Stumbleupon Makes the Internet Fun!

Stumbleupon.com. 

Stumbleupon is NOT a search engine.

Stumbleupon is NOT social media

Stumbleupon is NOT about productivity

Stumbleupon IS a recommendation engine

Stumbleupon is like having your own personal internet-addicted geek that knows you and recommends new site for you to check out.  Nay, the geek DARES you to check out the new sites.  Stumbleupon is like Google’s I Feel Lucky button on steroids. 

Simply choose your interests.  Travel?  Science and Technology?  Humor?  Internet? Books?  Bizarre/oddities, etc.  Then start stumbling.  Stumbleupon will then pull up a web site that it thinks you may like depending upon the boxes you have selected.  A toolbar will affix itself on the top of the web site.  If you like the site, click the toolbar button Like it.  You can also share this site via Facebook or Twitter.  Once you have enjoyed the site enough, click the magical Stumble button for your next site for your perusal. If you don’t like the site, just stumble onto the next one. 

Stumbleupon is a wonderful way to spend a few hours roaming the internet finding sites you would never find otherwise. 

 If you create a login for Stumbleupon, you can save all your favorite sites and Stumbleupon will remember the topics that you are interested in. 

For example, I selected the topics of Bizarre/Oddities and Internet.  I select Stumble and my browser closes its eyes, spins around and opens an article on The 50 most interesting posts on Wikipedia.  I rate it¢â‚¬â€Thumbs up or not¢â‚¬â€and stumble on to a list of the top ten most annoying alarm clocks.  On and on it goes. 

 If you are so inclined, you can also search your favorites, a friend’s favorites, or the entire site for a specific topic. 

 If you are a Firefox user, check out the Stumbleupon plugin https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/138  which brings the Stumbleupon toolbar to your browsers so you can quickly stumble around the internet giving sites your thumbs up or thumbs down right from your browser.

 There is something intrinsically addictive about this site.  It’s simple to use and is guaranteed to take you to web sites you have never seen before.  I highly recommend this site if you have time to fill, or if you are always looking for new and interesting information.  You will not be disappointed.

iGoogle Showcase: Finally I Can Pretend I am Using The Kutch’s Computer

Google’s iGoogle Showcase was revealed earlier this week, allowing everyone on the whole Internet to look at the homepages personally approved by the publicists of celebrities.

With iGoogle Showcase anyone can take a look at the widgets and plugins that barely likeable celebrities like Al Gore, Demi Moore, Ashton The Kutch Kutcher, Martha Stewart, Ryan Seacreast, and others use on their Google homepages.

Mind you, use should be taken very lightly here.

At first I wasn’t sure what the purpose of showcase was. Then later on I figured something out: I still had no idea know what the point of iGoogle Showcase was. To be honest as of this exact moment I cannot clearly discern any sort of useful purpose for Showcase.

The thing is, there isn’t any obvious use for Showcase. Unlike some of Google’s other neat apps, like Gmail and Google Docs and SketchUp, which are all immediately useful in some ways, Showcase doesn’t provide us with any sort of tools or devices that make things possible. It doesn’t even provide something as vague as an e-solution.

Let me explain. Each Showcase page is ostensibly the personal page of a celebrity, implying that the widgets on it were chosen by a celebrity. That these pages are personal also implies that celebrities make use of them regularly, but that seems unlikely, given how they look like they were designed by a soulless robot programmed to mechanically coordinate PR initiatives.

Are we really supposed to believe that Kevin Rose has a Digg widget on his homepage, even though he owns the freaking website, or that Ryan Seacrest looks up American Idol updates, even though he is literally the first person on the planet to know when someone is voted off? That would be like Wyclef Jean looking for updates about the new album that he himself is writing.

Oh wait, that is already on his iGoogle page.

So are these actually the personal pages of celebrities? Of course not. The fact of the matter is that Showcase doesn’t have any point because it is just marketing. Each page is a thin veil of celebrity publicity, crafted to reinforce a consistent public image while covering some pretty clumsy marketing. Andy Roddick is a tennis player, so his page has a tennis ball. Rachel Ray’s page has a word scramble, because absolutely all stay-at-home moms in the universe like little daily newspaper puzzles. Al Gore’s page has Jon Stewart quotes because the hip, young, liberal demographic is into that.

