Tech Flashback: What if Keanu Reeves in "Speed" (1994) had a Smartphone? Part 2

Category: Techtoday   Ever heard of Google Maps?  Or at least Bing Maps?     7.  Wouldn't an iPad be handy just about now?     8.  Keanu probably thought his police-issue wireless headset was pretty cool then, but look at the size of that earpiece!  Too bad there wasn't any bluetooth then . . . or Dr. Dre Beats.     9.  Wow, huge phone.  How many apps does...

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Grsync for Windows - the Linux version works better

Category: Techtoday Creating a port for an application is a difficult task.  Successful cross-platform applications, such as Mozilla Thunderbird, uTorrent, and Google Chrome, benefit from a long and well-supported development period.  Grsync, a GUI for the excellent rsync, is a useful and capable backup and sync application in Linux.  Having used the application in openSUSE, Mandriva, and...

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Tips for a Technical Writer Part 2

Categories: Techwriter   9. Have a backup plan in case  you can't open a file format, especially if it's a legacy one.  Did I mention Linux has a plethora of open source applications supporting almost every file format out there?   10. Unless you're a freelance writer, remember that your work will pass through several hands – project managers, dozens of translators, editors, assistant editors, engineers, proofreaders,...

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Is the Ubuntu Site down on the release of 12.04 Precise Pangolin?

Category: Linux   When Linux resources are down, such as when Mandriva's repositories and openSUSE's mirrors weren't working properly, it could mean that there's a deluge of Linux users scrambling to download a new release or application.   Distrowatch and Wikipedia.org marks today as the official release of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.  Although I'm not quite ready to move on to the next Ubuntu release, I attempted to access...

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Review: SMPlayer for Linux - Video Player Feature Highlights

Category: Linux SMPlayer, one of the best video and music players on Linux, works because it focuses on playing videos/music and adding useful tools for the cinephile.  Unlike the popular and powerful VLC player, SMPlayer isn't overloaded with advanced (and occasionally complicated) features like transcoding, video streaming, and video capture.  Some of the highlights of the MPlayer-based SMPlayer...

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Congratulations Linus Torvalds!

Category: Techtoday   What a year for Linux!  Not only did openSUSE and Linux celebrate their anniversaries, Linux-creator Linus Torvalds is being honored by the Technology Academy of Finland for his underrated contribution to open source and computing.  Web pioneer Sir Tim Berners-Lee won the Millenium Technology Prize in 2004 and Torvalds is one of two recipients this coming June 13 in Helsinki, Finland.   He joins...

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QuickFix: Line Breaks and Paragraph Breaks in InDesign

Category: Techwriter   Line Breaks (Shift+Return) and paragraph breaks (Return/Enter) are both types of carriage returns.  They are, however, handled differently in varying environments and each serves a different purpose.  Web designers, for instance, discourage the use of Shift+Enter when writing and laying out text and web objects.  It generally makes for awkward and inconsistent code.  In Microsoft Word, some...

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Torrents in China Part 2

Category: Techtoday   Understanding Xunlei   There are many secrets to downloading media in many countries, even in "restricted" places like Chuugoku.  Xunlei is one of the most popular websites/software providers in the Middle Kingdom.  Xunlei Thunder 7.x is an all-in-one manager for P2P sharing, torrents, and accelerated file downloading.   The interface is in Chinese, but even those without the ability to...

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Not-surprising: Taiwan-Chinese hardware companies test using Linux

It's not earth-shattering news and most Linux veterans would probably exclaim "D-uh," but I was genuinely excited when I found out a very prominent Taiwan-Chinese hardware device manufacturer runs routine quality control tests using RHEL 6.2, Ubuntu Oneiric Ocelot, openSUSE 12.1, and Fedora Verne - all very new releases from each Linux team.  Surprisingly, although the company tests hardware using both RHEL and ...

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Trying out Windows 8 Consumer Preview (from a Linux LiveCD perspective)

Categories: Techtoday   I was thrilled when Microsoft released Windows 8 for consumer testing a few years back and like thousands of other users, ran the new OS through its paces.  Although the Windows 8 Consumer Preview has been out for a long, long time now, it took me awhile to give it a try on my Lenovo IdeaPad Z360.    The experience is very slick and the setup file checks your hardware, providing a list of compatible...

