Arun's Tech Corner

How to download Lookback Videos from Facebook

2014-02-05T21:25:00.000-08:00

If you are an active facebook user, I bet half of your news feed will be filled with lookback videos for the past couple of days. Lookback videos are personalised videos created for each user as part of Facebook's 10 year anniversary. It includes their important posts, photos and life events from the day they joined facebook. To view this video, just point your browser to https://www.facebook.com/lookback.

Sad thing is, Facebook only allows you to share the video with your friends. You cannot download the video to keep a copy on your local device.

Fortunately, Xadhix wrote a nifty javascript that finds the link to the actual video and serves it up in a nice HTML overlay. To download the video using Xadhix's script, follow these simple instrcutions.

Copy the javascript from Facebook Lookback Downloader
Press Ctrl+Shift+J (in Chrome) or Ctrl+Shift+K (Firefox)
Paste the code in the console that opens and press Enter
Now an HTML overlay will appear with a link to download the video.
Once you click the link, the video will open in a new tab. Press Ctrl+S to save the video.

Alternative to XChat in Windows - HexChat

2013-10-15T22:31:00.003-07:00

It does not matter whether you are an IRC newbie or a seasoned IRC user, you need a feature rich IRC client to make your life easier. What is IRC, you ask? This tutorial on IRC can help you get started.

Now coming back to topic of feature rich clients, XChat is one of the popular open-source IRC client with a neat interface and a lot of features. The linux version is free, but unfortunately the developer decided to publish the Windows version as a shareware. Now, this is where HexChat comes into picture.

HexChat is a fork of the XChat project, which means it contains almost all the features that XChat has, and some more additional features of its own. Surprisingly, the code for the windows build of XChat is not open-source, but only linux version is. The developers of HexChat have definitely put in a lot of effort to make it work under Windows. While devepoment on XChat seemed to stop around 2010, HexChat is still being constantly developed. If you are a fan of XChat, you will definitely like it. You can find more details about it on their project page.

Checkout the screenshot from their website below. Lots of themes are also available, including the easy-on-the-eyes Solarized themes. Give it a try now.

Image source : http://hexchat.github.io/screenshots.html

Download music legally from Flyte Music(Flipkart) for FREE

2013-02-20T06:06:00.001-08:00

Flyte MP3, also called as Flyte Music is Flipkart's digital music store where you can legall buy music and download it across all your devices - your PC, your android mobile, your iPad and literally any device with an internet access. The main advantage of buying digital music online is that the MP3 will be tagged with proper information unlike the songs downloaded via "not-so-legal" means. You also get the satisfaction that you bought the album legally.

Flyte has a very good collection of songs and it is cheaper too (as low as Rs.6/song). This February 28th, flyte is going to complete 1 year since its launch. As part of the "Birthday celebrations" (as they call it in their facebook page - Flyte Music), they are giving away around 100 albums for FREE everyday. All you need is a Flipkart account. You don't have one, worry not. Your facebook/google account will do.

Head over to the facebook page of Flyte Music, you will find a link to their promotional offer page. I hope this offer runs till February 28th, which means 100 new albums everyday till 28th. If you want more free regional music, download the Flyte Music App for your device. This will give you access to more free regional music than the ones listed on the website. See the screenshot from my android mobile showing free regional albums for Tamil.

Flyte Android App - Free Tamil Albums

Now go ahead and grab those all those FREE music. Thanks to Shankar Ganesh (Killer Tech Tips) for providing a heads-up about the offer.

Enable HDMI audio in Ubuntu 12.10 with open source ATI driver

2013-02-16T23:21:00.002-08:00

If you have recently made the switch from the proprietary ATI drivers to the open source ATI drivers, you will notice that the HDMI audio is not working when you connect it to an external HDMI device like TV. In my case, I switched to open source drivers because Ubuntu 12.10 uses xorg 1.13 which is not supported by the latest (and proabably the last) proprietary driver provided by ATI (legacy 12.6).

