A fresh off the press photo leak of possibly one of HTC newest devices dubbed the “HTC Rider” has just surfaced on the net, unfortunately the leaker decided to take the picture using an ancient digital camera and the picture leaves much to the imagination.
What do you think this device is?
Source: [911Sniper via AndroidCentral]
Can you still recall the time when T-Mobile unveiled the first ever Android smartphone way back in 2008? It was also during that time when Google’s app library was in high demand. Since then, Android apps have increased in number substantially over the years. The latest cutting-edge smartphones from HTC, Motorola, Samsung and LG have made Android apps even more popular. At this present moment, Android has reached over 250,000 apps and that will continue to grow for as long as Android exists. Google’s Android Market offers so many apps for just about anything and it makes it confusing for users to decide which apps are the best.
So, without further adieu, here are some of today’s best Android apps under several categories to help you choose the best, must-have apps for your Android phone.
Gas Buddy FreeWith gas prices still consistently rising, the quest for the cheapest nearby gas can be a frustrating and pointless task, especially if you are driving around wasting precious fuel to find a better price just for the heck of saying you did. Gas Buddy uses your location to quickly locate nearby gas stations and immediately give you the best price around. The app gives you a list and a helpful map of all of your options. Never again will you fill up only to drive by a less expensive station five blocks later.
Get it here: Gas Buddy
Weather Channel FreeThis is the weather app you’ll find yourself checking before you even crack the blinds in the morning. Besides offering accurate current conditions with extreme detail down to wind speed, humidity and UV index, the Weather Channel’s app offers hourly and 10-day forecasts for planning ahead, plus advanced features like animated weather radar.
Get it here: Weather Channel
Google Voice FreeWith Google Voice, you get a free number for receiving calls, sending texts, and even receive access to your voicemail and text messages over the Web. With the Android app, you can even keep your true mobile number private by making outgoing calls using your Google Voice number instead. Another handy feature is voicemail transcription, which automatically transcribes your voicemails to text so you can read them like e-mail. Unfortunately, this particular service is only available to US Android users currently.
Get it here: Google Voice
Yahoo has compiled a very good list here.Grab these apps now, what are you waiting for?
It is similar to what you see in Microsoft Windows 7 where the folder shows a preview of the pictures contained in it.
Open your terminal and enter the following set of commands :
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:flozz/flozz$ sudo apt-get update$ sudo apt-get install cover-thumbnailerIf you are using another Linux distribution, you can download the source code from the Cover Thumbnailer website, compile it, and install it on your machine.
Cover Thumbnailer program will store a cache of cropped images of albums in a hidden folder named .thumbnails/ in your home directory. The .thumbnails/ directory is a cache directory created by GNOME when you browse through your folders in Nautilus. It contains thumbnail pictures of images you have previously viewed.And when you visit a particular music folder, the thumbnail of the respective album is shown on top of the folder.
You can access the Cover Thumbnailer preferences via GNOME Menu > System > Preferences > Cover Thumbnailer. Here you can specify more folders that can avail of Cover Thumbnailer's services and set many other options such as clearing the thumbnail cache and more.
Cover Thumbnailer in action in Nautilus
And this is what the people who implemented this awesome feat have to say about this exercise (and I quote).
Many people see a demo like this and assume there are ’smoke and mirrors’ or that we’ve implemented a suspend to disk solution. This is genuinely a cold boot including UBoot (2009-01), Linux kernel (2.6.31-rc7) and Qt Embedded Open Source 4.6.2. We’ve not applied any specific intellectual property but instead spent time analysing where boot delays are coming from and simply optimising them away. The majority of the modifications we make usually fall into the category of ‘removing things that aren’t required’, ‘optimising things that are required’, or ‘taking a new approach to solving problems’ and are tailored very precisely to the needs of the ‘product’.If you want to dig a bit more into the process of achieving the 1 second boot, do check out these slides from the same author.
The basic premise behind this announcement is that it is the quality and usability of the application (to be included) that is important; the choice of toolkit should be irrelevant.
