Thoughts of a future engineer

Writing Java code in blogger posts

2012-01-02T19:47:00.000-08:00

I've been looking for a simple way to help me tweak my blog to show Java code.
This is what I've got after some changes in the blog template.

// Comment
public class Testing {
public Testing() {
}

public void Method() {
/* Another Comment
on multiple lines */
int x = 9;
}
}

All you have to do is changing your blog template and add some scripts so you can use the "SyntaxHighlighter" Library.
It works thanks to this post.

Web-Desktop Application for Network Monitoring and Alert Management.

2010-09-14T06:38:00.000-07:00

Currently, computer networks are the backbone in the remote communication. Now they have become essential for the proper functioning of many domains and applications. Their rapid growth induces increased complexity of administration tasks and fault detection. Any problems or failure may have serious consequences forcing the use a system of monitoring and alert management.

The network monitoring has become therefore a major task not only the ensure the system retention and good functionality but also to have a global view on problems that may occur to prevent their appearance. As the task of the administrator is to ensure the smooth functioning of its network and manage heterogeneous devices, administrators were then forced in the past to work on a machine connected to the network which makes their task more difficult and may risk delaying critical tasks. Thanks to advances in technology and the evolution of the Web, this monitoring task has become more flexible.

In fact, the administrator is now able to monitor its network remotely via a web application that provides network monitoring and is capable of describing its condition and report alerts when this is necessary. Hence, it can remedy problems and resolve them as quickly as possible.

Indeed, this application starts with the automatic detection of network equipment (Routers, firewalls, terminal) which allows to draw the map showing equipment found to give the administrator a clear view on its network. The administrator can also predefine the annoying problems that which he judges to be important to be notified when they occur. Once one of these problems is encountered, an alert will reported to the administrator to inform him about the problem detected, its severity and its location so that he becomes able to correct it immediately.

The main objective of this project is to develop a web application for network monitoring and effective management of alerts. This application should be able to monitor services and network resources (routers, terminals). The following video is a demonstration of the project.

Introducing EXT JS

2010-09-06T07:33:00.000-07:00

EXT JS is a javascript library which is build to offer web developers the ability to make interactive web applications using Ajax, DHTML and DOM scripting.

The new tendency in the last deacades in software development is the "rich Internet application". To be close to desktop application, you should have some advanced web

graphic tools and frameworks. Extjs has all the features to allow you to develop your rich Internet application.

The predefined tools such us grid, forms, panels and menus are rendered client-side.You don't have to wonder about compatibility. It's designed to work perfectly on any common browser.

Coding and editing Ext js scripts is fun. Since there are many examples with the downloaded package of the library and it has a very helpful community. These are some Screeshots of what this library is capable of:

Download ExtJS

How to make vi colorful on xubuntu

2009-03-16T13:39:00.000-07:00

Hi...
We started to study shell programming in school and we use VI to code some scripts. I noticed that all my colleagues using vi on ubuntu are very irritated and seem to envy their friends who use VI on Fedora 10 because it's very easy to use and colorful, it helps to detect syntax errors. Some of my friends started to regret installing Ubuntu instead of Fedora and even blamed me for recommending it. As an Ubuntu fan I looked for a solution for this tiny problem. I won't accept any lame remark about Ubuntu !! you need a colorful VI ? Here you are !

1- You have to install VIM which is "vi Improved" just tape this code in your console:

sudo apt-get install vim

2- After installing it you have to edit a file () and uncomment a parameter. To do so first you have to turn into root so type su and enter your root password:

then change this file mode for writing (so you can change its content)

chmod +w  /etc/vim/vimrc

no open this file using vi if you want and uncomment syntax on. i.e erase the (") before syntax on in line 20.

vi /etc/vim/vimrc

After doing that save changes and exit using :wq
try writing something, save it and re-open it and you will find your beautiful colorful script. ENJOY !!

Xubuntu and low performance machines : The perfect match !

2009-03-16T12:26:00.000-07:00

When the machine gets old and becomes useless. You get short on options. You can't sell it because you are so emotionally attached to it and it doesn't worth that much and you can't run new applications on it because it can't afford them. But you can turn it into a beautiful workstation. Able to open your pdf documents, play your music and videos and does your office tasks... You need just a light operating system that doesn't consume much hardware resources.

I'm talking about a Linux system of course so you won't spend any dime on proprietary software and you can avoid the headaches of the anti-viruses and etc...
The choice was : xubuntu .

I installed xubuntu 8.04 on my Compaq Armada notebook. This notebook is really a disaster running with WinXP but not bad with Windows 2000 and this is its configuration :

Intel Pentium III 750 MHz
64 MB Ram
20 Go hard disk

Pathetic isn't it ? But it was all I had when I needed a Linux system for my SHELL programming courses. I downloaded the Xubuntu which is an ubuntu distribution designed for low performance machines and it was just perfect. The graphics were nice and simple. Most of the applications run properly. The execution of the system in the start up doesn't take much time.
You can see down here the "system monitor" and how xubuntu is using the ressources of the machine.

Torvalds' gift for the Linux community... The new Kernel 2.6.28

2008-12-31T03:34:00.000-08:00

Actually, it was on the 25th of december. Linus Torvalds plays Santa clause and released a gift for all Linux users. It's the New Kernel.

Ext4 :
The most important thing in this relase is EXT4 the new Filesystem of Linux which will be :

Compatible with the old EXT3 : you can have and ext4 partition as if you have a ext3 one.
Larger filesystem : The capacity of this FS was extended to be able to support 1 Exbibyte and files of 16 TiB ( about 16 000 Gigabytes). The number of possible used directories was extended to 64000.
Journal Checksums : The Journal (a file containing the changes of a hard disk) will be using a new technique which will improve the reliability of the disk by cheking the occurence of anyy error during the processing of saving data.

