DetectorPro

Export Email Addresses from Facebook Friends

viktoru.u@gmail.com (Viktor Ustijanoski) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:09:00 +0000

If there is any need for exporting contact from Facebook, there is few apps on the Facebook Apps directory that can transfer your friends contact information out of Facebook.

An app called “Export Friends” will save you friend’s names, city, birthday and their current location in a CSV (text) file that you then import into Excel, Gmail or any other web email program. There also many plugins for syncing your contacts with outlook. But there is no app for email and phone number download. This can be done with some Greasemonkey scripts and other hacks that can pull this information from Facebook through “web scraping” but don’t ever think about this because Facebook team will ban your account forever.

So here is a perfectly legal way to download all your friends email addresses from. If you have yahoo account, log in into address.yahoo.com and on tab contacts/tools/import click the Facebook icon. When login dialog pop-ups, just sign-in with your Facebook account and within seconds, you entire Facebook address book will be available inside your Yahoo Mail Account. Once the import is done, you can download a CSV file by clicking here.

Now, you can import the CSV file into Gmail Contacts, LinkedIn, your phone address book or any of the social sites where you want to connect with your existing Facebook friends.

Download WinX HD video converter deluxe for free

viktoru.u@gmail.com (Viktor Ustijanoski) — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 15:54:00 +0000

A top notch video product from Digiarty Software, the company behind the WinX video converter, can be downloaded for free. Otherwise the product cost $49.95.

You can download WinX HD video converter deluxe for free and get a legal license for limited time that is expiring on March 15, 2010.

WinX HD Video Converter Deluxe builds in 160 video codecs and 50 audio codecs. And without any third-party codecs, it can easily support Multi-track HD video, such as BDAV, M2TS, MKV, AVCHD, HDTV and MPEG-TS video movies. It also supports converting all the HD and HD-Camcorder videos, to both portable and console players, such as iPad, iPod, iPhone, Apple TV, PS3, PSP, Xbox, Zune, PDA, Blackberry, Nokia, Android, Zen, etc.

With WinX HD Video Converter Deluxe you can:

Separate audio and video files from a video.
Capture pictures from video and save them as .bmp or .jpg.
Do the single and batch conversion.
You get support for both Multi-core CPU and Hyper Threading, so it offers 5x-15x real-time video conversion speeds.

Download WinX HD Video Converter Deluxe here. After installation, you can license this product with this code: WINHCD-GIVE-AWAY-2010

Enjoy

Microsoft Power Defragmenter - fix your slow Windows machine

viktoru.u@gmail.com (Viktor Ustijanoski) — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 18:54:00 +0000

One of the reasons why your Windows computer become slow over time is because the files on the hard drive can become fragmented. What is that?

As you start filling your hard-drive with new programs, documents, and other files, the operating system tries to find vacant places on the hard-drive to place these files. Like an artist who breaks a tile into multiple pieces to form a mosaic, your computer will break these file into fragments and store them in different places across your hard drive.

When you load a program or open a file, the computer will have to first assemble these “fragmented” pieces thus decreasing the performance. And fragmentation is not just an issue with your computer’s hard disk but even removable devices like the USB Flash Drive or your external drives can also become fragmented with time.

Windows Disk Defragmenter from Microsoft

A Disk Defragmenter pre-arranges all the “fragmented” pieces of a file close together thus reducing the time it takes to open files or load programs on your computer. Now, the problem with built-in windows solutions is that the app will ignore all files smaller than 64MB. But Microsoft offers another free, more powerful but lesser-known utility called Contig (short for contiguous) that lets you have more control over the defragmentation process. Contig lets you to defragment individual files, folders, or the entire hard drive. But Contig is command prompt based so you can look at Power Defragmenter – an easy and more visual interface for Contig.

Using Power Defragmenter, you can visually select files, folders, or the drive you wish to defragment, and Power Defragmenter will internally use Contig to perform the defragmentation process. You may use Contig (Power Defragmenter) on computers running Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7.

Download MS Power Defragmenter here, or if you are more tech user try the command prompt Contig here.