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Mandriva: A Call to Arms

Category: Mandriva   News regarding the fate of Mandriva has not been coming hard and fast despite the failing fortunes of this once popular Linux distribution.  However, a recent corporate blog post by current Mandriva COO Jean-Manuel Croset reveals the uncertain future of Mandriva Linux.  The COO humbly requested for a response from the Mandriva community, citing the the community@mandriva.com address as a contact point....

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Linux on Film: Chuck Season 4 - "Chuck vs. Agent X"

Category: Linux   Although "Chuck" has plenty of episodes displaying Windows products and prominently features the iPhone on many episodes (and a sad reference to the Microsoft Zune), there was only one episode which clearly referenced Linux.  However, a brief but obvious Root terminal is displayed in the Season 4 episode, "Chuck vs. Agent X."  The commands are fictional but Unix-like with technical-sounding terms like...

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Happy birthday SUSE!

SUSE celebrates its 20th anniversary this year and although its parent company Novell (now owned by  Attachmate) has experienced its share of ups and down commercially and with the open source community, SUSE's success is still a bright light for Linux users everywhere.   OpenSUSE, the free Linux distribution that is the base for SUSE Linux Enterprise, also continues to be a popular distribution for Linux users and is currently...

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Tech Flashback: What if Keanu Reeves in "Speed" (1994) had a Smartphone? Part 1

Category: Techtoday   The ex-Spider-Man comic book artist and Image creator Todd McFarlane eviscerated the movie "Speed" in an editorial in "Spawn" almost two decades ago as a ludicrous and insensible movie.   Sure, the huge fail with the flying bus over the unfinished highway was a pathetic display of movie physics but all in all I actually liked "Speed" when it came out in 1994.  Keanu Reeves, despite improving...

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BestBuy: Death by Apples, Amazons, and Customers?

Category: Techtoday   When a customer needed a particular piece of hardware, cable, or component that didn't come with a product, technical support guys (which I was for a number for years) would recommend purchasing the needed item from either CompUsa, Good Guys, Circuit City, or Best Buy.  Among the four retailers, only Best Buy has survived.    I've only purchased a handful of items from Best Buy over the years. ...

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QuickFix: Frozen Palettes in Adobe InDesign CS2 for Mac

Category: Techwrite   If you're still running Adobe InDesign CS2 for Mac and frequently encountering frozen docks and palettes that won't move and option buttons that won't open, the SHIFT+TAB or TAB shortcuts will "dislodge" the palettes from their position and return functionality.  The SHIFT+TAB hides all visible docks except for the Book palette and the Toolbox.  The TAB shortcut, on the other hand, leaves only the pages...

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Tips for the New Technical Writer Part 1

Category: TechwriteHave you applied for that technical writer job yet?  Here's a bit of unsolicited advice for getting started and keeping that new technical writer job:1. Know where all the images, templates, and resources are kept.  Take note of every FTP, remote, or local server the company has (whether you have official access to it or not).  One day, you'll have to search for something in places everyone else doesn't know...

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Heading to China? Install Skype or Google Talk before Flying out

If you're planning to visit the Middle Kingdom but plan to chat or make phone calls using Skype or Google Talk, install the software before taking your trip.  Attempting to access the Skype website might be a daunting experience for some users as it defaults to a Chinese site that is hardly ideal for international users.        Obviously, there are other alternatives to downloading the application through other...

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QuickFix: Windows Live Mail crashes when Inserting an Image

Categories: Techtoday   Windows Live Mail 2011 is one of the better Windows Live products and is a great alternative to Thunderbird.  Users, however, may experience an issue with inserting images into an e-mail message.  After switching to the Insert tab and clicking Single photo, Live Mail will stop working for a few seconds.  An error message will appear informing the user that the application will shutdown and relaunch....

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Editing EPUB using Sigil and Calibre in Linux Part 1

Category: Linux Programmers and hard coders may scoff at WYSIWIG applications like Kompozer, Dreamweaver, and even Lyx (LaTeX).  However, there are plenty of users out there that benefit from exceptional applications like Sigil - a popular editor that makes EPUB creation and modification simple and efficient.  With Apple supporting EPUB and the exploding adoption of tablets, there is little doubt EPUB will...

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Torrents in China Part 1

Category: Techtoday Although it might seem obvious that torrents work in the bootleg-loving Middle Kingdom, there's the question of the Great Firewall stopping any such type of file-sharing.  The answer is yes it works and there is every likelihood that some of the movies or videos sold on the street come from that very source.  However, many expatriates have reported complaints regarding the lackluster...

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