This release has got many functionality fixes. No new features have been added in this release but it contains many bug fixes. With full iPOD support it might prove to be an iTunes killer.
Songbird [Download Link]
Along with the release news, we bring to you top 3 add-ons apart from the essential add-ons to play certain audio files.
1. YABS: “Yet Another Black Songbird” feather for Songbird. And by the way for new songbird users, feather is equivalent to theme or skin.
2. LiveTweeter: Twitter, MSN/Windows Live Messenger, Pidgin, Mercury support for Songbird. Display your track in your favorite IM.
3. MediaFlow: Adds a nice album art preview to Songbird. It is equivalent to Coverflow of iTunes.
Here’s Songbird in full swing:
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What are you doing these holidays? Perhaps if you do not have any plans these holidays, its time to oil your squeaky windows (and by windows I mean your OS). Windows installation does get sluggish by time. Windows file system is such that it needs a defragment after a certain use. But more than blaming the file system, we collect a lot of junk in our normal usage. So, here’s a check list to make your windows installation as fast as a fresh install.
1. Organize files and folders
Download! trash! Download! trash! Ya, my default download folder is named as trash and it stays in the corner of my desktop. Just before writing this post it had about 300 items and it took a long time to open it and longer still to scroll through it.
Organize your folder and files and name it wisely. Like put you music files in and folder in appropriate folder named Audio or Music.
2. Delete files you don’t need anymore
Nothing to explain here. Just go and press the delete button but be careful do not be in a hurry, you might loose some important documents.
3.Specify how folders open
Use Filmstrip for folders containing few photos or videos. On the other hand use Thumbnail for large number of photos and videos. Similarly, icons for documents,etc. Use these to benefit you as want them.
4. Update Windows
Usually, I keep Automatic Updates off for bandwidth purposes. But, its time to update Windows.
5. Remove programs you don’t need anymore
You can use Windows default Add or Remove Programs feature (or Uninstall Programs in Vista) to remove programs you don’t need anymore. But even better use Revo Uninstaller. Why use Revo Uninstaller instead? Because not only does it just uninstall a program—it also removes all traces of the program from your system where the basic uninstaller may not. Revo also boasts a Hunter Mode for uninstalling apps by dragging a cross-hair onto the app you want to uninstall, whether it’s the app’s system tray icon or just a shortcut. It even helps manage your startup applications.
6. Defragment your hard disk drive
Defragmentation improves your computer’s performance by reorganizing your files. Again you can use the default Defragment tool available in Windows or use Auslogics Disk Defrag or JkDefrag instead. Auslogics Disk Defrag is a fast and effective disk defragmenter intended to replace the Windows default. It’s quick and easy to use, and Auslogics DD provides a nicely formatted report of the latest defrag, including a motivating “Defragmentation has increased this computer performance by X%” message. JkDefrag is an open-source disk defragmenting tool. Unlike Auslogics DD, JkDefrag boasts command line support to allow you to set up your disk defrags on a schedule. Perhaps even better, JkDefrag has an installable screensaver that will automatically start defragging your hard drive whenever the screensaver is launched—it even displays the defrag process.
7. Run the Disk Cleanup tool
Another way to find wasted disk space is to use the Disk Cleanup tool. Yes, I now Disk Cleanup utility is pretty lame. If you feel the same skip to next in the list.
8. CCleaner
CCleaner or Crap Cleaner does every bit as its name suggests. Running CCleaner on your system promises to free up space, keep your computer running smoothly, and protect your privacy. It’s also very fast and very easy to use.
9. Anti-Virus & Anti-Spyware
AVG Free does a very good job as a Anti-Virus cum Anti-Spyware. And its FREE. You might be running any antivirus but make sure to run a Full System Scan.
10. Backup data on CD/DVD
Backup your data on CD/DVD. Again you can use the default program in Windows or use Ashampoo Burning Studio Free. Free application Ashampoo Burning Studio Free is yet-another CD and DVD burning utility. Ashampoo handles virtually any burning need, from music CDs and video DVDs (Blu-ray support included) to data discs. It also supports burning compressed and encrypted backup discs. Granted, there are already plenty of burning utilities already available, but for anyone who remembers how difficult it used to be to find a free app to handle this sort of thing (i.e., not Roxio), the more options the merrier.
