Google Apps for Your Domain

Apparently, it is not very difficult to get into the “Google Apps for your Domain” beta testing. I heard about it this morning and signed up. Luckily for me, I was granted access immediately. For those of you who dont know “Google Apps for your Domain” is, its google’s new venture. Your domain gets private-labeled email(gmail),IM(google calendar) and calendar tools(google calendar) and also you are able to use google page creator to create pages and post them to your website. Everything is hosted by google and for calendar,gtalk and gmail to work, all you have to do is change some dns settings for your domain.You get email addresses folowing the format email@yourdomain.com .  You sign into your email at https://www.google.com/a/yourdomain.com  . So far, as far as I can see, its the same gmail(that everyone uses) which has been bundled into this offer. Right now, I am slighly concerned about privacy. Will google be permanently storing all my mail like how they do it for gmail? If pushed by the government, are they going to release my mail to the government? 

technorati tags:google, gmail

Blogged with Flock

My favorite Linux(Ubuntu) apps

After getting asked by some of my friends new to Linux(Ubuntu) what some of my favorite software were, I have decided to compile (no pun intended) a list  of my favorite software on Linux. I am sure some of you out there have better alternatives to some of the software I am going to list. Please feel free to leave a comment telling me,I would be glad to find new and better alternatives. Also feel free to leave comments telling me about some other software that you guys use and love a lot that aren’t listed here. I will try and incorporate all suggestions into this list. Please remember that the software are not listed in terms of how much I prefer them to the other software in the list. So here we go:

1. XChat:  My favorite IRC client for Linux. It is heavily extensible and is user friendly.
2. Rhythmbox: One of my favorite music players. Most people prefer xmms but I have this weird problem of xmms policing my soundcard and preventing other programs from using the soundcard when xmms is in use.
3. gFTP: My favorite FTP client. I supports regular FTP and all other secure FTP protocols and even SSH2.
4. Flock: Favorite web browser.Based on firebox and uses firefox code, Flock is a social browser. It has soo much inbuilt features.
5. Liferea: The offline feed reader. Liferea distinguishes itself from other feed readers by allowing you  to read your feeds even when you are offline.
6. Gaim: The all inclusive IM/IRC client for Linux. It allows you to communicate with friends on almost all the other IM protocols.
7. Thunderbird: The email client. It is a kickass email client from the good folks at Mozilla.
8. Skype: Skype caters all my VOIP needs. It even allows me to call any number in the USA for free.
9. Tomboy: A desktop note taking app for gnome.
10. Automatix: Install some basic software easily. (A good tool for newbies)
11. Gedit: A simple text editor
12. Streamtuner: Listen to a variety of internet radio stations
13. Dvdrip: Rip and backup your dvds
14. Mplayer: Watch any type of movie
15. Open Office: Make spreadsheets, write documents and make presentations easily
16. Audacity: A voice recording suite
17. Avidemux: Video authoring
18. Gimp: Image authoring and manipulation tool
19. Amule: P2P client
20. Bittorrent: Bittorrent client (I would have preferred if there were a Linux version of utorrent)
21. Screem: Web authoring tool

I probably left out a lot of other important tools so don’t hesitate to leave a comment.

technorati tags:gnome, Linux, Liferea, Tomboy

Blogged with Flock

FLOCK STUFF

Hi everyone. Its been a long time since I updated this blog with soem meaningful news. Sorry for that.

First of all, I am wishing Flock QA engineer Lloyd luck in all his future endeavours. Unfortunatley for the flock team, Lloyd is moving back to Canada with his bride. I wish him luck in all his future endeavours. I am sure almost every flockstar will be very sad to see him go considering how helpful and considerate he is.  We will all miss him. Good luck Lloyd and have fun in Canada.

