Quickfix: Install the latest Skype on Debian, Ubuntu, and openSUSE while in China

If you bought a new ultraportable or laptop while traveling or visiting China and decided to switch over to Linux and install Skype while you were still in the country, you're going to find yourself on the Skype China Official Site web page if you attempt to visit Skype.com to download the latest version of Skype for Linux. There is an English link to make the page comprehensible but Skype is tightly controlled by Chinese regulators. This prevents you from accessing most of the Skype web pages including the link to Skype for Linux. Regardless if you clicked the hyperlink from Microsoft.com or third-party websites like Download.com to download Skype, you end up in the same Skype Chinese web page.

Thankfully, the same approach that allows users to access a few blocked sites in China also allows you to download the latest version of Skype for Ubuntu, Debian, and openSUSE. This is using a translations service such as Google Translate or Bing Translator.

To download Skype for Linux in China:

1. Visit the Linux Skype blog site.

2. Scroll to the link Download Linux for Skype 4.1. Do not click on the link or you'll open the Chinese Skype web site.

3. Right-click and copy the link address for Skype for Linux. Open Google Translate and paste the link in the text box. Select a target language other than English, such as Spanish or French. Click Translate. And then click the new link provided by Google Translate.

4. The translated page will have a download link for Skype for Linux 4.1.

5. Select the .rpm or .deb file for your Linux distribution.

Users of Ubuntu can actually install Skype from Ubuntu Software Center. However, I've had issues with that version in recent versions of Ubuntu Unity and Lubuntu. Windows users won't have any problems with the Skype version provided by the Chinese site though if they prefer they can still download from the U.S. site using the same steps provided.

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QuickFix: Extracting RAR (.rar) files in Linux

If your workflow involves RAR archives, then you've no doubt had issues extracting .rar files in your Linux distribution. The file compression standard .rar, which competed with the more popular .zip when it was first developed, is proprietary. Most (if not all) Linux distributions will not have the necessary software packages to support and extract .rar by default although the option to compress files to RAR is sometimes displayed in the file manager (it's visible in Dolphin but not in PCMANFM for instance). Users would have to install the non-free unrar or a free open source rar package in order to support this format. As an alternative, you can install unarchivers such as the commandline-based P7zip that directly support RAR.

To install RAR support in openSUSE 12.2:

1. Click ALT+F2 and search for Install. Click Install/Remove Software.

2. In Yast2's software management window, search for unrar or rar or p7zip. (P7zip also has a corresponding package for .rar files).

3. Select the package and click Apply.

4. Using Dolphin file manager, select the files to compress to .rar. Right-click the selection, click Compress and then click As RAR Archive. To extract files from a RAR archive, right-click and click Extract and select the destination.

To install RAR support in Lubuntu:

1. Click ALT+F2 and type LXTerminal.

2. Type sudo apt-get install unrar. As an alternative, you can also search for the package in Ubuntu Software Center (installed with Lubuntu) or Synaptic Package Manager (installed separately).

The file archive format RAR is popular for use with Comic Book Archives in the .cbr format. Change the .rar extension to .cbr and you have a .cbr file for use with a smartphone or tablet. However, .cbz is always an alternative, which is just a zipped file with a renamed file suffix. However, for compressing files, documents, and photos, consider using the more Linux-friendly .tar.gz or the popular and efficient 7z format.

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What is your Online Footprint?

Category: TechToday

What seemed like a long time ago, I found myself looking for an English tutoring job shortly after surviving the dreaded "Y2K" (which was very much like this year's Mayan "apocalyptic" event). I ended up being interviewed by a smug French expatriate that was too comfortable in his cushy chair and huge city view. Suffice to say, it wasn't a very pleasant experience with the Frenchman telling me midway through the interview that I shouldn't use "canned" answers (what he failed to understand was that there are people as dull as I am! And I hadn't even begun to tell him about Linux!). Ten minutes before the 20-minute French inquisition was over, a mischievous smile passed over his face and he made a sly threat saying: "What would happen if I searched for you online?" With a woosh of his leather swivel chair (which was probably more expensive than my rent), he turned to his HP desktop and started typing my name.

Herve Villachaize was a lot nice than that HR guy. Screen cap from The Man with the Golden Gun.

Now, this was 2001. There was no Twitter and the term "social networking" had yet to be invented. Yahoo was still popular and had no idea about the dire straits it would end up in a decade later. Tablets and smartphones weren't affordable yet and the church of Apple was still in its infancy. My French interviewer tried to look intimidating as he searched online for any instance of my name online but he was obviously disappointed. All he found out when he searched for yours truly was that I was a member of a now-defunct Sherlock Holmes online club.

