DuncsWeb

Hey guys, It Waqar again with yet another very useful and important Linux application. It’s called Liferea.

Now Liferea is the best “Desktop RSS reader” that i know of. It was voted the best in a poll at Ubuntu forums and i really like it. Good ahead and install it from you local repositories and then watch the video to have a look at it. It has a few subscriptions added already. It works on Ubuntu and it should work on other Gnome-based distributions as well and it might work on KDE as well, but i don’t know about that. It is a very good program though

A couple days back my math teacher went over a very interesting topic with the class, internet security, and I thought that I may share this information with you.

When your on the internet, there are several corporations who are trying to get you to ’sign up’. Why? Well, when you sign up for these websites, you enter lots of personal information. Your address, name, phone number, and e-mail are all recorded.

What do these corporations do with this information? They sell it. Big spammer companies will buy a big chunk of information for thousands of dollars.

They then will send you advertisements through your email that are relative to your location. They might even send you a package if they were that crazy about getting your money.

One big example of this is a company called ‘DoubleClick’. This company actually sends cookies into your Web Browser. These cookies then track what websites you go to, and add them to one giant database, where advertisements can be easily generated for content you like.

So I guess the moral of this story would be to watch out for what you sign up for, and make sure that it is a loyal company you are giving your information to. And feel free to check your browser cookies on a regular basis to make sure you have no ‘DoubleClick’s.

Many of use and download file everyday, and then we delete them when were done with them to save space. But then you forget that you need that file or download just one more time or you have to install that program again. Well there is a program called Recuva by piriform. Piriform is also the company that made CCleaner and Defraggler and Speccy. Most operating systems when you empty the trash it doesn’t 100% delete that file so what Recuva does is it goes though all the binary data from the hard drive and searches for the files that you would like to retrieve. if you just deleted that file and you want to recover it, then you have a better chance of getting that file back then from 2 weeks ago. Here are some images of the Program…

With Apple announcing its new tablet, named the “iPad”, it seems the device has had very mixed responses. With some deeming it as a “giant iPod Touch”, its clear that the iPad looks evolutionary rather than revolutionary.

As shown in Engadget’s Post:

“It’s a half-inch thick and weighs just 1.5 pounds, with a 9.7-inch capacitive touchscreen IPS LCD display, and it’s running a custom 1GHz Apple “A4″ chip developed by the P.A. Semi team, with a 10-hour battery life and a month of standby. It’ll come in 16, 32, and 64GB sizes, and it’s got the expected connectivity: very little. There’s a 30-pin Dock connector, a speaker, a microphone, Bluetooth, 802.11n WiFi and optional 3G, as well as an accelerometer and a compass.”

To give my own thoughts, unless the screen space is something that annoys an iPhone or iPod Touch user (or something thats required, especially when web browsing), I would hastily say this isn’t a worthwhile investment (as it lacks even the basic features of Netbooks Steve Jobs bashed in his keynote!), and to go for a smaller device if on the go (and if staying at home, go for a full laptop that has flash!).

Whats more is that the same amount of icons are on the screen of the device as the iPhone and iTouch, which surprises me as the device runs applications for the smaller devices, surely we would want more icons on our homescreens?

That aside, with the A4 chip apple have released with the device allowing 10 hours of HD Playback, we could see some competition in this area.

What do you think about the Apple iPad? Will you be buying one?

It’s likely that you are a fan of Firefox due to the fact that it gives you so many options to customize it and yes i totally agree with that but where in the world are all the hacks and tips and tricks and all these stuff about Firefox. Well firefoxfacts.com is a website that has it all. Firefox Facts shows you some pretty cool tips and tricks that you may or may not know about Firefox. It also gives the latest News about Firefox and another cool thing about it is that it has interviews with the developers of some of the very popular Firefox addons such as Grease monkey and colourful tabs.

It is a very useful website if you want to know cool new tips and tricks about Firefox and you should check it out.

Specto is a very useful application for Ubuntu that i found out about recently, it may work on other Gnome distros as well but i am not sure, Specto should be available in your local repositories so go ahead and grab from there.

So what the heck is Specto?

Well basically it is a monitor and what i mean by that is suppose you want you want to monitor a blog or a website’s RSS feed, Specto will monitor that and will give you instant notifications when the feed is updated. It can also monitor your e-mail account such as G-mail. It is a very nice little application and is worth a try.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll check out some songs on YouTube you like and see if someone has made a remix, or their own acoustic version, but you’ll find that you can not find anywhere to buy/download it. You like it so much you want to put a piece of it on your phone, but your computer doesn’t have a stereo mix and you don’t want to record it with a microphone or edit it down with things like Audacity.

Keeping it simple, enter Tube2Tone.com, an easy to use site that simply allows you to paste in a URL, select the section of the song you would like as a ringtone (or choose from already made sections if available), and download in the various formats available to you including MP3 and iPhone.

