register for an account and actually post content. This is great if you are an MMA fan who would like to try to get into MMA journalism.

Cage Potato

Cage Potato is very similar to Bloody Elbow, in that they are both pure blogs, and they are willing to push the envelope a bit more than some of the other sites. Cage Potato is a little more casual, in that they are willing to swear in their posts and they don’t carry that professional journalist way of doing things.

Basically, Cage Potato is an MMA blog by fans of the sport who are not trying to be taken necessarily as journalists, but just guys who love Mixed Martial Arts and choose to write about it.

Between these four mixed martial arts sites you should be able to stay up to date with everything that is happening in the fast-moving world of Martial Arts. Check these amazing websites daily and enjoy!

What MMA websites do you rely on for your MMA fix? Let us know in the comments.

Image Credit: ShutterStock

50 Fabulous Free Android Apps

2011-10-11T16:04:11Z

Datamation: "On the hunt for yet more free apps for your Android phone? Here's a list of 50 free apps you should consider."

How To Set Up Your FreeNAS Server To Access Your Files From Anywhere

2011-10-05T19:01:13Z

FreeNAS is a free, open source BSD-based operating system that can turn any PC into a rock-solid file server. Today I’m going to walk you through a basic installation, setting up a simple file share, and setting things up so you can access your files from anywhere over the Internet using the encrypted secure FTP over SSH option.

Requirements & Alternatives

To set this up today, you either need a working FreeNAS installation already set up and running, or:

The latest install ISO from the FreeNAS download page.
A spare computer or VM.
A USB stick 4GB or larger.

As well as to set up remote access, you’ll also need:

The ability to configure your router to either forward ports or setup dyndns addresses.
An ISP that doesn’t block every port.

If FreeNAS isn’t your thing, here’s a few alternatives:

Microsoft Windows Home Server is my current choice of home file and backup server, and is an absolute steal at just $49 for an OEM license.
Amahi Home Server is a free, Linux-based solution that comes complete with an app store for adding functionality with one click installations. It’s well-developed, but some features such as disk pooling are still a bit sketchy for the average user and it does sometime require a little command line hacking to get things just right.
A router with DD-WRT hacked onto it and a USB hard disk attached could also perform the same function, but again there’s a lot of hacking involved to get it to work right.

Installation

First up, FreeNAS isn’t something you’ll be dual-booting, and it doesn’t even come with a nice graphical partitioning utility. If you install to your nice 1TB drive then the space will be wasted. You need to install FreeNAS to either a USB drive, or an SD card if your PC supports them.

If you’re unsure, try on a virtual machine first (our guide to VirtualBox should help you there). To write this guide, I used Parallels on the Mac, but it has issues booting from USB devices so you’ll need to create a separate 4GB internal drive for it to install too.

Upon booting, choose the default option at the top and be sure to choose the correct installation location. Remove the CD or detach the image when done, and reboot.

Once installed, there should be a web GUI URL listed, so you can switch back over to your main PC and continue to configure things over the LAN.

Click on Users -> Change password to harden the system – by default there’s no admin password set. Next, click Users -> Add User and go ahead creating your own regular user account. We’ll use this to authenticate later.

Configure A Share

Configuring a share involves first adding a ‘volume’ – that is, a hard disk – then creating a share. If you have more than one drive, you can configure them as a software RAID too for increased data integrity, but I won’t be going into details on that today.

Click on the storage button on the top menu.

Click create volume. The name you assign doesn’t really matter, but you’ll need to ensure you check off the drives you want to be in the volume. For our purposes, I have one drive I’ll be adding to it.

You should now see that you have 1 ‘active’ volume listed. Click change permissions and make the owner of the group the user you created before, as well as turning on the checkbox for the Group ->Write permission. In a real world scenario, you would create a group for all users and assign ownership to that rather that to an individual user, but for the purposes of testing, this is fine.

Next, click on the sharing tab. Here you can choose between Apple, Unix or Windows shares. I’ll switch over to a Windows share for now and click Add Windows Share. The only difficult part about what comes up next is choosing the folder – I just made mine the root of the /mnt/drive1 volume that I added.

You’ll also need to enable the CIFS service, which starts the Windows share ‘listener’. Click on Services ->Control Services from the sidebar and toggle on CIFS. Toggle on SSH while you’re on this screen too, which we’ll use later to do secure FTP (don’t enable the regular FTP service though).

At this point, you should be able to access the share from a Windows machine – if it doesn’t show on the network yet , just type \\freenas directly into the address bar to force it. If you type //freenas, you’ll access the web GUI instead – good to know.

Now that you’ve confirmed the Windows share is working, let’s move onto remote accessing your data.

DynDNS

In order to use a simple URL to access our files, we’re going to be assigning a free dynamic DNS address to our home IP. Head over to DynDNS to set up a free account.

You’ll need to confirm the email address too. When that’s done, you’ll be presented with a service plan page. In small writing at the bottom is the link to set up your free account for up to 2 hostnames. Click that.

Enter your desired hostname (you can select various domains from the drop-down), then click on the blue text that lists your IP. This will automatically fill in your IP address.

Port Forwarding

This is a different configuration for every router, so it’s really hard to show you how it’s to be done on your exact model. For mine, I accessed the router configuration at 192.168.0.1, and clicked on Port Forwarding.

You need to forward the SSH service port – 22 – to your FreeNAS internal IP. This is .11 in my case.

Test:

First, let’s see if regular SSH works. From a linux or OsX terminal, type:

ssh username@domain.dyndns.org

The username you set up earlier, and the domain is the address you chose at DynDNS . You may get an error about verifying the authenticity of the host, but don’t worry, type YES to connect anyway.

If you see a bunch of text, you know it’s working.

Now open up your favourite FTP program and enter in the same details – username, the DynDNS domain, the password – but make sure the protocol is set to SFTP – this is crucial.

If all went well, you should be presented with a straight overview of the whole filesystem, so you can now drill down into the precise folder or share you want access to. Congratulations, you now have complete access to your shares from anywhere in the world!

