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Na, it’s not a book about the big search engine, but it’s a search engine for books. Wow, I don’t know whether you understood what I just writen but it sounds so confusing. Basically, it’s sort of a search engine, just for books and publications. So I tried searching for “Penthouse” and I found the correct one I am looking for. Sure, it is not the top few but at least this search engine has some substance. Well, Google’s supposed deal with Google Books (formerly Google Print) is to help users search for information inside books and publication and at the same time help authours and publications promote their books. So, basically, it’s like a library but it much easier to search for information. Of course, not all books are listed and you will most likely need to buy the books, but I think this is a good idea. There are so many books out there, but without information and ways to access the books, we will never know what they contain and which books to look for. Google Books will help ease this problem. It’s not perfect mind you, but at least the idea works to a certain extent.
It works just like normal web search. Just type the information you want, let’s say “Penthouse” and you will be displayed a listed of books (and publications) with the information requested. It’s that simple. Some will have limited samples of the book while others, you can access the book for free. And if you are an authour, you can submit your book to Google free of charge. Think of it as free promotion. Google needs all the information on your book or publication, they scan it completely but others won’t be able to access the book completely, only a portion. Something like a little snipplet. Plus, Google will place adwords below your publication! What does this mean? Well, it means that you will get paid whenever someone clicks on an advertisement when viewing your publication online! Wow, Google must be a Saint sent from Heaven to book authours.
I think people should make use of this wonderful feature by Google. And I hope Google will keep on increasing the number of books they index. Perhaps one day we will have a complete collection of all the books published in the world?
What’s an audio ripper you ask? Well, it’s a software which converts CD Audio to mp3 or whatever audio compression format, you know like MP3 or WMA or OGG. That kind of software. It’s the same like DVD Ripper, just that it rips audio from your audio cds/dvds. Actually MusikCube is not just an Audio Ripper, it’s a fully pledged audio/multimedia center. Yes, just like your Microsoft Media Player, but it’s open source, has tons of features not found in Microsoft Media Playyer and you don’t need to validate your Windows to use it. That is if you using illegal copies of Windows, which you shouldn’t because we all know that piracy is not good and it’s linked to terrorists and mafias.
Anyway, back to MusikCube. One of it’s interesting features is that it learns from what you like to listen and can generate a personalized playlist based on your preferences. So if listen to Spice Girls a lot, then it will help create your very own playlist which may be illegal in some countries. It also has enhanced support for portable storage devices. If you plug in an audio device or a thumb drive, MusikCube will ensure each audio device has a seperate database/playlist. So you don’t need to fumble around to check which playlist is for which device. Cool right? You can use this software to listen to the various Internet radio stations out there as well.
MusikCube allows you to add plugins, just like my previous favourite WinAMP. Hey, in the past, WinAMP is one of the best media players out there. Too bad it became bloatware and I guess nowadays we are looking for lean and mean programs to power our system.
MusikCube is for Windows 2000, XP and 2003 only. Not too sure whether it will work for Windows Vista. If only it can directly burn and create audio cds!
Woohoo, I am on a roll. I have yet another defrag program to introduce to you guys. It’s JKDefrag. And it’s Open Source too. Hahaha, I am sure some of your Open Source geeks will be pleased about this. You can download this software and distribute it freely.
Anyhow, JKDefrag uses the standard Windows API to defrag your HDD thus your data should be quite safe. It seems that a lot of commerical “defragers” use the same API as well. However, JKDefrag is much faster than the Windows Defrag program and it is optimized for everyday use. It allows you to set different defragmentation strategies so you can optimize your data to your heart’s contend. What is also interesting is that it allows you to defrag individual directories or files! So you won’t need to spend hours defraging your entire HDD when all you need is to optimize a certain directory. And you can even use this program as a screensaver. It will run whenever your Screensaver starts and it will display a detailed defragmentation map of your HDD.
JKDefrag allows you to defrag your HDD even when your HDD is full(or near full), unlike most other defrag programs out there. And because it is meant for the causal user, it’s pretty simple to operate and use. You shouldn’t have any problem using this software even if you never touched a defrag software before.
JKDefrag works by analyzing the data on your HDD to determine which files are located at which part of your HDD and figure out how to optimize your data. It will then provide you with the optimization strategy and then start moving your data around. Although it is much faster than your Windows defrag software, for a large HDD, it may take some time to complete. That’s why I recommend the screensaver mode. Let JKDefrag defrag your HDD when you are not around!