Symbian^3

viktoru.u@gmail.com (Viktor Ustijanoski) — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 00:53:00 +0000

The Symbian Foundation unveiled the Symbian^3 (S^3) platform, the first entirely open source release following the platform's transition to an open source license on 4 February, 2010, which was the largest of its kind in history.

S^3 will include:

HDMI support enables users to plug their phone into a TV and watch a high-definition movie at 1080p quality without a Blu-ray player.
Music store integration embedded within the radio enables users to identify a song and learn more about it. The addition of a "buy now" button, which links with the
user's chosen music store, makes purchasing easy.
More efficient memory management due to Writeable Data Paging allows more applications to run in parallel for a faster, more complete and efficient multi-tasking experience, especially on mid-range hardware.
A new 2D and 3D graphics architecture takes full advantage of the hardware acceleration available to deliver a faster and more responsive user interface. Users, developers and device creators will all benefit greatly from the visual enhancements and smooth transitions that will significantly improve the look-and-feel of their applications and services. Combined with industry-standard OpenGL ES, the new architecture also provides a great platform for high performance games – all without slowing the phone down.
The industry-leading networking architecture, ready for 4G networks, provides next-generation Internet experiences on today's devices. Consumers will benefit from the architecture's ability to seamlessly balance each individual application's needs regarding factors such as bandwidth, latency and jitter. This improves the consumer's experience of network-dependent applications and Internet services like VoIP and media content streaming.
One-click connectivity for all applications greatly simplifies the process of connecting to the Internet, without interrupting the user. New global settings allow the user to configure platform-wide behaviour, for example ensuring the device automatically switches from cellular to WLAN when a free WLAN network is available.
Usability enhancements across the user interface include the adoption of a direct "single tap" interaction model, making it much easier to complete common tasks on a device. Multi-touch support for gestures such as "pinch-to-zoom" forms the basis of a gesture framework that can be extended and leveraged by the developer community.
The Homescreen takes a big step forward with support for multiple pages of widgets and a simple flick gesture to move between them. The widget manager makes discovery and download of new widgets simple and support for multiple instances of a native widget means that consumers can monitor multiple weather forecasts, news feeds, social networking accounts or multiple email accounts simultaneously through a common interface.

Lee M. Williams, Executive Director of the Symbian Foundation, said: "S^3 is another huge milestone in the evolution of our platform. Now that it is fully open source, the door is open to individual contributors, device creators and third-party developer companies, as well as other organizations, to create more compelling products and services than ever before. We have enjoyed significant momentum since we completed S^2, with companies including Sun, Nokia, Ixonos, Comarch and Accenture, among others, contributing to S^3. We are now looking to build on this momentum and remain on course to complete S^4 later this year."

The developer experience has also been greatly improved. The Qt toolkit is pre-integrated into all kits and the runtime in S^3 will run on existing devices back to S60 3.1. The Web Runtime support provided in the platform remains a key part of the developer story, allowing web developers to directly re-use their skills in HTML, CSS, Javascript and AJAX to create Homescreen widgets and standalone applications.

Revolutionary Windows.next

viktoru.u@gmail.com (Viktor Ustijanoski) — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 21:15:00 +0000

If you are on a revolutionary mood, wait for at least two years, when Microsoft plans to release new versions of Windows. According to MSDN blog (the article is currently removed) the next version of Windows will be something "revolutionary" and completely different from any other Windows released so far. On the new Windows development concept works already dozen teams and the new structure will be based on the requirements of end users and their needs.

"Exchanging ideas reflects what people have been looking for years and it will change the way people think about computers and the way they use them. This is the future of PC ..."

Unfortunately, what will be the future and what are the real changes - it is not specified. Although the text is removed from the blog, you can read the full article from the Google cache, here.

Google Buzz

viktoru.u@gmail.com (Viktor Ustijanoski) — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 18:23:00 +0000

Google actively enters in the online social network market presenting a new service called Google Buzz.