We have really only just scratched the surface of how powerful FreeNAS is – I hope to highlight some of its other features in the future, so stay tuned. I hope you also tried copying a file across to see how blazingly fast it is too. Problems and comments are welcome as always but if your problem is really technical, you might get a better response by crowdsourcing it to our tech answers site.

3 Awesome Tools To Download Flickr Photos & Sets

2011-10-04T21:31:24Z

Although many people now use Facebook or Google’s Picasa to share and backup photos online, there are still plenty of people who prefer to keep on using Flickr for one reason or another. If you are a regular Flickr user, you might have noticed that there are plenty of tools for downloading photos, however many of them are a little hacky and are not very elegant or easy to use. Most Flickr downloading tools available don’t make it easy to share your full-sized pictures with friends either – until now.

Here are three very different but extremely useful methods for downloading photos from Flickr. FlickAndShare is designed with simplicity and sharing in mind, DownThemAll is a neat way to download using Firefox, while Bulkr is an Adobe Air application with some powerful, easy-to-use features.

1. FlickAndShare [Web]

FlickAndShare is the latest in excellent online Flickr downloading tools. All you do is go to the FlickAndShare site, authenticate your Flickr account and choose the set of photos you wish to share or download. FlickAndShare generates a link to download all of the full-sized photos in that set, which you can then use yourself or share with friends.

So you can easily send your friends and family links to the photos you took of their kids or at weddings or parties. It certainly beats explaining that they can go to “all sizes” and download the ones they like individually.

FlickAndShare is by far the simplest, most useful Flickr downloading tool available today.

2. DownThemAll! [Firefox]

This method from Lifehacker allows you to use Greasemonkey with a script called “Flickr – Link Original Image” to get access to the original images of any Flickr set. Then you simply use the Firefox extension DownThemAll! to grab all of the original photos and download them to your computer.

In DownThemAll, you need to change to the links tab so you can see all of the original photo links selected and then start the download. Note that the original photo links will end in something like _o.jpg.

DownThemAll also comes with a feature called dTa which lets you do the same operation several times over without having to redefine everything. This means you can easily set up several sets of photo downloading and save your time for something else.

3. Bulkr [Adobe Air]

Bulkr is a Flickr-recommended Adobe Air application for Mac or Windows. Bulkr lets you download up to 500 photos per batch, which can be from your own collection or images from an individual or group who have allowed downloads. You can download any size of photo and the titles, tags and descriptions will be stored in the EXIF information. You can even download your whole photo collection with one click!

Check out Bulkr’s promo video.

More Flickr Tools

Flickr lovers might also enjoy reading the following articles:

Are you glad to finally be able to share original-sized Flickr photos with your friends? Or are you just happy to find an easy way to download batches of photos from Flickr? What will you use these tools for?

More Useful and Interesting Bash Prompts

2011-09-19T23:58:06Z

A while back, we listed 8 Useful and Interesting Bash Prompts. That turned out to be one of our most popular articles, and still generates user response and feedback. This time we’ve found a few more gems, as well as some handy tips and tricks for having the coolest shell prompt on the proverbial block.

Using These Prompts

Some of the following prompts are one-liners, and can be pasted directly into your terminal for (temporary) use. To make them permanent, you’ll have to paste the code into your .bashrc or .bash_profile.

The larger, more complex prompts such as Twtty should be saved to their own script file (such as myprompt.sh), and you place a line like

source myprompt.sh

in your .basrc file to “import” them.

Twtty Prompt

This is a two-line prompt that holds quite a bit of information including username, hostname, working directory, time, and command history number. Because of the technical and visual complexity, it’s best to place this prompt script in its own file, then source it from your .bashrc or .bash_profile as described above.

function prompt_command {
 
TERMWIDTH=${COLUMNS}
 
#   Calculate the width of the prompt:
 
hostnam=$(echo -n $HOSTNAME | sed -e "s/[\.].*//")
#   "whoami" and "pwd" include a trailing newline
usernam=$(whoami)
cur_tty=$(tty | sed -e "s/.*tty\(.*\)/\1/")
newPWD="${PWD}"
#   Add all the accessories below ...
let promptsize=$(echo -n "--(${usernam}@${hostnam}:${cur_tty})---(${PWD})--" \
                 | wc -c | tr -d " ")
let fillsize=${TERMWIDTH}-${promptsize}
fill=""
while [ "$fillsize" -gt "0" ] 
do 
    fill="${fill}-"
	let fillsize=${fillsize}-1
done
 
if [ "$fillsize" -lt "0" ]
then
   let cut=3-${fillsize}
	newPWD="...$(echo -n $PWD | sed -e "s/\(^.\{$cut\}\)\(.*\)/\2/")"
fi
}
 
PROMPT_COMMAND=prompt_command
 
function twtty {
 
local GRAY="\[\033[1;30m\]"
local LIGHT_GRAY="\[\033[0;37m\]"
local WHITE="\[\033[1;37m\]"
local NO_COLOUR="\[\033[0m\]"
 
local LIGHT_BLUE="\[\033[1;34m\]"
local YELLOW="\[\033[1;33m\]"
 
case $TERM in
    xterm*)
        TITLEBAR='\[\033]0;\u@\h:\w\007\]'
        ;;
    *)
        TITLEBAR=""
        ;;
esac
 
PS1="$TITLEBAR\
$YELLOW-$LIGHT_BLUE-(\
$YELLOW\$usernam$LIGHT_BLUE@$YELLOW\$hostnam$LIGHT_BLUE:$WHITE\$cur_tty\
${LIGHT_BLUE})-${YELLOW}-\${fill}${LIGHT_BLUE}-(\
$YELLOW\${newPWD}\
$LIGHT_BLUE)-$YELLOW-\
\n\
$YELLOW-$LIGHT_BLUE-(\
$YELLOW\$(date +%H%M)$LIGHT_BLUE:$YELLOW\$(date \"+%a,%d %b %y\")\
$LIGHT_BLUE:$WHITE\$$LIGHT_BLUE)-\
$YELLOW-\
$NO_COLOUR " 
 
PS2="$LIGHT_BLUE-$YELLOW-$YELLOW-$NO_COLOUR "
}

One important thing to note about this prompt is that the horizontal bar scales to fit the width of your terminal, and that the working directory line will truncate itself when it gets too large.

