I bought a new BlackBerry 8310 mobile device in May 2nd in the city Digital Mall when Linda came and visited me during the holiday. She planned to buy a nice netbook, and came to look for me for suggestions. At the 2nd floor, I saw all kinds of mobile phones, and, I found some BlackBerry phones were sold there, this was for the first time that I knew they sell BlackBerry mobiles.

I am currently using an old BlackBerry 7100V, too old not to meet my requirements. Compared with 7100V, 8310 has much more features that I live and need, for example, EDGE network, it’s faster than GPRS, and, GPS, 8310 has a GPS receiver, so I won’t get lost wherever I am. What’s more, it has a media player which I can play musics in my spare time.

One of the most important feature that I think a mobile device must have is Camera, with a camera, I can take pictures whenever I want, although it has only 200 mega pixels. With a BlackBerry 8310, I don’t need to take my DSC-T500, it’s so big and heavy, don’t you think?

When I got this new 8310, I tested all of its features, it works just fine. It costed me only a little, but its quality is just good. Oh, I wanted and planed to buy a Nokia E71, but I think this BlackBerry 8310 can do all its job, but price is very lower than that.

These pictures were taken by my 8310, pictures quality is just good.

Linda in the Digital Mall

Linda lying on the bed in a hotel

Boiled Fish with Pickled Cabbage and Chili / On Sunday, before Linda went back to her school, I took her to a Sichuan Restaurant, this is what we eat.

A good mobile phone helps a lot if you don’t have a computer at hand. Last time, when we went to a small city nearby to prepare customers goods, the list I printed was not clear enough, but I didn’t have a computer at that time, I called my customer, and told that to send me picture to my mailbox, I logged in my mailbox with BlackBerry’s default browser, and I downloaded the picture in seconds. If I don’t have a mobile, or the mobile doesn’t have this kind of feature, I don’t know what I can do, really.

As for many Linux users should have known, Mitter is one of my favorite open-source, and cross-platform client for Twitter, it’s a Linux native application runing both PyGTK and on a console/terminal.

The latest version of Mitter is 0.4.5, you can download it here or run yum install mitter in the command line to install it in your system.

I registered and begun to use Twitter last year, Mitter was my favorite Twitter client for a very long time since then in my laptop (running Fedora 10). It has the basic feature which any Twitter client should have, especially the latest 0.4.5 release, I had been using this version for quite a long time, although this version meets my needs and requirements, but it has a little problem: some Twitter followers’ profile images are displayed very large, which made the whole interface very ugly, see my previous screenshot for an example:

I know Mitter is open-sourced, but I know nothing about programming, and know nothing how to solve this problem as well.  However, one of Chinese bloggers and Linux fans solved this problem finally on his blog post, whom I know latter is also a Twitter user @shengbo, he hacked Mitter 0.4.5 and made my twitter experice much more better!

This hacked Mitter improved the following features including:

0, Resoved the bug of displaying large profile images
1,  Removed “What are you doing” above the input area, this line takes up too much spaces
2, Word count instead of the “Add” button
3, Hide menu bar, just press Alt+9 to hide the menubar to release more space
4, Refresh button at the left of input area
5, Alt+X to hide the whole Mitter window
6, System tray icon: click to toggle windows visibility

Thanks @shengbo, who made Mitter more amazing. To install this hacked Mitter, please run  git clone git://github.com/albert748/hacking-mitter.git in your terminal. Or you can download it directly from here.

BTW: A latest Linux (Ubuntu) Twitter and Identi.ca app

Today, I found a new Twitter project called wallDent. wallDent is a script that turns your desktop wallpaper into an identi.ca or Twitter timeline.

What a cool interface. Can anyone tell me how to compile and install in Fedora 10? Thanks in Advanced. (Source code is here https://code.launchpad.net/~nhandler/walldent/trunk)

Some fans of my blog took to the streets in San Francisco, and spelt out “I ♡ CHARLES” with Google Latitude. Thanks them, please click here for their video: http://services.google.com/latitudevideo/view.html#n0BGZQKDR5m0H-GDZQS5z0BGZQKDR5s0BgZqkdr-Odmf5s0BgZqkdr-Odmf

Frankly speaking, my blog is writen in English, so most of my blog visitors come from the United States, and Europe (especially United Kingdom), and some other English-speaking countries (Except China).