The only page that looks like it wasn’t pieced together by an army of assistants is The Kutch’s. I mock the guy, but his page is a messy jumble of stuff that real people would actually use, like sports scores and dumb youtube cartoons, instead of a Punk’d widget and a picture of a trucker hat. But other than the Kutchster’s, every page is so generically representative of the public’s view of these celebrities that you can’t help but feel an advertising firm thought it all up while Keith Urban or whoever played golf on the moon while rolling in million dollar bills in a suit made of even more million dollar bills.

So iGoogle Showcase is basically just a cross-promotional marketing tool. That’s fine, and marketing has it’s place. Maybe someone will find a widget they like from the page of their favourite celebrity, or discover some news about someone they’re interested in. But let’s not pretend that these are actually the homepages these celebrities customized and use every day. The sites are such flimsy, cookie-cutter representations of the celebrities’ public images that insisting they are personal is only contrived and artificial.

So why even talk about Showcase if it’s so shallow and pointless? I will make a feeble attempt at answering this question. It seems to me that iGoogle Showcase is representative of a larger trend in which technology is suddenly very cool. Some might even call it hip if they are so inclined.

I’m not sure when it happened, but at some point tech and tech-culture went from being simply a useful thing for some and a geeky obsession for others, to the prime way for celebrities and public figures to garner some cred with fans. Between The Kutchinator running a competition with CNN to see who could reach a million twitter followers first, and news sites and blogs all over the web obsessing over whether or not Obama is a Mac user, you can’t seem to avoid the new-found trendiness of technology.

Even late night, normally a safe haven where fads and trends are mocked mercilessly, has gotten in on the act. If you can manage to stomach an entire episode of the Jimmy Fallon show you will be exposed to an incredible amount of shameless pandering to the technology crowd, and even Conan O’Brien, who I distinctly remember mispronouncing modem during an old episode, has a skit about twitter every night.

Some of this new focus on technology is obviously very good. Obama’s change.gov site, with its technological agenda, is leap years ahead of the technologically ignorant stone-age that was the last administration.

But I imagine not everyone will see it this way. It’s probably safe to say that many people out there hold a personal attachment to the nerd culture of technology, and many of those people understandably feel as if Hollywood is merely cashing in on their beloved sub-culture. Like someone who suddenly sees their favourite band go mainstream and finds that the music that meant so much to them on a personal level is now being eaten up by everyone in the world, geeks the world over feel violated by the commodification and abuse of their geek and tech culture by celebrities who are merely using it to get a bit more publicity.

The angst of geeks who are caught up in the new Hollywood obsession with their world was summed up pretty nicely in the response to the I Am a Geek video, released last month. Wil Wheaton, star of Star Trek TNG and famous hardcore nerd, was involved with the video and said of it that it seemed like a promotional opportunity for celebrities who don’t know a damn thing about our geek culture, which sums up nicely how most geeks feel about the new found celebrity status of geekiness.

In short, the sorts of celebrities that are featured on the iGoogle Showcase are the exact ones that nerds are shaking their fists at right now, damning them for invading their castle and abusing their culture.

I tend to look at it a bit differently though: being a geek is suddenly cool. Not just cool among an ever-growing population of geeks, but cool among people with a lot of sway, geeky or not. Further, geekiness is not just cool, but influential. Geekiness has become powerful.

I guess that “The Bible” thing was right; the geek shall indeed inherit the Earth.

(I apologize profoundly for that joke. Please don’t melt my computer with your nerd powers.)

10 Mac applications that promise to improve your productivity

Featuring some of the most useful applications that will definitely help you improve your productivity on Mac. These utilities are available totally free of charge and can be downloaded right away.

SketchBox

SketchBox is a multifunctional sticky notes manager for your Mac Desktop. Unlike other Sticky notes it doesn’t limit itself to just writing text but you can even draw and set individual reminders for each sticky to use them as visual alarm clock.

SketchBox Sticky notes consists of three layers: The drawing canvas, a little text editor and an intuitive alarm timer that combines the best of analog and digital clocks. While editing text you can still see your drawing in the semitransparent background and vice-versa.

Anxiety

Anxiety is an excellentt To-do list application for Mac OS X Leopard that synchronizes with iCal and Mail. It is extremely lightweight and aims to provide a streamlined, easily accessible interface to add and check off your tasks, while remaining poised to melt into the background at a moments notice.

Anxiety’s sleek interface provides just what you need to jot your tasks down, without burdening you with cumbersome large windows. With a tiny desktop footprint and clean minimalist aesthetics, the application is simultaneously small, beautiful and effective.