If you have any problems with the above code snippet, the plain text version can be downloaded here.

High-Performance Minimalist Prompt

All the complexities of a fancy prompt like Twtty do take up extra CPU cycles, and while it’s certainly not going to grind your system to a halt, it can add up. If you want something that packs a lot of info without slowing you down, I suggest this:

PS1="[\d | \T -> \w ...\$?]\n#"

One interesting thing to note here is the use of the variable $? at the end. This signifies the exit status of the last command entered. 0 means all is well, any other number usually indicates an error.

Rob’s Prompt

This is one of the more popular prompts floating around the Internet. The code is small and simple, yet it gives many of the features found in the larger, more complex examples.

PS1="\[\033[0;33m\][\!]\`if [[ \$? = "0" ]]; then echo "\\[\\033[32m\\]"; else echo "\\[\\033[31m\\]"; fi\`[\u.\h: \`if [[ `pwd|wc -c|tr -d " "` > 18 ]]; then echo "\\W"; else echo "\\w"; fi\`]\$\[\033[0m\] "; echo -ne "\033]0;`hostname -s`:`pwd`\007"

MegaFancyPrompt

The name is entirely deserved – this prompt is quite large and extremely fancy. It’s got color, titlebar control, user-awareness, proxy detection, screen detection, job count, and more. In short, just about every feature found in the other prompts we’ve mentioned can be found here, and quite a few others. If you want it ALL in your prompt, this is it.

Note: Not all features are visible at all times, so while it may not look like much in the screenshot, you can check out the full (documented, commented) script file here for details on how to get the visible parts you want.

COLOR_WHITE='\033[1;37m'
COLOR_LIGHTGRAY='033[0;37m'
COLOR_GRAY='\033[1;30m'
COLOR_BLACK='\033[0;30m'
COLOR_RED='\033[0;31m'
COLOR_LIGHTRED='\033[1;31m'
COLOR_GREEN='\033[0;32m'
COLOR_LIGHTGREEN='\033[1;32m'
COLOR_BROWN='\033[0;33m'
COLOR_YELLOW='\033[1;33m'
COLOR_BLUE='\033[0;34m'
COLOR_LIGHTBLUE='\033[1;34m'
COLOR_PURPLE='\033[0;35m'
COLOR_PINK='\033[1;35m'
COLOR_CYAN='\033[0;36m'
COLOR_LIGHTCYAN='\033[1;36m'
COLOR_DEFAULT='\033[0m'
 
# Function to set prompt_command to.
function promptcmd () {
    history -a 
    local SSH_FLAG=0
    local TTY=$(tty | awk -F/dev/ '{print $2}')
    if [[ ${TTY} ]]; then 
        local SESS_SRC=$(who | grep "$TTY "  | awk '{print $6 }')
    fi
 
    # Titlebar
    case ${TERM} in 
        xterm*  )  
            local TITLEBAR='\[\033]0;\u@\h: { \w }  \007\]'
            ;;
        *       )  
            local TITLEBAR=''                               
            ;;
    esac
    PS1="${TITLEBAR}"
 
    # Test for day change.
    if [ -z $DAY ] ; then
        export DAY=$(date +%A)
    else
        local today=$(date +%A)
        if [ "${DAY}" != "${today}" ]; then
            PS1="${PS1}\n\[${COLOR_GREEN}\]Day changed to $(date '+%A, %d %B %Y').\n"
            export DAY=$today
       fi
    fi
 
    # User
    if [ ${UID} -eq 0 ] ; then
        if [ "${USER}" == "${LOGNAME}" ]; then
            if [[ ${SUDO_USER} ]]; then
                PS1="${PS1}\[${COLOR_RED}\]\u"
            else
                PS1="${PS1}\[${COLOR_LIGHTRED}\]\u"
            fi
        else                               
            PS1="${PS1}\[${COLOR_YELLOW}\]\u"
        fi
    else
        if [ ${USER} == ${LOGNAME} ]; then     
            PS1="${PS1}\[${COLOR_GREEN}\]\u"
        else                               
            PS1="${PS1}\[${COLOR_BROWN}\]\u"
        fi
    fi
 
    # HTTP Proxy var configured or not
    if [ -n "$http_proxy" ] ; then
        PS1="${PS1}\[${COLOR_GREEN}\]@"
    else                               
        PS1="${PS1}\[${COLOR_LIGHTRED}\]@"
    fi
 
    # Host
 
    if [[ ${SSH_CLIENT} ]] || [[ ${SSH2_CLIENT} ]]; then 
        SSH_FLAG=1
    fi
    if [ ${SSH_FLAG} -eq 1 ]; then 
       PS1="${PS1}\[${COLOR_CYAN}\]\h "
    elif [[ -n ${SESS_SRC} ]]; then 
        if [ "${SESS_SRC}" == "(:0.0)" ]; then 
        PS1="${PS1}\[${COLOR_GREEN}\]\h "
        else 
            local parent_process=`cat /proc/${PPID}/cmdline`
            if [[ "$parent_process" == "in.rlogind*" ]]; then
                PS1="${PS1}\[${COLOR_BROWN}\]\h "
            elif [[ "$parent_process" == "in.telnetd*" ]]; then 
                PS1="${PS1}\[${COLOR_YELLOW}\]\h "
            else
                PS1="${PS1}\[${COLOR_LIGHTRED}\]\h "
            fi
        fi
    elif [[ "${SESS_SRC}" == "" ]]; then
        PS1="${PS1}\[${COLOR_GREEN}\]\h "
    else                                 
        PS1="${PS1}\[${COLOR_RED}\]\h " 
    fi
 
    # Detached Screen Sessions
    local DTCHSCRN=$(screen -ls | grep -c Detach )
    if [ ${DTCHSCRN} -gt 2 ]; then
        PS1="${PS1}\[${COLOR_RED}\][scr:${DTCHSCRN}] "
    elif [ ${DTCHSCRN} -gt 0 ]; then
        PS1="${PS1}\[${COLOR_YELLOW}\][scr:${DTCHSCRN}] "
    fi
 
