Web Upd8

Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx Proposed Themes [Artwork]

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 07:48:22 PST

There's not too much on the Ubuntu wiki proposed artwork for Lucid Lynx, however the Ubuntu Sun concept themes look really nice. Take a look:

More about Ubuntu Sun.

[via ubuntu life - thank you!]

Create A Shortcut To Kill Stop Responding Applications [Windows]

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 05:08:50 PST

In Windows, it take a while to press Ctrl + Alt + Del, then select an application which has stopped responding end select "End task". There is a much easier way to do this, with a simple shortcut which will terminate any non responsive application.

To create a shortcut to kill stop responding applications, right click on your desktop and select "Create a new shortcut".

Point the shortcut to this:

taskkill.exe /f /fi "status eq not responding"

Whenever an application stops responding, double click this icon and the applications which have stopped responding will be terminated.

Note: this does not work on Windows XP Home edition because TaskKill.exe is not installed in this Windows version.

HoldingNuts: Open Source Poker Game Client And Server [Windows, Linux, Mac OS X]

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 02:37:58 PST

HoldingNuts is an open source multi-platform poker client and server game on which you can play the popular Texas Hold'em variant with people all over the world, meet your friends, run your own games and even setup your own poker-network.

Among the HoldingNuts poker game features are: the ability to chat with other players, auto actions (auto fold, auto check, auto call), configurable table view, support for different poker card decks (4 color deck, 2 color deck), taking screenshots of the poker game table, sounds and localization for several languages, including English, Dutch, Romanian, German, etc.

The server has it's own features: poker variant Texas Hold'em (but more to come), Sit'n'Go games with up to 10 players (multi-table tournaments planned), support for many simultaneous games, players can create their own games, auto re-connect, flood protection, server statistics, logging and many more.

Also, all the options for both the HoldingNuts poker game and server are are configurable via a config-file.

The game is still in it's early stages but it's already great and has a lot of potential.

Download HoldingNuts (packages available for Windows, Linux - Debian, Gentoo, Arch Linux -, Mac OS X and source packages).

To install HoldingNuts in Ubuntu, simply run this command:

sudo apt-get install holdingnuts

(also add holdingnuts-server if you wish to also install the server).

Shutter 0.85 Released - Advanced Screenshots Tool For Linux

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 07:38:15 PST

After 15 weeks of development, Shutter 0.85 has finally been released. Shutter is a feature-rich screenshot program. You can take a screenshot of a specific area, window, your whole screen, or even of a website – apply different effects to it, draw on it to highlight points, and then upload to an image hosting site, all within one window.

New in Shutter 0.85:

Shutter now supports undo / redo functionality within the main program
Drag and drop images into Shutter
Capture menus and tooltips
Many UI improvements
Improved Advanced Selection Tool
Improved Window Selection
Notifications - Shutter is now able to use the system’s notification architecture to display some information, e.g. delay, pre-delay and save messages.
Send screenshots via email or instant messenger or use the ‘nautilus-sendto’ dialog if it is available on your system to send it to various targets
Shutter registers itself as an app to open images with

Download Shutter 0.85:

Ubuntu:

You can add the Shutter PPA.

If you don’t want to add the repository you can download these packages instead

Ubuntu Karmic: Shutter

Ubuntu Jaunty: libgoo-canvas-perl (32bit, 64bit, or netbook) and Shutter

Ubuntu Intrepid: libgoo-canvas-perl (32bit, 64bit, or netbook) and Shutter

Ubuntu Hardy: gtkimageview (32bit, 64bit, or netbook), libgtk2-imageview-perl (32bit, 64bit, or netbook), libgoo-canvas-perl (32bit, 64bit, or netbook) and Shutter

For other Linux distributions, see it's download page.

Dual Panel Nautilus For Ubuntu Karmic Koala

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 01:15:18 PST

The dual panel Nautilus which previously was only available for Ubuntu Jaunty is now available for Ubuntu Karmic Koala. Thanks to the author's comment, I kept checking to see when Karmic packages were finally available and it didn't took long until he finally build them.