HDMI audio support is still experimental in open source drivers and is disabled by default. However it can be enabled by adding the parameter "radeon.audio=1" to the kernel command line in your grub list.

Follow the simple steps mentioned below to enable HDMI audio:

Open the /etc/default/grub in a text editor.
```
gksu gedit /etc/default/grub
```
Add the parameter to "radeon.audio=1" to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT. For example, if the corresponding line is like :
```
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
```
Then make it as :
```
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash radeon.audio=1"
```
Now close the text editor, go back to command line and update your grub bu issuing the command below
```
sudo update-grub
```

Restart your computer and check the sound settings. Your HDMI port should now be listed in the Output list. Select that port as output and you are good to go.

Know your battery level better with ChargeBar

2012-02-25T04:52:00.000-08:00

Ever felt that the stock battery level indicator on your android phone is too tiny to give you a clear picture of how much charge is left ? Then, you should definitely give ChargeBar a try.

As the name suggests, this little app places a thin bar atop the android notification bar to show your battery charge level. You can also place it on the bottom of the notification bar or even at the bottom of your screen.

Notice the thin blue line on top of the status bar ? That's the ChargeBar. Pretty sleek, isn't it?

Since the bar stretches across the whole width of your mobile screen, you can easily and more accurately estimate the battery charge level . The app also provides options to change the size and colour of the bar. The charge bar can also be set to animate when you charge the battery.

The app works on any mobile that runs android. No matter , whether it is rooted or not. No matter , whether it is the stock android or a custom ROM.

To quote from ChargeBar's Marketplace info,

ChargeBar is a highly-customizable, completely-free MIUI battery bar application for ANY Android device on ANY ROM, with or without root

To put it short, ChargeBar is the perfect choice for those who are looking for a better alternative for the android's default battery bar.

Get it from the Android Marketplace - ChargeBar

Batch convert/resize images in Ubuntu using Imagemagick

2011-10-29T19:59:00.000-07:00

Recently , I found myself in a situation where I had hundreds of high resolution photographs hogging up my hard disk space. Most of them were taken with high end cameras and each photo sized around 5 MB each. I didn't want to lose them all and didn't want them waste my hard disk memory either. So, I figured that resizing them would be the best option.

I'm pretty sure that almost everyone of us have had a similar experience. There are plenty of options to do batch resize images. But being a fan of command line, I wanted to get it done in a single line. That's when I came to know about Imagemagick.

Imagemagick lets you convert all your photos with a single line of command. If you haven't installed it already , do install it now by typing the following in your terminal (If you don't know how, take a look at this help page)

sudo apt-get install imagemagick

Now , enter into the folder containing all the images using the cd command .

Eg:

cd /home/arun/Pictures/photos/

Then, issue the following the following command

mogrify -resize 50% -path resized/ *.jpg

With the above command, I have resized all .jpg images in the folderto 50% of their original resolution. You can specify a custom resolution for the '-resize' option. Also, you can change your output directory by varying the '-path' option.

Warning : Make sure you specify a '-path' option, otherwise your original images will be replaced.

Google's Countdown timer to New Year 2010

2009-12-11T21:20:00.002-08:00

Google.com features a countdown clock to welcome the coming New Year 2010. The clock counts down in terms of seconds. To see the clock , proceed to google.com (if your are using Google in other domains like co.in, co.uk.. , use the "Go to Google.com" on your Google homepage.)
Now without entering any search query, click the "I'm feeling lucky" button. You will see a countdown timer as shown in the image below.

Thanks @kv for your tweet and @ramanujam for sharing it.

Keep your desktop clean with Fences

2009-12-08T16:46:00.001-08:00

Does your desktop always get messy , no matter whatever you do to keep it organized? Worry not , because Fences is here to take care of your desktop.

