How to install Java on Ubuntu.

Open up a terminal (Alt+F2, type gnome-terminal) and write

sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jre sun-java6-plugin sun-java6-fonts

#Enter your sudo password

Note: Each line in the quote is a unique line in the terminal, so write them and enter them separately. The #Text is a comment, do what it states.

Once it downloads the packages and begins the installation you will get a screen that contains the Sun Operating System Distributor License for Java. Press Enter to continue. You’ll see a message that asks if you agree with the DLJ license terms. Select Yes, and press Enter; the JRE will finish installing.

You’ll want to confirm that your system is configured properly for Sun’s JRE. Here’s how you do that.

First, check that the JRE is properly installed by running the following command from a terminal (alt+F2 and type gnome-terminal).

java -version

You should get similar output

java version “1.6.0_14″
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_14-b08)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 14.0-b16, mixed mode, sharing)

Second, check that Java works properly with your preferred browser.

Open your browser and head over to Sun’s “Do I have Java” webpage. For Firefox you can alternatively write about:plugins in the adress-bar and see if the Java plug-in is enabled.

You should now have Java functioning on your computer.

How to install Adobe Reader 9 on Ubuntu.

Browse over to Adobe’s download page for Adobe Reader. Download the .bin to your desktop.

Open up a terminal (Alt+F2, type gnome-terminal) and write

cd /home/YourUser/Desktop

sudo chmod +x AdbeRdr9.1.2-1_i486linux_enu.bin

#Enter your sudo password

sudo ./AdbeRdr9.1.2-1_i486linux_enu.bin

#You may need to enter your sudo password once more

Note: Each line in the quote is a unique line in the terminal, so write them and enter them separately. The #text is a comment, don’t write it in your terminal, do as the comment states.

The package will now extract the installation files needed for the setup.

You’ll have to show the installer where it should put Adobe Reader. I installed Adobe Reader under /opt/AdobeReader.

Adobe Reader should now be installed and working properly on your computer.

Another customization frenzy, I felt bored.

Click the image for the Flickr version with embedded notes explaining the desktop.

I was bored with the normal Windows Vista (Yes, you probably think Vista sucks, no need to mention that in a comment), so I decided it was time to beef it up a bit. I usually don’t spend a lot of time staring at my desktop, but when I do look at it – I want to look at something nice, minimalistic, clean and informative. Since none in the programming world seems to know what design, usability and nice user-interfaces are – we, the users, are left with a pretty standarized way of having our desktops.

So then we have to create it and customize it the way we wish it was. That’s not really a bad thing though, at least they gave us the possibility, not easily done considering a lot of the dumb road blocks that Microsoft have laid out to stop people who want difference in this world. But they did give us a small possibility by at least allowing us to install third party applications and other neat things.

Another reason for doing this is me being tired of people in the desktop-threads over at 4chan who never explain the gears working behind their, sometimes beautiful, desktops. Their usual respond is “newfag” when someone politely asks about the desktop user-interface of their wet dreams, but yeah, that’s 4chan anyways, scum of the internet and all that. The other, and main reason, for creating this post is so that I remember what I did and how the heck I got my desktop to look this way – so when I sometime, in the future, start over with a fresh install can easily modify my desktop to be nice, minimal, clean, and informative once more.

My desktop, apart from what’s in there already from the Windows OS, consists of mainly two small applications with heavy modifications (design, mostly) of the standard look you’re given when you start using the application. I’m using

• Start-Killer – To remove the ugly and totally meaningless Windows button. Heck, every keyboard (more or less, ‘least the ones that are up to date) is given the super button, or the Windows-key as most people know it by. So why would I want a stupid, bloated, fat start-icon sitting there, taking up space for my task-bar? Yes, that’s right, I wouldn’t want it!
• Taskbar Shuffle – To rearrange open tasks in the taskbar, and to rearrange icons in the tray. I like to keep my desktop clean and informative, remember.
• RocketDock – I don’t like flooding my pretty wallpaper with a heap of ugly icons, I would rather have them sit nicely in a docked bar with fancy “bubble” effects when I hoover over the application I want to launch.
• Rainmeter – Because I want to have information given to me quickly, whether it’s new torrents (automatically feeded to my torrent client using RSS (I love RSS)), reading Twitter updates from a specific source, checking the clock, remembering which day it is, or easily writing down notes/to-do lists.
• Launchy – Because I dislike opening up Windows Explorer every time I want to find some folder, open up a document, or do anything else consisting of finding files or opening applications I seldom use. With Launchy I can press a key-combination, type what I want to find, and hit enter.

For RocketDock I’m using a style called Blank (standard style in the application) and a icon-set called Reflections, with some self-made icons since the icon-set didn’t have everything I am using.

For Rainmeter I’m using a customized set of widgets/desklets called Enigma, with small config-edits to make it suit my desktop, as well as for some of the widgets to work for me (like a mail notifier, RSS-feed with things I want, Twitter-updates)

For Launchy I’m using a skin called Sutra

You can find most of those skins on DeviantArt, or by simly searching on Google.

My thoughts on how Twitter contests should and should not be done.

Twitter is a nice and simple way to spread the word about what your company is all about. Contests is even better, especially for marketing and creating a big buzz. If you’re able to climb onto the trending topics on Twitter, you’re instantly getting thousands of hits just from people clicking different trends to get a quick input of “what’s hot” and “in”, updated realtime.

