Load2All can upload files to multiple file hosting websites at once. The service currently supports 19 different file hosting services among them Rapidshare, 2Shared or File Factory. Each file host can be selected on the main page individually.

There are two options that make Load2All unique when it comes to file uploading services. It can split large files into multiple files if the size of the uploaded file should exceed the limit of the supported file hosting services. That’s very interesting for users who usually upload large files to these services. Load2All will automatically pack the files as rar files and split them into multiple archives if a file size limit would be exceeded by the upload.

Even better is the fact that it will do that only for the services where the limit would be exceeded. The other option is to make use of a Rapidshare or Megaupload Collector account to earn points from the uploaded files. The Rapidshare login information need to be entered in this case in the web form.

Finally it is also possible to enter an email address which will then be used by the file uploading service to notify the user about the created links at the selected file hosting websites. Load2All offers several interesting options to users who want to upload large files to multiple files hosts.

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Amazon.com not only has an outstanding collection of digital downloads in their music section (as covered by Martin in his insightful article “Amazon DRM Free MP3 Store“), they offer a completely cross-platform tool to make this process simple. The Amazon MP3 Downloader is a very simple (as well as required) tool that enables you to purchase music from Amazon.com and use it at your leisure. And since the files are DRM-free, you aren’t limited to putting them on one device and only one device. Instead you can download your music, burn it on to CD, copy it to your device, copy it to your friends device…what have you.

But in order to take advantage of this service, you MUST have the MP3 downloader installed. That’s where this tutorial comes into play. Here you will see how to install and use the Amazon MP3 Downloader on your Linux box.

Getting and installing

Point your browser to the download page and download the proper file for your distribution. As of this writing you have the choice of files for the following distributions:

• Ubuntu 8.10/9.04
• Debian 5
• Fedora 10
• OpenSuSE 11

Yes, Amazon is a bit behind the times, but you can get around this (at least on Ubuntu 9.10). Below you will find the steps to install the Amazon MP3 Downloader on Ubuntu 9.10.

Download the .deb file for Ubuntu.

Open up a terminal window and issue the command (from within the directory the file was saved) sudo dpkg -i amazonmp3.deb.

You will see a bunch of errors that will end with the warning: Errors were encountered while processing: amazonmp3.

• Issue the command sudo synaptic.
• You will get a warning that you have 1 broken package.
• Go to the Edit menu and select Fix Broken Packages.
• Click Apply in the new window.
• Close Synaptic when the packages have been fixed.

Using Amazon MP3 Downloader

There are two ways you can use the downloader. The first is to start up the application by clicking on Internet submenu of the Applications menu. From within this menu click on the Amazon MP3 Downloader entry.

When you first launch it your default web browser will start up with a “congratulations” page informing you that the Downloader will launch the next time you download a song from Amazon.com. You also will get the chance to download a free song. When you click on the button (on Amazon.com) to download a free song you will taken to the Amazon.com login page. Log in and then you will have the chance to download your free song.  Go ahead and download your free song.

What you will download is an .amz file that links to your download. Your browser, by default, will ask you what to do with the file. Go ahead and let the Amazon MP3 Downloader open that file and the download will being.

But where did that file go? The Downloader will, by default, download all files to ~/Music/Amazon MP3/. If you open up that directory (after you download your file) you will see the sub-directory containing your new download.

Figure 1

Another way to use the Downloader is to open up the tool and click the

Configuring the Downloader

There aren’t many options in the Downloader’s preference window.  From within that window you can click the button “Shop Amazon MP3 Store”. This will automatically open your default browser to the store.

In order to configure the tool click on the File menu and then select Preferences. From within this window you can configure the following:

• Download directory.
• Automatically check for updates.
• Proxy settings.

And that’s it. But what more would you need to configure for such a simple tool? The only option I always change, by default, is the Download Directory. I tend to change this to the directory used by my multimedia player so I don’t always have to add the new media to the player when I download something. Of course, in order to have this work you have to have your media player set up to automatically scan for new files.

Final thoughts

If you are a Linux user, and a purchaser of digital music, you should do yourself a favor and give the Amazon MP3 Downloader a try. If for another other reason, all Linux users should give it a go in order to show support for Amazon’s support for Linux.

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So what do you do when you’re brain reaches critical mass for passwords? Simple, you let a single application store and encrypt them for you so all you need is a single password to access all of those crucial passwords. And what Linux distribution is without a tool (or twelve) to enable such a feature? One of those many tools is Password Gorilla. Password Gorilla manages your logins as well as all of your passwords for web sites, encrypted files, etc. But PG does more than just store those passwords. Password Gorilla makes logging in to various websites easy by copying and pasting your username/password to the clipboard. Those passwords are never revealed on the screen so you’re even safe from prying eyes. But how does it work? Let’s find out.

Installation

Installing Password Gorilla is quite simple as you will most likely find it in your distributions’ default repositories. In Ubuntu just fire up the Software Center enter the string “gorilla” (no quotes) in the search field, and install the resulting entry. That’s it.

