HYIP-Man

WinRAR 4.00 Final Released

2011-03-09T16:46:00.001Z

What's new in the Version 4.00

1. RAR decompression speed is improved. Depending on data type,decompression can be up to 30% faster than in previous versions.
Both the general RAR algorithm and most of special RAR multimedia methods benefit from this improvement. The only module of RAR
algorithm, which is not affected, is "Text compression" method.

2. Changes in ISO support:

a) UDF support is upgraded to UDF 2.50 revision. It makes possible to unpack most of Blu-ray ISO files;
b) when browsing UDF ISO file, UDF revision number is displayed after the "UDF" format name in WinRAR address bar and in archive information dialog;
c) WinRAR sets the folder modification date when unpacking folders stored in UDF and ISO9660 files.

3. Changes in password dialog:

a) WinRAR uses the same format of password dialog both when archiving and extracting, so "Show password" option is available also when extracting;
b) "Organize passwords..." button in password dialog provides access to password organizer interface, where you can specify your frequently used passwords. You will be able to access these saved passwords using the drop down list or autocomplete feature in password dialog.
It is important to know that saved passwords are not encrypted and anybody having access to your computer can view them. Use "Organize passwords" feature only if your computer is protected from unauthorized access;
c) "Use for all archives" option is available in password dialog when unpacking several archives at once. You can utilize it to apply an entered password to all archives. If you use this option with an empty password, WinRAR will skip all encrypted archives;
d) Unlike previous versions, the password from default compression profile is not used for extraction. If you wish to use the same password for all extracting archives, press "Organize passwords..." button in the password dialog and define a new password entry, specifying "*" file mask in "Select for archives" field.

4. In Windows 7 WinRAR will display the total operation progress also on WinRAR icon on Windows taskbar. You can disable it using "Taskbar progress bar" option on "General" page of WinRAR settings.

5. Numerous Unicode support improvements allow to process non-English file names more smoothly. These improvements include:

a) better Unicode handling in WinRAR in "Rename", "Convert", "Find" and other commands, in folder tree panel, in password request dialog and in many other parts of WinRAR interface;
b) correctly displayed Unicode names in WinRAR items in Explorer context menus;
c) Unicode support in .lng files, making WinRAR localization possible for Unicode only languages.

6. Changes in -x switch syntax. Now you can specify a wildcard exclusion mask for folders. Such mask must have the trailing '\' character, like -x*tmp*\ or -x*\temp\

7. New "Extract relative paths" option in "Advanced" part of extraction dialog. If you browse some archive subfolder in WinRAR shell and enable "Extract relative paths" option, the path part up to and including the current subfolder will be removed from extracted file paths.
For example, if you are inside of "Backup\MyData" archive folder and extract "Images" folder, it will be extracted as "Images", not as "Backup\MyData\Images".
This option is the new default extraction mode, but you can change the default back to WinRAR 3.x style. Just select "Extract full paths"
and then press "Save settings" in "General" part of extraction dialog.

8. Windows 98, Windows Me and Windows NT are not supported by WinRAR and WinRAR self-extracting modules anymore. Minimum Windows version required for WinRAR 4.0 is Windows 2000.
If you need to run WinRAR on older Windows, you can download previous WinRAR versions from ftp://ftp.rarlab.com/rar

9. If TAR, TAR.GZ or TAR.BZ2 archive contains symbolic or hard links and if destination file system is NTFS, WinRAR will create these links when unpacking such archive. WinRAR will create symbolic links as symbolic and hard links as hard in Windows Vista and newer and it will create all links as hard in older Windows.
If destination file system is FAT32 or any other not supporting file links, WinRAR will skip links when unpacking TAR, TAR.GZ and TAR.BZ2 archives.

10. Recovery volume processing involves less disk seek operations resulting in higher performance.

11. You can select Windows 7 library in tree panel in extraction dialog and WinRAR will use its default save location as the destination path.

12. "Report" command allows to select HTML, Unicode text and usual text as output format for report file. Unlike previous WinRAR versions,
now WinRAR preservers Unicode characters in reports when using HTML or Unicode text format. So non-English characters in file names
will be displayed properly in such reports.

13. Message list in GUI SFX archives displays only operation status and error messages. It does not contain names of all extracted files anymore. This change improves the speed and reduces memory requirements for SFX archives containing a large number of files. Also it makes easier to locate error messages, because they are not hidden among extracted file names.

14. GUI SFX archives display "Extract" button instead of "Install" if no "Setup" or "Presetup" commands are present in the archive comment. If you prefer "Install" button, but do not need to execute any setup programs, you can add "Setup=<>" command.

15. WinRAR displays the current percent above the operation progress bar when repairing an archive containing the recovery record and when processing recovery volumes.

16. WinRAR limits the maximum possible volume size to 4 GB minus 1 byte when creating RAR volumes on a disk with FAT or FAT32 file system in volume size autodetecting mode. These file systems do not support 4 GB and larger files.

17. If "Wait if other WinRAR copies are active" option is enabled and WinRAR waits for another copy, you can press "Continue" button
in command progress window to force WinRAR to stop waiting. So now "Continue" button allows to override the state of "Wait if other WinRAR copies are active" option for current operation.

18. WinRAR displays one password request instead of two, when saving an encrypted file back to RAR or ZIP archive after modifying it
in some external editor. Previous WinRAR versions usually requested the password twice, both when extracting the original file
and archiving its modified copy. Only RAR archives with encrypted file names were processed with the single password prompt.

19. New error code 10 ("no files") is added to list of error codes returned in command line mode by RAR and WinRAR. This new code
can be returned by archive, extract, delete and repair commands. It means that RAR did not find any files matched the specified file or archive mask.

20. File name area in file overwrite dialog occupies several lines now. It makes possible to display much longer names.

21. Now switch -ep3 converts not only disk letters, but also UNC paths. So \\server\share will be converted to __server\share when archiving
and restored to the original \\server\share when extracting with -ep3.

22. New "Background extraction" option in "Advanced" part of extraction dialog places WinRAR into background, when extracting files.
You can save its default state with "Save settings" button in "General" part of extraction dialog, just like for other extraction options.

"Background archiving" option from the default compression profile does not affect the extraction behavior anymore.

23. "Mode..." button in operation progress window is enabled also when extracting or testing archives. It provides access to "Command parameters" dialog, where you can set "Turn PC off when done" option for extraction and test operations. Previously this dialog was accessible only when archiving.

24. Bugs fixed:

a) renaming a file in archive could also rename all other files with the same name in other folders of the same archive;

b) previous versions displayed the wrong total packed size in "Info" command for multivolume CAB archives;

c) in ZIP archives 'U' (update) and 'F' (fresh) commands could erroneously update even files not specified in the command line.
It happened only for files in current folder which names matched files in ZIP archive. This bug was not present in usual 'A' (add) archiving mode.

Linux 2.6.37 Released

2011-01-06T14:52:00.000Z

Summary: Linux 2.6.37 includes several SMP scalability improvements for Ext4 and XFS, an option to compile the kernel with the Big Kernel Lock disabled, support for per-cgroup IO throttling, a network device based in the Ceph cluster filesystem, several Btrfs improvements, more efficient static probes, perf support to probe modules and listing of accesible local and global variables, image hibernation using LZO compression, PPP over IPv4 support, several networking microoptimizations and many other small changes, improvements and new drivers.
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cd /usr/src
mkdir linux-2.6.37
cd linux-2.6.37
wget http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/linux-2.6.37.tar.bz2
tar xjf linux-2.6.37.tar.bz2
cd linux-2.6.37
make menuconfig
make
make modules
make modules_install
make install

Top 50 Linux Quotes of All Time

2011-01-03T14:54:00.000Z

50. I develop for Linux for a living, I used to develop for DOS.
Going from DOS to Linux is like trading a glider for an F117.
- Lawrence Foard, entropy@world.std.com

49. Avoid the Gates of Hell. Use Linux.
- unknown source

48. I've run DOOM more in the last few days than I have the last few
months. I just love debugging ;-)
(Linus Torvalds)

.47By golly, I'm beginning to think Linux really *is* the best thing since
sliced bread.
- Vance Petree, Virginia Power

46. Linux poses a real challenge for those with a taste for late-night
hacking (and/or conversations with God).
- Matt Welsh

45. Linux is obsolete.
- Andrew Tanenbaum

44. Your job is being a professor and researcher: That's one hell of a good excuse for some of the brain-damages of minix. (Linus Torvalds to Andrew Tanenbaum)

43. I still maintain the point that designing a monolithic kernel in 1991 is a fundamental error. Be thankful you are not my student. You would not get a high grade for such a design :-) (Andrew Tanenbaum to Linus Torvalds)

42. We all know Linux is great... it does infinite loops in 5 seconds.
- Linus Torvalds about the superiority of Linux on the Amterdam Linux Symposium

41. People disagree with me. I just ignore them.
(Linus Torvalds, regarding the use of C++ for the Linux kernel.)

40. Some people have told me they don't think a fat penguin really embodies the grace of Linux, which just tells me they have never seen an angry penguin charging at them in excess of 100mph. They'd be a lot more careful about what they say if they had.
- Linus Torvalds, announcing Linux v2.0

39. Other than the fact Linux has a cool name, could someone explain why should use Linux over BSD?

38. “How should I know if it works? That's what beta testers are for. I only coded it." (Attributed to Linus Torvalds, somewhere in a posting)

37. "Problem solving under linux has never been the circus that it is under AIX." (By Pete Ehlke in comp.unix.aix)

36. "Besides, I think Slackware sounds better than 'Microsoft,' don't you?" (By Patrick Volkerding)

35. "And the next time you consider complaining that running Lucid Emacs 19.05 via NFS from a remote Linux machine in Paraguay doesn't seem to get the background colors right, you'll know who to thank." (By Matt Welsh)

34. "...Deep Hack Mode--that mysterious and frightening state of consciousness where Mortal Users fear to tread." (By Matt Welsh)

33. Sigh. I like to think it's just the Linux people who want to be on the "leading edge" so bad they walk right off the precipice. (Craig E. Groeschel)

32. Microsoft Corp., concerned by the growing popularity of the free 32-bit operating system for Intel systems, Linux, has employed a number of top programmers from the underground world of virus development. Bill Gates stated yesterday: "World domination, fast -- it's either us or Linus". Mr. Torvalds was unavailable for comment ... (rjm@swift.eng.ox.ac.uk (Robert Manners), in comp.os.linux.setup)

31. Who wants to remember that escape-x-alt-control-left shift-b puts you into super-edit-debug-compile mode? (Discussion in comp.os.linux.misc on the intuitiveness of commands, especially Emacs.)

30. It's a bird.. It's a plane.. No, it's KernelMan, faster than a speeding bullet, to your rescue. Doing new kernel versions in under 5 seconds flat.. (Linus, in the announcement for 1.3.27)

29. Those who don't understand Linux are doomed to reinvent it, poorly. (Unidentified source.)

28. "How do you power off this machine?" (Linus, when upgrading linux.cs.helsinki.fi, and after using the machine for several months.)

27. I've discovered that using VMS is a lot like driving a nail with your head: sure, you eventually get something practical done, but it usually results in a headache and some blood loss.
(submitted by Sean A. Simpson)

26. "... being a Linux user is sort of like living in a house inhabited by a large family of carpenters and architects. Every morning when you wake up, the house is a little different. Maybe there is a new turret, or some walls have moved. Or perhaps someone has temporarily removed the floor under your bed." - Unix for Dummies, 2nd Edition (Found in the .sig of Rob Riggs)

25. If Bill Gates is the Devil then Linus Torvalds must be the Messiah. (Unknown source)

24. LILO, you've got me on my knees!
(from David Black, dblack@pilot.njin.net, with apologies to Derek and the
Dominos, and Werner Almsberger)

23. Anyone can build a fast processor. The trick is to build a fast system. (Seymour Cray)

22. We can use symlinks of course... syslogd would be a symlink to syslogp and ftpd and ircd would be linked to ftpp and ircp... and of course the point-to-point protocal paenguin. (Kevin M. Bealer, commenting on the penguin Linux logo.)

21. A multithreaded file system is only a performance hack. (Andrew Tanenbaum to Linus Torvalds)

20. I did this 'cause Linux gives me a woody. It doesn't generate revenue. (Dave '-ddt->` Taylor, announcing DOOM for Linux)

19. This message was brought to you by Linux, the free unix. Windows without the X is like making love without a partner. S*e(x), Drugs & Linux Rules win-nt from the people who invented edlin apples have meant trouble since eden Linux, the way to get rid of boot viruses. (By mwikholm@at8.abo.fi, MaDsen Wikholm)

18. Be warned that typing killall name may not have the desired effect on non-Linux systems, especially when done by a privileged user.
-- From the killall manual page

17. Only wimps use tape backup: _real_ men just upload their important stuff on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it. "
- Linus Torvalds

16. Linux is not user-friendly. It _is_ user-friendly. It is not ignorant-friendly and idiot-friendly.
-Source unknown

15. `When you say "I wrote a program that crashed Windows", people just stare at you blankly and say "Hey, I got those with the system, *for free*".' (By Linus Torvalds)

14. "If you want to travel around the world and be invited to speak at a lot of different places, just write a Unix operating system." (By Linus Torvalds)

13. "Are Linux users lemmings collectively jumping off of the cliff of reliable, well-engineered commercial software?" (By Matt Welsh)

12. "Linux: the operating system with a CLUE... Command Line User Environment". (seen in a posting in comp.software.testing)

11. “See, you not only have to be a good coder to create a system like Linux, you have to be a sneaky bastard too.” (By Linus Torvalds)

10. "What happens when you read some doc and either it doesn't answer your question or is demonstrably wrong? In Linux, you say "Linux sucks" and go read the code. In Windows/Oracle/etc you say "Windows sucks" and start banging your head against the wall."
- Denis Vlasenko on lkml

9. "...you might as well skip the Xmas celebration completely, and instead sit in front of your linux computer playing with the all-new-and-improved linux kernel version." (By Linus Torvalds)

8. Linux hackers are funny people: They count the time in patchlevels. (Seen in the .sig of Gerd Knorr.)

7. Linux: the choice of a GNU generation
- ksh@cis.ufl.edu put this on Tshirts in '93\

6. "Not me, guys. I read the Bash man page each day like a Jehovah's Witness reads the Bible. No wait, the Bash man page IS the bible. Excuse me..."
(More on confusing aliases, taken from comp.os.linux.misc)

5. What's this script do?
unzip ; touch ; finger ; mount ; gasp ; yes ; umount ; sleep
Hint for the answer: not everything is computer-oriented. Sometimes you're
in a sleeping bag, camping out with your girlfriend.
(Contributed by Frans van der Zande.)

4. I'm an idiot.. At least this [bug] took about 5 minutes to find.. Surely, Linus is talking about the kind of idiocy that others aspire to :-)
(Bruce Perens in response to Linus Torvalds's mailing about a kernel bug.)

3. One OS to rule them all,
One OS to find them.
One OS to call them all,
And in salvation bind them.
In the bright land of Linux,
Where the hackers play.
(J. Scott Thayer, with apologies to J.R.R.T.)

2. ...the Linux philosophy is "laugh in the face of danger". Oops. Wrong one. "Do it yourself". That's it. (by Linus)

1. We are using Linux daily to UP our productivity - so UP yours!
- Adapted from Pat Paulsen by Joe Sloan

Internet Download Manager Version 6.03 beta Build 6 is available

2010-11-11T14:15:00.000Z

What is new in version 6.03?

Improved downloading of videos in web players. IDM's "download this video" panel will appear on more number of popular sites.

Completely revised advanced browser integration. Improved IDM integration into Google Chrome, Opera, and other browsers. Fixed compatibility problems with these browsers. Added download panel for these browsers.

What is new in version 5.19 Build 5?

Fixed youtube downloading problems

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88 High-Risk Security Bugs Found In Android Kernel

2010-11-04T08:37:00.000Z

An analysis of Google Android Froyo's open source kernel has uncovered 88 flaws that could expose users' data
An analysis of the kernel used in Google’s Android smartphone software has turned up 88 high-risk security flaws that could be used to expose users’ personal information, security firm Coverity said in a report published on Tuesday.
The results, published in the 2010 edition of the Coverity Scan Open Source Integrity Report, are based on an analysis of the Froyo kernel used in HTC’s Droid Incredible handset.

Enterprise fears

The results arrive as Android is increasing its market share and increasingly being used in the enterprise.
While Android implementations vary from device to device, Coverity said the same flaws were likely to exist in other handsets as well. Coverity uncovered a total of 359 bugs, about one-quarter of which were classified as high-risk.

The report analysed a total of 61 million lines of open source code from 291 widely used projects, including Apache, Linux, PHP and Samba.

While Android’s density of bugs per thousand lines of code was lower than the average found in open source software overall, it was higher than that of the Linux kernel, according to Coverity. The company said some of the bugs appeared to be important enough to have been addressed before the code was released.

Fixes demanded

Coverity said it will hold off releasing the details of the flaws until January to allow Google and handset vendors to issue fixes. The flaws could be patched via an over-the-air update, Coverity said.
Canalys reported on Monday that Android now dominates the US smartphone market with a 44 percent share, up from 33 percent in the second quarter of this year.
While the deployment of Android on large numbers of handsets has allowed the software to claw market share away from competitors such as RIM, some have criticised Google’s “hands-off” approach for harming the quality of Android and its applications.
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Stuxnet Questions and Answers

Stuxnet Questions and Answers

2010-10-22T10:56:00.000Z

Q: What is Stuxnet?
A: It's a Windows worm, spreading via USB sticks. Once inside an organization, it can also spread by copying itself to network shares if they have weak passwords.

Q: Can it spread via other USB devices?
A: Sure, it can spread anything that you can mount as a drive. Like a USB hard drive, mobile phone, picture frame and so on.

Q: What does it do then?
A: It infects the system, hides itself with a rootkit and sees if the infected computer is connected to a Siemens Simatic (Step7) factory system.

Q: What does it do with Simatic?
A: It modifies commands sent from the Windows computer to the PLC. Once running on the PLC, it looks for a specific factory environment. If this is not found, it does nothing.
Q: Which factory is it looking for?
A: We don't know.

Q: Has it found the factory it's looking for?
A: We don't know.

Q: What would it do if it finds it?
A: It makes complex modifications to the system. Results of those modifications can not be detected without seeing the actual environment. So we don't know.

Q: Ok, in theory: what could it do?
A: It could adjust motors, conveyor belts, pumps. It could stop a factory. With right modifications, it could cause things to explode.

Q: Why is Stuxnet considered to be so complex?
A: It uses multiple vulnerabilities and drops its own driver to the system.

Q: How can it install its own driver? Shouldn't drivers be signed for them to work in Windows?
A: Stuxnet driver was signed with a certificate stolen from Realtek Semiconductor Corp.

Q: Has the stolen certificate been revoked?
A: Yes. Verisign revoked it on 16th of July. A modified variant signed with a certificate stolen from JMicron Technology Corporation was found on 17th of July.

Q: What's the relation between Realtek and Jmicron?
A: Nothing. But these companies have their HQs in the same office park in Taiwan. Which is weird.

Q: What vulnerabilities does Stuxnet exploit?
A: Overall, Stuxnet exploits five different vulnerabilities, four of which were 0-days:

LNK (MS10-046)
Print Spooler (MS10-061)
Server Service (MS08-067)
Privilege escalation via Keyboard layout file
Privilege escalation via Task Scheduler

Q: And these have been patched by Microsoft?
A: The two Privilege escalations have not yet been patched.

Q: Why was it so slow to analyze Stuxnet in detail?
A: It's unusually complex and unusually big. Stuxnet is over 1.5MB in size.

Q: When did Stuxnet start spreading?
A: In June 2009, or maybe even earlier. One of the components has a compile date in January 2009.

Q: When was it discovered?
A: A year later, in June 2010.

Q: How is that possible?
A: Good question.

Q: Was Stuxnet written by a government?
A: That's what it would look like, yes.

Q: How could governments get something so complex right?
A: Trick question. Nice. Next question.

Q: Was it Israel?
A: We don't know.

Q: Was it Egypt? Saudi Arabia? USA?
A: We don't know.

Q: Was the target Iran?
A: We don't know.