Camouflage

Camouflage is a tool that allows you to hide all icons behind the wallpaper. If you were looking for Camouflage you probably have a messy desktop, so you should put this window in list-view to have a much better overview over the tons of files

Key features include

• Perfect system-integration: change your wallpaper and Camouflage will show the change instantly.
• Works with multiple monitors: attach new monitors and the icons will instantly be hidden.
• Drag & drop: drag files on the desktop and they will be copied onto your real desktop.
• Finder integration: click the desktop and Finder will be activated and opens or selects a separate desktop window. (You can disable this with the Popup Desktop option of the menu. To still open a window, press the option-key while clicking the desktop, or by double-clicking on the desktop)
• Support for Path Finder
• Ability to show and hide the icons
• Works with desktop managers
• Ability to ‘click through’ Camouflage to get the normal Desktop-Context menu

iClockr

iClockr is a simple tool to show you a simple way to track your time. The concept of iClockr is based on 3 columns including

Projects: A project is a bundle of tasks
Tasks: A tasks is a bundle of durations
Durations: A duration is the smallest brick to calculate your total time.

iClockr is a great tool to Track Timeline for Different Tasks and Projects.

Appointments

Appointments is an application designed to keep record of customers, contact persons and important events related to them. Information is collected in a structured way: there are separate dictionaries with customers data, contact persons, appointment managers etc. which are used to create appointments record. The application provides convenient user interface tools for sorting and filtering stored data.

Key features include

• Document based architecture
• File based datastore and
• Multiuser access

Paparazzi!

To take screenshots of the entire page I personally use Fireshot. It is like the perfect add-on for Firefox that also provides editing tool. On the other hand Mac users like to take advantage of a small utility known as Paparazzi.

You can grab a free copy of Paparazzi from here.

iStat Pro

iStat pro is a highly configurable widget that lets you monitor every aspect of your Mac, including CPU, memory, disks, network, battery, temperatures, fans, load & uptime and processes.

It even allows you to filter out specific disks, network interfaces, or fan sensors, if you’d like.

AppFresh

AppFresh is responsible to keep all your applications,widgets, preference panes and application plugins installed on your Mac up-to-date. AppFresh works by checking the excellent osx.iusethis.com for new versions and lets you download and install available updates easily.

AppFresh provides a central place to control the software updates available to your Mac, integrating most popular and most common update checking technologies such as Apple Software Update, Sparkle, Microsoft AutoUpdate, Adobe Updater, osx.iusethis.com and more.

TextWrangler

TextWrangler is the powerful general purpose text editor, and Unix and server administrator’s tool. You can use this text editor for a wide variety of tasks from cleaning up data, to editing configuration files on your Mac or server, to writing HTML or coding.

Key features include

• Powerful single and multi-file search & replace
• Flexible ‘grep’ style pattern-based search and replace based on PCRE (Perl-Compatible Regular Expression)
• Sort Lines and Process Duplicate Lines plug-ins offer grep pattern support for sorting, extracting, and handling text
• Find Differences to compare two versions of a text file and merge the differences
• Support for a wide variety of BBEdit plug-ins

The Unarchiver

The Unarchiver is a much more capable replacement for “BOMArchiveHelper.app”, the built-in archive unpacker program in Mac OS X. The Unarchiver is designed to handle many more formats than BOMArchiveHelper, and to better fit in with the design of the Finder.

It can also handle filenames in foreign character sets, created with non-English versions of other operating systems. I personally find it useful for opening Japanese archives, but it should handle many other languages just as well.

These applications can definitely come in handy in everyday life routine.

A Year of Linux, January 22: Crashing at Linux’s Place!

The old plan: Ring in the new year by switching over to Linux for a week, documenting each day of the transition. To read that first week, click here!

The new plan: Keep using Linux for the rest of the year, giving periodic updates on my experiences, all of which you can read here!

January 22: Crashing at Linux’s place!

As readers of my first week know, Linux and I had a tumultuous relationship for our first period of time together. There were ups and downs, tears and laughter, romance, action and suspense, and in the end everyone involved learned an important, heartfelt lesson about pre-marital intercourse. (The lesson: don’t do it or Linux will burn your car down.)

But like all goodish things, that week had to come to an end. Linux and I packed up our stuff, said our goodbyes, deleted each other’s numbers from our telephones, stomped on the phones as hard as we could until they stopped working, held them next to an incredibly powerful electromagnet to ensure no information could ever be salvaged, then got Alishyana the Mystical Psychic Gypsy Fortune Teller (call 555-5-GYP to set up an appointment) to cast an ancient telephone-disabling enchantment on them.

