Keeping an overview of a media collection can be quite hard depending on the amount of media that you own. Griffith provides a comfortable solution for movie collectors. Adding movies to the movie collection manager is a breeze because it can pull data from dozens of Internet movie databases like IMDB or OFDb including several of their local editions.

The best case is to enter (part of) a movie title and click on the button to search one of the databases. Hits are then displayed in a menu and the user can pick the movie that he owns from the list. All relevant information are then filled automatically. And this can be quite a lot of information including all technical details, cast, plot and rating.

This would take lots of work to fill out manually. Each movie that gets added by the user is shown in the main list which can be sorted and filtered by a lot of parameters.

continue reading "Griffith Multi-Plattform Movie Collection Manager"

Some of you will remember my post a little while back about favorite music players. For most people on Linux, Amarok rules hands down. In fact, Amarok has gained a reputation as ‘the player’ and made a lot of Windows users sit up and take notice, myself included.

The developers at Amarok have been working hard over the months to put forth a new version of the software. The result is Amarok 2.0. The new version is radically different from the previous version and includes a whole new bunch of features.

Amarok doesn’t just have a new look, it also has a new interface. Another new addition is the PopUp Dropper, which lets you add files to a playlist, copy them to an attached device or edit tags, all using simple drag and drop. Apart from that, you can also extract tags from filenames as well as integrate your online music into the player including Last.fm, Jamendo, Magnatunes, etc.

continue reading "Amarok 2.0 is Ready"

Password protecting the Bios is considered a weak protection, something that professionals can find out or reset in no time. Besides the obvious possibilities to set a jumper or remove the bios battery to reset the bios password it is also possible to reveal or reset the bios password by using a software like CmosPwd which is available for Windows, DOS and Linux.

Most users will probably run the application in Windows. To do that they need to access the command line and install a driver that gives “direct port I/O access for specified ports to user-mode process (ring 3) using Ke386SetIoAccessMap and Ke386IoSetAccessProcess kernel functions.” The driver is located in the Windows directory of the software package after unzipping it to the computer.

The command ioperm.exe -i is used to install the driver which can be uninstalled with ioperm.exe -u after the bios password has been revealed. Once the driver is installed the bios password can be revealed with the command Cmospwd_win.exe which displays a list similar to the one below.

continue reading "Reveal or Reset the Bios Passwords"

I have watched the steps of Mandrake-Founder Gaël Duval since he (was forced to) quit the company, not because I was such a big fan of Mandrake (or Linux in general ^^) at all, but because of the announcements and plans he made for his new company, Ulteo. At that time I was investigating so-called ‘online desktops’ to achieve my goal of total portability, and Ulteo seemed like another nice competitor - and one with some experience - to offer a *NIX Desktop-in-a-Browser-solution. Turned out Online-Desktops didn’t grow to meet my expectations, so I turned away from them.

All except Ulteo, to be precise, which hovered at the edge of my attention with their OpenOfficeOnline-Beta, for example. Now they’re back with a piece of software called “Virtual Desktop“, which can be confusing judging from the name, or at least I expected something different from it. But it turned out to be another solution to run Linux-software seamlessly in a windows environment, just like the recently extremely popular andLinux (In fact, both are based on the same core, coLinux, a portation of a Unix-kernel to windows). But since Ulteo’s Virtual Desktop uses less disk space in comparison to andLinux’ full-featured ubuntu (2,5-4,5 GB), I decided to give it a try.

Installation was quick, and since I already had an Ulteo-Account (which is not required unless you wanna sync your local data to your online desktop), I didn’t encounter anything unusual at all.

continue reading "Ulteo Virtual Desktop"

Update: Bruno Miguel pointed out that the official Asus website for Australia is listing different information. Both Windows and Linux EeePC 900 will have the same 20 Gigabyte storage capacity. The Windows model is listed with $799 Australian Dollars while the Linux edition with $649. The Linux edition would be $150 cheaper than the Windows edition of the Asus EeePC 900.

I already see signs of a public outcry in the Internet landscape. How can it be that a version for a free operating system, Linux, is more expensive than the version for Windows XP ? If you know only these facts you might think that Microsoft is using their power to promote Windows on the EeePC 900 by either giving the version away for free or even subsidizing it.

This may very well be a valid point but you have to know the following fact to come to a conclusion. The Windows version of the EeePC 900 will ship with a 12 Gigabyte Solid State Disk while the Linux version will have a 20 Gigabyte one. The price difference between the two versions is $50 Australian Dollars according to website apcmag.

So the reality is that Asus did cover the license cost of Windows and Works on the EeePC 900 by reducing the hard drive of that version. Which version will sell better when the EeePC 900 comes out ? I think it could be the Windows version. It’s cheaper which is always a good selling point and it is Windows, something the users are used to work with. Casual users will have trouble finding out if 8 Gigabytes of additional hard drive space are worth the extra 50 bucks and the time it takes to feel comfortable working with a Linux system.

continue reading "Windows EeePC 900 cheaper than Linux model"