How you can do it

Two examples of a good (or bad, whichever way you look at it) way to market your stuff is Moonfruit and Squarespace. If you’re into Twitter you’ve probably seen the hashtags #moonfruit (www.moonfruit.com) and #squarespace (www.squarespace.com) appearing more than once from several people in the Twitterverse (me included, I love freebies, who doesn’t?). If you’re not seeing the marketing value in this example of doing contests on Twitter, let me do an easy mathematical calculation for you: Let’s say 20 people tweet “I love #moonfruit, I want to win the Macbook Pro! Look at www.moonfruit.com for details!”, and for the sake of simplicity lets say that each of those 20 individuals have 20 unique followers who receive their updates. So our calculation would be: 20×20 = 400.

But.. That’s not wrong

Put short, this would get 400 possible users, and clicks, for www.moonfruit.com, possibly even more. Isn’t that just wonderful? Well, some will definetely say that it’s an awesome way to market your new, or old, projects and products. It will certainly get a lot of hype and talk about your new, awesome stuff going. On the other side, some people will say that it’s awful and destroys Twitter.

I myself am split on the middle in this case, while I do find the spam created by these contests (happening once in a while) pretty dull and boring in the long run, I think it is a very good way to put your product up for a show. Whatever you say, it will get you a remarkable amount of attention, either in a good, or a bad way. Bad commercials are commercials too, and can often get you even more attention since people mock it over and over, and over.

How a lot of people prefer you doing it

However, I much prefer the “other way” of doing contests on Twitter. If you’re hosting a contest, great! It means I can win free stuff, and free stuff is always awesome even if my chances are as small as me winning the lottery. So just by saying “Hey, contest over here! Just follow me on Twitter and you’ll be able to win in any contest I host!” you’ll have me hooked, and I have a chance to win without doing anything other than following you. That’s most certainly a win-win situation for both of us. The proper way to do a contest on Twitter is in my opinion the following:

1. Find out what you want to give away on Twitter, something related to your blogging interests, or perhaps your own company products.
2. Create a webpage that explains the rules of your Twitter contest. Your rules should simply be something like “Follow @xxxxxx”, “You can tweet about this contest one time, more tweets will not give you a better chance at winning”.
3. Send out a small amount of tweets once in a while where you explain that you’re doing contests, and a link to where your rules can be found.

Examples of this way to do contests on Twitter can be seen here (Scott Bourne, focusing on Mac and Photo) and here.

Joost have created a player optimized for PS3.

What’s Joost? Taken directly from their “About Us” page

It’s a way to watch videos – music, TV, movies and more – over the Internet. We could just call it a website … with videos … but that’s not the whole story.

We’re giving you new ways to find what you’d like to watch. You can search in “traditional” ways – by title or category – or you can find suggestions from other people on Joost. They may be your friends, or they may just be people who have something in common with you – but either way, they can direct you to great things to watch.

The player for PS3 is currently in beta, or in laboratatory as Joost call it. That means that the experience you have with the player right now, probably won’t be the same as the end result.

How do I browse videos on Joost with my PlayStation 3, then? You simply open up the network browser on your PS3, found under Network in the XMB. Then you press the Start button on your PS3 controller to open up the adress bar and write http://labs.joost.com/tv and press the Cross button.

You’ll be greeted by a page that explains you the controls within Joost on the PS3

Joost Control Scheme – Click the image for a larger version

Press the cross button to continue and you’ll experience the optimized Joost player. From my experience there’s currently just featured videos as well as some music videos to be found within the player, it might have something to do with my geographical location (Norway). Or it might be that this player is still in beta. Either way, I find this service nice, it’s good to see that large video-communities like YouTube and Joost are optimizing their platforms for consoles.

Here’s how the user interface looks

Joost User Interface – Click the image for a larger version

How to connect your blog and RSS feeded Twitter posts.

So.. What is Twitter Feed? I suppose you’ve heard of RSS (Really Simple Syndication) by now. What Twitter Feed does is connecting your blog’s RSS feed (mine is http://skarh.wordpress.com/feed) and your Twitter account. This service is nice for, in my opinion many reasons, basically two reasons – you save time as you don’t have to manually tweet about your newly added blog post, in fact you don’t even have to think about tweeting your new blog post as Twitter Feed does that for you.

You also get your blog some publicity, which, depending on the content, is a good thing. Twitter is a huge network, your followers might like what you post and they’ll retweet that message so it reaches out to their followers and so on, this means it can reach a very large amount of people in matter of seconds.

Sounds awesome, how do I hook up?

1. You visit Twitter Feed’s webpage and sign up for an account
2. Tell Twitter Feed which social media you want to promote (obviously, for Twitter you choose Twitter)
3. Then you need to validate your Twitter account with your username and password from Twitter
4. Choose a name for your feed, this is basically to keep track of your feeds if you choose to create several
5. Next step in the process is finding your blog’s RSS feed, the RSS feed to my blog is http://skarh.wordpress.com/feed for example, yours is probably similar
6. Check the advanced settings if you wish to change how often the feed should check for updates on your blog, what it should include, which link-shortage service it should use, how it should check updates from your feed, and if you wish to include a prefix and suffix (prefix content suffix)
7. Create feed

There, that’s it! Check if your feed works by pushing out some content on your blog.

Small how-to on getting more traffic (visitors) to your blog.

Tired of seeing small visitor numbers to your blog? Feeling like your posts are worth a visit, but you’re not getting anyone to read your blog because it’s not rating high on the search engines? Well, I felt the same way about these questions myself and decided to look for solutions. I found two excellent providers, webpages that crawl through blogs in pretty much the same manner as you would switch channels on your TV, giving you a small preview of a blog before it goes on to another blog in the list.

So, who are those providers, and how do you get your blog known through them?

