Posts Tagged ‘Softwares’

Generate Hardware Information on Linux!!!

February 8th, 2010

You can generate a nice report (HTML or XML format) of your laptop/desktop hardware information by executing this command:

lshw -html > sysinfo.html

You may need to install it first… For Debian and Ubuntu users installation is simple..

sudo aptitude install lshw

You can find the detailed information about lshw from the following page: http://www.ezix.org/project/wiki/HardwareLiSter

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Why is Software Development Addicting???

December 8th, 2009

So what is it about software development that interests geeks like us…..

After putting a little thought into it, for me it comes down to two words, new and challenging… It’s these two words that makes software development so addicting as well as fun.. :) As developers we are always looking for that high, however we can’t always get it, making it better, making it more efficient keeps us going, with a reward in the final product… Read the rest of this entry »

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Google Adds “Swirl” to Image Search!!!

November 18th, 2009

google_swirlGoogle has launched Google Image Swirl, a new image discovery tool that visually clusters similar images. It automatically organizes image search results into groups and sub-groups.

Swirl uses algorithms, metadata, and facial recognition software to distinguish between structures, places, people, and even time of day in digital images. For example, if you search for “New Delhi,” you will get sets of New Delhi state maps, and various scenery of the state. As you drill down further into the results, you get to see more tightly refined sets of images based on what you choose. Read the rest of this entry »

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What is Considered a Good Application???

November 6th, 2009

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. — Antoine

What is a good application? or lets put it this way what defines a good application? It’s not just one thing, of course, there is no magic formula for making a good application.

What makes me love an application or what i think is a good application: the buttons and features should be in the right place. This is one of the reasons why i love applications by Google. Nearly all their applications make sense.

Example: I was working on a Word as well as an Excel document today and I was thinking that wouldn’t it be great to be able to access this document from anywhere. In other words, I wanted to upload it somewhere. The first thing that strikes anyone is to Gmail it to myself so I have a copy in my mailbox, but then I though: I’m sure Google is smarter than that, and they already have a better solution. And they already do, at the top of the page, next to Gmail and Calendar, there is Documents. Which does exactly what I expected it to do. This, for me, is what defines a good application. It’s made by people who already thought of what you want, and implemented it in the most logical and reasonable way. All I have to do is think “where would I put the button if I was a programmer/user of this feature?” and I will find it instantly.
Cheers :)

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What is a Software Devlopment cycle???

September 27th, 2009

Well according to Wikipedia :

A software development cycle is a structure imposed on the development of a software product. There are several models for such processes, each describing approaches to a variety of tasks or activities that take place during the process.

I’l  share with you for the first time the details of the cycle. The following are the important steps in the development cycle. Read the rest of this entry »

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Set Twitter Tweet as status message in Pidgin!!!

March 8th, 2009

While browsing the net you would have heard about Twitter. Twitter is basically another name for micro blogging. In twitter you just have to sign up, then update a single line(“what you are currently doing?”) whenever you can. Its just so simple, no fuss about making a profile or writing down about the movies you like and blah blah…

A lot of us also use different instant messaging clients on a day to day basis. Pidgin is one of these clients that runs on a number of platforms, including Windows, Linux, and other UNIX operating systems. The advantage of using pidgin is that instead of running GTalk, Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger separately, you can have everything-in-one.

Now Pidigin allows us to set a status message and that is exactly what we do in twitter. So here’s what we can do.. update twitter status alone and then get Pidgin to retrieve and set the tweet as the IM status automatically.. This can be done with a help of a code found at Google Codes.

To do this follow the steps below. (I am taking it that you have already got Pidgin installed on your system.)

1. Firstly we need to install Perl. Most Linux distros come with Perl preinstalled. Windows users, download and install Perl from here.

2. Take a Command Prompt/Terminal and enter: perl -MCPAN -e shell (Linux users, would have to add a sudo before this). In the CPAN prompt that you got now, enter install XML::XPath and hit enter. This will download and install the Xpath module from Internet.

3. Now launch Pidgin. Go to Help -> About and scroll to the bottom of the page. You should see a line : Perl: Enabled.

4. Download twitter.pl from http://code.google.com/p/pidgin-twitterstatus/downloads/list and put it into your Pidgin plugins folder. Usually the plugins folder is C:\Program Files\pidgin\plugins for Windows users and ~/.purple/plugins for Linux users.