Q: Is it true that there's are biblical references inside Stuxnet?
A: There is a reference to "Myrtus" (which is a myrtle plant). However, this is not "hidden" in the code. It's an artifact left inside the program when it was compiled. Basically this tells us where the author stored the source code in his system. The specific path in Stuxnet is: \myrtus\src\objfre_w2k_x86\i386\guava.pdb. The authors probably did not want us to know they called their project "Myrtus", but thanks to this artifact we do. We have seen such artifacts in other malware as well. The Operation Aurora attack against Google was named Aurora after this path was found inside one of the binaries: \Aurora_Src\AuroraVNC\Avc\Release\AVC.pdb.

Q: So how exactly is "Myrtus" a biblical reference?
A: Uhh… we don't know, really.

Q: Could it mean something else?
A: Yeah: it could mean "My RTUs", not "Myrtus". RTU is an abbreviation for Remote Terminal Units, used in factory systems.

Q: How does Stuxnet know it has already infected a machine?
A: It sets a Registry key with a value "19790509" as an infection marker.

Q: What's the significance of "19790509"?
A: It's a date. 9th of May, 1979.

Q: What happened on 9th of May, 1979?
A: Maybe it's the birthday of the author? Then again, on that date a Jewish-Iranian businessman called Habib Elghanian was executed in Iran. He was accused to be spying for Israel.

Q: Oh.
A: Yeah.

Q: Is there a link between Stuxnet and Conficker?
A: It's possible. Conficker variants were found between November 2008 and April 2009. First variants of Stuxnet were found shortly after that. Both exploit the MS08-067 vulnerability. Both use USB sticks to spread. Both use weak network passwords to spread. And, of course, both are unusually complex.

Q: Is there a link to any other malware?
A: Some Zlob variants were the first to use the LNK vulnerability.

Q: Disabling AutoRun in Windows will stop USB worms, right?
A: Wrong. There are several other spreading mechanisms USB worms use. The LNK vulnerability used by Stuxnet would infect you even if AutoRun and AutoPlay were disabled.

Q: Will Stuxnet spread forever?
A: The current versions have a "kill date" of June 24, 2012. It will stop spreading on this date.

Q: How many computers did it infect?
A: Hundreds of thousands.

Q: But Siemens has announced that only 15 factories have been infected.
A: They are talking about factories. Most of the infected machines are collateral infections, i.e. normal home and office computers that are not connected to SCADA systems.

Q: How could the attackers get a trojan like this into a secure facility?
A: For example, by breaking into a home of an employee, finding his USB sticks and infecting it. Then wait for the employee to take the sticks to work and infect his work computer. The infection will spread further inside the secure facility via USB sticks, eventually hitting the target. As a side effect, it will continue spread elsewhere also. This is why Stuxnet has spread worldwide.

Q: Anything else it could do, in theory?
A: Siemens announced last year that Simatic can now also control alarm systems, access controls and doors. In theory, this could be used to gain access to top secret locations. Think Tom Cruise and Mission Impossible.
Q: Did Stuxnet sink Deepwater Horizon and cause the Mexican oil spill?
A: No, we do not think so. Although it does seem Deepwater Horizon indeed did have some Siemens PLC systems on it.

Q: Does F-Secure detect Stuxnet?
A: Yes.
Source: f-secure.com

Why Linux Failed on the Desktop

2010-10-22T09:10:00.000Z

The failure of Linux to catch on with mainstream PC users will come as no great surprise to most observers, but the reasons for its failure are often misunderstood or, at the very least, grossly misstated. Linux didn't fail on the desktop because it's "too geeky," "too hard to use," or "too obscure," as casual detractors so often claim in online forums. On the contrary, the best-known distribution--Ubuntu--has received high marks for usability from every major player in the technology press, and it features a menu layout nearly identical to that of Mac OS X.

Ultimately, Linux is doomed on the desktop because of a critical lack of content. And that lack of content owes its existence to two key factors: the fragmentation of the Linux platform, and the fierce ideology of the open-source community at large.

User expectations have shifted dramatically in the past few years, and it's no longer acceptable for any PC to fail at basic media viewing. DVD playback and video streaming from premium sites such as Netflix are now fundamental capabilities that any computer should have. But the politics of the open-source world make that a nearly hopeless dream for Linux.

"I share the hope with everyone that free and open-source software will rise to meet the requirements of content delivery," says longtime Linux developer Jeff Whatcott, senior vice president of marketing for Brightcove, a company that specializes in online video streaming. "But that's not happening."

"DRM is not popular with the open-source crowd," says Whatcott, lamenting that the open-source community at large remains so steadfastly opposed to digital rights management technologies. Without those systems, commercial content providers have no incentive to embrace Linux. And Whatcott points out that even if the open-source community were willing to go along, the DRM arena is dominated by "deep, deep patent pools," making a free, open-source alternative unlikely anyway.

Meanwhile, even common streaming technologies such as Flash--which Whatcott helped bring to Linux in his previous role as a Macromedia (and later Adobe) product manager--deliver poor results on Linux.

"It wasn't for lack of trying," Whatcott says. "At the time, Macromedia put extensive resources into figuring that out." But despite the hard work of a team of engineers "that loved Linux," the fragmentation of the Linux platform and the hurdles presented by what Whatcott describes as "alpha-quality" drivers for audio and video hardware made success elusive for the Flash development team.
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Desktop Linux Is Dead

Desktop Linux Is Dead

2010-10-22T08:23:00.001Z

The dream of Linux as a major desktop OS is now pretty much dead. Despite phenomenal security and stability — and amazing strides in usability, performance, and compatibility — Linux simply isn't catching on with desktop users. And if there ever was a chance for desktop Linux to succeed, that ship has long since sunk. ... Ultimately, Linux is doomed on the desktop because of a critical lack of content. And that lack of content owes its existence to two key factors: the fragmentation of the Linux platform, and the fierce ideology of the open-source community at large.
More @ linux.slashdot.org

Desktop Linux Is Dead

2010-10-22T08:21:00.000Z

DX11 Coming To Linux (But Not XP)

2010-09-23T13:07:00.000Z

As reported over at Phoronix, the Direct X 11 API now has an open source implementation on top of Gallium3d which should ease porting of games to Linux with or without Wine. While still in its infancy, you can see where this is heading. All this while Microsoft hasn't offered DX11 for their own aging WindowsXP. Could it be that Linux may soon support this Microsoft API better than Microsoft itself?
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multicd.sh Combine Several CDs into One
openSUSE 11.3 Milestone 4 Released
The most complete list of commands on linux

Linux Command Line and Shell Scripting Bible

2010-09-23T12:44:00.000Z

Learn all the command lines for all Linux shells in this one-stop guide

There's a lot to be said for going back to basics. Not only does this Bible give you a quick refresher on the structure of open-source Linux software, it also shows you how to bypass the hefty graphical user interface on Linux systems and start interacting the fast and efficient way—with command lines and automated scripts. You'll learn how to manage files on the filesystem, start and stop programs, use databases, even do Web programming—without a GUI—with this one-stop resource.

Understand the Linux desktop and various command-line parameters
Learn filesystem navigation, file handling, and the basics of bash shell commands
Write shell scripts to automate routine functions and reports
Harness nesting loops and structured commands
Monitor programs, master file permissions, and make queries
Run scripts in background mode and schedule jobs
Use sed, gawk, and regular expressions
Explore all alternate shells, including ash, tcsh, ksh, korn, and zsh

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The most complete list of commands on linux

RoboForm Beta version 7.0.65 has been released.

2010-07-09T00:09:00.000Z

Latest Release Notes

Version 7.0.65
* COnflict resolution and mass changes in Embedded Synchronizer.
* Numerous Editor User Interface bug fixes.

Version 7.0.64
* Embedded Synchronizer.
* Numerous Editor User Interface improvements.

Version 7.0.5
* Update icons in existing passcards that do not have icons, on Login, GoFill, Save.
* Logins menu: Add Most Popular section, below Recently Used section.
* New Passcard Editor: add Categories selector on the left.
* Embed GoodSync2Go ver 8.1.9, to sync with RF Online server.

Version 7.0.4
* New GoodSync integration scheme: GS is embedded with RF and does not have to be installed.
* Fix crashes in Quicken.
* Make CTRL+F work in Safenote Editor.
* Add import from KeePass.
* Fix misc bugs.

Version 7.0.3
* Show AutoSave toolbar on top of the page by default, not at the bottom.
* Add color transition to AutoSave toolbar to make it more noticeable.
* Win32: fix freeze that RF causes in some programs.
* Add import from LastPass CSV and Firefox bookmark.html.
* Upgarde built-in Firefox Adapter to support FF ver 3.6.

Version 7.0.2
* Fix BasicAuth detection in Windows 7.
* Do not attach to desktop process explorer.exe.
* Fix misc bugs.

New Ver 7 Features Summary

Save and fill password in Windows (WIN32) applications.
Non-modal AutoSave presented as a toolbar.
AutoSave: Show what is being saved in Details view.
Each passcard contains an icon from web site it logs into.
Fully support UNICODE: all file names may be non-latin.
Editors do not use HTML, so they are faster and more stable.
Scripting of keyboard and mouse click input for applications where AutoSave does not work, such as SAP.
Use fingerprint reader to enter Master Password, no need to type it.

Download:
RoboForm for Desktop / Laptop

Opera 10.60 Beta 1 (Build 3422) Released

2010-06-17T09:45:00.000Z

Change Log:
# User interface
* Improved
- Cross-document messaging
> W3C reference (http://dev.w3.org/html5/postmsg/#web-messaging)
> See this Opera demo (http://achau.appspot.com/demo/html5/crossdoc/index.html).
- Fonts for Asian languages: added sets of specific fonts to be used for CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) web sites
- The ability to show suggestions in the search field when using Wikipedia
- Added "Menu" to the Opera button
- Visual Speed Dial adjustments, including:
> Speed dials (and tab-previews on hover) changed from 4:3 to 16:9 (wide screen format)
> New resizing behavior for thumbnails
> New default background
> Bing is the new Speed Dial search engine
- Icons are replacing thumbnails for some internal tab types, such as mail and downloads
- Scrollbar knob resizing to correspond with big pages
- Storing the list of confirmed intranet servers in Preferences instead of relying on typed history
- Add Opera Portal to "Subscribe to this feed using"
* Fixed
- Use icons instead of thumbnails for some internal tab types, such as mail and downloads
- Disabled task bar thumbnails by default with an option to enable them in Preferences
- Domain name not showing on a collapsed address bar
- User interface becoming unresponsive after middle clicking on a link and selecting text
- Text disappearing in appearance/toolbars section when using several old skins
- Address bar searches in private mode not using private mode context
- Problem when installing Opera Unite applications
- Desktop window deteriorating into a non-drawing state
- Jump list "Recent" not being cleared when deleting private data
- Opera shutting down when uninstalling widgets via the panel
- Not being able to remove widgets with Cyrillic names
- Inspect Element not being the last item in Image Properties
- Shutting down when in the Save As and Open dialog boxes
- Shutting down when right clicking Google Earth plugin
- Issue with focus in the Google Earth plugin
- Toolbar missing after starting with a new page if the source viewer was previously an active tab
- Speed Dial fixes:
> Dragging a Speed Dial entry to another position executes default action on target in addition to dropping
> Visual glitch occurring in the Close button
> Backgrounds of Speed Dial dialogs being too transparent
> Titles not being shown when Speed Dial is set to Read Only
> Visual degradation occurring when setting opacity to a low value (disabling opacity for now)
> Shut down when hovering a Speed Dial tab
> Buttons located at the bottom overlapping when height is reduced
- Some custom shortcuts not working properly
- Widgets with a non-default start file not installing on Windows or UNIX, and close on startup on Mac
- Inability to select items in dropdown menus using the mouse
- Opera Unite applications not showing in panel after installation
- Opera prematurely shutting down when hiding and showing bookmarks in the address bar dropdown
- Launching a previously saved session with two separate Opera windows causing a premature shut down
- Premature shut down when dragging buttons to the status bar
- Widgets only being upgraded to the default path
- Advanced menu in download tab does not appear for files downloaded to non-ASCII folders
- Autoupdate not closing Opera when set to hide in the system tray
- Unable to change or install dictionary in dialog boxes
- Links being opened in external applications close page if page is opened from a panel or from a mail
- Find in page overlay not disappearing when clicking an iframe
- Deleting private data does not remove closed windows
- Ghost close button appearing when clicking top of trash button in Windows 7
- Opera not prefetching icons for bookmarks from the custom/ folder
- Percent sign in encoded url from an external application being encoded by Opera again
- Buttons often being disabled in new non-modal dialogs
- Many user selected locales not getting get a language if it is available
- Not being able to install the Voice plugin
- Middle-click not working on "autoscroll" action with mouse drivers
- Logitech mouse tilt function not working for horizontal scrolling
- Black tooltips appearing for tabs when using Windows Native skin
- "Show thumbnails when hovering tabs" being disabled
- Incorrect Tab cycling order after closing tab opened in background, or with "Activate the next tab" enabled
- "More..." in the Widget Upgrade Wizard displaying an error page
- Opera starting when launching the Widget installer
- Ctrl + Enter saves address to typed history even if in a private tab
- Radio buttons causing premature shut downs with accessibility software
- Opera prematurely shutting down on exit when a state button (Opera Unite or Opera Link) has been added and the appearance dialog is still open
- Ability to open multiple "Downloads" tabs when one is already open in another Opera window
- Panel order being wrong after a restart
- "More..." button in the 'Why do I need to upgrade?' Widget Upgrade Wizard has no effect
- No usable interface being available when Tab bar is set to "show only when needed"
- Pressing Ctrl or Shift key combination on startup dialogs causes an Opera premature shut down
- Premature shut down when navigating back and forth with a limited cache size
- Right-click > Validate menu item not working
- Inline address completion disappearing after typing www.x
- Delaying tooltips on the Tab bar when moving the cursor between thumbnails
- Checkboxes having no focus indication when being tabbed
- Premature shut down on exit after visiting page with Flash
- Premature shut down when closing tabs

# Display and scripting
* Improved
- Reliability of out-of-sync situations in Opera Link
- Document Object Model (DOM) performance
- Extended functionality of the tile/stretching of skin elements
- HTML5: Added support for onhashchange events
- CSS selector matching performance
- Optimized premultiplication of decoded images
- Performance for plug-ins and animated content
* Fixed
- Tab visibility state not working properly
- Session corruption occurring when Opera closes while loading pages
- Mouse gestures dialog closing Opera when in kiosk/nomenu mode
- Speed Dial "Reload Never" being set to "Custom"
- Problem when changing Windows style to Classic while Opera is using a native theme
- Bookmarks being lost on upgrade when using new format
- Progress bar inside the address bar changing address bar buttons
- The minimize button missing from restored tabs
- Problem when creating a new panel using drag and drop
- HTML/MHTML files with non-ascii characters in path not opening when Opera is the default browser and already running
- Text field not being focused in Go to Page dialog
- Context menu missing in the download manager
- User interface not being restored after using fullscreen
- Mouse wheel not working in popup window
- Problem when trying to copy Notes
- Large buttons not working on combined Back/Forward buttons
- Dragonfly window state not being remembered
- Double-clicking a target _blank link opens the home page
- Fraud Protection from saving the details of visited sites in private mode
- Using the caret position for keyboard invoked context menus
- Tab chrome missing for a restored tab when new tab is opened in background
- MathML entities not working in Opera 10.5x
- Minimized Opera not restoring when opening an external link
- Shut down when viewing Opera skin images on a page while using the Omelion skin
- Removing support for div nowrap
- MouseEvent and UIEvent interfaces not being exposed
- 0.01% height of auto in standards mode not computing to auto (Picasa)
- Stop differentiating between shrink-to-fit and table cell content width propagation
- Absolutely positioned element inside a bottom absolutely positioned element not redrawing when moved
- --!> and --\s*> not closing a comment
- Scripts hanging at www.toshiba.co.jp (plugin related)
- location.replace in iframe turning a previously initiated location.href assignment in parent into a replace
- Negative clip left/top value if being larger than an element's width/height hides the element
- Navigating to a different WML card via element not working
- Combining of z-index, display, overflow, position, and float hides content at Google Wave
- Reading empty cookie value still appends an = (jil.org)
- Caret appearing in the wrong position if put in an empty block beside a float (new reply on Google Wave)
- Freezing caused by nesting positioned and non-positioned elements
- Content overflowing the content edge but not the padding edge triggering scrollbar for overflow:auto
- Mouse coordinates being incorrectly reported to Flash
- Zimbra: UI freezes when closing a calendar item: history.back() causes an unload event
- Navigator mimeTypes description being wrong
- Odd XSLT behaviour occurring with (non-URI) ihost names
- Problem when viewing Google Pistview: document.readyState can revert to "interactive" from "completed" when content is added to the DOM
- Nested positioned descendants of inline-block failing to redraw
- Nested positioned descendants of inline-block with z-index failing to redraw
- Unexpected 14px offsetTop for page when closing an inner window for web.qq.com
- Danskebank page not working: Let document.domain affect the frame navigation policy
- Windowless plugin desynchronizing with the page after scrolling
- Not setting the focus on DocumentEdit when handling an onfocus event on the body
- An issue with Webstorage causing a premature shut down
- Excessive memory consumption (<1.5 GB)
- Google Earth links from web sites not opening properly
- Cafeworld and potentially other Flash games failing on Facebook
- Objects sent with the wrong MIME-type being shown incorrectly
- application/pls+xml incorrectly being treated as XML
- SVG fixes:
> Opera freezing on loading altGlyph testcase
> Clip-path incorrectly being applied while painting source graphics for filter effect
> Incorrect handling of empty altGlyph element
> Incorrect handling of the filter primitive "in" attribute that matches a prefix of a filter source
- Several DOM problems when using Facebook chat
- xhr.overrideMimeType() being called before xhr.open throws
- Freeze occurring on Youtube inbox related to colspan and border with border-collapse:collapse
- A Gmail problem associated with the width of shrink-to-fit float with fixed-width parent and STF float grandparent: not updating when content is added
- Not being able to type or enter text in windowless Flash
- DNS query failing when the response contains more than 24 addresses
- Google Docs spreadsheet scrolling to top when typing
- HttpOnly cookies not being accepted through NPAPI (BankID)
- Premature shut down when printing a page where the body has a background color and negative margins
- Spatial navigation highlight not respecting overflow:hidden on parent element
- Double clicking a target _blank hyperlink incorrectly opens home
- Focusing an empty RTL (Right-to-Left) textarea causing the caret being shown to the left
- RTL textbox forgetting the caret state after clearing the first letter of the cursive text with a backspace
- Multi-line selection of BiDi text in a RTL textarea being broken
- Not being able to select the last character of cursive text (e.g., Persian) in a textbox using a mouse
- Not being able to scroll to the bottom of a textarea when pasting large texts into it
- Repaint problem when scrolling an element that has the border of another element positioned on top of it
- Erratic downloading from a HTTPS URL with a specified port
- Premature shut down when doing a cache-full cleanup
- IPAPMincho being discarded as a web font even though Windows thinks it acceptable
- Encoding problem when STP/1 host replies to a STP/0 request
- Page search hits missing when a problematic search hit is visible

# Mail, news, chat
* Fixed
- Reduced functionality of spell checker in Notes and Chat
- Replying to a specific e-mail freezes Opera
- Slow Loading of mail when Received is open
- Mail not setting "replied" to flag when resuming drafts
- Compose button not working when no message is selected
- Shut down occurring when fetching mail
- Delisting of folders when they cannot be selected
- Shut down occurring on "Manage Feeds" while loading the mail database
- Dragging and dropping a file fails when no tabs are open
- Replys to Sent messages being sent to the original sending author
- Mail not transferring correctly from roaming to local profile when upgrading from Opera 9.2x to Opera 10.5x
- Problem with Zoom box in the email compose page
- Mail not being re-indexed after removing lexicon
- Email contact importer on www.hi5.com triggering a file download
- Mail messages not staying in focus
- Opera freezing when receiving mail
- Feed articles being mixed up
- Mail account wizard not using port 587 for Hotmail as specified in mailproviders.xml

# Security
* Fixed
- After accepting a certificate, SSL negotiation fails in some circumstances
- Not being able to install a Skandiabanken CA certificate
- Not being able to accept a self-signed certificate

Sabayon Linux 5.2 Released

2010-03-29T12:18:00.000Z

Fabio Erculiani has announced the release of Sabayon Linux 5.2, a Gentoo-based desktop Linux distribution with GNOME/KDE and with a custom (binary) package manager: "The best, refined blend of GNU/Linux, coming with bleeding edge edges, is eventually here. Say hello to Sabayon Five-point-Twoh, available in both GNOME and KDE editions. Dedicated to those who like cutting-edge stability, out-of-the-box experience, outstanding desktop performance and beauty. You will find outstanding amount of new applications and features, like XBMC 9.11, KDE 4.4.1, GNOME 2.28. Features: based on new GCC 4.4.1 and glibc 2.10; shipped with desktop-optimized Linux kernel 2.6.33; installable in 10 minutes; faster boot time and lightweight default system...." Read the rest of the release announcement for additional details. Download the GNOME (G) or KDE (K) edition from here: Sabayon_Linux_5.2_x86_G.iso (1,680MB, MD5, torrent), Sabayon_Linux_5.2_x86_K.iso (1,944MB, MD5, torrent), Sabayon_Linux_5.2_amd64_G.iso (1,791MB, MD5, torrent), Sabayon_Linux_5.2_amd64_K.iso (2,038MB, MD5, torrent).