You can check this link fo further informations

Graphic performances :
The release of the new GEM (Graphics Execution Mananger). This piece of software will take care of the graphic chipset ressources and how to exploit them for different multimedia applications. This GEM will improve the graphic performance of you graphic card.
Some improvments were made to KVM. It's the part of the kernel that take care about virtualisation for some architectures like intel-V and AMD-V. It will allow the machine the possibility to seperate several systems without restarting and the possibility to use some pieces of software that don't exist on the HOST system.

Drivers:
Many improved drivers specially for USB and Wirless devices. The tree of these drivers was considered as stable.

As a conclusion, the new Linux has many new features. Will they be adopted by the different distributions ?

References :
Site du zero news article.
Kernel.org changelog

The status of the engineer in Tunisia

2008-12-26T13:32:00.000-08:00

In order to find out the status of the engineer in Tunisia we will try to answer these questions:

Who`s he ? What does he do?

How much does he earn ?

What is his image in society?

What does he suffer from ?

What are the potentials of this career in Tunisia ?

Definition

An engineer is a person professionally engaged in a field of engineering. Engineers are concerned with developing economical and safe solutions to practical problems, by applying mathematics and scientific knowledge while considering technical constraints. As such, the work of engineers is the link between perceived needs of society and commercial applications. Some consider this profession to be the link between art and science.
wikipedia definition

Problems

joblessness and overexploitation :

Some statistics of a study made on 4763 young graduated students in 2005 after 18 months from their graduation

Financial status

For newly graduated engineers with no experience the wage is from 800TD to 1200TD.
After 5 to 10 years of experience the wage can touch the 1500TD to 2000TD.
Earnings mainly depends on years of experience, certifications and of course the engineer himself. Once he proves to his boss his skills and abilities, he can renegotiate his salary.

The gap between Tunisia and Europe in wages

In France, the salary of a newly graduated engineer is from 2000€ to 2800€ ( 3600TD to 5000TD).
In the end of his career, a well experienced engineer can touch 6000 € (10800 TD).
The standard of life is very different. The daily needs are expensive in Europe compared to what is available inTunisia but still an engineer in Europe is better remunerated.
The evolution of the engineer in Europe and USA is faster. In fact, occidental companies evaluate talent and take it into consideration.
The competition between these companies to have the best members in their crew make the salary negotiation more simple and efficient.
In conclusion, Tunisian engineers won`t skip the chance to travel and work abroad . Consequently, Tunisia lose many skilled engineers and this is just a sample of a wider phenomenon called `Brain Brand`.

Social status

57,2% of higher education students are female (www.universites.tn)

30% of working engineers are female(2004 statistics INS)

conclusion : The society consider engineering as a masculine job

To proceed in explaining the social status of the engineer Tunisia we will use a study made by Raoudha Ben Othmen a professor in the university of Tunis:

Subjects:

180 secondary school students aged 15-16
180 primary school pupils

Tools :

Questionnaire
Draw me an engineer test
Teacher led class discussions

N=140 Questionnaires (45% boys and 55%girls)

Drawings

No major difference between children and teenagers’ drawings.
None of the drawings contained a picture of a woman.
Most drawn engineers have glasses, are middle-aged, look scruffy wear a lab coat and hold some kind of tool.
Some pictures contained a working bench

Class discussions

Teachers seem to have naive ideas about engineers and engineering.
Teachers did not give the children the name of a famous modern engineer. Most of the examples are old (Graham Bell)
In leading the class discussions about future careers, teachers allocated more turns to boys than to girls
In leading class discussions about studying engineering, teachers seemed to allocate turns equally between girls and boys

Tests conclusions

• Students and teachers hold naive conceptions of engineering
• The necessity to enhance the image of engineers and specifically of the working environment
• Both male and female students are determined to choose other lucrative careers than engineering

Potentials

Many foreign companies choose to invest in Tunisia due to the low taxation and labor cost.
The Tunisian government aims to attain 7000 engineers in 2011-2012.
Many Mega projects are scheduled in Tunisia as ` The Mediterranean gate` which will host hundreds of companies.

Conclusion

All the figures are showing the fact of the promising future of engineering as a profession in Tunisia. However, many laws and interventions have to be made in order to protect the engineer`s rights and ameliorate his status and his image is society.

Diapositive 1

how to get your blog back on track after a long period of inactivity.

2008-06-12T14:40:00.000-07:00

First, Let me apologize to all my readers for my absence. I was really busy lately because of an important exam that I hope I will pass.
As you all can notice my blog was inactive for more than six months. My Alexa rank dropped from 500k to 2M ! My PR dropped from 4 to 2 ! ( That's hard ! ah) . My visits kept an average of 50 visitors a week most of them from google. So to fix these problems I put some steps to take :

1- Finding new content :
I have to write and make some new fresh articles about the latest news. I made a tour among the E-magazines that I used to read and I found a couple of subjects that I definitely will write about. Since I was cut off from the world, I will need some time to figure out what is going on in the world.

2-Gathering old web traffic sources :
Get back tou your Web analytics and open the archives of the happy days ! The busiest months and the best traffic days and find out the websites that directed to you and try to post your content in them again. Believe me it's very efficient.

3- Gathering keywords :
This absence is a very good experience for my blog. In fact, I kept on having traffic from google. So it's very important to get those keywords and work on them more so you can still have traffic if you will get absent again.

4- Heavy social networking :
I will need thousands of diggs and stumbles. I will use everything I can use to get the old traffic.