    # Backgrounded running jobs
    local BKGJBS=$(jobs -r | wc -l )
    if [ ${BKGJBS} -gt 2 ]; then
        PS1="${PS1}\[${COLOR_RED}\][bg:${BKGJBS}]"
    elif [ ${BKGJBS} -gt 0 ]; then
        PS1="${PS1}\[${COLOR_YELLOW}\][bg:${BKGJBS}] "
    fi
 
    # Stopped Jobs
    local STPJBS=$(jobs -s | wc -l )
    if [ ${STPJBS} -gt 2 ]; then
        PS1="${PS1}\[${COLOR_RED}\][stp:${STPJBS}]"
    elif [ ${STPJBS} -gt 0 ]; then
        PS1="${PS1}\[${COLOR_YELLOW}\][stp:${STPJBS}] "
    fi
 
    # Bracket {
    if [ ${UID} -eq 0 ]; then              
        if [ "${USER}" == "${LOGNAME}" ]; then 
            if [[ ${SUDO_USER} ]]; then
                PS1="${PS1}\[${COLOR_RED}\]"
            else
                PS1="${PS1}\[${COLOR_LIGHTRED}\]"
            fi
        else                               
            PS1="${PS1}\[${COLOR_YELLOW}\]"
        fi
    else                                 
        if [ "${USER}" == "${LOGNAME}" ]; then 
            PS1="${PS1}\[${COLOR_GREEN}\]"
        else                               
            PS1="${PS1}\[${COLOR_BROWN}\]"
        fi
    fi
    PS1="${PS1}{ "
 
    # Working directory
    if [ -w "${PWD}" ]; then 
        PS1="${PS1}\[${COLOR_GREEN}\]$(prompt_workingdir)"
    else                                 
        PS1="${PS1}\[${COLOR_RED}\]$(prompt_workingdir)"
    fi
 
    # Closing bracket } and $\#
    if [ ${UID} -eq 0 ]; then              
        if [ "${USER}" == "${LOGNAME}" ]; then 
            if [[ ${SUDO_USER} ]]; then
                PS1="${PS1}\[${COLOR_RED}\]"
            else
                PS1="${PS1}\[${COLOR_LIGHTRED}\]"
            fi
        else                               
            PS1="${PS1}\[${COLOR_YELLOW}\]"
        fi
    else                                 
        if [ "${USER}" == "${LOGNAME}" ]; then 
            PS1="${PS1}\[${COLOR_GREEN}\]"
        else                               
            PS1="${PS1}\[${COLOR_BROWN}\]"
        fi
    fi
    PS1="${PS1} }\$\[${COLOR_DEFAULT}\] "
}     
 
# Trim working dir to 1/4 the screen width
function prompt_workingdir () {
  local pwdmaxlen=$(($COLUMNS/4))
  local trunc_symbol="..."
  if [[ $PWD == $HOME* ]]; then
    newPWD="~${PWD#$HOME}" 
  else
    newPWD=${PWD}
  fi
  if [ ${#newPWD} -gt $pwdmaxlen ]; then
    local pwdoffset=$(( ${#newPWD} - $pwdmaxlen + 3 ))
    newPWD="${trunc_symbol}${newPWD:$pwdoffset:$pwdmaxlen}"
  fi
  echo $newPWD
}
 
# Determine what prompt to display:
# 1.  Display simple custom prompt for shell sessions started
#     by script.  
# 2.  Display "bland" prompt for shell sessions within emacs or 
#     xemacs.
# 3   Display promptcmd for all other cases.
 
function load_prompt () {
    # Get PIDs
    local parent_process=$(cat /proc/$PPID/cmdline | cut -d \. -f 1)
    local my_process=$(cat /proc/$$/cmdline | cut -d \. -f 1)
 
    if  [[ $parent_process == script* ]]; then
        PROMPT_COMMAND=""
        PS1="\t - \# - \u@\H { \w }\$ "
    elif [[ $parent_process == emacs* || $parent_process == xemacs* ]]; then
        PROMPT_COMMAND=""
        PS1="\u@\h { \w }\$ "
    else
        export DAY=$(date +%A)
        PROMPT_COMMAND=promptcmd
     fi 
    export PS1 PROMPT_COMMAND
}
 
load_prompt

Bonus – Finding the Right Colors

As you may have noticed, most of these prompts use color, and the color is often represented in a coded form like ‘\033[1;30m’, which is quite difficult to read or remember. An easy way to see all your available colors, and preview what they’ll look like, is to simply paste the following snippet into your browser:

for i in `seq 1 7 ; seq 30 48 ; seq 90 107 ` ; do 
    echo -e "\e[${i}mtest\e[0m$i" 
done

Which will output each color code with its number.

Conclusion

There are, of course infinite variations that could be packed into your prompt. Nearly any kind of textual data can be added in, and bash’s developers have had decades to add in functionality. Some readers have even commented about running custom Python or Ruby scripts from within the prompt. Whatever you do, make it functional, and if it’s REALLY cool, drop us a link in the comments!

More Useful and Interesting Bash Prompts originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)
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How To Change The Apple ID On Your iPod Touch/iPhone

2011-09-19T23:30:38Z

An Apple ID allows you to obtain apps, iTunes downloads and more, which is required to get the full mobile experience if you own an iPhone or iPod Touch. After all, how can you not?

There are a plethora of goodies on the App Store that you shouldn’t miss out. On this page, you’ll effectively see 108 of the best (most are free!), hand-picked by our very staff, and broken down in 14 categories.

A lot of times when you’re purchasing loads of apps, you may run into issues with your Apple ID. You may discover that a cool and exciting app, for example, turns out to be offered only in another country. But worry not. Jeffry posted a detailed article on how to create a US iTunes account without a credit card to access US-only items (and judging from the comments in that post, the method seems to work for many people around the world).

If you want to actually change your Apple ID by either changing your current ID or switching to another existing ID, read on.