Ubuntu Will Switch To Base-10 File Size Units In Future Release

2010-03-29T12:09:00.000Z

Ubuntu's future 10.10 operating system is going to make a small, but contentious change to how file sizes are represented. Like most other operating systems using binary prefixes, Ubuntu currently represents 1 kB (kilobyte) as 1024 bytes (base-2). But starting with 10.10, a switch to SI prefixes (base-10) will denote 1 kB as 1000 bytes, 1 MB as 1000 kB, 1 GB as 1000 MB, and so on.

Sou®ce :slashdot More info
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"Install Other OS" Feature Removed From the PS3

2010-03-29T11:54:00.000Z

The next system software update for the PlayStation 3 (PS3) system will be released on April 1, 2010 (JST), and will disable the “Install Other OS” feature that was available on the PS3 systems prior to the current slimmer models, launched in September 2009. This feature enabled users to install an operating system, but due to security concerns, Sony Computer Entertainment will remove the functionality through the 3.21 system software update.

In addition, disabling the “Other OS” feature will help ensure that PS3 owners will continue to have access to the broad range of gaming and entertainment content from SCE and its content partners on a more secure system.

More info:

Additional information about PS3 firmware updates.

Sony Computer Entertainment management seemed committed to the continued support of the Other OS option on the PS3.

multicd.sh Combine Several CDs into One

2010-03-27T16:20:00.000Z

multicd.sh is a shell script designed to build a multiboot CD image containing many different Linux distributions and/or utilities.

The avantages to making a CD with this script are:

You don't need to burn multiple CDs for small distributions.
If you already have the ISO images, it is not necessary to download them again.
When a new version of one of the distributions is released, you can simply download the new version and run the script again to build a new multiboot image.

Instructions:

Make a folder for building the image. You can give it any name; I call mine multicd.
Download the multicd.sh script and save it into that folder. (For version 5.0+, either download multicd-[version]-combined.sh to that folder or untar multicd-[version]-seperate.tar.gz to that folder.)
Copy or symlink some of the supported boot images to files in that folder. Note: they must have the names below (i.e. Puppy must be puppy.iso, etc.) Also, only distros supported by this script will work.
Install mkisofs or genisoimage. If your distribution comes with CD/DVD burning sftware, you probably have it already.
Open a terminal, go to the multicd folder (made in step 1) and type:

chmod +x multicd*.sh
sudo ./multicd*.sh

The script will detect which images are present and make a CD for you. They will appear on the menu of the final CD in the order they are listed. (Note: if the final size is over 700 MB, you will have to use a DVD.)

Arguments:

c / md5: include an MD5 checksum file (md5sum.txt) m: don't include Memtest86+ modules: select which Slax moudles to copy over (requires dialog) v: be more verbose

Supported Distributions:
Note: with version 5.0 and up, these distributions will appear in alphabetical order. Change the filenames of the files in the plugins folder to change the order. Ubuntu Live CD → ubuntu.iso
Linux Mint → linuxmint.iso
PCLinuxOS → pclos.iso* PCLinuxOS LXDE → pclx.iso* Knoppix → knoppix.iso (Versions 5 and 6 supported. If you use the DVD version, KNOPPIX2 will be dropped. You can also use the 5.3.1 Japanese Edition if you prefer KDE.)
*the two plugins can both be used for any other version of PCLinuxOS 2009 -customized-
Debian Live → binary.iso
-compilation-
Ultimate Boot CD → ubcd.iso
-not too large-
Slax → slax.iso
Tiny Core Linux → tinycore.iso
Puppy → puppy.iso
Macpup → macpup.iso
Feather → feather.iso
SliTaz → slitaz.iso
Austrumi → al.iso
GeeXboX → gbox.iso
DSL → dsl.iso
Slax modules → *.lzm
DeLi Linux → deli.iso
TinyMe → timyme.iso
antiX → antix.iso
Wolvix → wolvix.iso
CDlinux → cdl.iso
-partitoning and specialized-
RIPLinuX → riplinux.iso
SystemRescueCd → sysrcd.iso
Trinity Rescue Kit → trk.iso
INSERT → insert.iso
Parted Magic → pmagic.iso
GParted Live → gparted.iso
BackTrack Linux → backtrack.iso
WeakNet Linux → weaknet.iso
Offline NT Password & Registry Editor → ntpasswd.iso
EASEUS Disk Copy → diskcopy.iso
Clonezilla → clonezilla.iso
PING → ping.iso
Endian Firewall → efw.iso
NetbootCD → netbootcd.iso
Ubuntu (hardy or jaunty) mini.iso → ubuntu-mini.iso
Debian (lenny, squeeze or sid) mini.iso → debian-mini.iso
Fedora 11 netinst → fedora-boot.iso
openSUSE NET iso → opensuse.iso
Mandriva boot.iso → mandriva-boot.iso
Arch Linux FTP or CORE → arch.iso
FreeDOS base or full CD → fdbasecd.iso/fdfullcd.iso
Any floppy disk image → *.img or *.imz (could be Super Grub Disk, MS-DOS, etc.)
Any floppy disk image → games/*.img or games/*.imz (for bootable DOS disk images with games)
GRUB4DOS grub.exe → grub.exe
DBAN iso image → dban.iso
Memtest86+ → automatic

Downloads:
The script can be downloaded from ftp://downloads.tuxfamily.org/multicd/.

openSUSE 11.3 Milestone 4 Released

2010-03-27T15:56:00.000Z

Right on schedule, openSUSE 11.3 Milestone 4 has been released. This fourth test release brings many changes, among which that take place "under the hood" is switching over to the Upstart init daemon, an upgrade to NetworkManager 0.8 for wired/wireless/broadband network management, and other packages upgraded include OpenOffice.org, Mono, CUPS, Python, and Samba, among others.

openSUSE 11.3 has also begun better integrating the Moblin user-interface, but it's expected that this netbook-focused UI will be more properly integrated with openSUSE 11.3 Milestone 5. Another modification to openSUSE 11.3 is the LiveCDs having the VirtualBox guest tools installed by default, which provide a better "out of the box" experience when running openSUSE as a virtualized OS with Oracle's VirtualBox platform.

On the desktop side, the Milestone 4 release has the release candidate of GNOME 2.30 and KDE 4.4.1.

The openSUSE 11.3 Milestone 4 release announcement with the various download links can be found at news.openSUSE.org.

The fifth milestone release (of seven, then followed by two release candidates) is scheduled to be available in early April. The final release of openSUSE 11.3 is set to arrive on the 15th of July.

source: Michael Larabel @ phoronix.com & rarlinux.blogspot.com
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YouTube video leads to Hollywood contract

2009-12-16T13:36:00.000Z

A producer from Uruguay who uploaded a short film to YouTube in November 2009 has been offered a $30m (£18.6m) contract to make a Hollywood film.

The movie will be sponsored by director Sam Raimi, whose credits include the Spiderman and Evil Dead films.

Fede Alvarez's short film "Ataque de Panico!" (Panic Attack!) featured giant robots invading and destroying Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay.

It is 4 mins 48 seconds long and has had more than 1.5 million views so far.

"I uploaded (Panic Attack!) on a Thursday and on Monday my inbox was totally full of e-mails from Hollywood studios," he told the BBC's Latin American service BBC Mundo.

"It was amazing, we were all shocked."

The movie Mr Alvarez has been asked to produce is a sci-fi film to be shot in Uruguay and Argentina. He says he intends to start from scratch and develop a new story for the project.

"If some director from some country can achieve this just uploading a video to YouTube, it obviously means that anyone could do it," he added.

YouTube recently revealed the most watched videos of 2009. Britain's Got Talent star Susan Boyle topped the chart with more than 120 million views worldwide of her debut on the show.

source:BBC

100 Useful RUN Commands in Microsoft Windows

2009-09-09T09:47:00.002Z

Accessibility Controls access.cpl
Add Hardware Wizard hdwwiz.cpl
Add/Remove Programs appwiz.cpl
Administrative Tools control admintools
Automatic Updates wuaucpl.cpl
Bluetooth Transfer Wizard fsquirt
Calculator calc
Certificate Manager certmgr.msc
Character Map charmap
Check Disk Utility chkdsk
Clipboard Viewer clipbrd
Command Prompt cmd
Component Services dcomcnfg
Computer Management compmgmt.msc
Date and Time Properties timedate.cpl
DDE Shares ddeshare
Device Manager devmgmt.msc
Direct X Control Panel (If Installed)* directx.cpl
Direct X Troubleshooter dxdiag
Disk Cleanup Utility cleanmgr
Disk Defragment dfrg.msc
Disk Management diskmgmt.msc
Disk Partition Manager diskpart
Display Properties control desktop
Display Properties desk.cpl
Display Properties (w/Appearance Tab Preselected) control color
Dr. Watson System Troubleshooting Utility drwtsn32
Driver Verifier Utility verifier
Event Viewer eventvwr.msc
File Signature Verification Tool sigverif
Findfast findfast.cpl
Folders Properties control folders
Fonts control fonts
Fonts Folder fonts
Free Cell Card Game freecell
Game Controllers joy.cpl
Group Policy Editor (XP Prof) gpedit.msc
Hearts Card Game mshearts
Iexpress Wizard iexpress
Indexing Service ciadv.msc
Internet Properties inetcpl.cpl
IP Configuration (Display Connection Configuration) ipconfig /all
IP Configuration (Display DNS Cache Contents) ipconfig /displaydns
IP Configuration (Delete DNS Cache Contents) ipconfig /flushdns
IP Configuration (Release All Connections) ipconfig /release
IP Configuration (Renew All Connections) ipconfig /renew
IP Configuration (Refreshes DHCP & Re-Registers DNS) ipconfig /registerdns
IP Configuration (Display DHCP Class ID) ipconfig /showclassid
IP Configuration (Modifies DHCP Class ID) ipconfig /setclassid
Java Control Panel (If Installed) jpicpl32.cpl
Java Control Panel (If Installed) javaws
Keyboard Properties control keyboard
Local Security Settings secpol.msc
Local Users and Groups lusrmgr.msc
Logs You Out Of Windows logoff
Microsoft Chat winchat
Minesweeper Game winmine
Mouse Properties control mouse
Mouse Properties main.cpl
Network Connections control netconnections
Network Connections ncpa.cpl
Network Setup Wizard netsetup.cpl
Notepad notepad
Nview Desktop Manager (If Installed) nvtuicpl.cpl
Object Packager packager
ODBC Data Source Administrator odbccp32.cpl
On Screen Keyboard osk
Opens AC3 Filter (If Installed) ac3filter.cpl
Password Properties password.cpl
Performance Monitor perfmon.msc
Performance Monitor perfmon
Phone and Modem Options telephon.cpl
Power Configuration powercfg.cpl
Printers and Faxes control printers
Printers Folder printers
Private Character Editor eudcedit
Quicktime (If Installed) QuickTime.cpl
Regional Settings intl.cpl
Registry Editor regedit
Registry Editor regedit32
Remote Desktop mstsc
Removable Storage ntmsmgr.msc
Removable Storage Operator Requests ntmsoprq.msc
Resultant Set of Policy (XP Prof) rsop.msc
Scanners and Cameras sticpl.cpl
Scheduled Tasks control schedtasks
Security Center wscui.cpl
Services services.msc
Shared Folders fsmgmt.msc
Shuts Down Windows shutdown
Sounds and Audio mmsys.cpl
Spider Solitare Card Game spider
SQL Client Configuration cliconfg
System Configuration Editor sysedit
System Configuration Utility msconfig
System File Checker Utility (Scan Immediately) sfc /scannow
System File Checker Utility (Scan Once At Next Boot) sfc /scanonce
System File Checker Utility (Scan On Every Boot) sfc /scanboot
System File Checker Utility (Return to Default Setting) sfc /revert
System File Checker Utility (Purge File Cache) sfc /purgecache

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Tips for maintaining an AdSense-friendly site with user-generated content

2009-08-14T20:54:00.000Z

These days, user-generated content is everywhere, from the comments below newspaper articles, to the photos and videos shared on social networks. So it's no surprise that many publishers are monetizing this type of content with AdSense ads. But, while you're familiar with types of content which are compliant with the AdSense program policies, your users might not be. We understand that it's not always easy to monitor hundreds of new comments, posts, user profiles, videos, or photos every day, so here are a few ideas on how to maintain an advertiser-friendly environment on your pages.

As a quick note before we head into the tips, remember that inappropriate content can come in many forms -- images, forum posts, comments, links, and so on. For example, adult content isn't only limited to pornographic images; it can also be sexually explicit forum posts or spam bot comments with links to adult sites, which aren't permitted by our policies. We recommend reviewing our previous Inside AdSense post on this topic for further clarification and a few tests you can try on your content.

Now for the tips, which we've divided in two sections - 'Prevention' and 'Monitoring'.

Prevention

Here are some recommendations for ways to prevent your ads from appearing alongside user-generated content that isn't compliant with our policies:

Publish clear content guidelines and policies that your users will have to accept and adhere to in order to sign up and use your site's services.
If you own a photo or video sharing site where users are permitted to upload adult or other non-compliant content, clearly structure your content to avoid placing your ad code in sections/categories containing this type of content. The same idea could also be easily applied to online stores with adult sections or to classifieds sites which offer adult dating classifieds.
Ask users to tag their inappropriate content (e.g. sexually suggestive pictures or videos) as being non family-safe. This can help you perform human evaluations of potentially inappropriate content for AdSense ads. You can also try installing keyword filters for content related to adult topics, violence, or drugs, for instance. While we're unable to provide you with details about setting up these filters for your site, we recommend searching for terms such as "keyword filtering" or "content filtering" on Google.com.
Implement spambot protection for your comment forms, forums, and guest books. If you need more information on this topic, try a Google search for "spambot protection".

Monitoring

We suggest these tips to ensure that your existing user-generated content pages remain compliant with our policies:

Set up ways for your community to monitor itself. For example, try adding a "Report inappropriate content" link to your pages, to allow users to flag content for you to review.
Proactively review pages, videos, photos, etc. with high pageviews on a regular basis.
Spot-check content based on keywords, content search, or related user accounts. For example, try entering keywords related to inappropriate content in your own search engine and checking the results. Alternatively, you can search on Google.com using the following parameter, replacing 'example.com' with your own site's URL and 'keyword' with a specific word or phrase: "site:example.com keyword".
Create editorial policies and exercise moderator control in your comments, forums, and guestbook sections.

source:AdSenseTeam
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Tips for maintaining an AdSense-friendly site with user-generated content

2009-08-14T18:23:00.000Z

Publish clear content guidelines and policies that your users will have to accept and adhere to in order to sign up and use your site's services.
If you own a photo or video sharing site where users are permitted to upload adult or other non-compliant content, clearly structure your content to avoid placing your ad code in sections/categories containing this type of content. The same idea could also be easily applied to online stores with adult sections or to classifieds sites which offer adult dating classifieds.
Ask users to tag their inappropriate content (e.g. sexually suggestive pictures or videos) as being non family-safe. This can help you perform human evaluations of potentially inappropriate content for AdSense ads. You can also try installing keyword filters for content related to adult topics, violence, or drugs, for instance. While we're unable to provide you with details about setting up these filters for your site, we recommend searching for terms such as "keyword filtering" or "content filtering" on Google.com.
Implement spambot protection for your comment forms, forums, and guest books. If you need more information on this topic, try a Google search for "spambot protection".

Monitoring

We suggest these tips to ensure that your existing user-generated content pages remain compliant with our policies:

Set up ways for your community to monitor itself. For example, try adding a "Report inappropriate content" link to your pages, to allow users to flag content for you to review.
Proactively review pages, videos, photos, etc. with high pageviews on a regular basis.
Spot-check content based on keywords, content search, or related user accounts. For example, try entering keywords related to inappropriate content in your own search engine and checking the results. Alternatively, you can search on Google.com using the following parameter, replacing 'example.com' with your own site's URL and 'keyword' with a specific word or phrase: "site:example.com keyword".
Create editorial policies and exercise moderator control in your comments, forums, and guestbook sections.

source:AdSenseTeam
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How To Send Completely Anonymous Emails

2009-08-14T08:56:00.000Z

There are services on the web – mostly online utilities – that allow you to send anonymous emails. You can send simple messages from, and to everywhere in the world, without having to reveal your true identity.

AnonEmail

AnonEmail is a service by AnonyMouse. It allows you to send anonymous emails by resending your email several time through random nodes, thus making it impossible to trace back.

In AnonEmail, you can fill in your recipient, the subject, and a short plain-text message. Contrary to many other services AnonEmail does not (seem to) log your IP. However, we do urge you not to use it for anything illegal.

As an extra security measure, AnonEmail will then wait for an unknown period before sending your email along. Why? So no one will be able to prove your ‘guilt’ based on time/location, or make geographic presumptions based on timezones.

It remains the question whether this particular functionality should be obligatory – as it might be a serious disadvantage if you don’t need it.

Formmail Anonymous Mailer

Formmail Anonymous Mailer, developed by Infinite Monkeys & Company, is a great alternative to AnonEmail.

Apart from the usual functionality, this website allows you to specify a sender’s address as well, allowing you to seemingly send it from a normal mail account. You can also select the specific remailers you want the website to use, from a list of 17 possibilities. Note that the message will take increasingly longer to send when re-rooting it through multiple remailers.

After pressing send, you’ll be able to watch the progress of your message through the different nodes. I used three remailers for a prank mail, and it took about a minute or two to send.

The debatable downside of Formmail Anonymous Mailer is that it logs your IP-addresses to keep you from doing anything stupid. They won’t include it in the emails you send, but if you do anything illegal, they’ll give it up.

Send Anonymous Mail

Like the name implies, this one is a third anonymous mailing utility. Although it lacks the complete anonymity of AnonEmail, and the remailer control of Formmail, this is the most simple one around.

You’ll also be able to specify a sender’s address, a ’supposed’ origin point for your secret message. Nothing else fancy is included, but if you’re looking for simplicity, this is your guy.
Again, this one logs your IP address, so you’ll have another reason not to try anything shady.
via:rarlinux.blogspot.com

Opera Mini users view more than 10 billion pages in one month

2009-08-14T08:49:00.000Z

For the first time, Opera Mini users viewed more than 10 billion pages in one month according to the State of the Mobile Web report by Opera. The report provides information on the top global trends affecting the mobile Web. The full report is available from http://www.opera.com/smw/ (English only). In addition to the top global trends and country snapshots, the report highlights trends in North America and the Caribbean.

source: Poweredlink

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How To Disable USB Ports To Prevent Malware Infection

2009-08-14T08:35:00.000Z

Disable USB Ports By Disabling Autorun

Most of the malware that spreads through USB devices spreads because of the Autorun feature which automatically executes a said file mentioned in the autorun.inf file located at the root of the USB device folder tree. Something as unsuspicious as “Open folder to view files” to the untrained eye can be easily made to run any desired file on the drive and can thus infect your computer. So disabling autorun is always one of the better options. To do so:

First, the key combination Win + R and type Gpedit.msc
Navigate to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components, then click Autoplay Policies. (XP users should try Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System
In the Details pane, double-click Turn off Autoplay.
Click Enabled, select All drives in the Turn off Autoplay box to disable Autorun on all drives.