Google Buzz service is integrated with Gmail and allows Gmail users to quickly exchange messages, post information and file sharing (videos, music, pictures). Users can also connect to their accounts on Twitter, Flickr, Picasa and Google Reader to see what their friends has published on this services.

The main advantage of Google Buzz is ability to focus on content relevance and ranking within a social network. For example, Buzz users can see all the content for "followed" friends, but also can see the contents from the users that are not directly followed if some of followed friends likes or comments their content. Buzz can also "learn" to identify recommended content (interesting or not interesting) following the user reading habits.

In addition to Buzz, Google has released a special application for mobile devices so Buzz can be used from every location in the world.

More info about Google Buzz here.

Open source + Microsoft + Adobe browsing improvements

viktoru.u@gmail.com (Viktor Ustijanoski) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 13:38:00 +0000

After Mozilla announced that there will be no support for h264 encoded video (Youtube as example), a new open “coalition” is made in form of OGG Theora video codec for Silverlight. Next, Microsoft have just joined the SVG working group and Adobe promise significant improvements in Flash 10.1, including hardware rendered flash and lowered CPU usage. And there is CoperLicht - a WebGL JavaScript 3D engine – OpenGL support in browsers.

If you want OGG playback within Silverlight, you can do that with Highgate media suite, an open source product. It also provides a JavaScript bridge that’s compatible with the HTML5 video API, allowing developers to script it as a fallback to the HTML5 video tag. Given that all the major browsers that aren’t IE already support HTML5 video, this seems somewhat limited to IE/Windows; nether-the-less, it exists and means that there’s another way to play OGG.

Last months, Adobe is working quite hard to bring faster flash experience for end users. They announce that Flash 10.1 will bring many improvements first on Mac platform but we expect same improvements for Linux and Windows soon. Fewer crashes, faster, better, reduced CPU usage. Adobe have been getting a lot of bad feedback at the moment as many developers move on HTML5 support - without flash. The best Adobe can do is make Flash suck less and be upfront and honest about their plans to solve people’s complaints about flash.

CoperLicht is a set of development tools to take advantage of emerging OpenGL support in browsers (“WebGL”). WebGL exposes an OpenGL ES API to the HTML5 Canvas element. Support is highly experimental at this stage on Webkit and Firefox only, with no public releases. You can read more here and see the demos of a Quake III level.

And why is all this? Google announce only h264 codec support for their Youtube service. Becouse h264 is closed licensed product Mozilla refuse to license h264 for their Firefox browser and there will be no support for that codec on Firefox - at least in form of legal support, so they are forcing Ogg theora codec - also quality but open source video codec. ( Many open source supporting companies can join forces to refine OGG Theora in a perfect codec but there is no interest about that. Why?? ) As Google browser improves in many ways and Youtube is highly consumed it's logically that a competition response is coming. OGG Theora is now playable within Silverlight, Adobe is fixing Flash bugs and will improve hardware Flash decoding and also there is new OpenGL implementations in browser world which will dramatically improve web usability and web UI for future applications and games. What we get from all this? Just, more enjoyable and quality time in front of our browsers...

Wordpress for Android

viktoru.u@gmail.com (Viktor Ustijanoski) — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:31:00 +0000

Wordpress release a mobile version of their blogging platform for Android powered devices, so now you can easily update your blog and publish posts from everywhere. Android Wordpress has many interesting features among many:

Support for both Wordpress.com blogs and self hosted Wordpress blogs
Ability to configure and manage multiple Wordpress blogs
Total Comment Management: comment moderation and the ability to reply to comments
Publish new posts & pages including categories, tags and photos and edit the old ones
Comment Notifications in the Android notification bar

Android Wordpress comes as successor of popular android app for wordpress “wptogo”. For those familiar with wptogo – using Wordpress for android will be a real pleasure and it equips the ability to manage your blogs in Real Time 

Download here.