To launch Password Gorilla click on KDE’s “K” menu and enter “password” (no quotes) in the search string, select the entry for Password Gorilla, and hit enter.

When you first start the application up you will be asked to select a password database. Well you can’t because you’ve not created one. So just click Cancel and the main window will open. The first step here is to create a new password database. To do this click the File menu and select New which will open up a new window asking for a password and a password confirmation. Make sure you use a strong password here because it will be the database containing your passwords. After you confirm your password click the OK button.

Adding Logins

The first thing you will want to do is to add a login. Now don’t confuse this login with your user account login. A login for PG is, for example, your login to your Slashdot account.

Figure 1

To add a new login click on the Login menu and select Add Login. This will open up a new window (see Figure 1) where you will enter the details for your login.

You will notice, by default, when you enter a password it is visible. If you are a paranoid person, right before you enter the password, click the Hide Password button so your password will be obscured.

Once you have entered all of the details of the login click OK to save the new login details.

Figure 2

Now if you look in the Login menu you will see the entry Add Group. Adding groups allows you to keep your various logins better organized. You can see, in Figure 2, I have created a group called “Work”.

Using Password Gorilla

Now let’s take a look at the real benefits of Password Gorilla. Go back to the main window and right click on one of your login entries. You will see a menu (see Figure 3) that allows you to copy username, password, and even URL to the clipboard.

Figure 3

In order to login to a website you have a login for follow these steps:

1. Right click the login entry and select “Copy URL to clipboard”.
2. Go to your browser and click the middle mouse button (or click <Ctrl>v) to copy the URL to the browser address bar.
3. Go back to the Password Gorilla and right click the entry again and select “Copy username to clipboard”.
4. Go to your browser and click the spot where you would enter your username and either click the middle mouse button or click <Ctrl>v to paste the username.
5. Go back to Password Gorilla, right click the entry, and select “Copy password to clipboard”.
6. Go to your web browser and click the the spot where you would enter the password and either click the middle mouse button or click <Ctrl>v to paste the password.

It sounds like a lot of steps, but it beats trying to remember numerous login credentials.

Final thoughts

When the amount of credentials you have exceeds your brains ability to remember, a handy tool like Password Gorilla comes in handy. But it’s not just about trying to remember, it’s also about keeping those password secure.

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Feed Flipper has been designed by Adam Schlitt to overcome this problem. It can convert any iTunes podcasts into a valid RSS feed that can be integrated into any feed reader or podcast viewer. Best of all – at least for most users – is the fact that Feed Flipper is an online service which means it will work with all operating systems and web browsers.

The basic principle is the following: Feed Flipper uses a base url and several parameters to turn an iTunes podcast into RSS feed. Here is the developer’s description of the options:

Creating your Feed Flipper RSS URL is easy! To start, copy the base URL:

* http://picklemonkey.net/flipper/convert.php?
Next, add your feed and any desired options to the end of it:

* &feed=URL – Your iTunes podcast URL
* &return=count – Sets the number of articles to display. (0 for all). If omitted, 20 is assumed default.
* &sender=text – Sets the sender of each RSS item to the specified text
* &senderprefix=text – Begin the sender of each RSS item with the specified text
* &subject=text – Sets the subject of each RSS items to the specified text
* &subjectprefix=text – Begin the subject of each RSS item with the specified text

The most basic option for users is to use the base url with the &feed=URL parameter like in the following example:

http://picklemonkey.net/flipper/convert.php?feed=http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=109573938

This creates a valid RSS Feed for the Japanese 101 Podcast that is available in the iTunes store. The only problem that some users might have with Feed Flipper is the fact that everything depends on the availability of the script on the developer’s website. It is not possible to update feeds if this is temporarily or even permanently unreachable. It can also happen that Apple changes a core setting in their iTunes store which could lead to the program not working anymore. The developer has fixed those problems in the post however.

All information to use Feed Flipper are provided above. The developer’s homepage can be accessed here.

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One tool I have found to be the least invasive is Twidge. Twidge does not have an application or daemon running in the background. Twidge does not have a panel applet. Twidge doesn’t even remain open in the terminal window. Twidge just allows you to enter commands that take specific action on your Twitter account. It’s simple, it’s fast, and it’s…well…command line fu-tastic! With that said, let’s install, configure, and use Twidge.

Features

The first thing you need to know is if Twidge offers enough features to convince you to use it. Here is the short list:

• Simple to use.
• View activity of friends.
• Add followers.
• Follow users.
• Archiving of your tweets.
• Automatic URL shortening via tinyurl.com.

And much more.

Installation

As you would expect, twidge can be found in your distribution repositories. So all you need to do is open up a terminal and issue a command like:

sudo apt-get install twidge

or

yum install twidge

or

urpmi twidge

The installation will pick up the curl dependency automatically. After Twidge is installed, keep that terminal open because you’ll need it (at least to begin with).

