Nov 18

David’s links of the week November 13th through December 1st:

  • Socialthing! - See everything that#039;s going on with your friends in all the sites you use, easily figure out where you#039;re missing connections with your friends, interact with multiple sites at once, and more!

    Socialthing! makes it easy to see all the things your friends are doing. It#039;s a news feed for every site that you use in one place.

    It#039;s a place to see quot;what#039;s upquot; in your digital life, and figure out where to go to from there…

  • Date Smart with intellectConnect - Are you a bookworm? Do you love museums? Maybe you#039;re seeking intelligent conversation.
    Whether you#039;re looking for a smart soul mate or friends who share common interests,
    our service will help you find them. intellectConnect. It#039;s a meeting of the minds.
  • freesound :: home page - The Freesound Project is a collaborative database of Creative Commons licensed sounds. Freesound focusses only on sound, not songs. This is what sets freesound apart from other splendid libraries like ccMixter. New to this site? Read the What is Freesound page to learn more!
  • The world’s best free web based email | Welcome to Zenbe -
  • Explore Space Right From Your Computer With Celestia -
  • Howto: Fresh Ubuntu Install Without Losing Your Current Settings - A clean install or an upgrade? That’s a question that keeps tossed around every new Ubuntu release. Common wisdom would suggest that a clean install would probably be better, however the inconvenience of losing current installed apps and configuration makes most of us shy away from this path. But what if I told you that you could have the good of both worlds? A fresh install and keeping your apps and configuration intact?
  • WordPress Optimization Guide - This WordPress optimization guide is a collection of useful tips and tutorials on how to speed up your WordPress site.

    If you ever experienced slow WordPress admin panel, “MySQL server has gone away” message, pages taking forever to load or you want to prepare your site for a major increase in traffic (for example Digg front page) this is the guide for you.

Nov 11

David’s links of the week November 4th through November 10th:

  • jRin.net ” Dell XPS M1330 Review (Videos Pics) -
  • The Ubuntu Upgrade Guide - The next release of Ubuntu (8.10 Intrepid Ibex) is just round the corner. So it’s time again to upgrade the Ubuntu release that you are using and a good time to consider trying out Ubuntu if you have never done so before.Let’s take a look at some of the options you have and then we will have a brief look at what the new things are and the anticipated additions to Ubuntu Intrepid as well as where we can find them.
  • Add Me Button from Retaggr - The universal button to show where you live on the web. * A Portal to All Your Profiles
    * View Example Portal Page
    * Easy url : http://clicktoadd.me/yourname
    * 170+ Sites Supported
    * 1-Click Connect where Possible
    * For Websites, Blogs, and MySpace
    * Removes Clutter

    * The Add Me Button is Part of Retaggr
    * Retaggr is the Web 2.0 Business Card
    * Consolidate Your Online Presence
    * Rich, Interactive, Portable
    * Email Signature Included
    * View More Features
    * Free

  • Recover Deleted Files From Your Linux System - Recovering deleted/lost files on a Windows system is easy to do as there are plenty of software (both paid and free) that allows you to do so like a CSI expert. But what about Linux?Recently my Linux hard disk crashed on me and it was then that I discovered that there was a limited choice of data recovery tools that I could use on my Linux system. In my desperate attempt to revive my hard disk (and the data on it), I came across these two great pieces of software TestDisk and PhotoRec that single-handedly saved my hard disk.
  • 27 Indispensable Web Design and Development Firefox Extensions : Speckyboy - Web Design, Web Development and Graphic Design Resources - A collection of extensions for your every Design and Development need, from Editing CSS and Database Management to Image Capture and Color Pickers.
  • 40 Beautiful Free Icon Sets - Six Revisions - Some of the best things in life are free. When it comes to icons and icon sets, there are many talented designers and artists that choose to provide beautiful and useful icon sets for commercial and/or personal usage.In this collection, you’ll see 40 beautiful, free icon sets that you can use in a variety of ways (websites and/or your desktop). In total, you’ll find close to 3000 invidual icons showcased in this article.Note: It’s important to read the fine-print before using any icon sets; some may have restrictions for commercial use (or require that you give credit to the designer).