Secondly, I would have thought most flock users will have heard of it but apprently not. Mr. McTones (thats the only part of his name I know) has released his MiniMapper flock extension. This extension adds support for google maps in the maps topbar. So for all of you who have been complaining about how “sucky” Yahoo maps is(or you just dont like Yahoo Maps), please go download this extension. The extension also gives you a choice in choosing which map service you will like to use(google or yahoo) and also view places nearby in platial.com  McTones has written a whole changelog here so go see it for any additional features.

Also, finally, Flock is getting youtube support. Right now, its really crude but its a step in the right direction. For now in the hourly builds, you can browse youtube videos through the photo topbar. Just go to “All public photos on” and choose youtube. *PLEASE BE AWARE THAT THE HOURLY BUILDS ARE NOT STABLE AND YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE IF YOUR COMPUTER SUDDENLY DECIDES TO GOBBLE UP YOUR DINNER* .

Ok, so its goodbye for now. More flock news and other news coming later on. Oh and if do have some spare ALLPEERS beta invites. Send me a note thorugh the contact page and i will shoot you one.

Blogged with Flock

Songbird Media player on Mac

Rob Lord of the Songbird Media player fame has published a screenshot showing Songbird running on a Mac. Its about time we saw some conclusive evidence that we would be getting Linux and Mac versions of Songbird before the summer is over. Personally,I think it would be a good idea if the Songbird folks set up something telling us the users how far they have gone and the progress they are making cos the long spells with no news about Songbird is lowering the interest in it. Here’s to hoping Mac and Linux ports of Songbird will be released by the end of this month. Oh, and Rob, can you guys also post screenies of Songbird runnig on Linux?

PS: Rob Lord is a Flockstar!!!!!

Blogged with Flock

UPDATE

I set up my new website and I am transferring my posts to it so please bear with me. You can visit my new blog here. I am still going to be maintianing this blog but that blog will be updated faster and regularly than this.

Blogged with Flock

Enough of the promises

I know,I know. I promised to start blogging again a long time ago but nothing surfaced. i was in the middle of some work and so had to finish it first. Hopefully with the work done, I can now start concentrating on full time blogging again. Thanks to all my numerous readers/suscribers of feeds from this blog. You guys motivated me to get out of this rut and start blogging again. Till my next post, adios.

technorati tags: hiatus

Peekko:Chat the web

As most of my readers have noted, I am a sucker for an app related to “social web” . I was among the first people to blog about and try out Chatsum. So,I found out about Peekko from a friend and decided to try it out. First of all,Peekko is also a firefox/flock extension  that allows you to chat with other Peekko users about a common website/page. Peekko runs over an irc chat server. Here is a screenshot of Peekko runnig in firefox:

As you can see Peekko is craddled at the bottom of the browser window so as to conserve screen real estate. You can customize the chat window. Also,you are allowed to register your nickname but not a channel. The Peekko toolbar shows you the number of people chatting on a channel and you can toggle both the toolbar and chat window on and off. For those privacy nuts,you can browse without getting any info sent to the Peekko server by just checking the browse invisibly button. Also, you can embed a chat window in your website so that visitors can see what is being said in a channel. Almost all irc commands work here. Though,I have been using chatsum for some time,I very much prefer peekko becuase it has more users onlnie and i am assured to find someone in the main peekko window anytime of the day. Another feature that clinches the deal for Peekko is its translation bot,rbot. You just need to register yourself  for the language you speak and rbot will translate all the chat transcripts into that language. Right now, transaltion is supported for about 8 languages including frech,spanish,portuguese,italian and russian.

Technorati Tags: peekko.firefox, extensions, flock

The ipod phone(iphone)

The ipod phone(iphone)

Originally uploaded by Killeroid.

Info has hit the net that Apple is creating a phone equipped ipod.Apple has been talking to various Tiawanese phone maunfacturers in efforts to get a manufacturing deal.

