Won’t it be great if you can listen to the whole songs (or CD) before you buy? iTunes store and Amazon has the preview feature, but they only come with a 30-second preview, which is not enough to sample a song.

We need some alternatives, great alternatives. So, here are my favorite websites where users can listen to CDs before buying them.

1. AOL music

AOL music is one of the best place in the Web that offers free full length songs and music for listening. It has a huge database of songs. You simply pick the songs you want. If the song is not available, AOL will search for it in the web and playback (from the remote location) the song on the fly.

In addition, AOL music always have a “New music releases” section where you can listen to new CD releases for free in their entirety every week.

This is not only a good way to sample the CD before you buy, it is also a good way to discover new CDs in the market.

2. Youtube

At Youtube, you won’t be able to sample the whole CD at one go, but surely you will be able to find most of the tracks (in music video and other forms) in its database. When you search for the songs/artists/albums in the search bar, there is a high chance that you will find what you want in the search result.

Furthermore, with all the YouTube and other video conversion tools previously highlighted by MakeUseOf, you can also convert and download the music video to your desktop, even though the music quality differs a great deal from those in the music store.

5. Rhapsody

With Rhapsody, you never have to worry about a lack of songs. They have more than a million songs in their database and there is a very high chance you will find what you want. Rhapsody operates on a subscription model (only available in US), that is to say, you pay a subscription fee every month ($12.99) and you have access to all the songs in their database and you can listen to them again and again, unlimited times.

With the subscription account, you can also download the software and access to your favorite songs from your desktop.

If you are not willing to pay the subscription fee, Rhapsody also allows its users to listen to 25 songs for free. That should be enough for you to sample two and a half CD of songs before you make your purchase decision.

4. Imeem

Imeem is a social network that enables its users to share media, including music, video and photos with each other.  In here, you are likely to find the songs/CDs that you want. Some of the music are restricted by the label/artists and features only a 30-second preview, but there are still a great deal of them that are full length and you are able to listen to the full CD.

5. Baidu MP3

This may not be suitable for everyone, but if you are a Chinese song lover, like I am, then this is the place to listen to free songs.

All you need to do is to perform a search with the search bar and it will fetch the required songs from the artists. You can then scroll to find his/her current album or previous albums. You can click on the link beside the song to hear the full song.

Other alternatives that did not make the list

MySpace

I am sure some of you will swear by MySpace. I am not an active user of MySpace and I don’t have much love for it. Personally, I find the layout very messy and it crashes my browser (and computer) very often.

Last.fm

While there are plenty of songs and information in Last.fm, you seldom have the chance to sample the full CD of your favorite artists. I do use it for occasional listening, but when it comes to CD sampling, I guess there are better sites out there.

If you are interested in purchasing music online, Simon listed out 3 Ultra Cheap Alternatives to the iTunes Store. Check it out.

What other websites do you go to listen CD before buying? Do you prefer digital copies or physical CDs? Comment away!

Image credit: SChristineBrink

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Su.pr is currently in private Beta mode. If you like to test drive the service, you must first have a StumbleUpon account, then follow the official SU twitter account and wait for them to release the beta code. I was lucky to receive the beta code the moment I followed SU, but I have seen others waited 5 days for the code. Your waiting time could vary. Once you obtained the beta code, simply enter into the input field at the Su.pr homepage.

At the homepage, you can see a textbox where you can enter your text message and link. Just like Twitter, you are only allowed 140 characters and all links within the text will be shorten with the Su.pr prefix.

From here, you have several options. You can either:

• Post your text message to Twitter or Facebook (or both)
• Schedule it to post at a later date (like Tweetlater)
• Just use the URL shortener service to translate your long URL

Is that all about Su.pr?

You bet! That is only the tip of the iceberg. Every post message or link that you submit (or create) via Su.pr will be tracked and recorded. You can view real time analytic result of your posted items and see how popular it gets. Statistics that you can view include the number of retweets, number of StumbleUpon reviews, number of click through and even traffic source. You can view stats for the past 12 hours, past 7 days, or even past 30 days.

More surprises

Suggested posting time

Based on your submission on Su.pr and the statistics, Su.pr will analyze your data and suggest the best time to post your stuff. This should help you to gain more exposure for your submissions.

Promoting your website

If you are looking to gain more traffic for your site, here is a good way to promote your site. By submitting your websites (you can enter up to 3 websites) in the Promote Website field in the Settings page, Su.pr will analyze your site(s) for the most popular content and promote them via StumbleUpon.

Su.pr bookmarklet

Su.pr is not yet integrated in the StumbleUpon toolbar. Users who wish to have quick access to Su.pr services can drag the bookmarklets (located at the bottom of Su.pr homepage) onto your bookmark bar.

Launching of API key

StumbeUpon has released the API for developers, so we should be able to see more third party apps that integrate with Su.pr in the near future.

How does StumbleUpon play a part?

Until now, it seems that everything is about Su.pr and there is no mention of StumbleUpon playing a part in the process. So how does SU play a part in Su.pr?

This is where SU comes in. When your readers/visitors/followers click on your link to reach the destination page, a StumbleUpon toolbar will show up on top of the page. If the page is not yet submitted to SU, a Discover button will be available for the user to submit to SU, else a thumb up/down button will show. This is very similar to the Digg bar, except that it is more user-friendly and maintains the usual high standard of the SU toolbar.

What Su.pr is lacking at the moment?

There are several functions that are clearly missing in Su.pr right now. The inability to post tweet to multiple Twitter and Facebook accounts, inability to edit scheduled post (except for deletion), inability to post to Facebook page/group, not integrating Su.pr into StumbleUpon toolbar are some of the features that are missing and are highly requested by the community.

Noting that this is still a beta version, I am confident that the StumbleUpon team will get all this ironed out in the final release.

Meanwhile, if you have not tried Su.pr, do follow Stumbleupon (on Twitter) and grab the invitation code now.

So what do you think? Thumbs up or down? Let us know in the comments!

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This is a native feature of Linux and can be easily accessed by right-clicking the mouse and choose “Always On Top” from the context menu. However, when it comes to Windows (and even Mac), I am surprised that this small, but useful feature is not available in all iteration of the operating system.

Here comes Deskpins.

Deskpins is a small and lightweight application that can keep your application window on top of all other windows at all time. Simply grab a pin from the Deskpins icons and click on the window, it will then automatically pin itself at the topmost of the desktop.

Installation

The installation is easy. Download the software (only 96KB in size) and run the .exe file to install it in your system. It shouldn’t take more than a minute, even if you are using it on an old system (like Windows 95). It is stated in its website that it is compatible up to Win XP, but I tried it on Windows 7 and it works flawlessly.

Usage

After you have launched the application, it should show up as an icon in the system tray.

Click on the Deskpins icon. Your mouse cursor will instantly change to a pin icon. Click on any window to pin it to the topmost level of the desktop. You will now see a pin on that particular window.

Configuration Options

Even though it is a simple and small application, it also comes with several configuration options for you to customize its behavior and look and feel.

First of all, if you are not a red lover, then you can change the pin color to your favorite color in the first tab menu. You can also change the tracking rate and to use a single or double click to activate the pin in the system tray.

Now, if you have a particular application that you want to keep it “always on top” at all time, instead of activating the deskpins everytime, you can create an Autopin rule such that the application is automatically pin to the desktop each time it is launched. This is definitely one nifty feature that will come in handy at all times.

For those who prefer keyboard shortcuts more than clicking the mouse, there is also an option for you to configure the hotkey to activate the Deskpins.

Conclusion

For a simple feature that should exist by default, but doesn’t, this simple application has definitely done its job well. It is small in size and only take up little system resources, best of all, it supports all version of Windows, thus making it an useful and versatile application.

This is definitely not the only app that can make an application “always on top”. If you have tried any other apps that perform the same function, share it with us in the comments.

On the opposite end of this productivity stick, Varun wrote about the top 5 desktop apps for multitasking. You should definitely check it out, if you haven’t already.

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AcetoneISO is a feature-rich and complete software application to manage CD/DVD images in your Linux system. It runs the poweful fuseiso in the backend and provides a very user-friendly frontend for its users to handle the image file easily. If you have tried and used fuseiso before, you will know that it supports a large variety of CD/DVD images, including ISO, BIN, NRG, MDF and IMG, which in turn makes AcetoneISO a versatile and powerful tool.

Installation

AcetoneISO is found in the repository of all Linux distro, so it can be easily installed via the respective APT manager. Alternatively, you can also download the installation package for your distro.

When you first run AceToneISO, it will run you through the configuration process and help you to set up the environment for you to work in. There are some options that you are required to configure, including the ISO settings, selecting the default media player application, the file manager to use, and the storage directory.

To mount a CD/DVD image, you just have to select the “Open Image” option in the File menu. It will automatically mount the selected ISO file to the Virtual Drive folder in your Home directory. To unmount, simply highlight the respective file entry in AcetoneISO and click the unmount button.

Here is a warning: while testing the unmount feature in Ubuntu, I have found that I am unable to unmount the image within Nautilus. The only way to unmount the image is to use the unmount button in the AcetoneISO application. Some of you might be annoyed by this, but that is how it works.

Other than the default mounting and unmounting of image files, AcetoneISO also comes with other functionality to allow you to edit and manage your image files. Here are some of them:

Image conversion (with PowerISO)

AcetoneISO makes use of the great functionality found in PowerISO (free for Linux users) to provide some of the useful image conversion features to its users. You can now use it to convert image to ISO, convert Mac OS image (DMG file), extract image content to a folder (without mounting), generate ISO from CD/DVD and even create a ISO from folder(s).

Using the image conversion features require you to install PowerISO in your system. If you have not installed PowerISO, AcetoneISo will prompt you about it and help you to download and install.

Utilities

The Utilities menu comes with several functions such as mounting your image in a specified folder, generate the Md5-sum of the image, extract the boot image or even generate Cue for BIN/IMG images.

Archive manager

The archive manager feature is one powerful function in AcetoneISO. It allows you to split the image into several volumes (best used when the file size is too big), compress images, encrypt the images or even extract a RAR password-protected ISO (you will need to have the password before you can extract).

Working with Video/Audio

AcetoneISO can also be used to download, extract, convert video and audio component of an image. You can use it to rip a DVD (or generic video) to a xVid avi video file and convert a FLV (YouTube format) file to AVI. Better still, you can download YouTube and Metacafe videos right within the AcetoneISO application. Once you have downloaded the video, you can also extract the audio component from the video file (under the Audio menu). On a side note, you may also convert online video to mp3 audio using VidToMP3.

I am not sure how often you would have to deal with ISO or various image files, but when you do (and you are a Linux user), I am sure that AcetoneISO is the only tool you need to get everything done. It may not be the best yet, but it is getting close.

What other tools do you use to manage your image file in Linux? Shout out in the comments!

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1. Sticky Notes

Sticky notes is the default sticky note application for Gnome. It is an applet that you add on the panel and access it via a simple click on the panel icon.