Most people probably won't have an interviewer like that Frenchman, who searched for my name during the interview itself. A recruiter interested in hiring you probably already searched for you online either through a fairly advanced proprietary search application or method or through rudimentary data mining. The Internet has become much more sophisticated in its ability to search but it's more about people's habits that have made searching for persons easier and more comprehensive. In fact, general job-related sites like MSN Careers and LinkedIn encourage that you have a strong online presence. There are also hundreds of sites out there that offer to build and display your online portfolio so you can get discovered. And there of course those people who just mindlessly share themselves online, whether it's in the form of their ego-stroking photos or inane chatter.

Of course, when it comes to photos there's perfectly nothing wrong if you're Vietnamese and extremely cute.

People still shake their heads when I tell them I don't have Twitter and Facebook. Some of them think I'm just pulling their leg or being antisocial. I'd actually prefer people read my contributions to the openSUSE wiki or read my tutorials in Unsolicited But Offered than see photos of me climbing hills in Sheshan Park or wearing my Indiana Jones leather jacket. Do I want people to find me on the Internet? Not really, but even with my size 6 1/2 online footprint I'm pretty easy to find. Do I want people to find out what I've contributed to the Internet and what I can do? Definitely, especially if it would get me a job or an opportunity to help someone out.

Going Commando

The Internet is a communal place for socializing, building bridges, creating, and entertaining. Your online footprint should reflect your motives for being on the Internet. Just because services like Tumblr and Google+ exist and are free, it doesn't mean you should have an account. Every weekend, I debate with myself whether I should close down my old Yahoo e-mail and my more recent LinkedIn account. Like most people when the Internet grew in the 90s, I signed up to Yahoo for Geocities and e-mail services, but with Geocities dead and their e-mail services as attractive to spam as dung is to mosquitoes I don't see the point of keeping it up. I had no hesitations deleting my other Yahoo account based in Australia, which had the distinct advantage of having POP service for its users back in the day.

The decision to delete ties to LinkedIn is a bit less clear. LinkedIn's relevance in most industries is debatable, but some people swear by it and insist you're a dinosaur without it. I'm pretty sure hundreds of professionals have been successful through its services, but I have a notion that it works in the same principle as other social networking services - you'd have to actively maintain it and socialize ad infinitum.

I'd rather write a few more entries about troubleshooting Linux distributions or even about the hazards of being interviewed by a Frenchman armed with a search engine.

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External Desktop Hard Drives, Backup Software, and Linux Part 2

Category: Linux

Seagate Registration

As a Linux user, I'm not really bothered about purchasing an external hard drive that only has either Windows or MacOSX bundled software. In fact, the reason why I bought the Seagate Expansion HDD model was to avoid the extra dollars/RMB I'd have to shell out for the BackUp Plus software. What put me off somewhat, however, is Seagate including a quick registration utility that is only for Windows. It's certainly easy to just visit their website but couldn't they have at least just included an HTML file instead of an .exe file to trigger registration?

Drive Diagnostics

After checking the file system of the Seagate Expansion Drive and registering over at Seagate, the next step was to run a basic SMART diagnostic test.Ubuntu/Lubuntu's Disk Utility can run several surface and sector tests on hard drives and provides SMART information. SMART has been historically used to check the performance and status of drives and has been used as a standard for some time now (Dell used to use it to determine whether an old Dimension desktop's hard drive needed replacing).

To run a hard drive diagnostic utility in Lubuntu:

1. On the Lubuntu main menu, click Preferences and then Disk Utility.

2. On the Storage Devices list, select the Seagate Expansion HDD or your new hard drive.

3. Click SMART data.

4. If you want to run a basic HDD self-test, click Run Self-test.

At the end of the test, Disk Utility will provide a quick summary of details regarding the hard drive. Now, there are plenty of other hardcore hard drive diagnostic utilities in Linux with some of them integrated with file-recovery tools, but Disk Utility is fine for checking out a newly bought hard drive and is preinstalled with most Ubuntu-based distributions. I know it's a bit overkill so soon after purchasing the product but you can't be too careful when you'll be using the drive to back up precious data. Plus, if a disk diagnostic utility does catch bad sectors, you can quickly take advantage of your warranty and replace the drive.

The Disk Utility concluded that my new Seagate Expansion Desktop hard drive was healthy and error free.