If I follow these steps my blog will definitely be back.

KDE 4 shining points..

2008-01-21T13:36:00.000-08:00

Originally posted by bluestorm

KDE4 Libraries have witnessed major changes in order to make coding KDE applications an easier task. Many shining points in this new edition which make of the future of KDE more promising.

Oxygen:

Oxygen has remarkably changed. It's the standard graphic kit of KDE, developed by KDE designers. Oxygen Includes Wallpapers, buttons and themes... You can change any theme you want but Oxygen is the standard theme of KDE4. May be some screenshots could describe better than words: (by SDZ)

and here are some Oxygen designers :

Qt4:

The graphic library used by KDE users to code most applications. QT4 wasn't compatible with the previous editions of KDE. Now, KDE4 is using Qt4.

Qt4 will allow KDE developers to make better graphic applications. Qt library was optimized to reduce its appetite to memory and hardware resources (RAM,CPU..etc). This optimization is still not complete. Qt developers are focusing to make the use of Qt4 easier than they will continue this optimization.

Qt4 is portable through KDE. We previously explained that Qt4 was distributed under both proprietary and GPL license. From now on Qt4 will be distributed with KDE which will make it accessible to everyone.

Plasma:
Plasma is a KDE library dedicated to the desktop : background, menus... Plasma was tweaked to become more personalized. You can change your desktop by adding widgets and plasmoids on your Dashboad, add RSS wires, and many other features.
These plasmoids are independent from each other which makes them easier to create. You can code your own plasmoids using C++ or Javascript.

Phonon:

Phonon is a multimedia library which I previously talked about ( Phonon : where Qt and KDE meet) dedicated for Sound and video. This library will allow KDE developers to include sounds and video effects to their KDE graphic applications smoothly. this is the blog of Matthias Kretz the Phonon creator.

900 fixed bugs with Mozilla Firefox 3 beta 2

2008-01-10T10:53:00.000-08:00

Firefox 3 developers are taking all the time that they need to accomplish their new Firefox. After the Beta 1 Mozilla has released Firefox 3 beta 2 to get more feedbacks about bugs from its testing community. Bugzilla was a little bit busy lately since the beta 1 thousands of bugs fortunately 900 of them are fixed. Firefox developers are trying to reveal more bugs to make their Firefox 3 better. The Beta 2 features are very promising and the Firefox 3 will definitely beat all competitors.

What's new in Firefox 3 :

Security :
I think that the previous reported vulnerabilities in Firefox made them more determinant to improve the security of Firefox users. The most important improvements in this issues were the the protection against cross-site JSON data leaks,anti-virus integration, malware protection, add-ons version check and the one click site info.
Easier to use :
developers added new buttons to save time when bookmarking. The ability to put some tags about the page you're bookmarking. You can also search your bookmarks through a Places Organizer.Tabs will also be easier to locate and better integration with Vista, Mac and Linux.

Performance :
Mozilla developers are dealing with Firefox's appetite for Memory. Around 30 memory improvements were included in the Beta 2 and developers are still working on optimizing the Firefox memory use, speed and reliability.

Related links :
SDZ news article by misterti (Fr)
All the features presented by Mozilla
The Beta 2 release notes
Firefox security add-ons

Mozilla Weave... Mozilla is trying to be more social

2008-01-02T14:34:00.000-08:00

The newest Project of Mozilla labs was "Weave". It allows the user to save his browser settings on Mozilla servers (Favorites, sessions ,passwords...etc..) and be able to load it wherever he is.

What are they preparing ?
Mozilla labs are trying to make some Mozilla-hosted online services which means that Mozilla is trying to be more social. Weave project still a prototype and Mozilla labs are planning for the future. Early in 2008, Mozilla Labs will try to offer some initial Web service APIs for developers to build on and will enable sharing on applicable interfaces.

Privacy : The biggest challenge
Many visitors asked about Privacy in Mozilla Labs Blog. Developers were very conscious of this issue because putting such important individual data on the web is risky. Weave developers answered these questions:

We currently encrypt on the client all data that gets placed on the server, with an encryption passphrase that only the user knows.
We kept the server intentionally dumb and standards-based, so that anyone can set up a server for themselves and/or their friends or company.

How to use it?
First you have to create an account in this website https://services.mozilla.com/ then you download Weave extention. Once you sign in you can install the extension then you need to save your settings on you hard disk. You risk loosing them. It's still a prototype!
Second, The software will ask you to put your email and password. Then will ask you to put a passphrase to encrypte all your data.
Finally, you make your first synchronisation then it will be automatically done every 30 minuts.

Related Links
Create a Mozilla Weave account
Introducing Weave

Would Ulteo help OpenOffice to beat MS Office ?

2007-12-30T09:17:00.000-08:00

Openoffice is an open source software offering its users many desktop applications as text editing and spreadsheet application. Since its appearance it was the first competitor of Microsoft Office but has never been the number one ! Microsoft Office is still the best sold Microsoft product ever! This desktop suite alone is making huge revenues and still the most desktop suite used in the world. You may say that's because integrated with Windows but it doesn't. It's sold separately from Windows. IE is integrated in Windows and couldn't beat Firefox so it's time to OOo to have some wings !

Wings.. This is what Ulteo is offering to OOo. Ulteo will allow users to use OpenOffice desktop suite on line with no installation process required. May be it will give some lazy and curious users an opportunity to give it a try. It will also allow people who were making some economies to buy a MS office suite to give OOo a try and may be they will be convinced to download OOo.

How to ?
Make sure you have:

A high speed network connection
A recent Safari,IE( 6 or 7) or Firefox(1.5 or more) browser.
A virtual Java machine
An Ulteo free account.