Sticky notes is a simple app and it is easy to use. You can configure the background color, font color and the default width and height. On the sticky note itself, you can also toggle the lock to prevent accidental deletion of the note content. While it is simple and short of features, it still can perform its task well, and one good thing is that it integrates well with the Gnome desktop and can access to the language library of the system. This gives you the capability to select the input method and the unicode characters.

2. KNotes

Knotes is the default sticky note app in Linux KDE desktop. It is highly configurable and comes with plenty of features not found in any other apps.

KNotes is actually part of the KDE PIM suite and an integrated component of Kontact, but it can be used independently as well. Being tightly integrated with the KDE framework, it give you functionality like drag and drop notes into emails, sending/receiving notes over a network and print note.

Features like editing the background color, font color, title font, text font, default width and height and the tab size are also available in KNotes. You can also paste note from the clipboard and perform a search to find that particular to-do list. You can add a title to each note for easy reference in the future. I found this nifty feature very useful and it is apparently missing from all other sticky notes apps.

On thing that I don’t like about it is that it doesn’t allow you to resize the sticky note on the fly.

Gnome users can also install KNotes from the repository, but must be prepared to install a whole bunch of KDE files.

3. Xpad

Xpad is a third party sticky note app (not to be confused with the xPad text editor and xPad sticky note for Mac) that is loved and used by many. It is lightweight, simple, yet extremely useful application.

Xpad is highly customizable. You can add basic styling (bold, italics, underline, etc) to the text, change the background color on the fly, resize the notes and even choose if you want to have scrollbar, window decoration on the notes itself. Each note comes with a toolbar that allows you to control all the note on an individual basis. You can even add or remove extra icons to the toolbar to make it more interactive.

Some of the Linux distros that are not using Gnome or KDE as the default desktop environment actually used Xpad as the default sticky note app in their distribution. If you are looking for a lightweight, yet highly configurable sticky app, this could be a great choice for you.

4. Pin ‘em up

Pin ‘em up is a Java-based sticky note application, which means it can run in whatever platforms that supports Java, including Mac, Windows and Linux.

Anyone who have used Java app on their system will know that it won’t run as fast (and look as nice) as the native app. This is also true for Pin ‘em up. It does feel clumsy when you try to move the sticky note around. However, Pin ‘em up does comes with some useful features that could worth a second look.

First of all, Pin ‘em up allows you to sort your notes into categories. You can define your own categories and categorize your notes into their respective groups.

Secondly, it supports importing/exporting of your notes to your own server to sync them with other computers. This is useful if you are using different computers with different operating systems.

5. Tomboy Notes

Strictly speaking, Tomboy notes is not a sticky app, but it is an excellent and extremely powerful note-taking app that I think it worth a mention here.

Most people who have used Tomboy Notes will swear by it. Its ability to link notes together with a Wiki-like linking system makes it extremely easy to organize your thoughts and ideas. The best thing is, even if you rename/reorganize your notes, the links will still be intact.

Accessing the notes is often a mouse click away. Simply click on the panel applet icon and you will be able to access all your notes instantly. Tomboy integrates well with the Sticky Notes (in Gnome) and you can easily import your sticky notes into Tomboy. It comes preinstalled in Gnome desktop.

Are you aware of any other sticky notes for Linux? If they weren’t mentioned in this article, please introduce them to us in the comments!

Image credit: closedzero

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For those Linux users who have been waiting hard and long for the release of Google Chrome Linux Alpha, there are both a good and bad news for you. The bad news is, Google Chrome for Linux is still not available yet. The good news however, the alpha build is now available for testing, which could be a joy for some Linux geeks.

Last week, Google released the first alpha build (build 3.0.183.1) of Google Chrome for Linux (and Mac). I have tested the Linux version on my Ubuntu machine and compared how it fares against Firefox. It is apparent that there are plenty of features missing, but it also comes with some juice that proved to be a surprise for many.

Warning

On the Chromium developer’s blog, they have stressed that the alpha build is not meant for mainstream public use and should be used only by developers. Being a public user, you are still free to download/install the software, but do bear in mind that many of the features are still missing.

Next step, installation.

Installation

Installing Google Chrome on Ubuntu is very easy. Download the deb file from the Chromium Early Release Channel to your desktop. Double click on the downloaded file to initiate the installation.

When the installation is complete, a warning window regarding the instability of this software will pop up. In the window, you can also opt to help the development of Google Chrome for Linux by sending in the crash reports to Google.

First impression

The very first impression of running Google Chrome Linux on my Ubuntu is that it is very fast.

Whenever I click on the Firefox launcher, I always have to wait for several seconds (at least 10 seconds) for it to load in the background before I get to see the home page. The more extensions I installed, the slower it got.

For Google Chrome, the moment I click on the launcher, the browser loads instantly, almost without any delay. One could argue that Google Chrome doesn’t support any extensions now and most of its features are not available, so it is logical that it loads faster. That could be true, but still, the difference in the speed is enormous.

Other than the boot speed, the speed that it loads a web page, performs a search, accesses URL history, suggests the URL as you type is also much faster than Firefox. And also more intelligent, in my opinion.

We have already covered plenty of Google Chrome features, including the tips and tricks, so I shall not delve into that. Overall, what is working in this alpha build is basic browsing, new tabs, simple tab dragging, search from URL bar, incognito mode and full page zoom.

What is lacking for now?

In short, it is still lacking a whole great list of things. There is no flash support, means you won’t be able to watch any videos on Youtube, no printing, no complex text support, no complex tab dragging (pulling the tab out of the browser window), you can’t change the homepage, little or almost no configuration options in the Options page and many other features that are only partially implemented.

One thing that I also noticed is that the font rendering in Google Chrome is still not up to par with Firefox. In addition, the UI still needs some polishing to make full of the GTK+ theme.

Should you install?

Google has make it clear that this is still an alpha release and should be installed by developers only. I am not a developer, but I am already enjoying the benefits of its speed. For basic browsing (checking mail, reading articles, performing searches in search engines), Google Chrome can do its job well, but for anything that is more complex, you will have to fall back to your native browser. There is no harm in installing it and trying it out for yourselves, I am already using it as my default browser. For complex stuff, I guess I’ll have to stick with Firefox.

Don’t forget that this is only the Linux version. My colleague, Jeffry, will be reviewing its Mac counterpart. Watch out for his article. Will it be better or worse? Find out soon.

What do you think about this alpha release? Did Google do the right thing by releasing such a raw version of their browser? Are you satisfied with it? Let it all out in the comments!

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RoundCube Webmail is a browser-based multilingual IMAP client packed with plenty of AJAX goodness. It comes with an application-like user interface and provides full functionality you expect from an email client, including MIME support, address book, folder manipulation, message searching and spell checking.

The best thing about RoundCube is that it is lightweight, simple to use and lightning fast. As long as your web host supports PHP 5 and MySQL, you will be able to install in your site and access it on your domain. A point to note here: while the installation is relatively easy (and fast), you will need to obtain the email server information from your web host and setup a database in your phpmyadmin before you can configure it to work.

You can configure your RoundCube account to access any of the email accounts out there as long as you have the IMAP configuration information. I am able to access my Gmail account and receive/send emails from the RoundCube inbox.

Once you have got it up and running, everything else will be a breeze. Just point to the designated URL and login with your email username and password.

The inbox is just like any of your email client, except that it is cleaner and neater. When you open a message, send a message, check new message, everything is achieved via AJAX interface which make it elegant and interactive. At the moment, the search function does not supports on-the-fly searching, but that doesn’t reduce any of its functionality.

RoundCube Preferences

Other than the basic inbox layout and management stuff, you won’t find too many superfluous features in RoundCube. Even so, it still comes with excellent management options such as creating of folders to store various mails, compact inbox on logout, daylight saving time etc. One useful feature that I found is the ability to create multiple identities. The identities allow you to send emails using different username (and email account) and signatures. This is useful if you are using RoundCube to manage several email accounts.

Skinning and Plugins

A software is not complete if it does not support skinning and plugins. The good news is, RoundCube supports both. The latest beta comes with a Plugin API that allows third party developers to create plugins for the software. RoundCube plugins can be found at the repository, though most of them are already included in the download package. You can also find and download some of the beautiful themes at the Roundcube forum, or simply searching for them in Google or Bing.

Conclusion

Is RoundCube Webmail for everyone? Most probably not, since not everyone owns a domain or have multiple email accounts to attend to. However, if you are one of the those Webmasters that are looking for a simpler and more elegant way to manage your emails, I am sure RoundCube Webmail will fit the bill well.

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1. Freeclip

Freeclip is a simple clipboard manager that comes with several useful functions. It keeps a record of the last 25 clips you have copied, regardless whether it is a line of text, URL, application shortcut, or images. Whenever you hover over the items on the clipboard, it reveals up a preview window showing you the content of the copied item. The default option is for you to activate it via the mouse (click on the icon at the system tray), but you are free to configure your hotkey in the configuration menu.

One of the things that I like about FreeClip is the ability to add buttons to the clip and modify them on the fly. For example, you can add a Uppercase/Lowercase button so that you can pasted the text in UPPERCASE or lowercase with a single click. There are several buttons available to add including Run applications, Email buttons, form filling, Firefox bookmarks button etc.

2. Arsclip

ArsClip is a small clipboard that does not require any installation. You can easily double-click to fire it up and get it running. It records the last 15 entry of the copied items, but can be adjusted to accept up to 100 records.

The ArsClip user interface is not really that bad, but the good thing about this application is that it gives you plenty of configuration options so you can mix and match until you find the settings that best suits you. You can configure the hotkey to use, the popup options, what to be copied and how it should treat non-text items (such as picture or filenames).

3. Yankee Clipper 3

When you use Yankee Clipper to manage your clipboard, it can sort out the things that you are copying/pasting and place them in the respective order. For example, if you copy an image from the web, Yankee Clipper 3 will show the item on the Pictures list. The same goes for a string of text, URL and rich text. YC3 allows you to save up to 200 items on the clipboard and there is no limit to the size of the clipping.

The best thing about Yankee Clipper is that you can save your clipping to the boilerplates (just like a template) and keep them for future usage. If you find that you are copying/pasting the same things over and over again, the boilerplate is definitely an useful tool for you.

4. Ditto-CP

Ditto-CP is an open-source portable clipboard that uses the SQlite database to store all your clippings. When you first use it, you will find that it is just the same as any other clipboard manager. However, on further exploration, you will discover many other useful features that are not available in other applications.

First, Ditto-CP allows you to connect to other computers and sync your clippings with each computer. You won’t have to recreate all your clippings again when on a different computer. Secondly, it supports the ’search as you type’ feature on its clipboard. If you have plenty of items on the clipboard, this feature is definitely very useful for you.

Thirdly, there are plenty of settings that you can configure, including creating hotkeys to access the first ten items in the clipboard. There is also a stats menu where you can view the number of copied/pasted performed and the database size.