Download dual panel Nautilus for Karmic:

-i386:
libnautilus-extension1_2.28.1-0ubuntu3~hb1~karmic1_i386.deb (59.3 KiB)
nautilus-data_2.28.1-0ubuntu3~hb1~karmic1_all.deb (4.4 MiB)
nautilus_2.28.1-0ubuntu3~hb1~karmic1_i386.deb (1.1 MiB)

-amd64:
libnautilus-extension1_2.28.1-0ubuntu3~hb1~karmic1_amd64.deb (60.4 KiB)
nautilus-data_2.28.1-0ubuntu3~hb1~karmic1_all.deb (4.4 MiB)
nautilus_2.28.1-0ubuntu3~hb1~karmic1_amd64.deb (1.2 MiB)

You can add the PPA instead of just downloading the files, if you wish. You will also find Jaunty packages in the PPA.

Once you install it, restart Nautilus:

killall nautilus && nautilus &

Then press F3 to open the second panel in Nautilus.

Foobar2000 1.0 Beta Is Out

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:48:03 PST

After 7 years since it's initial release, my favourite Windows music player, Foobar2000, finally reaches version 1.0 beta.

Foobar2000 1.0 beta changes:

New context menu structure - better out-of-the-box layout but less customizable.
Built-in support for Windows Media and RTSP streaming.
“Edit” menu operates on the currently selected object rather than always on the active playlist.
Improved compatibility with multimedia keyboards.
Improved, more customizable album art support.
Portable installs now remember Media Library paths relatively to the install folder.
Reworked Preferences: OK/Cancel/Apply buttons, new layout of standard pages.
New options regarding selection viewer behavior.
Default User Interface: new pseudo color code system for status bar and playlist view.
CD ripping improvements:
- Results can be now checked against the AccurateRip database on-the-fly.
- CD-TEXT reading support.
- Ability to choose individual tracks to rip in the “Rip Audio CD” dialog.

If you are still using a bloated music player such as Winamp, you should really give Foobar2000 a try. Just take a look at these Foobar2000 themes (most are not compatible with the latest Foobar2000 releases, but maybe some designers will create some up to date themes once they see the potential of Foobar2000).

Download Foobar2000 1.0 beta: torrent | direct download

[via downloadsquad]

New, More Colorful Google Home Page Coming Soon

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:48:36 PST

A small number of Google users should already see the new Google main page with a new look to the Search Options. This will be released to everyone some time after the New Year.

This is how the new Google home page will look:

And here are the sprite image (as you can see, the image is hosted on Google.com):

More about this: Searchengineland

Maximus: Do Not Automatically Maximize Newly Opened Windows [Quick Tip - Linux]

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:50:00 PST

We covered Maximus a while back:

Maximus will make sure that each window is maximised (hence its name) as soon as it’s open. The windows will also miss their title bar, freeing up precious screen real estate.

Maximus also comes by default in Ubuntu Netbook Remix. One annoying thing is that it maximizes every window you open, even small windows which should not be maximized.

Here is a quick way to tweak Maximus so that it doesn't maximize every window: press Alt + F2, enter gconf-editor, navigate to: /apps/maximus/no_maximize and set it to "true" (Do not automatically maximize newly opened windows. If undecorate is set, will still undecorate maximised windows.)

Mount ISO with WinCDEmu 3.0

noreply@blogger.com (SymbianFreak) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 03:36:51 PST

WinCDEmu is a free, open source virtual drive mounting software allowing you to easily mount iso images of your CDs and DVDs exactly like you would do with Daemon Tools or Virtual Clone Drive softwares. The main advantage is that, this one is really, really tiny piece of software (about 500KB).

WinCDEmu makes mounting CD/DVD images simple: double-click on an image file in Windows Explorer and a new drive letter with the mounted image will appear. You can mount as many images as you want at the same time, and you don't need to reserve drive letters when nothing is mounted. WinCDEmu supports ISO, CUE, NRG, MDS/MDF, CCD, IMG formats and runs on all Windows versions from WinXP to Win7.

Download WinCDEmu

Download Google Chrome OS .vmdk (Virtual Machine Disk) (via Torrents)

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 06:42:00 PST

Post updated with Megaupload download links with Chrome OS for VMWare and VirtualBox.