Alpha Inventions
Basically the same as what Condron is, it’s hard to explain the technology behind the crawler, but Cheru Jackson (the creator) has tried in this post.

1. Head over to Alpha Inventions
2. Wait for the “My Blog” field to load up
3. Write your blog URL
4. Choose category
5. Click Validate, let it validate
6. Click Notify Readers About My Blog

You can also buy a #AHD so your blog stays longer in the reading cycle, but a good tip is to add your blog to the cycle 2-3 times each day for the best outcome.

Condron
Small introduction from their webpage

Give us a shout out! If you mention condron.us in one of your blog posts our surfing engine will automatically pick up your blog more frequently. Remember for best results the shout out must be in an actual blog post.

Join the community. Our Forum is a great way to gain exposure for your blog and meet potential readers. Connect with bloggers and readers from around the world! Click the ‘Forum’ button to sign-up for free.

Submit Your Blog. Submitting your blog to the Condron.us blogroll exposes your blog to a large number of potential readers every day. Adding your blog to a specific channel will increase your ability to reach your target audience.

1. Head over to Condron
2. Click Add Your Blog
   
3. Fill in the information
4. Click Submit

Another tip is to add your blog to several categories that it fits into, so that people who use RSS feeds for categories can check up on the subjects that you blog about.

Twitter
Tweet a link to your blog post on Twitter. If your post is inspirational, educational, informative or just a nice read, chances are high that other people may retweet (RT) your tweet and create a chain-reaction so a lot of people will be notified about your excellent post.

That should be it, you’ll probably start seeing an increase in the traffic to your blog pretty soon.

Here’s how you can get a little taste of Red Faction: Guerrilla. (Limited to EU)

Taken from THQ

Lured by the rich veins of Martian ore, miner Alec Mason arrives on Mars hungry for a new life. But the promise of a brighter future for Mason quickly fades. The Earth Defence Force, once protectors of Martian colonists, have adopted heavy-handed checkpoints and omnipresent armed patrols. As violence escalates, an underground resistance known as the Red Faction is swiftly gathering strength to combat the EDF. Mason’s quest for a new life has become a battle for survival, and the fate of the planet now rests with him and the Red Faction.

Red Faction: Guerrilla is coming to Xbox 360 and PLAYSTATION®3 this summer – but you can get your hands on the single player demo today and experience the most realistic destruction engine ever seen – Geo-Mod 2.0 – for yourself.

The Red Faction: Guerrilla Single Player Demo is not open to the general public, but we’re offering myTHQ members exclusive access right now – there are a limited number of places available, so sign up today.

To claim your early access key, follow the instructions below.

Please note, these keys are region-locked to European Xbox LIVE and PSN accounts – they are not valid in North America or any other country outside the EU.

Register on THQ-games and click this link to get your game-code.

Five tips to get tasks done more efficiently in Photoshop.

Images and parts of the text is taken from a brilliant tutorial/article about Photoshop on Developer Tutorials, I have updated it slightly to suit the newer versions of Photoshop and added some of my own preferences. They have a lot of very good and descriptive articles on how to use applications more efficiently, as well as tips and tricks, worth a visit.

1. Learn to use keyboard shortcuts for tools

Move your mouse cursor over to the toolbox, scan the toolbox for the tool you want to use, click on it, move back to your canvas. Is this how you use the tools in Photoshop? Switching tools by going back to the toolbox and selecting your new tool each time takes up time that adds up to minutes and hours over larger and longer projects. Becoming familiar with Photoshop’s keyboard shortcuts for accessing tools cuts down a large amount of that time. It also keeps your cursor within the canvas area so that you don’t have to figure out where you were before you switched tools.

Keyboard shortcuts for the tools are displayed in a tooltip along with the name of the tool when you hover over the tool (Pops up after 2 seconds). In the figure below you can see the Move tool and the help message. The keyboard shortcut shows up in parentheses, (V) for this tool. In this case, if you’re in Photoshop and simply hit “v” on your keyboard, you’ll automatically switch to the Move tool.

Some tools have fly-out menu options for selecting similar tools in the same genre, these tools often share the same shortcut. In the example below, you can see that the Brush tool, Pencil tool, and Color Replacement tool share “B” as the keyboard shortcut. Simply hitting “B” on your keyboard will switch to whichever tool was previously selected (in this case, the Brush tool). To switch to the Pencil or Color Replacement tools, you’ll have to press “Shift”+”B” to cycle through the other tools.

The easiest way to begin learning keyboard shortcuts is to focus on a couple of the tools that you use most often and practice using the keyboard shortcuts for them. As you commit them to memory and instinct, you can add other tool shortcuts as you slowly learn and memorize. I frequently use:

• A – Direct Selection and Path Selection tools
• B – Brush, Pencil tools
• C – Crop tool
• D – Changes the foreground color to black and the background color to white
• E – Eraser
• M – Marquee tools
• P – Pen tools
• V – Move tool
• X – Switches the foreground and background colors

2. Learn to use more keyboard shortcuts for other tasks

Photoshop is full of other keyboard shortcuts for different tasks, learning them really makes everything much easier, and faster. You’re probably already familiar with some of the basics – Ctrl+S to save, Ctrl+O to open a file, Ctrl+C to copy, Ctrl+C to Paste – which are common to other types of software. Many of these shortcuts can be found listed next to the command when you click an option from the top menu.

But there are many other keyboard shortcuts for performing a variety of actions. Here are some that I’ve found to be indispensible while working in Photoshop.