Configuration

In order to use Twidge you have to configure it to authenticate to your account. To do this you have to run a built-in configuration script issued from the command line. Issue the command:

twidge setup

You will be asked two simple questions:

• Your use(r)name.
• Your password.

That’s it. Now you are ready to start using Twidge.

Usage

The basic usage of Twidge is:

twidge update ‘STATUS’

Where STATUS is what you want to post to twitter (between single quotes).

Of course updating is not always enough. Twidge has a number of built-in tools. Let’s take a look at what they are. NOTE: The basic usage of these tools is:

twidge TOOL OPTIONS

Where TOOL is the tool you want to use and OPTIONS are any options you want to pass to the tool (if any options are available).

Display updates.

• lsarchive: List your own posts.
• lsdm: List direct messages sent to you.
• lsdmarchive: List direct messages you have sent.
• lsrecent: Lists recent posts made by you or those you follow.
• lsreplies: Lists all recent replies made to you.
• lsfollowers: Lists those following you.
• lsfollowing: Lists those you are following.

Action commands.

All of these tools are used in the same way the tools above are used, except in certain instances you proceed the tool name with username like so:

twidge TOOL USERNAME

Where TOOL is the specific tool you want to use and USERNAME is the user you want to send the information to.

• dmsend: Send a direct to a user.
• follow: Follow a specific user.
• unfollow: Stop following a user.
• update: Update your status.

So let’s say you want to update your status to say “Hey everyone, I am reading a cool article on Ghacks right now!”. To do this you would enter the command:

twidge update ‘Hey everyone, I am reading a cool article on Ghacks right now!’

and hit enter when you’re done.

Let’s say, however, you wanted to use I’m instead of I am. The use of a single quote in the middle of that tweet would cause an error. To get around that just enter:

twidge update

and then hit enter. You should notice that you do not get your bash prompt back. What you do now is type in your tweet, without using quotes, and then hit enter. This way you can use contractions without having to worry about proper shell quotes.

Using twidge without command line

Although Twidge is a command line only tool, you can get around opening up a terminal by opening up your desktop’s run dialog and then entering your twidge command there. If you’re using GNOME you hit <Alt>F2 and then enter the Twidge command in the run dialog. This keeps you from having to have yet another window open, and it’s much faster.

Final thoughts

I will make no bones about the fact that Twidge is not nearly as simple as the standard GUI-based tool. But Twidge makes up for that with speed, reliability, and flexibility. Because of its command line nature, you could even create a nifty bash script to use something like fortune and then add that bash script to a cron job so you would get an automatically updated status. Script-fu-tastic!

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For Linux there are plenty of possible RSS feed readers. One of my favorite readers is Liferea. Liferea is a feed aggregator for Gtk/GNOME that is fast, stable, works with most feeds, and takes up very few precious CPU cycles. And Liferea offers numerous features other, simpler, RSS feed readers do not have. In this article you will be introduced to this outstanding aggregator tool for the Linux desktop.

Features

Liferea offers the following features:

• Easy subscription addition/management.
• Bookmark using sites like Zurpy.
• Fast.
• Easy to use email-like thread pane.
• Import/Export of feeds.
• Script manager.
• Subscribe to your Google mail feed.
• and much more!

Installation

Liferea is very simple to install on any modern Linux distribution. In Ubuntu 9.10 you can open up the Software Center, do a search for “liferea” (no quotes), and install. The same steps can be followed with Synaptic. If you are using a Fedora-like distribution you can open up a terminal and issue the command (as the root user):

yum install liferea

Once installed you will find the Liferea menu entry in your Internet sub-menu of the Applications menu.

Using Liferea

Figure 1

When you first fire up Liferea (see Figure 1) you will notice a number of already configured feeds for your enjoyment. Reading an entry from one of the pre-configured feeds is simple:

1. Click on the feed from the right pane.
2. Click on a story in the upper right pane.
3. Read the story in the lower right pane.

If, within the story, there is a link or comments you want to read you only need click on the Comments link or the url link within the article. The nice thing about Liferea is that you can read the entire story from within the application, so no other application is necessary. You are not just given a snippet of the article to preview.

Adding a new feed source

Of course you will most likely want add your own feed sources. Liferea has made this simple as well. Follow these steps:

Figure 2

1. Click the “New Subscriptions” button.
2. Enter the address of the source in the resulting new window (see Figure 2).
3. Click OK

That’s it. Now you will have noticed the Advanced button in the New Subscription window. You will want to go to the advanced configuration options if you need to:

• Change the source type from URL to either Command or Local file.
• Use a proxy.
• Use a conversion filter.

Other than that, just entering the source address is all you need.

Google

As I mentioned earlier, you can also subscribe to your Google mail. To do this follow these steps:

1. Click the New Subscription button.
2. Enter https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom as the source.
3. Click OK.

When prompted enter your Google username/password. Once authenticated Liferea will download your Gmail as a feed.