Thats it, free ringtones from YouTube to your Phone.

Podcasting has been a huge hobby of mine and I wanted to share my tips on recording podcasts and the tools you can use to help you record a better podcast.

My podcasts can be found on itunes

-Tech-World Podcast

-Social Buzz

So first off decided on your show and what type of podcast you’ll be doing whether its video or audio.

VIDEO PODCAST TIPS:

- Nice Scenery / Set ( Make the background neat and pick a good recording location or even use chromakey)

-Lighting ( Keep your set evenly lit)

-Quality while it  isn’t the most important thing over content get a decent enough camera to record your podcasts

-Microphone placement make it so the audio is picked up and your not getting  a lot of background noise

AUDIO

- Mic Placement again same thing keep your mic leveled with your mouth or even buy stands for your mic to keep it leveled

-Pop Filters etc are all optional equipment to buy to reduce noise and keep your podcast sounding professional

-Location (Record in a quiet area where you won’t be interrupted)

*General Tips:

Use software like Audacity to record your podcasts or even skype+Pamela to record yourself and others to make a collaborative show or interviews

Using applications like Notepad or Notepad++ to label some show notes or even put your news stories.

Sites like Delicious help organize your links to share with your friends also get networking use services like twitter , facebook to announce when your recording or even start up a live stream Ustream.tv is a great place to start live streaming and get interactive during your podcasts.

Other than that just stick with your podcasts and try to set aside time when you’ll record your shows and try to let others know so you have no interruptions during your show and stay commited , you may not get a lot of views from the start just keep at it.

-Adrian

Tech-World Blog

Well, I decided to try the game maple story. Considering all the fans, videos, and all that, I figured it’d be pretty good. It’s a free MMORPG, supported by micropayments, for elite items, weapons, and armor.

Well, to start it off, theres several classes, theres the ones you’d expect: Warrior, mage, etc. And then theres some strange ones, like the pirate. I think it’s interesting that they’ve given that sort of option, though I have no idea how a pirate would attack, they’re fairly common within the game.

The games tutorial is lengthy and in depth, and if you pay attention, it should tell you everything you’ll need to know. After that, your told to reach level eight or so, at which point you’ll choose one of the real classes.

After that, you embark on your quest with your specific class to become one. Then, you’ll begin leveling, grouping up – the par for MMO’s these days.

So, to get down to it, it’s a 2-D side scrolling MMO. You embark on quests to kill monsters, capture things, whatever is needed. From what I understand, the max level is 200, so there a nice chunk of content.

Theres a few animations for each attack, claiming to be dynamic, but eventually it gets repetitive. As for other graphics, they get flashy and look interesting. Otherwise, theres a bit like feel to it, and a different feel to every town, regarding graphics.

Now, for the final thing about the game that really annoys me. There is no resolution adjusting. I’m not even joking. If you go full screen, it’s stretched and even more bit-like. If you window it, it’s 640×480 (I’m pretty sure thats the resolution, but it’s by no mean larger) . No matter what, theres no way to change it, at all. And honestly, this is what kept more from enjoying this game. I use a 22 Inch monitor, and if I turn down the resolution low enough, even then, I cant enjoy the game. For now, my rating on this game stands. If they ever patch it to increase screen resolution, and make it enjoyable for computers built after the 90’s, I’ll re-review it.

Features: 4.5/10
Interface: 6/10
Performance: 10/10

Price: 10/10 (It’s free)

Overall: 6/10

This game can be found at :

http://maplestory.nexon.net/

-Tony C

Note: I know that DuncanM already made a post of it, but it was a Video Review, so i’m making a written review.

First, I would like to thank the guys at BumpTop for providing me a key to the Pro version. If you have a messy desktop (or even a clean one), and you would like to have a 3D desktop, so you would make your friends jealous, then you will like this software. Before, I had my desktop like this:

So, you see it’s all messy, and it’s 2D. Now, take a look at this:

Which one is better, eh?

When I go to the settings box, I have several options, so I could change General stuff, the icons size, the theme, etc.

You have several default themes on there, but you can download more from the website! If you have the free version of Bumptop, that’s alright, you still can download themes. You can also have applets, for an example, Facebook, and Twitter, so you can upload pictures to Facebook by just dragging and dropping the photos to the Facebook icon, and you can tweet by just double clicking the Twitter icon. You can also have the “Infinite Desktop Mode”, so you can have a diferent desktop that looks “infinite”.

My Rating:

Features: 9/10

Interface: 8/10

Performance: 8/10

Price: 7/10

Overall: 8.5/10

If you are a customization “freak”, I recommend you to try at least the free version. Although I don’t know if it’s worth to get the Pro version, since all your needs (the basic needs) are on the free version.

You can get Bumptop in here.

Hope you liked this post, and I will see you later