ImgBurn is highly recommended for burning ISO.
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Inverted Text
ʇxǝʇ pǝʇɹǝʌuı sı sıɥʇ
ASCII Generator
_ ____ _ ____ _____
| | | _ \| | / __ \ / ____|
_ _ __ _| |__ | |_) | | | | | | | __
| | | |/ _` | '_ \| _ <| | | | | | | |_ |
| |_| | (_| | |_) | |_) | |___| |__| | |__| |
\__, |\__,_|_.__/|____/|______\____/ \_____|
__/ |
|___/
_ ____ _ ____ _____
| | | _ \| | / __ \ / ____|
_ _ __ _| |__ | |_) | | | | | | | __
| | | |/ _` | '_ \| _ <| | | | | | | |_ |
| |_| | (_| | |_) | |_) | |___| |__| | |__| |
\__, |\__,_|_.__/|____/|______\____/ \_____|
__/ |
|___/
There a lot of ASCII effects to choose from.
Text Image
Leet Text
ƒ00£1$h-n00b
This is a old trick, often used in multiplayer games.
I am quite sure there a lot of similar tools. If you know feel free to let us know by replying.
Here’s previous list of Show Offs
- Show Offs – 1 [Animated Wallpapers Ubuntu]
- Show Offs – 2 [Lock Dialogs Ubuntu]
- Show Offs – 3 [Custom Visual Style Windows]
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It has been few months since my last day of college. I miss my college very much, but the things I miss the most are those software/games. Be it DOTA or IP Messenger which tweeted twenty times in a minute. In this post I will familiarize you with most of them. Excuse me if I am a bit nostalgic and praise them above par, but most of them deserve it.
IP Messenger
This is a pop up style LAN Messenger for multi platforms. It is based on TCP/IP(UDP). It does not require server machine. Simple, lightweight, and compact size. This small tools which resides in the taskbar does all the work of an efficient LAN Messenger and supports files/folder trasfer at lighting speed. Can’t imagine network without it.
Your Freedom
Most of the colleges are behind a proxy, and block various traffic or websites. The Your Freedom services makes accessible what is unaccessible to you, and it hides your network address from those who don’t need to know. Just download the client application and install or just run it on your PC.
JAP
JAP makes it possible to surf the internet anonymously and unobservably. It is better and faster than Your Freedom, if you can make it work.
Ventrilo
Ventrilo is best known for it’s superior sound quality and minimal use of CPU resources so as not to interfere with day to day operations of the computer or during online game competitions. Most of the games come with inbuilt VOIP but games like Warcraft and Ages of Empire benefit a lot from it.
Qtracker
If you’ve ever played a multiplayer game on your PC, the in-game server browser has probably left you wanting more. Qtracker lets you say goodbye to the in-game browser, forever! From the convenience of one program you can manage all of the games you play, whether they’re on the Internet or your LAN, without ever having to load a game. Find your friends, find new servers, watch games in progress, administer servers, and tons more.
This is a must for all LAN Gamers in the campus.
Warkeys ( for Warcraft III and DOTA )
A must have for Warcraft III and DOTA players. Go and get it noobs!
Now, the next one I never used it in college but it for the people who miss their multiplayer games over LAN.
Garena
Formerly knows as ggclient, Garena works on the concept of LAN over the internet. You might have visited a chat room, it is quite similar to it but in addition your favourite multiplayer comes in to play. Now you don’t chat, you play. Warcarft III, DOTA, Conter Stike have a lot of players, there are other popular multiplayer games too.
I am quite sure you might have used them before, but if you haven’t try them, especially if you are in a campus hooked over LAN.