If you want to add your Google Reader feeds you can do this as well. Follow these steps:

1. Right click an empty spot in the left pane and select New.
2. From the resulting menu select “New Source”.
3. From the Source Selection window choose Google Reader.
4. Click OK.
5. When prompted enter your Google account username and password.
6. Click OK.

The Google feed will automatically update for you, but might take a bit of time to update depending upon how many feeds you are subscribed to with Google Reader.

Final thoughts

Liferea is one of the best RSS solutions available for the Linux desktop. Not only is it easy to use, it’s flexible enough to satisfy even the more critical users.

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The performance of Bing Maps was improved in several ways. Microsoft is now serving maps from seven different locations in the world making it faster for the user to access the information requested. The default Bing Maps homepage has seen a size reduction as well from nearly 700 Kilobytes to less than 500 Kilobytes which should be noticeably by and beneficial to low bandwidth connections.

The full list of changes includes:

• Draggable Routes – Yes! This is a great (and much requested) feature added to Bing Maps allowing you to generate a route, then in the case that you need to change the route, you can simply grab any part of it and drag it to where you want the route to actually go. To use draggable routes, click the directions link in the welcome pane or the car icon near the bottom of the welcome pane. Enter a start and end, generate a route, then grab anywhere on the route to move the route line. The route will regenerate for you.
• Zoom Bar – No longer just a zoom in and zoom out button, the zoom bar allows you to jump to specific zoom levels within predefined settings.
• Command Parsing – Want driving directions? Enter “Bellevue, WA to Space Needle” in the Bing Maps search box. Want traffic info? Enter “Seattle Traffic” in the Bing Maps search box.
• Embed a Map – You can now take a map view right from Bing Maps and embed it into your site. To do this, you’ll want to click the Share button once your map is where you want it to be. You can copy the embed code from there; or, you can click the Customize View link which will take you to the embeddable map customizer (EMC). The EMC allows you to set a map to the map height and width (small, medium, large or custom); the map type (static or draggable); the map styles (road, aerial, aerial w/ labels); and, add links to Bing Maps for Viewing a Larger Map or Getting Directions. Once you’ve set everything the way you want it, click Generate Code and boom! there’s your code. You copy it, then paste it into your web page and you’ll have the map you wanted.
• Dynamic Compute – We’ve moved the processing power closer to the user. Using Microsoft’s ECN, we now have Bing Maps running in data centers in 7 locations around the world. This means wherever you are around the world, you will access Bing Maps from the closest geographic node to where you are physically located.
• New Navigation – We also added a subset of features to a button bar along the bottom of the welcome pane. Each button loads features on Bing Maps. Welcome loads the welcome pane; the car loads the route planner; the star loads My Places, formerly called Collections; the envelop loads the ability to share the map with someone via email, copying a URI or embedding the map into a web page (more on that below); the printer icon is for printing; and, stoplight will load a traffic overlay with flow and incident information.
• World Wrap – no longer will your Bing Maps experience stop at the international date line. Keep going around, and around, and around…
• Diet Bing Maps – The default Bing Maps home page dropped from 678kb to 484kb. It zips through the pipes much faster now.

Bing Maps is a service over at Microsoft’s Bing search engine.

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And then there’s OpenGoo. OpenGoo is an open source collaboration tool that is fully web-based, easy to use, simple to install, and free to use. But is OpenGoo for you and your company? This tutorial will show you how to get an OpenGoo installation up and running so you can kick the tires and find out if it is exactly what you need.

Features

OpenGoo offers all of the standard features of a business-level collaboration suite:

• Text documents
• Spreadsheets (coming soon)
• Presentations
• Task Lists
• E-mails
• Calendars
• Web Links
• Contacts

All you need to install an OpenGoo server is:

• Apache >= 2.0
• MySQL >= 5.0 (5.2 recommended)
• MySQL >= 4.1 with InnoDB support

Now, let’s get on with that installation.

Install

This installation will be done on a Ubuntu 9.10 setup. I have installed this on both desktop and server installation, but regardless of which you have installed, you will need a LAMP server running.

The first thing you need to do is to download the zip file from the OpenGoo download page. I downloaded and installed the 1.6 beta version which works nicely.

Once that file is downloaded, move that file to /var/www. Now, change to the /var/www/ directory and then unzip it with the command:

sudo unzip opengoo_1.6.beta-2.zip

NOTE: If you downloaded a different release, edit that command to reflect the release number.

Once that files is unzipped rename the directory with the command:

sudo mv opengoo_1.6.beta-2.zip opengoo

Now change into the /var/www/opengoo directory and issue the following commands:

sudo chmod -R ugo+w /var/www/opengoo/config

sudo chmod -R ugo+w /var/www/opengoo/cache

sudo chmod -R ugo+w /var/www/opengoo/upload

sudo chmod -R ugo+w /var/www/opengoo/tmp

With all the right permissions in play, it is time to create the database. I like to use PhpMyAdmin to make database creation simple. For more information about installing this tool check out my article “Install PhpMyAdmin for easy MySQL administration“. Use this tool to create a database called “opengoo” (No quotes).