Previously covered in MakeUseOf

5. Clipx

Mark had previously wrote a great article featuring the usefulness of Clipx. The best thing about Clipx is that it remembers up to 1024 clippings and you can set ClipX to purge itself when you shutdown your PC. There is also a bunch of useful plug-ins to improve ClipX’s functionality.

6. Clipguru

Another useful Clipboard manager is Clipguru, featured by Karl a while back. After you have captured your clippings on your clipboard, you can combine various selections and search through what has already been captured and edit those notes. A useful feature if you want to edit the stuffs that you have copied.

Using a Mac? Not to worry, Jackson wrote about the best free clipboard managers to run on Mac OS X.

What other clipboard manager do you use to make your copy/paste easier? Paste them in the comments.

Image credit: stupid is the new clever

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Different versions of Bing

Depending on your location, you will be served different versions of the Bing homepage. The one that provides the most interactive features is the USA English site. This is an interesting, yet confusing at the same time; but when you realize that this is just another Microsoft product, it is not surprising. I am not sure if Microsoft will implement the same interactivity in all the different versions in the future, but for now, we will be dealing mainly with the USA English site.

To access the US English site, you just have to change your country to USA in the top right hand corner.

Interactive Homepage

Unlike Google, you will find a nice interactive image (that changes everyday) to greet you. The image contains several regions which when you hover your mouse above it, it will popup a small window showing some historical fact about the image. It is not too much use if your main purpose is to execute a search, but it is fun to learn a new random fact every now and then.

Web search

Bing comes with plenty of user interactivity. When you perform a search, you can hover your mouse over the orange orb at the right side of the search results to see a quick preview. On the left, there is a related-search column that shows a list of the popular searches similar to your search terms. This is a good way to expand your search without having to enter another search term.

Images search

When it comes to images search, Bing does a great job in displaying the images and minimize the effort required to view all the images. Instead of arranging the images in pages, Bing now loads the images on the fly. As you scroll down the page, Bing will fetch the images from its database and display on the screen. There are also plenty of options to customize the search results, such as size, layout, color, style and people.

As you hover your mouse above the image, a larger preview thumbnail of the images will pop up, and with some of its details.

Video search

For people outside of USA and are not able to watch Hulu TV, Bing video search allows you to watch a short preview of the video. Simply hover your mouse over the video and it will start to play a short clip of the video.

When you click on the video link, instead of bringing you to the video site, Bing will load the video as a frame within the search result page. Once you are done watching the video, simply close it and continue your search from there.

Shopping and Travel

Microsoft seems to have put in great effort to integrate the shopping and travel components into Bing. When you perform a search in the Shopping section, it will return results showing the product image, user ratings, price and Bing cashback percentages. Bing cashback is the new feature introduced in Bing that allows you to redeem a percentage of the product’s cost back as a discount (aka cashback). This is a new feature not found in any other search engines.

Bing also allows you to search for cheap flights and hotel stay.

Web slices

If you are using IE 8, Bing can automatically create web slices from news page or stocks chart so that you can refer to them quickly and easily.

Conclusion

Will Bing be the next Google killer? In my opinion, probably not, at least for the time being. Nevertheless, I have no doubt that Microsoft has come up with plenty of new and useful features in Bing that could ruffle some of Google’s feathers. As more and more companies introduce innovative and interactive features, the mass public (people like you and me) are definitely the ones who are going to benefit. What do you think? Let’s hear it in the comments.

Similarly, you can also check out Wolfram Alpha for a brand new kind of search experience.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Specto is a Linux-based desktop application that allows you to watch for configurable events and get notified instantly when updates are available. Things that you can monitor include websites, emails, files/folders, system processes and connection ports.

The way Specto works is very easy. If you are monitoring a particular website, like your Facebook account for new messages on your wall, Specto grabs the file size of that site at regular interval and compares it with the previous version. If there are any changes, it will notify you via an unobtrusive popup at the corner of the system taskbar. You can define an error margin so that Specto won’t notify you for small changes to the site (such as rotating ads).

Specto is available as a package in the software repository of most Linux distro, so Linux users shouldn’t have much difficulty in installing it in your system.

After you have installed it, you can easily add events via its interface window. There are only several simple configurations so anyone, even if you have no technical knowledge, can use it easily.

To monitor a website, you just have to enter the name of the event, the update interval and the website’s URL. As mentioned above, you can set the error margin at the bottom of the window.

Specto comes with native support for Gmail, which means you can simply enter your username and password and have it notify you when new mails arrived. If you are using other email accounts, you will have to configure the POP3 or IMAP account accordingly.

If you want to monitor a particular file/folder, system processes or ports, the configuration process is the same as the above steps.

Whenever there is an update to the event that you are watching, Specto will popup a notification message just below its icon at the task bar. If you are using Ubuntu Jaunty, it also support the NotifyOSD feature.

Import/Export feature

What if you are using multiple computers but want to maintain the same setting and watch the same events throughout every computer? Specto comes with the import/export feature where you can easily and quickly export your configuration file in one machine and import it in another machine.

Conclusion

This may not be the ‘must-have’ application in your Linux machine, but if you are currently spending a lot of time monitoring some mundane but important stuff on the Web or your network files, you can be sure that Specto is going to make your life much easier.

What do you currently have Specto or any other applications monitoring? Let us know how you did it, in the comments.

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In this article, I will point out 6 other ways that you can transfer music to your iPhone without iTunes.

(Note: When I refer to “iPhone” in the article, it includes the iPod Touch as well)

1. Media Monkey (Windows)

MediaMonkey is a heavy-duty, fully-featured media player for Windows. It is just like iTunes in Mac, allowing you to manage your music, video, podcast, rip CD, organize album art etc. In their latest version 3 release, they implemented iPhone/iPod Touch support and you can now transfer/sync your music easily.

In order to use Media Monkey to manage your iPhone music, you have to first install iTunes (version 8.1.0.52 and before). That could be ironical since the purpose of it all is to do without iTunes completely. However, iTunes comes with the device driver for iPhone/iPod Touch that is required by many third-party media players to detect and access the database of the iPhone. As soon as you install iTunes, you will be able to use Media Monkey to sync your music.

For those who don’t want to install iTunes, there is a hack:

1. Download the iTunes.exe file
2. Rename the .exe to .zip
3. Open up the zipped file and extract AppleMobileDeviceSupport.msi and QuickTime.msi
4. Install these two files.

You can then sync your iPhone with Media Monkey without iTunes.

2) Winamp and the ml_ipod plugin (Windows)

For those who have been using Winamp since the first day it was launched, there is no need to migrate all your music library to iTunes just because you bought a iPhone. With the ml_ipod plugin, you will be able to sync your music.

Firstly, you have to install iTunes (ml_ipod was tested with iTunes 7.4.2 and 8.0.2. If you are using a later version of iTunes, might not work), or use the above hack to install the driver without installing iTunes.

Secondly, install Winamp (recommended version 5 and above), follow by ml_ipod (version 3.08 or later). Plug in your iPhone and start Winamp. You should be able to see the device appear on the left side of the panel (see above screenshot).

One good thing about using this combination is, unlike iTunes, this is a bidirectional sync – you can download the songs back to your computer.

3) SharePod (Windows)

If you are looking for a simple and lightweight software to get the synchronization done quickly and easily, then Sharepod would be a good choice.

Sharepod is nothing more than a software for you to sync your iPod and iPhone. While you can play music directly from your iPhone within Sharepod, the music player is only minimal and does not offer much options.

SharePod also offers bidirectional synchronization between your iPhone and computer. Did I also mention that there is no installation required for Sharepod? It just works!

Just like the above two softwares, you’ll need to install iTunes (or perform the hack) for SharePod to recognize your iPhone.

4) CopyTransManager (Windows)

If you are still using firmware 1.x on your iPhone, CopyTrans Manager will work out of the box to sync your iPhone. However, if you are using firmware 2.x, it will prompt you to apply a fix to downgrade the iPhone database so that it can be read by the software. If you are not comfortable with it modifying the internal structure of your iPhone, this software might not be for you.

Editor’s note: Downgrading your iPhone firmware may render your iPhone incapable of using newer applications which require firmwares 2.2 and higher.

Unlike all other software listed above, you don’t need to install iTunes to use CopyTrans Manager. It claims to be the alternative to iTunes. Perhaps in the field of syncing your music library, it can be a good alternative. Other than that, it is clearly lacking in features and does not offer as many features as iTunes.

5) PwnPlayer (any platform)

Pwnplayer is an iPhone music player app that acts as an alternative to the default ipod.app in your iPhone. Its user interface is almost similar to the iPod.app, allowing you to view your songs in Artists, Albums, Songs, Genre list etc. It also supports album art display.

To use Pwnplayer, you have to first jailbreak your iPhone, then install the PwnPlayer application from Cydia. Once you have jailbroken your iPhone, you can then transfer your songs (over SSH) to any folder in your iPhone (for more information about transferring files over to the iPhone, refer to my older article: 6 Ways To Use iPhone As An External Hard Drive). Pwnplayer will scan the whole iPhone hard disk and add the songs to its library. You don’t have to worry about any compatibility with OS platform since it works regardless which OS you are using. As long as you can perform SSH in your computer, you can get Pwnplayer to work.

6) GtkPod (Linux)

Gtkpod seems to be the only solution to sync music to your iPhone in Linux (The older version of Amarok will work too, but Amarok 2.x doesn’t support iPhone syncing yet), but getting it to work is not as easy.

Image source: Gtkpod screenshot page

For those who are geeky and advantageous enough, here are the full instructions to hack your iPhone to get it to sync in Linux with gtkpod.

Enjoyed this article? Maybe you’ll be interested to know that you may also sync any MP3 player with iTunes. Also, find out how you can easily make ringtones for your iPhone.

What other ways do you use to sync your music to iPhone without iTunes? Let us know in the comments.

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Disclaimer:

1) This is not a full feature comparison between SugarSync and Dropbox as that will take up several pages. I have only listed some of the most commonly used features and users’ concern

2) All the points listed below are factual at this instance when the article is published. Things might change in the future and all the points stated here might not be valid any more.

3) I have tried my best to be unbiased and impartial in making judgement. You may not agree with some of the points below and are encouraged to share your opinions in the comments.

OS Support

At the moment, SugarSync only supports Windows and Mac (I will go into the mobile platform later) whereas Dropbox supports Windows, Mac and Linux.

Clearly the winner for this round: Dropbox.

File Management

SugarSync makes use of a sync client (SugarSync Manager) to manage all your file synchronization.

After you have installed the client, it automatically creates a Magic Briefcase folder in your Documents folder and everything you add to the Magic Briefcase will be synced to the cloud and across all other computers that have SugarSync linked. In addition, you may select any folders outside of the Magic Briefcase folder to be backed up to the cloud. These folders won’t be synced across other computers unless you specificy it in the SugarSync Manager. It gives you a certain degree of control and flexibility in backing up your files and syncing across computers but require much repetitive work.