New ATI 10.1 Display Driver for Linux

viktoru.u@gmail.com (Viktor Ustijanoski) — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 13:22:00 +0000

ATI has many problems with Linux drivers, and instead of a good reputation as graphics card producer, the company Linux support reputation is on the third - last place compared with nVidia and Intel. ATI released a new version of its Catalyst Display Driver for Linux. The new driver, i.e. ATI Catalyst 10.1 introduces production support for Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala. It is available for both 32-bit and 64-bit systems and introduces the following fixes:

X.Org no longer crashes on an Ubuntu 9.10 system, if multiple Xinerama-enabled X.Org server generations are executed
Switching between virtual desktops no longer breaks the operating system
Single mode is now shown properly in the “Display Manager Properties” tab of the ATI Catalyst Control Center, instead of multiple modes, if the “big desktop” mode is enabled
The system no longer crashes if an HDMI monitor is hot-plugged, or if the users toggle between HDMI and LCD
Fixed an issue on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 32-bit systems, when the “Detect Displays” button was selected in ATI Catalyst Control Center, and an HDMI display was hot-plugged.

But even the driver is new with many bug fixes, again, many users are complaining of various problems with the new driver on their Ubuntu 9.10.

Download the new driver here.

Skype will be open source on Linux

ukioff@gmail.com (Ukion) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 08:51:00 +0000

"Yes, there's an open source version of Linux client being developed. This will be a part of a larger offering, but we can't tell you much about that right now,"

said Skype developer Stanislav Karchebny (whose screen name is Berkus) in his blog post.

This is also confirmed by Skype, that it's developing an open source version of its client software that runs under Linux.

As Karchebny said:

"Having an open-source user interface will help us get adopted in the multicultural land of Linux distributions, as well as on other platforms, and will speed up further development. We will update you once more details are available."

Just for information - the Skype client software for Linux came out in 2004 and over the years THE FREE VOIP AND CHAT client won the hearts of Linux users.

Download and install Firefox 3.6 on Ubuntu

viktoru.u@gmail.com (Viktor Ustijanoski) — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 20:51:00 +0000

After two RC editions few days ago, Mozilla has released the final version of Firefox 3.6. This Firefox version is based on Gecko 1.9.2 Engine, developed since the beginning of last year. The new engine delivers improvements and more speed for page views and JavaScript and significantly lower times for startup and responsiveness when browsing.

On UI way, the biggest news is improved Personas - it is a simple way of changing Firefox appearance. If you want to change or preview some of the skins, just point your mouse over the selected skin and if you want it on your Firefox just click wear it. Simple.

Firefox 3.6 has added support for new CSS attributes such as gradients, background sizing, and pointer events, added WOFF web format and new fonts and support for new DOM and HTML5 specifications including the Drag & Drop API and the File API. Open, native video can now be played full screen.

The new Firefox has safety protection from outdated plugins, and also improved stability when using third-party plugin integration.

The browser is available via the update or directly from official Mozilla page.

How to install it on Ubutu? Here is simple tutorial:

First add Mozilla ppa daily repository, open terminal and copy/paste the next line for adding repositories and installing.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-mozilla-daily/ppa && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install firefox-3.6

If you already have Mozilla repositories then open your terminal and copy/paste this line

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Have fun.

New Skype 2.1 beta 2 for Linux – ready for download

viktoru.u@gmail.com (Viktor Ustijanoski) — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 01:15:00 +0000

The new beta 2 version of Skype is announced and ready for download with manu bug fixes and extra new features that will equilibrating Linux, Mac and Windows Skype versions.

This release comes with High Quality Video and super wideband audio, so now the special people in your world will feel much closer and clearer on your Skype calls. Also there is introduction of new Screen Sharing feature, Quote message in chat, Support for different User Interfaces styles, reporting abuse and other useful features.

Click here for Skype download and install.

Hack Windows 7 to enable Aero UI

viktoru.u@gmail.com (Viktor Ustijanoski) — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:41:00 +0000

Windows 7 comes with one of the best UI features introduced on Windows Vista - Aero Interface. This interface requires much higher hardware than average computer, so for most users with old machines it will come turn off by default. If there is no chance to enable Aero on your computer with Personalize/Windows Colors, here is simple registry hack to force Windows 7 to use Aero interface:

1. Click on Start and type regedit at run
2. From left pane find and select the next registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\DWM

3. Right click on the right details pane, and create three DWORD (32-bit value) entry (bold only) and set value for each one:

UseMachineCheck - set value: 0.
Blur - set value: 0.
Animations - set value: 0.