Time to begin the web-based installation.

Fire up your browser and point it to:

http://IP_TO_SERVER/opengoo

Where IP_TO_SERVER is the actual IP Address of your OpenGoo server. You will be greeted with usual welcome screen that will tell you exactly what is going to happen during the installation. Click the Next button to continue on.

The second screen will run the environment checks. If everything gets and OK (and it should be if your LAMP server is up and running and you’ve taken care of all the permissions) click the Next button to continue on.

Figure 1

The third page of the installation (see Figure 1) is the first step that should require you to input any data.

The information should be fairly self explanatory. There is one point of note: If you plan on allowing access to your local LAN you will need to change the Absolute script URL to reflect the proper IP address (or domain).

Once you have all of this information in place, click the Next button which will take you to the congratulations screen where you only need click the Finish button to assume you’ve completed the installation.

Figure 2

Ah, but there is one more step. Figure 2 shows the final step for the installation. Here you need to create an administrator for your installation.

Setup your administrative user and click Submit. You can now log in to your OpenGoo server with your administrative user.

The basic interface

You will log into your OpenGoo server by entering the same address you did for the installation. When you log in you will be at the OpenGoo Getting Started Page (see Figure 3).

Figure 3

The OpenGoo installation will offer a very simple information page that will help you get started on your decision. But as you can see, the interface is laid out quite well. The tools are accessible and very user-friendly.

After using OpenGoo for a while I can assure you if you like Google’s suite of tools, you will like OpenGoo.

Final thoughts

If you are looking for a very cost effect collaboration solution look no further than the open source OpenGoo suite of tools. Not only is it easy to use, it’s simple to install, and free of charge.

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There are a number of possible applications that can take care of this task. In this article I am going to illustrate a few of those tools for you so you can choose which one is the right one for you.  So, without further adieu, let’s get on with the installation and usage. NOTE: All of these tools can be found and installed using the new Ubuntu Software Center. For more information on that tool, take a look at my article “The new Ubuntu Software Center“.

Gmail Notifier

Figure 1

The Gmail Notify  is a very innocuous panel applet that also pops up warnings when you have calendar event notifications set up . The setup of this applet is simple. When you first run the Gmail Notifier a windows will appear (see Figure 1) where you enter your Gmail username/password and configure any options you want. But ultimately all this little applet does is reside in your panel and checks your Gmail Account for new email and pops up alerts.

Make sure, during the configuration, you set your Browser path or when select “Go To Inbox” from the right click menu, no action will be taken.

This entry in the Gmail Linux desktop apps is one of the less flashy, but also less intrusive as, say, the Prism take on desktop Gmail.

Check Gmail

This entry in the desktop Gmail space is one of my favorites. One of the main reasons why I like this one so much is that it only takes a simple mouse over on the panel applet to see a full listing of your Gmail inbox. Now, before you even try to start this application up there is a problem. Out of the box the Check Gmail applet will not be able to log into your account. You will go batty trying to make sure you type in your password correctly. The problem is the executable file in /usr/bin. I’m not sure why the developer has not fixed this (the error has been known since 2007), but here’s the fix:

wget http://checkgmail.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/*checkout*/checkgmail/checkgmail
sudo mv checkgmail /usr/bin/
sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/checkgmail

Figure 2

Once you have done that, Check Gmail will be able to log into your account. Once logged in you will see a tiny red and white applet in your panel that you can right click to get a menu of items to select from (see Figure 2) or you can hover your mouse over to see the first few emails in your inbox and the first couple of upcoming events in your calendar (see Figure 3).

Figure 3

If you do a single left click on the icon your browser window will open for you to log into Gmail. If you right click and select Compose Mail you will also be first taken to the sign in page. Even if you configure Check Gmail to save your password you will still have to sign in to your account before you can read or compose. This is a bit of a frustration and should not be a default behavior. This even happens if you already have a Gmail window open that is authenticated to your account.It would also be nice if you could set the background of the pop up to be transparent so it would be a bit less intrusive, but the application is very usable.

Gmail Prism

What would be a listing of Gmail Apps without including an actual web-based app. I mentioned Prism in my article “Install Prism on Linux for easy to use web apps“. You will find the Prism app listed in Synaptic as Google Mail or Prism for Google Mail. Very little needs to be said about the Prism app other than it’s nothing more than a stripped-down browser window that logs you into your Gmail account. There is no applet to remain out of your way – just a window.

Which is best?

From my experience (and for my preference) Check Gmail gets the vote. Although it has some issues that must be overcome before it will work, once it is working it is the usable of the Gmail applications available. If you rely on Gmail, and check it regularly, you would do well to at least give one of the above a try.