• Ctrl or Alt and + or – zooms in or out of your canvas.
• Holding the Shift key generally constrains movements to straight horizontal, vertical, or 45-degree angles. For example, if you’re using the Move tool to move a layer, holding the Shift key will allow you to move it perfectly horizontally (or vertically, or at a 45-degree angle) so that you don’t have to guess your placement by the naked eye.
• The Alt key will often allow you to copy things, depending on the context. When you have the Move tool selected, holding the Alt key and then using the Move tool will allow you to copy the selected layer to a new layer. Or, if you’re working in the Layers palette, holding the Alt key down, clicking on a layer, and dragging it to another spot in the Layers palette will create a copy of that layer. The same thing works with the Path Selection tool when you’re working with paths.
• Holding the Ctrl key and then clicking on a thumbnail in the Layers palette makes a selection based on the pixels in that layer.
• Ctrl-D will clear all selections, such as selections you’ve made with the Marquee or Lasso tools.
• Holding the space bar temporarily switches you to the Hand tool so that you can easily move your canvas around (Most digital tables have this function built into the pen, I use Wacom Bamboo).
• Change the layer opacity by simply typing in a number.

For more shortcuts you can search blogs and webpages for “Photoshop shortcuts” or “Photoshop keyboard commands”. One resource you might find helpful are the PDFs at Morris Photographics. However, even these extensive PDFs don’t include tricks like double-clicking in the grey Photoshop work area to bring up the “Open” dialog box if you’re not fond of the Ctrl-O keyboard shortcut! There is a lot to discover in Photoshop; while you may not find some of the shortcuts to be worth retaining in your memory, you’ll inevitably find some that you will use every time you open Photoshop.

3. Create Actions

If you find yourself doing a task in Photoshop that follows the exact same steps over and over again, you may find it helpful to create a Photoshop action to automate those steps. A common example is if you have a bunch of photos that you’re resizing from high resolution to web-ready formats. Let’s say that your boring, repetitive steps consist of:

1. Opening the image.
2. Going to File > Image Size and entering in a new width or height, then clicking OK.
3. Saving the photo for the web in a different folder.
4. Closing the photo without saving.

Instead of going numb by doing this for all of your <insert a number above 10> photos, let Photoshop do the work by creating an Action! Here are the basic steps for making your own custom Action.

1. Open the Actions palette by going to Window > Actions (Or pressing Alt + F9).

Click the “Create new action” icon in the bottom of the Actions palette.

1. Name your action, for example, “Resizing photo”
2. Notice that the recording button is immediately active, so any commands that you do in Photoshop will be recorded. If you’re not ready to record, hit the Stop button. When you’re ready, click the Record button to begin recording again.
3. You should start with the image already open before recording (Will show why later on). Then, you can proceed with your normal steps and perform your tasks on the image, including saving the image for web and closing the image without saving. As you perform your tasks, you’ll see a list of Photoshop tasks building under the Actions palette. When you’re done, hit the Stop button.



4. Let’s say you have a mixture of landscape and portrait images. When resizing the image, you would pick the larger dimension and change that size. Creating an action this way, however, would force you to make two separate actions – one for portrait photos, one for landscape photos. Luckily, Photoshop has a built-in command for “fitting” the resized photo into a certain area. So when recording the action, instead of going to Image > Image Size, you go to File > Automate > Fit Image and type the width and height that you want the image to be resized within.
5. So, the Action would really look more like this, with the Fit Image instead of Image Size tasks:

With your action complete, take it out for a test drive. Open up another image, click on the name of the action in the Actions palette, and hit the Play button. Photoshop will go through the steps of your action. Check to make sure that the photo was resized and saved for web properly.

If all looks well, you’re ready to batch and automate! Go to File > Automate > Batch. Most likely your new action will already be selected, but if not, select it from the dropdown list. Change the Source to Folder and click the Choose button to set the folder to your collection of images that need to be resized. Also set the Destination to Folder and set this location to where you want the web-ready images to be saved. Finally, you can set the other options for renaming the saved file or overriding commands as necessary. One important option is to change the Errors dropdown to Log Errors to File, click the Save As button, then select the filename and location for your error log file. This way, if Photoshop runs into a problem, it will log the issue and keep going instead of stopping the process completely.

Then click OK, sit back and do something else while you let Photoshop perform the magic!

4. Learn non-destructive editing techniques

“Non-destructive editing techniques” describe ways to modify and adjust layers without actually changing the pixel content of the layer. This is a way to save time in Photoshop, you don’t actually save time on the front end, but you save a lot of time and trouble on the back end if you need to go back and make new changes.

Lets take an example of the difference between “destructive” and “non-destructive” editing. One common modification for pumping up the contrast on a image is to use the Image > Levels option and dragging the outer sliders towards the center.

This permanently changes the image, in other words once you save and close it, there’s no return.

To change the levels “non-destructively”, you can add an Image Adjustment layer in the Layers palette. Click the Create new adjustment layer icon in the bottom of the Layers palette and choose Levels.

The same Levels dialog box will come up and you can make the same changes, but instead of permanently changing the layer of the image, you’ll see an additional layer come up in the Layers palette.

The wonderful part of adding the adjustment layer is that you can always go back and change the adjustment by double-clicking on the <insert name for your Levels layer> thumbnail. You can also turn it off by clicking the eye icon to hide the layer, or if you wish you can remove it completely by deleting the layer. You can add more adjustment layers on top of this one to continue to make “changes” to the image, all without touching the original image itself.