Microsoft Help and Support has more details and methods

Option 1. Disable users from connecting USB devices

You can prevent selected user accounts from connecting USB devices to your computer. So if you share your laptop/computer with a friend, you should create a separate user account and deny his/her account the ability to connect USB devices. Microsoft Help and Support provides steps to obtain such fine grain control.

Or you can simply navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\UsbStor and set the value of Start to 4. To enable access again change the value back to 3

Although the site mentions that this applies to Windows XP, 2000 and 2003 it worked just fine on Windows Vista and Windows 7 as well.

Option 2. Change BIOS, disable USB ports, password protect BIOS

Enter your system’s BIOS, just when you press the Power On button. Look for anything that allows you to disable USB ports, disable them and make sure you add a BIOS password.

Option 3. User Device Manager to disable USB

Go to Device Manager (Right click My Computer, choose Manage, choose Device Manager in left pane)
Now look for USB Devices in the right pane, right click on the device and choose disable.

Of course you would like to make it a little easier to enable/disable the USB ports. For that you need to create a reg file that modifies the appropriate registry key. Here is an example (make sure to spell everything correctly):

Now double clicking on this file will enable access, similarly you can change 00000003 to 00000004 to create a reg file for disabling access.

None of these are fool proof, there is always someone smart enough to find a way around. If you really want to go all the way you can fill the ports with some epoxy or a similar substance! This is of course not a recommended solution for your personal computer but might come in handy for large organizations trying to prevent employees from using USB devices.

All in all the options are good enough to stop accidental, non intentional spread of malware/compromise of your computer as mostly happens when a USB device is plugged into different computers. However don’t bet your life on these if some one is really determined to use a USB device on your computer for whatever reason.
source:makeuseof
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AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4GHz Phenom II Deneb

2009-08-14T02:53:00.000Z

AMD has officially updated its Phenom II lineup today by introducing the fastest Phenom II X4 up to date, the Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition.

The new Phenom II X4 965 BE is practically the same Phenom II X4 955 BE, except for the slight 200MHz core bump and a TDP bump to 140W, something that was last seen on the old Phenom 9950. In any case this is the fastest, or more precisely, highest clocked processor that ever came from AMD.

On the other hand, according to the review over at Anandtech.com, the power consumption of this CPU is almost the same as that of the Phenom II X4 955 BE, as it only has a slight higher power consumption under load.

It managed to hold its ground in gaming against some Intel's Core i7 processors, and it is definitely faster than any LGA-775 processor. In any case it sounds like a great CPU, especially considering its US $245 price tag and the price of the entire platform.

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10 Simple Steps to Better Photoshop Performance

2009-08-14T00:44:00.000Z

here are 10 important and useful points that you may want to consider.

1. Adjust The Number Of History States

Maybe you already went through that bad feeling of clicking “undo” dozens of times and realizing that Photoshop wouldn’t provide you with more previous steps, but this problem can be easily resolved by changing the History States setting in the “Edit > Preferences > Performance” menu.

There are more efficient ways of going back and forward in your projects like using the “Snapshots” feature, which are essentially comfortable checkpoints of your work that you can go back to. But if you use Undo a lot, you may want to consider adding more states, e.g. set them to ‘30′. However, be aware that too many states on a single image will usually result in History Palette literally “eating” RAM and if you work with less than 2GB of RAM, you probably shouldn’t using the Undo Feature that often!

Overall, you may add up to 1,000 history state levels in Photoshop.

2. How Many Cache Levels Do You Need?

The Cache Levels setting can be found inside the “Edit > Preferences > Performance” menu, right under the History States. It controls the histogram and the time it takes an image to reappear on the screen after an action is applied to it.

By default, there are 6 cache levels; the number of levels can be increased to the maximum of 8 which will – obviously – increase the rendering speed. It is particular effective when you are working with high-resolution images. When workin with smaller view-sizes, e.g. viewing an image at 50% Zoom, the cache levels will determine the number of “down samplings” allowing Photoshop to perform operations faster.

Photoshop uses Image Caching and if you have a good amount of RAM, like at least 2GB and work with high-resolution images, you might want to raise the level to 8 as the speed performance will compensate the memory loss, but if you have a low RAM amount and usually work with small images only (1-4MB), you may want to lower the value to 1 or 2 as the RAM will be better allocated – storing the images rather then caching them.

3. Keep An Eye On Your Memory Usage

Photoshop really likes RAM and will use every little bit it can grab, but it also allows you to limit the RAM resources of your computer that Photoshop will use, and it even gives you good suggestions for the appropriate range of RAM values it wants. This setting, of course, can be found inside the “Edit > Preferences > Performance” menu, on the Left Side.

The displayed available RAM is the value left for applications after the Operating System loads into memory. If you are going to use mostly only Photoshop, or if you have a low amount of memory, you will probably want to give it 75-80% of the available RAM. But if, on the other hand, you are more of a multi-task kind of person with browser, word processor, mail, Twitter client etc. being always opened, then you might want to limit Photoshop to around 50%.

Efficient Use of Memory

After setting up your memory values, you can keep an eye on how Photoshop is performing. At the base of your image window, click to the right of the document size information and you will be able to choose “Efficiency” which will show you a percentage value. If this value is not 100%, it indicates that if you allocate more RAM to Photoshop, the operations would perform faster. Closing applications or images that you are not using can also increase the efficiency – not exactly a secret, but worth mentioning nevertheless.

4. Use Proper Scratch Disks

Similar to what happened with RAM, Photoshop also uses a good amount of your hard drive space as the so-called “scrath disk” which works as the secondary memory resource. Photoshop assumes that your primary hard drive is its scratch disk, but you can set it up differently with a secondary internal or external hard drive.

If you are going to work with large images, it is recommended that you have a dedicated scratch disk that is different from the one containing the image file. Using different scratch disks is good, especially to avoid killing your primary boot drive when you have just a few gigabytes left.

5. Turn Font Preview Off

Photoshop users (and especially designers) like to have a good selection of fonts always installed and ready to be used; but when the font preview is active, having too many fonts can slow you down. Turning the font preview feature off can be a simple and instant step towards improving your Photoshop performance. To do so, simply go to the “Edit > Preferences > Type” menu and remove the check mark from the “Font Preview Size” option, just as it is shown in the picture above.

6. Use Thumbnails In Your Palettes

Displaying preview thumbnails in the Layers, Channels, and Paths palettes will cause Photoshop to consume some more of your RAM as it will be constantly updating the thumbnails to reflect the changes you will be doing in your project. The memory consumption will keep growing with the amount of thumbnails you have opened at the same time as well as their size.

You could use the smaller thumbnail size or no thumbnail at all to increase your Photoshop performance. To do so, in each palette, select “panel options” from the palette menu as it is shown on the picture above and select the smallest thumbnail size or “None”.

7. Learn How To Use Purge

When you are working on your images, Photoshop stores image data for the Undo, Clipboard, and History features. This data consumes memory, especially if you have been working for a while and have a high number of History States defined (see Point 1 for more on History States).

To eliminate that extra image data consuming your RAM, go to: “Edit > Purge > ( option )”. Keep in mind that clearing History will remove all the history states saved previously and you will not be able to undo your latest actions.

8. Set Maximize PSD And PSB File Compatibility to Always or Ask

Maximize PSD and PSB File Compatibility increases the size of your file by attaching a flattened copy of your image when you save your image. A small amount of extra data is included in the file when you choose this option that ensures that PSD and PBS files saved in Photoshop will open in previous versions.

Additionally, if you want to use the Edit in Photoshop feature in Photoshop Lightroom, this option needs to be on. To change the Maximize File Compatibility option choose “Photoshop > Preferences > File Handling”.

9. Don’t clutter your Photoshop

Of course, you can easily find an enormous amount of free stuff to add up to the default Photoshop brushes, fonts, patterns, etc. but that doesn’t mean you need to download every freebie that comes in your way. Keep it simple! Having too many plugins and other resources installed in Photoshop will greatly decrease performance. Most top designers use a small selection of fonts and brushes that define their style and that can be used in a great amount of ways for literally millions of different results.

10. Reset Default Settings

If you are using a shared machine for your Photoshop needs there is a little Photoshop start-up trick that may come in handy. When the application is launching, if you press and hold: Alt + Control + Shift (Windows) or Command + Option + Shift (Mac), a window will pop up asking you if you want to delete the Photoshop settings file, resetting all of the preferences to their default.

source: Marco Sousa

AMD's Phenom II 965, 3.4GHz, 140 Watts, $245

2009-08-14T00:36:00.000Z

While AMD does not have the muscle to push around the i7, they certainly have the ability to give the older and more common Core 2 Quads a run for their money. With the release of the Phenom II X4 965, AMD further attempts to dethrone the Core 2 Quad as the premier midrange CPU offering. While it may not be a world-beater by any stretch of the imagination, it certainly is catching Intel's attention in the breadbasket of the CPU market. The X4 965 is the fastest clocked processor that AMD has ever produced, much less shipped in mass quantities. While the speed bump is appreciated, the cost in terms of power and heat will make the introduction of the X4 965 problematic for some. Many of us thought that we would never see another 140 watt processor (as the Phenom 9950 was), but unfortunately those days are back. Still, AMD offers a compelling part at a reasonable price, and their motherboard support for this new 140 watt processor is robust.
More @

insane memory usage of firefox

2009-08-14T00:32:00.002Z

Sandro Tosi: My dear iceweasel,:

WTH are you doing with all this memory?

 $ top -b -n 1 | egrep "xulrunner|PID" 
PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND  3907 morph
20   0 2349m 859m  15m S   14 21.7   2013:33 xulrunner-stub

say goodbye, you're going to die; mew

Matthew Palmer: Oh Firefox...

What are you doing in that the 1.1GB of resident memory (1357m of virtual memory) you have decided to consume in order to display three web pages? All fairly basic pages -- no flash, no excessive Javascript, and I haven't even done anything particularly exciting in the browser -- just loaded the pages up and let them sit for a few days.

Time to look at Conkeror on the Netbook, I suppose. I'm unlikely to be needing Firebug on there any time soon

Enrico Zini: Firefox garbage collection:

Some people complained about the insane memory usage of firefox.
It must be a misunderstanding. They probably are not aware of how to trigger the excellent garbage collector shipped with the browser.

Let's navigate heavily a bit, opening several new tabs, click click click around, then closing those tabs:

 $ top -b -n 1 | egrep "firefox|PID"   PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM
 TIME+  COMMAND  6842 enrico    20   0  882m 398m  17m S    2 19.9  24:29.55 firefox-bin

Indeed Firefox memory usage quickly grew. I've seen it grow to a gigabyte and a half after keeping it open for a month.

Now let's trigger the garbage collector:

 $ kill -9 6842 $ # Rerun firefox $ # Click on "Restore previous session"
$ # Wait for the various open tabs to reload

And voilà! Now Firefox uses much less memory than before:

 $ top -b -n 1 | egrep "firefox|PID"   PID USER
PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND  5242 enrico
  20   0  656m 205m  25m S    0 10.3   0:14.49 firefox-bin

Search engine optimization (SEO) and Tips for Bloggers

2009-08-14T00:14:00.000Z

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results for targeted keywords. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results, or the higher it "ranks", the more searchers will visit that site. SEO can also target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.

As a marketing strategy for increasing a site's relevance, SEO considers how search algorithms work and what people search for. SEO efforts may involve a site's coding, presentation, and structure, as well as fixing problems that could prevent search engine indexing programs from fully spidering a site. Other, more noticeable efforts may include adding unique content to a site, ensuring that content is easily indexed by search engine robots, and making the site more appealing to users. Another class of techniques, known as black hat SEO or spamdexing, use methods such as link farms and keyword stuffing that tend to harm search engine user experience. Search engines look for sites that employ these techniques and may remove them from their indexes.

The initialism "SEO" can also refer to "search engine optimizers", a term adopted by an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients, and by employees who perform SEO services in-house. Search engine optimizers may offer SEO as a stand-alone service or as a part of a broader marketing campaign. Because effective SEO may require changes to the HTML source code of a site, SEO tactics may be incorporated into web site development and design. The term "search engine friendly" may be used to describe web site designs, menus, content management systems and shopping carts that are easy to optimize.
SEO Tips for Bloggers

1. Content is King
The quality of the posts you write is the single most important factor when it comes to Search Optimization on a Blog.

2. Anticipate What People Will be Searching For

Every time you write a post you should be automatically be considering what words people might be putting into search engines to find that type of information. Once you know what kinds of words they’re using you’re in a great position to position yourself for that search.

3. Titles Titles Titles
There are a number of things to keep in mind when it comes to titles. Google pays particular attention to titles - so make sure you get them right:

first make sure that the way you set your blog up puts the title of your post in the ‘title tags’ on the back end of your blog. This is really important.
if you’re just looking from an SEO perspective don’t include your blog name in the title tags of single posts. This dilutes your keywords. Of course if you’re looking more at branding including your blog’s name in the title tags might be worth doing.
next - include the keywords that you identified in point #2 in your post title
also, keep in mind that the words you use at the start of a title tend to carry more weight than words you use later in your title

4. Keywords in other parts of your post

Use the keywords you identified in point #2 within your post also. If you want Google to rank you for a term or phrase you need to use that term or phrase. Use it in sub headings in your post (use h tags where you can), use it in the content itself, use the words in the alt tags of images etc. Don’t go over the topic but do use the words where you can naturally in the post.

5. Link to Your Own Posts

Don’t over do this one but while links from other sites are a great way to increase your blog’s rankings so are links from your blog. Interlink your posts to share where readers can find more information on your topic (where relevant) but also consider linking to key posts on your blog from other places on the blog (sidebar, front page etc).

6. Links from Outside Your Blog

Links from other sites to yours are key in SEO but they can be hard to get. Start to linking to your blog from other sites that you have or are active on. Some (like on Twitter) won’t count for anything much as they have no-follow tags but they are all potential ways for people to access your site and some will help with SEO.

Don’t become obsessed with getting links - rather become obsessed about writing great content and the links will generally come in time. However if you’ve written a great post that you think will be relevant to another blog don’t be afraid to let that blogger or website owner know about it - they could just link up.

Also - take note of the type of posts that you write that do well at getting other sites to link to you. You can learn a lot about generating linkable content by doing so and might just develop a technique that will work again and again.

7. Readers Begat Readers

This isn’t an SEO technique as such but it plays a part. The more readers you have the more likely your blog is to be found by other readers. There’s a certain ’snowballing’ thing that happens on a site over time - as you get readers quite often momentum grows as those readers pass on your site to others in their network. They link to you, they bookmark you, they tweet about you, they email friends about you, they blog about you, they suggest your site in recommendation engines….

sources:problogger.net, poweredlink.blogspot.com & rarlinux.blogspot.com
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Opera announces beta 3 release of Opera 10 browser – ready for heavy work on the Web

2009-08-13T23:58:00.000Z

After more than 10 million test runs and ample user feedback, Opera 10 is now available in its third beta version from http://www.opera.com/next/. Performance and stability were prioritized in beta 3, with improvements to Opera Turbo, a compression tool for faster surfing, and refinements to the overall look and feel of the previous Opera 10 betas.

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source:Powered link

AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Review

2009-08-13T22:17:00.000Z

There is nothing wrong with an incremental update—especially an update that adds performance without affecting pricing. Such is the case with AMD’s new Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition, which arrived at our performance lab running at 3.4 GHz—200 MHz faster than its predecessor, the Phenom II X4 955 BE.

So, if the latest Phenom II is predictably faster than AMD’s former flagship, why is today’s launch so significant? In short, it comes just a few weeks ahead of Intel’s upcoming LGA 1156-based P55 platform debut—an event that’ll almost certainly play a bigger role in the adoption of Nehalem-based machines than either the LGA 1366 Core i7 or Xeon 5500-series CPUs have thus far. After all, LGA 1156 is going to be the interface that purportedly makes Intel’s latest architecture accessible to the mainstream, supplanting the Core 2 family at a number of affordable price points.

No doubt, those new Core i5/i7 CPUs will be faster than the Core 2 Quads they replace, and at competitive prices. Just when AMD looked like it had achieved performance parity with the top end of Intel’s Core micro-architecture, LGA 1156-based platforms seem almost certain to set the bar higher.

Thus, today’s Phenom II X4 965 BE introduction is actually a fairly important one for AMD. On one hand, it could earn the company its mainstream performance crown—at least for a few weeks. On the other, it could be the last time Phenom II looks as competitive as it does now. Of course, that’s going to depend mightily on how the upcoming Intel chips perform.

Up Against Core i5

Of course, we’re not able to publish performance numbers with the pre-production Core i5 processors currently running in the lab, so it’s hard to officially quantify how Phenom II will size up. But we can make best guesses using today’s Core i7s as rough test subjects.

You’ll find all of our usual benchmarks on the pages that follow. First, however, we wanted to set up Phenom II X4 965 BE against a hypothetical Core i5-750—a processor expected to cost less than $200 when it launches. We simulated the 2.66 GHz offering with a Core i7-920, which runs at the same clock rate. Of course, we had to pull out a single channel of memory (yielding two channels of DDR3-1333) and disable Hyper-Threading, since Core i5 won’t have that feature. The one variable we couldn’t reproduce was Core i5’s enhanced Turbo Boost, which is expected to accelerate clocks to 3.2 GHz when a single core is active. Core i7-920 only benefits from a single bin of Turbo Boost, yielding 2.8 GHz instead.

The only other platform capability setting LGA 1156 apart from LGA 1366 is the use of on-die PCI Express 2.0, which we’ve tested extensively and can say that, in single-card configurations, has almost zero impact on performance versus the X58’s chipset-based connectivity.

source: tomshardware

Downlaod K-Lite Codec Pack 5.05 (Full)

2009-08-10T22:33:00.000Z

K-Lite Codec Pack is a collection of codecs, DirectShow filters and tools. Codecs and DirectShow filters are needed for encoding and decoding (playing) audio and video formats. The K-Lite Codec Pack is designed as a user-friendly solution for playing all your movie files. With the K-Lite Codec Pack you should be able to play all the popular audio and video formats and even some rare formats. This download is for the Full package and contains all the codecs a normal user would ever need.
The K-Lite Codec Pack has a couple of major advantages compared to other codec packs:

It it always very up-to-date with the newest (and/or best) versions of the components.
It is very user-friendly.
The installation is fully customizable, meaning that you are able install exactly those components that you really want.
Uninstallation removes all files and registry entries created by the pack.
It is extremely easy to make a fully customized unattended installation.
It has been very well tested, so that the package doesn't contain any conflicting or buggy codecs.
It tries to avoid potential problems with existing codecs and even fixes some problems. The pack is able to detect broken codecs and filters on your system, and remove them for you.
It is a very complete package, containing everything you need to play your movies.
There are different packages. From small to extra-large.
Suitable for both novice and expert users.

change log:
# Updated ffdshow to revision 3054
# Updated AC3Filter to version 1.62b
# Updated AC3File to version 0.7b
# Updated FLV splitter to version 1.2.1207.0
# Updated Gabest MPEG splitter to version 1.2.1207.0
# Updated MediaInfo Lite to version 0.7.20
# Added more file association options for audio file types
# Minor changes

download:
Download K-Lite Codec Pack 5.05 FULL

Emulated PC Enables Linux Desktop In Your Browser

2009-07-02T23:48:00.000Z

"Classic DOOM and DSL Linux Desktop inside your Java-enabled browser! The latest JPC, the fast 100% Java x86 PC emulator, is now available with online demos and downloads. JPC is open source and is the most secure way of running x86 software ever — 2 layers (applet sandbox, JPC sandbox) of independently validated security make it the world's most secure means of isolating x86 software. Visit the website to try out some classic games and play around with Linux all within your web browser. Refresh = reboot!"

More @

Canonical Delves Deeper into the Cloud – Launches Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud Services

2009-07-01T06:07:00.000Z

Canonical, the founder of the Ubuntu project, today launched new professional services to help and support users building 'private clouds', cloud infrastructures behind a corporate firewall.