As you can imagine, I thought my relationship with Linux was over. But like all firey, passionate, Latin couples, no matter how much we fought and yelled and stabbed one another with rusty pairs of Fisher Price scissors, we ended up coming back together.

The circumstances of our reunion are familiar to all of us I imagine: after an extended period of time searching my soul while doing some of the extremest sports known to man on the highest snow-capped mountains and most remote, crocodile-infested tropical islands, I returned home to find that my landlord had evicted me.

With no place to stay, I turned to Linux. “Please, Linux! I’m out on the streets with no way to process words, or even browse social networking sites to read incredibly boring minutia about the lives of people I haven’t talked to in years,” I whimpered. “Take in this tired, old sky-diving rocket-roller-boarder one last time.”

With a sigh, Linux agreed to let me sleep on its couch for an indefinite period of time, so long as I didn’t invite too many people over or eat all of its eggs.

So join me as I crash at Linux’s place!

Now that I’m hanging out at Linux’s place for an extended period of time, I figure I might as well make myself at home. So my first order of business is to get all my mail sent to Linux, because I am a very important person who gets a lot of mail.

Fortunately, Linux doesn’t seem to have a problem with this; it gives me a touch of the evil eye as I write my name on its mailbox with a permanent Sharpie, but other than that the process goes flawlessly.

Setting up my gmail and school email in the pre-packaged Evolution Mail program seems to be no different than doing the same thing in Mozilla Thunderbird, and before I know it I am flooded with hundreds of pieces of wonderful electronic mail. As such, I get straight to the important task of highlighting each one, clicking Mark All as Read, and ignoring everything that was sent to me.

Now that I’ve very carefully inspected all 963 pieces of mail asking me for a monetary donation to the school that sapped me of tens of thousands of dollars and forced me into a massive, overwhelming, depression-inducing student loan-based debt, it’s time for me to rearrange Linux’s place a bit and make it more comfortable. I mean, this place has some seriously harsh feng shui, bro, and I just can’t chill if there’s bad chi-flow in my living space, you know?

So while Linux is at work I decide to completely rearrange its desktop. I’m sure it will be happy with my changes when it gets back, because I have a lot of experience with rearranging friends’ places without their permission.

First, out with that dirty, brown, coffee-stain desktop background (that I spilled my drink on a piece of old parchment paper look is so last week) and in with a stunning, minimalist, black background that is sure to impress all my post-modernist friends.

For the next step in my Desktop Makeover (official TV series debuting this fall on The Style Channel) I decide to change the theme. The Mist one looks nice, and its blue colour pallet will go well with my black background, and will maybe take some attention away from those hideous curtains that Linux insists on keeping around. (Honestly? Just because your grandma gave you those curtains literally seconds before she died a horrible death doesn’t mean you have to keep them up forever. Especially when they clash with, like, everything, girlfriend.)

The final step in project Desktop Makeover: change the desktop icons. I prefer to change all of my desktop icons into question mark boxes from Super Mario Bros. 3 and give them blank spaces for file names, so that anyone who uses my computer gets hopelessly lost and confused and runs away befuddled before they can snoop around at all. (Password protection is for narcs, man.)

This one will probably take some work, as I am unfamiliar with Ubuntu’s icon system and what special file-type Ubuntu uses for icons. So it’s off to the Internet for some research!

After about 16 hours of digging through dead-end links and unrelated information in a search for Ubuntu’s special icon file-type, I figure out that Ubuntu doesn’t actually have a special file-type for icons; any suitably sized .png file will work just fine.

This is a refreshing change from Windows XP, which required I go through a very long bureaucratic process in order to obtain the proper authorization for changing icons, and insisted I fill out reams of paperwork that proved I wasn’t an icon terrorist before it let me actually make my own icons.

So with that I open GIMP and get to work making my custom icon. Another 16 hours later (what can I say, I’m no graphic artist) and I finish screwing around with alpha channels and layer merges and a bunch of other stuff I can’t really get to work because I don’t even know what any of it is, until I get an icon that pretty much looks the way I want it to, even though it is entirely jury-rigged and wouldn’t work for anything but a perfectly square picture.

It is right about this time, when I am continually right-clicking the eraser button in GIMP to try to force it through attrition to erase to a transparent background, that Linux comes back from the office and sees what I have done.