Dropbox, on the other hand, works very differently from SugarSync. Instead of a file management client, it integrates itself into the file manager (Windows explorer for Windows, Nautilus for linux and Finder in Mac) so that you can handle your files like you have always done.

There is no learning curve at all and you can use it immediately after you have installed it. Everything you place in the Dropbox folder will automatically be synced to the cloud and across all other computers.

You won’t be able to sync any other folders outside of the Dropbox folder unless you move/copy them into the Dropbox folder. Also, you can’t choose which files you want/don’t want to sync across computers. In this aspect, Dropbox gives you lesser flexibility and control but it makes it extremely easy to use. (While you can create symlinks to sync folders outside of the Dropbox folder, this is more of a workaround rather than the core feature in Dropbox, so I will not take it into consideration here.)

Winner: Draw. One gives you the flexibility of managing your files while the other gives you the ease of use. No clear winner here.

Sharing Options

To share files in SugarSync, you have to do it via the Web interface. Even if you click on the Share option in the SugarSync Manager, it will still direct you to your Web account. In your Web account, you can enter the email addresses of the persons you want to share the files with.

In Dropbox, there are two ways you can share a file/folder. You can share your folders with your friends (by sending them an email in the Web interface), or place them in the Public folder (within the Dropbox folder) and have them accessible by everyone. Public sharing can be done within the file manager and you can quickly grab the Public link and broadcast them on your site. This is a great way to share large files without having to worry about the storage space and bandwidth.

Winner: Dropbox, for the additional public sharing feature.

Mobile support

Sugarsync comes with native iPhone, Blackberry and Windows Mobile apps where the users can access their files directly from the handset dashboard. Dropbox users who want access to their files can only do so via the Mobile web interface. Not to complaint about the Dropbox mobile Web interface but somehow, a native app is able to integrate with the handset better and provide better viewing and features.

Winner: Sugarsync

Storage space (and pricing)

Dropbox gives you 2GB after signup and another 3GB after referring a friend. Sugarsync comes with a 2GB of storage space when you sign up a free account with them (see below for the limitations of the free account).

When it comes to premium account, Sugarsync offers more choices than Dropbox. Sugarsync comes with 4 upgrade options, ranging from $4.99 (30GB) to $24.99 (250GB) whereas Dropbox only have a $9.99/month (50GB) upgrade option. Editor’s note: Dropbox has now added a 100GB package for $19.99/month.

In terms of choices, flexibility and value for money (price per GB), SugarSync offers better value and choices.

Winner: Sugarsync

Limitations of Free Account

While SugarSync comes with a 2GB free account, it also comes with certain limitations:

• You can only backup & sync up to two computers.
• You can only maintain up to 2 past versions of each document.
• The upload time on the 2 GB free plan isn’t as speedy as with the paid.

In Dropbox, there are no limitations on the free account and you can use it on multiple computers.

Winner: Needless to say, Dropbox is the clear winner here.

Conclusion

Dropbox 3 – Sugarsync 2, Draw 1

It is quite obvious (at least to me) that Dropbox is the triumphant winner in this clash of the titans. Personally, I prefer Dropbox as it supports Linux, integrates fully into my Nautilus and allows me to host and share large files with all the readers of my blog. Perhaps you have a different reason for choosing Dropbox (or SugarSync)? Do share with us in the comments.

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ZumoDrive is an online storage service that everyone can use to store their files in the Cloud and access them from different computers. What makes it different from the rest of its competitors is the way it manages the data on your computer. Most storage services create a folder on your local hard drive and sync all of the data to/from that folder. This might be a good idea in order to keep the data in sync, but what if you are using a 4GB Netbook and you have 10GB of data in the cloud? Your Netbook won’t be able to hold all the data.

What ZumoDrive does is: mount itself as a drive on the computer and “tricks” the computer into thinking that the hosted data are local. When you click to open any file (or music) from ZumoDrive, it will stream those files from the cloud and open them with any local application. This way, even if you are running out of hard disk space, you can still access 10GB (or even 500GB) of data from your computer effortlessly.

What happens if I am not connected to the Web?

There will certainly be times when you are not connected to the Web, so does it mean that you won’t be able to access to your data? This is what I thought when I first used ZumoDrive. Apparently, ZumoDrive is clever enough to prevent this from happening.

When using ZumoDrive, your hosted files are tagged with a specific logo on the icons. This means that the files are currently residing on the cloud server.

When you click to open any file, it will be streamed from the server and cached on your computer. In the event that your computer is not connected to the Web, there is still a cached version on your computer that you can open, view and edit; just like any other file. The next time you are connected to the Web, ZumoDrive will sync the local data changes back to the cloud server.

In the settings page, you may configure the amount of hard disk space available for caching and where to store the cache. You may also set the policy for ZumoDrive to follow, whether or not to always stream file from the server, to always cache it locally or a mixture of both.

ZumoDrive for iPhone/iPod Touch

Who says you can’t playback 10GB of music when you only have a 8GB iPhone? With the Supersize Me (iTunes Store link) free iPhone app (and an Internet connection), you can play your entire music library, open and edit your documents and see view your photos directly from the cloud.

ZumoDrive is currently available for Windows, Mac OS X and iPhone/iPod Touch. Linux users can only access ZumoDrive via the Web interface. According to ZumoDrive, a Linux version is coming soon, so stay tuned to the ZumoDrive developers.

A free account comes with 1GB of storage space. Those who require more storage space may upgrade to a premium account at prices ranging between $2.99 (10GB) to $79.99 (500GB) per month. For me, 1GB of free storage space will suffice. What about you?

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Luckily, in Linux, there are plenty of great alternative browsers that you can use. So, check out 12 alternative browsers for Linux.

1) Flock

Flock is also known as the Web 2.0 browser. It is based on the Gecko engine (the same engine used by Firefox) and it is geared toward many of the Web 2.0 stuff. You can easily connect to your friend in Facebook, MySpace, Digg. watch Youtube video, browser Flickr photos, write a blog post or save a public bookmark and many more Web services. It may not be the fastest, but it is surely the most complete in Web 2.0 sense.

2) SwiftFox

If you haven’t have the courage to ditch Firefox, but wish for it to run faster, then Swiftfox could be a good alternative. Swiftfox is an optimized build of Mozilla Firefox and is fully compatible with the Firefox profile and extensions. There are builds for both AMD and Intel processors and is based on the most cutting edge Firefox source code available.

3) Swiftweasel

Another optimized build of Firefox. The difference between Swiftweasel and Swiftfox is that Swiftweasel is open source while Swiftfox has a proprietary software license. Same as Swiftfox, Swiftweasel loads faster than Firefox and uses far less memory. The default installation of Swiftweasel also comes with the AdBlockPlus extension to block all the javascript and ads.

4) SeaMonkey

The SeaMonkey browser is part of the SeaMonkey Internet Suite, which comes with a browser, email and newsgroup client, IRC chat client, and Web development tool.

SeaMonkey has a well-designed menu layout, enabling you to access to various options in the menu bar quickly and easily. If you are looking for an all-in-one email and browser package, then SeaMonkey will be a good choice.

5) Konqueror

Konqueror is the default browser in KDE system. It is more than a simple browser. It is also a file manager and an universal document viewer.

One good thing about Konqueror is that it is fully integrated into KDE 4 and is able to manage the memory usage and allocation better. It is lightweight and loads much faster than non-native browser. The ability to double as a file manager and document viewer is also useful at times when you need to access the documents in the local system.

6) Midori

Midori is a lightweight web browser that is fully integrated with GTK+ 2. Midori uses the WebKit engine (the same as Safari and Chrome) and it is fast in rendering web pages. Midori uses the Open Search API and allow you to specify and define your own search engine easily. It is still in the early development stage and is currently under heavy development.

7) Epiphany

Also known as the Web browser for GNOME desktop, the goal of Epiphany is to be simple and easy to use. Epiphany is based on the Gecko engine and supports tabs and extensions. It may not be the best among all the browsers, but when it comes to simplicity and ease of use, Epiphany definitely lives up to its name.

Kazehakase

Kazehakase is a Gecko based browser that comes with plenty of surprises. On the surface, it looks like a stripped down version of Firefox, but further exploration reveals plenty of useful features that are only available via extensions in Firefox. It include a mouse gesture function and key accelerator to allow you to perform tasks faster. You can also customize the size, width and color of the tab and there are options to manage your current session. Kazehakase is definitely a great browser that is worth checking out.

9) Opera

Opera is another popular browser used by many people. Some of its innovative design such as the Speed dial, mouse gesture, panel splitting have been implemented in other browsers such as Firefox, Chrome and IE.

10) Arora

Arora looks like a super slimed down version of Firefox, but it is in fact based on the Webkit engine. It is a lightweight and minimalistic browser that is most suited for normal Web surfing. It does come with a private browsing mode that are not even available in the current version of Firefox (private browsing is available in Firefox 3.5beta)

11) Amaya

Amaya is more than a browser. It is also a Web editor that allows you to create and update documents directly on the Web. You can browse the Web and use the editor to change the color of the text, images layout or any other things that you see in the screen. A great tool for Web developers/designers.

12) Lynx

Lynx is the text web browser, which means that it is text based and you won’t see any images, javascript, advertisement or popup in the page. It is very useful for those who value speed over looks and just want to read the text rather seeing plenty of image advertisements.

This is a great list of alternative browsers for Linux. Do share with us which one is your favorite.

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Now, while you are downloading the movies, wouldn’t it be great if you can preview it, check out its quality and then decide if you want to continue the download?

VLC

We all know that VLC is a versatile media player that can play almost any media format you throw to it. Well, another thing that you can get it to do is to repair and playback the partially downloaded video.

Open your VLC and load the video file. It will automatically detect that this is broken file and will prompt you to repair it. For instance, it can open broken avi files.

Click the Repair button to start the repair process. It could take quite some time depending on the file size of your video.

Once the repair is finished, it will automatically playback in the player.

To avoid damaging the integrity of the partially downloaded torrent file, it is best to first duplicate a copy of the video file, then use VLC to repair and playback the duplicated copy. When you are done previewing, simply delete the duplicated copy.

DivFix++

DivFix++ is complete rewrite of the “DivFix” application simply because the developer feels that the original DivFix program is too slow and take up plenty of CPU power. What DivFix++ is capable of doing is to fix broken AVI file, rebuild the index of the video and allows you to playback in a media player.

Indeed, after using DivFix++, I do find that it is much faster (than DivFix and VLC), not CPU-intensive and able to reproduce the AVI file in good shape. The best thing is, it doesn’t require any installation. Karl has written a well explained article about DivFix++, so I will not  go into great detail here.

One thing that I like about is the ability to fix a file to a temporary location so you won’t hurt the original file. Similarly, you can preview the fixed video with a media player and then delete it once you are done.