The move follows the technical preview in April of Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC), an open-source system that enables organisations to build their own clouds that match the interface of Amazon EC2. UEC is now available as part of the Ubuntu Server Edition technology stack.

By creating private clouds with UEC, organisations can optimise server use and increase data-centre efficiencies, while lowering costs and providing end users with self-service IT. Ubuntu is the first Linux distribution to provide such a system and now Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud Services from Canonical help businesses build these environments with optimal efficiency.

“Enterprises are realising that building 'private clouds' enables them to better manage variable workloads, while reducing the waste of idle servers. Building on open-source technology also avoids the issue of vendor lock-in,” said Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Canonical. “Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud enables businesses to do this - and the addition of these services helps them to do it with confidence.”

Canonical has partnered with Eucalyptus, whose eponymous product forms the base of UEC, to jointly provide the service but with a single interface for the customer through the Canonical support team.

“While the IT industry talks of future strategies and releases vapour ware, UEC today allows businesses to deploy and now support a 'private cloud' on open source technologies from a renowned Linux provider,” said Woody Rollins, CEO of Eucalyptus. “We are very excited to lend our expertise to building the type of professional services that will help more businesses discover the benefits of private clouds built on open technologies.”

Pricing and Availability

Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud Services enable users to scale up from a five-machine environment all the way to a site license covering all machines, physical and virtual, in a single location.

Yearly pricing for entry-level support for five physical servers and up to 25 virtual Ubuntu servers is $4,750 for 9x5 standard support and $17,500 for 24x7 advanced support. Additional support packs are available per physical server and per ten virtual servers for $1,250 p.a. for standard support and $3,000 p.a. for advanced.

Site support is also available which covers one geographical location. It includes an unlimited number of physical and virtual servers for $90,000 p.a. for standard support and $150,000 p.a. for advanced.

To use Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud, users must first install Ubuntu 9.04 Server Edition available at no charge from http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download-server

To find out more about Ubuntu Cloud Computing, please visit http://www.ubuntu.com/cloud

To enquire about support, please visit: http://www.canonical.com/contact/cloud

more information on Cloud Service:

http://www.ubuntu.com/products/whatisubuntu/serveredition/cloud/services

To keep up-to-date with Ubuntu Cloud activity, follow the cloud blog aggregator: http://cloud.ubuntu.com

Follow Ubuntu cloud on Twitter: http://twitter.com/ubuntucloud

EXT4, Btrfs, NILFS2 Performance Compared

2009-06-29T23:55:00.000Z

"Phoronix has published Linux filesystem benchmarks comparing XFS, EXT3, EXT4, Btrfs and NILFS2 filesystems. This is the first time that the new EXT4 and Btrfs and NILFS2 filesystems have been directly compared when it comes to their disk performance though the results may surprise. For the most part, EXT4 came out on top."

The past few Linux kernel releases have brought a number of new file-systems to the Linux world, such as with EXT4 having been stabilized in the Linux 2.6.28 kernel, Btrfs being merged into Linux 2.6.29, and most recently the NILFS2 file-system premiering with the Linux 2.6.30 kernel. Other file-systems have been introduced too during the past few Linux kernel release cycles, but these three have been the most talked about and are often looked at as being the next-generation Linux file-systems. Being the benchmarking junkies that we are, we have set out to compare the file-system performance of EXT4, Btrfs, and NILFS2 under Ubuntu using the Linux 2.6.30 kernel. We also looked at how these file-systems compared to EXT3 and XFS.

Before we begin, here is a quick summary of these three new file-systems. EXT4 is the successor to EXT3 and this file-system can now support volumes up to 1 Exabyte, introduces Extents to replace traditional block mapping, supports persistent pre-allocation and delayed allocation for improving performance, brings journal check-summing to the EXT family, and file-system checking is faster under EXT4. Previously we delivered real-world benchmarks of EXT4and found it to be a nice performance step above EXT3 in a majority of the tests. Install-time support for EXT4 was introduced with Ubuntu 9.04. EXT3 has been in the Linux kernel since 2001 and is what a majority of the Linux desktop distributions had been using as the default file-system.

More ...

Google Translates Farsi

2009-06-17T01:36:00.000Z

You can now use http://translate.google.com to translate to/from Farsi. More info here.

Canonical announces detail of collaboration with SanDisk to better support Ubuntu

2009-05-30T02:37:00.000Z

Canonical today announced that it has been collaborating with SanDisk, the global leader in flash memory cards, to improve how Ubuntu runs on the solid state drives (SSDs) that provide the memory – and memory management – for most netbooks and laptops in the market today. Engineers from both companies have worked closely on system optimizations resulting in longer battery life, reduction in heat levels & better system responsiveness. This is done to optimise the user experience and offer original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) a better solution to bring to market.

In addition to remote collaboration, SanDisk engineers have engaged at events like the Ubuntu Developer Summit in San Francisco and Barcelona where the technology industry and Ubuntu community plan future releases of the award-winning platform.

That an industry leader like SanDisk has engaged to this degree is testament to the success of Ubuntu in winning design wins with leading PC manufacturers. More and more people are choosing an open platform on which to run their 'on-the-go' netbook machines, while increasing numbers of OEMs are enjoying the freedom and product differentiation that choosing Ubuntu gives them. With SanDisk committed to full support for the Ubuntu platform, and its engineers in direct and regular contact with their operating system peers, the success of Linux shows signs of acceleration in this area.

"SanDisk is committed to providing OEMs and consumers more choices in how they compute,” said Rich Heye, senior vice president and general manager, Solid State Drives, SanDisk. “We decided to collaborate with Canonical thanks to its unprecedented success in helping Ubuntu to drive Linux in the mainstream market. Ubuntu on SanDisk SSDs delivers a fast, robust user experience and offers a fantastic combination for OEMs or original design manufacturers (ODMs)."

"There is no question that flash memory technology has helped this category to flourish. For small, lightweight, robust, heat-managed machines, SanDisk SSD is the best choice for OEMs," said Chris Kenyon, Director of OEM Services at Canonical. "The collaboration between our two organisations demonstrates that Ubuntu is an easy and great choice for OEMs interested in delivering an optimal user experience while differentiating their machines in the market."

Happy New Year!

2009-01-01T21:58:00.000Z

16 Interviews With Linux Kernel Hackers

2008-11-24T04:30:00.000Z

The Linux Foundation has published a series of video interviews from the annual Linux Kernel Summit held Sept. 15-16 in Portland, Oregon. In the videos, 16 developers — including Linux creator Linus Torvalds — discuss their kernel development activities. Other kernel hackers interviewed include Rafael Wysocki, Chris Mason, Greg Kroah-Hartman, Mathieu Desnoyers, Paul Mackerras, John Linville, Stephen Rothwell, Kristen Accardi, Dirk Hohndel, Dave Jones, David Miller, Len Brown, Jon Corbet, Frank Eigler, and Ted Tso. A detailed report on the Summit can be found at LWN. Lots of interesting insights into the status and future of Linux!
More @

Linux 2.6.27 Out

2008-10-10T15:49:00.000Z

Linux 2.6.27 kernel released 9 October 2008.

Summary: 2.6.27 add a new filesystem (UBIFS) optimized for "pure" flash-based storage devices, the page-cache is now lockless, much improved Direct I/O scalability and performance, delayed allocation for ext4, multiqueue networking, an alternative hibernation implementation based on kexec/kdump, data integrity support in the block layer for devices that support it, a simple tracer called ftrace, a mmio tracer, sysprof support, extraction of all the in-kernel's firmware to /lib/firmware, XEN support for saving/restorig VMs, improved video camera support, support for the Intel wireless 5000 series and RTL8187B network cards, a new ath9k driver for the Atheros AR5008 and AR9001 family of chipsets, more new drivers, improved support for others and many other improvements and fixes.
More @

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Catia V5 works on Linux

2008-09-27T13:36:00.000Z

Test on ubuntu linux 8.04 with wine 1.1.1 and Catia V5 r16 .

There are still some bugs (like can't reopen a file) but a lot of functionalities are available !

Mozilla Demanding Firefox Display EULA In Ubuntu

2008-09-20T15:20:00.000Z

Users of the upcoming Ubuntu release, Intrepid Ibex, are being confronted with an EULA the first time they launch Firefox. Mark Shuttleworth says 'Mozilla Corp asked that this be added in order for us to continue to call the browser Firefox... I would not consider an EULA as a best practice. It's unfortunate that Mozilla feels this is absolutely necessary' and notes there's an unbranded 'abrowser' package available. Many of the comments say Ubuntu should ditch Firefox as this makes it clear it's not Free Software, hence unsuitable for Ubuntu main, and just ship Iceweasel or Epiphany, the GNOME browser.
A few comments take Canonical to task for agreeing to Mozilla's demand to display an EULA without consulting the community.
More @
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New release under development; suggestions requested

2008-08-11T13:49:00.000Z

Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.development
Path: gmd.de! Xlink.net! Howland.reston.ans.net! Vixen.cso.uiuc.edu! Sdd.hp.com! Portal! Imurdock
From: imurd ... @ shell.portal.com (Ian Murdock A)
Subject: New release under development; suggestions requested
Message-ID: <CBusDD.MIK@unix.portal.com>
Sender: n. .. @ unix.portal.com
Nntp-Posting-Host: jobe.unix.portal.com
Organization: Portal Communications Company - 408/973-9111 (voice) 408/973-8091 (data)
Date: Mon, 16 Aug 1993 13:05:37 GMT
Lines: 86

Fellow Linuxers,

This is just to announce the imminent completion of a brand-new Linux release, which I'm calling the Debian Linux Release. This is a release that I have put together basically from scratch, in other words, I did not simply make some changes to SLS and call it a new release. I was inspired to put together this release after running SLS and generally being dissatisfied with much of it, and after much altering of SLS I decided that it would be easier to start from scratch. The base system is now virtually complete (though I'm still looking around to make sure that I grabbed the most recent sources for everything), and I'd like to get some feedback before I add the "fancy" stuff.

Please note that this release is not yet completed and may not be for several more weeks, however, I thought I'd post now to perhaps draw a few people out of the woodwork. Specifically, I'm looking for:

1) someone who will eventually be willing to allow me to upload the To release their anonymous FTP site. Please contact me. Be warned that it will be rather large:)

2) comments, suggestions, advice, etc.. from the Linux community. This is your chance to suggest specific packages, series, or anything you'd like to see part of the final release.

Do not assume that because a package is in SLS that it will necessarily be included in the Debian release! Things like ls and cat are a given, but if there's anything that's in SLS that you could not live without please let me know!

I'd also like suggestions for specific features for the release. For example, a friend of mine here suggested that undesired packages should be selected BEFORE the installation procedure begins so the installer does not have to babysit the installation. Suggestions along that line are also welcomed. What will make this release better than SLS? This:

1) Debian will be sleeker and slimmer. No more multiple binaries and Manpages.
2) Debian will contain the most up-to-date of everything. The System will be easy to keep up-to-date with a 'upgrading' script in the base system which will allow complete integration of Upgrade packages.
3) will contain a Debian installation procedure that does not need to be babysat; simply install the basedisk, copy the distribution disks to the harddrive, answer some question about what packages you want or do not want installed, and let the machine install the release while you do more interesting things.
4) Debian will contain a system setup procedure that will attempt to setup and configure everything from fstab to Xconfig.
5) Debian will contain a menu system that WORKS ... menu-driven package installation and upgrading utility, menu-driven system setup, menu-driven help system, and menu-driven System administration.
6) Debian will make Linux easier for users who do not have access to the Internet. Currently, users are stuck with whatever comes with SLS. Non-Internet users will have the option of receiving periodic upgrade packages to apply to their system. They will also have the option of selecting from a huge library of additional packages that will not be included in the base System. This library will contain packages like the S3 X-server, and nethack Seyon; basically packages that you and I Can ftp non-netters can not access.
7) Debian will be extensively documented (more than just a few READMEs).
8) As I put together Debian, I am keeping a meticulous record of Where I got everything. This will allow the end-user to not only know where to get the source, but whether or not The most recent version is a part of Debian. This record will help to keep the Debian release as up-to-date as possible.
9) Lots more, but I'll detail later ...

Anyway, I'll provide more specifics in a week or so after I receive enough replies.

Please, all replies by mail. I'll post a reply. If you wish to discuss this in the newsgroup, please do not turn it into a flamewar. :)

Until later,

Ian
--
Ian Murdock Internet: imurd ... @ shell.portal.com
The Linux Warehouse

Please mail me for more information on the status of the Debian Linux Release.

Ubuntu Intrepid Alpha 3 released

2008-07-28T13:33:00.000Z

Alpha 3 is the third in a series of milestone CD images that will be released throughout the Intrepid development cycle. The Alpha images are known to be reasonably free of showstopper CD build or installer bugs, while representing a very recent snapshot of Intrepid. You can download it here:

cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/intrepid/alpha-3/ (Ubuntu)
cdimage.ubuntu.com/edubuntu/releases/intrepid/alpha-3/ (Ubuntu Education Edition)
cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/intrepid/alpha-3/ (Kubuntu)
cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/intrepid/alpha-3/ (Xubuntu)

See http://wiki.ubuntu.com/Mirrors for a list of mirrors.

Alpha 3 includes a number of software updates that are ready for large-scale testing.
Please refer to http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/intrepid/alpha3 for information on changes in Ubuntu.

openSUSE 11.1 Alpha1 is available

2008-07-28T13:29:00.000Z

openSUSE 11.1 Alpha1 GNOME LiveCDs:

openSUSE-11.1-Alpha1-GNOME-LiveCD-i386.iso

openSUSE-11.1-Alpha1-GNOME-LiveCD-x86_64.iso

openSUSE 11.1 Alpha1 KDE4 LiveCDs:

openSUSE-11.1-Alpha1-KDE4-LiveCD-i386.iso

openSUSE-11.1-Alpha1-KDE4-LiveCD-x86_64.iso

More @

Intel Switches From Ubuntu To Fedora For Mobile Linux

2008-07-25T18:45:00.000Z

"According to a report on heise, Intel is switching from using Ubuntu to the Fedora Project for the second version of the Intel supported Mobile & Internet Linux Project Moblin, citing a desire to use RPM package management."
More @

Weekly Links

2008-05-10T14:22:00.000Z

Lenovo's X300 vs. Apple's MacBook Air - When Apple launched its MacBook Air, it was rumored that Lenovo would follow up with a 13" ultra-portable laptop. Lenovo did just that in February when it launched its X300.
Can You Become a Creature of New Habits? - New York Times - “The small steps in kaizen don’t set off fight or flight, but rather keep us in the thinking brain, where we have access to our creativity and playfulness.”
How to answer the people who think you’re nuts? - “I’ve been doing a lot of radio interviews and I turn into a self-righteous bore when the host inevitably asks, ‘How could you let your son take the subway alone?’”
Dear Shaun, at bluishorange - “My writing is not some fragile vase that is going to shatter the second I split an infinitive…” [via mathowie]
Clutterers Anonymous dot Net - “Clutter is anything we don’t need, want, or use that takes our time, energy or space, and destroys our serenity.”
Spark 35: Your Digital Legacy - I’ll be a regular contributor to the CBC’s wonderful Spark (podcast). My first segment with Nora Young is on the basics of backup. (Hint: Next Christmas, send Uncle Joe a DVD with those hard-copy photos)
TwitterSnooze! v0.13 - “TwitterSnooze is inspired by a Merlin Mann post and was written by Andrew Parker.” Yay, nice!
I think silent “snoozing” should be part of every social app. Warning, though; if your snoozed friend is the brittle type, note that re-following them will generate an email that gives you away. Caveat Twittor. [via del/andrewdparker]
Sony selects Opera 9.5 SDK for Devices to power its new digital photo frame
35 AMD CPUs Tested for Power Consumption - They look at the power consumption and cost of running 35 AMD CPUs under varying conditions.
How To Overclock Your Graphics Card - Overclocking is more popular than ever, but the fun is not just limited to boosting your CPU's speed - your GPU can be overclocked too. They tell you why and how to do it.
Distribution Release: Mandriva Linux 2008.1 "Xfce" - Mandriva S.A. has announced the availability of an unofficial "Xfce" edition of Mandriva Linux 2008.1.
Distribution Release: Parted Magic 2.2 - Patrick Verner has announced the release of Parted Magic 2.2, a specialist live CD distribution designed to facilitate hard disk management tasks.
Distribution Release: Slackware Linux 12.1 - Patrick Volkerding has announced the release of Slackware Linux 12.1

sources: 43folders Powered LINK Discovix

Kaspersky Anti-Virus 7.0 demonstrates complete compatibility with Windows Vista SP 1

2008-04-24T12:08:00.000Z

Kaspersky Anti-Virus 7.0 demonstrates complete compatibility with Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and wins another VB100 award

Kaspersky Lab, a leading developer of secure content management solutions, announces that Kaspersky Anti-Virus 7.0 has received a VB100 award from respected British magazine Virus Bulletin. The product successfully passed the publications latest comparative tests, demonstrating full compatibility with the recently released Windows Vista Service Pack 1.

The specialists at Virus Bulletin tested 37 antivirus products on a Windows Vista Service Pack 1 operating system. As well as comparing how effectively the antivirus products detected malware, compatibility with the latest Microsoft update was also assessed.
Almost half of the products, including McAfee VirusScan, Trend Micro Internet Security and BitDefender, failed to shine during the test, missing several known malicious programs. A number of the products also displayed instabilities running on the updated Windows Vista platform.

Kaspersky Anti-Virus 7.0 performed admirably throughout the testing process, demonstrating effective malware detection and superior stability on the Windows Vista Service Pack 1 platform. The performance earned the product yet another VB100 award, one of the most prestigious in the antivirus industry. According to John Hawes, author of the review, "Kaspersky has a long and illustrious record, producing consistently excellent detection rates and unimpeachable standards of design and implementation."

"The compatibility of our products with the latest Microsoft updates has always been a top priority for us," comments Alexey Kalgin, deputy product director at Kaspersky Lab. "For a number of years now we have had Microsoft Gold Certified Partner status and we are constantly taking part in Microsoft ISV Early Access Programs, which allows us to test the compatibility of our products with new platforms and service packs at the beta stage. This means we can guarantee that our users will have no problems when an updated version of Windows is officially released. The latest versions of our products are fully compatible with all versions of Windows Vista SP1, including the 64-bit version."

Additional information about Kaspersky Anti-Virus 7.0 can be found on the official Kaspersky Lab site at www.kaspersky.com/kaspersky_anti-virus.
The full version of the comparative review of antivirus products running on Windows Vista Service Pack 1 can be found on the Virus Bulletin website (paid subscription required).

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OOXML is like a baroque castle with secret passages and crumbling towers

2008-04-23T08:16:00.000Z

Here's a quotation for the ages, from an Alex Brown comment on Andrew Updegrove's Standards Blog (scroll down) asking Brown if he'd agree that ODF was cleaner than OOXML:

"I'd go with that. I think ISO/IEC 26300 (ODF 1.0) can be compared to a neat house built on good foundations which is not finished; 29500 (OOXML) is a baroque cliffside castle replete with toppling towers, secret passages and ghosts: it is all too finished."

Now he tells us. Still, better late than never. And I couldn't have put it better myself. But if it's that bad, why is it an ISO standard? A standard with secret passages is a standard no one can implement unless they have a map and the keys. We don't have either. Only Microsoft does. Thanks, ISO, for this little anticompetitive joke.

Meanwhile, the protests are not stopping, despite the rather cynical call for peace and an end to "personal attacks" from 30 of the attendees of the Microsoft-heavy SC34 committee that met in Oslo recently to try to figure out what in the world to do next with OOXML. Now that it's a "standard", somebody has to scrape off all the goo and make it actually work. I call it cynical, because as far as I'm concerned, OOXML is itself an attack on ODF. It seems to me to have no other purpose. Well. The ghosts.

More ...

Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Desktop Edition Released

2008-04-23T08:12:00.000Z

Canonical Ltd. announced the upcoming availability of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Desktop Edition for free download on Thursday 24 April. In related news, Canonical also announced the simultaneous release of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Server Edition.