The Sound of Silence

One of the sounds that makes the blood of tech guys run cold is the clicking of a hard drive. The clicking of a hard drive is almost as accurate as a SMART test when it comes to determining hard drive failure. However, like SMART, it's not 100% accurate. My Toshiba portable hard drive started clicking almost a year ago. The clicking occurs when the Toshiba was plugged into a USB port with minimal or no voltage. For example, my old ASUS EEEPC 1000H has three USB ports but only two of them provide enough power to keep my Toshiba going. As long as I kept the Toshiba plugged into a good USB port, no clicking could be heard and the hard drive worked fine. However, when the Toshiba did make that blood-curdling racket, it wouldn't work. There's no doubt hardware heaven awaits the Toshiba soon, but right now it works fine with the right USB port.

The Seagate Expansion HDD is superbly quiet. The Buffalo Drivestation on my worktable is also a silent worker but there's an initial whirring sound and soft click when I plug the power. The Expansion, on the other hand, just had a blue LED to indicate it was on and working. In fact, my Lenovo Ideapad's fan (which switches on when the NVIDIA chip is running), was noisier than my Seagate, Toshiba, and Buffalo drives combined (except when the Toshiba makes like a cricket).

A Quick Note on Backing Up

Since I was migrating to a different dual-boot Windows 7/Linux setup, I had to clean out both my Windows 7 partition and Ubuntu Unity installation. I was planning to replace Ubuntu Unity for openSUSE so it was due for removal but Windows 7, which takes longer to set up, was next in line for a Clonezilla image backup. To make the clone as small as possible, Windows 7 had to be free from unnecessary applications and personal data. For Ubuntu Unity, the most important areas to backup for my system were:

1. Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome bookmarks (if you haven't synced them online)
2. Thunderbird e-mail (just copy the profiles folder)
3. VirtualBox OVF/OVA files (CTRL+E to export the virtual OS as an appliance)
4. Downloads and work/personal folders

When I backup Linux distributions, I generally don't backup the whole Home folder - the parent folder that contains Documents, Downloads, Music, and other preset folders. I normally keep my work and personal files all in one folder (Downloads) to make backing up simple and less confusing when I end up searching for a file. I follow the same practice in Windows 7, eschewing the whole Users folder for just one folder.

For my Windows 7 partition, I had to backup the following:

1. Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer 10 bookmarks (bookmark managers on both browsers have the option to export to HTML)
2. Thunderbird e-mail
3. VirtualBox OVF/OVA files
4. Select iTunes Media folders, particularly the applications and podcasts folder (I'm a fan of BBC's podcast documentaries).
5. OneNote Backups folder (OneNote 2010 saves backups in the AppData folder or to a specified location)
6. Downloads and work/personal folders

External Desktop Hard Drives, Backup Software, and Linux Part 3: Clonezilla, Grsync, SyncToy and LuckyBackup

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Take clippings and pictures using the iPad's screenshot

Category: Techtoday

Why install a separate app for making notes and clippings in iPad when the iPad's screenshot feature is enough? The iPad's high-resolution display makes it ideal for making captures of more than just installed apps. If you're reading a magazine, you can take full-page screenshots of workouts, movies, pin-ups (which you can use as wallpaper for your iPad), and interesting pages or articles in a website or PDF. Unlike bookmarks in a PDF, browser, or note-taking app, you can always refer to the page/photo/capture just by opening the Photos app in iPad.


Screenshot for a Men's Health page in Adobe PDF Reader for iOS.


Screenshot from an Esquire magazine featuring Mila Kunis. The screenshot's resolution is high enough to be used as wallpaper on the iPad.

The steps to take a screenshot in an iPad is the same as the steps on an iPhone or iPod. Hold down the lock button for a few seconds and press the iPad's button. The screenshot will be saved on the Photos folder, which you can later refer to or download to your PC or Mac using iTunes.


A James Bond novel ad by Amazon.com screenshot from an Esquire magazine.


Movie screenshot (with app controls) from Australia in Flexplayer for iOS.

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MS Word Web App Review: Real-world Testing from a Linux System

There are many ways to sync documents and notes online. Dropbox is arguably the most popular cross-platform online storage service for syncing files anywhere. There's Evernote, Zoho Office, and Google Docs for both document creation and file syncing. All of the above have achieved a great degree of success for home and enterprise users.

I've been spending a lot of time examining both Microsoft Windows 8 and Microsoft's complementary online services, SkyDrive and Outlook recently. Although I'm primarily a Linux user at home, I find myself logging in to SkyDrive and Outlook often for e-mail and storage. Frankly, the service is pretty good and worth considering even if you are tied to Google's ecosystem.