According to another of blog statistics, it also says most of my blog fans come from the North America. That’s why they gathered together in San Francisco, and spelt out their feeling with their mobiles.

Oh, this video is only for fun, you can make your own here http://services.google.com/latitudevideo/ , thanks Google Latitute.

Give Ubuntu Jaunty An Apple Flavour A lot of people like to dress up their Linux (Gnome) computer with a Mac OS X interface. One way that I learned is to install Mac4Lin theme, I tried this before, but I don’t like Mac4Lin interface. Well, this article gives Gnome a fresh new look, and, it’s similar to Mac.

Schedule & Automate Tasks In Linux With Gnome Schedule I know a tool which called crontab, which can execute commands or scripts automatically at a specified time/date, so that you are allowed to do some things repeatedly on your computer and automactically, to use crontab, you must learn some Linux commands, because crontab is a command line based program. I like doing some basic job in terminal, but I hate commands, because I know only a little.

Well, if you don’t like Terminal either, you can try Gnome Schedule. This is a graphical equivalent of the crontab, which you can use it very easily. Here is a howto which you can learn from it.

Last month, a girl, who was my class mate when we studied at XFU, said she got married. It was a great blow to me when I heard this news.

We have been graduated from university for almost 3 years, many of our schoolmate have been married, and most of them have had a child, but, I’m still single, what’s worse, I never had a grilfriend. I’ve been 24 years old now, I want to get married too, it’s time to look for a girlfriend, perfectly a nice girl.

• Fedora 11 Will Have An Incredible Number Of New Features
• Fedora 11 Feature Bonanza
• Fedora 11 Feature Freeze Is On
• Fedora 11 preview
• Fedora 11 incluirá RPM 4.7
• Progress Towards Fedora 11 Beta
• Innovation Sparks Jealousy
• Ubuntu 9.04 vs Fedora 11: A lot can change in one month!
• The Future of Linux: Fedora 11 Beta Available Today
• Ubuntu 9.04 Beta vs. Fedora 11 Beta Performance
• Announcing Fedora 11 Beta
• Fedora 11 Beta
• Fedora 11 boasts 20-second startup
• Fedora 11 Beta Screenshot Tour
• Fedora 11 beta released
• Fedora 11 Beta Wallpaper
• Fedora 11 (Leonidas) Beta 发布
• Fedora 11 Beta图辑
• Fedora 11 beta bares chest to all-comers
• Fedora 11 beta on europa
• Fedora 11 beta beefs up Linux security

Fedora 11 (Leonidas) Final will be released

Days later.

Put a countdown widget on your blog or website. Anxious waiting for the final release of Leonidas.

Since my Flickr account went Pro, I was able to upload as many pictures and photos as I took with my camera and shared them with all of my friends. Here are two Flickr clients if you use Linux system, which allows you upload your photos conveniently.

1. jUploadr

jUploadr is a cross platform, cross-site Photo uploader. Currently it runs on Windows Linux and OS X and supports both Flickr and Zooomr. It allows you to set all properties of a photo before you upload it. It also supports batch editing, so you can make short work of uploading a bunch of files. It is Flickr officially recommend photo uploading client for Linux.

Latest version of jUploadr is 1.1.2, and you can downlaod jUploadr-1.1.2-linuxGTK-i386.tar.gz (for Linux i386)  here. jUploadr is a java-based program, no installation required, decompress the downloaded package, and double click the executable  “jUploadr” to run.

2. Postr

Postr is another Flickr uploadr for GNOME desktop, which aims to be simple to use but exposing enough of Flickr to be useful. It isn’t finished yet, but its a very capable uploader already.

To install in Fedora 10 is quite easy too, just type yum install postr in the terminal, it will automactially installed.

Postr has the same fuctoins which jUploadr has, but it doesn’t not support Zooomr, and UI more hardly to use. Which one do you prefer?

Shutter (former named Gscrot) is an open-source feature-rich screenshot program. You can take a screenshot of a specific area, window, your whole screen, or even of a website - apply different effects to it, draw on it to highlight points, and then upload to an image hosting site, all within one window.