Ubuntu 8.04 Long Term Support (LTS) provides a stable platform for software and hardware vendors, developers and users. With three years of support and maintenance on the desktop, 8.04 LTS is a great choice for large-scale deployment. A substantial and growing ecosystem of free and commercial software built for Ubuntu provides a rich set of choices for desktop users. This is the eighth desktop release of Ubuntu. Ubuntu's track record in delivering - on a precise schedule every six months - a commercial operating system that is free, stable, secure and fully supported, remains unique.

“Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Desktop Edition is a very significant release as it will take Ubuntu squarely into the business environment," said Jane Silber, COO of Canonical Ltd. "Our business and home users have told us that they want a longer support cycle to make Ubuntu a better deployment option. We have responded to that and added a commitment to much broader software and hardware support that we and our partners are excited to deliver. With enhanced commercial support through Landscape, combined with our always excellent community support, expect to see 8.04 LTS drive Ubuntu into new arenas."

"Ubuntu's polished, user focused version of the Linux desktop has built itself a wide enough following to compel significant ISV interest and support,” said Stephen O'Grady, principal analyst at Redmonk. "By coupling a very capable desktop offering with long term support options, Ubuntu is becoming an increasingly viable option for enterprises as well as consumers."

"Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino bring highly scalable messaging and industry-leading collaboration to the Ubuntu desktop,” said Kevin Cavanaugh, vice president of IBM Lotus Software. "We believe the extended multi-year support for Ubuntu 8.04 LTS makes it an excellent desktop solution for corporate users who wish to deploy Lotus Notes on an open platform."

Latest and Greatest Applications

Ubuntu 8.04 LTS raises the bar on the Linux desktop experience. It includes the latest, stable version of many core products, and in that spirit is the first distribution to bring Mozilla Firefox 3 (Beta 5) to millions of users. The combination of Linux and Firefox make Ubuntu 8.04 LTS a superb web desktop, with fast browsing and greatly reduced exposure to viruses, web forgery and spyware.

Enhanced photo experience: The enhanced default photo manager, F-Spot, together with improved camera and phone recognition means users can upload, tag, manage, display, delete, print and share photos with friends and family more easily.

Music sharing and download: Users can plug in a PSP, share playlists with friends, buy from the Magnatune online music store, stream live radio and plug in more devices than ever (with UpnP).

Better video: The new default movie player now allows users to browse YouTube and other video sources across the web and to share their videos with others. It integrates with Myth TV, the open source TVR, so users can watch their favourite TV shows straight on the desktop. Brasero allows them to easily burn all content to CD or DVD.

Productivity enhancements: Clock and calendar integration is available to manage time across the globe with a single click to set, attend and receive alerts about appointments.

Slick desktop: Ubuntu 8.04 LTS combines the latest GNOME applications with desktop visual effects, giving users a smoother, better-looking and more intuitive experience.

Breadth and Depth of Services

Longer support: Ubuntu 8.04 LTS is supported with security updates and maintenance for three years so corporate and individual users have a longer upgrade planning cycle. Those who want the newest applications will be able to upgrade to Ubuntu 8.10, due in October 2008, those who prefer longer deployment cycles can stay with Ubuntu 8.04 for three years before moving to the next LTS release.

More applications: More than 30 commercial ISVs plan to support and distribute their applications on the 8.04 LTS desktop platform, including Adobe, Google, Real Networks, Nero, Skype, Corel, Parallels and Fluendo.

More accessibility: Gesture support allows users to navigate Ubuntu in a more natural fashion. Also available are increased language support for voice command, support for keyboard accessibility, slow keys, zoom and more.

Pricing and Availability

Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Desktop Edition is free of charge and available on Thursday from http://www.ubuntu.com/download.

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Weekly Links

2008-02-23T14:24:00.000Z

Netscape Finally Put Down

2008-02-23T14:03:00.000Z

Nearly 14 years after the once mighty browser made its first desktop appearance as Mosaic Netscape 0.9, its disappearance comes as little surprise. Although Netscape accounted for more than 80 per cent of the browser market in 1995, the arrival of Microsoft's Internet Explorer in the same year brought stiff competition and surpassed Netscape within three years.
Read more of this story

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Ubuntu Hardy Heron Alpha 5 released

2008-02-23T13:30:00.000Z

Welcome to Hardy Heron Alpha-5, which will in time become Ubuntu 8.04.Pre-releases of Hardy are *not* encouraged for anyone needing a stable system or anyone who is not comfortable running into occasional, even frequent breakage. They are, however, recommended for Ubuntu developers and those who want to help in testing, reporting, and fixing bugs.

Alpha 4 is the fifth in a series of milestone CD images that will be released throughout the Hardy development cycle. The Alpha images are known to be reasonably free of showstopper CD build or installer bugs, while representing a very recent snapshot of Hardy.

Download:

See http://wiki.ubuntu.com/Mirrors for a list of mirrors.

Bug reports should go to the Ubuntu bug tracker:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu

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Canonical to resell IBM DB2 Express-C as software, virtual appliances

2008-02-23T13:21:00.000Z

For the First Time Ubuntu Users Can Purchase Annual Support Contracts

LONDON, February 21, 2008 - Canonical Ltd, the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu, today announced the availability of IBM DB2 Express-C 9.5 as software through the Ubuntu Partner Repository and as a virtual appliance running on VMware.

read more

Obsidian to provide official Ubuntu Linux training in South Africa

2008-02-23T13:20:00.000Z

Obsidian has partnered with Canonical to provide certified Ubuntu training in South Africa.

Johannesburg, February 2008 - Obsidian has announced that it will soon commence official training for the 'Ubuntu Certified Professional' programme. Obsidian has concluded an agreement with Canonical Ltd, the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu Linux that allows for the company to provide training beginning March 2008.

read more

Promises, Promises from Microsoft. Again.

2008-02-23T12:12:00.000Z

Nobody is buying it. Well. Employees, maybe. Microsoft is once again promising interoperability and adherence to standards, but its own version of each. Interoperability that is safe only for noncommercial software excludes Microsoft's number one competitor, Linux. It is noncommercial and commercial, depending on who is using it. So, right there it tells you that this is a promise to do nothing that matters. Microsoft is currently being investigated by the EU Commission regarding the same two issues, interoperability and its behavior pushing MSOOXML as a "standard". This is a promise to remain incompatible with the GPL, as far as I can make out.

Here's the response from the EU Commission. They totally get that this promise is insufficient. They've heard it before, at least four times. And it doesn't wipe the slate clean regarding past violations, even if they meant it. ECIS's Thomas Vinje also issued a statement [PDF] pointing out that the proof is in the pudding, that Microsoft doesn't get to define interoperability unilaterally, and as for standards, if it meant it, it would support ODF. What the world needs, he says, is "a permanent change in Microsoft's behavior, not just another announcement." ECIS' members include Adobe, Corel, IBM, Nokia, Opera, Oracle, RealNetworks, Red Hat, and Sun Microsystems. Here's Red Hat's statement. Here's Andy Updegrove's take. Todd Bishop's coverage on Seattle PI. And here's the video and transcript of Microsoft's conference call, with Steve Ballmer, Brad Smith, Bob Muglia, and Ray Ozzie. Look at Ozzie's expression in the photo on this page.
source:Rar Linux

Weekly Links

2008-02-09T07:33:00.001Z

From 0 to 2000+ Subscribers in 90 Days

2008-02-06T07:30:00.000Z

This guest post is one that I’m excited to publish - it’s by Tina Su from ThinkSimpleNow.com - a great blog that I’ve been a big fan of. In it Tina will share some of how she’s grow her blog from 0 to 2000 subscribers in just 90 days.

How I Got 2000 Subscribers in 3 Months

Hi, my name is Tina. I started a little blog called Think Simple Now on September 27th, 2007 with zero experience in blogging, internet marketing or writing. By the time Christmas came, 3 months later, I had 2135 subscribers.

I’m new to blogging, in fact, I read very few blogs. I also do not follow any blogs on blogging, with the exception of a couple of articles read from doshdosh and problogger very early on.

I often get asked how I did it, and I decided to compile this article as a record of my experience with hope that others might benefit from what I’ve learned. I want to show you that it is possible to achieve your blogging goals starting from scratch, using my case as a live example. I’ve learned that there are no real secrets to blogging success, all it really takes is a deep desire to do so, along with an urge to action.

I have three important reasons why my blog has been successful:

Concrete Goals & Focus - You can’t get what you want if you don’t know what you want.
Content Creation - Where I spend most of my time. Content and understanding your audience is king.
Getting the Word Out - Actionable tasks I did to market my blog. All are easily reproducible by anyone. But only focus on this after area 2 have been in place. Without content, all your marketing efforts will be ineffective.

Each step builds on the last, so it’s important to follow them in order. Let’s break each step down into details.

1. Concrete Goal & Focus

Why Goals? It is important to understand why you are starting a blog. What is your motivation? I had 3 motivations (in order):

To share my knowledge and experience through my own personal growth on topics surrounding personal empowerment, mental well-being and finding happiness. These are the topics I spend my free times thinking, reading and talking about.
My dream is to work in the self-improvement field. I have many product ideas around ways to improve lives. I wanted to create my own audience, before working on these ideas.
Achieve my financial goals such that I can leave my job and commit to my self-improvement ventures full-time.

What? Defining my target niche and the topics I wanted to cover was tricky, but ultimately vital to the success of any business or project. I originally wanted to start a blog around things I’m interested in: self-improvement, photography, technology and entrepreneurialism. I realized that a messy combination of topics might confuse people. Ultimately, if I wanted more subscribers other than my family and friends, the site cannot be focused around me, but rather focused around what my audience needs and wants. My target niche is health/wellness or personal growth. My topic areas are: creativity, clarity and happiness.

Goals We cannot get what we want if we do not know what we want. Sure, you can say, I want to be rich or happy. But what does that mean? It is important to set clearly defined goals before you start any new venture. Your goals need to be measurable and dated. I find it helps to regularly come back to evaluate my goals. I do this monthly in a traffic journal recording my progress: unique, page views, subscribers and revenue.

For example, my goal when I started was:

By December 31, 2007, I would have 1000 uniques, 2500 page-views monthly, and 100 RSS subscribers.

This goal was revised on October 22 after reaching the original goal:

By December 31, 2007, I would have 5000 uniques, 20,000 page-views monthly, 400 RSS subscribers, $100 in ad revenue.

The new goal was reached on November 29th. At this point, RSS subscribers had reached over 1500.

Summary & Action Items: To summarize, the following are the major points for the area of ‘Concrete Goal & Focus’. If might be helpful for you to answer these questions (on paper or type in a doc).

Why - What is your motivation? Why are you starting this blog? What are you doing that’s unique from existing blogs?
What - Who is in my audience? What topic areas will I cover? Describe my blog using 3 words.
Goals - Set a specific and measurable goal with a date. Come back to evaluate this goal and your progress periodically.

2. Content Creation

We all know that content is the most important piece, but how do you generate content such that people will want to read, reference and subscribe to it? First, recall the last time you subscribed to a blog. What was it about the content that made you want to subscribe? The reasons will likely fall into one or more of the following:

Highly value-packed content.
It provides practical solutions to a perceived need you have.
You enjoyed it. It was highly entertaining.
You personally connect with the content and style of writing.
You felt inspired and motivated.

Now, put yourself in the position of a reader to your site. You know who they are from exercises above. Ask yourself, which of the above situations can your content satisfy? Keep these points in mind when writing. Always write with the intention to generate value and produce work that will benefit others. If you don’t, it will show in your writing.

I obsess over my content, not only because I feel responsible for my readers and want to give them the best quality that I can produce, but it is the only way a new reader coming to your site will want to stay and come back.

Try different styles and test which your reader responds to the most.

The following are tips related to content creation that’s worked well for my blog:

Intention - Set the intention to generate the best and most valuable content possible. Hold nothing back when you’re writing. Your honesty and genuine intentions will shine through in your writing. I like to write as if I’m talking to my best friend, giving them the best I have.
Use Personal Examples - People love stories. This allows them to relate with you on a personal level and connect with you as friends.
Pictures - Use appropriate and vivid images to go with your article. Whenever possible, always use images, but don’t over-do it. I would use no more than 3 images per article in a typical case.
Length - I prefer to post less often and write longer articles that covers depth. I post twice weekly and at length 750-1500 words. The length is out of necessity to cover topics thoroughly. I do try to keep things concise. Make sure all content are relevant. Do not be verbose for the sake of length, it will show if your writing and will turn people away. If you were a reader, would you be able to focus your attention long enough to read the whole article?
Lists - Use numbered lists and bullet points whenever it makes sense. Bold key words. These make reading easy and effective for scanning.
Short Paragraphs - Be as concise as possible. During editing, see if you get the same point across using less words.

Summary & Action Items:

Intentions - Have your reader’s best interest in mind.
Needs - What needs are you fulfilling with your articles? Is it a need that people actually have or one that you think others need?
Observe & Model - What kinds of articles do you enjoy reading from other blogs? Pick out common characteristics and model after them.

3. Getting the Word Out

Once I was armed with my goal of reaching 100 subscribers and had my content in place, I started to promote my blog. You may have the most valuable site in the world, but no one will benefit if they don’t know it exists.

Offline & Email
I pretty much lived and breathed my one simple goal of reaching 100 subscribers. Everywhere I went, I told people about my goal and my blog, and people were willing to help. This include every physical person I met and anyone who emailed me: co-workers, girlfriends of co-workers, friends of family, person sitting next to me on a plane, new friends I met on facebook, photography clients … everyone.

I added a note about subscribing to my email signature, so it appeared at the foot of every email I sent out. I emailed all of my friends when I launched, asking them to support me by subscribing.

Connecting with People
Connecting with readers and potential readers is an essential part of my blogging success. Not only does it help my blog grow, but I absolutely love it. I have made many good friends this way. When people like you and feel that your content is valuable, they will tell their friends about it. I quickly discovered that many of my readers were emailing links to others, and referring many new subscribers.

I’ve given extra effort to reach out and connect with others. It was a process which I took personally. I made sure every comment was responded to and no emails were left ignored. I no longer respond to every comment due to time limitations, but I still respond to every email. If a comment was especially good, I would email the person to thank them and include a copy of my response to their comments, especially if it contained questions.

I used to email every person who commented with a thank you note and would ask them to consider subscribing. Then I discovered the Comment Relish plug-in that did this automatically.

I also connected with people through facebook, by visiting groups in my niche and befriending individuals. I’ve made some great friendships this way, and was even inspired with new article ideas.

Leaving Your Mark: Comments & Directories
Comment in other people’s blogs, especially ones with related topics. Make sure to leave thoughtful and relevant comments, otherwise, it will be viewed as spam. I found a list of personal development blogs, and made a point to visit every one and leave a comment when appropriate. Again, make sure you are not spamming. Bloggers are often curious of who the commentators are and will visit your site. On popular blogs, you may need to leave comments regularly to be noticed. If your content is good, bloggers will link to you when appropriate, others may even add you to their blogroll.

I’ve submitted articles to article banks, blog carnivals, and rss feed directories. I stopped article bank submissions when I learned about the google penalties for duplicate content. In an effort to save time, I outsourced these three tasks due to their repetitive nature.

Networking with Bloggers
Reach out and meet other bloggers. You never know who you’re going to meet or how you will be able to help each other. I feel that you cannot do it alone, you need a community of friends. “We are stronger together than we are apart“. I recommend keeping a contact list of friends, so it’ll be easy to get in touch with one email. This is also valuable when you need last minute help with social media.

This model helped me tremendously: To get what you want, help others get what they want, first.: In a email reply from Maki, he ended his email with, “Let me know if you need anything,” which left an impression on me. From that point on, I told people about Maki’s site whenever I had the chance.

Since then, I started using it in my emails as well. But it is important to be genuine. Always lend a hand to help other bloggers (within reason) and do not expect anything in return. If they end up helping you, great, if not, I don’t recommend harassing them.

Don’t be shy, people are incredibly kind creatures by nature. Drop them an email to introduce yourself, either make a genuine comment about their site, or ask a simple question. Do not start email conversations with asking to be linked, asking to review your blog, asking too many questions. Avoid philosophical questions, keep emails short, be friendly and honest. Try practicing on me: Feel free to drop me a line to introduce yourself at tina[at]thinksimplenow.com

Linking
I linked to other blogs whenever possible in my articles. It doesn’t cost you anything, and helps someone else out. If you feel uncomfortable with this, ask yourself, would you like to be linked by other blogs? If the answer is yes, then remember my motto: “To get what you want, help others get what they want, first.”

Through my linking to other blogs, not only have other bloggers noticed me but I have made many new friends. As a result, I’ve also been linked by larger sites like lifehacker, dumblittleman and lifehack.

Social Media & Networks In the first few weeks, I was getting like 15 hits a day, mostly from my mom and boyfriend. One day, I was blessed with 150 hits coming from StumbleUpon based on a user submit. I was fascinated and was determined to become a power user. You can check out my profile here. I did well on StumbleUpon using the same motto: “To get what you want, help others get what they want, first.” If you want user reviews, give lots of user reviews to others. If you want others to stumble your pages, stumble other people’s pages. Again, do so without expecting anything in return. And, when you do receive something, treat it like a gift and thank the giver.

Just as I was starting to feel de-motivated, my big break came on November 17th when one of my stories made it on the front page of Digg and subsequently on the front page of Del.icio.us. Digg now had my attention. Using the same motto as all my efforts above, I befriended Digg users and became a loyal contributor of the community. I like to Digg top upcoming stories (close to becoming popular), newly submitted stories and ones submitted or favored by friends. If you want to get a Digg user’s attention, start Digging their submissions regularly.

I like to keep a consistent profile across all social media sites I participate in. Use the same avatar image and use the same username. Your image and username is your face to the network, people will recognize you if they find you in other networks such as Mixx, Propeller or Twitter. But if you use different images, it’ll be difficult to keep track for your online friends. Also, I don’t recommend changing your avatar often. Some users on StumbleUpon will regularly update their image, this is really confusing and forces me to remember them by username only.

Summary & Action Items

Tell everybody and ask for help: in person and over email
Connect with readers via email
Install Comment Relish
Comment on other blogs
Link to other blogs whenever you can
Make 5 new blogger or social media friends weekly
Join StumbleUpon and Digg

Parting Words
I often hear people say things like “I just can’t get people to subscribe. What can I do? My advice is to stop repeating this sentence and start focusing on what it is that you want, instead of what you lack.

Develop the mentality of abundance instead of competition. Focus on your readers, obsess over their experience, have a clear goal and go after it with your whole being, without a minute spent on reasons why you will fail. I have seen over and over again that:

When desire is mixed with faith backed by massive action, the probable becomes possible, every time. No exceptions.

I wish you continued success with your blogging and other life ventures. Keep your head up high.

Ubuntu Hardy Heron Alpha 4 released

2008-02-05T07:48:00.000Z

Welcome to Hardy Heron Alpha-4, which will in time become Ubuntu 8.04.Pre-releases of Hardy are *not* encouraged for anyone needing a stable system or anyone who is not comfortable running into occasional, even frequent breakage. They are, however, recommended for Ubuntu developers and those who want to help in testing, reporting, and fixing bugs.

Alpha 4 is the fourth in a series of milestone CD images that will be released throughout the Hardy development cycle. The Alpha images are known to be reasonably free of showstopper CD build or installer bugs, while representing a very recent snapshot of Hardy. You can download it here:

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/hardy/alpha-4/ (Ubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/hardy/alpha-4/ (Kubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/edubuntu/releases/hardy/alpha-4/ (Edubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/jeos/releases/hardy/alpha-4/ (Ubuntu JeOS)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/gobuntu/releases/hardy/alpha-4/ (Gobuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntustudio/releases/hardy/alpha-4/ (UbuntuStudio)

See http://wiki.ubuntu.com/Mirrors for a list of mirrors.

Alpha 4 includes several new features that are ready for large-scale testing. Please refer to http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/hardy/alpha4 for information on changes in Ubuntu and https://wiki.kubuntu.org/HardyHeron/Alpha4/Kubuntu for changes in Kubuntu.

