[141001950010] |<title>4PSA VoipNow Review</title>
[141001950020] |If you are an enterprise, ISP or HSP, and you try to find a PBX solution that's easy to use and deploy, 4PSA VoipNow might be the answer.
[141001950030] |It comes in two flavors, a free one - 4PSA VoipNow Express - and a commercial edition - 4PSA VoipNow Professional.
[141001950040] |For those of you who don't know, a PBX - Private Branch Exchange - is a telephone exchange that serves a particular business or office and VoIP is a protocol for the transmission of voice on packet switched networks or over the Internet.
[141001950050] |Now let's take a deeper look and see what's in 4PSA VoipNow.
[141001950060] |What are the differences between the two versions?
[141001950070] |The Express one is good for residential and small organizations and it is limited to maximum ten extensions.
[141001950080] |This could be also used by persons who want to learn more about this technology.
[141001950090] |VoipNow Professional is fully featured, but has different licenses, going from those designed for only ten to those with unlimited extensions.
[141001950100] |There are four ways of installing VoIPNow, by using a .sh installer, an ISO image or Virtuozzo templates.
[141001950110] |The last one is used on Virtuozzo Hardware Nodes, and you should know that VoIPNow is compatible with only three OS templates, on the i386 architecture.
[141001950120] |These templates are centos-4, redhat-as4 and fedora-core-5.
[141001950130] |I recommend using the ISO installation, because you won't have to deal with a lot of manual configuring.
[141001950140] |To make things even easier, when you'll boot the CD with the ISO image, you should use the autopartitioning option, unless you want to make the partitions manually.
[141001950150] |It seems there is a problem with the ISO if you have a SATA hard drive, so it won't install.
[141001950160] |If you use the script, and not the CD, you will have a big surprise in case you have a non-RPM based distribution: the setup process will fail!
[141001950170] |To add more bad news, there are only a few supported RPM-based distros, which are also a little old.
[141001950180] |After configuring the server, the client machines can connect to it by using any usual web browser.
[141001950190] |You only have to type in the server's address.
[141001950200] |The next step is to login with the default username and password.
[141001950210] |These are "admin" and "welcome", respectively.
[141001950220] |The End-User License Agreement will appear.
[141001950230] |You should take your time and read it, and if you agree with it, scroll down and check the "Agree to the license" box.
[141001950240] |Underneath it, there's another box which if checked will not show the license the next time you login.
[141001950250] |I don't think it was necessary to have a button and a checkbox for the same function - accepting the license.
[141001950260] |The first screen you'll see is the Admin Contact Information.
[141001950270] |Here you'll fill in the fields with the necessary information, a very simple step that won't take too long to complete.
[141001950280] |Next the PBX Preferences show up, where you can change the extension settings - extension number length, number of seconds to call, maximum call duration, etc -, message notifications, voicemail and global SIP preferences, etc.
[141001950290] |I think you should add a diagnostic extension password, to make things more secure.
[141001950300] |I went to Billing Plans, option located in the left pane, so I could set up a new billing plan.
[141001950310] |Afterwards, I added a reseller for which I used the previously created billing plan.
[141001950320] |I changed the permissions of the newly created reseller, but I noticed an awkward thing: I don't know why it required once more to define a billing plan, as I already made one and I've set it as the default for the reseller.
[141001950330] |If you go to Options-> PBX - located in the left pane - you'll see all the features of the PBX.
[141001950340] |If you've purchased the Professional Edition, you can upload your license from this menu, by going to "License Management".
[141001950350] |A few details will be presented here like your server IP, license key status, number and the type of ownership.
[141001950360] |Uploading the file will be done very simple and fast.
[141001950370] |The server can be stopped and restarted from the admin panel, in case you get into a situation that might require it.
[141001950380] |Whenever a new client/reseller is created, you will be notified by e-mail about its details - user and password, address, etc - and the billing plan used for it.
[141001950390] |The notifications can be changed from Options -> PBX -> Email Template Management, which is a simple and intuitive table with all the events for which you, the reseller or client, receive notifications.
[141001950400] |If you want to see who has logged in recently you can go to Sessions and you'll have a complete list with all the users, when they've logged in and from which IP they've connected.
[141001950410] |A very useful option is Report Management which can be accessed from Options -> Reports.
[141001950420] |The menu is made up of three tabs (Overview, Call cost, Call flows), which will give you more than enough info about the current situation.
[141001950430] |<b>The Good</b>
[141001950440] |VoipNow could be described with the following three words: stable, reliable, complex.
[141001950450] |I really liked the way it guided me to the next thing I should do - it showed a message above the options notifying me about this.
[141001950460] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141001950470] |The bad...
[141001950480] |I think the developers should have thought about making the program compatible with newer Linux distributions.
[141001950490] |Another aspect that should be covered is its availability on non-RPM distributions.
[141001950500] |The tutorials offered on VoipNow's site aren't complete, because they skip some important steps, like the configuring of a VoIP phone.
[141001950510] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141001950520] |VoipNow is a little bit expensive if you want to buy a license with unlimited extensions.
[141001950530] |However, I might be wrong, because it is affordable to companies with a high income.
[141001950540] |VoipNow doesn't focus too much on users with medium VoIP knowledge, but more on the advanced ones.
[141001950550] |Here are some screenshots with VoipNow in action:
[141001970010] |<title>SkipStone Review</title>
[141001970020] |One of the most used applications these days, along with e-mail clients, word processors and instant messengers, are the web browsers.
[141001970030] |There are a few popular ones, such as Firefox, Opera or Flock (which is specialized on social networks).
[141001970040] |Besides these three, there are a few others, like Konqueror, Dillo, or SkipStone.
[141001970050] |Today, I'll be talking about SkipStone, a small GTK+ browser, based on Mozilla's Gecko layout engine.
[141001970060] |From the version I'm reviewing, 1.0.0, support for the Apple WebKit rendering engine has been added, but it's recommended to use SkipStone with Gecko, because WebKit is still in development.
[141001970070] |Skipstone was first started in 2000, way back when Firefox didn't exist, but its "ancestor" Mozilla was one of the main browsers at that time.
[141001970080] |After installing SkipStone, by using a .deb file for Ubuntu 7.10, I launched it and I wasn't very impressed at first.
[141001970090] |It's not the most beautiful web browser, but that can be changed, by using themes.
[141001970100] |The default one resembles those from Mozilla, so if you are nostalgic for the times when you used Mozilla, you might like this feature.
[141001970110] |I wasn't impressed by the looks, but the speed of opening up pages was very fast, I think it's almost as fast as Firefox 2.0.12.
[141001970120] |Being used to the key bindings from Firefox, I pressed Ctrl+T and waited for a new tab to appear.
[141001970130] |Nothing happened, so I decided to look through the menus and see the keyboard shortcuts.
[141001970140] |Skipstone doesn't use the common key combos, which is a disadvantage for a user that got used to those from popular web browsers.
[141001970150] |For example, to open up a new tab in SkipStone, you have to press Alt+N.
[141001970160] |When I was looking for the key bindings, I found an option to save current session, which is a good feature, if you have a lot of tabs opened up and you want to recover them the next time you start up SkipStone.
[141001970170] |Speaking of tabs, by default they are positioned in the lower part of the window, just under the pages you open up.
[141001970180] |If you are not satisfied by this position, you can move them in the upper, right, or left side of the window, by going to Settings -> Notebook tabs.
[141001970190] |Because SkipStone pre-dates Firefox, the keyboard shortcuts are different, and it is one of the first web browsers that used tabs.
[141001970200] |I've moved the tabs on the right side of the window, and I started opening up web sites.
[141001970210] |When I went on one with a long title, the tab bar occupied more than half of the entire window, and there was no way to resize it, at least not by dragging the margins to the desired place.
[141001970220] |So, I thought there should be an option somewhere in the Settings menu.
[141001970230] |I was right, there was such an option!
[141001970240] |In Settings -> Preferences -> Misc, I clicked on the radio button that said "Shorten Tab Names".
[141001970250] |For the moment, nothing happened, the tab names were as long as before.
[141001970260] |I closed the browser, and started it again, to see if anything happened.
[141001970270] |Now, the tab names were shortened, thus offering more space for the web pages.
[141001970280] |There should be something that announces the user that SkipStone needs to restart so the changes take effect, something similar to the way Firefox does this.
[141001970290] |I launched 16 tabs in SkipStone and 16 in Firefox, to see how much memory "eats" each of them.
[141001970300] |In the first test, Firefox took up 10 more megabytes than SkipStone, but in the second the situation changed, as Skipstone used with 30 MB more than Firefox.
[141001970310] |I don't know why this fluctuates, because I've used the same sites and the same number of tabs in both of the tests.
[141001970320] |When I was playing around with it, I found something in the Settings menu that allows a user to switch to windowed view, where every tab is opened in separate windows.
[141001970330] |As I had a big number of tabs, I got scared that this would take up a large chunk of memory, and my computer might get stuck.
[141001970340] |That's why I quickly went to the menu and switched back to tabbed view.
[141001970350] |The nice thing about this feature is that all tabs are regrouped in the same window, in the same order you had them before.
[141001970360] |When you close the program, you are not asked by it if you want to do that, like Firefox does.
[141001970370] |Maybe in a future release, this feature will be included, because it's necessary to avoid situations when you click by accident on the close button.
[141001970380] |SkipStone has a bookmarking system, with its own agent.
[141001970390] |The system is tree-like, with directories and bookmarks.
[141001970400] |The agent is very simple, too simple in my opinion.
[141001970410] |It is so simple, that you can't even right click in the bookmark list!
[141001970420] |If this was allowed, a user could manage his/her bookmarks much faster; for example, when one wants to delete a bookmark, he/she would only have to right click on an item and then select "delete".
[141001970430] |There are only a few buttons in the agent, for adding, removing and updating the bookmarks.
[141001970440] |A download manager is included in SkipStone, and bears the name "SkipDownload".
[141001970450] |Actually, it is a graphical interface to the wget downloading tool.
[141001970460] |When you start a download, two windows will appear, one with the progress of the current download, and the other showing the download queue.
[141001970470] |I think the developers should find a way to combine the two, and make a single window, because this will simplify SkipStone much more and make it better.
[141001970480] |There's no password manager in SkipStone included by default, so if you visit a lot of sites and have different usernames and passwords, this will be a big problem for you, encumbering your navigation.
[141001970490] |But don't despair!
[141001970500] |SkipStone remembers your passwords!
[141001970510] |Also, if you want to have them displayed, you will have to install a plugin that works as a password manager.
[141001970520] |Speaking of navigation, when you complete the address field, there's no automatic filling, like in other browsers, but there's a drop down menu from which we can select the desired web page we previously visited.
[141001970530] |If you decide to stay on the current page, SkipStone will reload it, which is an odd behavior from my point of view.
[141001970540] |I don't think it's necessary to refresh the site, as long as the user doesn't click on Reload or presses "Alt+R" (the key shortcut for refresh).
[141001970550] |However, a plugin called Auto Completer, exists in the source package, so you can install it and have the autocompletion feature included in the browser.
[141001970560] |<b>The Good:</b>
[141001970570] |The best thing about SkipStone is the fact that it opens up web pages very fast.
[141001970580] |Also, its own start-up time is very reduced, in comparison with other web browsers. 
[141001970590] |<b>The Bad:</b>
[141001970600] |It still needs a lot of polishing, especially in the bookmarking, usability and download areas.
[141001970610] |The themes should be also made to look like a modern browser, not to send a user back in time.
[141001970620] |<b>The Truth:</b>
[141001970630] |SkipStone is developed by only two persons, while other browsers have entire armies of coders behind them.
[141001970640] |I think SkipStone could be transformed in a much better browser, if more persons got involved in it.
[141001970650] |I am sure that with WebKit it will run much faster, and I am waiting for the version that will use WebKit as its web page rendering engine to see how it will act.
[141001970660] |Here are some screenshots with SkipStone in action:
[141001980010] |<title>NoteCase Review</title>
[141001980020] |When you need to organize a project, or even some ideas you have, you should use an outliner.
[141001980030] |Outliners are special text editors that let you organize the text in a tree-like structure, with parent and child nodes.
[141001980040] |NoteCase is such an application, helping you out in your project management tasks and more.
[141001980050] |NoteCase helps you organize text notes in a single document, with individual text notes shown in a hierarchical structure, allowing each note to have its own sub-notes.
[141001980060] |An interesting feature is that you can encrypt your documents, which also seems to compress the files.
[141001980070] |NoteCase comes in two editions: a free and a commercial one, which bears the name "Notecase Pro".
[141001980080] |The latter has some advanced features that are not included in the free version - which I am reviewing right now. 
[141001980090] |NoteCase is available in almost all big Linux distributions, through their repositories, and a few smaller ones.
[141001980100] |Ubuntu, Fedora, Gentoo, PCLinuxOS, Wolvix and Frugalware are only some of the distros that have NoteCase in their repositories or ship it by default.
[141001980110] |As I am using Ubuntu 7.10, the setup process was very simple.
[141001980120] |I had only to download the .deb package, double click it, grant administrative rights, and wait for GDebi to complete the installation.
[141001980130] |After the "long" setup process, I could find the application located in Applications -> Accessories.
[141001980140] |I like its icon, a briefcase with some papers sticking out of it.
[141001980150] |It made me think about a businessperson who is always in need for more and more organization in his documents.
[141001980160] |The interface is very simple and intuitive, so you will get accustomed with it in 10-15 minutes from the moment you start using NoteCase.
[141001980170] |The first thing you will have to do to start creating notes is to create a parent node.
[141001980180] |This can be done either by pressing the Insert key on your keyboard or by going to Tree -> Insert Node.