Fences is yet another powerful tool from Stardock that keeps your desktop icons and files in an organized manner. It creates so called “Fences” which are essentially a icon group. You can use the default groups provided when the initial run or you can create your own Fences.

The layout can be altered as per your need. One of the cool features of Fences is Quick Hide. With this feature, you can make your icons disappear by double-clicking anywhere in the desktop. In the same way. they can restored with a double click. Above all, the software is available for free.

Download Fences

WeTransfer - Online file sharing upto 2GB without any registration

2009-12-06T18:19:00.000-08:00

We already saw an online file sharing tool iFile.itwhich allows you to upload files upto 250MB. Now, here is another online file sharing tool , WeTransfer, that allows you to upload and share upto 2GB. And all this without any registration.

WeTransfer has striking interface, that makes your fire sharing experience feel like a breeze.

Here's a quick review of their features:

Upto 2GB file upload and sharing
No registration/signup required
Easy to use interface
2 Weeks time limit

Site : http://www.wetransfer.info/

Changing Default OS in GRUB2

2009-12-03T17:37:00.000-08:00

In the latest Ubuntu release , Ubuntu 9.10 (codenamed 'Karmic Koala'), the usual GRUB bootloader has been replaced with GRUB2. The GRUB2 menu entries are stored in a file /boot/grub/grub.cfg , which you should NOT edit manually. (as opposed to older menu.lst, which you can edit).

If you want to change the default OS (and other options like timeout), open the file in gedit '/etc/default/grub' with root privileges

To do this , Press Alt+F2 and then enter the command,

gksu gedit /etc/default/grub

Then change the value of GRUB_DEFAULT corresponding to your desired menu entry. The default value of 0 corresponds to the first menu entry. Therefore, to have the 'n'th menu entry as default OS, set the value n-1 to the GRUB_DEFAULT (i.e. set 2 if you want the 3rd menu entry to be default)

Now open up a terminal and type

sudo update-grub2

Now reboot your system and that's it. This will come in handy when have a Dual boot of Windows and Ubuntu set up and you want to set Windows as the default OS.

Optimize your firefox profile databases for better performance

2009-07-11T06:07:00.000-07:00

Since the release of version 3 , Firefox have been storing your bookmarks, cookies, rss feed information and such information in SQLite databases for better performance. On continuous usage, these databases can get fragmented and increase in size and may cause performance problems.

The databases can be defragmented again manually, which will optimize your firefox performance. Webupd8 explains how to perform this defragmentation in Windows, Linux and Mac OS. After trying out in a test system, ghacks author Martin, reported that it reduced the size of the firefox profile folder from 64.9MB to 53.4MB. He added that , heavy users with many bookmarks and rss feeds will most likely experience a large reduction in the size of the profile folder.

Source: ghacks

Recover your Gmail password by SMS

2009-07-10T05:11:00.000-07:00

Google recently launched a service to recover your Google account password by SMS. It is not uncommon that people forget their passwords for countless number of web applications they use. But forgetting important passwords like those of your email accounts and bank accounts can lead to lot of troubles. So normally these applications have some features to help you recover your password like the "Security question" feature.

Google had taken a step forward and introduced a new feature to recover your password by SMS. All you have to do is to login into your Google accounts page and then select the 'Change Password Recovery Options' . Add your mobile phone number in the option provided and click 'Save'. That's all. Simple isn't it. (If you got doubts, take a look at the screenshot below)

Next time, when you forget your password , goto password-assitance page and enter your Username. You will receive a text message (SMS) with the recovery code.

To take a look at the official google announcement , visit Official Gmail Blog

Also , take a look at our guide to sending free SMS from your Instant Messenger/ Gtalk .

