World is no more closed !

Most of the people confuse Open Source movement as something confined to the software and related areas, but in reality Open Source is not only the making of a license free software world, it's beyond that. Let's see how Open Source ideas are taken into fields other than computing and software.There are several Projects and Communities motivated by the Open Source ideology. Like Open Source Hardware and BlinkenLights Project. These things shows us how Open Source technologies can better the life experience in much better and creative ways. Yeah the world is no more closed to creative ideas. Express yourself with Open Source Technologies.

BlinkenLights

BlinkenLights Project is one of the best examples for how crazy and creative Open Source ideas can be, and how it can change the way the world works.
On September 11th, 2001 the famous "Haus des Lehrers" (house of the teacher) building at Berlin Alexanderplatz has been enhanced to become world's biggest interactive computer display: Blinkenlights.



The upper eight floors of the building were transformed in to a huge display by arranging 144 lamps behind the building's front windows. A computer controlled each of the lamps independently to produce a monochrome matrix of 18 times 8 pixels. There was an interactive component, which enabled users to play old arcade classic Pong using the mobiles or placing love letters or animations on the Screen.Even a software called BlinkenPaint was created and made available as Free software which enabled users to create their own animations.

Free Beer (I'm not kidding!)

The project Free Beer, originally conceived by Copenhagen-based artist collective Superflex and students at the Copenhagen IT University, applies modern free software / open source methods to a traditional real-world product - namely the alcoholic beverage loved and enjoyed globally, and commonly known as beer.



The recipe and branding elements of FREE BEER is published under a Creative Commons (Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5) license, which means that anyone can use the recipe to brew their own FREE BEER or create a derivative of the recipe. Anyone is free to earn money from FREE BEER but they must publish the recipe under the same license.

RadioVeRVe

RadioVeRVe is an internet radio station operating out of Bangalore, India. It differentiates itself from other FM and internet radio stations by focusing exclusively on independent music from India.


Even though It's not an open Source project. The infrastructure for the radio station has been completely based on open source software.

Open source hardware

Open source hardware/Open source Electronics refers to computer and electronic hardware that is designed in the same fashion as free and open-source software.

Open source hardware is part of the open source culture that takes the open source ideas to fields other than software. An example of this is the Simputer project.

XKCD - A webcomic of romance,sarcasm, math, and language.

XKCD, a geek humor comic created by Randall Munroe a former contractor for Nasa. XKCD is Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License . This means it's free to copy and share these comics




There are so many such open projects, that are currently involved in changing the world from the way it worked. May be you will be the one behind next major project :). Happy Open Sourcing.

'Demystifying Google' - Search efficiently

Google is the most advanced Internet search engine of our time. How many of us know that google search has more than that we think it can offer ?

Here are some small tips for those who don't know how to search efficiently.Google has the ability to accept some predefined search queries for providing efficient search results.

I'm going to discus some of those Special Commands and I'll explain each command briefly ,you can use this commands to form complex queries and find what you need in a flash.

"intitle:" - intitle:keyword

• The "intitle:" syntax helps us to restrict the search results to pages containing the searched word in the title of the web-page. eg: intitle:mother will return links to the pages that have the word 'mother' in their title.

"inurl:" - inurl:keyword

• The "inurl:" syntax is similar to the intitle but it returns the links of the pages whose url contain the word that is searched. for example inurl:cooking will show the links of pages whose url have the word cooking in it.

"site:" - site:website-url

• You may need to find something from a specific site sometimes.For example searching for Mac Mini related articles in wired.com.
• we can make use of the command - mac mini site:www.wired.com to find-out articles related to Mac Mini

"filetype:" - filetype:file-type

• Looking for a specific file type (i.e. doc, pdf or ppt... ) or an ebook, this command can help you a lot. eg : mathematics filetype:pdf will list the pdf files realted to mathematics.

"link:" - link:site

• This will return the list of sites link to the specified website. eg: link:amritapuri.org

"related:" - related:sitename

• This will return the results similar to the specified site. eg: related:www.wired.com

"cache:" - "cache:sitename"

• Cache will show the version of web-page that google has in it cache.
• eg: cache:nextdoornerd.blogspot.com

"intext:" - intext:keyword

• The “intext:” syntax searches for words in a particular website. It ignores links or URLs and page titles.For example: intext:gardening will return only links to those web pages that has the search keyword "gardening" in its web-page.