The online version of Word has been around for awhile, but I never found any use for it. I paid for a a retail version of Microsoft Office Home and Student 2010 a few years back when I purchased my Windows 7 system and although I don't regret it, I realize that I haven't been using it as much as I should be. My word processing and spreadsheet needs are minimal (LibreOffice is neglected in my Linux machines too). Most of my projects make use of basic text editors such as Gedit, Kwriter, Bluefish in Linux and Notepad+++ in Windows.

Word processors are a dime a dozen in Linux, MacOSX, and Windows, so I was curious about what MS Word Web App had to offer. I pulled up a few foreign language translations I've been working on and uploaded them to SkyDrive. In Lubuntu, I launched Google Chrome and went to work. After a few hours, I grinned. If you're looking for on-the-go text editing and you're both a Linux and Windows user, Word App is worth a try:

• Forget about what the reviews say about Word Web App being "crippled" - you don't need all the features of Word. "Experts" complained about the lack of features in Word App. Obviously, they aren't very focused on productivity. A popular trend in word processing applications today is a focus on distraction-free writing. Would-be Amazon self-publishing authors want to write, not focus on styles, columns, and tables. This is what Word App's frugal features have to offer - distraction-free writing Microsoft style. If you're an aspiring author then Word App is a good choice especially if your publisher requires the .docx format. Plus, all the basic formatting options are there when you need them.

• Dependable Office 2010 .docx compatibility. A government worker once complained to me vigorously about LibreOffice and OpenOffice's issues with .doc and .docx. He tried the open source suites and it failed him when he tried to run it during a presentation. His tables and text formatting were in shambles when opened in MS Office. As much as I wanted to defend any open source application (especially one closely associated with Linux), I couldn't say anything against his rant. Both Libre and OoO have made great progress in MS Office compatibility but the conversion can never be perfect. Using Word Web App at least assures you that saving to .docx retains the code and formatting you originally intended. The translations I worked on were originally in .txt (originally written in CherryTree for Linux). Word App by default will save it to .docx. This initially disturbed me until I copied and pasted the finished document back to CherryTree and Leafpad and was reminded that Linux editors strip the excess code when pasted.

• Works in Google Chrome and Chromium. Gone are the days when Microsoft forces you to use Internet Explorer to access their services (not that IE has not improved recently). I was expecting Word App to have Silverlight or HTML5 errors in Chromium while working in my Linux machine. It went 100% without any errors. Moreover, I had no problems using the Word Web App interface from within Chromium on a 11" netbook screen. Not bad.
• Word App isn't blocked in China. This is more of a personal issue. Google Docs, like most Google services in China, is blocked or crippled. Microsoft's SkyDrive, Outlook, and online Office Apps run fast even in Shanghai. Say what you will about the politics involving Google, China, and Microsoft, but the bottomline is Word Apps is a good choice if you're in the Middle Kingdom.
• SkyDrive integration. If you're a Windows and SkyDrive user, I encourage installing the sync utility on your Windows 7 machine (it's native to Windows 8). It's similar to Dropbox's own application but with the promise of future integration with Microsoft's online services (including Xbox360). Later in Windows 7, the translation I finished was uploaded/downloaded without issues. If you're already a SkyDrive user, then Word App may have a place in your workflow.

• Integration with Microsoft Office and Windows 8. I mentioned previously that I have a retail copy of Office. Web Apps by Microsoft will allow you to open the document directly in Word 2010. It's a minor feature at best but integration is becoming an important part of Microsoft's ecosystem (an element absent in the days of Windows 2000 and Windows XP). Even if you don't like Windows 8's design and tile theme, you will find that Outlook, SkyDrive, and MS Word Web App fit nicely with your Windows desktop. I will admit it looks hokey in my openSUSE and Lubuntu machine but hey, it works!

One word of caution: MS Word Web App is for documents not for web markup language and programming. You can't save the document to any other format other than .docx. Clicking File then Save As in the MS Word Web App interface only provides with an option to save a copy of your document to your computer. So, it's not really a good idea to use the app for XML or XHTML documents unless you want to go through the process of converting it later on.

In this age of ultraportables, tablets, and mobile devices, the need to work in the cloud has several meanings. Considering the power of most portable devices today, there's really no need to depend on applications that reside in the cloud, but if you're working across platforms, then it's always a good idea to look for services like MS Word Web App that fit your needs.