4. Close Regedit
5. Now click Start and type CMD with administrative Priviliges
6. Next type:

Net Stop uxsms
Net Start uxsms

With this command you will stop already used and start new Desktop Window Manager Session with new options added in registry.

7. Final step is to enable Aero interface with right click on desktop and choose: Personalize/Windows Colors.

Enjoy.

Ubuntu Tweak 0.5 released

viktoru.u@gmail.com (Viktor Ustijanoski) — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 22:22:00 +0000

The new version of popular Ubuntu tweak was released with full UI redesign and many code changes new features and improvements. Also, from this release, the support for Ubuntu 9.04 and before is dropped.

Now Ubuntu tweak supports dynamic-module (only loads what desktop supports), has improved Application Center: improve from Add/Remove, supports online data sync, improve from Third-Party Source, a simple but more human-readable update manager, Improve the computer page, add the option to disable user list in GDM and many more. Full feature list and download link can be found here.

Calendar For Thunderbird 3 Update

ukioff@gmail.com (Ukion) — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 11:14:00 +0000

After unpleasant surprise from Thunderbird 3 to users who switch to this software that existing client email management provides the ability to manage a calendar which is not compatible with the new version, Mozilla has released the new version of Lightning, which solves these problems.

Lightning 1.0 beta 1 with support for Thunderbird 3, brings many fixes so far identified the problem as well as a calendar display option and related tasks in tabs (the tabs). There is also support for SeaMonkey 2, the possibility of placing multiple Alara for individual events, and improved interoperability with CalDAV-om.

More information can be found on the Mozilla site.

Windows 7 SP1?

viktoru.u@gmail.com (Viktor Ustijanoski) — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 21:31:00 +0000

Despite of the good acceptance of MS Windows 7 by regular users, a branch of users, perhaps more important to Microsoft are still hesitant to upgrade - the business users.

Microsoft is aware that a large number of users are waiting for the first major upgrade of Windows 7 to start using it. That’s why Microsoft wants to introduce SP1 as soon as possible, but for now, according to available information, it could happen at September and the testing should begin in June.

Service Pack 1 for Windows 7 will bring mostly minor updates and a few new features.

Set up Gmail account on Thunderbird 3

viktoru.u@gmail.com (Viktor Ustijanoski) — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 01:48:00 +0000

Thunderbird 3 is excellent mail client with many useful functions, but automatic configuration of gmail accounts does not send the emails, however you can receive it. The problem is in smtp settings (outgoing mail), so here is tutorial how to set up gmail account correctly:

After automatic settings by Thundetbird 3.0, choose manual settings:

In the account Server Settings choose as below:

Server Name: imap.gmail.com
Port: 993
User Name: name@gmail.com or name@yourdomain.com (for google apps users)
Connection security: SSL/TLS
Use secure authentication: unchecked

In the Outgoing Server (SMTP) change the settings as below:

Server Name: smtp.gmail.com
Port: 587 Default: 25

Use name and password : checked
username: name@gmail.com or name@yourdomain.com (for google apps users)
Use secure authentication: unchecked
Connection security: STARTTLS (NOT SSL/TLS)

After account creation you will be asked to enter your password and that’s it, your account is ready to use :)

Skype with 720p video calls

viktoru.u@gmail.com (Viktor Ustijanoski) — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 11:54:00 +0000

Skype announced support for 720p HD resolution video calls on PCs and on TVs.
The latest version of Skype for Windows can deliver up to 720p HD-quality video calling at 1280 x 720p at 30 frames per second if you have a high-speed broadband connection, a new HD webcam, a PC with a 1.8 GHz dual core and Skype 4.2 beta for Windows.