(sorry for messy post.Remind me later on that,drinks and blogging dont mix)

TUX WINS AGAIN

Another game point for the tux!!! PS3 is going to ship with Linux. How badass is that!!! Yet another reason to get a ps3 when it comes out

BACK

Hi everyone.It's been a long time since I posted an entry. I went on a sabbatical and was working with another friend on his website and blog. it was good time spent away from the blogging world but I finally came back. Thanks to all for bearing with me and to Lloyd,dont worry,somewhere during this week I am going to post the reasons why I love performancing better than the built in blog editor. Cheers.

Flock 0.5.12 – The UPDATE

Just a week after Flock 0.5.11 was released,the Flock Devs have released Flock 0.5.12. Flock 0.5.12 has been released to address a few bugs in Flock 0.5.11. Users of Flock 0.5.11 who also used McAfee VirusScan had spellbound.jar deleted from their chrome folder because McAfee VirusScan thought it was a generic malware. Some users including myself reported this to the Flock Devs and it was discovered that it was a false positive so Lloyd and the other devs have re-ordered spellbound.jar. This was the major bug that was fixed in this new release. Other bugs that were fixed included the breakage of the collections topbar from international characters in favorites.

The upgrade from Flock 0.5.11 to Flock 0.5.12 was really smooth this time. You didn’t have to go delete your old Flock profile or even go download the installer. The auto-update system worked really fine. I am sure this is very good news for Mac users of Flock since most of them lost their blog drafts when they upgraded from Flock 0.4.10 to Flock 0.5.11

Flock is getting nearer and nearer to the 1.0(beta) stage despite all the nay-sayers.

To the Flock Devs,awesome job and keep it up.You guys are the best.

Technorati Tags: flock, bugs, open source,

Flock 0.5.11

Flock 0.5.11 has been released with quite a number of improvements. Toolinux.com (A french site) has a headline that sums up what i fell about this new release.The headline says  “Flock 0.5.11 est encore plus….sexy” . I guess there is no need to translate that into english because it pretty much is very easy to understand.

Some of the new features/improvements included in this release are

1. The addition of private favorite service,Shadows
2. Importation of Firefox settings
3. Flickr Photo Uploader
4. A new blog engine,TinyMCE

The whole list can be found here.

My favorite new feature is the addition of Shadows to the bookmarking/favorites service.In the previous release,we had only del.icio.us as the online bookmarking/favorite service.I love del.ico.us but I hate its inability to let you have both public and private bookmarks. This new Flock release supports both Shadows and del.ico.us so you can choose between the two. Also,you can choose to store the favorite online or locally.

Another new feature that I love is the addition of so more topbars.There is now a maps topbar that allows to drag an adress to it and it will map for you. Unfortunately, the topbar uses yahoo maps so users in europe and other continents wont find much use for it since yahoo maps has limited coverage in europe and other continents.Also,the shelf has been added to the topbar menu and your can store tidbits there

Also, Flock has now bundled TinyMCE as the blog editor.Much better better than the old blog editor but Performancing has more features than it has so  I will stick to Performancing for now.

There is also a Flickr photo Uploader topbar which allows you to upload images from your computer to Flickr via it.My only qualm with it is that,you can’t upload images from web images directly to flickr from it.

Also with the Flickr photo browser topbar,you can now search by text or tags or by user.

So far,though Flock is my primary browser and I use for long streaches of time each day,it hasnt yet crashed on me.

I will in a later post, blog about the extensions that I can’t live without in Flock.

Please download the Flock Browser here.

Gotta go now,Sorry for the shitty post.

PS: This post reflects what I found and thought to be important in the new release but I am sure lots of you have other new features that you love.Sorry,I couldn’t talk more about those features.

Technorati Tags: flock, flock 0.5.11, browser, topbar, TinyMCE, Shadows, del.ico.us,

The Flock browser has flown.

Flock 0.5.11 has been released this evening.I wrote about flock here.More features have been introduced.I will blog more about it after i test it out tonight.i will also blog tommorow about Peekko,an extension for both flock and firefox which allows you to chat about websites but through the irc interface.