Mark Renouf has compiled a VMware hard disk image of Chrome OS for testing out in your virtual machine environment [via lifehacker]:

This is a ChromeOS image converted to VMware .vmdk file. It was built from instructions provided on the ChromiumOS developers site:
http://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/dev/chromium-os/building-chromium-os/build-instructions

Built from sources retreived on 11/19/2009, following the announcement of the opening of the ChromeOS source code.

Shared user password (for sudo, etc is 'chromeos')

The image can be downloaded the Pirate Bay.

Keep in mind that Google Chrome OS might now be usable for now and that the source code has just been released yesterday.

Instructions for using the .vmdk image in VirtualBox can be found at TechCrunch.

Update: Korben (thank you!) uploaded the Chrome OS to Megaupload. There is a virtual machine disk image for VMWare and one for Virtualbox:

Download Chrome OS for VmWare (.vmdk)

Download Chrome OS for VirtualBox (.vdi)

Canonical Is Contributing Engineering To Google Under Contract

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:32:23 PST

Cannonical just announced on their blog that they are "contributing engineering to Google under contract". For Chrome OS, obviously.

More about this, on the Canonical blog.

Live From Google Chrome OS Event (Info and Screenshots)

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:28:28 PST

We’re here today to talk about Google Chrome OS. We aren’t launching it today and not beta today. But we’ve made progress. As of today the code will be completely open. We’re excited to announce this.

You can view the event live, here (don't worry, it works on Linux too).

What is Chrome OS?

Live updates:

Chrome OS source code: http://src.chromium.org/

-In Google Chrome OS, EVERY application will be a web application!

-The boot process is one of the most important things. Right now Chrome OS boots in 7 seconds:

-Basically, Chrome OS is Google Chrome!

-Chrome OS will be released 1 year from now.

The first REAL Chrome OS screenshots from the Live video stream:

-Multiple desktops will actually be multiple Google Chrome:

-Any application is actually an URL:

-Google Chrome OS applications:

-The root partition will be read-only! This means that if you break the system, all you have to do is restart the computer and everything will be up and running again. Also great from the security point of view (but not from the end-user point of view, I might add).

-You CAN'T install Chrome OS on your machine. You will have to buy a Chrome OS machine. Also, Chrome OS does not operate on a normal Hard Disk. It will only support solid-state drives and certain types of WiFi cards.

-They are waiting for feedback from the Open Source community - you can run it today (source code is already available). But I might ask: how will it work if they said it won't work on a normal computer? We'll see...

-What you see in Chrome OS will be available in Google Chrome (the browser).

-Users can't install binaries on Chrome OS.

-Chrome OS will be able to run on desktops and laptops, etc. in the future, but for now, Google is concentrated on optimizing it for netbooks.

-Android apps will not run on Chrome OS, at least not in the near future.

That's it, the Chrome OS event has ended. Thank you for reading my live updates.

Google Chrome OS UI Concept Video

Update: Download Google Chrome OS .vmdk (Virtual Machine) Image

More on Google Chrome OS:

Fedora 12: How To Ruin An Almost Perfect Linux Distro

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 07:33:50 PST

I must admit, I didn't have time until now to install Fedora 12 on my system, but I have read a lot of great reviews about it and I was waiting for the week-end to give it a try myself. Then I found THIS.

Fedora 12 allows any user to install applications without asking for a password. The change in Fedora 12 has caused consternation amongst Fedora users (see their complaints, here). The change is part of PolicyKit's policy for desktop users and was made to make the system easier for desktop users. Easier how? Here's what a Reddit user has to say about this:

This is about the dumbest commit in a mainstream linux distro that I've seen in the last 10 years. What's worse, is people don't even get what the big deal is. Even WINDOWS knows not to do this now. Before UAC, it at least had "Administrator" accounts in XP home. Congratulations, you are now on par with Windows 98.

or:

you are now vulnerable to local root exploits not only in packages you installed, but also in packages you chose not to install.

For users who wish to return to the policy of always prompting for a root or administrator password, the command:

sourcepklalockdown --lockdown org.freedesktop.packagekit.package-install

Read more about this change, HERE.