Ubuntu till date have shown a bias towards applications built on Gtk toolkit. Currently, almost all applications that are shipped with Ubuntu are GNOME centric. And if a user needs a Qt based application the recourse is to manually install it from the Ubuntu repository.
However, this is going to change in the future.
Mark Shuttleworth further suggests a procedure (see flowchart below) to decide what applications will go into a default Ubuntu install.
[Source : Mark Shuttleworth]
Switching to Linux is easy for most of us. You just have to download and burn a Linux distribution and boot your computer with it. If the Linux distribution you have chosen is a modern one, then you can finish installing it on your machine in 6 steps or less. However, if you rely on your computer for a living, then you need to do some preparations prior to making the switch. Kim Cascone, an experienced and gifted musician and composer had been using an Apple PowerBook to compose music. When his PowerBook G4 exhibited signs of age, he did a quick fact check and found that he could save as much as $3000 (which includes the machine and the software costs) if he switched to Linux.
While his switch to Linux has not been without glitches, he did overcome them and more importantly, has provided detailed documentation on how he made the switch, and the problems he encountered.
Read Kim Cascone's tale of Switching to Linux - Linux Music Workflow.
Pinguy OS is targeted at lay persons - people who are going to use Linux for the first time, or those who want an out-of-box working OS.
It is currently available to download as a DVD ISO (~1.3 GB size) for the 32 and 64 bit architecture PCs.
I was visibly impressed with the screenshots of Pinguy OS desktop I chanced at various places on the Net that, I decided to download this Linux distribution (essentially built from Ubuntu Minimal CD) and take it for a spin.
I tried out Pinguy OS on my two year old PC which has Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2 GB RAM, 128 MB onboard Graphics memory, and a 320 GB hard disk.
Compiz is the default window manager. However, if your machine is not powerful enough, the Desktop falls back to the fail-safe mode by disabling many special effects.
There are two tools for photo management namely Rapid Photo Downloader and Shotwell.
And for taking screenshots, you have Shutter which can be favourably compared to the professionally used Techsmith product SnagIT.
Fostwire which is a peer to peer program used to share files with others has also been included.
Ubuntu by default ships with a firewall called ufw. However, it is disabled by default. And because it is a command line tool, ordinary users may not be aware of it. Pinguy OS has included a GUI front-end for ufw called Gufw which makes it much easier to enable the ufw firewall and use it.
Then there is Bum (Boot Up Manager) which is a graphical front-end to configure run-levels and start up services, which is also included in Pinguy OS.
Gnome Activity Journal is another software which caught my fancy in Pinguy OS. Gnome Activity Journal is powered by Zeitgeist and provides a time line of all the files you have accessed in the past.
Anybody with a TV card that wants to watch tv on their PC will be able to do so in Pinguy OS.
Some of the notable software in this section found in Pinguy OS are - Brasero and DeVeDe for burning CDs DVDs and BlueRay disks; HandBrake - a DVD transcoder, MPlayer, VLC Media player, Open Shot video editor which allows you to open and edit movies ... just to name a few.
Conky has been spruced up with a custom configuration file which makes it a joy to display on the Desktop. The special effects are vivid without being garish.
All the multimedia codecs are there. So is Oracle Java and Adobe Flash player.
Pinguy OS also helps reduce your carbon footprint because it runs Granola in the background. Granola is a free tool that helps reduce the power consumption of your computer without affecting its performance.
Here is what the Pinguy OS developer has to say about this (and I quote) -
I have no plans to use Gnome Shell or Unity for 11.04. Pinguy OS 11.04 desktop will stay mostly unchanged to how it is now.
Pinguy will follow the Ubuntu 6-month release schedule but will be released a few months after the finale release. This will never be more then two months.
One change that is being thought about is replacing Rhythmbox with Clementine. This is all depending on how polished Clementine is by time 11.04 comes out.
The first time when you press this key combination, GNOME 3 will start recording your Desktop and any movements that happen on it. A red circle is displayed in the bottom right corner of the screen when the recording is in progress. Pressing the same key combination a second time will stop the recording.
After the recording is finished, a file named 'shell-%d%u-%c.webm' is saved in the home directory. In the filename, %d is the date, %u is a string that makes the filename unique, and %c is a counter that is incremented each time a recording is made within a single gnome-shell session. The recording is saved in the WebM format.