Like VLC, DivFix++ works in Linux, Windows and Mac and it is a great software worth trying out.

GOM Player

On the frontend, GOM player looks just like any of the media player in the market. It allows you to play videos (of various format) and have great subtitles support. However, what really distinguishes GOM player from the rest is its patented technology that allows you to play broken AVI files on the fly.

Don’t ask me how the patented technology works, I know nuts about it. The only thing that I know is that when I playback the partially downloaded file, it doesn’t show any error message, nor a prompt to ask me to repair the file. What it does is to repair the file quietly on the backend and playback when it is done. It is just like streaming video on the Web, the initial process might be slow, but if you pause the video and wait for the streaming (backend repairing) to complete, you will get smooth playback in no time.

GOM Player is currently available only for Windows platform.

The above three software have helped me a lot when I was downloading bitTorrent videos. What about you? What software do you use to preview partially downloaded video?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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With the release of BuddyPress, there is now a third way that is both easy to handle and allows you to have full control: turn your WordPress site into a social networking site.

BuddyPress is not a standalone social networking software. It is in fact a set of WordPress plugins and themes that enables the users to add social networking modules to their sites. You can either use it as an addon service to your existing blog, or convert your domain to a full fledge social networking site.

In case you are rushing off to grab the software and install on your site, here is the warning: BuddyPress doesn’t work on just any version of WordPress. You have to install (or upgrade if you are already running WordPress) WordPress MU before you can run BuddyPress. WordPress MU is an extension of WordPress that allows the users to easily create multiple blogs in one domain. BuddyPress requires this multiple blogs creation capability of WordPress MU to allow the users to register, set up and create their user profile

Installation

Since BuddyPress is essentially a series of WordPress plugins, installing BuddyPress is as easy as activating the plugins in the Plugins page. To fully integrate BuddyPress into your site, you’ll have to first change your WordPress theme to a BuddyPress-capable theme, then add the respective modules (widgets) via the Appearance -> Widgets section. Unlike WordPress, there are only few BuddyPress themes available for download. However, if you have experience with creating/modifying a WordPress theme, you shouldn’t have any problem in creating your own BuddyPress theme.

Activating BuddyPress in the Plugins page

Adding social networking widgets to the site

Features

Some of the features that you find in BuddyPress include extended profile, private messaging, adding of friends, forming of groups, activity streams, own blog etc.

BuddyPress is also able to integrate with bbPress, the WordPress-style forums. In future release, other features such as status update and photo album upload will also be included.

Back when BuddyPress is still in development stage, there has already been plenty of plugins available to enhance its functionality. These plugins are usual WordPress plugins and you can easily install/activate them in the Plugins page.

Useful Links

Here are some of the links that would be useful to you when you are integrating BuddyPress to your site.

• BuddyPress demo site: http://testbp.org/
• WordPress MU installation guide: http://codex.buddypress.org/getting-started/installing-wordpress-mu/
• BuddyPress installation guide: http://codex.buddypress.org/getting-started/installing-buddypres-from-combo/
• Buddypress plugins: http://buddypress.org/extend/plugins/

Have you tried BuddyPress? How do you find its functionality compared to other social networking software?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Backing up your device driver saves you the trouble of searching, downloading and installing the drivers after you have reformatted the system. Also, in some OEM computers, the device drivers are custom made and are not available anywhere on the Web. If you lost the driver CD, your hardware will cease to work properly. When such situation arises, driver backup software will come in handy.

Double Driver

Double Driver is a simple and small software that you can use to backup/restore your device driver. There is nothing fanciful about Double Driver, except that it does its job well.

Double Driver is able to detect between third party drivers and drivers provided by Microsoft. By default, only the third party drivers are backup since the Microsoft drivers come installed when you reinstall the OS. However, if you want a comprehensive solution, you can select all the Microsoft drivers and back them up as well.

Within the Double Driver application, there is this function that allows you to build a portable version of DD. With this portable version, you will be able to run it on any Windows machine without installation.

DriverMax

When it comes to driver backup, DriverMax is the powerhouse. Not only does it backup/restore your driver, it also searches the Web and update your driver when a newer version is available. No more searching for some rare driver on discs or on the Web.

There are several functions that come with the DriverMax application. You can export/import drivers and view the installed drivers report, check for driver update and identify unknown hardware. There is even a function where you can check out the popular hardware (video cards and processors) out there.

DriverMax is free to download and use, but you need to set up a user account and obtain a registration key before you can access the full functionality.

Driver Backup 2!

There have been very little publicity about this software, but that doesn’t mean this is not a good software. In fact, among the three, this is the one that I like most.

While it does not provide driver update like DriverMax does, it does give you plenty of choices when backing up your drivers. You can choose to view between OEM drivers, third party drivers or both and backup those drivers that are digitally signed or fully portable. For your information, fully portability refers to the ability to backup and restore without causing a gitch to the system.

DriverBackup 2! also comes with a command line mode that makes it possible to automate driver backup using particular parameters in the command line. If you know absolutely nothing about the command line, I would advise you to steer clear of this mode.

One last thing that I like about DriverBackup 2! is that it is already a portable app when you first download it. There is no installation required and you just need to double-click the DrvBk.exe file to run it. Cool.

What other software do you use to backup your driver?

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Over the years, I have learnt my lesson. Now, before the start of any projects, I will tell my clients that I charge by hours and give them an estimate of the time needed to complete the project. I will then use a desktop time tracking software to track the amount of time I have spent in the project and then charge my clients accordingly.

If you are like me who provide your services on the hourly rate, here are some free and useful desktop time tracking tools that you can use to track the time you have spent on any projects.

Baralga

Baralga is a simple and lightweight application that allows you to track the time you have spent on your project. On the home page is a big Start/Stop button where you can click to start the timer as you start on the project. There is also options for you to enter manually the total time you have spent on the projects. Best of all, it allows you to export your data to Microsoft Excel, CSV or even as a data backup.

Baralga is developed in Java and works in multiple OS.

Rachota Timetracker

Rachota looks slightly complicated than Baralga, but it is in fact a simple to use application with several useful functions. It allows you to define your working hours/day and give you a notification when your working hours are not reached/exceeded. It also allows you to define regular tasks (with priority) so that you can access to them easily on the front page.

While doing your projects, there will be times when you need to take a coffee break. Rather than stopping the timer, there is a Relax button where you can use to pause the timer. Once you are done with your break, simply click the Work button again to start the timer.

Rachota comes with an Analytics tool where you can use to compare the amount of time and work done that you have completed.

Rachota is developed in Java and in available for all platforms (that support Java)

Klok

Even though Klok is still in beta, it is surprisingly an useful and comprehensive time tracking application. For each project, you can further split it into smaller sub projects and manage it like any other projects. You can also create templates to be used for new creation of projects.

Once a project is completed, you can drag and drop to the Archive button (located at the bottom left corner) to archive it. At any point of time, you can also access the archive to unarhived any old projects. While Klok allows you to export your data to Excel spreadsheet, there is no ways for you to import any data. This might be a problem if you need to work on multiple computers.

Klok works in all platforms and requires Adobe Air to be installed in your system before you can use it.

actiTime Basic

actiTime Basic is a free, yet powerful timesheet optimized for your basic time tracking needs. Once installed, you can run ActiTime from your browser. Features include creating new users, setting up customers record and project details, enter the time spent for each projects, allocate your work schedule and best of all, generate an invoice for the time you have spent on the projects.

actiTime uses Microsoft Access or MySQL to store your data. Data collected by actiTIME can be exported to qbXML file and then imported by actiTIME Invoice Importer to QuickBooks® for invoice generation.

Time Tracker

Time Tracker is a Windows-based application. One thing that I like about this application is its user-interface. It allows you to see everything in one glance. The projects, tasks and links to reports/charts are located on the left pane and allow you to switch between each project easily and quickly. The main panel that track the time you have spent on your project is of a spreadsheet format so you don’t have to spend a lot of time getting used to it.

The reports section comes with three different type of visual report: text, chart and grid. Depending on your preferences, you can choose the one you like.

Time tracker also supports plugins. However there are only few and limited plugins that you can use currently.

Time Tracking Tool

Time-Tracking-Tool is really what I call a lightweight application. Weighing at only 1.3 MB, it is by-far the smallest applications among these 6 time tracking software. Even though it is small, it still comes with the complete set of tools to track your time effectively. You can create new tasks and add sub-tasks to it, activate the timer as you work on the project, view the report with bar chart. One thing that is lacking from this application is the ability to export/import data.

Time-Tracking-Tool is developed in Java and works in all platforms.

What other time desktop time tracking software do you use to track your time?

Image credit: John-Morgan

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Simply said, GKrellM is a single process stack of system monitors that allows you to monitor your system resources easily and quickly. Apart from monitoring your computer’s status it comes with lots of plugins bringing lots of useful featureslike radio tuner, weather lookup, reminder etc.

In case you are wondering why is it called such a wierd name, the word GkrellM is actually make up of three words G-Krell-M. The G stands for GNU (some call it GTK) while the word Krell is an inspiration from the flim “Forbidden Planet” (the native in the show is called Krell). The M stands for Monitor.

When you install GKrellM, it comes with a default set of monitors, including

• Hostname/system name display.
• Clock/calendar.
• SMP CPU monitor that can chart individual CPUs and/or a composite CPU.
• Temperature, fan, and voltage sensor monitors
• Process monitor with a chart for load and forks and a display of number of current processes and users.
• Disk monitor that can chart individual disks or a composite disk.
• Internet monitor (http, ftp, …) that displays current TCP port connections and charts historical port hits for over two days.
• Net interface monitors with charts for all routed net interfaces.
• Memory and swap space usage meters, and a swap page in/out chart.
• File system meters which show capacity/free space.
• A mailbox monitor which can launch a mail reader, a mail fetch/check program, and a sound notify command.
• APM laptop battery meter with a configurable alarm and warning for low battery time left.
• Uptime display.

Configuration

Configuring GkrellM is as easy as scrolling through the options menu and checking the boxes of the options you want.

On your Gkrellm window, right click your mouse and select Configuration (alternatively, press F1 on the keyboard). This will bring up the configuration window.

In the General option, under the Properties tab, this is where you can configure Gkrellm to be on sticky mode (always show on desktop) and/or get it to dock to the panel so that it won’t show up as an active window in the window list.

The configuration window also allows you to change settings for almost every built-in monitors. In the event that you are confused by the settings, you can click on the Info tab to read the related information and documentation.

One thing that I like about GKrellM is that its give you the ability to customize and personalize the settings, yet doesn’t require you to be too technical.

Themes

Being an application based on GTK, GKrellm supports themes and is able to integrate well with all the desktop environment. The default installation comes with 5 different themes, but seriously, they are not the outstanding type that you want to keep on your desktop for long. To download new theme, go to http://www.muhri.net where you can find a great collection of attractive third party themes.

Interested users can also create your own theme by following the documentation here.