“What the hell did you do to my desktop?” it yells. “And why are the entire contents of my fridge arranged into a happy face on my living room floor?”

“I made a happy face because happy faces are good karma, dude!” I yell back. “And I had to rearrange your desktop because I can’t take my mid-afternoon power-nap unless all the energy lines on my desktop are facing north! It’s common knowledge that energy lines should always face north!”

Oh man is Linux pissed off now; and right when I was about to install Java so I could get my important accounting websites working.

After our fight, Linux doesn’t seem to want to cooperate any more, and also responds to everything I ask it to do by calling me a dirty hippie.

I go to Add/Remove Programs, and Linux gives me a host of different Java installations, including Sun Java Runtime, Icedtea Java Plugin, OpenJDK Java Web Start, You Are a Dirty Hippie, and OpenJDK Runtime. Since Linux isn’t being any help, I decide to install the Sun Java Runtime, because it sounds most familiar. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to work, because none of my Java-requiring sites function.

With that I check the manual, which Linux has clearly gotten to, because it mostly just says “you are a dirty hippie” over and over. It also tells me to install the Sun Java package, then go into Firefox and type a command into the address bar to make sure Java is installed. Once you have confirmed that Java is in fact installed into Firefox, because this process is absolutely flawless, the manual explains that you will then prance around in a Java-filled wonderland, executing Java script at will and rolling around in endless Java flower beds.

Unfortunately, Firefox indicates that Java is not installed, and also indicates that I am a dirty hippie. The next step, according to the manual, in getting Java working in Firefox is apparently to do nothing at all, because the manual’s instructions end after telling me to type the command into Firefox. This further reinforces my suspicion that Linux is still angry at me for that whole thing where I smashed every one of its eggs to make sure there were no baby chickens mistakenly trapped inside, trying to get free.

Thinking it must be a problem on Firefox’s end, I decide to install the Java plug-in from within Firefox’s plug-in menu. Unfortunately that doesn’t work either. But I think I’m getting through to Linux and making some progress, because it doesn’t call me a dirty hippie this time. (It just spits on my shoe and kindly informs me that I have spit on my shoe, and that I should probably clean it up.)

At this point I’m starting to get a funny feeling that Linux needs some space and time alone (my friends at the weekly seances tell me I must be psychic or something, because I get feelings like that all the time from everybody) so I head to the old forums to drown my sorrows in a few beers. When I get there, I notice a few people talking about having the same problem as me.

The first suggestion I get is to download the Java plug-in’s binaries straight from the Firefox website, then do something involving an alien to install them, which sounds more ridiculous than anything I can imagine, but is actually pretty much what it said.

Being absolutely terrified by this course of action I check out what other advice is available. Someone else mentions that they got Java working with Firefox by downloading a file-package from the Synaptic application after they installed the Java Runtime, so I go for it too.

Success! When I head to one of my Java-based websites to check if it worked, the site instantly crashes instead of doing nothing at all, showing that Java has been perfectly integrated into Firefox.

Being the stubborn person I am, my next step is to change absolutely nothing at all, load up Firefox again, and try a different Java-based site.

This time it works! Hooray! Linux must have finally forgiven me for catching all its furniture on fire with my patchouli incense!

The process is so obvious; how did I not figure it out earlier? Installing Java just required me to install the Java Runtime from the Add/Remove Programs application, then go to the Synaptic application and install a different Java package that didn’t mention Firefox at all! What a fool I am.

With that I move back into Linux’s place, although I still don’t feel entirely at home. My desktop has been configured to my liking, but Java is hit or miss with particular websites, meaning I’ll have to use other operating systems if I want to use online banking to transfer money out of the savings account my mom set up so I can buy a new hacky sack for the jam-circle this weekend.

Also, the process of getting Java installed in the first place was pretty obtuse: the manual didn’t even begin to help, Firefox’s plug-in menu didn’t work, and all the most obvious courses of action were ineffectual. What I did finally do wasn’t really, you know, explained at all. Oh well!

And thus concludes today’s article! Stay tuned for me next article, which will occur some time in the future!

SiteLauncher Makes Bookmarking Even Faster

If you’re like me, you have a lot of Bookmarks, and they get used daily. Many of them are sites that everyone else visits such as Digg, Facebook, or YouTube. It would be nice to have an application that allows instant keystroke access to these popular sites, and that is exactly what Sitelauncher does.