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TubeRadio is another service that makes use of that principle. It offers an interface that resembles that of Apple’s iTunes software. Here is how it works. It begins by entering a song or artist into the form on the homepage of the service. It is alternatively possible to pick one of the artists or genres that are prominently displayed on the homepage.

TubeRadio will search its database for albums that match the song or artist. All of the albums that are found will be displayed with their album cover and name.

Albums are selected with a left mouse click. It is possible to select multiple albums. TubeRadio will then perform a search on Youtube for those songs in the selected albums which are then added to playlists from where they can be played. Registered users have options to save playlists so that they can reopen them whenever they re-visit the website. Another option is to go back to the search and add additional albums by performing new searches. It is furthermore possible to search directly on Youtube instead of the discography search option.

The music is played on the TubeRadio website with a small video being displayed. Basic controls like switching songs, changing the playback volume, repeating, muting or shuffling songs are available. Users can also look at lyrics, biographies or similar songs (if available) while listening to the music.

There is also an option to display albums and artists that are currently in the charts to listen to these songs instead. The only aspect that users might criticize is something that all of these services have to cope with: the quality of the Youtube videos. It can happen that the service does not retrieve the song by the artist but a cover that is performed by another artist.

Just visit the TubeRadio website if you are interested in trying out the service. (via Make Use Of)

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In this article I am going to show you a few tips and tricks that you can apply to the Konqueror web browser to make your Konqueror (and KDE) experience even more flexible and powerful than it already is.

KIO Slaves

KDE Input/Output slaves allows Konqueror to take advantage of external applications making it far more usable. Depending on what kio_slave you want to use the input for Konqueror will be different. Let’s take a look at some of the more useful slaves.

fish://

If you start an address with fish:// you are telling Konqueror to make use of the ssh protocol. With this you can connect to a remote ssh server and even copy/paste to that server from within Konqueror. To do this you would enter an address like:

fish://USERNAME@ADDRESS

Where USERNAME is an actual username on the remote machine and ADDRESS is the actual address of the remote machine. You will be prompted for a password, unless you already have this connection set up for passwordless secure shell connections (see “Five handy secure shell tips and tricks“).

imaps://USER@PASSWORD@ADDRESS:PORT

Where:

• USER is the actual user name.
• PASSWORD is the users password.
• ADDRESS is the address of the imap server.
• PORT is the port used for the imap server.

Quick search

If you enter gg: linux in the Konqueror address bar you will get a page with the Google results of the string “linux”. Konqueror has a lot of pre-configured quick search shortcuts like this. For example:

• gg – Google
• fm – Freshmeat
• froogle – Froogle
• msdn – Microsoft Developer Network
• odp – Open Dictionary
• tr – Technorati
• wp – Wikipedia

You can also create your own by issuing the command kcmshell4 ebrowsing in either the run dialog or a terminal window. In the new window click the New button and then fill out the following information:

• Search Provider Name: Give your shortcut a name.
• Search URI: The URI the site you are adding uses.
• URI Shortcuts: Comma delineated list of shortcuts.

So let’s say I want to create a short cut for searching amazon.com. To do that I would enter the following information:

• Name: Amazon
• URI: http://www.amazon.com/s?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=\{@}
• URI Shorcuts: az,amazon

So now if I want to do a search for the string “Linux” on amazon.com I would just enter:

az: Linux

In the address bar.

Split views

Figure 1

Not only can Konqueror do tabs, it can do split windows. Say you want to do some comparing of windows, or just want to be able to see more than one window at a time. With Konqueror you can split the view either horizontally or vertically by going to the Windows menu and selecting either Horizontal or Vertical and you can have two windows open at once for simple viewing. NOTE: Whichever window has the focus is the window that the address bar will effect. In other words, if you want to change the page on the right pane, click on the right pane and then enter the url in the address bar. If you want to close a pane <Ctrl><Shift>R will close the active window.

Final thoughts

Konqueror is a very powerful, flexible tool that can be extended well beyond its intentions. Have you found a cool trick that applies to Konqueror as either a web browser or file manager? If so, share it with your fellow Ghacks readers.

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Myspace was launched in August of 2003 as a way to compete with the website Friendster which had launched in 2002. It only took 10 days to get Myspace off the ground and on the Internet. In the beginning, the first users were actual Myspace employees and they held contests to see who could get the most users signed up. Many of the employees were also eUniverse users already, so they quickly got the nearly 20-million eUniverse users to sign up to Myspace which very quickly moved it to the top of the social networking sites.

Because the website was doing so well, the owners initially thought they could possibly charge for the service. However, this idea was quickly overruled as they realized that keeping the service free would help in attracting and keeping more users.

The MySpace login page is located directly at the main MySpace page.

The MySpace login requires the user’s email address and password with options to request a new password if the password cannot be remembered. There are also options to log into the mobile version of MySpace to speed up things.

A Myspace webpage contains what is called a user profile. The user profile consists of the blog where the user can tell people about themselves, upload videos they enjoy and tell people what they doing at the time, also called their status updates. They can even add mood status updates along with an emoticon that shows if they are happy, sad, etc.