On Your Device (Will Probably Apply To iPad, Too)

First, let’s verify the account that you are currently using for iTunes and App Store purchases. Open either the iTunes or the App Store in your iPod, navigate to the bottom of the page you’re on. If you’re on an App Store product page for an app, simply go back to the main screen or tap on Categories or Top 25 (where you can see Top Paid, Top Free and Top Grossing apps) and just navigate down. If you have ever purchased an app, even a free one, you have had to either create a new Apple ID or sign in using an existing ID.

If you’ve created one in the past, you’ll see your current Apple ID at the very bottom of the iTunes or App Store.

Now that you’re sure what account you’re dealing with, press the Home button and launch Settings. Navigate down to Store and tap on it.

You’ll see two options: View Apple ID and Sign Out.

If you tap on View Apple ID, you will see the payment information associated with your account (things like credit card information, billing address and phone number). You can also see which country’s iTunes Store you’re buying from. If you choose to change your Country or Region, you’ll need to follow the on-screen instructions, agree to the terms and probably even change your billing information.

If you’re looking to change your Apple ID email, you can tap on your current Apple ID, and you’ll be presented with your email, password, security questions, etc.

If what you’re seeking is to sign in with another existing Apple ID, simply go back and tap on the Sign Out button and you’re well on your way.

When you’ve signed out, the next time your are purchasing apps or iTunes Store items, it will promptly ask you to sign in.

On iTunes Desktop

If you’re on your actual computer and thus, enjoy the glory of a full-sized keyboard, you can change your Apple ID email address, password, billing information and all that other good stuff by launching iTunes on your desktop. Head to Store > View My Account (some email here).

You will need to enter your password for verification, after which you’ll be presented with all the information Apple has for your account, which you can readily edit.

You can also head to the Apple website (appleid.apple.com) to manage and change your account information if for some reason you’re not on your primary computer.

Have you ever had to change Apple IDs on your iPod or iPhone? Let us know about your experience in the comments!

Solutions to 6 Common Martial Arts Training Hurdles

2011-09-19T22:40:00Z

This blog post has been moved to our new address: http://pacificwavejiujitsu.com/blog/solutions-to-6-common-martial-arts-training-hurdles

How to Batch Convert Documents at the Command Line

2011-09-16T23:58:12Z

There comes a time when you need to convert one or more files to another format. Say, for example, you have a bunch of .rtf files that you want to turn into OpenDocument files. Chances are you don’t need to do that too often, but when the time comes, opening each file in a word processor and saving it can be a real chore.

If you use OpenOffice.org or LibreOffice, then you can save a lot of time by letting a command line utility called JODConverter do the work for you. Don’t let the fact that it’s a command line tool scare you. JODConverter is easy to use and fast. It’s also very effective.

Let’s take a look at how to use it.

Getting Started

Before you go and grab a copy of JODConverter, you’ll need OpenOffice.org or LibreOffice and the Java Runtime Environment for your operating system installed on your computer. Because it’s written in Java, JODConverter runs on Linux, Mac OS, and Windows.

Once you’ve made sure all of that is installed, download a copy of JODConverter. There are two version available: 2.x and 3.0. The main difference between the two version is that version 3.0 supports both LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org. It also seems, from my unscientific observations, to be a bit faster than version 2.x.

Extract the contents of the archive you downloaded to somewhere on your hard drive. For example, if you’re using Linux and downloaded version 3.0 of JODConverter, you can extract the archive to the directory /opt. JODConverter will be installed in /opt/jodconverter-core-3.0-beta-4.

Supported Conversions

JODConverter is very flexible. It can convert between the following formats:

Word (.doc) to or from Word OpenDocument Text (.odt)
Excel (.xls) to or from OpenDocument Spreadsheet (.ods)
PowerPoint (.ppt) to or from OpenDocument Presentation (.odp)

The utility can also handle conversions from RTF and WordPerfect, older OpenOffice.org files, and can even convert all supported formats to PDF.

Doing a Basic Conversion

Now that everything is installed, you’re ready to go. The first thing you need to do is start OpenOffice.org in the background. To do that, open a terminal window and then type the following command:

soffice -headless -accept="socket,host=127.0.0.1,port=8100;urp;" &

Stay in the terminal window and change to the directory containing the files that you want to convert. Then, run the following command:

java -jar [path to JODConverter]/lib/[.jar file] source_file output_file

The path and the name of the .jar file will be different depending on the version of JODConverter that you’re using. If, for example, you’re using version 3.0, here’s a sample path:

java -jar opt/jodconverter-core-3.0-beta-4/lib/jodconverter-core-3.0-beta-4.jar source_file output_file

Let’s say you have a Word file named Secure_Email_Report.doc that you want to convert to OpenDocument format. Just run the following command:

java -jar [path to JODConverter]/lib/[.jar file] Secure_Email_Report.doc Secure_Email_Report.odt

Doing Batch Conversions

Using JODConverter to convert a single file is a waste. You can just as easily do the deed in OpenOffice.org or LibreOffice. But converting large numbers of files is where JODConverter shines. And that’s easy to do.

How? Just run this command:

java -jar [path to JODConverter]/lib/[.jar file] *.input_type -o output_type

In the command above, input_type is the extension of the files that you want to convert and output_type is the extension of the target format. For example:

java -jar [path to JODConverter]/lib/[.jar file] *.doc -o pdf

This converts all Word files (*.doc) in a directory to PDF files. All you need to do is substitute the extensions of the files types that you want to convert from and to.

Scripting the Conversion

Typing that long string at the command line can be a chore. And if you only use JODConverter infrequently, it’s easy to forget the path and name of the .jar file that you need to include in the command.

To get around that problem, you can write a script or a batch file. If you’re running Linux, for example, here’s a good tutorial on shell scripting.

But you don’t even need to do that. If you have Python (a popular scripting language and interpreter) installed on your computer, you can download and use a script named DocumentConverter.py.

To use the script, just type:

python DocumentConverter.py input_file output_file

The script doesn’t seem to work with batch conversion, though.

Final Thoughts

If you’re looking for a fast and efficient way to convert multiple documents to another format, then JODConverter is definitely worth a look. It’s fast, it’s efficient, and it’s flexible. On top of that, it’s fairly easy to use. Even if you only convert documents once in a blue moon, JODConverter is a good addition to your toolkit.