Skype recommends broadband connection of at least 1 Mbps to achieve 720p HD-quality video calls on either a PC or television. You actually might have to upgrade your broadband connection to get 1Mbps upstream bandwidth. Skype also announced today to bring Skype video calling to Panasonic and LG TVs in 2010.

Make Firefox and Thunderbird to use Ubuntu notification system

viktoru.u@gmail.com (Viktor Ustijanoski) — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 11:18:00 +0000

Firefox and Thunderbird has their own notification system, but if you want to use Ubuntu unified notifications here is tutorial how can you do that:

For Firefox download extension from here.

After installation, restart Firefox to activate the newly installed extension.

For Thunderbird:

Download the extension from here and save at your download folder. Open Thunderbird, click tools/Add Ons/ and drag and drop the downloaded extension to install it. Restart Thunderbird. Enjoy

Managing Agile Project Cycle, Agile Development and Project Management Tools

ukioff@gmail.com (Ukion) — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 14:30:00 +0000

Agile! This is the right word for every software process especially for managing any software project. With simple definition from Wikipedia - Agile methodology is an approach to project management, typically used in software development. It helps teams respond to the unpredictability of building software through incremental, iterative work cadences, known as sprints.

Agile development methodology attempts to provide many opportunities to assess the direction of a project throughout the development lifecycle. This is achieved through regular cadences of work, known as sprints or iterations, at the end of which teams must present a shippable increment of work.

If you are one of the players in Agile methodology process, especially Project manager or, as “Agilists” used to say “Scrum master” for sure you will need some kind of tool of software for running your project, tracking issues, and building new ideas for new features and software improvements. JIRA is that kind of software. If you are running “agile” JIRA is definitely a solution that you need. This product will allow you many benefits in leading and tracking projects/products. System itself is very flexible, modular and customizable. Administration panel allow us very powerful configurable functionalities such as : Managing Users ( users, groups, …), Schemes, Defining issues fields, etc.

From the end user aspect it is also very powerful. Having notification system integrated in it and intuitive dashboard that people will never forgot a task or forgot any issue. Flexibility of the system will allow you creating different types of projects, creating custom workflows, assigning tasks to issues, time tracking, … From developer side you will have direct connection PM tool -> development studio.

But, there is something else which I would like to pointed the most in my short presentation for usability of this system in Agile software development. Below you can find a short case scenario for using this perfect product:

If your are Project Manager of similar projects, you know that Agile projects are run in iterations, these might be 1 week, 2 weeks or perhaps a month (or more :) as it is now in my company). In our department 4 week iterations are a good for a start. Each iteration has a collection of Features and Improvements – in JIRA those issues are called "stories". A story a single feature that has been defined through analysis of the project needs. As agile project, you don't have to analyze the project completely up front and have everything mapped out. You just need enough to get you on your way, you will be creating and estimating more “stories” as you go – as we called in the moment – Flexible development.

Workflow of the Agile Projects - using the “Story” type issue.

In Jira you can define a custom issue type – “Story”. You can create new "Story" issue types in Jira, but you don't have to estimate them straight away and certainly don't need to assign them to iteration yet. That could be all requests from Product and Business Analysts, Stakeholders, features, and improvements which need to done in specific time frame.

You can estimated them later when you will have a Specification and Documentation (users can attach a files and documentation directly to the “story” issue).
You can put your estimation date is specific field or you can just open custom field for that. Jira lets you add custom fields just to a particular issue type, in our case "Story".

Estimation is needed because some of the reports we want to generate want to know when new stories came into play. You could do this based on the creation date of the issue, but it may well be that you only want to start counting a story as being available once it is estimated and this allows you to record some data about the story before estimating it.

Stories have a certain workflow. For example:

(1) New story ready for estimation,
(2) Story ready for scheduling,
(3) Story ready for development,
(4) Story in development,
(5)Story ready for testing,
(6) Story tested and complete.

Assignment and reassignment between users and resources of the project is also possible. User can be grouped in specific groups like, PA, Development, QA, Testers, Support, so we will always know which Group/Part of Department need to do something(in the specific moment of the time/plan) with the story/task/issue.