[141001980190] |I have noticed that, when you accidentally create a new node, and try to cancel it, NoteCase will not cancel that element but it will just make a new one with the name "New node".
[141001980200] |I found out that this is the intended behavior, because the user actually cancels the renaming action.
[141001980210] |A user can switch between three view modes, allowing him/her to see only the structure of the nodes, the text editing mode or a combined view (the default when you run the application).
[141001980220] |The switch can be done by pressing Ctrl+T or by going to View -> Change view mode.
[141001980230] |One of the most interesting features of NoteCase is the encryption, which is done by using the popular encryption algorithm Blowfish.
[141001980240] |Also, before this, the data stream is compressed using the zlib library, so the encrypted file takes much less space than the unencrypted one.
[141001980250] |The encrypted document has the extension .nce; in case you save in this format, the program will ask your permission to delete the unencrypted file.
[141001980260] |You can have both versions, if you want, but that increases the risk of getting your data stolen.
[141001980270] |I have tried to open both files with a text editor.
[141001980280] |First, the .ncd (unencrypted) and then the .nce (encrypted) file.
[141001980290] |In the first one, I could see the text I wrote very easily, only the images and attachment.
[141001980300] |The second one did not open up at all, making all the text editors think this is a sort of exotic text encoding, or file format.
[141001980310] |I know this is a very, very simple test, but we are talking about Blowfish!
[141001980320] |What tool could break a Blowfish-encrypted file?
[141001980330] |A nice feature is the one that back-ups your file at a specified time interval (measured in seconds).
[141001980340] |You can change the default 30 seconds setting to a value that fits your needs.
[141001980350] |After changing this setting, I looked for a status bar or something, to let me know that my file was saved.
[141001980360] |I did not find anything at all, a confusing aspect that makes a user wonder if his/her file was really saved.
[141001980370] |I wanted to make the application crash in a way or another.
[141001980380] |I managed to do that, by setting a very fast autosave rate, of 0.1 seconds.
[141001980390] |NoteCase got stuck and I had to kill its process.
[141001980400] |This could be fixed by setting a limit of seconds for the autosave feature.
[141001980410] |When you need to highlight an important idea in your notes, you have at your disposal the basic rich text editing features: bold, italic, underline, strikethrough and font/background color.
[141001980420] |If you have to remember the address of a website you can quickly save it in a note, and the next time you use NoteCase, you can visit the website, with a simple click on the link.
[141001980430] |NoteCase also features a tagging system to quickly find notes.
[141001980440] |For example, if you write a note about a Linux distribution, you can tag it with the 'linux' keyword, or anything else that is relevant to you.
[141001980450] |<b>The Good:</b>
[141001980460] |It is very easy to use, and you get accustomed to its interface in no time.
[141001980470] |It is good even for creating simple HTML manuals, with a tree-like structure.
[141001980480] |You can even include CSS stylesheets, if you like.
[141001980490] |<b>The Bad:</b>
[141001980500] |The free edition should have at least a spellchecker and numbered listing support.
[141001980510] |That would make NoteCase the best multi-platform outlining solution.
[141001980520] |<b>The Truth:</b>
[141001980530] |NoteCase is one of those applications that make you want to buy its commercial version.
[141001980540] |It is very good and makes you want more.
[141001980550] |NoteCase Pro is the advanced, commercial edition, with a lot of features under the hood.
[141001980560] |Here are some screenshots with NoteCase in action:
[141001990010] |<title>Geany Review</title>
[141001990020] |One of these days I was looking for a good IDE that could help me out with some scripts I was making at home.
[141001990030] |After going through a couple of options, I was still unsatisfied by what those programs offered me.
[141001990040] |I really needed a genie to help me out...
[141001990050] |Why couldn't I have Aladdin's lamp, and just ask the genie to make me an IDE?
[141001990060] |Although I didn't have that magic lamp, I still managed to find a genie.
[141001990070] |Or should I say "Geany"?
[141001990080] |Yes, that's the word!
[141001990090] |Geany is a fast and lightweight IDE based on the GTK2 toolkit, full of nice features and with only a few package dependencies.
[141001990100] |Although Geany is included in the Ubuntu repositories, I decided to test the latest version, 0.14.
[141001990110] |The one in the Ubuntu repositories for Gutsy Gibbon is version 0.12 and for Ubuntu 8.04 you get 0.13.
[141001990120] |There is no third-party .deb package for Geany 0.14, so I got the source archive and compiled everything.
[141001990130] |The installation process from the source is not as hard as you might think it is.
[141001990140] |To setup Geany, you will need the following pre-requisites:
[141001990150] |• The GTK (>= 2.6.0) libraries and header files• Pango, Glib and ATK• A C/C++ compiler and Make
[141001990160] |After you make sure you have these required packages, you should untar the archive in a convenient place.
[141001990170] |I decompressed it in my home directory, in a folder I use for testing stuff.
[141001990180] |I opened the good ol' terminal and went into Geany's folder (this can be done with the 'cd' command, for example 'cd /home/johndoe/programs/Geany').
[141001990190] |Next thing on the list was to run ./configure and wait...
[141001990200] |It didn't take too long, and when I scrolled up to see the messages it outputed, I found this funny thing: "checking whether the force is with you... no".
[141001990210] |I found myself wondering what condition would be necessary to give a positive result to this test...
[141001990220] |Anyway, I typed 'make' after ./configure stopped and waited once more.
[141001990230] |These two commands can be run as a normal user, but if you want to install Geany system-wide, you will have to run the last command, 'make install' as root.
[141001990240] |On Ubuntu, you can do it by typing 'sudo make install'; it will ask for your password and then you wait for the third, and last, time.
[141001990250] |When it finishes, you can find Geany located in Applications -> Programming.
[141001990260] |Everything went well and in a few minutes I had a really nice IDE installed on Ubuntu 7.10.
[141001990270] |So, when you're anxious to see what a certain something has in stock for you, what do you do?
[141001990280] |Of course, you test it out!
[141001990290] |Geany is really full of features, and the developers should be proud of this program.
[141001990300] |From the very beginning, you get a full-fledged interface, with two buffers and a sidebar.
[141001990310] |In the sidebar you have two tabs, with the documents you opened and the symbols in the file you're editing.
[141001990320] |In the lower buffer you have five tabs: "Status", "Compiler", "Messages", "Scribble" and "Terminal".
[141001990330] |If you select Status, Geany will show you the actions that took place, for example what file was opened and at what time said action happened.
[141001990340] |"Compiler" shows you information when you compile a project, and "Messages" shows various information from Geany.
[141001990350] |"Scribble" can be used for noting stuff in it, or even as some sort of in-program clipboard.
[141001990360] |"Terminal" launches a terminal inside Geany, in which you can do anything you do in a normal terminal.
[141001990370] |Although most Linux IDE have syntax highlighting, some of them don't recognize a file from the beginning, and the user has to select from a menu what type of file is the one that's being edited.
[141001990380] |I don't like to go through a long list of scripting/programming languages, and Geany seems to have been built for persons just like me.
[141001990390] |It detects the programming language, accordingly highlights the functions, variables, etc. and shows all the functions, macros, structs and other programming bells and whistles in the Symbols tab.
[141001990400] |Another interesting feature is the code folding, allowing you to concentrate more on a part of a project and hide the unnecessary chunks of code.
[141001990410] |Unfortunately, when you close Geany, it doesn't remember the folded parts - although it does memorize the opened files - and you have once more a large number of code lines.
[141001990420] |Geany simplifies your work a lot, by providing templates and code snippets.
[141001990430] |When you have to write a program, for example, you must always add the libraries or headers that are needed at the beginning of your file, and must be included so the program works properly.
[141001990440] |Geany can insert comments, dates and for C/C++ and more.
[141001990450] |Also, it would be nice if Geany could create a project skeleton, in case someone would make a C++ project for example, where many files are to be included.
[141001990460] |If you're not satisfied with the default functionality, you can extend Geany with plugins.
[141001990470] |There are a few of them in the Tools -> Plugin Manager menu, for auto-saving files, creating source files for new class types, adding a file browser tab into the sidebar, etc. 
[141001990480] |<b>The Good:</b>
[141001990490] |One of the best aspects of Geany is the fact that it supports a great number of filetypes.
[141001990500] |Besides this, you don't have to install a lot of dependencies to make it work.
[141001990510] |The interface looks very clean and it's very easy to use.
[141001990520] |<b>The Bad:</b>
[141001990530] |If you want to make a project from a template, you can't.
[141001990540] |It would be nice if some sort of template system were implemented, so you can have a project structure from the beginning.
[141001990550] |<b>The Truth:</b>
[141001990560] |Geany is the best Linux IDE I've used until now.
[141001990570] |I think it will become more and more adopted by Linux developers, because it manages to combine robustness with power.
[141001990580] |There are other IDEs out there as well, but they seem to lack most of the abilities Geany has.
[141001990590] |Once you use Geany, I'm sure you will not switch to another IDE.
[141001990600] |Here are some more screenshots of Geany in action:
[141002000010] |<title>Extreme Tux Racer Review</title>
[141002000020] |After a hard day at work, you decide to relax and play a nice game on your Linux system.
[141002000030] |As you don't want anything too complex that could require a lot of attention, you decide to find a game that's simple and fun to play.
[141002000040] |Based on the fact that Tux, the penguin, is the most popular guy in the Linux world (besides Linus Torvalds, of course), you could try Extreme Tux Racer, a very popular racing simulation game where you drive...
[141002000050] |Tux!
[141002000060] |You control the popular penguin as it slides on the mountain, to catch as many herrings as possible.
[141002000070] |Also, you will have to finish the race in time, or you'll lose.
[141002000080] |The game menu is nice, packed up with some cool things... cold as ice, I could say.
[141002000090] |The cursor is an icicle and on the background you see snowflakes falling, which will swarm around your cursor when you move it around the menu.
[141002000100] |Speaking of the main menu, here's what you can find in it:
[141002000110] |1. Enter a campaign2.
[141002000120] |Practice3.
[141002000130] |Highscore4.
[141002000140] |Configuration5.
[141002000150] |Credits6.
[141002000160] |Quit
[141002000170] |If you want to see who worked on Extreme Tux Racer, so you can enjoy the game, you should click on "Credits".
[141002000180] |This will also show you what version of ETR you're running and a short info about it.
[141002000190] |After you satisfy your curiosity about the persons behind ETR, you should go through "Configuration" and set the game to fit you.
[141002000200] |The menu is not so well organized, which I'm sure you'll also notice.
[141002000210] |For example, we have "Graphics" and "Video".
[141002000220] |It would have been nice if there was only one category for graphics.
[141002000230] |Another thing that seemed odd was the fact that the user had to select the language of the game from...
[141002000240] |"Graphics".
[141002000250] |From "Video" you can change your resolution as well as the color depth and you can enable FSAA (Full-Scene Anti-Aliasing).
[141002000260] |If you enable this option - and if your card supports it - you will enjoy a much smoother gameplay.
[141002000270] |Also, you will notice that everything looks much better after you select FSAA.
[141002000280] |In "Audio" you can opt for sound effects and music or none of them, the bits per sample and samples per second.
[141002000290] |The "Keyboard" menu lets you select what keys to use for the actions Tux will take in the game, like turn left/right, paddle (which is an interesting feature that can help you only in some moments of the game, while in others it will make things much harder), jump (you will have to press the assigned key and hold it, then when a jump is imminent, release it and create a larger jump), trick (Tux will do a trick in mid-air) and reset (resets Tux's position back on the track).
[141002000300] |Okay, after configuring the game, it's time to play!
[141002000310] |I recommend you to start with Practice, before selecting "Enter a campaign".
[141002000320] |This way, you get a hang on how everything works in the game, and there's nothing to limit you.
[141002000330] |Also, you can test all the tracks available in the game and get used to them before you take on them.
[141002000340] |I almost forgot about the fact that you can select the way Tux will go down the slope: using a snowboard or on its own belly.
[141002000350] |It's funnier if you see it go down the slope on its belly, though.
[141002000360] |By the way, Tux looks a little bit weird, like it is made of plastic, or maybe it's something inflatable.
[141002000370] |I've started practicing, so I can learn some tricks with Tux.
[141002000380] |The HUD is made up of a timer, the number of herrings you catch, a speedometer and the current race progress.
[141002000390] |I managed to get to a speed of 200 km/h, which is very fast for a fat penguin like Tux!
[141002000400] |Some big holes in the tracks did a great job in stopping me to get to the finish line, but I found a way to get past them (this is called cheating, right?).
[141002000410] |If I press "R" just before the moment I get into one of these gaps, my position is reset somewhere safe, and I can think about a way to get past the gap next time.
[141002000420] |I think it's somewhat hard to find which track is designed for a beginner and which one is for an expert.
[141002000430] |There's nothing in the menu to select the difficulty level, but there's a way to differentiate which of the tracks are harder: those that are not available from the start of the game seem to be for experienced users.
[141002000440] |For every track, you have a limited number of tries - or lives - to complete it and advance to the next one.
[141002000450] |<b>The Good:</b>
[141002000460] |Extreme Tux Racer is one of the games that help you relax after some hard work and I think it's very good for children, mostly because there's no violence in it, and it's also funny.
[141002000470] |<b>The Bad:</b>
[141002000480] |The menu is not very organized, and Tux looks like a plastic puppet; also, when it is on the snowboard, Tux looks like the board is glued to it.
[141002000490] |I think that after playing ETR once, you get bored with it, as it is not very interactive.
[141002000500] |<b>The Truth:</b>
[141002000510] |I found out from "Credits", in the main menu, that a new version of Extreme Tux Racer is being worked on and it will be much more different than those we were used to.