Below the profile section is the comment section. This is probably one of the most favorite sections of Myspace users because here is where your friends can leave you comments or links to others website or just to say hello and see how the Myspace user is doing.

Another favorite section of Myspace users is the music section. This is where you can add your favorite music along with a music player. When a Myspace friend comes to the webpage, the music player automatically launches and starts playing the music. This is a nice feature because it allows the Myspace user to create and share their favorite music through music playlists.

Bulletins are another feature of Myspace pages. A bulletin is a way of posting a comment or event that the Myspace user would like to post to all of their friends. They are often used to send favorite emails or chain letters. Bulletins are deleted within 10 days.

Another feature of Myspace is the ability to join Groups. It’s a great way for the Myspace user to join groups that he or she is interested in along with other Myspace users. There they can discuss their interests on their own message board and webpage.

Myspace users can also post their favorite videos from Youtube. On Myspace, the user has the ability to embed their favorite Youtube video right into the webpage. This is a nice feature because the other friends can play the video without having to click on a link to get to it. Check out our second MySpace login article for additional pointers on how to log into MySpace and finding the right MySpace login page.

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A mobile version of Friendster is available as well which can also be used by Friendster users with slow Internet connections to log in and use the server faster as it has been optimized for slow connections. It might also be a valid option if you cannot access the normal Friendster website anymore as many organizations and companies block social networks from their computer networks.

The only other option to access Friendster is to use a web proxy or VPN. You might want to check out our web proxy list for pointers. Friendster login problems can also be solved by using a password manager like Last Pass which offers the ability to generate secure passes which are stored in its database. Last Pass can automatically log the user into Friendster without user interaction at all.

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But before we delve into those possibilities we should take a look at the default MySpace login process. The MySpace login form is located on the entry page of the social network. Users who want to log into MySpace need to provide their username (usually the email address they signed up with) and password to do so. A password recovery option is provided on the same page in case the password of the MySpace account was lost or forgotten.

Probably the best way to log into MySpace is by the use of a script or browser plugin that does it automatically. This not only solves the problem of forgetting passwords but will also take care of phishing websites that try to lure the user on a similar looking MySpace login page to grab the user data.

Last Pass is a password manager and web form filler for Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Internet Explorer and Google Chrome. It can generate secure passwords, store them in encrypted form in its database and perform automatic logins on websites. A MySpace login cannot be easier and more secure than that.

Users who prefer a lightweight solution can take a look at various Greasemonkey userscripts which also provide the option to automatically log into MySpace accounts. Users who do not want to install an add-on or use a userscript should bookmark the MySpace page and open it from there whenever they want to visit MySpace. This prevents most phishing attacks that fake the Myspace login page.

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All that it takes now is to move all documents of a project into one folder and share that folder with all project members. The share functionality is added to Google Docs accounts gradually. Notifications appear on screen on the next login if the feature has been enabled.

There are several options to share a folder. It is possible to right-click a folder and select the share option or to use the Share this folder option when the folder has been selected.

Another new feature is the possibility to upload multiple documents at once to Google Docs. The usual controls to upload multiple files (holding shift or ctrl while selecting files) are available to add multiple documents to the upload queue.

These two new features should come in handy for a lot of Google Docs users.

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Here is how Mikko describes what happended in his blog: He posted a warning about a new MySpace phishing website two month ago as a tweet using his Twitter account. This message contained an unclickable url of the phishing website to warn users and spread the word.

Twitter, after two months, figured that the url was a phishing url and made the decision to suspend the account. It is not clear if this was an automatic or manual suspension. The Twitter account of Mikko was restored after two days and the following explanations was given:

I’ve unsuspended your acct.
You were suspended for using the malware URL rnyspeceDOTcom in DMs.
Be careful!
We scan evrythng for malware.

To make matters worse all of his followers and people that he followed were not restored. Both counts showed 0.

The whole incident raises several questions:

• Why was the Twitter account banned after two months and not immediately?
• Why did no one notify the Twitter user about the suspension
• Why did it take two days to restore the account
• Why can’t the followers and followed be restored

Twitter’s reaction fell short and put the blame on the Twitter user rather on an ineffective way of handling the incident. Until things change Twitter users should be very careful what they post in Twitter.

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Yahoo Meme is still in beta but a recent silent change makes it possible to anyone to register an account without invites. That’s a big change to before and it remains to be seen if the developers have opened registrations just for a short time or permanently.

Users who want to try out Yahoo Meme can visit the main page of the service to sign in with a Yahoo account or create a new Yahoo account for that purpose. The process does not take longer than a few minutes the most.

Yahoo Meme offers many advantages over Twitter like the aforementioned ones. The only thing that it currently lacks is popularity. This could change if the service is promoted in the right way by Yahoo. You can follow Ghacks at Yahoo Meme by visiting the official Ghacks page at Yahoo Meme.