Photo credit: 7rains

How to Batch Convert Documents at the Command Line originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)
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Barbara Shaurette: Image Resizing with Python and ImageMagick (bleh)

2011-09-14T17:49:04Z

Image Resizing with Python and ImageMagick (bleh)

Integration fun with MATLAB and Mathematica

2011-09-13T15:30:45Z

Consider this indefinite integral

Feed it to MATLAB’s symbolic toolbox:

int(1/sqrt(x*(2 - x)))

ans =
asin(x - 1)

Feed it to Mathematica 8.0.1:

Integrate[1/Sqrt[x (2 - x)], x] // InputForm

(2*Sqrt[-2 + x]*Sqrt[x]*Log[Sqrt[-2 + x] + Sqrt[x]])/Sqrt[-((-2 + x)*x)]

Let x=1.2 in both results:

MATLAB's answer evaluates to 0.2014
Mathematica's answer evaluates to -1.36944 + 0.693147 I

Discuss!

How To Encrypt Your Gmail & Facebook Messages

2011-09-13T23:31:18Z

Privacy is always one of the major concerns that people have while they are communicating over the Internet. Whether it’s entering payment information on a site like Paypal or Amazon or sending an important email or other type of message, users don’t just want to think their information is kept private, they want to know that it is. With the rise in popularity of social networking sites like Facebook, this concern has never been greater.

One thing you can do to add an extra level of security is encrypt messages before sending them. Believe it or not, this is extremely easy to do. In this article, I’m going to show you how to encrypt your Gmail and Facebook messages. Get ready to hear James Bond and Mission Impossible references from your friends.

What Is Encipher.it?

To encipher, encode, or encrypt a message means to convert it into cipher, which is basically a random assortment of figures and numerals. Encipher.it (directory app) is a simple bookmarklet that allows you to encode and decode messages before you send them. Encipher.it uses Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) to protect your data, and all encoding/decoding is done locally in your browser.

How Do I Use Encipher.it?

As I alluded to before, Encipher.it is very easy to install and use. The first step is to head over to the homepage to get the bookmarklet. If you have Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox, you can just drag the Encipher It link up to your Bookmarks Bar.

If you’re still using Internet Explorer as your primary browser, well, you may have additional security concerns (switch to Chrome!), but you can use Encipher.it as well. Just right-click the link and click “Add to Favorites” rather than dragging it anywhere.

Now when you’re logged into Gmail or Facebook messages, or most any other place you visit for communication purposes, just type your message like normal. Once you’re done, click your newly added bookmark. An Encipher.it box will popup prompting you to enter an encryption key. This can be anything really, and it functions like a password. The person who receives your message will need to know the key in order to decode and view your message.

After you set your encryption key and click the Encrypt button, your message will turn into cypher and will include a sentence at the top explaining that it is encrypted using Encipher.it, so your friends won’t think you’re intoxicated upon receiving your message. They can just click on the bookmark and enter the decryption key the same as you did to convert the message back to its original, readable format.

Conclusion

I like using Encipher.it because it’s simple and actually kind of fun. You can try it for yourself at the bottom of Encipher.it’s website, but to be honest with you, the process of installing the bookmarklet is so simple you might as well just try it out that way to get the full experience. The ‘try it’ section on the website can be useful, however, if your friends don’t want to install the bookmarklet.

Another thing to think about is the encryption key you choose and how to get it to the other person viewing your message. If you want to make your key secure, you should ideally want to treat it the way you would any of your other secure passwords. You can use uppercase letters, symbols, numbers, etc. You may also want to tell your recipient beforehand (in person) what the code will be so they know how to decode the message. Otherwise you run the risk of sending an unsecured key over the Internet, which puts your message at risk as well.

At any rate, you should feel confident communicating important information with those you know online. A little added security can’t hurt, right? What do you think of Encipher.it? Or do you prefer something else?

How to Close Paypal Account [Photos]

2011-09-12T18:10:23Z

Home » Quick Tutorials

How can you close Paypal account? This article shows stepwise screenshot photos of closing a paypal account and will guide Paypal users how it is done what to expect.

There is no doubt that Paypal.com is one of the best services to receive money by freelancers and small businesses and to pay money online for many goods and services easily. However, sometimes people do need to delete / close their Paypal account for various reasons, maybe due to Paypal India restrictions.

NOTE: Its a good idea to download (various formats available) and print ALL Paypal transaction records in case you need them again in future.

Close Paypal Account

After Paypal login, browse to My Profile > My Account Settings

Find the Account category on the right side and click “Close Account”.

This will start the process of closing the account. But it is not a one click procedure. Remember your account balance must be zero and you should have withdrawn all your money via bank transfer or cheque, or they will ask for that before you proceed.

Now they will warn you of that closing the account is final and both your account history and reputation number will be lost forever. They encourage you to visit the Paypal Help Center if you have other queries.

After you confirm, they ask for the reason you request closure of your Paypal account, to improve Paypal.

After you provide a reason you want to close Paypal, then they ask again for the final closure notice.

Now this is you last chance. There is no going back after this step. All your outstanding transactions will be cancelled and you account closed.

If you click Continue now, your paypal account is finally closed forever. You are logged out of Paypal and the same Paypal login will no longer work now.

Although it seems like a lot of steps, permanently closing Paypal account just takes a few minutes. Remember that it is an irreversible process, that is why the steps are in place, should you decide to change your mind anytime. Paypal is a very useful money transfer service and do think twice before closing your account.

Related articles you might like ...

Sony VAIO S Series: All Day Consumer Computing

2011-09-09T04:00:00Z

You asked for it, you got it: in house, a review of Sony's longstanding 13.3" road warrior S series. It's light, has a matte screen, switchable graphics, a mainstream Sandy Bridge processor, and the potential to last all day (and then some) on the battery. From the outside, at least, the Sony VAIO S looks like a winner at nearly any level. But did Sony cut any corners to get the VAIO S' price down, or should it be on any traveller's short list?