You can make custom filters for each story but I think that this is only for JIRA enterprise version.
Once you are ready to start planning your iterations, you just need to assign the stories you've created and estimated to several iterations.

The interesting part of Agile project workflow is reporting. There are a lot of reports which we could use.

My conclusion that JIRA is excellent bugs tracking and project planning tool for keeping track of an agile project development.

I miss something: You could easily match source code repository with JIRA, so it is easy to track changes and releases and match them to stories.

As this is just short (:-) ) review of this tool maybe I could miss something(or a lot), but I hope that I show you the crucial part of the whole image.

Useful link: JIRA DEVELOPMENT STUDIO

Please let me know for any question.

DetectorPRO wishes you..

viktoru.u@gmail.com (Viktor Ustijanoski) — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 13:11:00 +0000

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year :)))

New User Interface for Firefox 3.7/4.0

viktoru.u@gmail.com (Viktor Ustijanoski) — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 23:53:00 +0000

Mozilla have unveiled some screenshots of the new Windows theme/UI updates for upcoming Firefox 3.7 and 4.0.

The designer and contributor to the Mozilla project - Stephen Horlander explains that the new App Button will appear in the top-left of the new UI. According to Horlander, the App Button solves a number of issues:

It is less complex
Takes up less space
Instead of two potentially conflicting locations for menu items, there is now only one unified location
Can be placed in the upper left analogous to the Menubar paradigm it is replacing
Similar to the far more ubiquitous Office 2008/2010 + Windows 7 application menu
Reduces clutter on the Navigation Toolbar
It also creates a more flexible and rich canvas for perhaps doing some decidedly non-menu-esque things

Here’s a side-by-side comparison of Firefox 4.0 and the current 3.5:

A public release of Firefox 4.0 is expected at mid 2010 and the final release at the end of 2010.

How to fix ghosting on LCD TV

ukioff@gmail.com (Ukion) — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 12:23:00 +0000

A lot of viewers of LCD television faces problem of ghosting. This is strange effect viewable on the TV screen where pictures shadow seems to be left of the main picture i.e. unwanted image on the screen, appearing superimposed on the desired image. Most of the viewers are facing with this problem when they connect their PC to the large (for example 32 inches and above) LCD TV.

The reasons are many but here are some of them:

Cable quality issue.
Length of the cable.
VGA compatibility.
Mismatched impedance along the communication channel.
Multi path distortion.

Solution of problem with ghosting:

First, user is aware to buy good quality connecting cable and if the length between PC and LCD is so far it creates attenuation problem. So, the desired signal is loss and then it shows ghosting problem. Generally, VGA is not compatible with large LCD because it cannot generate proper signals as required. So, use graphic cards having DVI interface or HDMI output that supply increase quality of the signals that’s resolves ghosting problem.

For Television channels recommends only DTH services for Good reception quality.
If set-top box having facility of multiple output like HDMI, Component video and AV out then first preference is for HDMI out, second preference for Component video and third for AV out.

If connecting media (transmission cable) is effected from external interface (electromagnetic and magnetic distortion) that is caused by Speakers, wires, ups etc. So, you can take these things away from your connecting media.

Make your own personal Firefox OS like Chrome OS

viktoru.u@gmail.com (Viktor Ustijanoski) — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 22:07:00 +0000

Google Chrome OS is based on Linux core and Google Chrome Browser. The point of Chrome OS is cloud based system that can be used for web applications so there is no local user data and apps installed on your computer.

The project is open source and easy to modify, so following Google Chrome OS guidance you can make your personal Chromium OS version with a few modifications you’ve like or if you don’t like Chrome you can put Firefox on top of it and you get Firefox OS. Here is very simple tutorial on how to make your personal OS:

1. We will use Slax distribution for this tutorial but you can use other distributions also if you have more linux skills. Slax is ideal because is already live CD and USB installer and on Slax web site on “build” section you can remove the no needed modules for your Firefox OS system (Turn off the no needed icons). Follow this link and choose only: Slax core, Slax XORG and Firefox. We need OS core for the system, Graphics System and Firefox. You can add more modules if you want to customize your system according to your needs – Skype for example.. but here we will use this three only.