5. Now restart Pidgin and go to Tools -> Plugins. There will be a new plugin named Twitter Status Feed. Enable it and click on Configure Plugin. Enter your twitter user name in the dialog box that pops up.

6. Now in the drop down box where we select our status choose Twitter.

Note : sometimes in Linux copying the twitter.pl in “~/.purple/plugins” may not work. If you have root privilege then copy the script in “/usr/lib/purple-2/“.

Please leave comments if you face problems. :)

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Green Verticale Line's while playing movies in VLC!!!

March 3rd, 2009

Sometimes while playing movies or videos in VLC you may have noticed that green vertical bar comes up on the video and the color of the video gets distorted. I didn’t know at first what causes it but after playing around with it a little i found out that Xgl causes these line to come up above the video. When i had xgl uninstalled, the green thick line at the top of some videos played in VLC was gone. But after reinstalled xgl, the green line was back. I played the video’s using the (non-GUI, terminal command) mplayer command, lines were not visible in this. But the lines were visible in the GUI version of mplayer. The basic problem is that default output module used by VLC is XVideo.The simple solution is to change the output module to whatever works best for you.
Now coming to the point on how to change the module :
VLC > Tools > Preferences > Video > Output > change the default to what you want by the drop down box.

If you face problems please leave comments. :)

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Installing Adobe Air and its applications on Ubuntu 8.10!!!

February 22nd, 2009

Adobe AIR Environment is one of the hottest new technology around, it allows us to easily create cross platform Internet rich applications and widget that are Internet ready.

To install Adobe AIR on Ubuntu 8.10 follow these steps..

Open Terminal window from (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal ) and issue the following command in the terminal window.
wget http://airdownload.adobe.com/air/lin/download/1.5/AdobeAIRInstaller.bin

Now :
chmod +x AdobeAIRInstaller.bin

After That :
./AdobeAIRInstaller.bin

After the above command you will get a installation dialog box like this follow the instructions to install Adobe Air.

After installation is over you will find a menu item (Applications -> Other ->Adobe Air Application Installer ) which allows one to easily install Adobe Air applications.

Some interesting Adobe AIR applications are :

ReadAIR
ReadAIR is an rss reader. But it lacks keyboard shortcuts.
You can download ReadAIR from here : http://readair.googlecode.com/files/ReadAir.0.3.air
You can install the downloaded the (.air) package using (Applications-> Other -> Adobe AIR Application Installer).

RichFLV
RichFLV is a video editor for flv files , some of its features are :
* Read flv Metadata
* read/edit/modify/delete cuepoints
* cut flvs
* convert the sound of the flv to mp3
* convert flv to swf
RichFLV is still in early stage of development and is an alpha release.

Download and Install RichFLV from here : http://www.richapps.de/files/richflv/RichFLV.air

RoadFinder
RoadFinder combines Yahoo! Maps and Google Maps into a single application. It allows one to easily look up address using its intiuative interface. RoadFinder allows you to search maps for physical directions anywhere in the world. It also allows you to view satellite images.
Download and install RoadFinder from : http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/air/linux/samples/1/RoadFinder.air


Spaz
Spaz is an Open source Twitter client and features an extremely user friendly interface. Some of the important features of Spaz are :
* Built-in global search powered by Summize
* Short URL creation tool with support for multiple services (is.gd, bit.ly, snurl.com, and more)
* In-line short URL decoding
* Markdown syntax support
* Multiple themes and support for user-created themes
* User-defined CSS overrides
* Event sounds using the Tokyo Train Station soundset by Dominik Dimaano
* Directory listings of users you’re following, and your followers.

Download and Install Spaz using this link : http://funkatron.com/apps/spaz/AIR/SpazAIR.air

TweetDeck
TweetDeck is also an Open source Twitter client, i find it better than Spaz..
Download and Install TweetDeck using this link :
http://www.tweetdeck.com/

I hope you enjoy AIR an its applications.. If you face problems please comment… :)

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Compress Pictures In Linux(Modified)!!!

February 1st, 2009

I got the script to move the new compressed images into a new folder that would be located in your home folder.