Send free SMS from your IM Client like Gtalk, Pidgin (Including India)

2009-07-08T07:09:00.000-07:00

There are lot of internet tools and websites available to send free SMS from your PC. But you have to visit the site, just to send a SMS and more annoyingly , some of those sites even need registration. Chikka, allows you send the SMS right from your Instant Messenger like Gtalk, Pidgin etc. All you need is a Google account and an IM client supporting its chat feature. Registration with Chikka is not necessary. Normally people use Google talk , but I suggest using Pidgin as it allow multiple logins like Gtalk, Yahoo , Icq all at the same time. Moreover, its supports secure chat with encryption.

How to send free SMS from your IM client :

Invite the <desired number with country code>@chikkatalk.com for chat. [DO NOT add a '+' before the number . Usage eg: For India , 919xxxxxxxxx]
The invite will be accepted and the contact will be online within a minute.
Now send your SMS as instant messages to that contact. It will delivered to that number as SMS.

To find the list of countries that chikka support , visit their faq page. I tested with Airtel India and the sms got delivered almost instantly . Let me know if it works for you , in the comments.

Happy Messaging :)

Ubuntu Tips #1:How to select the right repositories for faster update and software installations

2009-07-06T04:17:00.000-07:00

People who are new to Ubuntu, complain that it takes a lot of time for the update files to get downloaded despite their high speed Internet connections. The slower speed is also experienced while downloading software packages. This is because they did not select the right repository mirrors to download those updates. They are downloading from the main servers, which Ubuntu sets by default. These servers may be slow because of their huge load. If you configure your package manager to download the packages from a mirror repository that is close to your location (probably, a mirror from your country) , you can download the packages at a faster rate than that from the main server.

A step-by-step procedure to choose the right mirror repository in Ubuntu:

Open Synaptic Package Manager (System-> Administration-> Synaptic Package Manager)
Select Settings->Repositories
Now click the drop-down menu near "Download from:" in the "Ubuntu Software" tab.
Select "Other" from the list.
In the window that appears, select your country and click the "Select best server" button on the right side. (Take a look at the screenshot below)
Now click "Choose server" button and come back to the main window Synaptic Package Manager
Click "Reload" in the toolbar and wait for the package information to get updated.
After completing all the above steps you will certainly experience a difference in the download speed of updates and packages.

iFile.it - Upload and Share files upto 250 MB with Resumable download

2009-07-03T16:38:00.000-07:00

One of the worst problems with the file sharing giants like Rapidshare and Megaupload , is that they don't allow resumable downloads. Which means , if your download fails halfway due to some connection error or power cut, you cannot start the download again from the point it broke. You have to start over again. Same is the case , when you try to pause the download. This can become messy when downloading large files.

iFile.it , a replacement of the famous mihd.net, is offering free file sharing upto 250MB (as many files as you want) with resumable downloads. Once, you upload your files, you'll get a link to share with your friend. Clicking that link takes you to a page, where you/your friend can request a resumable download link. You can pause the download and resume it again , whenever you wish. If you are uploading as a guest user (no signup required), you can share upto 100Mb per file (any number of files) which is pretty decent.

Here is a quick review of their features:

Upload any number of files within the size limit 250MB (Free registration)
Upload any number of files within the size limit 100MB (Guest user - No signup required)
Resumable downloads (Pause and resume your downloads at your convenience)
Easy-to-use interface
Personally , I like their cool name "ifile.it"

Link : iFile.it

Happy sharing! :)

Windows Tips #1 : Shortcut key to access the items in system tray

2009-04-12T02:23:00.000-07:00

In Windows, we can accomplish a lot of tasks in a matter of few key strokes. But we are not even aware of many of the built-in windows shortcuts. Do you know that you can access the items in the system tray using your keyboard alone? Well, let us see how we can do that,

Press the key combination Windows+b , this gives you access to the system tray menu.

Use the arrow keys to navigate among the items.

Press Spacebar or Enter to activate (or open) a particular item

Press Menu key (the one nearer to your right ctrl) to access the right-click menu of a particular item.