Technorati Tags: flock, browser, firefox,

µTorrent is creating a WebUI

       I just found out that the  µTorrent development team is creating a Web based graphic interface for  µTorrent. The project is in its alpha testing phase and it allows you to remotely monitor your bittorent downloads. This webUI can be accesed through the port on which you run  µTorrent.  You would access the webUI through your IP.So, if your IP address is 64.233.167.99, and you run µTorrent on port 666, you can run µTorrent on port 666 through your web browser at  http://64.233.167.99:666/gui/index.html   from any PC.
       The webUI will be locked with a configurable password to allow only authorised people to remotely monitor and control your downloads. The webUI is accessible through Firefox 1.5.1 and through Opera 9.0TP2 and also through IE.

Here is a screenshot,someone took of it whilst using the webUI in Opera 9.0TP2:

More can be found out about this here.

Technorati Tags: µTorrent, bittorent, webUI, torrent, filesharing, utorrent

SONGBIRD: A BOOT IN ITUNES’ ASS

Before I say a word about Songbird,here is a screenshot to feast your eyes on: Are you done feasting your eyes on it? If you are done then read on.As I said earlier,Songbird was released this morning as a proof of concept.The first word I muttered when I saw it was WOW!!! The shiny black alone won many people over to download it.So,..Songbird is a media player just like Apple’s iTunes (Songbird likes almost exactly like iTunes) but with a twist. Unlike Apple’s iTunes which connects you to one store and makes you buy all your music needs from that store, Songbird gives you many choices in search of a music shop.Songbird allows you to connect to and buy music from a very wide range of shops.Songbird allows you to connect to 9(nine) music stores by default but more are going to be added,I am sure.Also,since Songbird is built on the same platform (XULRunner) as Firefox,Songbird functions as a special web browser that detects available media on websites that you visit.Songbird plays any kind of music file that you can throw at it.Also,Songbird is extensible.Modules called extensions can be added to it to be enhanced.Some people are claiming it is a memory hog and it crashes when you start it and open its window immediately,but that hasn’t yet happened to me.When I start Songbird and I maximise the window immediately,nothing happens.Also,its memory footprint is really small on my pc even though I have lots of processes running.The only time Songbird crashed on my pc was when I tried to change the defualt theme whilst I was playing a music file. Also,another bug i noticed in Songbird is that,sometimes the playback time exceeds the specified time.For example,if I am playing Rammstein’s-Du Hast,the file is shown to be 3 minutes long but sometimes playback goes on for about 30 seconds more.Also,a preferences or another tab should be made available to allow configuration of Songbird because not all users know that you can also edit Songbird by going to about:config Songbird is a proof-of-concept so users shouldn’t expect really high standards from it.Also Songbird is for only Windows right now but versions of it for other OSes are in the making and will be released real soon. Though,i hope it moves beyond a proof of concept really soon. The Songbird website was fatally ravished by the traffic so the website is offline but you can download it on different mirrors.Here is a mirror.Boing Boing had an interview with the leader of the dev team here. PS: You got to love the Songbird logo.It shows a birds with headphones on listening to music and farting.I can only guess why the bird is not smiling and is farting.Here is a picture of the logo.

Technorati Tags: songbird, free, itunes, music, XULRunner, DRM

THE SONGBIRD HAS ARRIVED

Finally,the long awaited release of the Songbird media player has arrived.For you who don’t know what it is(duh),it is a media player built on firefox’s browser engine.It is open source and will run on all platforms but currently runs on only Windows.It is highly customizable with moudules created by users called extensions.I am testing it out and will blog more about it later in the day.It looks and acts like iTunes on steroids. Here is a screenshot of it : Technorati Tags: songbird, open source, media player, itunes, gecko, free,

PUBLIC SERVICE MESSAGE

I have just got hold of a new server and so I am gradually moving my posts and stuff there. WLM invite seekers should visit that site for the invites.The new blog is at http://killeroid.profusehost.net/
To all my readers,don’t worry because I am still going to post and update this blog regularly without fail though I will also submit the same posts to that blog.I will fully move to that blog at the end of this year.Thanks a lot.