MATLAB functions with built in parallel computing toolbox support

2011-09-11T15:48:30Z

So, you’re the proud owner of a new license for MATLAB’s parallel computing toolbox (PCT) and you are wondering how to get some bang for your buck as quickly as possible. Sure, you are going to learn about constructs such as parfor and spmd but that takes time and effort. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could speed up some of your MATLAB code simply by saying ‘Turn parallelisation on’?

It turns out that The Mathworks have been adding support for their parallel computing toolbox all over the place and all you have to do is switch it on (Assuming that you actually have the parallel computing toolbox of course). For example say you had the following call to fmincon (part of the optimisation toolbox) in your code

[x, fval] = fmincon(@objfun, x0, [], [], [], [], [], [], @confun,opts)

To turn on parallelisation across 2 cores just do

matlabpool 2;
opts = optimset('fmincon');
opts = optimset('UseParallel','always');
[x, fval] = fmincon(@objfun, x0, [], [], [], [], [], [], @confun,opts);

That wasn’t so hard was it? The speedup (if any) completely depends upon your particular optimization problem.

Why isn’t parallelisation turned on by default?
The next question that might occur to you is ‘Why doesn’t The Mathworks just turn parallelisation on by default?’ After all, although the above modification is straightforward, it does require you to know that this particular function supports parallel execution via the PCT. If you didn’t think to check then your code would be doomed to serial execution forever.

The simple answer to this question is ‘Sometimes the parallel version is slower‘. Take this serial code for example.

objfun = @(x)exp(x(1))*(4*x(1)^2+2*x(2)^2+4*x(1)*x(2)+2*x(2)+1);
confun = @(x) deal( [1.5+x(1)*x(2)-x(1)-x(2); -x(1)*x(2)-10], [] );
tic;
[x, fval] = fmincon(objfun, x0, [], [], [], [], [], [], confun);
toc

On the machine I am currently sat at (quad core running MATLAB 2011a on Linux) this typically takes around 0.032 seconds to solve. With a problem that trivial my gut feeling is that we are not going to get much out of switching to parallel mode.

objfun = @(x)exp(x(1))*(4*x(1)^2+2*x(2)^2+4*x(1)*x(2)+2*x(2)+1);
confun = @(x) deal( [1.5+x(1)*x(2)-x(1)-x(2); -x(1)*x(2)-10],[] );

%only do this next line once.  It opens two MATLAB workers
matlabpool 2;

opts = optimset('fmincon');
opts = optimset('UseParallel','always');

tic;
[x, fval] = fmincon(objfun, x0, [], [], [], [], [], [], confun,opts);
toc

Sure enough, this increases execution time dramatically to an average of 0.23 seconds on my machine. There is always a computational overhead that needs paying when you go parallel and if your problem is too trivial then this overhead costs more than the calculation itself.

So which functions support the Parallel Computing Toolbox?

I wanted a web-page that listed all functions that gain benefit from the Parallel Computing Toolbox but couldn’t find one. I found some documentation on specific toolboxes such as Parallel Statistics but nothing that covered all of MATLAB in one place. Here is my attempt at producing such a document. Feel free to contact me if I have missed anything out.

This covers MATLAB 2011b and is almost certainly incomplete. I’ve only covered toolboxes that I have access to and so some are missing. Please contact me if you have any extra information.

Bioinformatics Toolbox

Global Optimisation

Various solvers use the PCT. See this part of the MATLAB documentation for details.

Image Processing

blockproc
Note that many Image Processing functions run in parallel even without the parallel computing toolbox. See my article Which MATLAB functions are Multicore Aware?

Optimisation Toolbox

Simulink

Running parallel simulations
You can increase the speed of diagram updates for models containing large model reference hierarchies by building referenced models that are configured in Accelerator mode in parallel whenever conditions allow. This is covered in the documentation.

Statistics Toolbox

Other articles about parallel computing in MATLAB from WalkingRandomly

Which MATLAB functions are multicore aware? There are a ton of functions in MATLAB that take advantage of parallel processors automatically. No Parallel Computing Toolbox necessary.
Parallel MATLAB with OpenMP mex files Want to parallelize your own functions without purchasing the PCT? Not afraid to get your hands dirty with C? Perhaps this option is for you.
MATLAB GPU/CUDA Experiences and tutorials on my laptop – A series of articles where I look a GPU computing with CUDA on MATLAB

Cloudnumbers: A simple example for writting parallel code

2011-09-07T13:56:24Z

Today, programmers have to deal with multi-core and multi-computer technologies. Several people claim that software developers are far behind hardware technologies. My two favorite posts for this statement are

Parallel computing is not that simple than writing serial code with loops or classes. But there are several simple tricks and advices available in the web to accelerate your serial code with simple parallelization. Aater Suleman posted a nice hands-on-tutorial for constructing another parallel programming example.

The goal is to implement an algorithm which finds a path from the mouse to the cheese in a 2D maze. What is you favorite and fastest solution? Who comes up with a nice implementation in R or Python?
If you are looking for more tips and tricks for parallel computing you should check the work-in-progress version of the book “Is Parallel Programming Hard, And, If So, What Can You Do” from Paul E. McKenney. He tries to help you to avoid at least some of the pitfalls that have beset parallel projects. The book is so far written very nicely and it concludes, that “Parallel programming is not as hard as it is reputed, and … [the] book makes it even easier for you.” This book an open-source project, and so both review comments and patches are quite welcome. Download the PDF.

All C examples from Aater Suleman and from Paul E. McKenney’s book work at cloudnumbers.com. If you do not have access to HPC resources you can use cloudnumbers.com to accelerate your calculation at a computer cluster in the Cloud.

A Hacker’s Craic

What's Your Excuse?: 7 People Who Will Inspire You to Overcome It

2011-09-07T18:29:00Z

This blog post has been moved to our new address: http://pacificwavejiujitsu.com/blog/whats-your-excuse-7-people-who-will-inspire-you-to-overcome-it

How Do I Choose the Right Hardware When Building a Hackintosh? [Ask Lifehacker]

2011-09-06T17:00:00Z

Dear Lifehacker,
I've read your guides on how to build a regular Hackintosh and a Hack Mini but the hardware I want is a little different, plus some of the parts in those guides are no longer available. How can I figure out what hardware will work so I can build the best Hackintosh for me? More »

How to Create a Video from your Photos

2011-09-03T23:58:25Z

I stumbled onto this one when looking for something I could use to add a little something to the visual nature of my company’s website. Animoto is a start-up that heralds from New York City and aims to turn your photos (and video clips) into a beautiful animated slide-show complete with music. Many people have already started using this service to add a special touch to websites they create for their clients, and I dare say you could make use of it in a similar way as well.