If you go to the Sitelauncher site, you can download this Firefox plugin for free and, in a matter of seconds, you will have an efficient way to get to your favorite sites even faster. Once it is installed, it will automatically appear on Firefox’s Toolbar, and it already comes with several popular sites already loaded on it. For example, a for Amazon, y is for Youtube.

All you have to do is hit the default Alt plus Shift plus the proper character, and you will have a new tab that will open up to that site. It is quite easy to program it, and if you want to see the menu, just hit Ctrl plus Spacebar.

I’ve tried it out, and it really works well! I found a little flaw. According to the instructions, any character key can be associated with a site, so you’re not just limited to a-z, 0-9. However, I tried to program zMogo as Alt+Shift+8, and it wouldn’t recognize a numerical key. However, when I brought up the menu and hit 8, it worked just fine.

Still, Sitelauncher is clearly the way Bookmarking technology is going. No more going to menu and navigating through tabbed folders. I guess our time surfing the web is so precious that any seconds that we can shave off of it is worth it.

Source

The New Year Linux Resolution: Day 6

The plan: Ring in the new year by switching over to Linux for a week, documenting each day of the transition.

Day 6, Hooking up with some KDE!

Other days: Day One, Day Two, Day Three, Day Four, Day Five, Day Seven

Like all domestic pairings, my long and storied relationship with Linux has had its ups and downs. Words have been said, dishes have been broken, mistakes have been made, and 1984 Dodge Caravans have had their tires slashed and then been doused in industrial-grade kerosene and set on fire. You know, the usual stuff.

So after the dust of yesterday’s indiscretions settled I made a decision: I can’t be boxed in any more. I need room to breathe. I feel so stifled sometimes, Linux, and I just have to be with myself for a while. Where’s the love we used to have so many years ago when I first asked to install you at the drive-in movie theatre?

With this in mind I’ve decided I’m going to hook up with some KDE! So come join me!

The fact of the matter is that the spark me and Ubuntu Linux used to have is gone, and I need to see some new things and experience what the world has to offer. It’s not you Linux, honestly. It’s me that’s causing all the problems.

Well, it’s me that’s causing the problems and also my computer, which refuses to cooperate with Linux in any task that’s more complex than opening a text file while rubbing its tummy. (I have no idea where my computer got a tummy. It’s a little bit disturbing, actually. Maybe that’s why it can’t get my graphics drivers working. Do tummies interfere with graphics drivers? Hm, my copy of PCs for Tummies doesn’t have a section on tummies. That’s weird. Oh wait, it says PCs for Dummies… I really should have paid more attention in grade 10 computer science class.)

Actually, scratch all that stuff about it being my fault. It’s totally just the computer’s fault. Seriously, it was all its idea. It’s such a bad influence on me. I mean, every time I tell it we’re going to the park to drink Colt 45s and set garbage cans on fire it just says, “OK.” Can you believe that!? “OK!” What an enabler it is. Always just… enabling. It should be ashamed.

So with all this in mind I’ve decided to become a Linux bachelor, put myself out onto the scene, and try to hook up with some sweet younger computers with supple graphics cards that can process some more attractive desktop effects.

My first step is to ask one of my friends if he knows any cute computers that are looking to party. He responds by asking me what the hell I’m talking about, telling me that I’m a weirdo that he never really liked hanging out with in the first place, and accusing me of a wide variety of perversions, most of which I cannot name here.

It looks like I’ll need to differ my strategy a bit, possibly towards a more standard approach that is based on the assumption that my friend doesn’t understand the narrative of my imaginary relationship with an operating system. (He’s so dense.) “Can I borrow your new computer?” I ask him. “Also, please stop dialing the police and put down the phone.”

He responds. (Nice! I got a response; I should try asking people questions that aren’t insane more often.) “Absolutely not,” he says. “And put your pants back on.” Drats! That move usually works great.

Clearly he’s a crafty one and is well prepared for my ingenious tactics. So, I make one more slight adjustment to my approach, this time away from the whole asking strategy, and towards a marginally more grab his computer and run out the door screaming “he touched me in an inappropriate manner!” strategy.

Now that I have no friends any more I have plenty of time to mack on this computer Linux-style. So I plug my Linux hard drive into it and see if I can seduce it into performing some crazy graphical effects.

To my surprise the wireless adapter and graphics card are immediately recognized in the hardware application, and they install flawlessly. Wow new computer, you do things that my old computer would never even think about doing, even if I begged!

Now that I have a functioning graphics card in Ubuntu it’s time to try installing some sexy new desktop effects. Although apparently I enjoy thinking outside of the box and taking unique approaches to this sort of thing, because I installed everything completely backwards.