Update: Paul W. Frields, the Fedora Project Leader and chairman of the Fedora Project Board has made some clarifications:

The PackageKit installer as shipped in the original release only allows users at the local console to install software without a root password.
The PackageKit maintainers have changed the defaults in an update to be issued shortly

See his comment below.

Set Up Custom Email Alerts In Google Analytics

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 02:43:36 PST

A new features was introduced a few days ago in Google Analytics, called "Analytics Intelligence", which monitors your website's traffic. Anytime something significant happens, it adds an automatic alert in your Intelligence reports. If your bounce rate suddenly jumps on one of your referrals, Analytics Intelligence creates an alert.

You can view these alerts on the Google Analytics Inteligence submenu:

But here is how to also create email alerts: on you Google Analytics dashboard, on the left side menu, click on "Intelligence" and then select "Daily", "Weekly" or "Monthy". You will then be able to create a custom alert for the period you selected:

You will then be redirected to a new page where you must enter a name for your alert, select the profiles you want to activate it for (if you only have one, skip this), and the custom alert parameters. Don't forget to check "Email me when this alert is triggered"!

Under "Alert conditions", you can choose the parameters for which Google will create an alert for. Here is how an alert I have created for Google search traffic dropping by 5% compared to the previous day looks like:

You'll then receive a custom alert, posted in your Daily Alerts, whenever one of these things happens. If you checked the "Email me when this alert is triggered" option, you'll know what's going on even if you're not checking your reports, receiving an email on each occurrence of your custom alert.

Sumatra PDF Viewer Is A Lightweight, Portable Alternative To Adobe Reader [Windows, Open Source]

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 01:17:33 PST

Sumatra PDF Viewer is a lightweight, very quick alternative to Adobe Reader for Windows. The open source application is just 1.2 MB (Adobe Reader takes up 199 MB after installation) in size and uses about 11 MB of RAM on my system (compared to 55 MB for Adobe Reader - tested on a single page PDF):

The focus is to build a small and simple program that starts up fast and offers basic features needed for comfortable on-screen viewing of PDF files. Simplicity and elegance have higher priority than additional features.

Sumatra PDF Viewer is not a fully-featured application, but it's perfect for quickly opening a PDF, even on an old computer.

Download Sumatra PDF

[via lifehacker]

Gnome Music Player Client (GMPC) + MPD - Just WOW [Linux]

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 06:24:12 PST

GMPC is a GTK2 client for Music Player Daemon. I'm not going to talk about Music Player Daemon again, because we covered it when we talked about Sonata (including how to configure Music Player Daemon - MPD).

This time we will talk about GMPC, or Gnome Music Player Client, which is a lightweight client for MPD, extendable through plug-ins: alarm, album view, AWN applet, dynamic playlist, fullscreen info, jamendo, last.fm, libnotify, lirc, lyrdb, lyricsplugin, lyricwiki, magnatune, wikipedia info, taglib (for editing tags) and so on (in the latest version).

The latest version (0.19.1) of GMPC adds a lot of new features, such as:

Dynamic playlists
Lots of new plugins (se above)
Now Playing window: This shows a page full with metadata information about the playing song.
Fully rewritten and more flexible metadata system.
Metadata selector: You can now look through all the results returned by the metadata plugin and pick the cover, lyric, etc you like best.
Guitar Tabs.
Similar genre support. (For now only used by dynamic playlist plugin).
Support for mpd's 0.15.0 single and consume mode.
Show the title of the next song. (requires mpd 0.15.x)
Translatable plugins: (Partial) translated plugin preferences pane.
Integrated favorites support.
A firefox like status bar, indicating repeat state, random state and when used the state of the dynamic playlist plugin.

For a full list of new features in MPGC 0.19, see THIS page.

Even though through plugins, GMPC becomes a fully featured music player and manager, it's still one of the fastest applications of this kind: currently it handles a play queue with more than a 1.000.000 songs without a problem. I have a collection of almost 40.000 songs and GMPC uses about 30 mb of RAM with all the plugins installed (the author says that for it's database of 32.000 songs, it used 11 MB of RAM but I guess that was either an older version, or he didn't test it using all the plugins).