The OpenOffice.org desktop suite is great and can satisfy all the users need but it wasn't well introduced to users. That's what the Open source community lacks! The ability to make people try their products. If Ulteo could reach many users I'm certain that OOo will get a great step forward. Ulteo is counting (until now) 15,000 beta users. If you want to be one of them visit this page.

Best Free C/C++ IDE

2007-12-28T15:07:00.000-08:00

The first question to ask is what does a programmer need ?
To create an application you have to make sure that all these tools are available.

A Text editor : To write the code source ( of any language). Basically a simple software as "bloc-notes" under Windows or "vi" under Linux is enough. The best thing is to have an intelligent text editor that make your code colorful and make your codes more comprehensive and easier to read.
A Compiler : to compile your source code to binary code.
A debugger : To help you to correct the bugs in your code.

Programming demands a lot of effort and concentration and you have to pick the tools that can make your life easier! You can look for these components separately but this will be like torturing yourself! You should pick 3 in 1 software called IDE : Integrated development environment.

Best Free C/C++ IDEs

Both of them are free and simple which make of them the best tools for beginners.
Note that both work on Windows and only Code::Blocks can run on Linux. And for Windows vista users you should follow some particular procedures to set up thes IDE or else you'll face many bugs with compiling. Nevertheless, Visual Studio Express work correctly on Vista.
For mac users, I recommend "Xcode". You can install it from the CD of Mac OS.

Phonon : where QT and KDE meet

2007-12-27T16:26:00.000-08:00

Originally posted and verified by bluestorm

Trolltech has recently announced that its graphic library Qt will be using Phonon, he new multimedia library created by the KDE developers. This is good news for Qt4 users allowing Qt to be better and simpler and it's a good sign of a great collaboration between Trolltech and the other Free software projects.

Qt is a library which allows programmers to write graphic application codes. Basically used in C++, it's also available with many other languages (Java, Python, Ruby...). Qt is Free software and can be used in many OS (Windows, Mac, GNU/Linux, BSD...)

Trolltech is the enterprise which has developed Qt. Founded in 1994 by students. It's counting about 100 developers in Norwich, Australia, California , China and Germany. Influenced by KDE, Trolltech has made of Qt a free software by using a clever double licenses : One Free ( and free of charge) license allowing to create Only Free software and proprietary software editors have to buy a commercial license. This politic is also used by MySQL, it allows to have a free library and have a good financial sources.

KDE is one of the most famous Free desktop environment for GNU/Linux distributions and the first competitor of GNOME. Allows the user to exploit many features : Desktop, menu, control panel...etc. KDE has also some applications as File explorer, Browser, Text editor, PDF reader...etc. To that purpose, the KDE project builded (on top of the Qt librairies) a framework helping programmers to create desktop application easily..

KDE Screeshots:

Phonon is a multimedia library ( sound and video) developed by Matthias Kretz, a KDE developer. KDE4 developers intend to use Phonon so any developer will be able to add a video or a sound to his application.

There are many multimedia libraries dedicated to sound and video like Xine , Gstreamer and FMOD. Phonon doesn't make the whole library from the beginning but uses the existing ones and propose some unified functionalities for all developers.

Qt developers were so interested in the multi-platform aspect of Phonon. In fact, Qt uses the same ingredients and gives some features to facilitate software conception. ( It's easy to manage networks, SQL...etc).
Consequently Trolltech suggested to support Phonon development. Which was very convenient for KDE developers, because this will bring to them more programmers. Phonon will be integrated in the new 4.4 Qt version and the Qt developers are already improving the library
during their work time. Trolltech hopes to finish the backends early allowing to Phonon to use some multimedia systems of MacOS (QuickTime 7) and Windows (DirectShow 9).

The most important detail in this news is that Phonon will be related the KDE project. KDE developers will continue developing the library and will discuss with Trolltech developers about its evolution. The whole source code of Phonon will stay hosted with the KDE code. Instead of working on Phonon alone, Trolltech engineers will collaborate directly with KDE developers.

QT
KDE
KDE announcing the integration of Phonon
Trolltech announcing the integration of Phonon with KDE

eZ Publish CMS 4th version : all the features you need

2007-12-22T14:16:00.000-08:00

CMS are Content management systems created to make creating a website an easier task. Among many others, eZ Publish has some unique criteria. It's a flexible and extensible CMS created by eZ Systems, a Norwegian company was behind the PHP eZ Components Library, eZ Publish is an ECMS ( Enterprise Content Management System) distributed under both GPL and proprietary licenses.

eZ Publish offers a great number of features: document publication, as text and multimedia files, is possible once the software is installed. Integrated solutions gives you the possibility to manage : Web shop, news, a social website, a personal website, photo gallery, forums and polls...

Mainly dedicated to enterprises, eZ Publish included many features as : Product catalog, the caddie function, tax and promotion management, sells stats and sending management using a secured payment system.

For developers, such features are implemented in eZ Publish 4: Classes and object definition, parametred and programmable workflows, WebDAV interface and clustering..

Where hides the revolution !
After many bugs corrections, the fourth version is a revolution by being the first version using PHP 5. So many new features are available as autoload, DOMDocument...
Another new thing, eZ Flow. It's a new extension dedicated to media publication using the WebDAV technologies. The import/export communication with ODF you can stream Flash and videos in eZ Publish.

Ameliorations:
eZ is more efficient with ameliorated scripts and a reorganization to the XML. The new versions also allows you to use eZ Components Library in the extensions. A great importance is given to the famous Web 2.0 by giving many features to publish pages with tag clouds, photo galleries, blogs...etc..

The eZ Publish community counts about 25000 members, composed by 2000 reference clients, 2 millions downloads and a network counting 200 partners.