WebM is an open media file format designed for the web. WebM files consist of video streams compressed with the VP8 video codec and audio streams compressed with the Vorbis audio codec. The WebM file structure is based on the Matroska media container.
Of course, that doesn't mean you can't minimize or maximize your applications' window in GNOME 3.
If you want the same functionality as what minimize does, then you should group your applications in different Workspaces or use the Activities overview. And if you need to Maximize your applications, you can double-click on the title bar of the application or you can use the drag-to-snap functionality.
GNUCash - for those in the dark - is a Free accounting package which you can use to keep track of your net worth, your income, and expenses. It operates under the double entry accounting principle. If you are not aware of double entry accounting, let me direct you to a wonderful article called "A day in the life of Dave the Dollar" which explains this concept in simple layman terms. In fact, a few years back, it was this very article which persuaded me to start using GNUCash in the first place.
GNUCash team recently released the latest iteration of its flagship product aka version 2.4. GNUCash is a stable and mature product fit to be used not just by home users but also in small businesses. So you won't find that many new features.
However, in version 2.4.0, GNUCash has transitioned to the more advanced WebKit engine to render reports and graphs. In earlier versions, GtkHTML HTML engine was used. Another interesting feature you will find in ver 2.4.0 is the ability to optionally use a database such as Sqlite3, MySQL, or PostgreSQL to store your accounting data instead of the traditional XML based native file format.
The XML-based native file format is adequate for personal finance uses but it does not scale well to the numbers of transactions seen in a typical business setting, and it is not well suited to a multi-user, integrated workflow.
You can download the latest version of GNUCash 2.4.0 from its website. It is available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. If you are using a rolling release Linux distribution (such as PCLinuxOS), you can install it directly from its repository.
I am curious, do you use an accounting software to keep your accounts ? If yes, which do you prefer ?
The big news today - as far as cellular world should be concerned, is the strategic partnership between Nokia and Microsoft to produce smart phones running Windows 7. Nokia says it will adopt Windows Phone as its primary smart phone strategy. Meaning, Symbian OS is going to be relegated to history. And MeeGo project on Nokia smart phones would be in limbo.
Thinking back, my first cell phone was a Nokia. At that time, Nokia was a dominant player in the Indian cell phone market. However, in the years that followed, Samsung and many other players have succeeded in grabbing a share of the pie (obviously at Nokia's expense).
So much so that, in India at present, if you go to any mobile shop to buy a cell phone, chances are you will be deluged with Samsung devices and not Nokia's. Currently, even I use a Samsung cell phone (though not a smart one). Verily Samsung offers more variety to its customers than Nokia ever has.
In the future, it is a given that mobile devices are going to permeate our lives even more. And smart phones are going to replace their dumb counterparts. Be that as it may, one of the best ways for Nokia to reclaim its market share is through innovation - by rolling out smart phones powered by its own homegrown OS. MeeGo, which is being developed on a Linux kernel shows a lot of promise. For one, there won't be a dearth of applications on MeeGo as most applications that run on Linux will run on MeeGo as well.
Sleeping with Microsoft is not going to turn Nokia's fortunes for the better any more than if it were to embrace an open source OS to power its smart phones.
For instance,
Windows OS is closed source and proprietary.It entails paying a royalty to Microsoft. And that additional cost will be transferred to the customer. Nokia will be subjugated to play a lesser role in the smart phone arena - the terms being dictated by Microsoft.And Nokia risks alienating its customers who might move to embrace products from its competitors which are powered by an open source OS.
Not surprisingly, this official announcement by Nokia and Microsoft has invited widespread criticism as indicated by over 460 comments made there.
On a personal level, I was looking forward to buying a MeeGo powered Nokia cell phone when it was released. I guess my wait is going to be futile.
Ben Simon has put together a nice compilation of the 11 things a potential Emacs user should be aware of before he starts using the editor.
So without further ado, the following are the 11 Emacs Concepts that a newbie should master.