My first step was to go into the Add/Remove programs and look for Compiz. The first thing I noticed was the Compiz tray icon, and thinking that it was the only Compiz app available I installed it. After messing around with it for a while and noticing that it didn’t do anything, I went back to Add/Remove program, where I found some other Compiz apps.

The next step in my wonderful plan was to install the Compiz Effects Settings manager, and then install the actual Compiz Effects tool. With these tools installed I decided to follow the Roomba method of trying to get them to work, randomly clicking on everything on the screen until I had exhausted every imaginable possibility through trial and error. After about six hours of this I noticed nothing had actually changed, so I moved on.

It was at this point that I realized that the Compiz installer mentioned something about it being designed for KDE, which is the secret code name for Kubuntu, I think. So, after a bit of looking around I figured out how to install KDE and restarted my computer.

It was in this roundabout way that I came to meet pretty little Kubuntu, with its sleak blue design and tempting desktop effects, beckoning for me to dive in and try them.

My next step is to immediately pounce on the Compiz settings manager to see what is available, where I find an overwhelming amount of different effects. But one in particular catches my eye: the jiggly window effect.

In my opinion the jiggly window is by far the most ingenious and practical of all desktop effects. I say this because I spent at least an hour grabbing windows and shaking them around like bowls full of jelly, giggling with glee at their playful, flirtatious movements. If I spent that much time with the jiggly window plugin it must be important, because I am a very important person who only spends time on important things.

Unfortunately the desktop cube and desktop wall effects don’t seem to work (maybe because I installed everything in the exact opposite of the intended order? Naw, that’s impossible.) Also, some of the effects seem to have a strange relationship with my new computer’s graphics card, because they work at incredibly high speeds and over-respond to my input.

For example, the spinning effect when I switch between different desktops rotates roughly one million-three-hundred-and-sixty-two times with one press of ctrl-alt-arrow, making my eyeballs comically spin 360 degrees inside my head if I try follow it.

But so far I’m enjoying the bachelor life with my new mistress, Kubuntu. I’ve got plenty of mind-expanding exploration and self discovery to do, and all kinds of crazy effects to cuztomize and try out. I’ve seen what life is like for users with computers that actually work with Ubuntu, and I’m never going back to the life I had with that other prudish harpy I was shackled to before.

Overall I was very impressed with KDE in Ubuntu. Not only is it a pretty nice looking desktop with some fun and neat Mac-like effects, but installing it into Ubuntu was very easy. I’ve never used an operating system before that so readily accepted modifications like Ubuntu accepted KDE, and I’ve also never seen an operating system that had mechanics built in for switching between different desktop configurations in such a straightforward way; simply selecting KDE at login did it.

I’ve also finally seen what it is like when Ubuntu just works, with no tinkering. I look forward to the days when even more hardware works in this simple way with Linux.

And that concludes today’s break up with Ubuntu and new relationship with Kubuntu! Tune in tomorrow for the stunning conclusion to my week!

Other days: Day One, Day Two, Day Three, Day Four, Day Five, Day Seven

Quick Hands-on with Fennec, Mozilla’s Mobile Browser

Mozilla is looking to spread the success of their Firefox browser into the world of mobile phones, and have moved one step closer with the release of the latest alpha version of Fennec.

Fennec, Mozilla’s mobile-based counterpart to Firefox, hit alpha version 2 this past week. For now the web browser only works on the Nokia N810 line of internet tablets.

Even then it is only designed for testing purposes, so that users can work out bugs and web developers can give feedback and suggestions. Users can also install it on any Windows, Mac, or Linux machine for testing purposes as well.

A quick install of the latest test-version of the program shows a fairly sparse but simple interface, with big, easy-to-read text and straightforward controls. These controls are pretty clever, allowing you to view the full width of a page while still allowing access to bookmark tabs and other controls by sliding the screen to the left or right.

Zooming also works fine, allowing you to move in for a closer look at a webpage, leaving out little to none of the details you would normally see when browsing on your desktop or laptop.

Fennec appears to simply be Firefox for mobile phones, which in my opinion definitely isn’t a bad thing; Firefox is a very solid browser with good security and many useful features, and I can’t even remember when I last used another browser as frequently. If Fennec can incorporate many of Firefox’s best features, such as tabbed web browsing, simple and usable interface, and strong security, I can see no reason why it won’t be successful.