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http://huffingtonpost.com
Arianna Huffington (born Arianna Stassinopoulos, on July 15, 1950) is an author and nationally syndicated columnist in the United States. She is the founder of The Huffington Post, a online news and commentary website and aggregated blog.
http://gizmodo.com & http://www.engadget.com
Peter Rojas is the co-founder and CEO of RCRD LBL, an ad-supported free music site, as well as the founder of several popular technology blogs, including Engadget, Gizmodo, Joystiq, hackaday, Engadget Mobile, and Engadget HD.
http://techcrunch.com
J. Michael Arrington (born March 13, 1970 in Orange, California) is a serial entrepreneur and the maintainer of TechCrunch, a blog covering the Silicon Valley technology start-up communities and the wider technology field in USA and elsewhere. Magazines such as Wired and Forbes have named Arrington one of the most powerful people on the internet.In 2008, he was selected by TIME Magazine as one of the most influential people in the world.
http://www.boingboing.net
Mark Frauenfelder is a blogger, illustrator, and journalist. He is editor-in-chief of MAKE magazine and co-editor of the collaborative weblog Boing Boing.
http://arstechnica.com
Started in 1998 by Ken “Caesar” Fisher, Ars Technica is headquartered in Malden, Massachusetts. The site was independently owned until it was acquired by Condé Nast Publications in May 2008.
http://lifehacker.com
Gina Trapani is a tech writer and web developer based in San Diego, California by way of Brooklyn, New York. She is the lead editor of Lifehacker.com, a daily weblog on software and personal productivity.
http://dailykos.com
Markos Moulitsas Zúniga is founder and publisher of Daily Kos, the largest progressive community blog in the United States. Named “the single most successful entrepreneur of the progressive movement” by NY Times magazine writer and author Matt Bai, Moulitsas is also co-author of the critically acclaimed book Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics, a contributing columnist to Newsweek Magazine and (starting in January 2008) a weekly columnist at The Hill newspaper.
http://www.smashingmagazine.com
Smashing Magazine is maintained by:
- Vitaly Friedman,
the creator of Web Developer’s Handbook and the author of Praxisbuch Web 2.0.
- Sven Lennartz,
the owner and editor-in-chief of the german Dr. Web Magazine.
http://mashable.com
Working as a web technology consultant in mid 2005, Pete Cashmore founded Mashable from an unlikely location: a small town in the north of Scotland. Focusing on up-to-the-minute news on social networks and new websites, it rapidly grew to be one of the top 10 blogs in the world according to the blog ranking service Technorati.
http://www.readwriteweb.com
Richard MacManus is the Founder and Editor of ReadWriteWeb. He is from Wellington New Zealand.
And heres my personal favourite
www.dailyblogtips.com/
Daniel Scocco has lived and studied in several places around the world, including Italy, Chile and Brazil. After receiving a degree in International Economics and working for a year within a multinational company, he decided to quit and pursue entrepreneurial projects on the Internet.
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Sources: WIKIPEDIA, fickr, and their respective blogs
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Rasmus Lerdorf (born November 22, 1968 in Qeqertarsuaq, Greenland) is a Danish-Greenlandic programmer and is most notable as the creator of the PHP programming language. He authored the first two versions.
Python
Guido van Rossum is a Dutch computer programmer who is best known as the author of the Python programming language. In the Python community, Van Rossum is known as a “Benevolent Dictator for Life” (BDFL), meaning that he continues to oversee the Python development process, making decisions where necessary. He is currently employed by Google, where he spends half his time working on Python development.
Ruby
Yukihiro Matsumoto (Matsumoto Yukihiro, a.k.a. Matz, born 14 April 1965) is a Japanese computer scientist and software programmer best known as the chief designer of the Ruby programming language and its reference implementation, Matz’s Ruby Interpreter (MRI). He was born in Osaka Prefecture, in western Honshū. According to an interview conducted by Japan Inc., he was a self-taught programmer until the end of high school. He graduated with an information science degree from Tsukuba University, where he associated himself with research departments dealing with programming languages and compilers.
Ruby on Rails
(though Ruby on Rails is an open source web application framework for the Ruby programming language)
David Heinemeier Hansson is a Danish programmer and the creator of the popular Ruby on Rails web development framework and the Instiki wiki. He is also a partner at the web-based software development firm 37signals.