[141002000520] |I can hardly wait for this version, maybe the developers will make it look and perform better.
[141002000530] |And the most important thing: increased interactivity!
[141002000540] |Here are some screenshots with Extreme Tux Racer in action:
[141002010010] |<title>StorYBook Review</title>
[141002010020] |As there are a lot of creative persons in this world, like playwrights, novelists, etc., who might want to move from the traditional way of penning down their works and ease the writing of a possible masterpiece, I thought I should find an application that brings them just the features they might need.
[141002010030] |This way I came across StorYBook, a Java-based, open source story writing application, tailored for "novelists, authors and creative writers."
[141002010040] |What does StorYBook actually do?
[141002010050] |It helps you keep your storylines clear and have a general overview of your story as you're writing.
[141002010060] |It manages all your data, like summaries, locations and characters, and helps you assign them to the chapters you create.
[141002010070] |The application can be run in multiple languages, including English, German, Spanish, Danish and Brazilian Portuguese.
[141002010080] |If you want to use StorYBook, you will only need the Java Runtime Environment 6 (it doesn't work with older versions).
[141002010090] |To install StorYBook on your system, you will have to download the archive, decompress it somewhere convenient and then run the Bash script install.sh.
[141002010100] |The installation takes only a few seconds and does not require you have administrative rights.
[141002010110] |After the installation, you can run StorYBook through the storybook.sh script.
[141002010120] |When you launch StorYBook, you will be greeted by a window that allows you to open an existing project or to create a new one.
[141002010130] |I suggest you start with the Demo project, because it will help you learn some things about StorYBook; this is also very funny as it tells the story of a semi-normal day in the lives of the Simpsons.
[141002010140] |If you are not satisfied with the default look (called Cross-Platform because it's... cross-platform), you can switch to System, which integrates much better within your current system theme.
[141002010150] |There are a couple of other themes as well, like Tiny LaF and Tonic LaF, which do not differ one from the other too much (there's a slight difference when it comes to scrollbars, as in, they are much bigger on the latter).
[141002010160] |Also, if you are somewhat nostalgic, you can try the Motif theme.
[141002010170] |After the welcome screen, you will see the interface, made up of three areas: one where all the defined locations, characters and strands are shown; the main area where you can add, replace and modify chapters or strands; and a small window with some quick info.
[141002010180] |The developers did a great job, as they kept the interface very simple and clean, but there are some glitches here and there.
[141002010190] |I found a possible bug in the characters/locations/strands area, where I could right click on an empty list and have two options, "edit" and "delete", although there was nothing to change in there.
[141002010200] |I tried the "delete" function to see what happened: StorYBook asked if I wanted to delete "null" from the list.
[141002010210] |So I clicked on "yes" and nothing happened.
[141002010220] |No crash, no error message, and everything kept on going just fine.
[141002010230] |Through the menus, you can add new characters with a view over their life, their birth date, occupation and description.
[141002010240] |If you want to "kill" a character at one time or another in your story, there's an option that allows you to select his/her death date.
[141002010250] |Characters can be linked to certain locations and strands and, after a while, you can use the reports to find out how many times a character has appeared, where he/she went and what he/she did, etc.
[141002010260] |This can be done through the "Reports" menu, where you have two sub-menus: Part Related Reports (with "Appearance of Characters by Chapter") and Overall Reports.
[141002010270] |When you generate a report, it can be exported as a PNG image that you can use in different projects.
[141002010280] |Speaking of which, the entire story can be exported as a PDF document, which is an awesome feature if you want to have a document with your entire story without having to open StorYBook.
[141002010290] |This is also nice when you want to share the story with someone else that doesn't have StorYBook installed.
[141002010300] |If you select Reports -> Overall Reports -> Occurrence of Locations, StorYBook will generate a report with the occurrences of the locations from your document.
[141002010310] |It is interesting to see how many times the home of a character, or a restaurant has appeared during the plot of your story.
[141002010320] |<b>The Good:</b>
[141002010330] |StorYBook is created in Java, which makes it an excellent cross-platform story writing software.
[141002010340] |You don't have to worry if you have library_x or application_y on your system to use StorYBook.
[141002010350] |It has a simple and easy to use interface and you don't have to be a computer geek to use it.
[141002010360] |<b>The Bad:</b>
[141002010370] |It needs some polishing here and there, and an offline help file for the users that don't want to go to a website to watch a tutorial.
[141002010380] |Some of the menus need to be clarified, like the Reports menu that's somewhat ambiguous. 
[141002010390] |<b>The Truth:</b>
[141002010400] |StorYBook is fast and doesn't gulp computer resources, although it is made in Java - most of the Java applications I used took a lot of resources from my system.
[141002010410] |There's room for improvements in StorYBook, especially on the assistance and appearance parts.
[141002010420] |Here are some screenshots with StorYBook in action:
[141002020010] |<title>Adobe AIR Review</title>
[141002020020] |You've probably found yourself in that situation when you wanted to have a desktop client for popular online service like Twitter or Pownce, but the few options available for GNU/Linux did not satisfy you.
[141002020030] |For example, I'm always looking for ways to simplify my work and, at the same time, enjoy the eye-candy an application might offer.
[141002020040] |As Adobe released an Alpha version of its popular AIR runtime for Linux distributions, I decided to try it out with a few applications. 
[141002020050] |Just to make things clear from the start, Adobe AIR is still Alpha quality, but there are a few limitations on Linux so it can make your system act weird.
[141002020060] |For example, on my Ubuntu 8.04 machine, the archiver sees .air packages as archives and tries to open them if I double click on one.
[141002020070] |Before trying out AIR-based apps, you will have to install the runtime, of course.
[141002020080] |You must have binutils present on your system, as it will be necessary for the installation.
[141002020090] |The Adobe AIR installer comes as a .bin executable file and the setup process only takes a few moments.
[141002020100] |After a successful installation, you can then move on to the apps created with AIR.
[141002020110] |When it comes to installing AIR apps, the process is very simple, thanks to the clean looking 'Adobe Air Application Installer' software.
[141002020120] |You will see the name of the application you're currently installing, its description, installation preferences (if you want to add a shortcut on your desktop and if you want to start the application when the setup is finished) and the installation location (which is by default in the /opt folder).
[141002020130] |After this step, it will ask you for the root password and, in a little while, you'll be enjoying your new application.
[141002020140] |If you're using the popular micro-blogging service Twitter, you should start with <b>Twhirl</b>, a beautiful desktop client for this service.
[141002020150] |This little app comes with a couple of themes, so you can choose one that you consider the most interesting, ranging from dark to vivid color schemes.
[141002020160] |Twitter is a service that allows you to keep in touch with your friends through short messages of 140 characters.
[141002020170] |The updates are called 'tweets' and are separated in three categories: normal updates (that can be seen by the whole web, in case you didn't set your account to private), replies (they are sent to another user, but they can be seen by everyone) and direct messages (they are only seen by the person you've sent them to).
[141002020180] |Some companies have started using Twitter as a marketing tool and they advertise their products or get in touch with clients through this service.
[141002020190] |With Twhirl, you can connect to multiple Twitter and FriendFeed accounts but, due to the issue in Adobe AIR that doesn't allow AIR apps to store passwords, you will have to enter your password every time you want to login to any of your accounts. 
[141002020200] |Another interesting AIR based software is <b>Doomi</b>, a note taking utility that's quite useful when you need to remember something, like an important meeting.
[141002020210] |You can set it to remind you about a specific event from its list.
[141002020220] |I've noticed something interesting about Doomi.
[141002020230] |I think it's using alpha-transparency and, when its window is placed over some other application, you can't go into the other app because it is actually covering it with a transparent rectangle that goes from its titlebar to the lower part of your screen.
[141002020240] |This is probably not Doomi's fault, but happens rather because of the fact that AIR is still in its Alpha stage of development.
[141002020250] |Most of us like to watch videos on different online services.
[141002020260] |Wouldn't it be nice if we could concentrate the videos from various websites in one single place?
[141002020270] |This is possible with the help of <b>uvLayer</b>, an AIR app with a clean and very intuitive user interface.
[141002020280] |Through uvLayer you can share the videos you like with your friends, as it can connect to GTalk and AIM.
[141002020290] |An interesting feature of uvLayer is the fact that it can find related videos to the one you're watching.
[141002020300] |To increase the space on its workspace, uvLayer allows you to stack videos just like cards and to name the stacks as you please. 
[141002020310] |You've probably heard of <b>Pandora</b>, the service that allows you to listen to online music.
[141002020320] |There is a desktop client now, that's using AIR, for this service and it bears the same name as the service.
[141002020330] |Unfortunately, if you are located outside the USA, you cannot use this service due to licensing constraints.
[141002020340] |Anyway, in case you are in the U.S, you can use this app to easily play/pause and change music stations and you can see what's playing from the system tray.
[141002020350] |For the popular bidding service eBay, an app was created, called "<b>eBay Desktop</b>", that allows you to search, bid, browse and more.
[141002020360] |The program looks very clean and features a recent item cache, item reminders and persistent filters that will help you find the best products and prices on eBay.
[141002020370] |All you have to do is to login with your eBay username and password and start shopping!
[141002020380] |<b>AOL Music - Top 100</b> is an awesome Adobe AIR application that lets you play the latest and hottest music videos.
[141002020390] |It separates the music videos in different categories like Rock and Alternative, Pop, Country and Latin.
[141002020400] |When you watch a video, you will notice that the app shows you the latest news about the artist and a couple of videos that are related to the one currently playing. 
[141002020410] |Adobe AIR is not yet feature complete so you might encounter some problems during the usage of AIR-based applications, depending on what features are used in a specific program.
[141002020420] |For the time being, AIR works only on distributions that use the RPM or Debian package management systems, and you will notice that it gets installed as a native package on your system.
[141002020430] |The same thing applies to AIR apps, so you can remove them like you would any normal program.
[141002020440] |On Ubuntu, for example, you can uninstall them by using Synaptic.
[141002020450] |In case you want to uninstall the AIR runtime, search for adobeair-enu in Synaptic and remove that package.
[141002020460] |<b>The Good:</b>
[141002020470] |The best thing about Adobe AIR is probably the fact that it allows a multitude of applications to be run on different operating systems without major differences.
[141002020480] |When it is complete, Linux users will get to enjoy all the features present on the other operating systems.
[141002020490] |<b>The Bad:</b>
[141002020500] |It is still not fully functional and some applications take a lot of resources out of the system when they are running. 
[141002020510] |<b>The Truth:</b>
[141002020520] |Although Adobe AIR is in the Alpha stage, I consider it pretty stable and I'm using it to run some popular applications like the ones I mentioned above.
[141002020530] |In the forthcoming build of AIR for Linux, we will probably see the apps act the way they should - not entirely, but at least with 20-30% more than what we've got now.
[141002020540] |Here are some screenshots with the Adobe AIR applications presented above:
[141002030010] |<title>GNOME Mplayer Review</title>
[141002030020] |One of the most popular ways of relaxing in the modern world is probably watching a movie we like.
[141002030030] |As multimedia content is everywhere around us, especially on the Internet, you probably want to see a movie on your computer without keeping a web browser open or something else that might not do the job of a media player well.
[141002030040] |If you are also looking for a lightweight media player that just does its job and nothing more, you should try GNOME Mplayer.
[141002030050] |GNOME Mplayer is a really simple media player (actually, a front-end for Mplayer), based on the mplayerplug-in source code.
[141002030060] |Its developer created it for testing purposes also, using it as a test bed for new methods of operation for mplayerplug-in.
[141002030070] |GNOME Mplayer can be set as default player for RTSP and MMS protocols in Firefox by adding the following two strings with their respective values in about:config:
[141002030080] |<b>CODE</b><code>network.protocol-handler.app.mms with the value /usr/bin/gnome-mplayernetwork.protocol-handler.app.rtsp with the value /usr/bin/gnome-mplayer</code>After adding these two strings, all the movie streams from the sites you visit will be played through GNOME Mplayer.
[141002030090] |The application supports Windows Media formats (wmv, avi, asf, wav and asx), MPEG Video and Audio (mpeg and mp3), Ogg Vorbis, Vivo, Real Player files (ram and rm), Quicktime (mov and smil) and AutoDesk FLI (fli and flc).
[141002030100] |When you first launch the app, you will go something like "where are the buttons?!
[141002030110] |Is this the application?" as GNOME Mplayer looks pretty minimal, with the main toolbar, four navigational buttons (previous, play, stop and next), a progress bar, the volume and an inactive "fullscreen" button.
[141002030120] |If you want to make it "minimal", you can hide these controls by pressing "C" or going to View -> Controls.
[141002030130] |The next thing you'll probably do is open up a movie file.
[141002030140] |Besides playing movies, you can also watch online streams, programs from analog or digital TVs or DVD discs.
[141002030150] |The interface will modify every time you do something, like opening up a playlist or showing the information related to the currently playing file/stream/etc. and all the action will take place in the same window.
[141002030160] |This is a really nice feature, as it saves space on your desktop and offers better usability.
[141002030170] |Comparing GNOME Mplayer to VLC for example, I could say that the first one does all the things VLC does, and it can perform much better than VLC thanks to its single-windowed interface.
[141002030180] |I think there's a feature that's missing from GNOME Mplayer, and that is the "Recently Opened..." menu which would allow the user to play the movies he/she has recently viewed.
[141002030190] |The movies I played ran smoothly, the only thing disappointing is the fact that the progress bar doesn't show the progress accurately and you can't navigate through the movie by dragging it.