Indeed, you might be wondering why would a client be interested in purchasing one of these videos? Well, to put it simply, some of them look phenomenal. They can be incredibly effective if you do a good job with the photo and music selection. Many of these videos can also tug at the heart-strings. In fact, one non-profit organisation, Let’s Adopt, has had amazing success thanks to a short video they put together. Just take a look at the video below, but keep in mind that it contains images that some may find disturbing (it’s muted by default, hit the speaker icon to unmute).

How does it work?

Animoto is really quite easy to use. First go the Animoto website and create an account. Once you’ve created an account, activated it and logged in, hit the big blue “Create Video” button in the top right hand corner. A large list of different styles will load. These styles basically determine how your images, video clips and text slides will be displayed. You can preview them by clicking the little preview link below each style.

As with many features on Animoto, some of the styles are limited to “Pro” accounts, while others are available to all. For the purpose of this article, I selected a style called “Simplicity”. Now that we have selected a style, the next few steps are simply a matter of selecting or uploading relevant photos, video clips, and music and arranging your slideshow.

Uploading images and editing the slideshow

The slideshow editor in Animoto is quite amazing in some ways, and a bit limited in others. One really great feature is that you can tell it to retrieve images from your Facebook account or a website address rather than uploading photos or video clips directly. Some people might balk at giving a company access to their Facebook account, so do keep in mind that you don’t have to use this feature, it’s just there to make things a little easier. You can, of course, upload whichever photos you wish to use directly into their system. You also have access to their stock catalogue, which has some great images from various different categories. As I’m creating a short video to go along with this article, I chose to use a few images and video clips from their stock collection.

If you wish to add text to your slideshow, you simply click the little “T” button down the bottom and type the text in on the right hand panel. Keep in mind that the top row of text will correspond to a much larger font, whereas the text in the lower bar corresponds to a sub-heading. Sometimes the main heading will show first, and then the subheading will fade in. The behaviour of the text is ultimately dependent on the style you selected in the first step.

As far as selecting the order of items within your slideshow, it really couldn’t be easier. You just click and drag images, video clips or text slides around to change the order.

In regards to video clips, unfortunately you cannot embed full-length clips, but actually need to select “highlights” from these clips. As with everything in Animoto, this is rather straightforward. It’s a matter of clicking on the video clip, which will load it in the right hand panel. Then you just need to select the length of the highlight and drag the little slider bar to select which segment of the clip you wish to use.

There are, of course, some other drawbacks with the slideshow editor. What I found the most annoying was that you could not edit the length of time a given slide was to be displayed. You also have no choice as to the transition used to display an image. It’s basically all preset by the style that you choose when first creating the video. Oh, and one other thing – you cannot use transparent gif or png files in the slideshow. This is especially problematic if you are trying to do anything with logos. With the video I created for my own website, I wanted to have the logo slide in on top of another image, which was simply not possible.

Adding music

Your options in this section depend on whether or not you have a pay or free account with Animoto. If you do pay, then you will have access to their rather extensive collection of music, with appropriate licensing to use in your videos. If not, you can always upload a music track of your own to use with the slideshow. As far as their selection – it’s pretty comprehensive with a wide variety of genres to choose from. For the video I made, I just selected something random from the Jazz genre.

Finalising

Now you simply select the playback speed of your video (1/2 speed, normal or 2x speed), type in a name and description, and hit “Finalize Video”. Animoto then sets off to do its thing and sends you an email a few minutes later with a link to the completed video. If you want to watch what I created with less than a minute’s work, then take a look below:

Wrap-up

Animoto’s good fun and can create some marvellous little videos from your happy snaps. To get the most out of this service, you’ll need to pay at least a small amount per month, although there is a free offering that limits you to 30-second videos (but you can’t use their licensed music selection, or download the video, or publish it in high quality). The cheapest plan is $5/month and it goes all the way up to $499 per year, if you want the ability to resell their videos to your own clients.

If you end up creating any videos, please share them with all of us below.

How to Create a Video from your Photos originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)
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Addi – A MATLAB clone for Android phones and tablets

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3 Awesome Tools To Download Flickr Photos & Sets

1. FlickAndShare [Web]

2. DownThemAll! [Firefox]

3. Bulkr [Adobe Air]

More Flickr Tools

More Useful and Interesting Bash Prompts

Using These Prompts

Twtty Prompt

High-Performance Minimalist Prompt

Rob’s Prompt

MegaFancyPrompt

Bonus – Finding the Right Colors

Conclusion

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How To Change The Apple ID On Your iPod Touch/iPhone

On Your Device (Will Probably Apply To iPad, Too)

On iTunes Desktop

Solutions to 6 Common Martial Arts Training Hurdles

How to Batch Convert Documents at the Command Line

Getting Started

Supported Conversions

Doing a Basic Conversion

Doing Batch Conversions

Scripting the Conversion

Final Thoughts

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Integration fun with MATLAB and Mathematica

How To Encrypt Your Gmail & Facebook Messages

What Is Encipher.it?

How Do I Use Encipher.it?

Conclusion

How to Close Paypal Account [Photos]

Close Paypal Account

Sony VAIO S Series: All Day Consumer Computing

MATLAB functions with built in parallel computing toolbox support

Cloudnumbers: A simple example for writting parallel code

A Hacker’s Craic

What's Your Excuse?: 7 People Who Will Inspire You to Overcome It

How Do I Choose the Right Hardware When Building a Hackintosh? [Ask Lifehacker]

How to Create a Video from your Photos

How does it work?

Uploading images and editing the slideshow

Adding music

Finalising

Wrap-up

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