Other tips for non-destructive editing

• Use adjustment layers for image adjustments. Most of the adjustment changes you would make to an image layer can be done using adjustment layers for non-destructive editing, as shown in the Levels example above.
• Use vector shapes with layer style effects. Using the marquee tool to create a rectangle selection, filling it with the paint bucket tool, and adding a gradient using the gradient tool, results in a pixel- or raster-based layer where you’d pretty much have to recreate the layer if you wanted to make significant shape or color changes. In contrast, creating a vector rectangle and applying a gradient layer effect allows you to change the shape of the rectangle or change the gradient effect at any point very easily.
• Use layer masks to hide portions of layers. Using the eraser tool will permanently remove information from a layer. Instead, add a layer mask and use it to hide the parts of the layer that you don’t want to show. You can then always go back and edit the layer mask to hide or show more of the original picture or remove the layer mask altogether.

5. Get organized

When you’re working with files that have multiple layers, there’s nothing more frustrating than going back to it later and trying to figure out if that small bullet icon is on Layer 1, Layer 15, or Layer 36. Invest some time in the front end to keep your Photoshop documents organized so that you can save time later on when you open the document for editing, or more importantly collaborating between other designers. Here’s two main ways that should get you organized in Photoshop

• Name your layers descriptively. Double-click the name of the layer to rename it from “Layer 2″ to something more helpful, such as “Left Column Foreground”
• Group layers together. Photoshop allows you to group layers together into folders. If you’re making a web site composition, you may find it helpful to group together the layers that hold objects related to the top header area, for example. You can also name the groups descriptively. You can even group groups together into subfolders. Click the folder icon in the bottom of the Layers palette to create a new group. (Keyboard shortcut: Select your layers first, hold Shift, then click the folder icon. This will automatically create a new group with those selected layers so that you don’t have to drag them into the folder later.)

How to install Adobe AIR on Ubuntu 8.10.

Browse over to Adobe’s download page for the AIR platform. Download the .bin to your desktop.

Open up a terminal (Alt+F2, type gnome-terminal) and write

cd /home/YourUser/Desktop

sudo chmod +x AdobeAIRInstaller.bin

#Enter your sudo password

./AdobeAIRInstaller.bin

Note: Each line in the quote is a unique line in the terminal, so write them and enter them separately. The #Text is a comment, do what it states.

That should pretty much be it, Adobe AIR will now install correctly. If you want to install applications, look for Adobe AIR Application Installer under Applications -> Accesories in your Gnome Menu. To get you started, if you enjoy using Twitter, take a look at TweetDeck, a good looking and well organized desktop application that uses the Adobe AIR platform.

Posted in All, Computer, How To Tagged: Adobe, Adobe AIR, How To, Install, Linux, Ubuntu, Ubuntu 8.10 ]]> http://skarh.wordpress.com/2009/04/08/adobe-air-on-ubuntu/feed/ 0 Sheel http://skarh.wordpress.com/2009/04/07/twitter-app-and-plug-in/ http://skarh.wordpress.com/2009/04/07/twitter-app-and-plug-in/#comments Tue, 07 Apr 2009 12:41:17 +0000 Sheel http://skarh.wordpress.com/?p=394 ]]>

What is Twitter, why use it and how to integrate it.

What is Twitter?

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

In a short explanation; Twitter is a tool for “microblogging”, to express what you’re doing right now by 140 characters or less. It’s a great tool to for example express yourself to close friends and family, but also asking questions or displaying your recent blog posts, pictures, videos or whatever you may do on the internet.

Here’s a short video, explaining what Twitter is  “in plain English”

Why use Twitter?

I use Twitter much like my blog, just in a small and more precise (or unprecise) way of telling people what I am doing and what I enjoy. I also use Twitter to publish myself, my pictures, my blog posts, things I find and take learning from, connecting with people I otherwise probably wouldn’t have had the chance to meet and so forth. Twitter is so much, you define yourself what you want to do with it.

How do you use it?

First, you’ll need to create an account over at Twitter. Then it’s just to start expressing yourself, you’ll soon get people interested in you and they will follow you and see what you’re doing. You can, in turn, follow them back, or search for other people who use Twitter that you want to follow and get updates from. You have the choice to follow anyone, but you can’t choose who you want to follow yourself – that’s their decision. You can find more information on how to use Twitter by checking out their webpage.

There’s a lot of applications, plugins and webpages who take use of Twitter and bring it to a whole new level. Since I am a Firefox user I will mention one nifty add-on for that, and one application for Windows/Mac.

TwitterFox - Twitter in Firefox

TwitterFox is a Firefox extension that notifies you of your friends’ tweets on Twitter.

This extension adds a tiny icon on the status bar which notifies you when your friends update their tweets. Also it has a small text input field to update your tweets.

You can get the add-on here (Requires Firefox 2.0-3.1b3) or look at their webpage for more information and how to use it.

TweetDeck

TweetDeck is an Adobe Air desktop application, currently in public beta, that looks to capture the abundance of social media and display it in a unique columned user interface.

It’s a Twitter-API application that uses the Adobe AIR platform, it works for Windows (XP, Vista and 7) and Mac OSX, possibly in Linux, but you have to install it manually. Currently in beta, and open to anyone who wants to try it. Visit TweetDeck’ webpage for more information and download (Requires the Adobe AIR platform, which is included in the installer)

Here’s a small how-to on getting into the Spotify “beta”.

There’s been a lot of buzz around Spotify; never heard of it you say? Well, basically it’s a service that stream/cache a lot of music, both new and old, through the internet. You can create playlists or listen to “radio” playlists crawling different genres. You can do this free of charge, except a small commercial sound coming once in a new moon (Not very often in other words) – or you can pay a fee and get additional features, and no ads.

So, that sounds good and all nice, the only downside to this application is that Spotify is currently beta. This means that you have to get an invitation from someone in the system to be able to create a new user and enjoy the music. However, I’ve found a solution! If you’re familiar with IRC (Here’s a list of IRC clients) you can get an invitation to this service.

