Imagine my surprise when Jojo mentioned that Comodo DNS was blocking ghacks.net, allegedly because it was a hacking / warez site that may offer illegal sharing of copyrighted software and media. Bogus claims obviously, which can hurt a website financially and irritate new and regular visitors. I tried to get hold of Comodo to resolve [...]

Have you ever just wanted to quickly hand a file off to a fellow user on a LAN without having to resort to using an email client or shared folder? Wouldn’t it be nice to just click on a username, send them a file, and have their desktop automatically notify them that the file has [...]

There are reasons why you would want to view a web site off line. Say, for example, you know you are on the go and do not always have access to a network connection, yet you want to be up to date on the latest news. Or you are a developer working on a site [...]

A lot of file sharing services end their services on the Internet after operating for a while. This can usually be attributed to a disparity between server and bandwidth bills and revenue. That’s a big problem not only for Internet users but also for webmasters who tend to report on the better ones on a [...]

The search for the perfect LDAP management tool has brought me around to a tool that is very similar to that of phpMyAdmin (for coverage of this tool, see my article “Install phpmyadmin for easy MySQL administration“). Both of these tools are web-based administration tools for tasks that many find too complex to do via [...]

LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) is one of the more complicated setups for a Linux machine. LDAP is to Linux what Active Directory is to Window. And if you have a lot of users on a network, which log into various machines, you will want something like LDAP in order to retain all of their [...]

One of the biggest strengths of music on the Internet is easy music discovery, something that the music industry still has not understood completely. Users find new music in Youtube videos, Internet radio stations and music blogs, to name a few. Shuffler.fm is offering a service that turns music posted on music blogs into Internet [...]

In my last article I illustrated how to install Enlightenment by checking out the most recent code from the Enlightenment Subversion Server (see “Installing Enlightenment E17 using subversion“). After that article I thought it would be a good follow up to illustrate how to create your own subversion repository. Why? What can you use a [...]

How many machines do you have? How many contacts do you have? How many machines do you try to keep your contacts in sync on? There are a lot of ways to do this. You could copy those contacts on a flash drive and move them back and forth, making sure you add the new [...]

The right archiving software may sometimes be out of reach to unpack an archive. This can be the case when using a public computer in an Internet Cafe or library for instance. Users who need to extract an archive but cannot do so locally can resort to online services to do so. WobZip is one [...]

Collaboration is a key component to working in a business or on a team. There are so many ways to collaborate on a project: Google Docs, Online Whiteboards, Chatting, CMS tools, and many more. One tool, though, has a bit of a different approach. This tool is built into the open source document writer Abiword. [...]

There are so many Linux distributions out there. Some of them are pretty standard and some of them go well out of their way to try to bring something different to the table. I’ve seen just about every take on the Linux desktop. Today, however, I came across a distribution, Peppermint Linux, that added another [...]

I write like who? That was the first thing coming to my mind after pasting in my first text into a form on the I Write Like website, but more on that later. I Write Like is a web service that analyses text pasted into a web form, to come up with a famous writer [...]

Site speed has been added as a ranking factor by Google some time ago. Webmasters since then have started optimizing their websites’ page loading times. Some of the optimizations done included reducing the number of elements loaded when people visit the site, optimizing media elements, minifying CSS and JavaScript, and using web caching technologies to [...]

After many months of pressure, social networking site Facebook has agreed to put a panic button for children and teenagers, according to the BBC. The button will reports abuse to the UK Child Exploitation and Online protection Centre (CEOP) and to Facebook administrators. The move follows months of negotiations between CEOP and Facebook, who initially [...]

For any open source advocate, one of the biggest needs is an Exchange-like server. There are plenty of them available, some of them offer less-than enough features to really be viable. Some of them offer plenty of features but are insanely difficult to install. And then there’s Zarafa. Zarafa is an open source collaborative software [...]

In a recent article I introduced to the Ghacks readers the latest release from Fedora (see “Fedoras Lucky 13“). In this article I mentioned a number of features that helped to make Fedora one of the more user friendly Linux distributions available today.  One of the reasons this is so is the inclusion of some [...]