Pro Combinations

I hope these simple techniques can help you find informations more quickly and easily.Rather than using these techniques alone, you can try combining them to make complex queries inorder to achieve better results.Now start searching like a Pro.

• For example : to search for pdf files in the adobe.com site we may create a new query - filetype:pdf site:adobe.com
• While searching for pdf files if you need to avoid the results from a specific site, you can create a query filetype:pdf -site:adobe.com, which will not show any results realted to the search from adobe.com

Now we can move to some sophisticated methodologies of searching that will help us to increase the efficiency of our search.

Index browsing with google

• There are sites with index browsing enabled, this means any one can browse the site directories like local directories.To find the results from index browsing enabled sites just include a "index of" command infront of the query.eg : "index of" rpm"

More Search Tips

'|' Operator

• Using '|' symbol literaly means 'or'. For example you want to search for 'indian or american fish' then you can make use of | and the query will look something like indian|american fish the resulted links will contain either indian food or american food in their contents.

'&&' Operator

• Consider we need to find the pages containing both the words cook and chinese,here the '&& operator can help us to find the best results. eg: cook&&chinese

'-' Operator

• '-' can be used to avoid an item for example including -fall in a search query will tell google to avoid all results containing the word fall. eg : water -fall

'+' Operator

• Google ignores common words and characters such as where, the, how, and other digits and letters that slow down the search.If a common word is essential to getting the results we can put a + operator infront of that word to make sure that Google paying attention to it. eg : peanut butter +or jelly
  

Calculator

• We can use google to find the answers for our arithmetic operations, yeah this means google is a calculator too. just enter 5*9+(sqrt 10)^3= in the search field and see the results!

Currency conversion

• Need to know how much is 46745.65$ in Indian Rs, Just enter '46745.65 dollars in INR' in the google search field to get the result.

Dictionary Definitions

• define:word will show the definition of the specified word.
• eg : define:eccentric

Unit Conversion

• Unit Conversion is one of the features among the google search,eg : 10.5 cm in inches

Spell Checker

• Don't know the spelling of a word ? Just enter the word in the Google search box, if the provided spelling is wrong Google will suggest the correct spelling for you. eg : coltorol
  

Fill in the Blank

• Some times it is better to ask google a question is fill in the blank by providing an asterics (*) in the desired space. eg: Indians are * men

Google Clock

• To see the time in the many places around the world, type in time and the city name.
  
• eg : time Berlin
  

It is time to start Googling now... Have fun with these Commands and tips, combine them to get better results.

Have a nice time with Google...

NB: Just checkout this

55 Ways to have Fun with Google : a refreshing book for enhancing your Googling skills.The book is freely available for download.

http://www.55fun.com/book.pdf

Mount your Linux Partitions in Windows!

Do you have all your movies and songs stored in Linux Partitions ? and do you want to use them while logged in Windows ? Here is a quick easy solution.

Ext2Fsd

A free program that allows you to mount your Linux partitions in Windows and have read/write capabilities.

Features

Ext2Fsd is an open source Linux ext2/ext3 file system driver for Windows systems (NT/2K/XP/VISTA, X86/AMD64), which enables you to mount your Linux partitions in windows like native windows partitions. Ex2Fsd also supports read/write capability on the mounted partitions. You can enable auto mount option to automatically mount the partition every time you login to windows.


Installation

Double click the downloaded exe file and follow the instructions, installation is simple like every other windows exe files. Just make sure that you check the below shown options

Make Ext2Fsd automatically started when system boots, Enable write support for ext2 partitions.

These options enables automatic startup of Ext2Fsd on system boot and enables write support on the Ext2 file systems respectively.


Configuring Auto Mount

Open the Ext2Fsd and double click on the drive you want to mount automatically. A settings window will pop up immediately.

• all you have to do is choose Mount Point for fixed disk,need reboot option to use your drives like normal windows partitions.
  

Now you can listen to all your Music and watch your Videos seamlessly in windows and Linux.

Download Ext2Fsd

Obtain your copy of Ex2Fsd from http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsd

Developer Manpages in Ubuntu

Manpages are very important for developers. Ubuntu doesn't come with Developer manpages pre-installed. So here is the simple way to install them in your machine. Happy Coding!

How to install Developer Manpages ?

• Open Your Terminal and type sudo apt-get install manpages-dev .Make sure that you have an active Internet Connection.