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External HDD utilities, Backup Software, and Linux

Category: Linux

Having purchased a 2TB Seagate Expansion Desktop Hard Drive recently, I was oddly excited at the thought of creating Clonezilla images of my machines and backing up my legally downloaded (cough) multimedia files. Ordering HDTVs and nice hybrid laptops are well and good, but there's nothing like the freedom of having plenty of storage to work with especially when you don't own a desktop or manage your own server.

A Bundle of Joy

When buying an external portable or desktop hard drive, one of the more overlooked aspects is the bundled software. Western Digital products, for example, price their products based not only on the storage size, but whether their proprietary WD SmartWare is included. Likewise, the Seagate Backup Plus series includes Seagate's (of course) Backup Plus software. On the other hand, Toshiba's mobile hard drives come with NTI Backup Now EZ software regardless of what model you purchase. The same goes for Buffalo hard drives, which include a small suite of optional software with their Drivestation series of drives.

I like the bundled software that comes with external hard drives. I don't really use the software since my machines run on Linux (the bundled software is primarily for MacOSX and Windows users). However, I like testing them out in a sandboxed system or from within VirtualBox. Toshiba's NTI Backup Now EZ utility was especially well-designed. BuffaloTools, on the other hand, included a RAM optimizer and a script to "accelerate" USB data transfer. Although Buffalo's bundled applications (TurboPC, TurboCopy, Backup Utility, RAMDisk Utility) seemed simplistic and would appear like crapware to most users, I actually appreciated their efforts (though the design of the toolbar looked decidedly 90s compared to today's apps). Moreover, including the utilities didn't add anything to the price unlike Western Digital and Seagate products.

In general, external drives with bundled software will include the following utilities:

• File/folder backup software
• Scheduled backup manager
• Encryption software
• System or imaging software (which creates incremental or a single backup of the whole OS)
• Disk format utility for MacOSX and Windows
• Link or launcher to register the storage drive

Advanced and Linux users don't really need any of those utilities, but casual users should explore and try these applications. Backing up data is a pretty important task in this digital world we live in. If you're not interested in backup software (and want to avoid the premium), go for basic external drives like WD Elements and the aforementioned Seagate Expansion drive. They're just good old empty drives for use and are often cheaper than those that don't include the bundled software.

File Format

The first thing I did after buying the Seagate was plug the drive into my Linux machine and check the drive's file format. This is especially important because some drives like the Buffalo Drivestation are shipped with the legacy file format FAT32. This isn't really a big deal . . . unless of course, you're trying to transfer a 4.9GB Blu-ray rip of Captain America: The First Avenger. FAT32 doesn't support large file transfer so you'll actually get an error message if you try to copy a file larger than 4.xGB. Why do some manufacturers ship the drive formatted as FAT32? So you can plug the drive to both a Mac and PC. This is also the reason why the Buffalo and Toshiba drives came with a utility to format the drive to either Windows' NTFS, FAT32, or Mac's HFS+.

One of the features of Linux that always warms my heart is its ability to support every disk format out there, from legacy file systems such as FAT32 to Windows' NTFS to Apple's HFS+ and to more advanced file partition tables such as Btrfs.

To check your drive's file format in openSUSE KDE:

1. Click ALT+F2 and type Partitioner.
2. Enter your user password and click Yes when prompted.
3. In the Partitioner window, click Hard disks on the System View panel.
4. Look for the Seagate drive on your list of hard drives. The FS Type column indicates your hard drive's file system.

To check your drive's file format in Windows XP, Vista, 7, and 8:

1. Click Windows+R.
2. In the Run window, type diskmgmt.msc
3. In the Disk management window, look for the Seagate drive and check the File System column.
   

Ubuntu and Ubuntu-based Linux distributions like Linux Mint come with the extremely popular Gparted disk utility. MacOSX also has a Disk Utility for formatting and managing external drives.

The Seagate Expansion drive I bought came with NTFS so I really didn't need to format it since the drive will be used on my Linux and Windows machines. Now, one word of caution. Although Linux has excellent disk utilities for formatting your Buffalo, Toshiba, Western Digital, or Seagate drives to NTFS, I highly recommend using either Windows Disk Management or the manufacturer's bundled utility instead. Windows 7 and even Windows XP might actually have issues reading external drives formatted in NTFS using Linux disk utilities such as Gparted and Partitioner. As much as I love Linux, better safe than sorry.

On an unrelated note, if you're primarily using Linux at home or in your workplace, try formatting your drive using Btrfs - you might actually find it worth your while.

External Desktop Hard Drives, Backup Software, and Linux Part 2: Drive Diagnostics and Linux backup utilities

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