[141002030200] |The brightness, contrast, hue, saturation and gamma can be corrected from the "Advanced Video Controls" option, located at View -> Advanced Options.
[141002030210] |If you go to the "Preferences Menu", in the "Language Settings" tab, you can choose the default audio and subtitle language.
[141002030220] |There are a large number of supported languages; there are probably hundreds of them! 
[141002030230] |In fullscreen mode, GNOME Mplayer will wait a few seconds and afterwards it will hide the buttons from the screen, allowing you to enjoy the film without any interference from the application.
[141002030240] |The OSD can be started with a scrollbar (On Screen Display Level) from the Preferences -> Player menu.
[141002030250] |The scrollbar has a few positions that allow the user to set how long the OSD will stay on screen, from "No Display" to "Timer/Total".
[141002030260] |There is the same issue that seems to be on most of Linux applications: the developer considers everyone knows what all the options are, and what they do.
[141002030270] |For example, would a normal user know what happens when the verbose debug mode is enabled?
[141002030280] |Or what's the difference between gl, x11 and xv video outputs?
[141002030290] |I don't really think so!
[141002030300] |I hope that this will change as this application looks very promising and acts fine, at least from a normal user point of view. 
[141002030310] |<b>The Good</b>
[141002030320] |GNOME Mplayer is very small, from few points of view.
[141002030330] |It doesn't take too much space on your hard disk, or on your desktop, allowing you to multi task easily.
[141002030340] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141002030350] |It includes some functions that a normal user might not understand, and they are not explained.
[141002030360] |I think GNOME Mplayer would be much better with a few tool tips to tell the user what a specific feature does.
[141002030370] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141002030380] |It is mostly used as a test bed for future features of the mplayerplug-in, so you should expect things to change very fast from a version to another or even appear/disappear.
[141002030390] |Here are some screenshots with GNOME Mplayer in action:
[141002040010] |<title>XML Copy Editor Review</title>
[141002040020] |When someone migrates from other platforms to Linux, he or she will look for his/her "tools of trade," like IDEs, image editing programs or something else.
[141002040030] |A web developer will surely want an XML validator and XML editor with syntax highlighting, DTD/XML Schema/RELAX NG validation and all the goodies.
[141002040040] |One of the best and easy to use solutions at the moment might be XML Copy Editor, a multi-platform XML editor that can make your work more pleasant with its easy to use interface and features.
[141002040050] |Before we start talking about XML Copy Editor, let's have a look at XML first, shall we?
[141002040060] |XML - the Extensible Markup Language - is used for the creation of custom markup languages, allowing a developer to define his/her own elements.
[141002040070] |XML can be used for a myriad of purposes, including serializing data, like YAML and JSON languages do.
[141002040080] |It was created by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), at first as a simplified subset of SGML (which was used to create HTML) and ended up as a complex, easy to understand language.
[141002040090] |XML gave birth to application languages like RSS, MathML, XHTML and many more.
[141002040100] |When you first run XML Copy Editor (XCE), you will be greeted by a simple interface made up of a new XML document and four small toolboxes, from which you can easily insert new elements, siblings (XML elements with the same parent) and entities (special characters like &, > or "). From the very start, I should let you know that XCE's interface and editing is based on Scintilla, and was created with wxWidgets (which you will need for XML Copy Editor to work properly).
[141002040110] |XML Copy Editor uses a tabbing system, so you can open up multiple files at the same time, thus simplifying your work even more.
[141002040120] |At the moment you create a new document, you can opt between 26 document types including XML, DTD, DocBook articles and books, XML schemas, XHTML 1.0 Strict documents, etc., which will come with a few lines of code already added by the editor.
[141002040130] |Now, if you want to change the color scheme (and syntax highlighting), you have the possibility to do that through the View -> Color Scheme menu.
[141002040140] |You can choose from the default color scheme, one with blue background and white text, Light (which is not too different from the default scheme), or none (black text on white background with no syntax highlighting).
[141002040150] |After you add some code to your file, you can save it (press Ctrl+S) and test it for how well it is formed by going to XML -> Check Well-formedness.
[141002040160] |What's a well formed document, actually?
[141002040170] |It is a document that conforms to all of XML's syntax rules.
[141002040180] |The next normal step in the creation of your good XML file would be to validate it with one of the validating parsers available through the XML -> Validate menu.
[141002040190] |You've probably encountered large documents, with many lines of code, that slow you down when it comes to finding something in a specific document.
[141002040200] |You can fold entire blocks of code with the Folding feature offered by XML Copy Editor.
[141002040210] |Adding to this the fact that the pretty printing feature will wrap long lines and highlight code elements according to your current document type, I think XML Copy Editor can really make coding truly fun.
[141002040220] |Another useful feature is the spellchecker included in XML Copy Editor.
[141002040230] |Unfortunately, it doesn't do automatic spellchecking, so you will have to go to Tools -> Spelling, select the language and click on "Check".
[141002040240] |It will present you a list with the possible mistakes you've made, allowing you to correct or ignore them.
[141002040250] |The default web browser from your system will be used by XML Copy Editor to test the documents you create in it.
[141002040260] |You can see the documents in your favorite browser by pressing Ctrl+B or by going to View -> Browser.
[141002040270] |The code you create can also be printed or exported as PDF document through the Print option, located in the File menu.
[141002040280] |<b>The Good:</b>
[141002040290] |XML Copy Editor has a few aces up its sleeve: its simplicity, help documents, its powerful validating and conforming parsers.
[141002040300] |I could also add to these the flexibility it shows when it comes to configuring it.
[141002040310] |<b>The Bad:</b>
[141002040320] |The Bad...
[141002040330] |Ahem...
[141002040340] |I think it might need some cleaning up in the menus, as some functions are getting in the way of one’s work, and I believe it would be great if the user could perform a few more actions through the right-click menu.
[141002040350] |Also, it is not too newbie-friendly, like the warnings you get when a document cannot be validated.
[141002040360] |It should explain in a few lines how you could validate it.
[141002040370] |<b>The Truth:</b>
[141002040380] |XML Copy Editor might turn into something big pretty soon, as it looks promising.
[141002040390] |It should not be missing from your computer if you're a web developer or someone who needs to create and edit XML files.
[141002040400] |Here are some screenshots with XML Copy Editor in action:
[141002050010] |<title>Almanah Diary Review</title>
[141002050020] |Keeping a personal diary is a good way to keep track of the things you do during a day and also to cast a look back if and when you so desire.
[141002050030] |Why look back into your past?
[141002050040] |First off, because it can prove helpful in your growth as an individual and, from a more physical perspective, because it can ease your work by making you notice things you consider important, to which you can and go back from time to time.
[141002050050] |And, to be honest, probably everyone had his/her own diary that acts as the legendary "skeleton closet"! 
[141002050060] |Anyway, traditional diaries - made of paper - are being replaced by digital ones (and I'm not talking about blogs, which are only semi-personal since they can be viewed by the whole wide web) that are more secure, thanks to their encryption capabilities.
[141002050070] |A simple and capable application that eases the management of a personal diary is Almanah Diary.
[141002050080] |Formerly known as "Diary," this small app features basic editing, linking (it allows you to link a diary entry to files and URIs), and adding notes to an entry.
[141002050090] |Its most interesting feature is database encryption, which encrypts your entries so no one - at least no one skilled in database access/cracking techniques - can see what you wrote.
[141002050100] |Almanah Diary is available as a source package, so you will have to "work your fingers to the bone" by installing its dependencies and going through the three magic steps of installing something from source: ./configure, make and make install.
[141002050110] |If you're using Ubuntu, you will have to install even a C compiler, as Ubuntu was probably designed for persons who are scared of the shell and just want to install pre-compiled .deb packages from this distro's repositories or from third-parties.
[141002050120] |I like Ubuntu, but it still lacks some basic development packages. 
[141002050130] |Anyway, let's see what Almanah Diary is all about and test it out.
[141002050140] |When you first start the application, you get a window made up of three panes: one where you add your notes, one for the attached links, and the other containing a calendar for easy navigation through the days.
[141002050150] |To differentiate between the days when you posted something and the ones with no entries, the program shows the active dates in bold style.
[141002050160] |If you want to post something into the "future," you can't!
[141002050170] |The program won't let you choose a day after the current date.
[141002050180] |Another useful feature of the calendar is the fact that you can drag and drop a date into the entry you're editing.
[141002050190] |Unfortunately, there is no undo function present in Almanah Diary, which could be useful when you don't want to delete something and just go a step back into your editing process.
[141002050200] |Although this is not connected to the writing process, I've tried to find a way to display the contents of the database where the entries are kept.
[141002050210] |The database is located in your home directory, under .local/share.
[141002050220] |It is called diary.db and, if you try to open it with Geany for example, you will see only a line displaying the current version of SQLite.
[141002050230] |By running SQLite from a terminal, you can then use its .read command to see the content of the last entry that was added to Almanah Diary.
[141002050240] |There is probably a way to see the other entries too, but I haven't tested that yet. 
[141002050250] |Leaving the database accessing aside, let's see what else Almanah can do.
[141002050260] |I think there is some sort of glitch in the compiling process - or maybe this problem is something I caused - that doesn't display the right icon of Almanah when you go to the About screen.
[141002050270] |I only got some sort of "Not Available" icon.
[141002050280] |Maybe there's something that doesn't link to the correct icon file and that can be fixed.
[141002050290] |Speaking of the About screen, it will also display the current status of your diary: it counts all the entries, links and characters.
[141002050300] |One of the weirdest things I encountered when I was playing around with Almanah Diary was the dialog that appeared from time to time, asking me if I wanted to delete an entry.
[141002050310] |This is a pesky bug for which I could not find a cause.
[141002050320] |Another thing I discovered was that an application crash could be created by dragging dates randomly one over the other.
[141002050330] |After 20 seconds or so, the application crashed with no error message.
[141002050340] |<b>The Good:</b>
[141002050350] |The most important feature of Almanah Diary is its simplicity that leads to ease of use.
[141002050360] |To use it, you only have to know how to use a text editor, and that's all!
[141002050370] |Also, it is really fast when it comes to searching after a specified term through your posts.
[141002050380] |<b>The Bad:</b>
[141002050390] |It lacks a few important features, like "Undo," and needs some fixing to the Print Preview option that doesn't send you back to the Print menu after you close it.
[141002050400] |<b>The Truth:</b>
[141002050410] |There is still a lot of code to clean up and features to add until we can say Almanah Diary is complete.
[141002050420] |From my point of view, the most important thing is stability, and that's one of the points where Almanah must be improved.
[141002050430] |Here are some screenshots with Almanah Diary in action:
[141002070010] |<title>CrossFTP Review</title>
[141002070020] |Have you ever wanted to transfer some files to a server and wondered what the best app for the job was?
[141002070030] |If that's the case, you'd better take a look at CrossFTP, a simple to install, reliable FTP client.
[141002070040] |This is a must-have type of tool if you often need to move files between remote locations and you don't have the time to deal with errors or crashes, CrossFTP proving to be truly versatile. 
[141002070050] |Not too long ago, I had no clue as to what FTP exactly was or what was it good for but, in my second year of college, I attended a class called Communications Protocols which, among other important/quasi-boring stuff, explained the basics of the FTP (File Transfer Protocol).
[141002070060] |I'm sure you can always check out the really technical part on whatever documentation you like, as there is plenty of that on the net alone (called RFC-request for comments), not to mention books, but basically this protocol has a quite simple task and implementation.
[141002070070] |Without getting into details, we generally refer to an FTP as a protocol that allows data transfer between two hosts through a network.
[141002070080] |And, since the Internet is the biggest network of them all, where but here would FTP reach its highest potential and popularity. 
[141002070090] |Of course, there is a lot more to say about FTP in order to fully explain the whole concept, but that doesn't concern us here.
[141002070100] |All I would like to add before I start telling you about this software is that for a connection from one computer to another to be established, much work has to be done, and it really isn't a lot of fun doing it every time you need to transfer some files.
[141002070110] |It goes without saying that, by now, someone had figured out how to automate this procedures and to add some user-friendly interface.
[141002070120] |And, to conclude, this is how the FTP client program appeared, a top representative being CrossFTP.
[141002070130] |In order to connect to an FTP server, you have to follow a few simple steps and then you will be on your way to handle all your transfers without any further complicated commands.
[141002070140] |First, you have to create a new record with the features of the site you want to connect to, this being achieved by going to Sites -> Site Manager and creating a new site.
[141002070150] |You are now given the option to either create a new category in which to add future sites, or simply create a new site in one of the two categories already provided, Quick and Site. 
[141002070160] |After you fill in the label you wish to remember the site by, a whole lot of settings are available, from the really important ones such as host, user name, password or protocol (which can be, aside from FTP, FTPS/SSL, FTPS/TLS, SFTP/SSH), to the advanced ones, like file name case conversion or security options (available if you use SFTP).
[141002070170] |All this may appear somewhat overwhelming for a newbie but, trust me, I'm not an expert either and I managed everything quite easily.
[141002070180] |In fact, for the first time I setup CrossFTP I wanted to quickly test it on the FTP server of a friend of mine, and I did nothing more than to kindly ask him for the host name, user and password and there it was - when I hit connect, I had access to all the files stored on his server.
[141002070190] |It was a very simple FTP server, but all I needed was to store some e-books, so I created a new folder and drag-and-dropped all the files there.
[141002070200] |Do not think that, just because I did not use its entire arsenal of options, they aren't useful.
[141002070210] |They come in quite handy in a lot of scenarios.
[141002070220] |For example, I discovered a very interesting feature called queue, which can save precious time when there are many different files to transfer.