1. Download IRC.
2. Install IRC on your computer.
3. Join #Spotify @ Quakenet (If you’ve got a IRC client installed on your computer you can simply click the link and it’ll join the channel).
4. When you’re in #Spotify, type !invite – you’ll get a message from the bot Spotify.
5. Follow the link you were given – it’ll take you to the user-registration of Spotify.

That should be it, enjoy Spotify.

YouTube has released a special feature for PS3 and Wii.

The channel, or feature, is meant to ease the browsing of videos on YouTube when watching content from YouTube on Sony PlayStation 3 or Nintendo Wii. The UI has been scaled up and there’s large buttons and clear, larger fonts on the text to make it easier for the user. Most other objects or features seen on YouTube in normal mode is also removed, to maximize the content on screen.

You can only browse the specialized version of YouTube within the browser on PlayStation 3 or Wii, if you try browsing the channel on a computer you’ll simply be redirected to www.youtube.com.

How do you use the feature, and how does it look?

So, basically you turn on your PS3 or Wii -> Start the browser -> Open up the adress-bar -> Type “youtube.com/tv” and go.

Great UPnP media streamer for PlayStation 3.

You can find the newest version of PS3 Media Server here, here’s the project page and here’s the blog.

Download for Windows (.exe), Mac (.dmg) or Linux (.tgz). I’ve tested myself on following OSes: Windows XP SP3 (Works), Windows 7 Build 7000 (Works) and Ubuntu 8.10 (Works).

What is PS3 Media Server?
It’s an open source media server, mainly developed by one person who wanted an easy UPnP streaming server for his PlayStation 3. The application is based on Java, which basically means it runs on any computer-platform you throw it on (Windows and Linux).
It’s a small application (Newest version 1.02 has a automated setup, this feature is supported for Windows) that streams media; Pictures, Music and Video, from your computer through UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) to your PS3. It consists of several codecs to for example transcode .MKV files to your PS3 so you can watch it as any other fileformat the PS3 support natively.  Most of the settings you’ll need are configured by default, so everything you throw at it will most likely run the first time you try.

What needs configuring
Basically, nothing needs to be configured since this is done by default (The most usual features). The only thing you need to tell the application is where to find your files if you have them mounted through an external disk, for example.

By default the application lists up [All Drives], you may not want this so just add the drive (Or spesific folder/file you want) and delete the [All Drives] input. Click Restart HTTP server and Save. You can now turn on your PlayStation 3 and check under Status that the media server has found your PS3 trace (May have to disable your firewall or alternatively allow your PS3’s IP-adress through the firewall on your computer).

Other bits and bobs
Version 1.02, general additions

• Support for running the application as a Windows service, which on Windows XP is found under Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services. Scroll down until you find PS3 Media Server > Right-click > Properties > Startup > Automatic. This allows PS3 Media Server to start up when you start your computer.
• Finally possible to maximize the GUI window, which is great for users like me sitting on a netbook with limited screen space

And here are the features

• Ready to launch and play. No codec packs to install. No codec packs to install. No folder configuration and pre-parsing or this kind of annoying thing. No leaflet configuration and pre-parsing or this kind of annoying thing. All your folders are directly browsed by the PS3, there’s an automatic refresh also. All your folders åre browsed directly by the PS3, there’s an automatic refresh also.
• Real-time video transcoding via MEncoder, tsMuxer or Avisynth Real-time video transcoding using mencoder, tsMuxer or Avisynth
• DVD ISOs images / VIDEO_TS Folder transcoder DVD ISOs images / VIDEO_TS Folder transcoder
• OGG/FLAC/MPC/APE audio transcoding OGG / FLAC / MPC / APE audio transcoding
• Thumbnail generation for Videos Thumbnail generation for Videos
• You can choose with a virtual folder system your audio/subtitle language on the PS3! You can choose a virtual folder system with your audio / subtitle language on the PS3!
• All formats PS3 natively supports: MP3/WMA, JPG/PNG/GIF/TIFF, and all kind of videos (AVI, MP4, TS, M2TS, MPEG) the ps3 is willing to play PS3 natively supports all formats: MP3/WMA, JPG / PNG / POISON / TIFF, and all kind of videos (AVI, MP4, TS, M2TS, MPEG) the PS3 is willing to play
• ZIP/RAR files as browsable folders for pictures/audio files ZIP / RAR files as folders for browseable pictures / audio files
• Preliminary support for pictures based feeds, such as Flickr and Picasaweb Preliminary support for pictures based feeds, such as Flickr and Picasaweb
• Preliminary Internet TV / Web Radio support with VLC, MEncoder or MPlayer Preliminary Internet TV / Radio Web support with VLC, or MPlayer mencoder

Both where I live and on the blog!

Thought I’d bring one of WordPress’ great features out on the blog. It’s that time of the  year here in Norway – cold weather and snow! What better to visualize Christmas and winter than snow? Perhaps a christmas tree, but snow fits me perfectly fine.

It’s about 20 centimeter of snow on the ground here by now, been snowing a lot and it doesn’t seem to slow down much. It’s beautiful and right on time.

If you have missed out on how to activate snow on your WordPress blog; here’s how

1. Go to your Dashboard
2. Navigate to Appearance
3. Click Extras
4. Check the box next to Show falling snow on this blog
5. Get into the spirit of Christmas

And there you have it, it’s snowing on the internet!

How to setup Thunderbird for access to your Hotmail account.