Nov 3

David’s links of the week October 29th through November 3rd:

  • Mozilla Control - quot;Welcome to the Mozilla ActiveX project!This site contains information on a number of projects that allow you to use Mozilla in an ActiveX environment and vice versa:

    1. Mozilla ActiveX Control
    Embed the Mozilla browser engine (Gecko) into any ActiveX application. This control implements the same APIs as the Internet Explorer control making porting of existing applications reasonably straightforward.
    2. ActiveX Control For Plug-ins
    Embed plug-ins in any ActiveX application. This control can host most Netscape Plug-in API (LiveConnect) plug-ins, allowing them to use them in your existing ActiveX applications, including Internet Explorer.
    3. Plug-in For ActiveX controls
    Embed ActiveX controls in any NP API application. This plug-in hosts ActiveX controls allowing them to be used in browser such as Netscape 4.x/6.x, Mozilla and Opera.
    quot;

  • The Call of Cthubuntu - In the dark, abysmal depths, there dwell timeless alien horrors that once roamed the void of space in the ages before the earliest building blocks of life congealed within the primordial waters of our doomed planet. From far beyond the stars, they came to this world when it was young and forged mighty edifices in the inaccessible places where nothing else could exist, there to rest in dreamful torpor for endless aeons.Though the presence of these Great Old Ones has long been obscured from humanity, we are surrounded by subtle signs and portents of the secret horrors that will one day awaken and rise from the depths to blot out our feeble existence. An artifact that prophesies their grim return has come into my possession: the dread Cthubuntu Linux distribution—an arcane relic of ineffable power that originated in a dark time beyond reckoning. The incomprehensible apparatus is an otherworldly chimaera forged by alchemical arts unknown to modern science.
  • 8 Best Defragmenters To Keep Your PC Running Like New - A good defrag software that can clean your hard drives and optimize them for maximum performance is what every computer user needs. I’ve complied a list of 8 great defragmenters, most of which I have used myself, and I’m pretty happy with the outcome.
  • Use BitTorrent to Upgrade to Ubuntu ‘Intrepid Ibex’ | TorrentFreak - Ubuntu, the open source GNU/Linux based operating system, is about to release its next big update - Intrepid Ibex. In the past, the update servers would crash very quickly on a big release day, making it hard for people to get the latest update. With BitTorrent, however, this can be easily avoided.
  • Using Your Linux Computer As A Media Center (Part 1) - If you are a Windows or Mac user, you will be familiar with Windows Media Center or Front Row that both have the ability to turn your computer into a Media Center PC. Linux users don’t have such luck as most distros do not come with a media center application pre-installed.If you are like me who is a Linux user and owns a huge collection of music, videos and pictures, the world is not over for you yet. There are many open-source applications that you can use to turn your Linux machine into a lean, mean media center.In part one of this series, I will go through some of these free media center software that you can use in your Linux machine.

Oct 28

David’s links of the week October 27th through October 28th:

  • QR Codes Can Digitize Your World - And Back Again - You’re probably already familiar with the bar code. It’s a series of differently widthed and spaced lines that confers a numerical value to the item it is attached to. While it appears to be a 2D object, it’s actually one dimensional, since the scanner picks up all the information it needs by taking a cross-section of the image.
  • welcome | irrepressible.info - Spread censored information, brought to you by Amnesty International.
  • COLOURlovers :: Color Trends + Palettes - COLOURlovers™ is a resource that monitors and influences color trends. COLOURlovers gives the people who use color - whether for ad campaigns, product design, or in architectural specification - a place to check out a world of color, compare color palettes, submit news and comments, and read color related articles and interviews.
  • 6 Ways To Search ‘By Date’ On Google - A normal search yielded lots of search results but how do you get the latest up to date information? Google results quite routinely includes pages from the way distant past.There are two faces to the ‘date’ conundrum.1. How to find the date of the page I am reading?
    2. How to search within a specific date?
  • GMAN: FlickrDown - Recently a friend started using Flickr which is a great service. I personally like to save pictures locally and selecting them one at a time to download was too much of a hassle so I whipped up this program so I could download them more easily.
  • What I Learned using Linux over the last 10 years - I started using Linux as my primary desktop and operating system in 1998. After brief flirtations with FVWM 95 and Enlightenment, I settle on Gnome (with it’s various WMs over the years ) and Redhat/Fedora (until switching to Ubuntu last fall ).
  • Battle of the Thumb Drive Linux Systems - These days, it only takes an increasingly-cheap USB thumb drive and a program like UNetbootin to create a portable Linux desktop you can run on any computer that can boot from a USB port. But check out the list of distributions UNetbootin can download and install—it#039;s huge, and the names don#039;t tell you much about which distro is best for on-the-go computing. Today we#039;re detailing four no-install distributions—Damn Small Linux, Puppy Linux, Xubuntu, and Fedora—and helping you decide which might work for that spare thumb drive you#039;ve got lying around, or as just a part of your multi-gig monster stick. Read on for a four-way faceoff of bootable Linux systems.
  • Linux applications gain new developers on Windows and OS X - Linux application developers are finding that they can attract new contributors to their open source software projects by porting them to Windows and Mac OS X. Ars looks at how portability can expand the open source developer community and create a migration path that may bring new users to the Linux platform.