Perl
Larry Wall (born September 27, 1954) is a programmer and author, most widely known for his creation of the Perl programming language in 1987.
JavaScript
Brendan Eich (born 1961) is a computer programmer and creator of the JavaScript programming language. He is the Chief Technology Officer at the Mozilla Corporation.
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Sources: WIKIPEDIA
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Mark Richard Shuttleworth (born 18 September 1973) is a South African entrepreneur who was the second self-funded space tourist and first African in space. Shuttleworth founded Canonical Ltd. and as of 2008, provides leadership for the Ubuntu operating system.
Debian:
Ian Murdock (born April 28, 1973, in Konstanz, Germany) is the founder of the Debian distribution and Progeny Linux Systems, a commercial Linux company.
Slackware:
Patrick Volkerding (born 1966) is the founder and maintainer of the Slackware operating system. He is the Slackware Benevolent Dictator for Life. Volkerding earned a Bachelor of Science in computer science from Minnesota State University Moorhead in 1993.
MEPIS:
Warren Woodford is a computer industry veteran who is perhaps best known as the developer of MEPIS Linux. From 2002 to 2007, Warren focused on developing MEPIS and building MEPIS related cross-platform applications for Linux and Mac OS, and even Microsoft Windows.
Source : WIKIPEDIA
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Debian? Ubuntu? Sidux? Pardus? Mepis? Gentoo? Whoa! Why are these Linux distros so strangely named? Why not name a OS simply – door, room or window? Although, Linux distros have very strange names but it is interesting to know, why they are called so?
1. Debian
Debian was first announced on 16 August 1993, by Ian Murdock. He formed the name “Debian” as a combination of the first name of his girlfriend (later wife, now ex-wife) Debra and his own first name. A nice way to name something. Take note all new Linux ditro makers.
2. Slackware
Slackware is an operating system created by Patrick Volkerding of Slackware Linux, Inc. The name “Slackware” stems from the fact that the distribution started as a private side project with no intended commitment. To prevent it from being taken too seriously at first, Volkerding gave it a humorous name, which stuck even after Slackware became a serious project. The “Slack” in Slackware is a reference to the term “Slack” as used by the Church of the SubGenius. Probaly he could have named it DNDUX (Do Not Disturb).
3. MEPIS
MEPIS distributions are created by Warren Woodford. According to Warren Woodford, the name MEPIS is pronounced like “Memphis”, with the extra letters removed. Basically, it is pronounced “MEP-us” with a short “e” (“meppis”). Originally, the word “MEPIS” didn’t mean anything in particular; it came about by mistake. When Woodford misunderstood a friend over a bad Skype connection, he decided to use the name because it was a simple five-letter word and there were no other companies or products with that name.
4. Mandriva
MandrakeSoft was forced to change its name as a result of losing litigation to the Hearst Corporation over the name Mandrake. The litigation concluded in February 2004, and appeals expired in early 2005. The litigation arose because of Hearst Corporation’s claim to the name “Mandrake”, inspired by the comic Mandrake the Magician; forcing MandrakeSoft to change its name. In 2005, MandrakeSoft acquired the assets of Lycoris, and purchased Conectiva. As a result of the forced name change, the name Mandriva was selected to reflect the combination of MandrakeSoft and Conectiva.
5. Sidux (Edited : See Chris Hildebrandt’s comments below for detailed information)
The name of the distribution sidux is derived from Debian Sid (Sid Phillips character in Toy Story – usually destroys and tortures his sister Hannah’s toys.) and the common use of -ux for Unix derivatives.
So, any more interesting ones you know, please feel free to share with us. If you like the post, please Digg or Stumble it!
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Can you type © ? There are some allowed special characters that can be written in HTML. Here is list of few commonly used special characters.
| Character | Representation |
|---|---|
| Non-Breaking Space | |
| “ | " |
| < | < |
| > | > |
| & | & |
| © | © |
| ® | ® |
| ¢ | ¢ |
| ° | ° |
| ² | ² |
| » | » |
| « | « |
| ¼ | ¼ |
| ½ | ½ |
| ¾ | ¾ |
| ± | ± |
| ü | ü |
| Ø | Ø |
| ¡ | ¡ |
| ñ | ñ |
If you are WordPress Blogger you would probably find “Insert Custom Character” button on WYSIWYG editor. The method I used was to copy/paste from MS Word. Here is the comprehensive list.