[141002070230] |I'm saying it saves you time, because you can just put the files in a queue and then start the transfer (the queue transfer), and you don't have to worry about the connection being lost, because it will try to reconnect after a given interval and, when it establishes again, the remaining files in the queue resume their transfer.
[141002070240] |Another perk I noticed was the filter capability, which allows a full customized transfer, in so providing different handling according to the file type.
[141002070250] |All the files are transferred in binary mode, but you can choose to transfer them in ASCII mode, if they're ended in a list of extensions.
[141002070260] |You can also set the priority of transfer, or skip some files that have a given extension.
[141002070270] |A nice thing here is that it's possible to add some of your own extensions in those lists, giving you the possibility to transfer numerous kinds of files, each one with its particular operations.
[141002070280] |The veritable control center of this java-based FTP client is the global options window, which you can reach by selecting Tools -> Global Options.
[141002070290] |This is really where you can change just about everything regarding general options, connection, transfer, behavior, and even sound or display.
[141002070300] |Just to name a few, here are the most important settings as I see them: server encoding, download and upload speed limit, CRC checksums, drag
[141002070310] |'s easy to understand/use even by a non-expert and has a full set of available options which can be put to good use.
[141002070320] |It provides the basics, but also many more features that can satisfy anyone in need of this sort of tool. 
[141002070330] |<b>The Bad:</b>
[141002070340] |There's nothing really bad about it, but maybe just that some shortcut keys would have been nice to speed things up a bit.
[141002070350] |Also, the interface looks rather antiquated, but that's just a matter of personal taste and it doesn't really have to be a graphical wonder to do its job properly. 
[141002070360] |<b>The Truth:</b>
[141002070370] |It's a reliable app, the kind that extensively helps your work without crashing or becoming unresponsive.
[141002070380] |It really is a very useful tool for advanced users and beginners alike. 
[141002080010] |<title>Last.fm Player Review</title>
[141002080020] |We all love music, and I'm willing to bet money on that any given day of the week.
[141002080030] |I'm positive nobody could argue with me when I say that there's not a single person in this world who hasn't spent at least a few hours listening to their favorite tunes.
[141002080040] |That's one of the reasons I'd like to tell you about a very nice music player that I stumbled upon a few days ago named Last.fm.
[141002080050] |The main highlight of this application is that it's a radio music player, it doesn't play anything stored locally on your computer.
[141002080060] |This is its primary purpose, to provide a useful interface for you to better organize your preferred music, and it does a pretty good job at it.
[141002080070] |That's why, in my opinion, we cannot say it's a downfall that it doesn't play local music, since it wasn't designed for this to start with.
[141002080080] |But don't worry, I assure you it has a huge song data base that will offer you anything you could possibly want.
[141002080090] |Actually, the fact that it loads music from the site may be a good thing, this way saving you plenty disk space.   
[141002080100] |The first thing that really got my attention was the interface, a very appealing and intuitive one.
[141002080110] |It somewhat lacks the complexity of other music players, but that's a small compromise for its other functionality.
[141002080120] |On the left, you have your profile options like favorite stations, recommendations, loved tracks, recently played or banned.
[141002080130] |Let's now go further and detail some of them.
[141002080140] |When you create your Last.fm account, you are asked to fill in some names of your favorite artists, whose songs will start playing as soon as you double click My Recommendations.
[141002080150] |You certainly have the option to later add or remove any artist in that list, in case you want to experiment with something else.
[141002080160] |The recently played and recently loved categories provide exactly what their name say, and they prove to be quite handy in certain occasions, for example, when you are listening to a great song and you want to later show it to a friend.
[141002080170] |However, this becomes easier if your friend also has a Last.fm account, as you can easily share it with him, and even add a message to accompany the share request.
[141002080180] |Something I didn't like here was the fact that you can't play a track again, for instance, when you look back on the recently played list and you decide you want to hear it once more.
[141002080190] |Only a 30-second preview is available, unfortunately.
[141002080200] |But I guess that I can live with this, given that it's still a radio station and that we all know we can't control which tracks are currently played.
[141002080210] |The banned section is for the tracks that you hated so much that you couldn’t stand the thought of hearing them again but, personally, I find it rather useless and I'll give you two reasons to back this up.
[141002080220] |First, you already select what artists you would like to listen, so what are the chances of such an awful track to pop up to make you want to ban it?
[141002080230] |Secondly, there's always the option of skipping the current song if you so desire, which results in another track starting seconds after.
[141002080240] |The simplest way to listen to music in this player, which I personally use exclusively, is the top button in the profile window, simply called Start a Station.
[141002080250] |I find it very convenient to just start the computer, wait until the system loads, launch the player, fill in an artist’s name you are in the mood for and just sit back and enjoy the fine music.
[141002080260] |That's indeed very nice –and I also noticed that all accessed stations are kept in the History list for later reference.
[141002080270] |I'm not a big biography fan, meaning I don't care about the artist too much, I just want to enjoy the tracks, but still, a few lines about the artist are quite appropriate.
[141002080280] |To my surprise, I found myself a few times reading not only the provided biography, but also searching for additional information elsewhere.
[141002080290] |That happened mostly with classical masters of the past by whom, I must admit, I've always been fascinated, but others as well, like rap musicians or famous rock bands.
[141002080300] |<strong>The Good:</strong>
[141002080310] |It's definitely a very good player which I'm sure will give you hours of good quality music and may even lead to your making it your default music player.
[141002080320] |The fact that it's not too ambiguous and that it provides an excellent track repository are its major highlights.   
[141002080330] |<strong>The Bad:</strong>
[141002080340] |Although I don't want to say anything that could make you not want it, because it really isn't bad, there are a few issues I didn't quite like.
[141002080350] |First, there is the fact that there's no way to listen to a track that you liked again, while the My Loved Tracks button is inaccessible without subscribing first.
[141002080360] |The second and last thing that bugged me was that the software is too connected to the developer's website, meaning too many links direct you there, which also means that you can't make any changes to your account directly.   
[141002080370] |<strong>The Truth:</strong>
[141002080380] |Do not think that just because "the bad" section is bigger than the “good” one means this app is highly flawed, because you'd be missing out on a great player that could be just the thing for you.
[141002080390] |I'd say, give it a chance and just maybe it will do the same for you as it did for me –taking the place of my previous main music player.
[141002090010] |<title>Sage Review</title>
[141002090020] |If you are involved in some activity or another that occasionally requires you to make fast calculations in fields such as geometry, algebra, number theory or anything else related to these, it may be worth your while to try out Sage, an open source, free math software.
[141002090030] |It could prove to be just the tool you needed if you are working on a team project, as this program places great stress on collaboration and openness, therefore being a great teaching or training software.
[141002090040] |I must admit that I was never a math genius in school, but I did pretty well, and almost effortlessly, with the concepts that were mandatory to finish the courses.
[141002090050] |Maybe that's one of the reasons why I was lured to see what this program was about, being curious to find out how much knowledge I still had after a few years of no mathematical quest whatsoever.
[141002090060] |Being based on Python, I felt a little more confident that the migration to Sage would not be too shocking, as I had just finished reading a tutorial about this high-level language.
[141002090070] |After I installed the program, I was a little surprised to discover that it didn’t have a regular editor, using instead the local web browser to load its interface.
[141002090080] |After a fresh IDE install, I have made a personal habit out of verifying what documentation is provided and, in this case, I cannot but praise Sage for delivering such a vast collection of helpful material, from which I'd like to single out a very good tutorial and a complete reference manual.
[141002090090] |The best way to get started is to create a new worksheet (you'll see the button for that right after Sage loads in your browser), and then go to Help -> Tutorial, at which point, a new tab with the Sage tutorial becomes available.
[141002090100] |Now, you can start reading and testing any command you find interesting in the worksheet.                  
[141002090110] |I decided to try out the tutorial myself because it did not seem to be very long and I thought it would be best to take a general look at what this program could do before I started exploring it in a more detailed manner.
[141002090120] |As I browsed the tutorial, I simply could not believe how many functions were provided and how well they were explained.
[141002090130] |Of course, for a non-math person, it would be rather hard to grasp that, for example, diff(sin(x)) = cos(x) or diff(x^2) = 2*x, but I think that, with a basic knowledge, there should be no problem getting through this tutorial very fast and without any headaches.
[141002090140] |Besides, it is a software aimed for a particular purpose, which addresses a specific user base, therefore we have to judge it from one of these users' perspective.
[141002090150] |In other words, it doesn't teach you math - you are supposed to have at least a general idea of it for this software to be of any real use to you. 
[141002090160] |I cannot depict Sage's entire functionality here, for reasons that are easy to understand, one of the most obvious being the fact that a tutorial is already available, as well as lots of additional information, as soon as you finish installing the program.
[141002090170] |I merely intend to point out some of the simpler traits I found useful and interesting, and which could come in handy in many situations.
[141002090180] |I do not presume to give a decent, documented opinion on Sage's expertise areas, which require you have a solid understanding of advanced math, like number theory, some parts of linear algebra, elliptic curves, Dirichlet characters, modular forms, and more.
[141002090190] |There are, however, a few functions that can really be useful, and about which I'd like to tell you a few words.
[141002090200] |But, first things first, let us get the general idea of the program, before moving ahead to exploring its capabilities.      
[141002090210] |The interface is, in my opinion, one of the most important aspects of an IDE because it directly influences the developer's productivity and handling.
[141002090220] |If the interface provides intuitive and easy to learn and use functionality, it's easy for the IDE to become a popular one.
[141002090230] |I've stated my thoughts on this because I want to give an extra reason as to why I think this program comes with a very interesting and, at the same time, useful interface.
[141002090240] |The main trait is workspace organization, which lets the user handle files with great ease and in such as manner as to need just a minor amount of time to get familiar with.
[141002090250] |Like Python, Sage is a scripting language, so you have the two well-known possibilities of writing scripts, or using the interactive shell.
[141002090260] |The shell is organized in worksheets, which resemble a source file of a compiled language, but the difference is that you can evaluate what you wrote at any given moment.
[141002090270] |A small example is in order here, I know, so here it is. 
[141002090280] |Let's say that you have an equation, and you obviously want to solve it.
[141002090290] |So, take a few moments and think how you would do it in C or Java.
[141002090300] |Of course, it's certainly possible to write a simple program that can do the job in either of the two languages mentioned.
[141002090310] |But it takes some time, doesn't it?
[141002090320] |That is, time you don't have to dispose of because you need results rapidly.
[141002090330] |Well, with Sage, solving equations, systems of equations or differential equations is absolutely no trouble.
[141002090340] |Now, back to the example, let’s suppose you have the equation x^2 - x - 20 = 0; the biggest power of x is 2, so there are going to be 2 valid solutions for x as well.
[141002090350] |All you have to do in order to generate the desired output is to declare a variable and then apply the solve function on the equation created with that variable.
[141002090360] |That sounds a bit harder than it actually is, but the code is really simple: var('x'), and then solve(x^2 - x - 20, x).
[141002090370] |After you click on evaluate or press Shift-Enter, the following output will appear: [x == 5, x == -4], representing the solutions for our equation.
[141002090380] |The thing I tried out for a pretty long time and that I honestly enjoyed very much was plotting.
[141002090390] |For those of you (experts, please don’t take this as an insult) who have no idea what this is, plotting is used to give a graphical representation to a mathematical function, with the help of 2 orthogonal axes for 2D plots and 3 axes for 3D plots, respectively.
[141002090400] |I just wish I had this tool when I was in high school or at least during my first year of college because, surely, it would have made a difference.
[141002090410] |However, the idea that you get to benefit from it makes me forget about not having it when I mostly needed it, because at least now I know that this tool, the plotting, will certainly make life easier for you.
[141002090420] |Even more, you could even recommend it to your teacher, if you're still in school.
[141002090430] |It makes it possible for you to draw the plot of any given function, be it linear, polynomial, exponential, logarithmic, factorial, or any combination you could think of.
[141002090440] |Then, you can even save the output as a PNG image in a file for later reference, the quality of the image being more than satisfactory.
[141002090450] |Even more, you have parametric plots that are a little more complex but which, when applied in 3D geometry, can turn into real works of art –a few examples being provided in the tutorial as well.
[141002090460] |<b>The Good:</b>
[141002090470] |I believe I already made it clear which are the things Sage excels at, but a short summing up would be in order at this point.
[141002090480] |First, it's a completely capable IDE that can help you in various ways; secondly, it has an intuitive interface and, last but certainly not least, it comes with a well written documentation.
[141002090490] |<b>The Bad:</b>
[141002090500] |Other than the fact that its most advanced functions are truly inaccessible to someone who doesn't have the right academic background, I didn't find anything not to my liking.
[141002090510] |May I remind you that I tried as best as I could to view this software from the perspective of someone who had at least a general idea of the matter.            
[141002090520] |<b>The Truth:</b>
[141002090530] |To conclude, I'd say that this software is suited to meet numerous needs, and not just those related to math and school.
[141002090540] |It may very well be used, for instance, to satisfy one's curiosity regarding a particular aspect, or it could be a great help for graphical developers who need a quick look at a certain function's 3D plot.
[141002100010] |<title>ArgoUML Review</title>
[141002100020] |This is a review about an already well-known application that has been enjoying huge success, since the earlier releases in 2006 and up to the current version.
[141002100030] |It's about an UML modeling tool called ArgoUML, the current version of which is 0.25.1, released on May 10, 2007.
[141002100040] |However, I will refer here to an earlier version, ArgoUML 0.24, mainly because there's no tutorial or documentation material referring to versions higher than 0.24.
[141002100050] |Hardly can one find anything these days that doesn't involve, to some extent, the use of a certain computer application.