Let's install GMPC in Ubuntu

If you configured MPD for Sonata, all the settings will also be used for GMPC (obviously). If not, configure MPD first.

NOTE: the mpd --createdb command doesn't work with the latest MPD. Instead, after installing GMPC, simply select Server > Update Database. You will then see a blue icon in the bottom right corner saying the music database is updating.

For this post, I am going to cover install GMPC from the trunk PPA, meaning it will be the latest version (0.19.1 at the time I am writing this post) but there might be bugs. If you want to add the stable PPA, see HERE.

Now let's get started:

1. Before installing GMPC, we must update MPD. So add the following PPA:

-For Ubuntu Karmic Koala:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gmpc-trunk/mpd-trunk

-For Ubuntu Jaunty, Intrepid or Hardy:

sudo sh -c "echo 'deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/gmpc-trunk/mpd-trunk/ubuntu YOUR_UBUNTU_VERSION_HERE main' >> /etc/apt/sources.list"
sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com C116A57C

Replacing YOUR_UBUNTU_VERSION_HERE with jaunty, intrepid or hardy.

Now upgrade or install MPD if it's not already installed:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
or:
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install mpd

2. Adding the GMPC trunk PPA.

Open a terminal and paste these commands:

-for Ubuntu Karmic Koala:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gmpc-trunk/ppa

-For Ubuntu Jaunty, Intrepid or Hardy:

sudo sh -c "echo 'deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/gmpc-trunk/ppa/ubuntu YOUR_UBUNTU_VERSION_HERE main' >> /etc/apt/sources.list"
sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com CA0EB130

Replacing YOUR_UBUNTU_VERSION_HERE with jaunty, intrepid or hardy.

3. Installing GMPC (Gnome Music Player Client).

Now, to install GMPC, simply run this command:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install gmpc

The following command will also install all the plugins available in the PPA:

sudo apt-get install gmpc-plugins

After installation, you will find GMPC under Applications > Sound & Video > Gnome Music Player Client

NOTE: Some of the internet fetching plugins might cause gmpc to crash if you have "wins" enabled for your host in /etc/nsswitch.conf.

GMPC and Last.fm

The last.fm plugin in the latest GMPC version only fetches artist images, generates playlists, etc. To be able to scrobble your music to last.fm, you must install mpdscribble:

sudo apt-get install mpdscribble

Then press Alt + F2 and enter:

gksu gedit /etc/mpdscribble.conf

MPDscribble has scrobbling support for last.fm, libre.fm and jamendo. Just edit the file above with your username / password.

Some last notes

Although the name suggests it, GMPC does not depend on Gnome anymore (for the last 4 years).

GMPC is very portable and will run on Linux,Solaris, Mac OSX and Windows and have been used on embedded/low end hardware like openmoke, one-laptop-per-child etc. You can grab source files and Windows binaries from HERE.

My verdict on this application: just WOW! I can't stop saying that ever since I started using it (just about when I started writing this post)

First Details - Internet Explorer 9

noreply@blogger.com (Ireena) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:12:23 PST

After the launch of Windows 7 complete, Microsoft is finally focusing its attention on Internet Explorer 9, having huge pressure from Firefox and Google's Chrome browsers.

Microsoft has revealed the first details of Internet Explorer 9 at the Microsoft Professional Developer’s Conference in Los Angeles, according to Mashable.

The new browser has only been in development for three weeks, but it seems like IE9 will have some standard improvements. The browser is a long way away from its release so there’s no telling what it will be able to do and whether it can match Safari, Chrome, and Firefox.

Some details:

- On HTML 5: The company doesn’t seem willing to commit to the standard until it is set in stone, but “wants to be responsible” about supporting it.

- On JavaScript: Microsoft admits that the previous versions of IE do not match the speed of Firefox or Chrome, so it is willing to narrow this gap.

- On CSS Support: It looks like IE9 will finally get better CSS support, especially for rounded corners, years after the other browsers.