Shutter has a .deb package officially, which allows you very easy to install in Ubuntu Linux, but it had no .rpm package available, so things are quite difficult if you want to run it in Fedora 10 system. I tried to install months ago, but failed to install its depencies.

Last night, I finally got to know how to install it in Fedora 10, because @liusuilong and Gcell compiled a rpm package for Shutter, it’s quite convinient now…

1. For 32 bit desktop

Download the following .rpm packages:

perl-Gnome2-Wnck-svn20090118-1.fc10.i386.rpm
perl-Goo-Canvas-0.05-1.fc10.i386.rpm
shutter-0.70.1-1.ppa2.fc10.noarch.rpm

and then install them like below:

$ sudo yum localinstall perl-Gnome2-Wnck-svn20090118-1.fc10.i386.rpm –nogpgcheck
$ sudo yum localinstall perl-Goo-Canvas-0.05-1.fc10.i386.rpm –nogpgcheck
$ sudo yum localinstall shutter-0.70.1-1.ppa2.fc10.noarch.rpm –nogpgcheck

2. For 64 bit desktop

First download the following packages:

perl-Gnome2-Wnck-0.16-1.fc11.x86_64.rpm
perl-Goo-Canvas-0.05-2.fc11.x86_64.rpm
shutter-0.70.1-1.ppa2.fc10.noarch.rpm

and type and run the following commands:

$ sudo yum localinstall perl-Gnome2-Wnck-0.16-1.fc11.x86_64.rpm –nogpgcheck –enablerepo rawhide
$ sudo yum localinstall perl-Goo-Canvas-0.05-2.fc11.x86_64.rpm –nogpgcheck –enablerepo rawhide
$ sudo yum localinstall shutter-0.70.1-1.ppa2.fc10.noarch.rpm –nogpgcheck

Enjoy!

Hello, guys, I started a program recently on Twitter since Mar. 21st this month called “1 Linux Software 1 Day“, which is aim to recommend ONE linux software ONE day to the CHINESE linux users. I think this is a good idea to introduce others a perfect linux application they would like so as to promote Linux as a lot of people still think there’s not as many software as Windows or Mac (I think a lot of people refuse Linux just because of this).

I read articles on tuxmachines.org almost everyday, and a lot of applications are introduced, but I don’t have enough time and energy to translate or forward them on my blog, but Twitter is a good place to do such things, it’s convenient engouth for me.

At very first, I just tweeted in Twitterfox the software I like in Chinese language, but I found it’s hard to be archived every software that I recommended, and other people who didn’t follow me can hardly have a chance to know them too, so I added every tweet a tag “1soft1day“, this tag is currently unique, so, when you try to search this tag on Twitter Seach, you can get all softwares I recommended before.

Well, now, I brought this “1 Linux App 1 Day Program” to English-speaking Linux user too, with another tag “1app1day”, when you type this tag name and search on Twitter, you will be able to see all of my recommended software, and all  in English. You can also visit this url directly: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%231app1day

In general, please seach #1soft1day for Chinese, well, #1app1day for English. Please help me and keep these two tags unique (you’d better use another tag if you have related program), and, please don’t post this tag in your tweets (so there’s no waste)

I suggest you follow me @pengjiayou on Twitter, so that you’re be able to know what I recommend at an early time, and, to recommend me the software that you like by @ replies. Thanks.

Hi, there, this is Charles, glad to see all of you here. First of all, I have some questions to ask you: do you write blogs? Do you have a personal blog? And where is your blog hosted? Is your blog Hosted in a BSP (Blog Service Provider, like Wordpress.com) or your self-hosted? This is a review of the best web hosting companies, which can help you to pick the right hosting company, if you want to have a  personal self-hosted blog or your own like me.

Compared with any BSP blog, for example, http://pengjiayou.wordpress.com, you have a personal domain name of your own, like http://www.charlespeng.com , this is your personal identification on the whole net, because it is unique. As you know, both wordpress.com blog and my blog are all driven by Wordpress blog software, but things are quite different, you don’t have full permission to do things you want on wordpress.com, however, if you download wordpress software and upload and install to your own personal hosting, you will have the ability to do whatever you want (upload and backup files, upload and active any wordpress themes or plugins, backup your blog posts … etc). What you need is just a personal domain name and a comfortable, high-quality, fast and secure web hosting service. Here we go!