Related links
Official eZ systems website
download eZ Publish 4.0
eZ components

12 Megapixels video cam... and more !!

2007-12-21T08:59:00.000-08:00

astonished! this is how I was when I saw this "supacam"! You can call it the video cam of your dreams! I'll try to be brief so you can get its fabulous criteria easily:

12GB VGA Streaming video
Tapeless digital movie cam
HD photo W/face detection
15 X Zoom. 30fps @ D1 720x480
6 HR personal Media player

You can get some of these extra accessories:

Water-proof case
Tripod
Remote control
Extra battery
Fast charge
Memory ( high speed SD )

It's a 12 Megapixels video cam. It means that you can make a DVD quality videos and stream it directly to the web using this cam! This cam contains a face detector so you can use it as a security cam for your baby. The Tripod allows you to use it as a web cam and the remote control will allow you to manipulate it easily for family home videos. It contains Flash and night shouting video!!
The price is $349
You can find it here

Free international calling : The real deal !!

2007-12-21T07:40:00.000-08:00

Imagine that you can call for free! Talkster givs you the possibility to do this. All you have to do is visiting their home page and fill the forms and your call will work. You can do this either from your desktop, your phone or via sms. If you want to get more informations about how to make your free calls work visit this page.
Actually, this service is free. You may be wondering "hmm.. free things doesn't exist anymore... there must be something in return..!" Let me be frank with you : You are right ! After doing this phone call you will receive some sms ads on your mobile. There can be some surprises on these sms (prices, coupons...)
How can they make it possible?
Actually, after filling the forms, the server will search for a local phone and will make the call for you then bridges you and your contact together. This will allow you to have a good quality phone call. It makes also group calls possible! After this call Talkster will send a ad for you and for your contact, an ad that suits each country. Consequently, this service is available in a limited but a great number of country around the world. If your country doesn't appear in the list, don't worry all that you have to is filling a form asking to add your country. Tell your friends about it so they claim to add your country too. The operator will send you an email once the service is available in your country.
Now visit Talkster.com

How to run games on Linux (sweet links)

2007-12-18T06:27:00.000-08:00

The most important thing that make youngsters so attached to Windows and reject Linux distributions is running games. To solve this problem we give those links:

How to install any game using Wine?
This question was asked in the Linuxquestions.org and largely discussed. It mainly deals with the best tools to run games on Linux such as Wine and VMware.

Linux games lists:
You can find here some Opensource games easy to set up. Those websites use lists sorted by the gaming type, developers and liscence.
Linux gamers' game list
Gnome files game list

Frank's Corner
Frank is a linux user. His blog is about how to run windows applications on Linux. In this website you can find how to run a huge list of games using Wine. Most of them need to be installed in Windows first then run them on Linux and this is his list of games that worked on Linux using Wine :

First person shooters

Call Of duty
Code Red
Counter-Strike
Delta force
Delta Force 2
Gore
Half-life
Half-life 2
Hitman 2: Silent Assassin
Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2
Gunman Chronicles
Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast
Heavy Metal FAKK 2
Kingpin: Life Of Crime
Max Payne
Quake 2
Quake 3 Arena
Sin
Soldier Of Fortune
Soldier Of Fortune 2
Steam
Starsiege Tribes
Unreal
Unreal Tournament
Wolfenstein - Enemy Territory

Action

AquaPop
Billy Bob
Bomber Mania
Daiktana
Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project
Galaxy Invaders
Gem Mine
GeneRally
Grand Theft Auto
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
Highway Pursuit
Jazz Jackrabbit 2
JBall
Lode Runner Online
Mageslayer
Mummy's Curse
Naval Strike
Onslaught
Pacmanic Christmas
Pacmanic Worlds
Sky Fire
Snowball
Starball
South Park Mario Bro 2
Tank Assault

RPG/adventure

American McGee's Alice
Avernum
Avernum 2
Avernum 3
Baldur's Gate
Blades Of Avernum
Blades Of Exile
Dark Earth
Exile: Escape From The Pit
Deus Ex
Diablo 2
Heretic 2
Icewind Dale
Nethergate
Planescape Torment
Rune
Wizardy 8
World Of Warcraft

Strategy

Caesar 3
Command & Conquer
Command & Conquer: Red Alert
Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun
Commandos - Behind Enemy Lines
Cyberstorm 2: Corporate Wars
Emperor
Europa Universalis
Final Liberation: Warhammer Epic 40,000
Pharaoh
Starcraft
Steel Panthers: World At War
Stronghold: Crusader
Sudden Strike
Total Annihilation
Warcraft 3
Warcraft 3: Frozen Throne
Zeus - Master of Olympus

This list is huge! If frank can do it you can do it. All you need is patience ... Now get back to work!!

Every video fan must have : A free and full featured DVD ripper

2007-12-11T04:24:00.000-08:00

Once we install the Linux on our desktop, the first thing we want to make sure it works properly is our media files : music and video files. We talked too much about music tools. It's time to have a clue about some powerful video tools.

DVD::RIP is mainly written in Perl, made to provide users an easy way to rip and transcode dvd. What makes this tool so special among others is the huge number of features:
This tool is able to support almost all major video codecs : Divx, Xvid, mpeg1, mpeg2,ffmpeg. That means that you can rip your DVD to any video type you want. It also uses Divx/Xvid multipass encoding. The transcoding process uses video filters with realtime configuration and a live transcoding preview window so you can make sure that your video is doing alright. You can also adjust every possible parameter of your zoom manually. The resizing modes are two : the fast one and high quality one.
The best thing in this tool is its manipulation of the audio data while the transcoding. It's able to rip as much audio tracks as you want to AVI/OGG/SVCD file. It also allows you to encode MP3, to maximize audio volume and range compression, to create WAV file form a selected audio track,render subtitle and create vosub... It supports OGG/Vorbis. It's easy to use your CD burning facility with this tool and much more other features
Dvd::rip home page

Edit sounds like a pro !