- On Hardware Acceleration: IE9 will utilize DirectX hardware acceleration to improve graphic and AJAX rendering and it will push more work towards the GPU.

Firefox 3.6 Beta 3 Released

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:15:00 PST

Mozilla has released Firefox 3.6 beta 3, just 1 week after the previous beta 2.

This is a bug fix beta release, introducing over 90 bug fixes, among which:

A new API will now allow add-on developers access Firefox’s geolocation features.
As expected, tab previews on Windows 7 taskbar has been pulled back. This is a real disappointment: there will be no support at all for some of Windows 7’s most welcomed features: jump lists, download progress in the task bar (a la IE8), and now no tab previews.
In the security/stability front, the Firefox components directory is now locked down, which means no third party provider will be able to write to Firefox’s components folder. More details in Mozilla Developer Center.
The extensions.checkCompatibility preference becomes less relaxed. In the past, it has been abused by users as a way to force incompatible extensions to work with newer Firefox versions. The preference is still there but it will have to be more explicit. For example to force them to work with Firefox 3.6, you wll have to add extensions.checkCompatibility.3.6 and set it to false. For future versions you will need to set extensions.checkCompatibility.3.7 to false and so on. See Dave Townsend’s post for more details.

Download Firefox 3.6 Beta 3 | Ubuntu users have a PPA which they can use to install the latest Firefox 3.6.

13 New / Recently Updated Ubuntu (Gnome) Themes [18.11.2009]

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 08:14:21 PST

1. HumanGraphite

2. BlackBird

3. Karmic X

4. sGrey_murrina

5. Techo gtk2

6. xpro2_port

7. Simple Grey

8. Appollo

9. DarkShible

10. Tozan

11. Cowlooks

12. Sonar

13. Google 2.0-final

And don't forget about the Bisigi Gnome Themes which come with an Ubuntu repository - they are constantly updated

Chrome OS Event: Demo And Info Expected On Thursday

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 03:50:28 PST

Google is planning to hold a special Chrome OS event Thursday morning, in which they plan to give some technical info and show off some demos on the new Chrome OS.

Google had been planning to release at least part of Chrome OS this week. That still may be the case at this event, but it looks for now that the more complete launch will in fact take place next year. This could mean that an alpha or pre-alpha release of the new Linux operating system by Google is just around the corner.

[via techcrunch]

How To Install Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Beta In Ubuntu Linux

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:46:53 PST

Like we told you earlier today, Adobe released the beta version of it's Flash Player 10.1. But the file comes in a .tar.gz package so if you are new to Ubuntu, installing Flash Player 10.1 beta may not be obvious to you.

Here is what you need to do to install Adobe Flash Player 10.1 beta in Ubuntu (presuming you already had adobe-flashplugin installed):

1. Download the Linux package from HERE.

2. Go to /usr/lib/adobe-flashplugin/ and rename libflashplayer.so to libflashplayer.so.old. You can do this using a terminal command:

sudo mv /usr/lib/adobe-flashplugin/libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/adobe-flashplugin/libflashplayer.so.old

The reason for renaming the old flashplayer to .old is that if the new Flash Player 10.1 beta doesn't work properly, you can always go back to the previous version.

3. Extract the archive and copy the file called libflashplayer.so from the archive you just extracted, to the /usr/lib/adobe-flashplugin folder.

And as a final note, I can tell you that the new Adobe Flash Player 10.1 beta works much smoothly for me, but this will definitely not be the case for everybody (unfortunately).

Netfleet: Download Manager for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows

noreply@blogger.com (Mahdi) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 05:54:01 PST

Netfleet is a download manager and accelerator for Windows, Linux and Mac OSX. According to its website "this program tries to accelerate the downloading process by using multiple connections for one file."

In the program's preferences dialog you can set "maximum running tasks" and the number of split threads, among other things.

Download Netfleet (Packages available for Windows, Ubuntu .deb and source packages)

New Features and a New Look for Google Translate

noreply@blogger.com (Ireena) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 04:51:59 PST

Google has launched today three new features for it's Translation Service - real time translations, (a really cool feature in my opinion), read and write any language (and a new input transliteration feature for Arabic, Persian or Hindi) and text-to-speech.