Where would we be today without social networking? I have heard many tales how a social tool has saved a life or joined two lives together. Just recently a friend of mine found our her son was wounded in war not by the Red Cross, but on Facebook. These tools have become an integral part [...]

Remember Virus Total and No Virus Thanks? The two services allow anyone to upload files to check them in dozens of antivirus engines. That’s very handy considering that no antivirus software solution is yet offering a 100% protection against malicious software and viruses. The developers of No Virus Thanks have created URLVoid which uses the [...]

I’ve owned a Kindle 2 for nearly a year now. I have to say I do love it and am not impressed with the iPad’s ability to allow the user to read books. Why? The Kindle doesn’t offer distractions and I can happily sit by and and read as long as I like with no [...]

On my phone (Android based) I use Google maps like crazy (I’d get lost in my own house I’m convinced). It keeps me from getting lost and misdirected. When at home, however, I like to refer to Google Earth to aid me in my quest to know my surroundings a bit better. Now, Google Earth [...]

If you haven’t experienced Pandora radio you don’t know what you’re missing. Pandora can stream music to your web browser specifically tuned to your tastes. Imagine having that ability right on your desktop – always at your fingertips? Pretty cool eh? Well as of now there is no stand alone Pandora client for Linux nor [...]

Google Translate is one of the most popular online translation services on the Internet. It can be used to instantly translate websites or text into other languages. Many Google services, like Google Docs or Google Reader, make use of Google Translate to offer translation as well. Up until now however there was no way to [...]

For those that use Flckr, it’s always easiest when you have a simple tool that allows quick and painless file uploading. Although logging onto the web site and using the built-in Flickr uploader isn’t difficult, when you have a number of images, or when you upload frequently, this can be a real hassle. So having [...]

Many video content creators want to make sure that they videos reach the largest audience possible. To achieve this they upload their videos to multiple video hosting services such as Youtube, Dailymotion, Facebook or MSN Video. Doing that manually can take quite some time. It would involve accessing the service’s website, logging in, selecting the [...]

Batchgeo is a free online service that maps spreadsheet locations to Google Maps. This can be useful for several purposes including creating a store locator, creating a map, calculating distances, house or apartment buying, finding the best route to visit several locations and more. All that needs to be done to map the locations is [...]

Lately I have been going on and on about the Ubuntu Music Store. So much so, it would seem I have forgotten the other music store that is friends to Linux. Not so. I am still a fan of the Amazon MP3 store and last night I took the opportunity to purchase something. I was [...]

Have you ever been asked to do any Linux desktop remote support only to find out the client didn’t have secure shell (so no tunneling of X) nor did they have a vnc server setup? In these cases, what would you do? You still need to be able to support that client. Or what if [...]

I’m on a roll with Ubuntu One Music Store and I thought I would finish it by showing you how to burn those purchases songs/albums onto CD. Of course, if you haven’t already, you will want to check out the previous two articles: Manager your Ubuntu One Account, and Ubuntu One Music Store has arrived. [...]

Yesterday I wrote about the Ubuntu One Music Store (see my article “Ubuntu One Music Store has arrived“). This little feature is starting to drum up a lot of excitement throughout the Linux community. Although this feature is also drumming up a lot of anger from other distribution communities, it is an outstanding new service [...]

This morning I woke up to write an article for Ghacks. I was searching around for inspiration while I was updating my Ubuntu 10.4 beta install. Near the end of the update I thought “Let’s just check to see the status of the Ubuntu One Music Store”. So I fired up Rhythmbox and, to my [...]

If you’re like me, you do a lot of uploading to pastebin services. Although the task isn’t terribly difficult, sometimes you’re in a hurry and you just wish there was a much faster way. With the help of a little application called Nautilus-pastebin your pastebin uploads are only a right-click away. In this article I [...]

How do you decide what to read and what not to read? The decision might be influenced by past books that have been read (e.g. from the same author or same topic), friend, colleague or magazine recommendations, advertisements, related books that are shown on shopping sites or by simply stumbling upon interesting books online or [...]