But the most interesting feature of Fennec is its potential to bring third-party and open-source add-ons and plug-ins to mobile web browsing; one of Firefox’s most cherished features is its open design, which allows users to create and download an enormous selection of user-designed add-ons that improve, change and customize Firefox.

Fennec is no exception to this trend, as plug-ins are already being designed for it. On the Fennec website Mozilla even encourages users to give feedback and write add-ons, expanding the capability of even this very early version of Fennec.

A few plug-ins have already been designed, including the NoScript add-on, which improves Fennec’s security, and the TwitterBar plug-in, which integrates Twitter-posting capabilities into the address bar of Fennec.

New features in the latest alpha release include faster panning and zooming, and improved responsiveness.

Overall, if Fennec is half as popular as Firefox we could see it become the de-facto standard for mobile phone browsing, and so far there doesn’t seem to be any reason to think that it won’t be; it looks to offer everything that Firefox does, in a mobile-sized package.

Try out the latest version of the Fennec Alpha for yourself, right here.

MyToons.com Joins Forces with Google to Release MyToons Live

The online animation community MyToons.com recently released MyToons Live, a plugin that extends the site’s features to Google Earth.

MyToons Live uses Google Earth to graphically represent the location of MyToons.com members, contributers and fans all over the world.

By pin-pointing each user’s location with a beam of light on the Google Earth map, MyToons Live allows anyone with the plugin to click on any entry and check out what sort of animations are being done in any region of the world.

The MyToons Live plugin expands on the community and social networking features of MyToons.com. MyToons.com, started in the Spring of 2007, is a free-to-join community of a animators and animation enthusiasts both professional and amateur where anyone can share their creations with other animation fans, make friends, and tag favourite videos.

MyToons.com is also designed to allow HD formatted animations to be uploaded and played. This makes it the first site to offer HD animation uploads, making it one of the most versatile platforms for uploading, sharing and viewing animations from around the globe.

I’ve only taken a quick browse through some of the animations on MyToons, but some pretty neat stuff can be found right away. I have no idea what Mama Luchetti is, but if the commercials for it are any indicator, I love it. MyToons has some very entertaining, well-crafted animations on it, so whether or not you plan on becoming the next Walt Disney in the near future, you can always check it out for some quick fun.

Signing up for a MyToons account is free, and you can check it out here.

Recosoft’s PDF to InDesign Converter Gets Considerable Upgrade

Recosoft has released major upgrades for its PDF2ID line of Adobe InDesign plugins.

PDF2ID, a tool that enables Adobe InDesign users to convert PDF files into InDesign files so that they can be accessed and edited with the Adobe product, has had both its Standard and Professional editions upgraded to version 2.0.

With the new version comes over 200 additions, plus support for Adobe InDesign 4. This makes PDF2ID the only PDF converter available for InDesign. PDF2ID integrates fully into InDesign, using the standard Adobe InDesign interface. This makes conversion from PDF to InDesign simple and straightforward and, according to Recosoft’s site, produces high quality reproductions of PDFs, complete with automatic formatting of text into paragraphs and character styles. PDF2ID also converts non-text PDF features completely. As Recosoft’s site explains:

As part of the conversion process, PDF2ID also transforms gradients in a PDF file to an equivalent gradient in InDesign, applies clipping paths to images and sets the appropriate InDesign property. Furthermore, it converts text that is on a path to an equivalent InDesign representation. Finally, transparencies and graphics transformations such as rotations, shearing and scaling are also converted to an equivalent InDesign data type.

If you’re a frequent user of InDesign, PDF2ID may well be an essential tool for you, streamlining the process of adding PDF files to your InDesign project. PDF2ID Standard edition starts at $299.99, while the Professional edition will cost $399.99, and is available for both Windows and Mac platforms.

For a preview of PDF2ID’s features, check out this link.

Classipress – A Great Classifieds System for WordPress

I’ve been search for a high-quality WordPress classifieds system for months now, and was thrilled to find ClassiPress by WPglamour.com.

Take a look:

And the demo can be found here.

What makes this classifieds theme so great? Here are just a few of the highlights:

• ClassiPress features an amazing yet simple style, covering the front page, category pages, and listing details with commendable clarity.
• No plugins are necessary
• Fully integrated with PayPal
• Image upload directly from the form

If you are looking for a clean and simple way to run a classifieds marketplace, look no further.

Product Page: http://wpglamour.com/classipress-premium-wordpress-theme-for-classifieds-websites/
Price: $49 ($149 for developer license)