Killing and YankingBuffer switchingDynamic AbbreviationsParenthesis ModesSpell CheckingUndoNarrowingIncremental SearchKeyboard MacrosDired Mode, and Version ControlAs an aside, did you know that Emacs has built-in games ? Well, I have played Tetris in Emacs. You can accomplish so much using Emacs that some die-hard fans of Emacs call it an operating system.
The notable enhancements you will find in KDE 4.6.0 are as follows -
A new Activities system has been introduced in the KDE Plasma Workspaces. This helps you to demarcate your activities on computer into different categories like Work, Home, Recreation, Web browsing, etc.Dolphin file manager gets Faceted Browsing - This allows Dolphin to give you better search results by reading the meta data of files.KDE games have been spruced up. Gwenview (The image viewer) and KSnapshot (The screen capture tool) have received Social Networking capabilities. This means you will be able to share your snapshots and pictures to Flickr, Twitter, Facebook etc from within these tools.KDE in 4.6.0 gains "Mobile build target" which allows for easier deployment of applications on mobile platforms.
As of now experimental builds of KDE applications for various mobile platforms like MeeGo, MS Windows Mobile and Symbian can be found on the web but are currently unsupported.
With the mobile build target capabilities gained by KDE applications, this is bound to change for the better. 
You can read the official announcement from KDE for the full details.
And if you are itching to try out KDE 4.6.0, I would strongly recommend a Linux distribution which has a rolling release because these Linux distributions bring changes far more quicker than traditional Linux distributions which follow a 6 month release schedule.Arch Linux, and PCLinuxOS support a rolling release.
Another really nice feature found in Debian 6.0 is the introduction of what is called "Debian Pure Blends".
Debian pure blends are customized Debian images which cater to a specific user profile. For example, if you wish to install Debian for your kids, you could download Debian-Jr which is specifically customized with children in mind. Similarly there are other pure blends such as Debian Med, Debian Science, Skolelinux and so on.
The Debian installer has also seen minor improvements in the form of easier language and keyboard selections, partitioning disk for RAID, Logical Volumes, and Encrypted systems. And the installer supports a whopping 70 languages.
You can download Debian 6.0 via BitTorrent, jigdo, or HTTP.
[Source : Debian News Release ]
Firefox 4 has been downloaded over 7 million times since its official release. This new avatar of the popular web browser from Mozilla stables makes extensive use of HTML 5 to render web pages. It also uses hardware acceleration when displaying HTML 5 pages - drawing on the power of a computer's graphics processor to improve the speed of complex visuals.
Less clutter - Firefox 4 has been re-designed to make it less intrusive, allowing for a much richer web browsing experience.
Panorama - It is intelligent tab grouping at its best. You can group tabs containing similar web pages and switch between the groups. Just press "Ctrl + Alt + E" to move into Panorama mode.
Private browsing - Now you can surf to your hearts content knowing that cookies are not stored on your machine thus giving you a semblance of privacy.
Improved security - Firefox 4 is not vulnerable to cross site scripting attacks as it supports HTTP Strict Transport Security, or HSTS.
Integrated Add-ons, Plugins, Appearance ,and Extensions dialog that opens in its own tab. You can install, uninstall, and manage all your extensions, plugins, and addons from this dialog.
Head over to Mozilla website to download Firefox 4.
Choosing an appropriate library for your software is a significant first step to developing your product.
And Qt is a good choice for the simple reason that it is a cross-platform application and UI framework for developing once, and deploying across Windows, Mac, Linux/X11, embedded Linux, Windows CE, Symbian and Maemo without rewriting the source code.
Currently, Qt in Education Course Material page has around around 10 lectures that cover the basics of Qt in addition to some special topics. The idea is to provide the teachers the necessary tools - such as PowerPoint slides, notes, exercises etc which will make their job a lot easier in teaching Qt to their students.
The lectures lasting 90 minutes each consist of notes for the teacher and exercises for the students. And the lecture is provided in multiple formats such as Microsoft PPT files, OpenOffice.org Odp, and PDF.
You can download all the lectures together at once (45 MB download) or download individual lectures.
The Linux Foundation has also released this nice infographic which depicts the major milestones of Linux development. 