Visit http://manpages.ubuntu.com/ to browse manpages online

DosBox : An MS-DOS Simulator for Linux

Wish to play your old M$-DOS games again ? You can use DOSBox to run your favorite vintage DOS programs in your Linux Machine.

DOSBox

DOSBox is a free sotware which simulates MS-DOS. It is intended especially for use with old computer games and programs.DOSBox does not rely on any Virtualization techniques it is a full CPU emulator, capable of running DOS programs that require the CPU to be in either real mode or protected mode.

Features of DOSBox

• DOSBox is even capable of emulating many types of audio and graphics hardware. Graphics emulation includes text mode, Hercules, CGA , Tandy, EGA, VGA, etc. Sound hardware that can be emulated includes the PC speaker, AdLib, Gravis Ultrasound,etc.

• Another advantage is, DOSBox can simulate peer to peer networking, this includes modem simulation over TCP/IP

• It's very simple and easy to use.
  

click here to read more

How to install DOSBox in Ubuntu

• Typing sudo apt-get install dosbox in your terminal will fetch you the dependency libraries and install DOSBox in a few moments.When the installation is completed you can type-in dosbox in your terminal to acces DOSBox.
  

External Links

• The official website of DOSBox is : http://www.dosbox.com/

• You can visit http://sourceforge.net/projects/dosbox/ for the source forge entry of DOSBox

• Wikipedia Entry about DOSBox is located at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOSBox
• 
  

NB: If you are looking for a more advanced windows software emulator where you can play your 3D games and other Softwares, you might probably give a look at Wine.

BitTorrent : Faster and more stable Downloads

What is BitTorrent ?

BitTorrent is an open source peer-to-peer protocol for distributing large amounts of data and files over the internet.The idea behind BitTorrent is to allow massive distribution of popular files without paining the actual source(Server).

How the traditional download works ?

Consider a traditional download method, where the user downloads a file from a server.When unusually high numbers of users are simultaneously downloading the same file, causing the server to run out of available bandwidth. When this happens the clients are refused a connection with the server and even results in a server crash.

To solve this problem Programmer Bram Cohen released a protocol called BitTorrent in April 2001.

How the BitTorrent Works then ?

image courtesy of wikipedia

The first distributor or server acts as the first seed, then each pair who downloads the data also shares the downloaded parts with the other peers.This helps to reduce the original distributor's bandwidth and hardware resource costs.

You can read more about BitTorrent here..

How do I download files using BitTorrent ?

Using BitTorrent for downloading files is very simple, all you need is a BitTorrent client and an active internet connection.Okey we can do it in 3 easy steps.

1. Get a BitTorrent client

• BitTorrent client is a software that uses BitTorrent protocol to download and manage torrents.There are a lot of BitTorrent client software available for each platform(Mac,Linux and Windows).Some popular BitTorrent clients are : Vuze (formerly known as Azureus),BitTorrent,uTorrent.

• The best choice for mac users is Vuze, for windows users uTorrent and for Linux Users BitTorrent.

• Just download any of these client software and install it.(Azureus and BitTorrent are available for Windows Linux and Mac OS X).
  

2. Find a torrent to download

• Okey now you have a BitTorrent client installed, now you need to find some torrent you like to download.

click on the image to enlarge

• for example : go to www.mininova.org and search for ''elephants dream" and click on a search results with more number of seeders (more number of seeders means fast download rates).

click the image to enlarge

• Now click on the desired torrent link and download the torrent file (.torrent file) from the site.

3. Start the download

• Once the file is downloaded double click on the file to open it.Some clients like Vuze may ask you to specify where to save the files.

That's all, now you are using BitTorrent !

Tips and Techniques

There are several BitTorrent sites , here are some of my favorites

• mininova
• torrentz - torrent search engine
  
• thepiratebay
• eztv - download tv shows

For faster Download rates

Choose torrents with more seeders than leechers
http://torrentfreak.com/speed-up-your-torrents/ checkout this link for a nice article on how to increase your torrent speed.

Read my review on Vuze (Formerly known as azureus), one of the most advanced and feature rich BitTorrent client available.

Essential Firefox Addons

Everyone is talking about Firefox these days, I thought I must share some of the best add-ons that I use regularly with Firefox.So have a look at them and start customizing your Firefox so that you can do most of the things without leaving Firefox.