BLUMMY

Blummy is a simple mini app that lets you organize your bookmarklets under one bookmark.Almost all of us have lots of bookmarklets on our bookmark toolbar and we are tied of it.Blummy has a drop down menu consisting of widgets/bookmarklets called blummlets which use ajax to provide rich functionality. Blummy comes pre-configured with some bookmarklets/blummlets like del.icio.us,shadows,blogmarks,etc. You can also create your own bookmarklets/blummlets. Blummy works on almost every web page.You manage your bummlets form the blummy website.You can drag blummlets created by other users on to your personal blummy to use them.
Here is a screenshot of blummy in use:

Technorati Tags: blummy, bookmarklets, javascript, ajax

NEW FEATURES IN CHATSUM

Chatsum,the awesome firefox extension that I wrote about here and here has implemented some new features that it previously lacked.The Chatsum community has been crying for these features and more in chatsum since chatsum was released. So the Chatsum developers have introduced :

1. Scrolling in chat window
2. User preferences(eg. For openong likns in same window or new tab)
3. Live “Users in this room” list
4. Dynamic transcript timestamps

The absence of scrolling in the chat window was a major pain in the rear ends of most chatsum users and its implementation is a huge relief.
As George,one of the devs say,let the stalking begin!!!

Technorati Tags: chat, firefox, firefox extensions, chatsum

MA.GNOLIA:Social bookmarking with a twist

I got an invite to the private beta test of Ma.gnolia somewhere last week. Ma.gnolia is a new social bookmarking service with a twist. Ma.gnolia describes itself as “Found in the new search”. When I first saw it,I thought,it was one of those ridiculous del.icio.us wannabees with extra dots and vowels.(As someone asked,”Where does that darned dot go again?”) . But that isn’t so, Ma.gnolia does have a twist indeed.It allows you to save your bookmarks publicly and privately.Then, Ma.gnolia also allows you to interact with other users in the community by joining groups,making contacts,creating member profiles and sharing boomarks in groups. It is extremely easy to make contacts with other users.You just go to their profile pages and click on an icon to make them your contacts.From then,you can see their recent bookmarks on your page.You can also create groups or join some groups.After you join a group or create one,you can also see the most recent bookmarks from the group on your frontpage.You can aslo see the most recent bookamarks from the Ma.gnolia community. Each bookmark on Ma.gnolia has it owns page you can rate it and also see a preview of the webpage.Also the page shows the name of users that have it on their bookmarks.Also,when bookmarking pages,you can add tags to these pages.Ma.gnolia has a tags page which allows you to see you tags,your contact’s tags,your group’s tags and everyone’s top tags.Most used tags are in bold and in bigger fonts. Also on the profile pages of each Ma.gnolia user,you can find his/her top tags,a bio that the user wrote about him/herself,the user’s recent bookmarks,his/her contacts and groups. Finally,Ma.gnolia allows you to import bookamarks from your browser.Currently,you cannot import bookamrks from Del.icio.us, Blinklist, Furl or Simpy though plans are in place to allow this soon.Ma.gnolia is also creating an API. My only gripes with Ma.gnolia is that,it takes some time before the bookmarks you upload appear on your bookmarks.There is a bookmarklet for your borwser that allows you to add bookmarks to Ma.gnolia from your borwser. There are rumors in the works saying that a toolbar/bookmarklet like the del.icio.us one is being created. Ma.gnolia is currently an invite only beta. You can sign up for an invite on its webpage. A more indepth review can be found here. A screenshot of Ma.gnolia: Technorati Tags: ma.gnolia, social bookmarking, web 2.0, bookmarking,