[141002100060] |Industry, medical equipment, commerce, sports, entertainment, education, administration, transportation systems, and the list can go on, are all fields that rely more or less on automation.
[141002100070] |Automation has been successfully introduced with the use of computer programs that perform certain tasks otherwise, meaning directly handled, too time consuming.
[141002100080] |What has become a matter of fact is that, today, it is practically impossible to accomplish anything by starting from scratch.
[141002100090] |What I'm trying to say, and I think this is a statement that cannot possibly be debated, is that most of the world we know today would be completely paralyzed if it wasn't for one thing, one of the main factors that led to the technological boom we’re all witnessing right now - computer software. 
[141002100100] |For a program to be exactly that, a contributor to technical evolution, it has to undergo certain necessary steps to ensure that it will perform its tasks efficiently.
[141002100110] |That is the most important trait of UML, which takes the construction of a system through a number of phases, while not prescribing any particular process.
[141002100120] |There are four primary steps required, and I think a brief description of each one is in order now. 
[141002100130] |The first one is about identifying the system's requirements and describing the problem in the “customers” terms, or, in other words, the problem space.
[141002100140] |The next stage is the analysis, which takes the requirements and tries to formulate them in the language of the solution space this time.
[141002100150] |This is performed by keeping a high-level perspective, without getting into the details of a specific solution.
[141002100160] |Then comes the design phase, when the solution is constructed in full detail, thus migrating from the abstraction of the previous phase to a concrete term realization.
[141002100170] |The final step is the build phase, in which the actual programming is done, followed by lots of test and validations to observe if the program meets the customer's demands.
[141002100180] |Also here, the user information material, tutorial and all the documentation reference is written.
[141002100190] |The reason why I felt a description of these basic UML steps was necessary was that I would like to state that ArgoUML offers a very good guide about them and, should you find the time to read the user manual, it cannot but turn you into a software design fan.
[141002100200] |Maybe it's just my small programming background that got the best of me when I first discovered ArgoUML, but I personally believe that designing, analyzing and finally testing a system to joyfully conclude that it works perfectly is very interesting.
[141002100210] |This program handles the task of helping you understand and efficiently apply these concepts wonderfully, and is also very well supported by its documentation pages.               
[141002100220] |I have always highly appreciated a software that has a well written documentation, which can virtually transform a newbie in at least an intermediate user without too much trouble.
[141002100230] |That's because we live in a world of free software, where developers collaborate more than in any other domain, and which is dominated, among others, by a very persistent human emotion.
[141002100240] |I'm talking about curiosity, of course, the kind that pushes you to dig deeper and deeper until you fully understand the conceptions behind a given application.
[141002100250] |I'm sure that it has happened to a lot of open source fans to stumble across a little application that they so extensively used that they became active members on the development mailing list. 
[141002100260] |The ArgoUML reference material, along with its tutorial and quickstart guide, are excellent documentation that I'm confident will prove useful to many of you.
[141002100270] |Although it is stipulated early in the beginning of the tutorial that it's addressed to experimented users, I had no major difficulties in understanding the basic ideas and functionality.
[141002100280] |I did not, however, have the chance to experiment just about every aspect of ArgoUML, probably because I did not use it for real, serious work –but that's a future plan of mine, which I'll be sure to share with you, should I accomplish something that's worth mentioning. 
[141002100290] |I know that this article sounds more like a praise to the software rather than a classical review, but it's difficult to discuss all that you can do with ArgoUML when you have a space limit, so I do not intend to do that here.
[141002100300] |My goal is to wet your appetite in what regards a great domain to work in, such as software design is, and to give you my general thoughts about my experience with ArgoUML.
[141002100310] |My first encounter with this program was in my second year of college during an OOP course, and I wondered then what good it could possibly do.
[141002100320] |After a very long and somewhat frustrating Java assignment, the teacher asked us to also create the UML diagram from our code.
[141002100330] |It was just a school assignment, no longer than 1,000 lines of code, so the programming process was very straightforward - I read what I had to do, gave it a few minutes’ thought, and then began coding.
[141002100340] |I was never in a real danger of writing too many lines and later discovering that something didn’t fit with what I had done so far, so that I'd be forced to fundamentally change the whole program.
[141002100350] |It was neither too complicated, nor too time consuming and, naturally, I failed to get what the point of a UML diagram was. 
[141002100360] |However, now, I realize that in the real software business, applications stretch out for many code lines, and can contain numerous source files, which makes a prior and thorough analysis and design an absolute prerequisite.
[141002100370] |And ArgoUML handles this task beautifully; it is, in my and many others' opinion, the tool to use for UML modeling.
[141002100380] |<b>The Good:</b>
[141002100390] |So far, I've concentrated on general aspects, but now's the time to show some practical perks as well.
[141002100400] |The most important is that it's written in Java, so it's as portable as a software can be, and requires only a machine with Java Runtime Environment (JRE 5 or 6).
[141002100410] |It's inspired by certain theories within cognitive psychology, thus taking into account the natural way of thinking of a complex system designer, leading to better handling and facilitating creation.
[141002100420] |It is also capable of code generation (without the method body, of course), reverse engineering by importing java source files and generating diagrams, advanced diagram editing, and has ten-language support (such as English, French, German, Italian and a few more).
[141002100430] |<b>The Bad:</b>
[141002100440] |The "bad" thing is there's no tutorial addressed to people who want to learn UML modeling, but the developers promise that it will be featured in future releases.
[141002100450] |Also, I might suggest a more appealing interface, maybe SWT but, then again, these are only details, although they do matter in the general overview of the program.
[141002100460] |<b>The Truth:</b>
[141002100470] |With regret that I could not deliver a more detailed article, I honestly recommend ArgoUML to experts, intermediates, and also beginners who are willing to spend the time required to get used to it.
[141002100480] |I, for one, know what I'm going to delight myself with every evening, so I hope you'll enjoy it too!
[141002110010] |<title>Social Networks Visualiser Review</title>
[141002110020] |Our last review was about a UML modeling tool called ArgoUML, a very complex application which takes some time to get used to and requires advanced knowledge about fundamental concepts in OOP in order to accomplish something notable.
[141002110030] |This is not the case with today's application, as with just basic computer know-how, anyone can begin their adventure of constructing their very own social network model. 
[141002110040] |To put it simply, SocNetV (Social Network Visualiser) is mainly a tool for social network analysis, editing and, of course, viewing.
[141002110050] |As usual, I'd like to take a moment and give you some details about the primary concept this software exploits (social network), the understanding of which is very important.
[141002110060] |It seems only reasonable that when you take a first look at a program, you want (after you are first explained what is it good for) to know how that kind of software  was developed and which are the needs it addresses.
[141002110070] |Well, like many questions related to the origin of computer software, the one above hasn't got just one answer, or more appropriately, even if it did at the time the application was first designed, that sure changed as it was soon discovered that various problems, other than the primary tasks, could be successfully dealt with by using it. 
[141002110080] |A social network is a structure, often very complex, having two basic components: nodes and ties.
[141002110090] |This is, of course, the concept brought to its abstract form in order to be better grasped by aspiring social studies gurus.
[141002110100] |From here on, I'll assume that you have at least a pretty good idea as to what a graph is and how it is most often represented, because a social network representation relies on basic standards borrowed from the graph theory that you cannot do without.
[141002110110] |So, nodes can stand for people, companies, countries, organizations, post offices, gas stations and so on.
[141002110120] |Ties represent what exactly connects the elements represented by nodes.
[141002110130] |It's all abstract thinking here; in other words, everything has a hidden signification.
[141002110140] |I'd better give you an example or two to shed some light over what I've been trying to say.
[141002110150] |It's important not to move on until you are absolutely sure you understood everything that's been discussed up to a certain point.
[141002110160] |Think of a company that resides within a four-story building and, on each story, there are twenty to thirty people working.
[141002110170] |The people who work in that building form a social network, but how, intuitively, would the representation of this network look like?
[141002110180] |Well, it depends very much on the criteria you place on the ties.
[141002110190] |But let's take the simple one for now, remembering that it's up to us what we want to model.
[141002110200] |For instance, suppose we want to see a model of the company's staff regarding how much they talk to each other.
[141002110210] |It's fair to presume that people talk mostly with those on the same floor, so the graph would generally look like four clusters (as there are four floors), each with as many nodes as there are employees on that specific floor.
[141002110220] |Each tie between two nodes signifies that the people represented by those two nodes have spoken at least once in that day.
[141002110230] |So, within a cluster, there will be far more ties than between nodes from different clusters.
[141002110240] |Occasionally, an employee could go to a different floor and talk to someone from a different department - that's how two clusters communicate.
[141002110250] |As much as this example simulates real life, please take into consideration that this is merely a generic one, because we did not take into account the possibility for two staff members to talk using an instant messenger or over the phone.
[141002110260] |As you'll see from the pictures below, SocNetV is suited exactly for this kind of job, offering everything for you to immediately start creating the social network model of your choice.
[141002110270] |I personally played around and came up with the idea of creating Europe's model by attributing each country to a node and each land border between two countries to a tie.
[141002110280] |It was really no problem finishing well under twenty minutes or so, thanks to SocNetV's easy to use and simple to understand and apply functionality.
[141002110290] |You have all the tools you need in order to design any model you desire; from node and link creation to changing the shape or color of certain nodes, all respects the purpose of this application.
[141002110300] |To give you a brief example here, you could represent the social network in which nodes would stand for towns from a state and ties would be trade relations.
[141002110310] |You could then modify the size of a node according to its population (the bigger the number of people living there, the bigger the node), the shape according to what it produces most (if it's food, a circle - heavy industry, a square, and virtually any combination you could think of). 
[141002110320] |SocNetV offers network analysis tools that really come in handy when a comparison is required between two models or when you want to extract certain information.
[141002110330] |To name just a few of them, here is what SocNetV offers: 
[141002110340] |·Density;· Distance of two nodes;· The Distance Matrix;· Diameter;· Centralities according to OutDegree, InDegree, Closeness, Betweenness, etc.
[141002110350] |As for the view control, there are a few ways you can look at a model, depending very much on what you want to accomplish and what your models stand for.
[141002110360] |You can choose to view the label and the number of a node (or just one of them), the weight and arrows of ties and also the various control bars (status bar, tool bar, progress bar); you can also switch on and off the anti-aliasing (I suggest enabling it right from the start, as it doesn't consume much of your CPU, and it's quite eye pleasing).
[141002110370] |<b>The Good</b>
[141002110380] |It has very intuitive commands, integrated in a very user friendly interface which poses no problem getting used to, granted you have basic computer experience.
[141002110390] |Its simple design and effectiveness in handling design issues make it the perfect tool to use for social network analysis.  
[141002110400] |<b>The Bad</b>                                          
[141002110410] |Sometimes when you double click on the canvas to create a node, this doesn't appear exactly on the spot, but further away, which can be pretty annoying if you zoomed in to maximum, and you created a new node, because you have to zoom out in order to reach the newly created node, move it to your desired location and then zoom back in again.
[141002110420] |Also, I would have been pleased to see features such as the minimum spanning tree (Prim and Kruskal's algorithm) or shortest path algorithms (Dijkstra, Bellman-Ford, Floyd-Warshall and A*).     
[141002110430] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141002110440] |It has many more good parts than bad ones; the bad ones would rather be called suggestions than real flaws.
[141002110450] |It's a useful software, it's open source and it's free.
[141002110460] |Enjoy it!
[141002120010] |<title>Pingus Review</title>
[141002120020] |We all need to relax from time to time, as it has been scientifically proved that regular breaks increase productivity, as well as our general wellbeing.
[141002120030] |This is one of the reasons I decided to present what in my opinion stands for an efficient, brain cooling experience.
[141002120040] |Pingus is a lemmings-like puzzle game, which, although based on a well-known idea, namely that of combining certain abilities to attain a goal, manages to keep you on your seat in front of the computer, scenario after scenario. 
[141002120050] |For those of you who don't really know what the lemmings-like game genre is, I'll give a short description, so that when you start playing the game, you will have a general idea of what you have to do.
[141002120060] |Basically, you have a specific number of penguins from which you have to save some in order to pass the mission.
[141002120070] |Penguins start showing up in a certain point of the map, and you have to carefully guide them until they reach the exit.
[141002120080] |For that, every particular mission has certain abilities that you can equip the penguins with, in order to pass over obstacles that stand the way.
[141002120090] |For instance, you may sometimes need to equip your penguins with floaters (little propellers mounted on their head), so that when they reach a gap, they gently land on the ground, and not hit it at great speed and die.
[141002120100] |You can also make the penguins jump over gaps to reach a specific point, or better, build a bridge over the gap and never have to worry about making sure every penguin jumps over.
[141002120110] |Other situations, like when the exit is lower than the area where the penguins are generated and there's no way to jump or land with a floater, only leave the possibility of digging.
[141002120120] |Digging is more special in Pingus, as there are practically four kinds of possibilities of doing it.
[141002120130] |The first is pretty straightforward, simply called digger, transforming a penguin into a cute, very well equipped drill worker that makes a vertical hole from the point where it is standing until there's no soil left to go through, or it reaches a piece of steel.
[141002120140] |Another possibility is the miner ability, very similar to the digger, but with a difference in terms of direction, as the miner creates not a vertical pathway, but one situated on a 45-degree angle relative to the vertical axis. 
[141002120150] |The basher is the third ability to allow the creation of tunnels in the ground for the penguin to pass through.
[141002120160] |Just in case you haven't guessed it already, it allows the penguin to dig the tunnel horizontally, starting from the point where it is at when you equip it with this ability, and ending either on the other side, with the penguin safe and sound, or stopping when reaching steel.