Share your pictures on twitter without giving out your password - img.ly

2009-04-11T00:22:00.000-07:00

Img.ly is an image sharing site designed for twitter. Though there are many sites for posting pictures to your twitter feed, most of them require you to enter your twitter username and password. While this kind of login was the only option in the past , the scenario has changed now. Twitter recently introduced OAuth and img.ly was one of the few twitter image sharing sites that implemented this facility.

Logging in with OAuth facility means you are not giving away your username and password to img.ly, but only to twitter (More like those facebook apps). After logging in, you can start using the site for sharing your favourite pics easily.

Visit img.ly

Gmail Labs announces new feature to add images in mail

2009-04-10T05:14:00.000-07:00

Gmail Labs recently added a new option to add Images in mail. Though gmail offers a great email service , it lacks some of the primitive features like adding images to your mail.(But there were some workarounds like this one from Digital Inspiration).

Gmail labs is doing a good job by adding new innovative features and most wanted features in gmail. Recently, they announced a feature to add images directly in your mail using the rich text editor. Enable "Inserting images" in your Gmail labs tab. Now you can see a image toolbar icon like this one,

On clicking this icon, a new dialog appears using which you can add an image from computer or an image from the web. So easy , isn't it?

URL Shortening Bookmarklets

2009-03-29T04:33:00.000-07:00

No one prefers to use long URLs when there are a lot of URL shortening services available. URL shortening services like tinyurl.com, bitly etc take up a long URL and give you a short URL which you can share easily. Though you can to these sites directly and do the conversion, there is another easy alternative.

Most of these sites provide you with a bookmarklet, with which the URL shrinking can be done easily. I've listed the bookmarklets of some popular URL shrinking services.

Drag the bookmarklet of to your bookmarks toolbar or use right-click menu to save it as a bookmark. Now, to shorten the URL of the page you are viewing, click on the bookmarklet and it will automatically generate the shortened URL for you.

If you have bookmarklets for any other services , please do mention it in the comments. If you are a ubiquity user, take a look at the is.gd URL shortening script for ubiquity created by me.

Play FLAC files in Windows Media Player

2009-02-07T23:18:00.000-08:00

FLAC (Free Loseless Audio Codec) is a great a way to store music if you don't want to lose the quality of the original source. But unfortunately, Windows Media Player does not support the flac format. There are lot of players available, which can play flac music, like Winamp, VLC and the previously mentioned XMPlay. But many people still use the Windows Media Player (WMP) that comes bundled with the Microsoft Operating System. Here's what they should do, to get flac music played in their Windows Media Player.

Download madFlac
Unzip the package and run install.bat to install the codec.
Open your .flac file in Windows Media Player .
Click "Yes" on the dialog box that appears . Select the "Don't ask again for this extension" if you don't to see this dialog again.
Now your flac music can be played in Windows Media Player without any problem.

Encrypt your IM Conversations in Pidgin

2009-02-07T19:01:00.000-08:00

Pidgin is IM (chat) client that supports multiple IM protocols including Gtalk, Yahoo, AIM, ICQ and many more. It also allows you to encrypt your IM conversations with the help of a plugin - "Pidgin-Encryption".

After installing the plugin just enable it by going to Tools > Plguins. Now your Pidgin is ready to secure your IM chat sessions. The plugin is available for various operating systems.

Features:

Automatically creates a public/private key pair for you upon loading the plugin
Automatically transmits your public key to other users.
Supports 512 - 4096 bit keys.
Saves keys of known users, and warns you if their public key has changed.
Embeds all encryption and keys inside HTML, so if the other user doesn't have the plugin, they will get a little message telling them about the plugin, and won't get a screen full of garbage.
Stores keys in human readable files in your .gaim/.pidgin directory, in case you ever need to copy/edit them by hand. Which you really shouldn't have to do.
Automatically recognizes if you are chatting with someone who has the plugin- see the Preferences dialog.
Available for the Windows version of Pidgin.
Modular and extensible. If you want to define a different type of encryption, you can use this plugin as a wrapper to take care of transporting the encrypted binary over the IM pipe.