To register a domain name of your own, is a quite easy thing, I recommend GoDaddy or DomainSite, these are my current domain names providers that I like,  type a name you prefer, and then search, if it’s not regsited, fill in your own information and make payment, and the domain is yours! (Please don’t walk away, if you register one of the hosting companies for one year which I recommend below, you will get your own domain name free of charges, and you can also get some money returned from me, this is not a joke, that is to say, your first year of self-hosting will be more cheaper, please go on).

I started my own domain names and personal sites since 2000, later since 2006, I begun to build up my own blogs with Wordpress blogging software, I have registered and tried a lot of US web hosting services since then, the hosting companies which I like most are only TWO: Hostgator and bluehost, these are the best hosting service providers that I’ve ever found, fast, secure, stable and low cost (as low as 10 usd/month).

Hostgator is one of the world’s top 10 largest web hosting companies with more than 1,300,000 hosted domains. They have over 175 employees to provide you around-the-clock superior support. They are the perfect choice whether you are looking for business, personal, or even Fortune 500 hosting.

Every web hosting plan of  Hostgator comes with a 45 day money back guarantee, 99.9% uptime guarantee, and is fully guaranteed by its owner himself. They have a very good sevice, if you ever have a problem with regular support just ask that your ticket be assigned to Brent (CEO of Hostgator) and he will personally take the time to give you the VIP attention that you deserve.

I recommend Hostgator Shared Hosting Baby Plan, 7.95 USD a month, you will get unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwhich, unlimited addon/parked or sub domains (alows you to host unlimited sites under your account), unlimited MySQL databases and FTP accounts as well as Email boxes.

- Hostgator.com trusted by over 1,300,000 domain owners
- Unlimited storage space, unlimited monthly bandwidth
- Hostgator 24/7 support, live chat support, toll free phone.
- Host up to 999 unique websites. Free domain name.
- Unlimited email, ftp, subdomain. Unlimited MySQL database.
- Free site transfer, mysql transfer, script transfer. 4500 free web templates.
- Cpanel with fantastico & PHP 5, ecommerce, blog, forum, joomla, drupal.
- Hostgator Baby Plan as low as $7.95 /month
- To register Hostgator Shared Hosting Baby Plan for one year with my affiliate link http://secure.hostgator.com/cgi-bin/affiliates/clickthru.cgi?id=pengjiayou I will get $50 through your sign-up, But I will return 25$ back to your Paypal account.
- 7.95*12-25, that’s 70.40 for the first year at Hostgator, 26% OFF

Bluehost is another high-quality web hosting company that I’d like to recommend you. Bluehost has been providing hosting solutions to thousands of business and personal web sites since 1996. Its unique  internet hosting package helps businesses and individuals get high-powered service at a fraction of the cost.

With BlueHost you can depend on:
Highest customer service
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Maximum guaranteed uptime
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BlueHost is here to secure your business. They are confident they can provide you with the highest level of support with their friendly and patient support staff waiting to address your needs. Their veteran hosting team knows what it takes to be the best and how they can help make your site a success.

- Bluehost.com trusted by 775,000 domain owner.
- Unlimited storage space, unlimited bandwidth transfer.
- Bluehost 24/7 support, live chat support, toll free phone.
- Host up to 999 unique websites. Free domain name.
- Cpanel with fantastico. Blog, ecommerce, RoR, Joomla, Drupal, forum.
- Email, ftp, subdomain, 100 MySQL, PHP 5, FastCGI.
- To buy Bluehost Shared Hosting, there’s no coupon, but to sign up with my affiliate link: http://www.bluehost.com/track/huzuofei/text1 , I will get 65 USD per your sign ups, hnn, a half, that’s  30 usd will be returned to you by me.

-6.95*12-30=53.40, that’s 35% OFF for the 1st year.

If you sign up with either Hostgator Baby Plan or Bluehost Shared Hosting with my affliate link, you will get some money returned from me to your paypal account, please believe me, so long as I get payment from them.

Oh, both Hostgator Baby Plan or Bluehost Shared Hosting plans contain a free domain name, free for life if you keep renewing your hosting account, that’s CHEAP!