Mozilla Thunderbird does by default not support access to webmail such as Hotmail and Yahoo. There’s a easy workaround for this – through Thunderbird plugins. I myself have been annoyed by Thunderbird not supporting this and did not know about the excellent addon/plugin called WebMail before I started searching around (I bet there’s more than me out there with this problem).

What is Thunderbird? Thunderbird in a few words: One mailclient for accessing several e-mail accounts and more (For example RSS feeds).

Download Mozilla Thunderbird.

How to setup Thunderbird to access your Hotmail account

• Download WebMail plugin
• Download Hotmail plugin
• Check Mozdev’s Setup page for Webmail

Short How To Setup

1. Install Mozilla Thunderbird
2. Run the application
3. Click Tools > Add-ons
4. Under Extensions, click Install…
5. Browse to the folder you downloaded XPIs to
6. Select Webmailfileversion.XPI and click Install
7. Go back to the Extensions tab and redo point 4 and 5
8. Select Hotmailfileversion.XPI and click Install
9. Click Restart Thunderbird from the Installation tab
10. Click Tools > Add-ons
11. Select WebMail and click Options
12. Change POP port to 1025, SMTP port to 1026 and IMAP port to 1027 (Just to be sure your OS is not blocking the port)
13. Close the Add-ons window
14. Add your accounts by clicking File > New > Account

If you’re browsing this guide with Firefox you need to right-click the plugin links and select Save link as – since the XPI is also used in Firefox, Firefox will think that the webmail and hotmail plugin are XPIs for Firefox.

That’s about it and as usual – comment if there’s anything you’re wondering about regarding setting up this solution.

How to get PlayStation Eye (PS3) working on a Windows computer.

Here’s a simple and fairly quick (and easy) way to get your PlayStation Eye working with your Windows computer. I am not sure about compability on other platforms, may do some testing under Linux (Ubuntu) later on.

Here’s the post from the guy developing.

Installation steps:

• Unplug the PS3Eye camera from your computer. if any
• Uninstall any previous version of PS3Eye software. If any
• Download and run the latest PS3EyeSetup file.
• Click ‘Install’ and follow the setup process.
• Plug in the camera.

Here’s the latest PS3EyeSetup file.

After the driver is successfully installed it should appear under both “AlexP Devices” and “Sound, video and game controllers” in the device manager.

To test the camera’s functionality you can execute the test application under Start > PSEye > PSEyeTest. You can also capture video by executing the AMCAP application under the same directory, this requires the Direct Show Video Source to be installed (It’s included in the PSEyeSetup).

How to delete older files and the application itself

• Close any program that are using PS3Eye camera.
• Press Windows Key + R on your keyboard or alternatively go to Start > Run
• Type the following – regsvr32 /u “C:\Program Files\AlexP\PS3Eye.ax”
• You will see the following dialog box confirming successful un-registration of the PS3Eye.ax file.
• “DLLUnregisterServer in C:\Program Files\AlexP\PS3Eye.ax succeeded”
• You can now safely delete PS3Eye.ax and PS3EyeLib.dll from your machine.

If this fails, try doing the same procedure under Window’s safe mode.

That’s it, you’re done and now you can enjoy your PlayStation Eye camera on your computer as well as your PlayStation 3!

Thanks to Alex Popovich (Support the project here, through PayPal) for making this possible, he’s the author.

How to install Windows XP from a USB device.

What you’ll need -

• 1GB+ USB storage device. I used a Kingston Datatraveler 2GB USB 2.0 pendrive
• PC with Windows XP/Vista installed. I used a HP nc6320, mostly any computer will do
• CD/DVD/ISO with Windows XP SP1/2/3. I used a Windows XP SP2 CD copy, Norwegian language
• USB_Multiboot_10.

Alright then, let’s continue.

Formatting the USB-device and copying Windows XP onto it

1. You will need a special tool to copy the Installation files and making the USB-stick/SD card bootable – usb_multiboot_10.zip
2. Unpack to any folder. THE PATH TO YOUR FOLDER MUST BE SIMPLE AND WITHOUT SPACES! (ex. C:\usb_multiboot_10)
3. Insert USB stick/SD card.
   1. ALL DATA ON YOUR STICK WILL BE ERASED! Please back up before running USB_MultiBoot_10.cmd!
4. Run USB_MultiBoot_10.cmd – Follow the text description.
5. Format utility will appear. Choose NTFS for larger than 4GB USB flash and FAT16 for smaller devices. Start format, close the window after the format is finished.
   1. NOTE: If you are doing this from a Vista machine, you may need to run PeToUSB.exe as adminstrator in order for this program to recognize the jump drive. (Right click PeToUSB.exe > Properties > Compatibility > “Run this program as an administrator” checked.)
6. Set options 1 and 2. Set option 0 only if you want to use USB HDD instead of a USB-stick/ SD card. Do not touch any other options if you have no idea about it.
7. Choose 3 after setting all other options. It will create the image and write to the USB-stick as well as making the USB stick / SD card bootable.
8. Answer “Yes” to all questions that come up (these vary depending on options selected).
9. When it finishes copying, remove your usb stick and insert it in the EeePC to install XP.
10. When you turn on the Eee, hold down “Esc” to choose the boot device and select the USB-stick/ SD card. You’ll need to do this at each reboot until XP is fully installed and you’ve logged in.
11. Choose Text installation at first time and GUI INSTALLATION AFTER REBOOT TWICE! – Choose step 1 to start installing, after reboot choose step two, after continued install press step 2 AGAIN to log into XP – As soon as you arrive at the Windows XP Desktop you can safely remove the USBStick / SD card.
    1. If you get hal.dll not found errors, read bullet 10 and 11.