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Much like DropBox, with Ubuntu One you do have to sign up for a service. And, as I mentioned in the previous article, Ubuntu One has two levels:

• Free: The free account offers 2 Gigs of storage space.
• Paid: The paid account offers you 50 Gigs of storage space for $10.00 USD per month.

Once you have signed up with an account, you can then install the client, and finally enjoy all the syncing between Ubuntu computers you need. In this article you will see just how to install the client and begin using Ubuntu One.

Signing up

Before we get to the installation process, we must first visit the sign up process. It’s actually quite easy. Go to the Ubuntu One Plan page and select your plan. Once you have signed up for your plan, you then can proceed to the installation process.

Installation

After you have signed up you can then install the software. I will assume you are using Ubuntu 9.04 for this installation. The first thing you need to do is make sure your 9.04 is up to date. So run the Update Manager (found in the Administration sub-menu of the System menu). Once that is done you need to add the correct repositories to your /etc/apt/sources.list file. There is a very simple way to add these repositories to your sources file. If you click on this link allow GDebi to install the .deb file which will create a file in /etc/apt/sources.list.d called ubuntuone-beta-sources.list with the following contents:

# Ubuntu One Beta PPA sources
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntuone/beta/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/ubuntuone/beta/ubuntu jaunty main

Or you could add the above code to your /etc/apt/sources.list file.

I would suggest going with the automatic method, because it will also add the GPG key for you.

Once you have done that you can open up Synaptic (Not the Add/Remove Software tool) with the command sudo synaptic and follow these steps:

1. Search for “ubuntuone-client-gnome” (No quotes).
2. Accept all of the dependencies.
3. Click Apply to install.

Once installed you fill find the Ubuntu One entry in the Internet sub-menu of the Applications menu.

Using Ubuntu One

Figure 1

When you start Ubuntu One for the first time it will also start your browser to the Ubuntu One page. From this page you will need to create an account or sign in to your account. After you sign in you will then have to add the computer you are using to the account. You can add as many accounts as you need. After you add the computer the Ubuntu One icon residing in your GNOME panel will appear, show your files being updated (if there are any), and then the icon will disappear. If you want the icon to remain on the panel you just need to start the application again where you can then configure the icon to appear at all times (see Figure 1).

Here you can also configure Ubuntu One to start upon login as well as limit bandwidth usage.

If you find that the Ubuntu One icon does not show up after the initial sync, make sure you have it set up to connect automatically on start, log out, and then log back in. You should then see the Ubuntu One icon in your panel (see Figure 2).

Figure 2

The Ubuntu One icon you see in Figure 2 is the second from the left (between the Google Desktop icon and the DropBox icon).

You are ready to use Ubuntu One. You will find a new directory created in your ~/ directory called Ubuntu One. Any file you place in this folder will be sync’d with your Ubuntu One account. As soon as you add a file to this folder you will see it automatically start to sync with your Ubuntu One account.

Final thoughts

Ubuntu One certainly one-ups DropBox for simplicity. This tool will make using Ubuntu on the business level all the more easier. You will be able to easily sync all of your files between home and work. Give Ubuntu One a try.

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Microsoft Research has created an online tool called the ESL Assistant which aims to correct errors that are typical for ESL (English as a Second Language) users. The tool is provided as a web form and as a plugin for Microsoft Outlook.

Microsoft Research ESL Assistant has been developed in Silverlight which needs to be installed to access the website. The website itself uses a basic layout. The top form is used to copy English text into it. The online tool will then check the text for errors and display these with suggestions on how to fix them in the lower form. Errors are underlined in the first form and it is possible to use the controls to go forward or backward. It is also possible to click on an underlined word or phrase to go directly to its suggestions.

Not every suggestion offered by ESL Assistant is correct. A check on Microsoft’s Bing search engine displays a percentage ratio for all suggested terms which could be an indicator aiding in picking the right phrase. The final decision has to be made by the user.

The Microsoft Outlook add-in is compatible with Microsoft Outlook 2007. It will place a new button in the Outlook taskbar which will open the ESL Assistant website when it is clicked. The email message is automatically analyzed and corrections are displayed.

The ESL Assistant website contains the web form and the Microsoft Outlook add-in download.

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Trendsmap is a Google Maps and Twitter mashup that solves both of these problems. The tool displays a world map that is displaying popular topics based on the region the user is looking at. It is for instance possible to see right now that the people in the Philippines are tweeting about the typhoon Pepeng while the most popular topics on the US west coast are the movie Zombieland, Halloween and the NL West Champs.

Since Trendmaps is a Google Maps mashup it is possible to zoom in and out of the map. This only makes sense in regions of the world where Twitter is a popular form of communication. A click on a popular topic will display trends and latest messages on the same screen. The box that is displayed on the right side of the website usually contains a short description of the trend and links to websites for additional information.

Trendsmap is an interesting Google Maps Twitter mashup. More so for researchers and users who like to stay up to date on certain topics.

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