[141002120170] |The forth and final way of clearing obstacles is also the hardest to master, because it differs fundamentally from the first three.
[141002120180] |The name is bomber, and it pretty much says all about its purpose; when you select the bomber ability and equip a penguin with it, it doesn't explode right away, but instead a timer is triggered and, when it runs out, boom!
[141002120190] |This is an explicit sacrifice ability, as there is no way to save the penguin after you make it a bomber.
[141002120200] |You might think of it as cruel but, trust me, there are cases when there is no other way to complete the mission than by using one or several bombers.
[141002120210] |There are other abilities as well, but I'd like to let you discover them and try to use their functionality in an efficient manner.
[141002120220] |However, there is one last comment I want to make on them.
[141002120230] |Every time you don't know how to resolve a given scenario, try to think of how you could integrate all the available abilities because, most often than not, the key ability is not the most obvious one.
[141002120240] |The graphics of Pingus is satisfying but, given that it's a 2D game designed more for thinking than for being pleasing on the eye, it can be deemed quite good.
[141002120250] |The entertaining aspect here comes not from superb landscapes or appealing effects, but from the contentment you feel when you finish a mission.
[141002120260] |Another thing regarding the graphical aspect I’d like to note is the animation used for penguins equipped with a certain ability, the floater being my favorite one.
[141002120270] |<b>The Good</b>
[141002120280] |I am impressed with how such a simple, 2D game could keep me up until 2 in the morning, therefore I cannot but accept that either I'm too competitive to give up, or the game was too good.
[141002120290] |Seriously now, it's indeed a great game, so I recommend it for relaxing, granted you don't become obsessed with it. 
[141002120300] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141002120310] |There would be much to state here if I were to say all the things that I personally would change, but that's not important, since Pingus is a very good game as it is.
[141002120320] |One thing I must say, though, and that is that there's a drastic shortage of levels.
[141002120330] |There are only twenty so levels on the Tutorial island (which are quite easy and, therefore, don't count as genuine levels) and eight Halloween maps.
[141002120340] |Maybe the developer could be kind enough to provide some new ones, or convert some of the levels in older versions to the new format.
[141002120350] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141002120360] |It has some minor, barely visible flaws, and a major downfall - too few levels, in my opinion.
[141002120370] |On the other hand, if you take the time to complete a scenario (not the Tutorial Island, but the challenging ones in Halloween), I'm sure you'll want to jump right ahead to the next map and try it out.
[141002120380] |I wish you all a good leadership over the penguins! 
[141002120390] |Below are some shots from my experience with Pingus - but be warned that some may give you the solution to certain scenarios, so if you want to try and find the right way yourself, you'd better skip them after you have installed and started playing the game.
[141002130010] |<title>Little Wizard Review</title>
[141002130020] |I've always wanted to present an educational product, one intended especially for children in primary school because, that way, I would contribute to making the learning process just a tad better for some.
[141002130030] |And by better I mean more fun, with less stress associated with it and, why not, a real pleasure. 
[141002130040] |Well, now that I have this opportunity, I will tell you about the most user-friendly development environment you ever set your eyes upon, an IDE especially designed for children.
[141002130050] |Although far less powerful than the usual programming environments, Little Wizard is just what a kid needs to be introduced to, if s/he is to regard learning how a computer program is crafted as something fun. 
[141002130060] |Little Wizard's job is indeed a difficult one, and that’s mainly because of two reasons.
[141002130070] |First off, children tend to become bored extremely fast, and I'm sure we can all agree on that - so it's fair to say that you can't really make a child do something, let alone enjoy it, if that thing doesn't profoundly arouse her/his interest.
[141002130080] |Any school teacher can confirm that boredom among pupils is one of the biggest obstacles standing in the way of an effective learning experience –so, to put it simply, there has to be something that, even if harder to grasp at first, dons a very user-friendly wrapper.
[141002130090] |The second reason is that computer programming is a field that is fundamentally difficult to comprehend.
[141002130100] |I don't want to analyze here what it takes to be a skilled developer, but trust me, it takes both time and effort, and to become an expert, well, let's just say it's hard to get there. 
[141002130110] |Then, is it possible to put together these two conflicting aspects and yet come up with something that's worth anything?
[141002130120] |The answer is yes, as Little Wizard is one of the most nicely implemented educational software I have seen.
[141002130130] |Although it's relatively straightforward, having no complicated commands or too complex concepts to deal with, it's certainly not a toy.
[141002130140] |I mean, it's true that in terms of user interface it has little in common with the more technical, real development environments, being very cute, with little animations all over, and a truly well made interface.
[141002130150] |Nevertheless, it's a serious application when it comes to its offerings. 
[141002130160] |When I first started using Little Wizard and saw that it was designed to teach kids, I thought there was no need for me to waste my time reading the tutorial, as I felt confident on my small programming background to help me get started quickly.
[141002130170] |However, in the first ten minutes or so, I literally felt overwhelmed with the multitude of tabs, small pictures of a little clown (which, after a while, I realized was the actual “little wizard”) and various other aspects.
[141002130180] |I was only familiar with the math tab, which contains all the digits and operations (both the basic ones such as addition, subtraction, division and multiplication, and the slightly more advanced concatenation or logical operations), and with the loop&conditions tab, including basic clauses such as if, else, for, while, repeat-until, break and continue.
[141002130190] |'s application, I began going through the tutorial, in order to understand how to start using its full potential.
[141002130200] |The conclusion I reached was that this is a software that a teacher has to learn thoroughly, and only afterwards can he introduce it to his pupils, because it does not offer any documentation whatsoever about how a computer program is structured, its core concepts and fundamental issues.
[141002130210] |It skips all that, and begins by briefly describing the program UI, and then gets right to how the commands are used.
[141002130220] |For me, and for anyone who has written and complied a program at least once, it was really easy.
[141002130230] |However, I think that. for someone who is new at this, getting used to it would be a real problem.
[141002130240] |Therefore, for those who want to start learning programming on their own, I have to recommend first a reading on the fundamental issues.
[141002130250] |I may have been a little to drastic above, but that’s because I suppose no one with absolutely no background in this area would venture using Little Wizard, so it will probably be a good experience for most that do.
[141002130260] |Now, let's see exactly what this tool is about and in what circumstances it may prove to be the optimum choice. 
[141002130270] |Little Wizard is a drag and drop development environment with a top priority to be as eye-pleasing and user-friendly, while offering as many of the facilities of a regular IDE as possible.
[141002130280] |The first thing you should know right from the start is that you'll probably never have to touch the keyboard, as everything you add to the program is done solely by using the mouse.
[141002130290] |For example, if you want to make a short loop to print all the numbers between 1 and 10, you have to first select a variable and assign it the value of 1, then drag down a loop clause (like while or for), open a logical block (a curly bracket, like so {), print the variable's value (which is done here by putting the create wand and the variable name next to each other), increment the variable (x = x + 1), and then close the logical block (}).
[141002130300] |Of course, there are other ways to do this, by using more specialized clauses, such as for, which increments the variable automatically with whichever step you desire (not necessarily 1 like in the previous example).
[141002130310] |<b>The Good</b>
[141002130320] |As I said before, Little Wizard has a real tough mission, that of combining a kid's need for something s/he deems intriguing, with the tedious work of studying computer programming.
[141002130330] |From my point of view, which might not be the most accurate one, it does a pretty good job at it, having a nice childish interface and various other features that kids can relate to.
[141002130340] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141002130350] |Having to constantly drag and drop figures out of the palette and into the program grid, especially if you want to create a larger program, may become a little tiring after a while.
[141002130360] |However, the most bugging aspect is removing pieces of program, as you have to select each separately, and drag it upwards in the palette.
[141002130370] |Also, there is no tool for selecting more than one item at a time, so to modify a program, you have to replace each item with the new one.
[141002130380] |This can definitely be seen as a downside since, when programming is first learnt, changes occur very often with your program as you experiment with various techniques and code statements.
[141002130390] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141002130400] |Overall, Little Wizard is an application that may prove to be satisfying for many school teachers in search for something additional to the main course (I can't say with certainty because I haven't had the opportunity to see it in real action, meaning, with kids working in it).
[141002130410] |I for one have enjoyed it because Little Wizard allows you to do a little more than just programming –an aspect I intentionally left out for you to experiment on your own.
[141002130420] |Have fun!
[141002150010] |<title>Shutter Review</title>
[141002150020] |I can confidently bet that there aren't a lot of computer users out there who didn't need, at least once, a screenshot-taking program.
[141002150030] |Whether you simply want to brag about the way your desktop looks or just demonstrate a certain function to a friend of yours, a quick screenshot will always come in handy.
[141002150040] |Us Linux users are lucky to have powerful tools already installed on our systems available for all desktop environments.
[141002150050] |From GNOME's Screenshot utility to KDE's KSnapshot, these are all great applications. 
[141002150060] |But there are times when an even more powerful, complete solution is needed, especially if screenshot-taking is part of your daily activities.
[141002150070] |So today I'm going to review the popular Shutter application.
[141002150080] |If it doesn't ring any bells, know that Shutter was recently renamed so from GScrot.
[141002150090] |Currently at version 0.70.2, this mighty piece of software has a ton of cool and useful features to satisfy most of your screenshot needs. 
[141002150100] |First of all, the interface is simple and intuitive.
[141002150110] |Five main buttons will let you choose what areas of your desktop you want to capture, while further, more specific options are available by clicking the arrow next to said buttons.
[141002150120] |If you take multiple screenshots, they will be conveniently arranged in tabs, making it easy to navigate through them.
[141002150130] |The first tab will always be "Session," a window that offers you a quick overview of all your active captures, complete with their combined size.
[141002150140] |Double click one of them and you'll be taken straight to its tab.
[141002150150] |But you won't have to use this window as often as you think, given the fact that the capture tabs themselves have little thumbnails.
[141002150160] |Also displayed on the tab is the time (in hours, minutes, seconds) when you took the screenshot; again, very, very convenient. 
[141002150170] |The actual screenshot-taking process is very simple.
[141002150180] |If you need to manually cut a region from your screen, push the selection button and draw a rectangle to cover what you need to capture.
[141002150190] |There are two available modes: "Advanced selection tool" and "Simple Selection Tool."
[141002150200] |The advanced mode will darken your screen to easily differentiate between what you select and the rest of the area.
[141002150210] |Unfortunately, the advanced mode doesn't let you include the top/down panels in your selection if Compiz is enabled.
[141002150220] |If you ask me, the "Simple Selection Tool" is actually the advanced one as it not only lets you select any portion of the screen, but it will also offer detailed information about the current cursor position and display a little zoom window for precision cuts.
[141002150230] |The Full Screen button does exactly what you expect it to do: take a capture of the whole desktop; you can also select what workspace to be captured, if you have more than one.
[141002150240] |The next button, "Window," allows you to capture individual windows either by clicking the main button and selecting the window on the desktop, or by accessing the second menu (arrow button) and choosing from the list of opened applications.
[141002150250] |The fourth available mode is "Section," which lets you select even more elements, like single buttons or menu bars.
[141002150260] |The fifth and last option, called "Web," is a really unique addition, as it allows you to type in a URL and then Shutter will automatically take a screenshot of that whole page. 
[141002150270] |There are a lot of options that can be tweaked in the "Preferences" menu, like image format (PNG, JPEG and BMP are available), save directory, automatic file naming or capture delay.
[141002150280] |You can also choose to automatically copy the captured screen to the clipboard or set keyboard shortcuts.
[141002150290] |Another interesting feature of Shutter is the ability to upload files to different image hosting sites or FTP servers directly from the interface.
[141002150300] |For now, there are three active services included: Ubuntu Pics, Imagebanana and the popular Imageshack.
[141002150310] |Just save your credentials for each service, press CTRL+U, click upload and you're done. 
[141002150320] |So you took your screenshot and now you want to add some highlights or some text to it.
[141002150330] |No problem!
[141002150340] |You no longer have to open a dedicated, third-party image editor, as Shutter has a built-in one.
[141002150350] |Don't expect GIMP capabilities, but basic tools are there for a quick edit.
[141002150360] |Furthermore, effects can be added to an image through one of the installed plugins: Grayscale, Jigsaw Piece, Hard Shadow, Soft Edges, Sunk Border, Torned Paper and more.
[141002150370] |You can even export your screenshots as PDF files. 
[141002150380] |<em><strong>The Good</strong></em> 
[141002150390] |Shutter has more features than all capture programs that I know of. You'll get used to the interface in no time and will fall in love with most, if not all of Shutter's capabilities.
[141002150400] |Oh, did I mention it is free? 
[141002150410] |<em><strong>The Bad</strong></em> 
[141002150420] |Being full of so many features, Shutter eats quite a lot of resources.
[141002150430] |Also, what I would like to see in future versions is a fixed-size selection tool, allowing users to specify exactly what size the capture area should be. 
[141002150440] |<em><strong>The Truth</strong></em> 
[141002150450] |You will not find a better Linux screen-capture utility.
[141002150460] |Shutter will ease your work and make you more productive than ever. 
[141002160010] |<title>Ubuntu Tweak Review</title>
[141002160020] |Ubuntu can undoubtedly be considered one of the most newbie-friendly Linux distributions out there.
[141002160030] |Yet, there still are some hidden functions and settings that will improve your experience.
[141002160040] |Though you don't need a third-party program to unlock them, it will save you a lot of time to have an application that centralizes most of them. 
[141002160050] |And what is that application?
[141002160060] |Ubuntu Tweak 0.4.6, of course.
[141002160070] |The easiest way to get it is by downloading the small, 1 MB .deb package and installing it with a double click.