Adblock Plus - Tired with ads ? then go for this Firefox add-on. Adblock Plus enables you to block ads.If you wish to enable ads for a particular site then you can create an exception.The only drawback of Adblock Plus is the exception filter creation needs a little knowledge.(Example exception filter - add @@|http://nextdoornerd.blogspot.com to add an exception for this particular site,remember you have to do this manually). You can learn to write Adblock Plus filters from http://adblockplus.org/en/filters. It is a nice how-to article on how to write custom filters.

Download AdblockPlus

DownThemAll - This is one of my favorite Add-on, this is a cool and easy to use complete download manager.DownThemAll even supports download resuming and queuing.

Click here to get DownThemAll

StumbleUpon - Go check it out, a cool add-on helps you discover Web sites based on your interests.This is a useful site when you are bored and looking for something to browse or when you want something funny or informative to browse through.

Get StumbleUpon

PicLens - It is an awesome add-on that transforms your Firefox into a next generation Image and Video viewer with their stunning new Image wall.(hey if you have Google desktop installed then you can use PicLense to show your offline Images to your friends,and see them say WOW!)

Download PicLens

PrintPDF - Installs a driver printer on your machine and lets you print your web pages to pdf files (Mac users, you already have this feature!).

Download PrintPDF

GSpace - This add-on allows you to use your Gmail as an online storage space.So now you can upload files from your hard disk and access them from anywhere.

Get GSpace from here

ScribeFire - If you are a regular blogger then this is a cool add-on for you,You can blog without leaving Firefox.You can even drag and drop text from web pages and take notes using this add-on.

Download ScribeFire

ChatZilla - Love your old IRC chat ? , then here is an add-on.ChatZilla - An easy to use IRC client add-on for your Firefox.Now you can chat without leaving Firefox.

Download ChatZilla

PDF Download - Did you ever think of downloading web pages as PDF files ?. Here is a very useful add-on that help you download web pages as PDF files.

Download PDF Download

FoxyTunes - FoxyTunes lets you control almost any media player and find lyrics, covers, videos, bios and much more with a click right from your browser.

Download FoxyTunes

Sage - Don't want to leave your browser for reading your favorite rss feeds ? here is a handy plugin with some cool features and easy to use interface for handling feeds.

Download Sage

Zotero - Easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources.

Download Zotero

ColorfulTabs - Colors every tab in a different color and makes them easy to distinguish while beautifying the overall appearance of the interface.

Download ColorfulTabs

Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer - If you use Firefox on more than one computer, you'll want Foxmarks. Install Foxmarks on each computer, and it will work silently in the background to keep your bookmarks synchronized. You can also log in to my.foxmarks.com to manage your bookmarks from any computer.

Download Foxmarks

Just drop a comment here in case of any doubt or suggestions.

[this post will be updated frequently with more better plugins as I come across them.. :) so don' forget to check this out]

Free and Open Source alternatives for everyone

I know a lot of us are afraid of moving from one OS to other, yeah it is a human nature.So what can be done for those who wish to use their favorite operating system while they still love Free and Open Source Software ? Here I've some software recommendations for every one, just checkout..

Media [Audio & Video]

• VLC media player : Highly portable cross platform media player and streaming server. This can be a better alternative for your windows media player. VLC supports various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, AVI, mp3, ogg..) as well as DVDs, VCDs.

• Elisa : An Open Source media center application, a replacement for Apple Front Row and Windows Media Center
  

• Media Player classic : Compact and powerful media player that can play almost all the media files.
  

• Miro : A free and open source Internet TV and video player that can automatically download videos from RSS-based channels.It even comes with a built-in BitTorrent client.

• HandBrake : Hand brake is an open source, multi platform, multi threaded DVD to MPEG-4 coverter, available for OSX, Linux and Windows.

• Exaile Music Player : An iTunes alternative for Linux
  

Internet

• Mozilla Firefox : One of the finest web-browser available for all the platforms including Windows, Linux and Mac. This can be the best alternative for your Internet Explorer or Safari. I listed some very useful add-ons for Mozilla Firefox in an old post Essential Firefox Addons
  

• Mozilla Thunderbird : A rich e-mail client from the Firefox family which offers a nice set of features.Now it is easier to organize your mails.Thunderbird is available for Windows, Linux and Mac

• Pidgin : A simple easy to use multi platform IM client that can handle multiple IM accounts simultaneously.This can be a best alternative for your Yahoo messenger,Google Talk or MSN messenger.