Plugins

The best thing about Gkrellm that truly distinguishes itself from its competitors is its large collection of plugins. Just a quick peek at my Synaptic Package Manager shows a page full of GKrellM’s plugins available for installation, and that’s only include those accepted in the repository. There are still plenty of unknown, yet useful third party plugins available at the Gkrellm plugins site. Some of the useful plugins that I have tried and used include gkrellm-reminder (remind you of important stuffs), gkrellm-weather (find out the weather of your area), gkrellm-xmms2 (control your XMMS2 from the desktop), gkrellm-radio (FM radio tuner) and gkrellm-mailwatch (watch your mailboxes in multiple panels).

Cross-platforms compatibility

Gkrellm is available for Linux and Windows. FreeBSD, Mac OSX, NetBSD/OpenBSD and Solaris users may have to compile from source to get it working. Mac users can check out the darwinport for instructions to port GKrellM over to Mac.

Are you a user of GKrellM? We would like to hear your experience with GKrellM in the comment.

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When on the move, whenever I heard a nice song (especially a foreign language song), I will record it down with my iPhone and use Midomi to identify the title of that song. However, when I am on my computer, I will use Tunatic to identify the song title instead.

Tunatic is a free and small software (for Mac and Windows) that anyone can use to identify songs by sound. It is only 500K in size and only take up 440KB of your computer space.

To get Tunatic to work, you have to feed it with song input. The most common (and easiest) way is to use connect your computer to an external microphone and point it to the music source. It may seem dumb and stupid, but it works.

In the event that you do not have an external microphone, some of the ways that you can do include:

1. plug your sound source directly to your computer, using the line-in method. This is actually the best way as there won’t be any loss in sound quality.
2. If you are using Mac, many of the later models come with a built in microphone, which means you can use Tunatic instantly.
3. If you are playing music directly from your computer, you can select “What you hear” (also named “Stereo Mix” or “Mixed Output”)  as input.

When you first open Tunatic, you will find that it occupies only a small fraction of your desktop and little configuration option. In fact, the only option you can configure is to choose the sound input source.

When you are ready, simply play the sound and feed it in to Tunatic. Click the search button on Tunatic to get it to retrieve the song information from its database.

According to its website, Tunatic supports any genre of music (except classical). Being someone adventurous, I decided to try out different type of music and see if it can detect them correctly.

First I try out the oldies English pop song. No problem for Tunatic.

Next, I try out Jazz music. Once again, it detects the songs fairly quickly.

The next attempt is a Latin salsa song. No sweat.

The last attempt is a popular Chinese song, and it detect the song again. However, due to the language setting in my Windows computer, it is not able to display the Chinese character properly.

For all the songs that I have tried, it brings me satisfactory results. If you happen to find out which genre/language of songs that it can’t support, do let me know.

Once it have successfully detected the song, a small arrow will appear beside the name of the song. Click on this arrow and it will bring you to its website where it will show you the link to buy the song from iTunes, download the song as a ringtone, or to search for its lyrics. Not too bad for a simple software like this.

What it does not do

While Tunatic works great at detecting music, it does not contain any data about the track info and album arts, nor update the meta-tag automatically. If you are searching for meta-tag auto updater software, MakeUseOf does have a great article about this- 4 Easy ways to Fix music tags and organize library.

Also, Tunatic does not response well to voice. If you sing or hum into the microphone and wish for Tunatic to find that song for you, you will be disappointed.

Conclusion

This is definitely not a great software that will save thousands of life, but if you are like me, who does not have the habit of managing your songs and have the sudden urge to find out the title of that song, then this will just be the right software for you.

Tunatic is currently available for Windows 2000 or higher and Mac.

If you are aware of any free program tool that can identify songs by sound please share them with everyone in comments.

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Podcast Generator is an open-source Web-based podcast CMS that you can use to manage your podcasts. With Podcast Generator, you can easily upload your podcasts (be it audio or video), enter your episode information, publish it in your home page and have it automatically create podcast w3c-compliant feed, including iTunes specific tags.

Podcast Generator doesn’t require any database to work. As long as your Web server supports PHP, you will be able to run it.

The installation is extremely easy. Once you have uploaded the whole Podcast Generator folder to your web server, navigate to the Web URL in your browser and follow a simple 5-steps procedure to set up the software. The whole process will not take you more than 5 minutes.

Once you have set up the software and login to the Admin screen, you will be prompted to configure the details for  your podcast.

Uploading your podcast

When you upload a new episode of your podcast, you are required to fill in the podcast title and its description. Same as WordPress, you can categorize your podcast and sort them according to their category. Extra information that you can provide include podcast image, iTunes keywords/tags, Author’s name and email address.

As soon as your podcast is uploaded, the software will auto generate the podcast RSS feed and iTunes feed to allow your readers to subscribe.

Other features

Some of the other useful features found in Podcast Generator include:

Creating Categories

This is where you can manage your podcast categories.

Themes

At the moment, there are only two themes for you to choose from, buit you can easily create your own themes as long as you have some html and CSS knowledge. Unlike WordPress that have a complicated themes structure, Podcast Generator uses only an index.html and a stylesheet, so it is easy to customize it, or even create your own.

iTunes Settings

What good does it do if you run a podcast site that doesn’t support iTunes? In Podcast Generator, you will find lots of support for iTunes and plenty of options that you can configure.

Selecting the iTunes categories for your podcast. You can choose up to three different categories.

Using WordPress and Podcast Generator

Most of you could still be using WordPress and have no wish to migrate to another software. In this case, you can still install Podcast Generator in a separate folder (such as http://www.yoursite.com/podcast). Use it to manage your podcast, then promote the RSS/iTunes feeds in your WordPress blog. In this way, you won’t have to worry that the podcast plugin will break everytime you upgrade your blog.

Conclusion

If you are comparing Podcast Generator to WordPress, Podcast Generator is definitely not up to the marks, but if you are looking for a software to better manage your podcast and serves as an addon functionality to your existing site, then I am sure Podcast generator will easily do the job well.

Image credit: thevoyager

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Tasque

Even though it is a simple ToDo list manager, Tasque is extremely useful and versatile that everyone will love to use it.

When you first use Tasque, you might be surprised to find that there is no menu bar or any other miscellaneous features. In fact, there is almost nothing in the whole application window except for a dropdown box (to access the categories) and an input field for you to enter your tasks. That’s it, nothing more.

One of the best thing about Tasque is its ability to synchronize with Evolution and Remember the Milk. It is also supported by the Avant Window Navigator (AWN) dock so that you can access your ToDo list directly and quickly from the dock.

In Debian-based distro, you can install Tasque via the ‘tasque‘ package in the repositories.

GToDo

GToDo stands for To Do list for Gnome. It is one of the oldest ToDo list apps for Linux, but this does not mean that it is obsolete and useless. It may not come with a beautiful GUI, but it sure has plenty of useful features that makes it one of the most popular ToDo list apps for Linux users.

Some of the features that I like about this app includes the ability to create multiple lists, set alarm notifications when tasks are due, auto-purge completed tasks, export tasks to HTML format, sort tasks according to priority, due date or status and highlight or hide tasks until the due time is reached.

The GToDo package is found in the repository. For Gnome users, you can also install the GToDo panel applet and place the icon on your panel for quick access and easy retrieval.

Makagiga

Makagiga is more of a powerful mini PIM rather than a ToDo list. Other than the task management feature, it also serves as a RSS reader, notepad, image and links collection, bookmarks, a built-in search engine and a terminal console. If that is not enough, you can install plugins to extend its functionality.

For its ToDo list feature, it comes with different color codes for each entry so that you can easily distinguish which tasks are more important. In addition, there is a Complete column where you can assign the percentage of work done for that particular task. This is useful if you are tracking the progress of a project.

Makagiga is java based and requires Java SE 6 to work. It is available for the Linux and Windows platforms. You can find the installer package (deb, rpm and exe) on the download page.

ThinkingRock

ThinkingRock is a very powerful GTD style task manager that could be an overkill for the average users. It’s not just a ToDo list, but rather a full fledged project management application.

The developer probably knew that their complicated modules could be very difficult for the average users to get used to, that’s why they included a flow chart on the Home page. This has been very useful as it gives you a step-by-step guide to organize your thoughts and put it into actions.

There are four main steps to this application: Setup, Collect, Process and Organise/Review.

The Setup mode allows you to setup your account, including creating context, criteria and the topics. The Collect mode is where you record down all your thoughts as you brainstorm.

The Process mode is to give you a clear instruction on how to process your thoughts and filter out those that are not important/workable.

The last step is to organise your tasks and split them into smaller actionable tasks or delegated out for others to do.

ThinkingRock works on all platforms. Ubuntu users can install ThinkingRock by adding the package source (deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/salutis/ubuntu intrepid main) to the repository.

iKog

For those who love the command line more than anything else, you are in luck here. iKog is a powerful command line based ToDo list that is based loosely on the GTD methodology.

There is no installation required to run iKog. It is in fact a small python script that weighs only 20KB. If you have Python 2.4 running in your system, getting iKog to run is simply running the script with the command

python ikog.py

There is a whole lot of functions found in iKog. You can add simple tasks (command: “+ your task name”) or give your task a due date (command: “+ your task name :d2009-04-20“). To view your task list, simply type in the command list. For more information on the usage of iKog, refer to the documentation on its site.

In the event that you wish to print your task list, iKog also allows you to export your list to HTML format so that you can easily print it from your browser.

Most people will dread using the terminal, but somehow, after using it for a while, I have found myself addicted to it for its simple, fast and clean interface.

Which ToDo list application do you use in your Linux computer?

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The concept behind Tonido is simple. Instead of storing all your data on a third party site and worrying about your privacy, you can instead keep all your files on your local hard drive and use a web server to connect to your computer. There is no need to worry about your data being lost, and you are able to have access to your files, be it online or offline.

In fact, if you take the extra effort to try out Tonido, you will find that it is more than just a web server. It is more of a desktop suite that comes with various extensible applications to allow you to organize your photos, music, project collaborations and a Personal Information Manager (PIM) to manage your personal life.

When you first install Tonido, it will prompt you to create a profile. This profile will be the account that you use to access your desktop, both online and offline.

Once you have logged into the dashboard, you should see all the applications line up on the left pane.

Jukebox

The Jukebox module is where you can import all your music and play them over the Web.

Photos

Instead of uploading all your photos to Flickr or Photobucket just to share them with your friends, you can easily create a share group and share all your photos with others within this Photos modules. You can also tag and comment on other people’s photos.

Thots

Fancy a personal blog but do not want others to see it? The Thots application serves as a diary or a personal journal where you can post random thoughts to it.

Several things that Thots allows you to do: keep a personal journal to record the events in your life, Twitter support to share individual thots, bookmark webpages and clipping text from the web (with Firefox plugins) and many other things you can do with a blog.