One of the many aspects that webmasters need to take care of is to optimize their websites so that users from all over the world can access it without unnecessary delays because of unoptimized contents. One of the things that need to be optimized are pictures that are displayed on the website. Reducing the size [...]

Internet users can experience a variety of problems when connecting to websites and using services on the Internet. Some of these problems are related to the user’s Internet connection while others to viruses or unresponsive or slow servers. It is always a good idea to test the Internet connection before contacting the Internet Service Provider [...]

Is an photo or image real or has it been tampered with? That is a question that sometimes needs to be answered not only because of curiosity but also for more important matters like solving a crime or deciding whether to publish a photo in a magazine or paper. The Image Error Level Analysis is [...]

There are a number of reasons to have to connect to a Windows Terminal Server machine. Either you telecommute, you administer remotely, you work on the go, or you use Linux and have to use a Windows app for company business. No matter the reason, you have to be able to connect. From the Windows [...]

The Linux operating system has gone through a number of “default” chat applications. From the earlier text-based chats like zicq, to the later Gaim, then to Pidgen (still in use), and now (and, hopefully, finally) GNOME has settled on Empathy. Empathy is a messenging program built upon the Telepathy protocol which is based on Gossip. [...]

Every once in a while the Ubuntu User Days Developer Team offers classes for Ubuntu users where you can join a chat room and ask your Ubuntu questions. One of those days is (with little warning from yours truly) today. Although IRC is, to many, a rather antiquated tool, others find it incredibly helpful. So [...]

Over the past years I’ve been using task managers on and off, but one I always come back to is Todoist. While there are certainly more powerful options out there (Remember The Milk), Todoist, to me, is the perfect balance between power and simplicity. If you take a look, you can’t argue that it has [...]

Some Youtube videos are only viewable by visitors from specific countries. Users from other countries are greeted with a red error message stating that “This video contains content from [name]. It is no longer available in your country”. Companies and organizations limit the visibility of their videos on Youtube using country specific IP filters locking [...]

Less than three weeks after the release of the much awaited WordPress 2.9 release milestone comes WordPress 2.9.1, a release that was expected by many because of bugs that some WordPress webmasters encountered after upgrading to or installing WordPress 2.9. The most notable – and annoying bug – was that WordPress seemed to have problems [...]

I sometimes wish that I would be there when my friend, a family member or colleague watches the Youtube video that I have discovered. It sometimes happens if the url of the Youtube video is submitted via a chat interface. I usually open the Youtube video again which is then more or less in sync [...]

If you are a Youtube regular you must have noticed the transition of many music videos that are now shown with a Vevo header that contains a more or less direct request to visit the Vevo website. Vevo is a cooperation between Youtube and several major record labels. The terms of the deal are not [...]

Many webmasters and system administrators need to know immediately when they websites or servers go down. Downtime can mean that business is lost, that search engines record errors when trying to crawl a website and that first time visitors never come back because the website or service is not loading or displaying error messages. Big [...]

The social scene has nearly reached critical mass. You can not peak around the internet without seeing its tendrils reaching deep within the fabric of every site you visit. This, of course, can cause problems with your work, school, or group environment. While work is supposed to be done, your users/employees are socializing on Facebook, Twitter, [...]

File hosting services such as Rapidshare, Megaupload or Depositfiles are immensely popular on the Internet. They offer a comfortable solution of sharing files with other users over the Internet without having to cope with email attachment size limits which usually make large sized file trades very uncomfortable. Some users want to make sure that their [...]

For most lovers of music on the go, the default seems to be the combination of iTunes and iP* (where * is either hone or od). This is great for Apple and Windows users. But where do Linux users get their new music? Oh sure you can purchase the CD, rip it, and copy it [...]

If you’re like me (and I know you are) you have an endless assortment of passwords stored in your head. And, again, if you’re like me your age is defying your memory such that your brain isn’t always so quick to recall that endless stream of random characters you have for passwords (and you know [...]

The iTunes store is offering a good selection of podcasts that iTunes users can subscribe to. Apple uses its own format to serve the podcasts which is problematic for two groups of users. Those who do not want to use iTunes and those who cannot use iTunes. The former group likely uses another software program [...]