Yes, Open Source rocks!
I am here to introduce to you yet another Open Source Software. This time, it’s for recording your screen movements. It’s called CamStudio. This powerful software is mainly used for program demonstration or for tutorials. Basically what it does it to record what you do on your screen into a video file. And it’s supports audio input as well. So you can give an audio presentation along with your video. What better way to present something with both audio and video right? You get to show your viewers where to click, where the key in stuff or where to find certain information. And now, you can convert those video files to flash files (SWF). This comes very handy for website developers, especially now since broadband is becoming more and more commonplace and bandwidth is less a problem. We see a lot of websites which incorporates streaming videos.
However, I mostly use this software to create little tutorials for my company. I usually create simple tutorials like how to create email signatures in MS Outlook, how to add contacts and so on on my company’s Intranet. The users just access it on the Intranet with their browser since I have converted them to flash. Nothing is easier and it saves me a lot of time and effort. I don’t need to go around explaining to my company users how to do those simple stuff. And video is a whole lot easier than a written tutorial. I also use it for creating presentation videos to explain my company’s IT policies.
CamStudio has it’s own audio codec which is supposed to be of a higher quality. However, I would not recomend using it since the other party who is going to watch the video may not have the codec installed and the audio will not work.Or you can easily add captions to your video files if you are worried about the audio problem. CamStudio comes with high quality, anti-aliased screen captions to add to your videos. If done properly, your video will look professional.
If you are going to use this software, get the latest Beta version (2.5). The older version has a problem with creating SWF files which may result in the flash file not displayed on certain browsers. CamStudio is for Windows only and is free( It’s open source, of course it is free). You can also read up on the development of the software through their blog. Oh, please support the software by donating something if you can.
 
Have you ever wanted a software which can help you convert a certain video or audio format to another easily? Have you wanted to resize your video files smaller so that you can send it to your friends through email? Have you ever wanted to extract only audio from video files? And you have no money to buy an expensive software to do all that? Well, let me now introduce to you yet another open source software called Media Coder. Yes, this software can do all these and more!
The most important feature of this software is that it can convert one “type” of video files to another. So let’s say you have a video file encoded in Xvid and you would like to convert it to Divx for your Divx enabled player, you can use this software to do just that. And it supports a huge range of video types like Xvid, Divx, H.264, Flash, WMV and so on. It even converts Realmedia files which can be problematic for a lot of converters! Lo and behold, it now comes with a “Device Edition”! It’s like a set of pre-defined settings for Media Coder. So if you are using it to convert a file which is readable by let’s say, PSP or iPod, you can make use of the Device Edition to easily convert files without the need to change or configure complex settings. Very useful for people like me who can’t differentiate one format from another or couldn’t care less about it.
However, if you are a control freak, Media Coder can be your best friend as well. It allows you to edit or change various settings. This allows you to control the final output of your audio or video file so that you can create the best possible quality with maximum compression (or smallest size).
I am using Media Coder for several purposes, one of which is to extract audio from video files. I have extract theme songs which I like from movies or sometimes to extract a certain dialogue. Very useful indeed. However, Media Coder did crash on me several times when it is doing certain jobs. I am not sure what causes it and it seemed to be random. Although I won’t exactly say that Media Coder is difficult to use, even for a newbie, but it’s interface can be confusing and even complicated. And it doesn’t come with a wizard. But seriously, it shouldn’t be that hard to figure out all the parts of the software.
If you find this software useful, please help the authours by either donating a few bucks or you could tell others about it.
Installation was successful. All my network cards were detected properly. I had thought that everything was going to be fine but I hit a snag. OpenFiler has recently incorporated OpenLDAP into OpenFiler to enable “local” authentication. After logging in to the web interface, I could not get OpenLDAP to work for me.Â
I tried different methods to configure OpenLDAP and browse forums to get more information on setting up this service. But to no avail. And the bad thing is that the Administrator guide by OpenFiler is for the older versions, they have nothing on OpenLDAP. I think a lot of people are having problems with OpenLDAP as well. Or perhaps it needs someone with way more experience in networking and with LDAP than me. But I hope that there will be a solution soon. Or at least a solution which I can understand. I am rather keen to test out the features but in order to do that OpenLDAP or a third party LDAP authentication system is needed. I don’t have any on my network currently.