2007-12-04T03:12:00.000-08:00

You're a music fan and Linux user. the combination was a little bit hard to satisfy because proprietary sound editing software are expensive now let's find a solution. I'm trying to cater to music lovers as I did with Gnormalize now let's get a bit more professional and find some useful sound editing tools.
I'm suggesting Audacity: The Free, Cross-Platform Sound Editor
Audacity is an OpenSource software which allows you to manipulate digital audio data. The Audacity author is Dominic Mazzoni, an ex-NASA engineer and a Google engineer. Now he has a crew of 20 developers and 30 translators to help him.
The most important feature of Audacity is the ability to record digital sound via micro/cd... and treat it by manipulating and exporting using multiple filters and extra effects like pitch, tempo, noise reduction, equalizer, Fourier filters, increasing precise frequencies, compression, amplification, normalization, echo, phaser, wahwah, inversion. It also allows you to convert CDs and tapes to a digital support.
Audacity is considered as an alternative to some professional proprietary software like sound edit of Macromedia! It's also an Award winner from sourceforge.org considered as the best multimedia project of 2007 ! It works on Linux/Unix, mac OS X and Windows.

Now what are you waiting for to get your Free copy ? ... and let us see some of your art pieces !
All you need to do is to visit the Audacity home page and you'll find all what you need to install it properly.

More screenshots here

Playing MP3 on Linux have never been that easy !

2007-12-02T09:12:00.000-08:00

Let's Imagine this situation : " you're a Linux newbie and you have just got the ubuntu CD. You were so happy about it , after some hustle and bustle you could install it properly on your PC then you opened your music directory looking for an old MP3 file you want to play it loud so you can celebrate your new achievement... And BING : " Cannot open this file !! " you click over and over again, you change the song and the same thing occurs. Finally you find out that your Linux can't play MP3. You curse the linux and maybe you'll blame who told you about it."

You could prevent that if you come across this article before. Maybe you should send it to your Linux newbie friends so they won't hate Linux for preventing them from playing their music because we will show you how to play all music file type.

All you need to do is to set up gnormalize. It's an audio converter and it allows you to decode these MP3/MP4/MPC/OGG/APE/FLAC file to WAV so you can play it on your PC. With gnormalize you can also extract an audio CD and output as other audio format (MP3,MP4,MPC,OGG,APE,FLAC,WAV).

This software requires some programs to be installed first. Not all of them it depend on what you need gnormalize for. We will put only what you need to play MP3 on Linux :

You need perl-Gtk2
You need lame
You need normalize

To download this software:
RPM package ( mandriva, Fedora, RedHat...)
Debian package ( Debian, Ubuntu...)

gnormalize-0.53.tar.gz or http://www.gnomefiles.org/ (release notes).

With root privilege, execute the bash script commands to install gnormalize:
tar zxvf gnormalize-version.tar.gz
cd gnormalize-version/
./install

If you need other optional features on gnormalize you can check the Gnormalize profile on sourceforge.org and here are some screenshots of gnormalize

the author of gnormalize
Source of information

Thoughts about Google's online storage service : Google Drive

2007-11-28T15:08:00.000-08:00

Wall street journal has revealed that Google is preparing to announce a new online storage service. This service will allow users to upload their data on google's servers and use whenever they want.
Google Drive will be compatible with PC and mobile phones. All files will be accepted : documents, music, films, pictures.. etc. Google's challenge is to make this service available all the time so they won't give the user a hard time! Google is planning to make it easy to access to the service and there will be some fees on unlimited storage. Yahoo and Microsoft have the same service but Google's project will be definitely bigger.

Some critics around the upcoming service mainly about the illicit uploads. In the opposite side some privacy defenders are upset with manipulating the users data. Some will be sent and never seen again!

Just to answer those. Google had it all : mails, photos, address book and blogs what the difference would it make if he gets our data too?! This keeps me wondering again :" Is Google a monopoly?"

Graphic solutions for web developers.

2007-11-28T06:27:00.000-08:00

A web developer isn't a designer. You can be a PHP genius but you you're pages won't be attractive as some designers do. I feel frustrated when my own PHP chat page was badly presented while I spent hours to fix the code. I'm not a photoshop expert and I really don't have the artistic touch to treat pictures and create my own banners and buttons. Fortunately, we can find everything we need on the net.

The round corners pictures.
Round corners was my first source of frustration until I found this website which allows you to get your round picture in a second ! Round corner pictures are really sweet to present and I highly recommend it.

Curvy corners
Still dealing with the same problem here; the curvy corners. I liked the website dedicated for this issue. It gives you some tips and tutorials about making your own curvy corners and how to blend your header with the background color.

Javascript effects
Actually I don't recommend to use too much javascript in your page even if you like the effect that it makes because it will slow down your page loading and your visitor will hit the "X" button before he can see anything of your content but there are some light scripts that you can use as the javascript menu.
All you need to do is to download a javascript editor like this one and start to make your own scripts or download this free javascript menu maker .
Beware that you're code must fit most browsers or else your visitors will start complaining abou the bugs on you page.

France forbids illicit downloads

2007-11-25T09:51:00.000-08:00

After we witnessed some acts around Peer to peer network in USA now the French government aims to make some regulations to forbid illicit download.
This will to fight unauthorized downloading come from the highest scale of the French government. It was illustrated in the statements of Nicolas Sarcozy, The president of France :

"We run the risk of witnessing a genuine destruction of culture ....."