Webshare

Whenever you need to share a file or folder from your desktop, there is no need to zip it up and upload it to the web anymore. With Webshare, you can easily add your folders and share them with your friends.

Workspace

Tasks, Calendar, Contacts, Notes and Files all in one place. You can use the Workspace to enter your appointments of the days, the tasks that need to be done and all the contacts you have. On the front, you will be able to see a quick summary of all the appointments for the day, to do list and so on. There is even a feed module that you can subscribe to so you won’t ever forget anything.

One thing that I find lacking is an email module to access your email.

Remote Web Access

By default, the remote web access is disabled. Luckily, you can quickly turn it on without much fiddling around. On the center of the dashboard, you can find a link “Run Web Access Setup Wizard”. Click on that and follow a few steps. In as little as 5 minutes, you will be able to get a connection to the web and access your data anywhere with Internet access.

Tonido runs on multiple platforms (Windows, Mac and Linux) and it is free for personal use. There is no mention of pricing on the site, but it seems that there will be a premium version in the future.

Overall, Tonido is a great software with plenty of useful applications for web workers. I certainly find myself using it very often on my Linux computer. What about you?

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If there is anything to complain about, it has to be the price and the compatibility issue with Linux OS. While Quicken is good, it comes at a price range from $39.99 to $99.99 and it only works in Windows does not have a native version for Linux. (Update: Quicken does work in Windows and Mac, thanks to Mulder for rectifying my mistake).

Luckily there are many free software options out there that works in various platforms and have the capabilities to become an alternative to Quicken.

1. GnuCash

Of all the free money management software out there, GnuCash is the most complete and also the closest alternative to Quicken. Not only can it be used as a personal finance manager, it also functions well as a small business accounting package. It aims to keep things simple, yet maintains the true accounting principles.

Useful features found in GnuCash include double-entry accounting, schedule recurring transactions and support for Quicken files (OFX/QFX) import/export.

Gnucash is available for Windows, Linux and Mac.

2. Grisbi

The best thing about Grisbi is its simple, intuitive and clean interface that makes organizing your finances a breeze. All the options are arranged in tabs and can be accessed quickly. While it is simple and easy to use, it is never short of features. Reconciliation, scheduling future transactions and creating a budget are just some of the many features found in Grisbi.

The default currency used in Grisbi is Euros, but you can easily change that to other currencies. If the exchange rate is supplied, it can even adjust the currency to the base value automatically.

The most powerful thing about Grisbi is its ability to generate reports and present the data in numerous ways. You can export your report in CSV or HTML format, or even clone it and export them to another machine.

Grisbi is available for Windows, Linux and Mac.

3. Home Bank

Home Bank is a small and lightweight money manager that works in multi-platforms. It is simple in design and does not take up plenty of resources. If you have completely no experience in using money management software and have no wish to learn complicated stuff, then Home Bank is most suited for you.

Home Bank is available for Windows, Linux and Mac.

4. jGnash

jGnash is a Java based software. This means that you can use it in almost any platform, as long as you can install and run Java in that platform.

When you first start jGnash, you might be surprised to find a blank screen staring at you, with very little instructions on how to get started. However, if you are patient enough to explore around, you will find that there are actually plenty of interesting features. Other than managing your own finances, jGnash also allows you to track your investment account and transactions. If you are geeky enough, you can even create your own javascript and run it in jGnash.

jGnash is available as long as you can run Java in your platform.

5. Money Manager Ex

Apart from GnuCash, Money Manager Ex is another software that is used and liked by many people. The unique thing about MMEx is not about its features, but its big screen that allows you to see at one glance where all your money has gone to.

Money Manager Ex runs on Windows and Linux and an experimental build is now available for Mac OS X.

(Note: The Money Manager Ex package for Ubuntu found at the download page is not an English version. I have not figured out where the download link for the Linux English version is though.)

What software do you use to manage your financial accounts?

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Some Linux users might argue that this is an emulation of Mac OS X (which they detest the most) and they would prefer to stick with the original favor – that’s fine. Some others might feel that since it is a beautiful and useful application and it is fully customizable in Linux, why not?

Nevertheless, having the option to choose whether you want or don’t want it is really the power of Linux. Below, I have listed some of the popular dock applications that you can consider if you are thinking of installing a dock in your Linux distro.

All Time Favorites

Avant Window Navigator

If you have been googling for docks for Linux, I am sure you will encounter the Avant Window Navigator very often. Indeed, this is currently the most popular dock for Linux. It is very interactive and allows you to do plenty of tasks right from the dock. There are also plenty of configuration options that you can configure in the Preference pane. Stuff such as the dock themes and animation effects are fully customizable.

If you are using Ubuntu Hardy and above, AWN is included in the repository.

Great Alternatives

Cairo dock

Previously known as Gnome dock, Cairo dock is definitely a great alternative to AWN. When compared with AWN, I feel that Cairo dock has much smoother animation and transition effects.

One great feature about Cairo dock (and missing in AWN) is the ability to create sub-docks within the main dock. This allows you to create several layers of applications grouped under the same family.

Installation instructions

Gnome-Do Docky

Gnome-do is better known for its Quicksilver or Launchy style of accessing your applications quickly. Recently, the Gnome-do team launched a dock version of Gnome-do: Docky.

One good thing about Docky is its ability to integrate the Gnome-do search into the dock. The applications that you used and searched the most often are automatically placed in the dock. In the dock mode, the shortcut key “Super + Space” to activate the search function is still valid.

WBar

WBar is a fast and smooth dock that can be installed in most Linux distros. While it is not as polished as the above few, it is highly tweakable and is not as resource intensive as the others. Best of all, it doesn’t require a compositing manager to run. If you have a old and low end computer, this is definitely the best dock application for you.

Download the deb file here.

Gnome Panel

If you are using a Gnome based distro and don’t wish to install any dock applications, or your old computer can’t support the dock, you can still modify the Gnome panel to become a dock.

First, drag all your applications from the menu bar to the bottom panel. Next, right click the panel and select Properties. In the General tab, increase the size to 50pixels (or higher if you are using a big screen monitor). Uncheck the box “Expand”. If you want your dock to autohide when not in use, check the box “Autohide”.

Next, go to the Background tab, select the Solid color and move the style slider all the way to the left. That’s it, you now have a simple dock in your desktop that will autohide when not in use.

Other Candidates

Engage dock

Engage is the dock for Enlightenment E17. If you install E17 as your desktop manager, you will see the Engage dock when you log in. However, if you are using other desktop managers, it is not an easy task to install Engage dock. While there is a standalone package for various desktop managers (other than E17), there is little documentation on where to get the source and how to install/configure.

Engage is useful in that it does not require a compositing manager to work, or to be more exact, it doesn’t require Compiz to work. All the libraries that it needs are bundled within the E17 framework.

This dock is great if you are using Enlightenment E17 desktop manager.

Kiba dock

Kiba dock is a nice, yet complicated dock. The installation can be very complicated (and confusing) and it can easily scare beginners off. If you are not the sort who likes to compile, configure or deal with the terminal, this is not for you.

Sim dock

Sim dock is a small dock that doesn’t require any compositing manager to work and is available for most Linux distros. It is a simple dock that doesn’t have much functionality except to allow you to quickly access your applications from the dock. The development has been stopped for several years and the latest version is backdated to July 2007.

Which dock do you use for your Linux machine?  Can you recommend another one?

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With the release of KDE 4.2, you can now install and use all the KDE applications natively on your Windows without having to install any Linux operating system on your computer.

For those who have not tried or used KDE before, it is one of the most popular and commonly used Windows managers for various Linux distributions. Apart from the attractive Windows-like user interface, it also comes with a complete suite of desktop applications, ranging from file manager, browser, media player to office suite.

As Windows comes with its own Windows manager, when installing KDE for Windows, only the applications are installed. If you want to get the full KDE experience, it is best to try out a KDE based Linux distro, such as Kubuntu.

To install KDE for Windows, first download the installer (download link here) from the KDE website.

First run the installer. It will ask you several questions and walk you through the installation.

During the installation, you have a chance to choose between End User or Package Manager mode. The Package Manager mode allows you to install many more different types of packages, but it is more complicated to use and configure. If you are not geeky enough, you might want to select the End User mode instead.

You will also get to choose between the different versions of KDE to install. I would strongly recommend installing the latest version (4.2.1 as of this post)

Lastly, before the whole installation starts, you can select the applications that you want to install on your Windows. For most of you, the package name will not make any sense to you. You have to read the package notes to get an idea what a particular package does.

Once you have got everything configured, the installer will start downloading all the necessary files. This might take a long time depending on the number of applications you have selected and your Internet connection. For me, it took me about half an hour to finish downloading 500MB of files.

Once the installation is completed, you will be able to access the KDE applications from the Start menu.

Here are some of the screenshots:

Konqueror

Konqueror is a two-in-one file manager and Internet browser. When I use it in Windows, it can be rather memory intensive and some of the site rendering can be a bit off.

Dolphin

This popular and versatile file manager works well in Windows, though the initial startup could be a bit laggy. Once it has finished loading, its performance is as good as in a native Linux KDE environment.

KWrite

Serves as a good alternative for Wordpad and notepad

At this moment, not all the applications are stable for daily usage. For me, I am not able to load the media player – Amarok at well as it crashed everytime I opened it. One thing for sure, all the games work pretty well and they are very addictive.

Currently, Windows 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista are supported. I have not tried it on Windows 7 yet. If you have tried it, do let me know if it works. In addition, there is also a Mac version that you can download. Mac users who are interested can check it out here.

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One thing though, before you upload that video of yours, it is important to get it compressed to the smallest possible size so that your movie can be more easily watched by people over the Web. Luckily, you do not need to be a tech guru to be able to compress your video files. If you are using Windows XP and above (excluding Windows 7), you already have a great tool in your Start menu that allows you to compress video files for web easily – Windows Movie Maker.

For some reasons, if your computer does not come with the Window Movie Maker, you can download it from the Microsoft website for a price of FREE.

In this tutorial, I am going to illustrate how you can compress a video file for web to half its size with Windows Movie Maker.

As seen for the screenshot below, the video file that I used for this tutorial is of size 61.8MB. Let’s see how much we are able to compress by the end of this tutorial.

Open up your Windows Movie Maker. Click on the Import Video link on the left pane.

Select the video file that you want to compress and import it into Windows Movie Maker.

Drag the movie to the timeline.

If you want to edit and add effects to your movie, you are free to carry on. If not, proceed on by going to File->Save Movie File.

Select a location in your computer.

When it comes to the Movie Setting page, check the box “Other settings” and select “Video for broadband (340 Kbps)” in the dropdown option.

Alternatively, you can also choose the Video for broadband (512 Kbps) options, which mean the video will be streamed at a higher bitrate (and a bigger file size).

Click Next to start compressing the video file. It will take sometime while the Movie Maker compresses and saves the video file.

The Result

The following image is the screenshot of the video file after compression. You can see that there is a whopping 64% reduction in the video files.