• Adium : It is a free instant messaging application for Mac OS X, a better Pidgin replacement for Mac Users (hi this is my personal favorite)

• Download Plus : Now known as 'True Downloader' is a Free and Open Source download manager and it is only available for windows.
  

• RSSOwl : A solid cross platform RSS feed client.

OFFICE

• OpenOffice : This is essentially a free Microsoft Office alternative. as an added advantage it features a drawing program and direct support for PDF files.Available for most of the operating systems.
  

• NeoOffice : A more Mac-like implementation of OpenOffice.Unlike OpenOffice it has a more native look and feel in Mac.

• AbiWord : Award winning cross platform word processor

Creative

• Blender : An amazingly powerful 3d suite which is easy to use, small sized (nearly 40MB) and feature rich open alternative for your 3D authoring tool.

• Audacity : Audacity is an excellent general purpose sound capture, editing, and sequencing program.

• GIMP : An open alternative for Photoshop,It is not as user friendly as Photoshop.

• Inkscape : It is an Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X. And it offers even more advanced features.
  

File sharing

• Cabos : A simple, easy to use file-sharing program. Gnutella network.

• GnuCleus : Another very good file-sharing program.

• FileZilla : An excellent cross platform FTP program.

BitTorrent Clients

• Vuze : Formerly known as Azureus, is an open source BitTorrent client available for Windows, Linux and Mac.

• μTorrent : It is another bitTorrent client developed for windows, which is designed to use minimal computer resources.
  

• Deluge : Another BitTorrent Client. Deluge is a multi platform light weight open source software for Windows,Linux and Mac.

Zip Utilities (Archiving Utilities)

• PeaZip : Free archiver utility is a portable, open source file and archive manager.
  

• 7-Zip : It is a file archiver with a high compression ratio, currently only available for windows users.

Google Lively - A rival for Second Life

The giant Tech leader, Google now turned the coin to a new dimension! Yeah Google Introduced a new service called Google Lively (8th July 2008) that may eventually rival Second Life.Lively is a web-based virtual environment similar to the "Second Life", and is currently supported only on Windows platforms (XP and Vista) using Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox.

So, what is the big deal ?

Google introduced search as a rival for Yahoo, and you know what happened then.they came up with the Orkut as a rival for Myspace and Gmail for the other mail service providers, now let us see what happens with Lively and Second Life...

Niniane Wang, Engineering Manager at Google and the creator of Lively seems more excited about the stuff..


" A while ago, I looked around the social web and wished that it could be less static. Sure, you can leave a comment on a blog or write a text blurb on your social networking profile. But what if you want to express yourself in a more fun way, with 3D graphics and real-time avatar interactions? I started asking this question as a 20% project, and I'm excited to announce today's release of Lively by Google - a 3D virtual experience that is the newest addition to Google Labs. "


What Google Lively offers ?

Create your own virtual space

Chat and interact with your friends in rooms you design...

Express yourself

Customize your avatar and stream personal photos and video

Add your room to your site

Invite your friends to chat and help decorate

May be Google is trying to conquer the web with all these products they have :) so go rock with Lively and create your own World out there in the web space...


checkout the Official announcement at Google Blog

Go Lively - link to the official site

Wi-Fi Detector Shirt : Gizmo for the geek in you

I was looking for a cool gadget to introduce the first Gizmo review, this cool Shirt caught my attention while geeking in Think Geek. It has an animated decal that glows with the Wi-Fi signal fluctuation.

For the quality freaks.the shirt is a 100% cotton black shirt which features a glowing bar-panel (decal) display that displays the current Wi-Fi signal strength (802.11 b/g).Three AAA battery pack is concealed in a small inside-pocket that helps the shirt run for hours.

You can detach the animated decal when you want to wash the clothes.

Product Features

• Glowing animated shirt dynamically displays the current wi-fi signal strength.
• Shows signal strength for 802.11b or 802.11g
• Black 100% Cotton T-Shirt
• Animated Decal is Removable (with hook and loop fasteners) for Easy Washing
• Battery Pack is Concealed in a Small Pocket Sewn Inside the Shirt
• Runs for hours off three AAA Batteries (not included)

Washing Instructions

1. Carefully peel animated decal from front of T-Shirt
2. Unplug ribbon connector behind decal and remove decal
3. Unplug battery pack and remove it
4. You can leave the ribbon cable inside the shirt
5. Machine wash gentle cycle on cold
6. Hang to dry

The Wi-Fi Detector shirt is a Think Geek exclusive (grab yours) and will be available for $29.99.