2. After components selection, download TAR file because we need a few more modifications.

3. Next, unpack TAR file. You will get “boot” folder that includes tools for booting the OS, and inside Slax folder “rootcopy” that will contain additional modules pack for main boot core. If you want automatic Firefox start up in full screen just like Chrome OS, you need to modify rootcopy folder. Create root folder in rootcopy and then file “.xinitrc” with next tutorial:

4. Open terminal

Cd slax/rootcopy
Mkdir root
echo "/usr/bin/firefox" > root/.xinitrc

If you want to remove the boot screen with OS choose, you must modify bootloader. Go to "boot/slax.cfg" file and copy paste this line:

DEFAULT /boot/vmlinuz initrd=/boot/initrd.gz ramdisk_size=6666 root=/dev/ram0 rw autoexec=xconf;telinit~4 changes=/slax/ nohd

This is already Slax command with + nohd – at the end that means no Hard Disc access to the system.

5. Now you can start packing your Firefox OS system in Live CD or USB. For that purpose we use slax/make_iso.sh. This script will create ISO CD image. For Live USB use the script boot/bootinst.sh. ATTENTION: Be careful when entering install path, do not use your hard drive path because the script will modify your MBR and you can broke your system. After this, you will make installer again with Firefox and Extensions in it.

6. Firefox configurations and extensions

You can test your Personal OS on Virtual Machine or on real clean installation. If everything is ok, Firefox will boot up at start up. As bonus on this package, Firefox on Slax comes with Chrome Like theme but you can easily change that if you don’t like.

The next step will be adding some extensions to installed Firefox OS. If you want to add Adobe Flash, download the archive in tar.gz format from Slax page, unpack it and copy the libflashplayer.so file in plugins directory

cd /root/Downloads
tar xzf install_flash_player_10_linux.tar.gz
mkdir /root/.mozilla/plugins
cp libflashplayer.so /root/.mozilla/plugins

Restart Firefox and Flash Plugin will be active.

Becouse you are doing this on RAM memory, everything after restarting computer will be erased so copy the folder “/root/.mozilla/” from your new Firefox-Flash OS to main folder where you are making the OS components : “slax/rootcopy/root/.mozilla/”

Follow the upper command to make OS boot installer again and that's it. After this you will have your personal Firefox Linux. Have fun :)

Install Thunderbird 3 on Ubuntu

viktoru.u@gmail.com (Viktor Ustijanoski) — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 23:21:00 +0000

Finally, Thunderbird 3 was released with many new and interesting features (read more about the new features here) but it doesn't contain .deb package for easy one click installation on Ubuntu. Well, we gonna fix that with this easy 2 steps install tutorial:

1.Download Thunderbird 3 in your home/username folder (Default download is in home/username/downloads/ so after downloading copy the file in home/username folder)
2.Next, Open terminal and copy/paste(Shift+Ctrl+V) the next line into it:

if [[ ! -f /usr/bin/thunderbird ]]; then sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install thunderbird; fi && if [[ -e ~/.mozilla-thunderbird ]]; then cp -R ~/.mozilla-thunderbird ~/.mozilla-thunderbird.backup; fi && if [[ -e ~/.thunderbird ]]; then cp -R ~/.thunderbird ~/.thunderbird.backup; fi && sudo tar -jxvf thunderbird-3*.tar.bz2 -C /opt && sudo dpkg-divert --divert /usr/bin/thunderbird.ubuntu --rename /usr/bin/thunderbird && sudo ln - s /opt/thunderbird/thunderbird /usr/bin/thunderbird && sudo dpkg- divert --divert /usr/bin/mozilla-thunderbird.ubuntu --rename /usr/bin/mozilla-thunderbird && sudo ln -s /opt/thunderbird/thunderbird /usr/bin/mozilla-thunderbird

And that's it. This will update your repository, check if any version of Thunderbird is installed and install it while you are enjoying in a nice cup of coffee. :) If you have any errors post a comment so we can fix it :)