Conclusion

To say the truth, Windows Movie Maker is nowhere comparable to a professional video editor software. However, taking into account that not everyone is a tech guru, Windows Movie Maker has done a great job in simplifying the process of compressing video file for web and make it easy for almost everyone to use.

As can be seen from the tutorial above, it is VERY easy to compress a video for the web and the result is impressive. Best of all, it comes preinstalled in your computer, so there is no need to search, download and install. Though it is not the best, i don’t have much complaint about it.

What about you?

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If you are wondering why reducing the size of your images can help in the site’s performance, basically the bigger the size of your images, the slower it takes for the server to load, and the higher probability that your server will crash when you experience a traffic spike (like reach Digg front page). In addition, if you are hosting your images on a third party site, like Amazon S3, having a smaller image also mean lesser cost as the charge is based on the bandwidth and storage space used.

How To Compress Pictures Online with SmushIt

Smush.it is a service developed by the Yahoo Exceptional Performance team, aimed to improve the performance of your site. What SmushIt does is to strip all the metadata from the images and compress them using an optimization algorithm that will not only reduce the size, but also preserve the visual quality. When I first used it, I were surprised to see a 30% reduction in the size of the image that I have optimized in Photoshop. Most of the time that I use Smushit, it is able to shave 10-50%, occasionally 80% off the image size.

There are several ways that you can utilize Smush it to optimize pictures online.

Upload your image

If you have some images in your computer that you want to optimize, you can easily upload your images to Smushit via the onsite uploader. There is no limit to the number of images that you can upload, but do bear in mind that the more you upload, the slower it is.

Image URL

Instead of uploading, you can also point Smushit to a Web URL (for example, your site) and get it to analyze and optimize all the images in that URL.

Firefox extension

This is by far, my favorite way of using Smushit. If you are using Firefox browser, you can install the Smushit Firefox extension and have quick access to it anytime, anywhere. When you are on a web page (perhaps when you are previewing your post article in your site) and you want to optimize the images on that page, simply click on the SmushIt icon on the Status bar and it will analyze and optimize all the images on that page.

Alternative to the Firefox extension is the bookmarklet that you can place on your Bookmark bar.

The result

Once SmushIt has optimized your images, it will show a report of how many bytes it has shaved off the original images and provide you a link to the zipped files of all the compressed images.

WordPress Plugin

Another thing, if you are using WordPress, there is also a Smushit plugin that you can use. Once you have activated the plugin, all the images that you upload to your site will automatically run through SmushIt behind the scene. There is nothing extra that you need to do. Alternatively, you can go to your Media Library in WordPress and process your existing images with SmushIt.

Have you tried out SmushIt to optimize and compress pictures? Is it useful to you? Share with us in the comments.

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If you are like me, someone who like to be organized and do things the efficient way, here are some applications that I use and recommend:

Windows xKill

How many times have you encountered an incident where the application freezes and when you try to kill it via the Task Manager, it just doesn’t respond?  It has happened to me very often, especially on my old Pentium III computer.

When such cases occur, I always use Windows xKill to kill the application quickly and easily.

Windows xKill is s small application ported from the xKill application in Linux. It is only 18KB in size and does not require any installation.

Once you have enabled the tray icon, you simply press the shortcut keys Ctrl + Alt + Backspace to bring up xkill (the cursor will turn into a skull) and then click on the window that you want to close. That’s it.

DropCommand

I know that most of you don’t use the command prompt in Windows, but when you do, don’t you wish that it can be a little bit friendlier, like the Terminal in Linux and Mac?

The DropCommand application allows you to drag and drop files to the command prompt so you don’t have to key in the path to the files manually. It was made using AutoHotKeys and provides a friendlier way for you to use the command prompt.

Fences

If you have a messy desktop filled with dozen of shortcut icons cramping up every single corner of the screen, you might want to use Fences to get your desktop organized.

Fences is a free software developed by Stardock, the developer behind the popular ObjectDock. This application allows you to define various containers on your desktop to place your icons. You can have a container for Internet related stuff, while another one to contain all your Word documents.

You can create as many containers as you like, and when you have no use for the icons, you can hide them by double clicking on the desktop. Any time you need to access your shortcut, simply double click the desktop to bring the icons back.

Just Close Some Task

If you have the habit of opening a lot of applications and then forget to close them after you have finished using them, then JustCloseSomeTasks is the best software for you.

What it does is to associate each task with an expiry time and then close that task once the expiry time is reached. After you have used it for some time, the program will learn your behavior and adjust the expiry time accordingly.

Lacuna Launcher

There are always a series of applications that you use when you are performing certain tasks. Wouldn’t it be great if you could load them all up with just a single shortcut?

Lacuna Launcher allows you to set a group of files to be opened with a single shortcut by creating a text file with the paths to all the files you wish to open. You can set an initial delay time for it to wait before opening files, as well as a pause time between opening each files.

There is no limit as to how many lists (each list represent a group of applications) you can create. You can create a list of applications to be opened when you want to browse the Web, or all the documents you need when you typing a report. It may take some work initially, but once you have it configured, it will work like a charm.

Conclusion

The above mentioned applications are some of the small and handy apps that I used daily. Despite their small size, they are very useful and have helped to increase my efficiency and allow me to do things faster in Windows.

If you have any small handy apps that you use and are not mentioned above, do share it with us in the comments.

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On the good side, one of the best things about WordPress is its plugin system that allows anyone to install any plugins or create your own plugins to extend its functionality, including improving security.

Here, I have listed some wordpress security plugins (and a couple of tricks) that you can use to secure WordPress blog.

All the plugins and tricks listed below are meant for WP 2.7 and above. If you are still using an older version of WordPress, it’s time to upgrade your blog.

Protecting Your Login

1. CHAP Secure Login

This plugin uses the CHAP protocol to encrypt your password.  The password is first salted with a random number (nonce) generated by the session, followed by the md5 transformation algorithm. This result is then sent to the server where it is decrpyted and authenticated. This is a zero-configuration plugin, which means you can use it immediately after activating it.

2. Stealth Login

Stealth Login obfuscates your login page by allowing you to define a custom login page rather than the default wp-login.php. In the event that your password is leaked, the hacker will also have a hard time finding the correct login URL. A good use of this is to prevent any malicious bots from accessing your wp-login.php file and attempting to break in.

3. Login Lockdown

Login Lockdown is useful in preventing a brute force attack. What Login LockDown does is to record the IP address and timestamp of every failed login attempt. If more than a certain number of attempts are detected within a short period of time from the same IP range, it will lockdown the login function and prevent any people from that IP range to log in.

4. AskApache Password Protect

This plugin adds an additional HTTP authentication to provide a second layer of defense for your blog. You can set up password protection for your blog using HTTP Basic Authentication, or you can choose to use the more secure HTTP Digest Authentication.

Note that this plugin might/might not work depending on your server capability. If your site does not pass the AskApache configuration tests (the tests run by the plugin to detect your server capabilities), contact your web host and see if they can make changes on the server side.

5. Semisecure Login Reimagined

This plugin provides a “semisecure” login environment by encrypting your password with the RSA cryptography

Protecting Your Database

6. WP-DB-Backup

Perhaps for some of you, backing up a database could mean a troublesome technical chore. With WP-DB-Backup, you just need to configure it once and get it to run automatically at regular intervals.

What this plugin does is to automate the backing up of your database and have it sent to your email inbox. Other than the default table created by WordPress, you can also backup custom tables created by plugins. In the event that your account crashes, you can easily import and restore the database with the backup.

7. WP-DBManager

Wp-DBManager is just like a phpmyadmin within your dashboard. You can easily manage your database directly within your dashboard. There are useful features such as optimizing/repairing/backing up/restoring your database and if you are technical enough, you can even run your own SQL query from the option page.

On the bad side, if any hackers manage to login to your site, this plugin is going to be a gateway for them to create havoc in your database.

8. Change database table prefix

The default prefix used by WordPress is “wp”. You can easily change the prefix to other terms that are difficult to guess using the WP-Security-Scan. More detail on this plugin below.

9. Protect your wp-config.php file

Your wp-config.php file contains all your database login credentials and it should be hidden from public view in all circumstances. In your htaccess file, put in this line:

<Files wp-config.php>
order allow,deny
deny from all
</Files>

to prevent anyone from viewing the wp-config.php file.

Protecting Your Admin Page

10. Admin SSL

This plugin forces SSL on all pages where passwords can be entered so that all information transmitted are encrypted.

One thing though, you have to own a SSL certificate before you can do it. If you are not willing to shell out the extra money to buy a private SSL certificate, you can ask your Web host about Shared SSL. Most web hosts provide Shared SSL for all their clients and it is easy to configure.

11. Change login username

Using “admin” as your login username is the last thing you want to do. When you first installed WordPress, you should immediately create another administrator account with your own username and password and delete the “admin” account.

Prevent Others From Viewing Your Internal File Structure

12. Hiding the WP version

In most WordPress themes under the <head> section, there is always a line of code showing the WordPress version that you are using. Giving away your WordPress version number means telling the hacker what exploit to use to hack into your site.

Since WP2.6.5, WordPress has made it even harder to remove the wp version as it embeds that information within the wp_header tag. A plugin that you can use to remove that information is WP-Security-Scan.

13. Hiding the WP-content

The WP-content folder is where you stored all your plugins and theme files. This is the place where you want to prevent other people from looking into. You can either upload a blank index.html file to the wp-content folder, or create a .htaccess file in the wp-content folder and add this line:

Options All -Indexes

14. Block wp-folder from indexing by search engines

While you want the search engines to index your blog and bring in lots of traffic, the last thing that you want to see is to let the search engines expose your internal file structure to the public. What you can do is to block all your wp-folder from indexing by search engine by adding the following entries to the robot.txt:

Disallow: /wp-* 

Maintenance

15. WP Security Scan

I have mentioned this plugin several times, so it is time for me to explain what it does. WP-Security-Scan checks your WordPress for security vulnerabilities and suggests/provides corrective actions. The corrective actions include changing your database prefix, hiding the WordPress version number from the header and allows you to test out the strength of your password.

Once in a while, it is a good idea to run the inbuilt security scanner and check your blog for any security invulnerabilities.

16. Change password regularly

Not only should you change your password regularly, you must also make sure that it is a strong one. If you have difficulty in creating one, find one how you can create strong passwords that you can remember easily.

17. Update WordPress and all plugins to the latest version

Needless to say, upgrading to the latest version of WordPress and plugins is the best way to protect yourself.

Protecting Your Connection

18. SFTP

Transferring files to your online account is a common thing to do. However, instead of using the unsecured FTP, you should use SFTP (Secure FTP). This will create a SSH connection and sent all your files encrypted to the server. If you need help creating a SFTP connection, here’s the guide.

The above information should be sufficient for you to create a secure WordPress blog. If you have not implemented any of these, I would urge you to do so now.

What other methods do you use to secure your WordPress blog?

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