Anyone has any success in getting OpenLDAP to work? The problem I am getting is that they say that my LDAP setting is not valid. And after doing some changes, I get the error message that the authentication is not successful or something. Ahhh…..so so so so frustrating. Took me about 1-2 hours to troubleshoot the problem but couldn’t solve it.
If only FreeNAS has individual share policy, I would highly recommend FreeNAS. But it looks like we need to wait a while longer for the next milestone in order for FreeNAS to have such a feature. I thought that OpenFiler is the solution to all my problems, too bad, I couldn’t get it work for me.
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Finally, one of the best open source NAS/SAN software now comes with local authentication. It means that you no longer need to use a third party authentication anymore. Previousy I had installed OpenFiler before I realized that a LDAP sever is needed. That was a waste of time. You can set the users and passwords locally on OpenFiler as it now comes with local LDAP service. Yes, they have understood what we need. How many of us have such a server in our home/small offices? Most of us just need a secure storage platform for several users. That’s all we need.
OpenFiler supports all the storage networking protocols like CIFS, NFS, HTTP/DAV/FTP & iSCSI so you can be rest assured that whichever operating environment you are working on, it should have no problems at all. It also comes with an easy to use web based administration interface. Thus, simpletons like me can administrate. And installing is also quite simple. All you have to do is download the iso image, burn to a CD and then boot up from your CD/DVD-ROM drive. The installation procedures are easy to follow.
And OpenFiler is powerful. It allows multi-user share and quotas with group support. For each share, you can configure to quota, access and service controls.  It supports a wide range of hardware too, so if you are thinking of setting up a high end system for your big office, you should take a look at OpenFiler. However, if you are thinking of setting up for a small office, OpenFiler can be the solution as well. Even if you don’t have a lot of experience in Linux, it should be a breeze to setup.  Or you can just buy one consumer NAS from Dlink or Buffalo. However, if you have a spare piece of PIV system with maybe 512MB of RAM, you can make use of it as your NAS. Plus it is way more secure.
OpenFiler is based on rPath Linux and it is a very stable piece of software, meant for enterprise usage. So, I guess that would mean that a lot of enterprise hardware is supported. I have downloaded the image and will be “deploying” the software on 2 servers soon. Too bad, I don’t have a Xenon server to play with but these should do. I will write my little review on OpenFiler soon.
I am here yet again to introduce to you another great open source software. This time, it’s UltraVNC. If you don’t know what VNC is, please take a look at my earlier post. Basically, it allows you to control a PC through the LAN or the Internet from another PC. Something like Norton Anywhere (if you are into commercial products). And previously, I have introduced to you RealVNC and TightVNC. Both are capable software, but UltraVNC tops it all.
In additional to the regular features of VNC (that is client access to a VNC server), they support graphics mirror driver, which helps improve the speed of client access (useful if you have a slow PC). You can also do File Transfer (just like TightVNC), Text Chat as well as enabling Javaviewer applet. What this means is that you can access your desktop through a Java-enabled browser! No client software needed. Very cool indeed. But I think that the Javaviewer will be somewhat of a resource hog, so the client PC may need a higher end PC.
UltraVNC also allows add-ons. This means that additional features (other than the official ones) can be added to your software. These include repeater (allows you to access behind a router), NAT-to-NAT (allows you to access behind a router without any modifications) plus a customizable UltraVNC Client which your users can download and use without the need to do any setting changes.
It is amazing that an open source software can do so much. I have always thought that open source software are usually plain or featureless versions of the commercial ones. But I think soon, open source software may even overtake commercial ones in terms of functionality. I am so glad that I am firmly on the side of the open source community. And it is important to note that these software can save your company or business a lot of money. Everyone should take a look at what these projects can offer them. And please support them if you can.
Oh, I nearly forgot, UltraVNC works on all versions of Windows, even older ones.
How many of you guys have a PMP (Portable Media Player)? How many of you guys would like to compress your DVD Video to something smaller in size? How many of you guys would like to watch videos on your PC instead? Nowadays, we have DVD Players which can play Divx/Xvid Video files and this makes the Divx/Xvid format rather attractive. Think large screen TVs! And I guess this is a very convenient way to “transfer” files since Divx/Xvid video files are much smaller than the native DVD format.