And for describing the situation of Internet nowadays he added :

" a lawless zone where outlaws can pillage works with abandon or, worse, trade in them in total impunity. And on whose backs? On artists’ backs.”

The government was to pushed to act from the whole film and music industry so it has come to an agreement with Internet providers to warn their users with messages if they download illegally and they will cut their Internet access if they ignore the warning.
Now fighting illicit download is becoming an international movement. governments are trying to put more regulations to forbid it so what comes next ?

PHPBoost for web newbies

2007-11-25T09:25:00.000-08:00

PHPBoost is an Open Source CMS dedicated to Web newbies, developed by a member of the francophone SDZ programming community. This CMS can be a solution for people who wish to make a dynamic website without having any PHP programming experience. Thus, newbies can install it in few clicks and easily edit their content via the Framework given by PHPboost.
These are the main criteria of PHPboost 2.0 :

GNU/GPL liscence.
strict and semantic xhtml 1.0 code
Multilingual
Easy to edit ; contains many themes and templates
Good users management ( groups...roles..)
Url rewriting
Automated updates

Although you can create your own design thanks to the templates system, the addons given by the CMS are enough to resond to all you needs. There is also a good documentation (fr) to help you.

try PHPboost

Successful bloggers full story : Bryan Clark

2007-11-24T13:34:00.000-08:00

I think it's encouraging to tell you some stories of successful bloggers. If they can do it so do you. I won't be talking about those blogging "superstars" as John Chow and others like him.. I will be talking about people who started from scratch and were so determinant to achieve their goals. I'm talking about somebody who were able to make a great success in a really short period of time. It's Bryan Clark with the "One Man's Goal" blog. Bryan's goal intended to create a respectable income by being a full time blogger within 365 days and after only four months he sold his blog for $8,500 !!

One Man’s Goal was 4 months old
Pagerank 4
Over 10,000 backlinks
1,500 daily pageviews
750-1,000 daily unique visitors
$941.27 Last Month
SOLD for $8,500

Onemansgoal.com niche was about blog monetization. Traffic sources were mainly from social bookmarking sites, specially Stumble Upon. Monetization methods were from direct advertising, paid posts and adsense. Bryan Clark was so active and able to post one quality article per day. His writing style is original and able attract readers.
The blog was put on auction in site point and sold to Austin Long. You may be wondering why he put so much money in such young blog? Let me tell you that Austin was intelligent because he gained a loyal audience that he probably couldn't create it and his investment will give its fruits soon.

A lot of noise around Peer-to-Peer

2007-11-19T14:35:00.000-08:00

As many of Internet users were so excited to use the file sharing system P2P. Many producers find it very difficult to live with such network by considering it a violation to their copyright. Some universities are paying money to cut P2P from their network and investing in producing anti-P2P software.

Today, the university uses a nearly $60,000 software and hardware package from Audible Magic to stop file sharing on its network and pays about $16,000 for support, maintenance and regular database updates that allow the system, called CopySense, to detect newly released music.

Peer to peer has another problem with traffic filtering efforts and data control. Comcast is having some accusations about manipulating data floods and bandwith and cut roads to P2P.

Comcast denies it has blocked any traffic outright, but admits to using "network management" techniques to handle the rising tide of peer-to-peer traffic, and thereby maintain service for all of its other customers

Will we see some regulations forbidding using this network ? We know that there are giant proprietary software makers which aren't very comfortable with P2P and they are very powerful and can easily create any rule they won't.

Is google a monopoly?

2007-11-19T11:36:00.000-08:00

Through the last ten years google has been growing fast, gaining many loyal users and creating a huge business opportunities around it as advertising and search engine optimization. Other companies have tried to imitate the google way of work and started to create its own text advertising programs, even started to compete Google adsense in the web advertising market.

Moreover, google's page rank has become a very trusted criterion in websites evaluation. Highest PR owners sells more expensive ad spots and even in website markets as SitePoint (where people buy and sell websites) people refer to PR to fix their first price.

And here we come to the point where google used his weapons to kick his competitors by cutting down PR from their affiliates. So is that an antitrust move? PR is google's tool and he can make what he wants with it...

Google has also slammed paid links users and cut off their PR. As we all know google is responsible of the relevance of his search results and he don't want to have links to show up first because its owner paid more ! But don't you think that Google exaggerated by cutting down PR that way? I think that wasn't because of the relevance of the search engine but to make bloggers and webmasters get away for paid links programs as payperpost. Because these programs were loved by bloggers because they generate a respectable revenue and for advertisers because it creates better keyword density to their link.

Finally, I am afraid that Google gets to the point to be a beast that can not be fed and turn into a manipulator of the whole network because it started to show some signs of Power and monopoly... What do you think?

Laptop autonomy problems ... no qualified batteries to satisfy the costumer needs

2007-11-17T15:22:00.000-08:00

For all laptop users you must have felt what I feel ! The autonomy issue that all mobile computers users are bitching and moaning about. The laptop batteries are an obstacle to fullfill the meaning of a mobile computer because you will not be able to spend the whole day without charging you laptop's battery !
A little hope .. we heard about In tel and Panasonic working on a 12hour battery two years ago but still see nothing on the market..
Instead of being a part of a crazy race of speedy processors I think that hardware constructors should have taken care of autonomy issue and be closer to satisfy the user's needs.
The American military technology laboratory has made a new invention which is a 30 years continuous power without a single recharge ! Using semiconductors and radioactive materials an energy source. So this is an extreme solution because people don't want to be infected by their radioactive laptop battery. I think they will stick with the electric wire !

