Archives for August 2008

August 25, 2008

Picasa For Linux

Picasa for Linux is a free software download from Google that helps you:

Locate and organize all the photos on your computer.
Edit and add effects to your photos with a few simple clicks.
Share your photos with others through email, prints, and on the web: itâ€™s fast, easy and free.

Every time you open Picasa, it automatically locates all your pictures (even ones you forgot you had) and sorts them into visual albums organized by date with folder names you will recognize. You can drag and drop to arrange your albums and make labels to create new groups. Picasa makes sure your pictures are always organized.

System Requirements

Should work on any Linux system with Intel 386-compatible processor,
glibc 2.3.2 or greater, and a working X11 display system.
Desktop Integration features require a current version of Gnome or KDE.
Camera detection and integration requires kernel 2.6.13, libgphoto2, and gnome-volume-manager or equivalent.
Downloading from Picasa Web Albums requires a Mozilla-based browser like Firefox.

Editing

Picasa has 3 modes for editing pictures. The Basic Fixes, Tuning and Effects. The Basic Fixes allows you to crop, straighten, remove Red Eye, Auto Contrast, Fill Light or automatically have Picasa adjust the photo for you using the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button. The Tuning mode allows you the Fill in the light, adjust Highlights, Shadows and Color Temperatures. The Effects mode allows you to add effects to your photos like Black & White, Sepia, Film Grain, Glow, Soft Focus, Sharpen, Warmify, Tint, Soft Focus to name a few effects.

Download

Download Picasa for Linux

Installation

For RPM based systems

$ sudo rpm -Uvh /tmp/picasa-2.7.3736-15.i386.rpm

For Debian based systems including Ubuntu

$ sudo dpkg -i picasa_2.7.3736-15_i386.deb

Starting Picasa

Once installation is completed. You will find the Picasa application under “Graphics” menu in Gnome.

Enjoy.

August 12, 2008

Firefox Web Developer Extension

The Web Developer Extension is a plugin extension for the Firefox browser. It’s a great tool for web designers or for anyone who owns and manages their own website. Here are some of the Web Developer’s features:

Features

It has a Disable function to turn on and off cache, Java and Javascript, disable page colors, pop-up blockers, minimum font-size and referrals.
It has a Cookie function which allows you to clear, delete or view a cookie. It’s great for troubleshooting authentication. You can also clear session cookies, delete domain cookies and delete domain paths.
The CSS section allows you to edit CSS on the fly without uploading styles to the server. If there are multiple CSS regardless of type whether they be inline, print or embedded. You can enable or disable one type or several types or any other combination. You can also enable the CSS box model.
The Forms section has a feature which allows you to manipulate form elements, remove maximum lengths, view passwords, enable form fields, auto complete, clear radio buttons, populate form fields, etc.
The Images section allows you to disable images, display alt attributes, image dimensions, file sizes, image paths and find broken images. In addition you can also hide images, background images, make it full size, invisibile or replace images with Alt attributes.
The Information section allows you to display abbreviations, access keys, anchors, block sizes, div orders, element information, id and class details, link details and a whole bunch more. You can also display table depth and table information, title attributes, topographic information and a lot more.
The Outline section will display frames, headings, links, tables, block size elements, deprecated elements, positioned elements as well as outline current elements and custom elements. It can display element names when outlining.
The Resize section allows you to display different window sizes, e.g. 800×600, 1024×768, 1280×1024 or any custom size you want. You can display windows size or windows size in the title. In addition, it also has a zoom in and a zoom out feature.
The Tools section allows you to validate CSS, feed, HTML, links, section 108 and WAI. It has a DOM inspector, an error console and a Java console. It can display page validation, validate local HTML or CSS.
View Source allows you to display HTML source code, view a frame or from a generated source.
Finally, Options allows persist features.

Download

If you are running Firefox, you can download the Web Developer extension from Firefox’s website. Double click on the downloaded item and the Firefox browser will automatically add the extension for you. A restart of your Firefox browser is necessary for the extension to work. You can validate the extension is working by clicking Tools – Add-Ons form your Firefox menu. Check the Web Developer Toolbar on your Firefox browser.

Playing With CSS

The added benefit of having Web Developer Tool is the ability to edit CSS on the fly. If you want to try a different font, different size, different color, background, borders, margins, padding, practically anything to do with CSS, you can make the changes in the Web Developer tool and see the changes instantly. There is no need to upload your new CSS code to the server every time you want to try something new. The Web Developer tool saves you time when playing around with CSS.

August 8, 2008

Avast For Ubuntu Linux

Windows is a popular and a bigger target for malware. Meanwhile, the Linux operating system remains practically virus free. So, why am I installing an anti-virus software on a Linux system? Is it necessary? Most likely, you will not find a virus on a Linux system. But, you may have downloaded an infected document specifically written for Windows that you can pass along to a Windows user. At the very least, you will earn extra points for being a good samaritan.

There are a number of factors involved as to why Linux is practically virus free. Linux is less popular and a harder target for malware, the Linux privilege system makes it more difficult to write, install or attached to files, certain Linux distributions like Ubuntu have no open ports except for services specified by the user.

Avast is software designed to remove and protect computers from viruses, spyware and rootkits. It’s free for non-commercial use with automatic updates. Avast boasts 50 million users worldwide. Why Avast? I’ve had good success with Avast in the PC front. I thought I would give it a try in Ubuntu Linux.

1. Download: Avast Linux Home Edition – Free

2. Double click on the deb file you’ve just downloaded. Ubuntu’s Package Installer will start. Click `Install Package` to begin installation. Please note: it says, `Reinstall` since it’s already loaded on my system. If a new install, it will say `Install Package.`

3. Once installed, press Alt-F2 and type `avastgui` to run the Avast.

4. This is the main Avast screen. Before you scan for the first time, I recommend you update the database first. It will take several minutes to download the latest Avast database, but it’s a minimal wait for those with broadband connections. Once finished, you have several options which directories to scan, either your home directory, selected folders or the entire file system. There are also 3 ways of scanning: quick, standard and thorough. Select one and click `Start Scan` to begin.

5. Avast ran into permissions problems with directory owned by root in my home directory. Since that directory owned by root was not important, I went ahead and deleted it. Avast ran fine after that. I had the same issues with when I ran Avast on the entire system. There were issues with certain files and directories owned by `root.` Instead I run Avast from root.

6. You can run Avast from root via the terminal by typing the following:

# sudo avastgui &amp;

7. Like most results, 99% of the time, you will not find a virus unless you’ve downloaded one of those Word document files!