This is quite an early set of images, so you should expect some bugs. For a list of known bugs (that you don’t need to report if you encounter), please see: http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/hardy/alpha4

If you’re interested in following the changes as we further develop Hardy, have a look at the hardy-changes mailing list:

http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/hardy-changes

We also suggest that you subscribe to the ubuntu-devel-announce list if you’re interested in following Ubuntu development. This is a low-traffic list (a few posts a week) carrying announcements of approved specifications, policy changes, alpha releases, and other interesting events.

http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-announce

Bug reports should go to the Ubuntu bug tracker:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu

Related Posts:
Ubuntu Hardy Heron Alpha 3 released
Ubuntu Hardy Heron Alpha 2 released
Ubuntu Hardy Heron Alpha 1 released
Ubuntu 7.10 Released

Autodesk Labs: Project Draw Offline

2008-02-05T07:27:00.000Z

David Falck and Shelly Mujtaba, members of Autodesk Labs, recently announced a new release of Project Draw that allows you to take your diagrams offline using Google Gears.

Project Draw is a browser based diagraming utility that lets you draw to your hearts content, without the need for plugins of any kind.

More

Microsoft and Novell Provide Renault with Interoperability

2008-02-05T07:18:00.000Z

SUSE Linux Enterprise has been selected by Renault to consolidate existing Linux environment and provide IT interoperability between Windows and Linux

REDMOND, Wash., and WALTHAM, Mass. -- Jan. 30, 2008 -- Microsoft Corp. and Novell today announced that French carmaker Renault has joined the growing ranks of customers taking advantage of the two companies' cooperation to deliver greater interoperability between Microsoft(R) Windows(R) and SUSE(R) Linux Enterprise. Under the agreement, Microsoft will deliver to Renault more than 1,000 certificates for priority support subscriptions to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from Novell(R), as Renault consolidates existing Linux* distributions to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server with the goal of improving interoperability and taking better advantage of virtualization.

"Working with Microsoft to jointly build and support solutions to improve interoperability and deliver powerful new virtualization capabilities is paying great dividends for our customers," said Susan Heystee, vice president and general manager of global strategic alliances for Novell. "Increasing the presence of SUSE Linux Enterprise in the data center, well integrated with a Microsoft Windows environment, will enhance the deployment of applications and increase the competitive advantage of innovative companies. With growing marketplace understanding of the solutions we are providing to the interoperability challenges in a world of mixed-source software, we expect to continue to see growth of SUSE Linux Enterprise in the market."

"Customers have asked for solutions to make Microsoft products work better with other platforms and for IP assurance that enables vendors to build technical bridges," said Susan Hauser, general manager of strategic partnerships and licensing at Microsoft. "We are pleased to provide this real-world, pragmatic solution to customers, such as Renault."

Urchin Software Beta Now Public

2008-02-04T05:21:00.000Z

Google has announced:
"Today we're happy to announce that the Urchin Software from Google beta is now available for download at urchin.com. Urchin Software from Google is a web analytics product similar in scope to Google Analytics, except you install and manage the software on your own servers.

Urchin 5 remains the current supported production release until Urchin Software from Google comes out of beta. This beta software should only be used for evaluation purposes, and is not recommended for production environments.

Here's what the new version looks like:

Why use Urchin Software?

Urchin is suitable for organizations that have content behind a security firewall or have other restrictions that prevent them from using the Google Analytics service. Urchin is also useful for those who want to perform ad-hoc historical log processing, who want to store their web analytics on local servers, and those requiring third-party data audits. Urchin Software from Google features the following upgrades from Urchin 5, among many others:

• More accurate geo-identification of visitors
• Cross-segmentation options similar to Google Analytics
• E-commerce and campaign tracking included (no longer requiring additional modules)
• Vastly improved embedded scheduler to more easily manage processing and re-processing jobs
• Improved user interface
• More robust log processing engine

You can download a 90-day version of the beta here. Once Urchin Software from Google comes out of beta, you'll be able to purchase it for $2995 through the Urchin Software Authorized Consultants. Please visit the FAQ page on the Urchin site to see details on pricing, previous version upgrading/importing instructions, system requirements, and differences between Urchin and Google Analytics."

Adsense: Pinning it down (to $10)

2008-02-04T05:09:00.000Z

>From Adsense Blog :
"As part of our efforts to make sure that the AdSense account details publishers provide are valid and correct, we do a couple types of validation that you may be aware of: the Personal Identification Number (PIN) program and, in some locations, phone number verification. One or both of these verification methods is required in order to ensure the security and accuracy of your information so you can receive payments from AdSense.

In the past, our system would ask you to verify your information when your earnings reached $50. However, we've recently changed the threshold to $10. This lowered amount means many of you may see a PIN arrive in your mailbox soon, as well as a prompt in your account to verify your phone number. For more information about these holds, visit the links in the 'Required Actions' box on your Payment History page.

(Psst: If your all-time earnings are between $10 and $50, this might be a good time to learn all about PINs so you'll know what to expect. Or, if you prefer surprises, you can remain blissfully ignorant till a PIN mailer pops up in your mailbox. Just be sure you don't pitch it in the trash!)"
source:Pinning it down (to $10) via :Powered LINK

Related Posts:
Recommended Money Makers
Google AdSense: Facts, FAQs and Tools

Novell Makes it Easier to Start with Linux on IBM's System z Mainframe

2008-02-04T05:04:00.000Z

WALTHAM, Mass. -- Jan. 30, 2008 -- Novell today announced the availability of the SUSE(R) Linux Enterprise Server Starter System for System z, a pre-built installation server that simplifies the installation of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server on IBM's System z mainframes. The starter system eliminates the need for IT managers to search for network access to installation media on the mainframe. With the new Starter System for System z, customers can quickly initiate evaluations of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for System z.

"We're excited to be able to leverage the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Starter System for System z for our mainframe deployments," said Mike Walter, z/VM systems manager at Hewitt Associates. "Until recently, there was no simple way to install SUSE Linux Enterprise Server on a mainframe using z/VM tools natively. This new tool makes it much easier and faster for us and others to experience SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for System z, taking advantage of the cost and reliability benefits of Linux on the mainframe."

Carol Stafford, vice president of worldwide System z sales at IBM, said, "This starter kit is a great example of the many ways IBM is expanding mainframe compatibility and ease-of-use features. Novell's Starter System for System z helps Linux customers quickly maximize the mainframe's high reliability and scalability for mixed workloads."

Starter System for System z, developed for Novell by Sine Nomine Associates, includes utilities and configuration tools to easily create an installation server and simplify the entire process of installing Linux* on a System z mainframe. The starter system requires less administrator expertise while jump starting evaluations of Linux for System z. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server running on System z helps customers reduce software platform costs while allowing them to take advantage of hundreds of new, lower-cost applications available to System z users.

Roger Levy, Novell senior vice president and general manager of Open Platform Solutions, said, "Novell worked closely with customers and the mainframe community to develop a tool that will actually save customers time and money while helping them meet their broader IT objectives. That collaboration and the effectiveness of the starter system as it facilitates the customer installation of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for System z platforms are additional indicators that Novell understands the needs of mainframe users better than any other Linux vendor."

Availability

More information about the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Starter System for System z, including a download link, can be found at www.novell.com/mainframe . The next-generation platform for the open enterprise, SUSE Linux Enterprise is the best-engineered and most interoperable platform for mission-critical computing, from the desktop to the data center. For more information on SUSE Linux Enterprise offerings from Novell(R), visit www.novell.com/linux .

Microsoft Offers $44.6 Billion To Acquire Yahoo

2008-02-03T08:31:00.000Z

The letter from Microsoft to the Yahoo board:

January 31, 2008
Board of Directors
Yahoo! Inc.
701 First Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA 94089
Attention: Roy Bostock, Chairman
Attention: Jerry Yang, Chief Executive Officer

Dear Members of the Board:

I am writing on behalf of the Board of Directors of Microsoft to make a proposal for a business combination of Microsoft and Yahoo!. Under our proposal, Microsoft would acquire all of the outstanding shares of Yahoo! common stock for per share consideration of $31 based on Microsoft’s closing share price on January 31, 2008, payable in the form of $31 in cash or 0.9509 of a share of Microsoft common stock. Microsoft would provide each Yahoo! shareholder with the ability to choose whether to receive the consideration in cash or Microsoft common stock, subject to pro-ration so that in the aggregate one-half of the Yahoo! common shares will be exchanged for shares of Microsoft common stock and one-half of the Yahoo! common shares will be converted into the right to receive cash. Our proposal is not subject to any financing condition.

Our proposal represents a 62% premium above the closing price of Yahoo! common stock of $19.18 on January 31, 2008. The implied premium for the operating assets of the company clearly is considerably greater when adjusted for the minority, non-controlled assets and cash. By whatever financial measure you use - EBITDA, free cash flow, operating cash flow, net income, or analyst target prices - this proposal represents a compelling value realization event for your shareholders.

We believe that Microsoft common stock represents a very attractive investment opportunity for Yahoo!’s shareholders. Microsoft has generated revenue growth of 15%, earnings growth of 26%, and a return on equity of 35% on average for the last three years. Microsoft’s share price has generated shareholder returns of 8% during the last one year period and 28% during the last three year period, significantly outperforming the S&P 500. It is our view that Microsoft has significant potential upside given the continued solid growth in our core businesses, the recent launch of Windows Vista, and other strategic initiatives.

Microsoft’s consistent belief has been that the combination of Microsoft and Yahoo! clearly represents the best way to deliver maximum value to our respective shareholders, as well as create a more efficient and competitive company that would provide greater value and service to our customers. In late 2006 and early 2007, we jointly explored a broad range of ways in which our two companies might work together. These discussions were based on a vision that the online businesses of Microsoft and Yahoo! should be aligned in some way to create a more effective competitor in the online marketplace. We discussed a number of alternatives ranging from commercial partnerships to a merger proposal, which you rejected. While a commercial partnership may have made sense at one time, Microsoft believes that the only alternative now is the combination of Microsoft and Yahoo! that we are proposing.

In February 2007, I received a letter from your Chairman indicating the view of the Yahoo! Board that “now is not the right time from the perspective of our shareholders to enter into discussions regarding an acquisition transaction.” According to that letter, the principal reason for this view was the Yahoo! Board’s confidence in the “potential upside” if management successfully executed on a reformulated strategy based on certain operational initiatives, such as Project Panama, and a significant organizational realignment. A year has gone by, and the competitive situation has not improved.

While online advertising growth continues, there are significant benefits of scale in advertising platform economics, in capital costs for search index build-out, and in research and development, making this a time of industry consolidation and convergence. Today, the market is increasingly dominated by one player who is consolidating its dominance through acquisition. Together, Microsoft and Yahoo! can offer a credible alternative for consumers, advertisers, and publishers. Synergies of this combination fall into four areas:

Scale economics: This combination enables synergies related to scale economics of the advertising platform where today there is only one competitor at scale. This includes synergies across both search and non-search related advertising that will strengthen the value proposition to both advertisers and publishers. Additionally, the combination allows us to consolidate capital spending.

Expanded R&D capacity: The combined talent of our engineering resources can be focused on R&D priorities such as a single search index and single advertising platform. Together we can unleash new levels of innovation, delivering enhanced user experiences, breakthroughs in search, and new advertising platform capabilities. Many of these breakthroughs are a function of an engineering scale that today neither of our companies has on its own.

Operational efficiencies: Eliminating redundant infrastructure and duplicative operating costs will improve the financial performance of the combined entity.

Emerging user experiences: Our combined ability to focus engineering resources that drive innovation in emerging scenarios such as video, mobile services, online commerce, social media, and social platforms is greatly enhanced.

We would value the opportunity to further discuss with you how to optimize the integration of our respective businesses to create a leading global technology company with exceptional display and search advertising capabilities. You should also be aware that we intend to offer significant retention packages to your engineers, key leaders and employees across all disciplines.

We have dedicated considerable time and resources to an analysis of a potential transaction and are confident that the combination will receive all necessary regulatory approvals. We look forward to discussing this with you, and both our internal legal team and outside counsel are available to meet with your counsel at their earliest convenience.

Our proposal is subject to the negotiation of a definitive merger agreement and our having the opportunity to conduct certain limited and confirmatory due diligence. In addition, because a portion of the aggregate merger consideration would consist of Microsoft common stock, we would provide Yahoo! the opportunity to conduct appropriate limited due diligence with respect to Microsoft. We are prepared to deliver a draft merger agreement to you and begin discussions immediately.

In light of the significance of this proposal to your shareholders and ours, as well as the potential for selective disclosures, our intention is to publicly release the text of this letter tomorrow morning.

Due to the importance of these discussions and the value represented by our proposal, we expect the Yahoo! Board to engage in a full review of our proposal. My leadership team and I would be happy to make ourselves available to meet with you and your Board at your earliest convenience. Depending on the nature of your response, Microsoft reserves the right to pursue all necessary steps to ensure that Yahoo!’s shareholders are provided with the opportunity to realize the value inherent in our proposal.

We believe this proposal represents a unique opportunity to create significant value for Yahoo!’s shareholders and employees, and the combined company will be better positioned to provide an enhanced value proposition to users and advertisers. We hope that you and your Board share our enthusiasm, and we look forward to a prompt and favorable reply.

Sincerely yours,

Steven A. Ballmer
Chief Executive Officer
Microsoft Corporation

source

10 Quick Fixes to Make your Windows Computer Faster

2008-02-03T08:29:00.000Z

Your computer running Windows isn’t running in the same speed that it used to run when you first used it. It’s slower, crappy, takes a while to start and tests your patience like anything. There are many reasons for this, let’s try fixing up a few things on your slow Windows PC:

Slow Start Up
There can be a variety of reasons to Windows loading slow during start up. Go to Run, type msconfig and hit enter. Under the ‘Start Up’ tab, uncheck the unwanted programs and press OK. Things should be a bit fine the next time Windows boots.

Another program worth mentioning here is StartUp Delayer which will help in setting after how much time programs should be loaded after Windows boots. For instance, you could set your instant messenger program to load 50 seconds after Windows starts up.

Slow Loading Start Menu
If the Start Menu items are loading slowly, you can open the Registry Editor by typing in the Run menu ‘regedit.exe’ and pressing Enter. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop. Look for MenuShowDelay, and double click to edit the value. The lower the number specified, the faster the Start Menu will load.

Slow Right Click Context Menu
Probably the Windows Right Click menu on your computer is loading slow because too many programs added unwanted entries there. Just download this program called Mmm, install it and then modify your context menu to remove unwanted items to speed it up.

Slow Send To Menu
If the Send To menu loads slowly, you can type ’sendto’ in the Run Dialog, and remove unwanted items in the Explorer Window that appears. This should add some speed to it.

Slow Defragmentation
The Windows Defragmenter can’t get any slower. You need to have an alternative to the Windows Defragmenter, and Defraggler is just one of the best ones available in the market. It’s free, and works like a charm and can speed up defragmentation manifold.

Slow loading My Computer Window
If the My Computer Window loads slowly, in the Explorer Window, go to Tools >> Folder Options >> View and uncheck ‘Automatically search for network folders and printers”

Slow loading Add or Remove Programs Applet
This is one of the most annoying piece of programs present in Windows, it takes ages to load if you have a considerable number of programs installed on your computer. You can either use the all-in-one CCleaner for this purpose, or get MyUninstaller that comes as a speedy replacement for Add or Remove Programs.

Slow Ending of Unresponsive Programs
If you’ve clicked on ‘End Task’ if any program is running unresponsive, you might have noticed that the program is not terminated immediately. You can alter this by going to Run >> regedit.exe >> HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\ and change this value to 1000.

Disable Animations and Appearance Overhauls to maximize performance
If you’re a serious performance junkie, you probably won’t bother about eyecandy. Go to System Properties in the Control Panel. Click ‘Advanced’, then ‘Performance’ and click ‘Adjust for best performance’. This might boost your PC’s performance up a bit.

Additional Tips:
- Always keep your computer clean. Remove Junk and Unnecessary registry entries. Use CCleaner for this purpose, one excellent tool that just does what it says.
- Don’t keep installing software. Install a program only if it really serves you a purpose.
- Keep as less programs as possible running on the System Tray. This essentially means reducing the number of programs that start during Windows start up.

sources:
KillerTechTips & Makeuseof & Powered LINK

IMAP on Windows Mobile devices

2008-02-03T08:11:00.000Z

Since google added IMAP access to Gmail in October, They've heard from a number of Windows Mobile users that their Gmail IMAP experience wasn't great -- some were receiving blank messages and others could read headers but not entire messages. There are a lot of email clients out there, each with its own quirks, so making IMAP work across all of them can be tricky. They've worked with Microsoft engineers to debug the incompatibilities with Windows Mobile and made some tweaks to Their code. As some people have already noticed, these fixes went out last week, so you should now have a better experience reading and sending Gmail messages using IMAP from your Windows Mobile device. If you haven't yet set up IMAP, just follow the configuration instructions to get started.

source: IMAP on Windows Mobile devices (Official Gmail Blog)

10 Free Image Editing Programs for your PC

2008-02-01T05:03:00.000Z

1. GIMP
The GNU Image Manipulation Program is a powerful and free piece of software that can handle all basic image editing tasks and much more beyond that. The fact that it’s open source and available for UNIX platforms, Mac and Windows makes it extremely flexible.

2. Paint.NET
This is probably the most powerful free photo editing software on the market. It can complete simple tasks such as red eye correction, resizing, cropping, but it also supports layers. The program is open source and a great collection of user created plugins is available from its online community.
It’s hard to recommend one over the other here, so depending on what you want to do with these programs, Paint.NET and GIMP are probably equally great…given you are a Windows user.

3. Autostitch
This is the perfect tool if you want to create panorama images from a series of photos. It works fully automatic and doesn’t require user input. The program can handle both horizontal and vertical stitching. The demo is fully functional and free. One thing you have to be prepared for though is the amount of system resources this program will occupy, depending on the options you select.

4. Microsoft Reserach Group Shot
If you need to take a photo of a large group of people, chances are that no matter how many shots you take, there won’t be a single photo everyone is happy with. This is where you should give Microsoft Group Shot a chance. With this software you can select your favorite parts in each shot of the series and the program will merge all your photos into the perfect composite image. Unfortunately, it appears the beta software download has expired, however future releases are around the corner.

5. TKexe Kalender
It’s the New Year and maybe you still need a paper calendar. To quickly create a personal and unique edition, try this easy to use software.

6. Opanda PhotoFilter
Filters can make a photo very interesting and special. But it’s tiring to carry around filters for your camera or play with camera or software settings endlessly to yield the desired results. Easier yet, use Opanda PhotoFilter to post process your snapshots. The program comes equipped with more than 100 different settings simulating Kodak, Cokin and Hoya filters.

7. Foto Mosaik
Create a mosaic picture from hundreds or thousands of photos.
The mosaic image is the eagle displayed in the top left, the rest of the image is a zoom into the single tiles, indicated by the red frame.

8. Win Morph
Morph, warp and distort images in a professional and high quality way. This program gives you all the freedom you could possibly ask for from a free package. It works as standalone application or as a plugin for various video editors, it offers advanced keyframing, blending and distortion tools for total control and can even do dynamic morphing with various input (JPEG,BMP,PCX,PNG,PBM,TGA,TIFF) and output (JPEG,BMP,PNG,TGA,TIFF,AVI,MPEG and SWF) file formats. Are you sold, yet? No wait, it’s free!

9. Free Digital Camera Enhancer
This is the tool to give your digital images the final touch. Reduce noise caused by bad light situations, smooth skin in portraits, correct the midtones, and add saturation. Naturally, this will work best on bad images.

10. JPEG Lossless Rotator
With most programs, the simple act of rotating your JPEG photo into the right orientation and saving it causes a loss of quality. JPEG Lossless Rotator does the job without recoding your photo. Rather it performs a special lossless block transformation which leaves the quality of your photo untouched. Yes, this is a tool for freaks…or geeks.
source:Powered LINK

Three low-cost Linux PCs

2008-01-29T23:03:00.000Z

Wal-Mart sells this Everex gPC for $198. It's bundled with speakers, a mouse, and a keyboard, and it comes with 24-hour tech support. The operating system is called gOS, a version of Ubuntu 7.10. Despite the fact that many mainstream consumers have likely never even heard of Ubuntu, Wal-Mart is having trouble keeping the gPC in stock.

Mirus and Linspire collaborated on the Mirus Linux PC, which is now for sale at Sears.com. Its retail price is $299, but an included $100 rebate brings it to $199. It comes preloaded with Freespire 2.0, an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution.