Well, I am here to introduce to you another open source alternative, this time to convert your DVD Video files to other video formats. It’s called Handbrake. It works under Mac OSX, Windows and Linux. However, I see that not all DVD encryption is supported, so you may not be able to “rip” certain DVD Videos out. I believe that they only support CSS type protection. You will need additional software to rip out other DVD Video files with other encryptions. And best part for some, you can convert directly to mkv files. Oh, you can convert to h.264 format as well. I am sure a lot of iPod users will be glad to have this feature.
This software is a batch converter. It allows you to queue jobs for processing and you can then enjoy a tall cup of Vodka and come back later to collect your files. If you have to do a lot of files at one go, you will appreciate the usefulness of this feature. Unless the videos are short, it will usually take several hours to encode. With batch conversation, you don’t need to be physically there.
There are other open source software out there to convert DVD Videos to other formats. But this one makes it easy. Just choose the file and the output type and then all you have to do is to wait till it is finished. No more complex commands to use or multiple software to consider.
As you guys know, I am rather keen to using a Linux PC as my router. The main reason why I would like to use a Linux PC as a router than those consumer routers from Linksys or Dlink or whever, is because they are much more powerful. I am a heavy Internet user, mainly for video streaming, emails, FTP, downloading Linux distros and so on, so I need the power. But I also need it to be easy to install and easy to configure and administrate. They must come with a web-based administrative interface. And because of that, I have tried a lot of different firewall/gateway linux based distros but most of them isn’t perfect. Some distros have this important feature but lack certain other important feature. The best I ever used is Monowall. It’s a lightweight router/firewall/gateway with some very powerful features and works perfectly as a gateway and can handle most of what I throw at it. And best of all, it doesn’t require a Harddisk so you just need to boot from CD and store all your configuration files on your floppy. However, because they need to keep it lean, some features are not included.
Anyway, the below points are what I would like to see on a perfect router/gateway.
1. Multiple WAN and load balancing + redundancy. Hey, with the Internet now so important and with broadband charges dropping, I think that a lot of us can afford 2 internet connection. Won’t it be great to have redundancy and faster internet access together?
2. VPN. Hey, it’s very important for mobile workers. And since a lot of us work both from home and office, having VPN access to our homes is a godsent. No longer do we need to carry portable hdds to and from office. And it’s reasonably secure.
3. Captive Portal + Time Limitations. Good for families with children. You can control your children’s internet access by limiting how long they can surf and chat online. In order for them to get into the Internet, a username and password is needed. And yo can control which time of the day they can access the Internet. For the rest of the adults, well…..
4. DNS Server. DNS Caching is good. Why, because a lot of ISPs have very crapy DNS servers. This really slows down the speed in which you can access a website, especially if you are like me who likes to visit all sorts of websites. I had to use OpenDNS to get a decent DNS!
5. Proxy Server. Can really speeds up http access. And with a proxy server, you can easily control which websites your children can access. Proxy Server comes with a log as well, so you can find out what your children have been visiting when they surf the Internet. However, I discovered that sometimes video streaming can be affected if I connect through a local proxy server. Perhaps it is because my own ISP is using a proxy server as well?
6. Enhanced Wireless Support. A lot of Linux routers have limited support for wireless adaptors. So if they have a wider range of Wireless adaptor support, tha would be great. But of course, the problem would lie with the underlying OS rather than the developer of the gateway. Oh, and WPA support as well.
7. Antivirus. Help us help the Internet by stopping virus from spreading. Antivirus at the gateway level will be great to stop virus from even reaching us in the first place.
8. Loads from CF Cards. I just don’t trust HDDs. They break down too easily. And they are power hungry too. So it would be great if it works from CF Cards. Or just use a LiveCD without a HDD and have all the configuration files on a floppy. But I don’t think the Proxy Server and the antivirus service can work without some storage space.
9. Lightweight. Sure, the proxy service will probably take about 50-100 MB as cache, but they rest should be lean. I don’t like bloatware and such a software should allow me to uninstall a certain feature which I don’t use. Not too mention, a lightweight router will be more responsive and speedier.
10. Dynamic DNS. Who remembers IP addresses? And who keeps tracks of IP address changes? No one. Not even big brother.
If I think of more ideas and suggestions, I will add them here. Hope someone will create such a perfect distro for us to enjoy.