Also watch this cool YouTube video that explains the History of Linux in caricature.
Assuming you are passionate about Linux, why not pledge your support for Linux by featuring the following web badge on your website? 
This is a nice way of supporting the Linux cause. Don't you think?
Take a full feature tour of XFCE 4.8 and view the changelog to know more.
GNOME 3.0 desktop is designed in such a way that it can run on a variety of modern computing devices including PCs, tablets, cell phones, and what not. The defining technology for GNOME 3.0 user experience is the GNOME Shell.
GNOME Shell takes advantage of the capabilities of modern graphics hardware and introduces a unique user interface that makes computing simple for the lay person.
For example, try moving your mouse pointer to the top left corner of your screen and GNOME Shell puts you into the Activities Overview. The Activities Overview helps you open new applications and also switch between open windows.
In fact, you can easily open any application or manage open app windows from within GNOME 3.0 with no more than two clicks of your mouse. In many cases, a single click of your mouse would suffice.
GNOME 3.0 desktop has an integrated search facility some what similar in functionality to Gnome Do that allows you to launch applications, switch windows, and open recent documents and settings. Why, you can even search Wikipedia and Google from within GNOME 3.0 Activities view.
Here are a couple of GNOME 3.0 screenshots -
After trying out a GNOME 3 Live CD, I feel the GNOME team has indeed struck gold. The three years' of planning and development culminating in the GNOME 3 release lives up to its promises of providing a distraction free, productive computing experience to the end user.
You can download Live CDs of GNOME 3 from its website. OpenSUSE and Fedora images have been provided.
GNOME 3, due for release in April 2011, is going to be revolutionary. The Desktop is designed to reduce distraction and interruption and to put the user in control. Messaging has been seamlessly integrated into the desktop. An improved file manager, redesigned work spaces, and better accessibility are some of the notable improvements. The GNOME Project has published a new website Gnome3.org showcasing the GNOME 3 Desktop environment.
If you are really interested in trying out GNOME 3 just now,you can do so by compiling it yourself using GNOME's JHBuild sandboxing tool.
Underneath, Jolicloud OS is powered by a Linux kernel. Now the company has drawn out a plan of making its apps accessible to a broader set of computer users. The idea is to synchronize the Jolicloud user interface to the cloud so your desktop would be accessible from anywhere, just by using a Web browser.
With that in mind, and to avoid confusion, the company has renamed its OS from Jolicloud to 'Joli OS'. More over, the Jolicloud web app will be made available on a variety of platforms including Chrome web store, Firefox 4, Safari 5, iPad, and Android.
[Source : Jolicloud blog]
MeeGo is an open source operating system project for mobile devices, hosted by the Linux Foundation - a non-profit consortium dedicated to fostering the growth of Linux.
MeeGo will run on multiple types of devices ranging from cell phones, tablets, netbooks, in-vehicle infotainment, TVs, and so on. It is powered by Linux.
The following Youtube video provides a glimpse of the MeeGo user interface.
If you are a developer and wish to develop applications for MeeGo you should first download the MeeGo SDK suite. It consists of the MeeGo OS, Emulator, GNU Toolchain and so on. The SDK is available for Windows and Linux.
Once you have developed your app, you should submit it to the Intel Atom Developer program. Your application if it passes the Intel guidelines, will be showcased at the Intel AppUp Center where you can earn revenue by selling your app.
Intel is pulling all stops to attract developers to MeeGo. This include a comprehensive collection of information and support provided in the form of Videos, Wikis, Forums, Mailing lists, Blogs, et al.
One of the frequent uses of Sed is in text substitution. For example, if you want to change all the occurrences of the word "train" with the word "car" in your file "myfile.txt", you can do it easily using sed as follows.
$ cat myfile.txt | sed 's/train/car/g' -
For a comprehensive tutorial on sed, check out the Introduction and Tutorial of sed by Bruce Barnett.
But teaching sed to netizens is not what this post is about. Rather, it is to present two all time classic games that have been developed entirely using Sed.
So without further ado, here are two classic games that you can download and play on your Linux machine - - Sed Tetris and SedSokoban.
This book is an easy introduction to this popular application.