Oct 25

These are my links for October 25th from 12:12 to 18:39:

  • http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/10/23/50-beautiful-blog-designs/ - There are things one can do a number of times without worrying about becoming boring. For instance, collecting and showcasing excellent blog designs. In this post we do it already the fifth time. Why? Web design lives in blogs; new developments appear there, that’s where the music plays. And that’s where you need to look for in order to keep up with current trends and developments.
  • 9 Must-Have OpenOffice Extensions - Like Firefox, OpenOffice also comes with extensions that you can use to improve its functionality. Here, we have tested all the extensions and sorted out those that are useful for everyday use. Some of them are for general use while some are only meant for Writer, Calc or Impress. (For those who haven’t heard about OpenOffice before, it’s a popular free alternative to Microsoft Office)
  • 4 Websites for Great Wordpress Themes -
  • Tips Sites For Finding Freelance Blogging Work (Part Two) - One of the wonderful qualities of the web is that anyone can put their content out there for everyone to see. This means YOU! Of course you probably already knew that. What you might be interested to know is that there are literally thousands of people out there willing to pay you to do it
  • Tips Sites For Finding Freelance Blogging Work (Part One) - Since replacing my part-time job with paid blogging, people frequently ask me “How do I get into blogging?” Well the answer is clearly a complicated one, but hopefully I can give you a few tips to get you going in the right direction.
  • How To: How to Use Dropbox as the Ultimate Password Syncer - Cross-platform application Dropbox may be great at syncing regular old files and folders over the internet and to the web, but with a little ingenuity, you can use this free software to ensure important application data stays in sync no matter what computer you#039;re using. With the right setup, you can sync your passwords over the internet so you#039;ve always got access to the latest versions of your secure passwords no matter where you are. Keep reading to find out how.
  • 3 Easy Tools to Record Streaming Music as MP3 Files - As a kid I spent hours recording tunes from the radio. I would even call to request songs and I hated DJ’s that chatted into the songs, making them worthless. My collection of music cassettes grew steadily. Growing up I started buying CD’s until I had internet access. From there on my need for hard drive space grew massively. Those were the days.Today, it doesn’t take a lot of time and effort to obtain legal MP3’s, but it does take some good tools. Here are three different programs to record streaming audio (i.e. from online radio).
  • Linux: Make Your Linux Desktop More Productive - Apple has convinced millions that they can make the switch from Windows to OS X, but those curious about Linux have to see for themselves if they can work or play on a free desktop. The short answer is that, for most halfway tech-savvy people who aren#039;t hardcore gamers, yes, you can. There are positively addictive productivity apps available for Linux, along with tools to make switching between Linux and other systems easy, or just running Windows programs themselves if you need to. Today we#039;re detailing a Linux desktop that helps you move quickly, work with Windows, and just get things done; read on for a few suggestions on setting it up.
  • Best of the forums this week: Steve Jobs to retire? - Crave at CNET.co.uk - ven Google didn#039;t escape the hate. David Gilson expressed his palpable fear of the Google ecosystem, claiming: quot;While I would bet my life that Google is a far more philanthropic organisation than Apple is, I kind of view their ecosystem with a similar eye. Whatever OS you#039;re using, you don#039;t have to use the Google ecosystem, although if you do, you#039;re totally dependant on them. This is why I actually avoid using Google services… so I#039;m definitely not going to jump at using a Google browser.quot;
  • Kohjinsha SX: Netbook in integrated DVD drive shocker - Last week, someone in the forums asked if anyone made a netbook with an integrated DVD drive. quot;No,quot; we replied, in a fit of ignorance, quot;that#039;s not possible.quot; But David Gilson, another forum user, proved us very wrong.
  • QA: Symbian’s switch to open source | News - Wireless - CNET News - Symbian, the U.K.-based maker of the world#039;s most popular smartphone operating system, is going through big changes.As well as being taken over by Nokia, the company is preparing to convert its closed code into open source.

    ZDNet.co.uk caught up with Symbian#039;s research chief, David Wood, at this week#039;s Symbian Smartphone Show at Earls Court in London, to discuss the complications of such a process, as well as what the next few years hold for smartphone technology.