[141002160080] |Once that's out of the way, you will find the Ubuntu Tweak entry in the Applications --  System Tools menu. 
[141002160090] |When you first open Ubuntu Tweak, a welcome screen will offer you a quick preview of the program's capabilities.
[141002160100] |At the bottom there are four buttons: About, Donate, Quit and Preferences.
[141002160110] |The first three are self-explanatory, while Preferences will let you customize some aspects of Ubuntu Tweak's interface, like its default size, colors, and the function window that should be shown when opening the application.
[141002160120] |An Enable Check Update checkbox will notify you when a new version is released. 
[141002160130] |But let's shift our focus on the functionalities of this nifty little program.
[141002160140] |A sidebar sitting on the left contains all the main categories: Welcome, Computer, Applications, Startup, Desktop, Personal and System.
[141002160150] |A click on one of these will expand it into several subcategories. 
[141002160160] |The first entry one after the Welcome screen, dubbed <strong>Computer</strong>, displays very useful information about your system and the current user: hostname, distribution, desktop environment, kernel, platform, CPU, RAM, your home directory path, shell and Language. 
[141002160170] |The second menu is <strong>Applications</strong> with four subcategories: Add/Remove, Source Editor, Third-Party Sources and Package Cleaner.
[141002160180] |And though you'll think that you already have an easily accessible Add/Remove function in Ubuntu, this one is a bit different as it only displays the most popular packages that don't come installed with a fresh system and are required to fully enjoy multimedia and Web browsing.
[141002160190] |To name just a few: VLC Player, Banshee, Ubuntu restricted extras, Opera, MPlayer, Miro Internet TV, Kino, gtk-recordMyDesktop, Filezilla, Compizconfig-Settings-Manager.
[141002160200] |VirtualBox OSE, Wine, GNOME Partition Editor and GNOME Do are other programs that you will find to be quite useful.
[141002160210] |I personally see this as a great recommendation portal for newcomers who are lost within the hundreds of packages in Ubuntu's repositories. 
[141002160220] |The Source Editor will let you manually add or remove software sources and also submit your favorite ones to a public server for everyone to see.
[141002160230] |The Third-Party Sources will allow many applications to be updated to their latest versions as Ubuntu will only offer bugfixing and security updates by default.
[141002160240] |I was delighted to see software like Chromium Browser (the future Google Chrome for Linux), Firefox, Skype, Compiz Fusion, Medibuntu or Skype.
[141002160250] |After enabling any of these they will also show in the Add/Remove section if they weren't there before.
[141002160260] |The last subcategory in Applications is Package Cleaner with three options: Clean Package, Clean Cache and Clean Config.
[141002160270] |While Ubuntu Tweak couldn't find anything to clean for the first and third options, the Clean Cache removed approximately 500 MB of unnecessary junk from my system.
[141002160280] |Nice! 
[141002160290] |Moving on, the <strong>Startup</strong> main entry hosts the Session Control and Autostart subcategories allowing some more nifty customizations.
[141002160300] |Leaving aside the features found in Ubuntu's own Startup Applications (session saving and autostart applications), Ubuntu Tweak lets you choose a splash screen to display on your desktop, show or hide the logout prompt, and Allow TCP Connections for remotely connecting to your desktop. 
[141002160310] |The <strong>Desktop</strong> menu will let you customize a lot of interface elements.
[141002160320] |Through the first "Icons" entry you can choose what icons to be displayed on your desktop: Computer, Home Folder, Trash, Network and mounted volumes.
[141002160330] |A neat option that will probably be useful to many is using the Home folder as the desktop so you will have quick access to your files.
[141002160340] |There is also a checkbox to hide the desktop icons, but, unfortunately, when I tried that (on top of our Ubuntu 9.04 test machine), Nautilus crashed and entered into a continuous loop, trying to restart.
[141002160350] |It's very possible this is a Jaunty-only problem, so previous releases shouldn't be affected. 
[141002160360] |The Windows setting allows you to change transparency levels and assign titlebar actions for each of your mouse buttons, like using the wheel to roll windows up/down or maximizing them with a double click.
[141002160370] |The Compiz Fusion subcategory provides quick access to some of the most popular 3D effects and lets you install the Screenlets widget framework.
[141002160380] |The last entry in the Desktop category addresses the GNOME environment and lets you lock all your panels to prevent accidental removals.
[141002160390] |Another neat feature is the ability to remove the "Input Methods" and "Insert Unicode Control Character" entries that appear when right-clicking a text-input field.
[141002160400] |Most of you probably never used them so you'll be happy about this. 
[141002160410] |If you got tired of the default Ubuntu menu logo, Tweak will let you easily change it through the same GNOME subcategory.
[141002160420] |Create a 24x24 image file, click the button, go to your file and that's it.
[141002160430] |You will be asked if you want to apply the changes immediately (this restarts the window manager) or at the next login.
[141002160440] |Another option will keep your computer activity hidden by disabling the Recent Documents menu.
[141002160450] |Finally, you can change the position of the system notification popups.
[141002160460] |Be aware though that this doesn't have any effect on Jaunty's new notification framework. 
[141002160470] |The <strong>Personal</strong> category is another great resource for further improving your desktop: you can change the paths to the default Ubuntu folders (Public, Download, Music, etc.), you can add useful Templates for the "Create Document" option, like HTML document, OpenOffice document, shell script and others.
[141002160480] |A big list of scripts for Nautilus will create new context-menu entries allowing you to manipulate files and folders much easier and faster: Copy to desktop, Link to..., Move to Home, Open with gedit, Convert image to JPG, browse a folder with administrator privileges and many more.
[141002160490] |The keyboard shortcut editor didn't work for me; I could set the command and the shortcut, but when pressing the assigned keys, the corresponding program wouldn't launch. 
[141002160500] |Last but not least, you will find a lot of interesting tweaks in the <strong>System</strong> category.
[141002160510] |Its first entry is File Type Manager, which, as its name suggests, allows you to change file type associations.
[141002160520] |From the second one, Nautilus, you can install three extensions, out of which the first two are must-have for any user: Nautilus with Open Terminal, Nautilus with Root Privileges and Nautilus with Wallpaper.
[141002160530] |From here you can also clean up the thumbnail cache, change thumbnail size and decide for how long you want to keep the thumbnails in your cache memory (also customizable). 
[141002160540] |There are some CD burner tweaks too that enable BurnProof and OverBurn so you can use every bit of space from a CD.
[141002160550] |Advanced file permissions can also be shown in the properties window by checking a box.
[141002160560] |Power Management allows you to enable/disable suspend or hibernation and lets you choose to disable the network when the computer goes to sleep.
[141002160570] |The last subcategory deals with security options, allowing you to restrict access to a lot of functions: the ALT+F2 Run Application, Lock Screen, printing, print setup, saving to disk and fast user switching. 
[141002160580] |<em><strong>The Good</strong></em> 
[141002160590] |The intuitive interface, ease of use and, of course, the plethora of customization options available make Ubuntu Tweak an awesome tool for any Ubuntu user. 
[141002160600] |<em><strong>The Bad</strong></em> 
[141002160610] |There are some functions that don't seem to work as they should.
[141002160620] |Also, a better support for the upcoming Ubuntu 9.04 is expected. 
[141002160630] |<em><strong>The Truth</strong></em> 
[141002160640] |Ubuntu Tweak is the number one application to get after installing a fresh Ubuntu operating system and also a great way to help newbies with their first Linux steps. 
[141002170010] |<title>Screenlets Review</title>
[141002170020] |Regardless of how often you change wallpapers or install new themes, you will eventually grow bored of your desktop.
[141002170030] |And because you like its functionality or find it to be better than the rest, switching to another desktop environment just to get out of the routine is not a viable solution.
[141002170040] |Instead, you could try putting some life in it by adding a few awesome little screenlets.
[141002170050] |What are these screenlets, you ask?
[141002170060] |Maybe Widgets or Gadgets sound more familiar to you, because this is what they are.
[141002170070] |In the last few years, widgets reached very high popularity levels, on all platforms. 
[141002170080] |While the KDE 4 desktop environment uses a widget framework as an important part of the system and is enabled by default, GNOME users have to rely on a third-party program, called Screenlets.
[141002170090] |I think the developers do the best job in describing these little companions, on the project website: <em>"the virtual representation of things lying/standing around on your desk."</em> 
[141002170100] |I have tested Screenlets on an Ubuntu 9.04 Beta machine, thus, I could easily install it through Synaptic.
[141002170110] |If you're using other Linux flavors, the producers were nice to provide packages for most major distributions and, of course, the source files.
[141002170120] |After the quick installation process, you will be ready to open up the program.
[141002170130] |The interface is clean and intuitive and most options are contained in a single window. 
[141002170140] |On the left side, a handy search field will allow you to quickly sort through the quite large default collection.
[141002170150] |Underneath it, you will find the main functions: Launch/Add, Install, Uninstall, Reset Config, Install New Theme, Re-Start All, Close All, Create Desktop Shortcut, Options, a filter and the Start/Stop, Auto start on login and Show daemon in tray checkboxes.
[141002170160] |On the right side, you will find all or some of your screenlets, depending on how you decided to filter them.
[141002170170] |The window can of course be resized for a better overview. 
[141002170180] |As I said before, the initial collection is rather large, containing 52, alphabetically arranged, screenlets.
[141002170190] |Though you probably won't make use of them all, you are sure to find many to suit your needs.
[141002170200] |From a Picture Frame, to FeedReaders, Stocks watcher or Sticky notes, I found screenlets to be more than simple toys.
[141002170210] |The first time you open the Screenlets Manager, you will want to look through the options to customize the way newly opened screenlets will act.
[141002170220] |By default, they will be kept above all other applications, so you will probably want that turned off.
[141002170230] |But how do you place a screenlet on your desktop?
[141002170240] |Select it, double click it and it's there!
[141002170250] |You can also check the Start/Stop box to make it appear or disappear. 
[141002170260] |Once it's on your screen, you can move it wherever you want by clicking and dragging or further customize it by right-clicking.
[141002170270] |Choosing Properties will take you to a window containing three tabs: About, Themes and Options.
[141002170280] |The About will give you a quick description of what the screenlet does and information on how to control it.
[141002170290] |From the Themes tab you can, obviously, change the screenlet's theme (where available).
[141002170300] |The Options tab will further display two (or more) tabs: Screenlet, for general settings and the other ones for screenlet functionality-related settings. 
[141002170310] |From the Screenlet tab, you can set the position, opacity (when having compositing effects enabled) and dimensions for your screenlet.
[141002170320] |You can also choose to make it stick to the deskop (so it can be displayed on all of your workspaces), treat it as a widget, lock the position, choose the order, show control buttons, resize with the scroll wheel, etc.
[141002170330] |The Treat as Widget option is quite interesting, as every screenlet that has this enabled will only appear on your Widget Layer (see Compiz Settings for activating this).
[141002170340] |This is useful for not cluttering your desktop as you can simply activate the corresponding keyboard shortcut and your screenlets will appear on a dark transparent layer.
[141002170350] |By combining different settings, you can make your most important screenlets always appear right on the desktop, while keeping the others on the Widget Layer. 
[141002170360] |I bet you are now curious about the functions some of these screenlets will bring.
[141002170370] |Though covering all of them is a bit too much, I will present you with the ones I find to be the most useful from the default collection (a 140+ user-created extra screenlet database is available online).
[141002170380] |The first one is "Clock," beautifully displaying the time in an analog "skin."
[141002170390] |I almost skipped this one as I already have a perfect functional digital clock on my GNOME panel.
[141002170400] |But this particular clock, aside from the fact that it looks wonderful, also provides an alarm function and different timezone options.
[141002170410] |When setting the alarm, you can choose for how long it should "ring" and whether you want it to run a custom command (like opening up GIMP, for example).
[141002170420] |The alarm is not audible; instead, the clock will start flashing to get your attention. 
[141002170430] |Another screenlet I like is "Control," which incorporates your entire screenlet collection to easily start new ones and also provides universally applicable screenlet options like "All to widget layer" or "All keep below."
[141002170440] |Moving on, "Convert" provides a quick way to convert from and to different measuring, weight, mathematical or temperature units.
[141002170450] |Speaking of measuring, I'm sure you needed, at least once, an on-screen ruler.
[141002170460] |Well, know it is available as a screenlet 7.50 inches long.
[141002170470] |Unfortunately, you cannot set it to display sizes in centimeters. 
[141002170480] |"Search" allows online searching through many popular engines like Google or Yahoo, but also IMDb, Wikipedia, Digg, Dictionary or Thesaurus.
[141002170490] |Next on my list is "Sidebar," a place to host all your widgets (similar to the ones used by Windows Vista or Google Desktop).
[141002170500] |"Mailcheck" will let you connect to a POP3 or IMAP server and warn you when a new email arrives.
[141002170510] |The "Youtube" screenlet is also very, very nice: in a small window you can search and watch videos from the popular website, without having to open your browser. 
[141002170520] |<em><strong>The Good</strong></em> 
[141002170530] |The ever-growing collection of official and user-created screenlets, combined with a small memory footprint, makes this application a great way to improve your overall computing experience. 
[141002170540] |<em><strong>The Bad</strong></em> 
[141002170550] |Other than a few bugs here and there, I don't have anything really bad to say about this piece of software.
[141002170560] |Still, I have two recommendations for the developers: allow users to select multiple screenlets at once and provide a way to save/back up different layout configurations. 
[141002170570] |<em><strong>The Truth</strong></em> 
[141002170580] |Though I was a bit skeptic at first about all this widget craze, Screenlets is sure to remain installed and active on my system.