Open Source Web Design - Free web design templates

“If a site is perfectly usable but it lacks an elegant and appropriate design style, it will fail.”
--Curt Cloninger, 2001

Well how many of you are good designers ? [put your hands up :) ]. Hey cheer up if your hands are down :) we have got open source community to help us.

oswd.org - open source web design is a web site founded by Francis J. Skettino. The site provides quality web design templates for free of cost.The site now has more than 2000 quality designs, all the designs are completely free (remember an average cost of a design template available in the market is 40$).

If you are some one looking for a good design for your site or if you are a good web designer who wish to showoff your designing abilities, then oswd.org is a perfect place for you.Yeah this is a site worth a look.

Click here to access the oswd.org site

Technology Review - The oldest technology magazine

I've one more site review for you, I thought I need to let you know some of my favorite sites.At least some of you might be interested.

Okey... Now we are going to talk about one of the grandfathers of technology magazines.Yeah I'm talking about the Technology Review (est. 1899) Magazine by MIT.

Technology Review is a website published by Technology Review Inc.,this is the oldest technology magazine in the world. Technology Review Inc. is an independent media company owned by MIT(Massachusetts Institute of Technology).

The site says that it aims to promote the understanding of emerging technologies and to analyze their commercial, social, and political impacts.

This site is one of my favorite places in the internet,The site covers a wide range of technological areas including Information Technology,Biotechnology,Nanotechnology,Energy,etc.

The Technology review is considered as one of the most authoritative magazine about the future technologies.

Visit Technology Review by clicking this link.

I know most of you might have heard about MIT but just in case if some Charlie out there reading this article without knowing about MIT, please click here to know more about MIT.

Flock - The Social Web Browser

Flock is the latest open source derivative of Mozilla Firefox, crafted specially for Social networking and Web 2.0 savvy users.So now you can guess it is designed to deliver a more personal experience of the web by providing features to organize everything from favorites to media integration.

Features

• Great theme,It looks like a beautiful next-generation Firefox which has a lot more features built into it.
• Flock Integrates Social networking and media services such as Youtube,Facebook,Flickr,Blogger,Gmail and Yahoo Mail etc.Sign-in to any of these accounts will be detected instantaneously and the services will be activated automatically within Flocks features.
• Flock helps us to get updated about the friends profile updates such as the new photo updates or other things like that.
• Flock has features that allow text,photo,video and link sharing internally.
• Flock has an integrated feature that allows the preview of online videos and photos,it even allows the subscription of video feeds.
• Atom and RSS feed support is integrated into Folk
• Folk even comes with a handy blog editor which allows direct posting of articles into a designated blog.
• Folk support third party addons.
• The interface is filled with all new gradient effects and cool features.The interface may seem a little cluttered (this is my personal opinion), some people like it.

I wont recommend using Flock as the primary browser like Firefox or IE, Flok is not just a browser that anyone can pick up and use.There are changes like organizing bookmarks, making it remarkably different from Firefox and Internet explorer,But it seems that the way book marks are organized have some relation with how bookmarks are handled in Safari.


Customization

Flock is developed based on the Firefox but still Flock is not yet compatible with every extensions made for Firefox.But still there are a lot of addons available for Flock.


Pros

• Flok helps us centralize our online life by bringing social networking sites, RSS feeds, photo/video sharing sites, and blogs blogs together organized under Flok.The accessibility of all these features from a single interface is really a benefit.

Cons

• If you're not a serious surfer, this browser can get a bit confusing. The interface is not fair. For safari users Flock does not seem to run faster.

Flock is available for Linux,Mac and Windows.



Flock compatible addons can be found here

Looking for Wallpapers to adorn your Kids Desktop

“I only want my kids to be happy” seems to be a simple, harmless, admirable desire. And here is another step by Next Door Nerd ;)

Did you started teaching your kid How to use a computer ? Then why not make a new user account for him ? You know kids need cute things and they love things they are attached to.And we are all need our kids more and more happy.

My neighbor came and asked me to customise his desktop for his Kids.I had no idea where to start, then I tried changing his wallpaper and the kids started loving it.They were talking about the cow and the animals in those images and yeah they really loved it.

You can find those images at www.pixelgirlpresents.com.