  • 7digital to go completely DRM-free: MP3s from all major labels - Crave at CNET.co.uk - Crave confidently expects 7digital to announce next week that it has acquired the rights to sell Sony BMG#039;s catalogue of DRM-free music downloads, making it the first UK download store to offer MP3 downloads from every major record label.
  • Screenshot Tour: A First Look at OpenOffice.org 3.0 - Look at that screenshot on the right. Just look at that. That’s Karbon (the KDE vector drawing application) running on an N810.This beautiful person has built (and made a repository available) KOffice on Maemo devices (Nokia N810, etC)
  • KOffice running on Maemo (N810) - Look at that screenshot on the right. Just look at that. That’s Karbon (the KDE vector drawing application) running on an N810.This beautiful person has built (and made a repository available) KOffice on Maemo devices (Nokia N810, etC)
  • Linux: Why Lifehacker Readers Switched to Linux - We asked the devoted Linux users, the dual-Windows-and-Linux-booters, and the newer converts to the open-source operating system last week why they made the switch to Linux, and received over 330 responses as of this posting. The answers were sometimes level-headed, often passionate in their embrace of open-source culture, and occasionally induced a laugh (or a cringe) with tales of the last straw before switching. Read on for a look at why a good number of Lifehacker readers took the time to learn, customize, and adopt to Linux.
  • Shifting Mind » Postalicious - Postalicious is a WordPress plugin that automatically posts your delicious, ma.gnolia, Google Reader, Reddit, or Yahoo Pipes bookmarks to your blog. The exact details of how your bookmarks are posted is very customizable and is designed to meet your specific needs. Postalicious uses the psuedo-cron functionality introduced in WordPress 2.1 to schedule automatic hourly updates. If you do not have WordPress 2.1 or later installed, you will still be able to use Postalicious, but you will have to perform the updates manually.

Oct 20

Last night I started thinking about a topic that could become a substantial future article on this blog. That topic was social bookmarking. This has been a subject that’s been creeping up on me more and more recently, the more I’ve used web services like Digg and Friendfeed.

Not so long ago, I made a rant against social bookmarking in that I did not care what other people were reading, and I expected the feeling was mutual. So, what changed? Well, some sort of sense of wanting to participate in large networks, and also I desire to self-promote. Let me clarify that, I didn’t want to get into social bookmarking simply to promote my own content; no, I was more thinking along the lines of enhancing my internet reputation.

What you soon discover if you look at any blog or news site, is that according to all those strange little icons you see at the end of an article (this blog has them too), that there are lots of them out there. Surely this indicates that there is a great deal of redundancy and repetition out there. Well yes, but also, if you look at all the big names, sure they publicly list user-recommended sites, but they all do have slightly different angles on how they do it. Being of a vaguely mathematical mindset, seeing all this chaos made me want to dig into them all and try to find some structure. The primary question in my mind being “When should I use which?“. Of course, the tacit assumption here being that surely not one system could be the best, most optimal, site that everyone should use!

Aha! I had myself a research project on. First step in such an exercise is not to bite off more than you can chew, therefore limit the scope of what you are looking at. Therefore, I picked what I thought were the most distinct social bookmarking services out there. Some I already participate in, some would be new to me. So here are services I’m looking into:

Friendfeed’s presence on that list is debatable, but I definitely believe it has an important role to play, even if I don’t yet understand it fully (and I confess to being a fan of the site).

In looking into this subject, it got me thinking about my own browser bookmarks. I firmly believe that my browser bookmarks are private to me. Social bookmarks are public, browser bookmarks are private. I’d be interested to hear arguments against this point of view, but that is the basis that I am working on. I digress, in relation to my own private bookmarks, I started thinking about organisation. Much as I was a sceptic about it, Firefox 3’s awesome bar and bookmark tags is really starting to change how I think about things.

I once asked a while ago on Twitter, when would people use tags and when would they use folders for organising arbirary objects. The answer I got back was to use folders only when hieracy was important (I apologise for not citing the tweet, but it’s a while ago and I cannot remember who said it).

So I shall ask you the reader, is hierarchy important to how you store your browser bookmarks? At the moment, my mind is somewhat swirling in the idea. That is because I have some sets of bookmarks where hierarchy does matter, but others wouldn’t matter so much.

I can imagine that hieracy certainly would not matter in a public/social context, which is exactly what Delicious does, it works solely on tags.

Anyway, I would love comments on this subject, and I shall continue to look into the subject with the aim of publishing a comprehensive review.