Desktop Apps for Online Storage: Ubuntu One, Windows SkyDrive, and ASUS WebStorage Part 2

Windows SkyDrive Love or hate Windows 8, Windows SkyDrive's improvements makes it a strong and viable competitor to popular services such as Dropbox. The online web interface is clean and extremely simple to use. Many users have decried integration with the newly dubbed "Microsoft Account" but these same users forget that Microsoft's all-encompassing account has a smaller influence compared to Google...

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openSUSE 12.2 is just around the corner!

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Five Superheroes that endorse Linux Part 2

Spider-Man (Happy 50th Anniversary!) CAMERON (Summer Glau)***Cameron just revealed that Skynet was built by Apple (they sued all the companies and their iPads/iPods started taking over the world. . . ...

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Five Superheroes that endorse Linux Part 1

Category: Techtoday A recent article on Wired.com annoyingly proclaimed Linux as dead and buried due to OSX. The forum discussions were even worst as Apple users heaped praise on their OS of choice and urinated on both Windows and Linux distributions for being difficult and unusable. As a longtime Linux user and self-proclaimed Linux evangelist, I called on my friends from high places (particularly Peter...

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Linux on Film: True Blood Season 4 Episode 6

Category: Techtoday Although this is a long shot at best, there's a very brief scene with Bill Compton making a Skype call using a desktop in his home office. The workstation is clearly not an iMac and the absence of the Dock (and the use of a standard mouse and keyboard) is pretty obvious. However, the mounted drive and the icons indicate a Linux-based distribution. Skype, which is recognizable through the...

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Samsung vs. Apple: No opinion

Category: Techtoday The patent battle between tech heavyweights Samsung and Apple was a big deal in many ways. Will it drastically change the landscape of consumer electronics as we know it? How will it affect the fallen titan Microsoft and other manufacturers who intend to compete with Apple? There are so many aspects to the case that is downright controversial, including a questionable jury, the nature of...

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Desktop Apps for Online Storage: Ubuntu One, Windows SkyDrive, and ASUS WebStorage Part 1

Category: Techtoday Should you use desktop online storage apps or should you just access the web interface? Although physical storage is still superior to cloud storage in a lot of ways, there are plenty of reasons to take advantage of the free online storage provided by many companies. Even casual users (like myself), can take advantage of these benefits: Uploading documents and images in lieu of...

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Checking your EPUB with ePubChecker

Category: Techwriter So you've finished your EPUB and you want to test it. However, you're not comfortable with working on the command line or using text editors and XML validators. Although it's often much more effective to test an EPUB using the hardware and software of the target end-user, validating an EPUB just like any XML or web document ensures a wider compatibility across devices and platforms. ...

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Self-publishing an ebook and the Chicago Manual of Style

When using InDesign, DocBook, or even Sigil to create ebooks, it's always good practice to follow a style guide. Your product will not only look more professional, but saves publishers in Amazon or iTunes store from requesting you to follow a certain structure or edit your manuscript. The classic Chicago Manual of Style is one of the most evolved resources for publishing a book or journal with its attention to detail...

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Tech Flashback: Nintendo Power

Category: Techtoday With Nintendo Power ending their publishing run, there are people all around the world who are heaving a nostalgic sigh as one of their long-cherished memories is finally nailed shut in the coffin of time. My brothers and I actually used the "Family Computer" and not the American NES in the 80s. The 8-bit games were the same though the Family Computer profited from various revisions...

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Captions and Easy Callouts with Corel Draw

Category: Techwriter Complex technical illustrations designed using CAD software require judiciously placed callouts, requiring precise tools from CAD software to achieve visual and mathematical consistency. For technical documentation for a more general audience, however, callouts are a necessary evil that occasionally ruin a beautifully rendered illustration, art, or drawing with misplaced lines and poorly...

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Toucan, SyncToy, and File Syncing Freeware in Windows

Surprisingly, it's difficult to find a simple and stable utility to sync files across folders in Windows. My personal choice for file syncing, Linux's Grsync, was ported to Windows but didn't work out as well as the original.  It's no secret that syncing files between external storage and networks is quickly being supplanted by cloud storage/services (e.g. Dropbox.com and Live Mesh) and cheap NAS hardware (e.g....

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The Two Sides to Wikipedia - Fact and Entertainment

If you ever, ever, want to lose credibility in a discussion, technical or otherwise. Quote Wikipedia. In fact, if you encounter any review, article, or blog that begins with a reference to text found in Wikipedia, click fast and away from that URL - as far away as the Internet universe can take you.   Now, don't get me wrong. I read through Wikipedia as much as anyone else. It's educational and most of...

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Using Hidden Characters to Organize text in InDesign

Category: Techwriter InDesign is not a word processor. It is much, much more powerful than a word processor and learning how to use the Paragraph tools and understanding how it handles text takes time. InDesign, contrary to a new user's belief, doesn't just involve pasting text and images and moving frames around. In this short tutorial, we'll look at how hidden characters behave in InDesign and...

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Online Storage, Clean Installs, and backing up your Spank Bank

Category: Techtoday Online storage, one of the first manifestations of "the cloud," is unavoidable. If you have an iOS or MacOSX device, you have iCloud. If you have a Microsoft product such as Windows 7 or Office 2010, you have SkyDrive and LiveMesh. A Google account merits you tons of storage space via Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Docs. The most popular cloud storage service today is arguably Dropbox,...

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