The site is not specifically for Kids, it is for all. And it has a lot of illustrations and artworks to download and they are all free.

Need more advices on how to setup your kids Desktop (Let it be any OS), just drop an e-mail at nextdoornerd AT gmail DOT com.

Ubuntu 8.04: Hardy Heron

The Ubuntu 8.04, the most anticipated releases of Ubuntu to date.

Ubuntu 8.04 : Hardy Heron is a LTS release.LTS release means that this release will receive continuous support and security updates for three years for desktop users and five years for server users.So the major focus of this release will be on stability and enhancement of existing features.


Features

• The Hardy Heron is packed with GNOME 2.22.GNOME 2.22 is based on GVFS instead of the old GNOME-VFS system, this comes with an entirely new backend, and ensures a better look and feel with more speed and compatibility.
• The other noticeable feature is the Brasero disc burning utility (easy to use cd and dvd burning utility)
• Transmission, a new BitTorrent client.PulseAudio is a major application bundled with ubuntu which enable the user to control the volume of individual applications.
• For better browsing experience they included Firefox 3 package.
  
• Ubuntu ships with Openoffice for complete office productivity
• The Ubuntu help and support feature is more better with this version.

Security is more important when it comes to an operating system, and like every linux Ubuntu is more secure.

To know more about Ubuntu security click here
Help for security related installations can be found here

System Requirements

Ubuntu is available for PC, 64-Bit PC and Intel based Mac architectures. At least 256 MB of RAM is required to run the alternate install CD (384MB of RAM is required to use the live CD based installer). Install requires at least 4 GB of disk space.

Explore more features at Ubuntu Tour

Download your ISO images from Here

NeoOffice - An excellent office package for Mac users

Neo Office

Neo office is an excellent freeware  which can be used to replace your MS Office package, it includes a complete set of office applications including Word Processing, Spreadsheet, Presentation, Vector Drawing and Database. Neo office is also compatible with Microsoft office file formats,so we can now import, export and edit MS office files using Neo office.

Features

• Media Browser Support 
• Floating Tool Windows 
• Trackpad Magnify Support 
• Trackpad Swipe Support 
• QuickTime Video Support 
• Import Images From Scanners
• Import Images From Cameras
• And Much More

Click here to obtain your copy of Latest version  

Neo office is available for both the Intel Macs and PPC Mac machines.

VirtualBox - Professional quality FOS software solution for virtualization

Looking for a free virtualization solution for your Mac or PC (Linux/Windows).Sun is here to provide you a better solution.VirtualBox turned me from a Fusionist to Boxer ;) and yeah it is free and open source software.Now we can have a glance at Virtual Box.

What is virtualization ?

Virtualization allows you to run an OS inside an OS. That is, your main OS hosts a secondary OS,for instance you can run Linux while you are working on Windows (running linux inside windows,like running an application inside windows).

VirtualBox OSE (VirtualBox Open Source Edition)

VirtualBox OSE is a general-purpose full virtualizer for x86 hardware. Targeted at server, desktop and embedded use, for now it is the only professional-quality open-source virtualization solution available.VirtualBox performed decently while running Windows XP on my 512 MB Intel Mac Mini running OS X Tiger (Virtual box even performed well in a Celeron M based Windows machine with 256 MB ram,I was testing my JeOS).

Features

Virtual Box is an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers which provides a set of good features and a wide variety of operating system support inluding os/2 support.

· Modularity.
· Virtual machine descriptions in XML.
· Guest Additions for Windows and Linux.
· Virtual USB Controllers.
· Remote Desktop Protocol.
· USB over RDP.
· Shared folders.

Supported host operating systems include Linux, Mac OS X, OS/2 Warp (experimental OSE builds),Windows, and Solaris/OpenSolaris.

Supported guest operating systems include FreeBSD, Linux, OpenBSD, OS/2 Warp, Windows and Solaris.

If you are looking for a free of cost open-source robust virtualization solution for your Windows Mac or Linux the the best available solution is VirtualBox

VirtualBox worked without any problems with both my PC and Mac.I've never experienced a problem while using it.I installed an Ubuntu JeOS server and Kubuntu without any problems.I prefer this for Mac users especially because it has several advantages (even though it does not offer some nice features that VMware offers) over VMware fusion and it's faster when compared to VMware.

You can obtain your VirtualBox copy here

More Information and Documentations can be found in the VirtualBox site.