All this in a brand new look.

Google Translate offers 51 languages, representing over 98% of Internet users today, and 2.550 language pairs.

But let's talk more about the new features:

- Instant translation - Google Translate now translates your text right as you type.

- Read and write any language - can't read a Chinese text? You can click 'Show romanization' to read the text written phonetically in English. According to the Google Official Blog, it works for all non-Roman languages except for Hebrew, Arabic and Persian. Also, it has a new input transliteration feature for Arabic, Persian or Hindi - if you want to translate from one of these languages, but can't type the script on your keyboard, Google input transliteration feature will allow you to type words as they sound and convert them to native script.

- Text-to-speech - available for when translating into English. You can now also hear translations in spoken form, by clicking the Speaker Icon.

SUPER: Windows GUI For FFmpeg, MEncoder, MPlayer, x264, Musepack, Monkey's Audio, Wavpack, Etc.

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 04:03:02 PST

SUPER (Simplified Universal Player Encoder & Renderer) is a GUI to FFmpeg, MEncoder, MPlayer, x264, musepack, monkey's audio, true audio, wavpack, ffmpeg2theora and the theora/vorbis RealProducer plug-in.

SUPER can manipulate and produce many multimedia file formats supported by its back-end programs. Back-end program features supported by SUPER include saving various streaming protocols (mms, rtsp, and http), conversion of Flash Video to other formats, and user-controlled conversion of video between different container formats. Users can chose between various lossless direct audio/video transfers between container formats or lossy video/audio encoding, with encoding possessing the added ability to change video and audio specifications such as bitrate, frame rate, audio channels, resolution, sampling rate, and aspect ratio.

SUPER is also able to utilize its back-end's built-in media players, allowing playback of supported video and audio formats.

Requirements:

At least 1800 MHz Intel Pentium4 processor or equivalent. (64-bit CPU not supported)
512MB of RAM or more.
20GB of free Hard disk space or more.
1024 x 768 video resolution or larger.
32,000-color video or more.
IE 5.5 or later.
Internet connection.

Since it's a GUI for quite a big list of command line tools, it also has a LOT of features. To see a list of all SUPER features, see THIS page.

Download SUPER

SUPER was suggested to Web Upd8 by Mahdi. Thank you!

PeaZip: Open Source File And Archive Manager For Windows And Linux

noreply@blogger.com (Andrew) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 03:14:55 PST

PeaZip is an open source file and archive manager: cross platform, available as portable and installable software for 32 and 64 bit Windows (9x, 2k, XP, Vista) and Linux. While PeaZip is open source, some archive formats are not, but that's another story...

Currently, 87 file extensions are supported ranging from 7Z, RAR, TAR and ZIP to experimental ones like PAQ/LPAQ family, currently the most powerful compressor available:

Full support (read and write): 7Z, 7Z-sfx, ARC/WRC, BZ2/TBZ2, custom, GZ/TGZ, PAQ/LPAQ, PEA, QUAD/BALZ, split, TAR, UPX, ZIP
Read only (browse, extract, test): ACE, ARJ, CAB, CHM, COMPOUND (MSI, DOC, XLS, PPT), CPIO, ISO, Java (JAR, EAR, WAR), Linux (DEB, PET/PUP, RPM, SLP), LHA/LZH, LZMA, Mac (DMG/HFS), NSIS, Open Office files, PAK/PK3/PK4, RAR, SMZIP, U3P, UDF, VHD, WIM, XAR, XPI, XZ, Z/TZ
Repair: ARC

PeaZip allows to apply powerful multiple search filters to archive's content; create and extract multiple archives at once; create self-extracting archives; export job definition as command line; save archive's layouts; bookmark archives and folders; scan and open with custom applications compressed and uncompressed files etc.

Other features: strong encryption, robust file copy, split/join files (file span), secure data deletion, compare, checksum and hash files, system benchmark, generate random passwords and keyfiles.

There are also a few plugins available for PeaZip - you can find them HERE.

Download PeaZip for Windows and Linux - both GTK2 and Qt (download page includes .deb and .rpm files).

[via ubuntu life]