Download the plug-in from Pidgin-Encryption
Happy Chatting :)

Shorten URLs in ubiquity with is.gd

2009-02-07T01:12:00.000-08:00

Start shrinking your URLs in ubiquity with is.gd service. Ubiquity, by default, comes with a command "tinyurl" to shrink your URL's. But I feel that TinyUrl is no more 'tiny' (as the domain itself is longer). So I created my own command to shorten the URL's using is.gd (another URL shortening service but with a short domain name).

If you don't know what ubiquity is , then take a look at the note below.

Adding the command to your command list:

Goto http://arunsonnet.googlepages.com/ubiquityis.gdcommand
If Ubiquity is already installed on you browser, you will notice a information bar with "Subscribe" button at the top right corner of that page. (If ubiquity is not installed, grab it from Mozilla Labs)
Click on the "Subscribe" button
A new page with the Command's source will appear.
Click "I know what I'm doing. Subscribe to it!" ( I assure you that there is no malicious code . The source code is before you! )

Usage:

Select the URL you want to shorten (or you can give it with the command)
Now open Ubiquity and type is.gd and press 'Tab' to auto-fill the selection (You can also enter the URL here)
Press 'Enter'.
Now your original longURL will be replaced by shrinked URL from is.gd. The shortened URL is also copied to the Clipboard.

Happy Shrinking! :)

The Project is hosted on Google Code . Visit the project page to know more about this command.

Note: Ubiquity is an extension for firefox that makes your online life easier. You can perform searches, send emails and a lot using ubiquity. Know more about it here.

YouTube Testing Video Downloads

2009-01-18T00:25:00.000-08:00

YouTube is testing a new feature that allows users to download the video they are watching. This is being tested at the ChangeDotGov channel right now. You can see a small "Click to Download" link below the video. Using that, you can download the video in MP4 format.

Lawrence Lessig, Professor of Law at Stanford University says that,

"Notice an important new feature in the world of YouTube -- a "Click to download" link. YouTube is rolling this out slowly, initially with content that aspires to be consistent with principles of open government. I'm told it will be offered more generally. In any case, it is an important development. There have always been hacks for slurping down YouTube videos. But it is a valuable step that YouTube encourage and support this sharing."

This seems to be a great move by YouTube. There a lot of ways right now , with which you download YouTube videos unofficially.I have even mentioned a couple of bookmarklets to download youtube videos. But now, it is glad to witness YouTube bringing out its own way to help users download the videos.
via Google Operating System

XMPlay - The tiny music player

2008-12-21T01:58:00.000-08:00

XMPlay is a tiny, light-weight, standalone Music Player that plays all the major formats right out of the box. And yes, its Free. The main program is just 263 KB, yet it still contains all that you need to play music. A lot of plugins are also available on the site which lets you add extra features like winamp visualizations, album art display, flac playback.

The coolest thing there are plugins that enable XMplay to play files within zip,rar and 7zip archives. You can customize the looks with the skins available in the support site. It also consumes less system resources. XMplay is the right choice if you are looking for a small, powerful music player to carry along with you on your pen drive.

Orkut Chat - Fully Integrated Google Talk inside Orkut

2008-12-03T20:11:00.000-08:00

Tired of chatting in orkut with the scrapbook and those constant page refreshes, now Google is bringing you a fully integrated Google Talk inside Orkut so that you can chat with your orkut friends and other Gtalk contacts right from Orkut. You can also browse orkut at the same time you are chatting. You can also decide which friend group can chat with you. Goto Settings-->Chat to configure these chat settings. Google is slowly rolling out this feature to its users, so if don't see the orkut chat right now you may get in a couple of days. (It is not yet activated in my account.) Below is a screenshot form TechBuzz

Happy Chatting! :)