At the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this month, Shuttle introduced its KPC. It'll include an Intel Celeron processor, a 945GC chipset, 512MB of memory, and either a 60GB or 80GB hard drive. What it won't have: an optical drive or a PCI Express slot. It comes in red, blue, white, and black, each with a different icon stamped on the front. Shuttle also says there will also be a $99 bare-bones version of the KPC. That version will have the option of upgrading to a Core 2 Duo processor and 1GB of memory.

source:DISCOVIX

60 Cool Websites

2008-01-23T18:30:00.000Z

All listed websites are FREE (or come with a decent free account option).

(1) Doodle - Next time you need to schedule a meeting, try Doodle: it’s smart, simple, fast, and doesn’t require any sign-up.

(2) MyVoipProvider - Compare VoIP calling rates to any country worldwide. MyVoipProvider looks through hundreds of popular VoIP providers (Skype, VoipBuster, Jajah etc.) and lists them based on the calling rates.

(3) PhoneSpell - Ever wonder what the letters that are associated with your phone number spell out. This is the place to find it out.

(4) phpForm - Great online form creator for those who aren’t sure of HTML. Create forms quickly and efficiently.

(5) Pingie - Free RSS to SMS service that allows users to forward RSS feeds to mobile phones.

(6) SwarmSketch - Online sketch board where 1000s of people collaborate on all kinds of sketches. Each week SwarmSketch randomly chooses some popular search term and makes it the sketch subject for the week.

(7) SubwayMaps - Find and print subway and metro maps for almost any city that has a subway. In addition to maps you can also get such info as hours of operation, ticket price, related subway images, etc.

(8) WebFormFactory - Every online form needs a backend code, something that grabs the input data and processes it. WFF is an open source online form generator which automatically generates the necessary backend code to tie your form to a database. Combine it with above phpForm, and you have everything you need to design and place forms on your website.

(9) WhatTheFont - Online font recognition tool that identifes the font type (Arial, Helvetica, Time New Roman, Tahoma etc.) by scanning font image.

(10) YouTorrent - Newly launched torrent search site that enables users to search and compare torrents from 12 popular torrent engines (Mininova, The Pirate Bay … ) simultaneously.

(11) ATMLocator - Instantly locate and get address details for nearby ATM Cash Machines in almost any country worldwide.

(12) BrowserShots - Web-based browser combatibility check tool that allows designers to preview website look in all popular browsers at the same time.

(13) Digby - Use your BlackBerry to find, browse and buy popular merchandise including books, music, DVDs, flowers etc.

(14) Meemix - Online music recommendation service that serves you custom playlists (aka ‘Mee stations’) based on selected songs or artists. Create stations, share stations with friends, tune-in to stations created by other members, etc.

(15) MobSaver - Lookup (compare) product prices on Amazon and eBay via text messaging. Just text UPC or ISBN number of any item to ’save@mobsaver.com’ and shortly after you should receive a text message with the item prices on Amazon and eBay.

(16) PDFHammer - Extremely useful online tool that lets you merge and rearrange PDF documents online.

(17) PriceHub - If you are in the market for a new car, or want to sell one, you can use PriceHub to get a fairly good idea about how much other people have paid for a similar car.

(18) PrintFreeGraphPaper - Create and print custom graph paper sheets. Perfect for science and math students, craft projects etc.

(19) ScrubIT - Free DNS service that offers a bunch of useful improvements to your internet connection. These include better connection speed, automatic blocking of malicious websites and domain typo fixer.

(20) toRead - Tiny browser bookmarklet that sends current webpage to your email address. Just click on ‘toread’ button on yout toolbar and the page will be forwarded to your email.

(21) Bodocus - Love to watch documentaries ? Bodocus is a documentary movie directory where you can freely access and stream over 650 documenatary movies.

(22) CanYouRunIt - One-click web utility that inspects your computer’s hardware and configuration settings to determine whether or not your system can run a particular game. Must-have bookmark for any gamer.

(23) CoverItLive - Stream live commentary onto your web pages or blog so your readers can follow you in real time. Extremely useful for live coverage of events, conferences, interviews etc. In addition to commentary you can also post polls, youtube videos, images from Google, accept questions from viewers, etc.

(24) IM-History - Desktop application that lets your save and sync your IM conversations for multiple instant messengers in one place. Whether you’re on Skype, MSN, AIM, ICQ, at work or at home, you can have all chat conversations securely stored in one place.

(25) InstaSaver - Free web-based screensaver maker that lets you transform your favorite photos into a Windows screensaver.

(26) PixDrop - Easily send pictures from a computer to your mobile phone. If you need a new wallpaper for your phone PixDrop is one of the faster and free ways to get it.

(27) SendMeRSS - Simple ‘RSS to email service’ that allows you to receive latest posts from your favorite blogs or websites by email. SendMeRSS checks each of the websites you’ve selected at least once in every two hours. If there is something new it gets instantly forwarded to your email.

(28) SurfTheChannel - Yet another online destination for streaming popular TV content for free. Stream TV shows, movies, documentaries, anime shows, etc.

(29) Taskado - Online project manager and collaboration tool for teams: collaborate on projects, delegate tasks to others, assign different priviledges to each collaborator, etc.

(30) TimeBridge - Fully automated meeting manager that can schedule and organize meetings for you. It’s free, takes less than a minute to sign-up and fully integrable with M. Outlook and Google Calendar.

(31) Adobe Share - Online document storage and sharing service from Adobe. Store and share office files from one centralized location and access it from any PC.

(32) Clip2Net - Must-have for anyone who frequently deals with screenshots. It’s a small desktop client that lets you easily capture and annotate screenshots (add highlights, arrows, …) and embed ready screenshots on any webpage. It’s also an excellent file sharing client.

(33) MeBeam - The simplest way to setup informal video / audio conference calls with with up to 18 people simultaneously. No sign-up or download required.

(34) Keybr - Quick and easy online training tool to practice your touch typing skills.

(35) Morale-O-Meter - Keep track of your morale, health, sleep, alcohol and caffeine consumption on a daily basis. Plot everything on a graph, share graphs with friends, compare your stats against others, and so on.

(36) Nymbler - Smart baby name guide to help you find the ideal name for your newborn.

(37) OhDontForget - Free mobile text messaging service with the option to schedule SMS delivery on any date and time you want. No registration required.

(38) reQall - reQall helps you remember stuff when you’re on the go - ideas, appointments, phone numbers, anything. Just dial provided toll-free number and ask reqall to remember it.

(39) Visual Dictionary - Visual dictionary from Merriam-Webster.

(40) Web-Alerts - Watches your favorite blogs or websites for updates and texts you as soon as there is something new.

(41) AirlineMeals - “The world’s first and leading site about nothing but airline food”. Excellent community where travelers submit, review and discuss airline meals.

(42) CameraSummary - Web-based image data extractor that extracts additional information from the JPEG images. Just upload your picture and it will instantly tell you what model of digicam was used, image creation date, camera resolution settings and lots of other details.

(43) CuePrompter - First of a kind, online teleprompter (autocue) service. Copy ‘n paste some text to CuePromter and it will run an enlarged line-by-line copy of it.

(44) Google Mobilizer - Free tool to mobilize any website and make it accessible from your mobile phone or PDA.

(45) Kwout - Handy web-based quote maker that allows you to quote a webpage (or part of it) as an image with an image map (screenshots that can have links in them).

(46) MoDazzle - This service allows you to access Facebook, LinkedIn and dozens of other web services (local directory services, weather, stock quotes, etc.) via email or mobile text messaging (sms): Update your Facebook ’status’, get ‘un-read’ messages from your Facebook inbox, get someone’s profile info from LinkedIn, request driving directions, read restaurant reviews, get location of the nearest Starbucks, and more.

(47) NetworkText - Free texting service for groups. Upload your contacts, organize contacts into groups, and send free group text messages both from web or mobile phone.

(48) OSLiving - Nicely organized collection of best open source software package in one place.

(49) PicMarkr - Finally, free online service to watermark your images. PicMarkr allows you to protect and brand your images by adding a custom image or text watermarks.

(50) Resolio - Free service to create and publish professionally looking resumes online.

(51) StumbleUpon - StumbleUpon’s service lets users bookmark and discover new sites they love.

(52) Twitter - Twitter, the new addictive microblogging platform.

(53) Netvibes - Based in London, Tariq Karim and Freddy Mini’s Netvibes has made waves in the U.S. as a top personalized web portal.

(54) Meebo - Meebo made instant messaging ubiquitous by bringing it online. They then developed it into a platform where anyone could add chat to their applications.

(55) Zoho - Zoho’s comprehensive online suite of 14 business applications ranging from document editing to CRM continues to lead the way in the move away from desktop computing to working in the cloud.

(56) iMedix - iMedix combines search and social networking to change the way people find health information online. Users are encouraged to help each other by sharing health experiences and links from around the web.

(57) ZapTXT - Get RSS feed updates in your IM program with ZapTXT.

(58) MetrO - Métro is a free worldwide public transport guide can be used on the web and on most existing smart phones. Download the program for over 250 cities wordlwide and have an easy subway, bus and tram station guide rite on your phone. It lets you calculate travel time, major landmarks (in major cities), shortest distances and of-course travel direction between any stations.

(59) TripIt - TripIt is a handy itinerary planner for those going on an independent trip. Simply forward your individual booking confirmations, reservation emails etc. TripIt recognizes these emails and creates a master itinerary that puts together all the individual pieces, provides extra information where appropriate (maps, weather information etc), enables the user to add notes and ultimately share and collaborate on this master itinerary with others.

(60) Browsercam - Screen capture and Remote Access service for cross platform compatibility testing and HTML design quality assurance.

source:
Powered LINK

Automating Firefox with iMacros

2008-01-22T22:17:00.000Z

Do you have some mundane task that you have to do regularly through a Web browser? Are you a developer who wants to automatically test the interface of your latest Web application? Maybe you want to log into all of the sites you visit on a daily basis with one click. If you fall into any of these categories, you should check out the iMacros Firefox extension.

The iMacros for Firefox is a record and playback automation tool for the browser. The extension uses the Firefox engine to track all actions and record them in scripts that can be saved, shared, and loaded for playback. It supports most JavaScript, which sets iMacros apart from most freely available Web automation tools. The free version of iMacros cannot record actions performed on Flash objects, Java applets, or any other third-party plugins, but a $500 business edition has support for various plugins, including Flash, Java, and Silverlight.

iOpus, the company that makes iMacros, also has a free Internet Explorer version of iMacros. Each version of iMacros can run the other's scripts, so you can create testing scripts once and test on both browsers.

Once installed, iMacros adds a new button in the main navigation bar. When you click the button, a sidebar opens to display a list of recorded macros, along with a few tabs and buttons to control the macros.

To record a macro, click on the Rec tab then the Record button, then go into the main browser window. Everything you do will be recorded by iMacros and made into a script. When you are ready to stop recording, click the stop button in the iMacros sidebar. iMacros saves the current macro script as #Current.iim in its list of macros. You can play the script by clicking the Play tab then the Play button. You can stop or pause playback at any point during execution by clicking the respective button.

You can store a macro you just created in one of two ways: Either click the Save button on the Rec tab, or right-click the #Current.iim macro and choose Rename from the menu.

iMacros also has several features to manage macros. One of the most useful is the ability to edit a macro script by hand. To do this, select a macro, click the Edit tab, then the Edit Macro button. This will open a small text editor with the macro script preloaded. This feature gives you the ability to fine-tune your macros. If you would rather use a different text editor to modify the script, you can tell iMacros what editor to use in the options dialog of the Edit tab. You can change several other settings as well using this dialog.

Another useful feature is the ability to play a macro in a loop. On the Play tab you can tell iMacros how many times you want to play the selected macro by providing a Max value then clicking the Play (Loop) button. This feature gives you the ability to load-test an application and a server. By sharing and simultaneously running a macro on several computers, you can get a real-world idea of just how much traffic your services can handle.

Article written By Chad Files

Sun acquires MySQL

2008-01-22T12:49:00.000Z

Jonathan Schwartz: “We announced big news today - our preliminary results for our fiscal second quarter, and as importantly, that we’re acquiring MySQL AB.”

Details on the Sun-MySQL Deal

Protect your WINDOWS while Running Suspicious Programs

2008-01-22T12:31:00.000Z

As a general rule of thumb, you should never download freeware apps unless it comes from a reputable source. Otherwise you could be letting yourself in for a whole lot of trouble if that cool little freeware app happens to contain malicious code. However if you MUST try out a new program which has come from dubious sources, you can use a Windows feature to protect your PC.

When you have downloaded the program, don’t double-click to install it just yet. First, right-click on the program icon and choose “run as”. When the “run as” box comes up, Select “current user” and make sure the “protect my computer and data from unauthorized program activity” box is ticked. Then click OK. You can then do a limited installation of the program in “safe mode” so you can check it out. Having the “protect my computer” option ticked means that the Registry can be read by the application but the application can’t change anything in the Registry. So if there is any rogue code in that freeware app, it won’t wreak any havoc on your PC.

When you are convinced that the app is OK, come out of the safe mode and install the program properly.
source

Plugins for BidVertiser Ads for Feeds

2008-01-22T01:07:00.000Z

Following the successful launch of BidVertiser Ads for Feeds, They have now added 3 unique solutions that allow you to keep your current feed address (including FeedBurner!) when running BidVertiser ads for Feeds:

1. WordPress Plugin to allow you to seamlessly embed the BidVertiser Ads in your feeds.
2. Solution for FeedBurner that allows you to embed the BidVertiser Ads in your current FeedBurner address (and keep your Subscribers Count!).
3. Solution for Blogger that allows you to embed the BidVertiser Ads in the footer of each of your post feeds.

All of those great features are now available for you in your publisher control panel under the Get Feed Widget button (after registering a feed).
If you are new to BidVertiser, click here to create a publisher account.

KDE 4.0 Released

2008-01-13T03:26:00.000Z

The KDE Community is thrilled to announce the immediate availability of KDE 4.0. This significant release marks both the end of the long and intensive development cycle leading up to KDE 4.0 and the beginning of the KDE 4 era.
more

Ubuntu Hardy Heron Alpha 3 released

2008-01-12T04:21:00.000Z

Steve Langasek has announced that the third alpha release of Ubuntu 8.04
full story

Recommended Money Makers

2008-01-11T01:28:00.000Z

1- Chitika eMiniMalls

Interactive Merchandise Kiosks Get paid per click (PPC)!
Chitika's flagship product, eMiniMalls, brings product promotion to life on the web. Provide your users with relevant content and comparative shopping information without even leaving your site!

Features & Benefits

Choose from thousands of products to feature – from iPods to baby strollers.
A convenient, non-intrusive and interactive shopping experience for your audience.
Geo-targeting in U.S., Canada, Europe, New Zealand and Australia allows you to display localized merchants, products and prices.
Intelligent coding learns and adapts to emphasize products your viewers are interested in buying.
As users interact with eMiniMalls you earn PPC revenue.

2- BidVertiser

HOW DOES IT WORK?

Complete the sign-up form
Paste the text-ads HTML code onto your website
Customize the ads layout to fit your site
Always have the highest bidders appearing on your ad space
Get paid for every click

What is BidVertiser Publishers Program?
BidVertiser Publishers Program is a fast and easy to use way for publishers of all sizes to display unobtrusive text ads on their website and earn money. The program is free and BidVertiser pays you for valid clicks on the ads on your site. You simply paste an HTML code into your web pages and ads will instantly start appearing. Advertisers will bid against each other for your ad space, while our 3rd generation bidding-based ad serving system will always display the highest bidders, those that will generate the maximum revenue for your advertising space.

3- AdBrite

How does the AdBrite Marketplace work?
AdBrite, "The Internet's Ad Marketplace", is an e-commerce site. Rather than selling books, CDs, or rare antiques, we sell ad space on thousands of websites. So whether you are an advertiser looking for the right space to place your ad, or a publisher looking for a simple, yet powerful way to make money and sell ad space on your site, AdBrite is your marketplace.

Getting started is easy. Simply sign up with AdBrite, paste a small snippet of AdBrite HTML on your site. You can be ready to start selling ads to users on your site, as well as advertisers that use the AdBrite network, in minutes!

It is free and easy to set up as an AdBrite publisher. Through a small snippet of HTML placed on your site, we handle serving, scheduling, billing, customer service, and sales. AdBrite takes a percentage of the ad sales, depending on the type of ads you are selling.
Your minimum check amount is $20.00 by default, but you may change it to any value you like.

Bidvertiser Add RSS Advertising

2008-01-10T22:12:00.000Z

a new way to monetize your RSS/ATOM feeds - BidVertiser Ads for Feeds:

Now you can display the BidVertiser CPC ads in your feeds, as well as get access to our various multiple-subscription Feed Widgets that will help you publicize your new feed.Here is how it works:

1. Login to your publisher account and click "Add New BidVertiser". During the Public Beta, you may also click the "Public Beta" link. If you are new to BidVertiser, click here to create a publisher account.
2. Make sure you are under the BidVertiser for your Feed tab.
3. Provide your feed URL and title and click Next.
4. Verify your feed ownership by adding a temporary post with a unique verification code we provide you with.
5. Choose your favorite multiple-subscription Feed Widget and add it to your website or blog. Detail instructions for each of the major blog platforms is provided as part of the process.

You're done!

First look at KDE 4.0.0 with screenshots

2008-01-08T13:35:00.000Z

KDE 4.0.0 is days away from being released. In this post I show you some pieces of the final look of KDE4.0.0 and mention some of the most anticipated features of this great step forward for the Free software desktop. Let's take a look at the final state of this highly anticipated release.

Starting up

I have been following the development of KDE4 for quite a few months now. The version I base this post on is from the main KDE development (trunk in svn) at the time of the release tagging freeze. As such it should be very similar to the packages you will receive from your favorite distribution on the 11th.

Progress all around

Many of the new frameworks are still almost unused in the user interface of the first KDE4 release. But some more obvious and easily implementable changes have already appeared in KDE4.0.0.

Graphics

Oxygen: Originally planned as the new icon set for KDE4, Oxygen has re-defined all aspects of KDE's user interface, including the window decorations and theme.

Plasma: Plasma is the new desktop shell of KDE4, one of the most anticipated components of KDE4 and the one which was started last.

Because of its late start plasma has not realized its full potential yet, but as with many things in KDE4.0.0 it will gain features rapidly in the future. Plasma's vision is a lot more than to display a panel and cool looking widgets. Stay tuned, already KDE4.1 will introduce new features.

KWin: KWin has been a very robust window manager for a long time. New in KDE4 is its ability to use desktop effects, window shadows and subtle animations. These features depend on the availability of OpenGL or at least XRender, which are not fully supported on all graphics cards yet although the situation is improving rapidly.

Applications

Dolphin: The new default file manager in KDE4. While Konqueror has retained its ability to manage files (and cook coffee) dolphin is written specifically for this task.

The first visible piece of KDE4's new semantic search backend Nepomuk (the name won't be visible in the UI) is dolphin's ability to annotate and rate files.
In the future Nepomuk and Strigi will help you answer questions like "Who gave me this file?" or "What sources did I use on that KDE4.0.0 blog post?"
Progress in Qt4 (the toolkit KDE4 is based on) allows user interface polish like dolphin's sidebar, which changes its layout dynamically as the user drags it. No screenshot, you have to see this one in action.

Gwenview: KDE's image viewer Gwenview has received a lot of polish while it was ported to KDE4 and handles really, really well.

Okular: The new document viewer for KDE4, based on KDE3's KPDF application. It sports annotation features, previews, presentation mode, bookmarks and support for no less than 28 file types in my build.

Unreleased Applications

Amarok: The famous KDE based audio player has been ported to KDE4 and is receiving a major overhaul. It is currently in pre-alpha state, but I have been able to use it normally over the last few weeks. When it is ready, it may also be released for windows.

Dragon Player: Based on the Codein video player from the KDE3 days, Dragon Player continues a successful carrier as a simple and enjoybale video player.

These are some of the highlights of the upcoming KDE4.0.0. I hope you enjoyed this preview and have come to share my opinion that KDE4 is going to rock!

Take a look at this album for these and a few more screenshots I didn't include in this post.
source:drowstar.blogspot.com