IMPORTANT! DO NOT REMOVE THE USB-STICK UNTIL YOU SEE THE WINDOWS XP LOGIN SCREEN!

That should be it! This guide is done by the Asus EEE user-community, fear not, as it will work on any other computer; laptop, netbook, desktop etc.

I’d like to say thanks to the EEE-wiki page over at eeeuser, it’s filled with nice information for me and anyone else with an Asus EEE PC.

Feel free to comment if you get stuck or wonder about anything in the guide. I might do a Windows Vista guide soon, will see how long I have fun fiddling around with Windows XP on my Asus EEE PC 1000 SSD.

Terminal integrated with your desktop, through Devil’s Pie.

As earlier stated in my changelog, I wanted to show you how the gnome terminal can be integrated right onto your desktop (Instead of popping up in a window). How this is done is through virtual transparency and several small tweaks to remove “unneeded” graphic like the menubar, titlebar and scroll. It’s all done through an application called Devil’s Pie.

I suppose saying you can run the terminal “with” the desktop would be to lie, as you can’t really communicate with the desktop, Devil’s Pie creates an invisible overlay for the preferred application (In this case that would be terminal), which unable for example right-clicking to bring up the right-click menu on the desktop and it hides any files/icons showing on the work-space you run the terminal in.

I’ve taken bolts and bits from different web-pages and blogs to create what in my opinion and need is helpful, easy to understand and fairly (hopefully) easy to re-enable if the need ever be.

Here is what you need to do

Create a new terminal profile for your desktop-terminal

Open terminal (Alt+F2 gnome-terminal) >
Edit – Profiles > New > Profile name: NameOfTerminal (I name mine DesktopConsole, I will use this name later in this how-to, so remember to change the name with your own if you go another way) > Base on – Default
General tab – Uncheck Show menubar by default in new terminals
Title and command tab – Change initial title to YourInitialTitle (I name mine “DesktopConsole”, I will use this name later on in the how-to, remember to change the name with your own)
Color tab – Edit this to your own likings, I use “White on black” and transparency to 100% since this suits my needs with my current wallpaper the best
Scrolling tab – Disable the scrollbar

Now close the edit profile and profile windows, let the terminal run.

Download and install Devilspie

As Devilspie resides within Ubuntu’s repository you only need one line written into the terminal  sudo apt-get install devilspie

Create a hidden devilspie folder in your home directory, this is done through terminal – mkdir ~/.devilspie now you need to create a script that devilspie will gather information on how to base your terminal-window from gedit (or nano) ~/.devilspie/DesktopConsole.ds

You should now have a open gedit (or nano) window named DesktopConsole.ds. Paste the following code into the document
# Are comments done by me for this how to, remove them in the actual script. /start and /stop indicates the script. Copy the text after /start and before /stop.

/start
(if
(matches (window_name) “DesktopConsole”) # Change “DesktopConsole” if you rename
(begin
(set_workspace 4) # I use set_workspace 1
(below)
(undecorate)
(skip_pager)
(skip_tasklist)
(wintype “utility”)
(geometry “450×350+795+605″) # More about geometry here
)
)
/stop

Save the document (If in nano you save (Overwrite) with Ctrl+O and exit with Ctrl+X)

Make Devilspie and terminal to run on startup

Open Sessions (System > Preferences > Sessions)

Click Add
Name: devilspie (Or add whatever you want to, just to remember what this process is)
Command: devilspie
Description: Describe the process as you want

Click Add
Name: Terminal (Or add what you prefer, just make sure it comes prioritized after devilspie, so the name has to start with a later letter in the alphabet)
Command: gnome-terminal –window-with-profile=DesktopConsole (Double – before window, profile name must be the same as the terminal-profile you created)
Description: Describe the process as you want

You’re done now, restart your computer to see the terminal integrated with your desktop. You can quickly restart X by doing Ctrl + Alt + Backspace.

You can change the color and window-settings in the terminal-profile to suit your needs. If you ever for example use a light background, you should use darker colors on the terminal and vice versa. There’s tons of commands and manuals on how devilspie works over at the devilspie wiki.

I’ve referred to Ryan’s (Known as ://) Terminal on Your Desktop and LinuxHaxor.net’s Configurating Linux Terminal to Work as a Transparent Wallpaper as well as the Devilspie wiki.

Build for Ubuntu EEE (8.0.4.1) and Firefox 3.

What you basically need with this build of Ubuntu (EEEbuntu 8.0.4.1) is installing the restricted-extras package for Ubuntu.

Perhaps you have a secure-ID bank-login you need access to while sitting in Ubuntu, like me. It might work for you, and it might not, that is why I made this how-to, to easily remember what I need to add myself when wanting to browse my bank-account online.

Ubuntu EEE comes with a lot of packages and applications installed by default, one of them is a java application. I found it rather early that Firefox and this version of java did not cooperate too well, at least not when I wanted to check my bank-account.

Here is what I did to make it work, it’s one command and very easy to set up. Ubuntu basically does everything you need for you.

Open up a terminal-window by using “Terminal” (Applications->Accesories->Terminal or Alt+F2 gnome-terminal).
When you have opened a terminal, you write the following sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras
This should prompt you with a password, type in the password for your current user. Ubuntu will now install, configure and set up the applications, libraries, fonts and etc. on your computer.

The java part of this package is really just an addon for java to work in Firefox.

That’s it, more or less. You may also have to change the preferred java-application used with programs on your computer, to do this you simply, in terminal, write the following sudo update-alternatives –config java if this gives you a output of more than one java application, choose the best suiting package for yourself by writing the number of the preferred alternative.