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Synaptic? deb? sudo? apt? Damn! I still remember when I first installed Ubuntu (my first encounter with Linux). But God bless Google, Ubuntu Forums, a few other resources and Blogs. Things became easier than I thought. Here, I will be posting a reference about Ubuntu things! And to end with top 5 Ubuntu resources on web for Ubuntu starters.
Privileges
sudo command – run command as root
sudo -s – open a root shell
sudo -s -u user – open a shell as user
sudo -k – forget sudo passwords
gksudo command – visual sudo dialog (GNOME)
kdesudo command – visual sudo dialog (KDE)
sudo visudo – edit /etc/sudoers
gksudo nautilus – root file manager (GNOME)
kdesudo konqueror – root file manager (KDE)
passwd – change your password
Display
sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart – restart X and return to login (GNOME)
sudo /etc/init.d/kdm restart – restart X and return to login (KDE)
sudo dexconf – reset xorg.conf configuration
Ctrl+Alt+Bksp – restart X display if frozen
Ctrl+Alt+FN – switch to tty N
Ctrl+Alt+F7 – switch back to X display
System Services
(Prefix commands with sudo to run)
start service – start job service (Upstart)
stop service – stop job service (Upstart)
status service – check if service is running (Upstart)
/etc/init.d/service start – start service (SysV)
/etc/init.d/service stop – stop service (SysV)
/etc/init.d/service status – check service (SysV)
/etc/init.d/service restart – restart service (SysV)
runlevel – get current runlevel
Package Mangement
(Prefix commands with sudo to run)
apt-get update – refresh available updates
apt-get upgrade – upgrade all packages
apt-get dist-upgrade – upgrade with package
replacements; upgrade Ubuntu version
apt-get install pkg – install pkg
apt-get purge pkg – uninstall pkg
apt-get autoremove – remove obsolete packages
apt-get -f install – try to fix broken packages
dpkg –configure -a – try to fix broken packages
dpkg -i pkg.deb – install file pkg.deb
(file) /etc/apt/sources.list – APT repository list
Network
ifconfig – show network information
iwconfig – show wireless information
sudo iwlist scan – scan for wireless networks
sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart – reset
network for manual configurations
(file) /etc/network/interfaces – manual configuration
ifup interface – bring interface online
ifdown interface – disable interface
Special Packages
linux-headers-generic – latest build headers
ubuntu-desktop – standard Ubuntu environment
kubuntu-desktop – KDE desktop
xubuntu-desktop – XFCE desktop
ubuntu-minimal – core Ubuntu utilities
ubuntu-standard – standard Ubuntu utilities
ubuntu-restricted-extras – non-free, but useful
kubuntu-restricted-extras – KDE of the above
xubuntu-restricted-extras – XFCE of the above
build-essential – packages used to compile programs
linux-image-generic – latest generic kernel image
Applications Name
nautilus – file manager (GNOME)
dolphin – file manager (KDE)
konqueror – web browser (KDE)
kate – text editor (KDE)
gedit – text editor (GNOME)
System
lsb_release -a – get Ubuntu version
uname -r – get kernel version
uname -a – get all kernel information
Top 5 web resoureses for Ubuntu Starters
http://ubuntuforums.org/ (Great, helpful and most responsive community)
http://www.ubuntugeek.com/ (A lot of Tips and Tricks)
http://www.gnome-look.org/ (Add a little flavor to Gnome)
http://tombuntu.com/ (Nice Ubuntu Blog)
http://lifehacker.com/ (Not specific to Ubuntu but they have a lot of good Ubuntu articles)
And here is the bonus
http://fosswire.com/ (the source of above information)
Hope, this might help you in your Ubuntu venture. If you like the post, please Digg or Stumble it.