As i explained before you need imagemagick installed on your system to run the script.
In ubuntu it can be installed by typing in the terminal sudo apt-get install imagemagick

Heres the script :
#!/bin/bash
# A script to resize images.
readonly OUT_FMT="_new.jpg"
if [ "$#" -eq 0 ] ; then
echo "A script to resize images "
echo "How to use : $(basename $0) add_of_image1 add_of_image2 ..."
exit 1
fi
read -p 'Enter name of Folder where compressed images would be located (would be made in your home folder) : ' fname
mkdir ~/$fname
for pic
do
# New filename
out_name="${pic%.*}$OUT_FMT"
if [ -e "$out_name" ] ; then
echo "Output file $out_name exists, Not resizing!!!"
elif [ "${pic#*$OUT_FMT}" == "" ] ; then
echo "$pic already resized!!!"
elif [ ! -r "$pic" ] ; then
echo "Error : could not access $pic !!!"
else
echo -n "$pic -> $out_name"
convert -quality 80 -resize 800x600 "$pic" "$out_name"
if [ ! -e "$out_name" ] ; then
echo " Error .. No output file!!!"
else
echo " ($(du -h "$out_name" | cut -f1))"
fi
fi
mv "$out_name" ./$fname/
done

I also didn’t explain the script properly in the previous post so i’ll that now.
Firstly the script should be copied from here and pasted in a text editor. Then save it as resize.sh in your home folder(you can save it any where you wish but then how you call the scritp would change thats why its easier to save it in the home folder :) ). Now open a terminal type:
animesh@animesh-laptop:~$ sudo chmod +x resize.sh

after this do animesh@animesh-laptop:~$ ./resize.sh aaa.jpg
This would ask a for a folder where new image should be placed
Enter name of Folder where compressed images would be located (would be made in your home folder) :
Specify the name of a new folder where you wanna save the image.
The new compressed image would be saved in the folder you specified with the name aaa_new.jpg

You can also convert all pictures of a directory at once by
animesh@animesh-laptop:~$ ./resize.sh Desktop/linux09/*.JPG
This to would ask for a folder where you would like to save the new compressed images.

Now in the line convert -quality 80 -resize 800×600 "$pic" "$out_name" in script the value after -quality is the argument specifies the amount of JPEG/MIFF/PNG compression level, the lower the value(meaning 60 or 50) the higher is the compression(change it according to what you want). The -resize is used to resize an image, the argument following resize(i.e. 800×600) can be changed to what you want.
Leave a comment if you face any problems. :)

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Compress Pictures In Linux!!!

January 26th, 2009

I have made a script to compress a set of images so that they can be mailed as images taken form a digicam are normally of 10 or 15MB and to upload a set of images is a pain in the ***. :)

Firstly you need to install package Imagemagick…
In ubuntu you can install by sudo apt-get install imagemagick

Now just copy the attached in an editor:
#!/bin/bash
# A script to resize images.
readonly OUT_FMT="_new.jpg"
if [ "$#" -eq 0 ] ; then
echo "A script to resize images "
echo "How to use : $(basename $0) add_of_image1 add_of_image2 ..."
exit 1
fi
for pic
do
# New filename
out_name="${pic%.*}$OUT_FMT"
if [ -e "$out_name" ] ; then
echo "Output file $out_name exists, Not resizing!!!"
elif [ "${pic#*$OUT_FMT}" == "" ] ; then
echo "$pic already resized!!!"
elif [ ! -r "$pic" ] ; then
echo "Error : could not access $pic !!!"
else
echo -n "$pic -> $out_name"
convert -quality 80 -resize 800x600 "$pic" "$out_name"
if [ ! -e "$out_name" ] ; then
echo " Error .. No output file!!!"
else
echo " ($(du -h "$out_name" | cut -f1))"
fi
fi
done

Now save it as resize.sh in your home folder.

Now in the terminal type
animesh@animesh-laptop:~$ sudo chmod +x resize.sh

after this do animesh@animesh-laptop:~$ ./resize.sh aaa.jpg
This would return a file aaa_new.jpg

You can also convert all pictures of a directory at once by
animesh@animesh-laptop:~$ ./resize.sh Desktop/linux09/*.JPG

The only problem with the script is that all the resized pictures would be in the same folder as original pictures. I am not able to move it in a new folder don’t know why. If you face any problem please leave a comment or if you know the solution to my problem please lemme know… :)
This post has being modified.

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