Making money with free software ..

2007-11-17T14:56:00.000-08:00

It seems to be a very famous question : how can free software developers make money to live. They spend a lot of time and effort on something that they'll never sell..

This is the main dilemma between proprietary software and free software. The problem was dealt in the REVOLUTION OS documentary that we previously recommended to watch. Actually, the documentary stated the Bill Gates's open letter where he critics amateur developers and he wonders how can a professional work -as coding complexed piece of software- be free! He stated that this kind of work will lack quality and good technical support.

Time goes and days have proved that Gates was wrong!
I don't want to compare MS products to OpenSource products because Windows is enough to prove that Bill Gates was wrong but let's discuss the money part ...
First of all Open Source developers are development lovers. Nobody forced them to code for free.. They're just looking for the honor of contributing on the Open Source community and of course they're trying to satisfy their need by coding a good piece of software. An Open Source developer is an unsatisfied user so he try to fix the code to satisfy his needs and share it with the community.
In addition, they could be paid in many other ways. For example through paid technical support. Which is The " Cygnus " firm case. It was the first firm that made a respectable revenue from selling technical support. How does it get costumers ? Some firms won't just wait an answer in a forum to know how to install Linux on their servers.It will recruit professional Linux users to install it on its device and assume the responsibility if anything gets wrong..
There another way of monetization. It's called paid documentation. If we make a web tour we will find many paid ebooks about Linux hacks and written by some linux experts.

We have also to mention that we have to be careful and not to mix the Free software concept and the free of charge meaning because Free software can be sold and bought and there are many paid linux distributions as RedHat and OpenSuse... So we have to stop mixing the term of "Free software" to "poor developers" because being a Linux savvy and an Open Source developer is very important on the professional scale and it will allow you get an important job someday!

Now I want you to read this interview with Linus Trovalds made by "First-Monday" and these are some quotes of what Linus said about what motivates an Open Source developers to code for free. ( From First-Monday)

XHTML/CSS newbies paradise tutorial

2007-11-17T11:45:00.000-08:00

Newbies paradise a programming community dedicated for newbies where you can find free tutorials written in a unique way, very simplified and detailed rich with examples. This community is very famous in its French version, counting about 100000 member and as proof of its quality we represent you a sample of its tutorials.

This tutorial contains the following parts:

Part 1 : xHTML Basics

Learn what xHTML is all about...
And how to use it to design your own website!
Part 2 : Some CSS to make it pretty

Now that you know xHTML basics...
Go ahead and give your webpage some style!
Part 3 : xHTML & CSS, unleash the power!

No, we are not quite done yet!
Combining xHTML and CSS makes magic come true!
Part 4 : Appendices

Appendices are filled with a lot of information you will find useful while designing your website, quick reference guides, and explanations on how to publish your website.
You do not have to read these tips, you can just use them whenever you feel like it while you are going through this tutorial.

Social networking market .. competition to get the biggest pie

2007-11-17T11:11:00.000-08:00

Too much money spent on social websites just to be the one to benefit from the advertising fruits. The last one was Microsoft that bought a piece of Facebook after a 240 million dollar deal. Microsoft start a new advertising concept on Facebook which os "Social ads" which allows advertisers to target costumers by age, gender and interests.

The biggest deal in the social networking market was with Myspace, considered as the number one in social networking, Google was interested on it. It was a $900 Million dollar deal on search and contextual ads. Myspace membership is growing by 5 million a month which makes ads on it gets a huge number of users.

The smallest deal was the partnership between Yahoo and Bebo. Bebo considered as the third social network in USA and counts about 1.7 million user.

Now as we see there is a competition between giants if Internet industry to get the social networks. After every one of the gets his piece of social networking i think the new challenge is how to get more users to the network. Myspace is number one but the gap between it and Facebook is too small. Every social network have to care about security and privacy issues because vulnerability to hackers is very bad for its reputation. Recently we heard about hacking Alicia Keys Myspace page.
Second, Google is making a great work to attract people to Myspace by making it an open social. This will allow developers to make many open source application around Myspace. Consequently this will create a space to creative minds to attract users. In the other hand microsoft is so determinant to fix her network losses and put a huge budget to expand her online revenue.

Fedora 8 full review.. an art piece !

2007-11-13T16:08:00.000-08:00

Fedora fans waited long five months to receive the new Fedora 8 distribution named "WereWolf". Developers worked on making a fedora a more stable and secure distribution and tried to make the use of Linux simpler and easier to Linux newbie. And this is a review of its newest features :

Codec Buddy (aka codeina) :
Fedora doesn't put any of protected codecs by copyright. The problem was that the user has to install it on his own. What is not always simple for most users. This is why Codec buddy was made for. To help installing what you need so you can listen MP3 and watch movies without making a drama of it..

PulseAudio:
Fedora 8 has integrated the last sound server. The main goal behind that is to offer audio addicts a better integration of new sound technology. Like decrease sound notifications while watching a movie.

System-config-firewall :
A better Firewall configuration. Easy to install with step by step setup.

System-config-selinux :
From now on, the configuration of SELinux is independent from the Firewall. Pepole seem to be very impressed with this new SElinux because it seemed very innovative and original.

System-config-printer :
The printer management system is better. It automatically make the waitinh line list. This modification is very helpful because users complained too much about it.

Java Support with IcedTea :
A Java system totally free developed by RedHat. This edition is only for 32 and 64 bits systems. IcedTea exclusively include an implementation of a web based code of gcjwebplugin with a new security management system.

NetworkManager 0.7 :
Completly rewritten in order to satisfy new networks as WiFi, providing a speedy connection and a better integration thanks to API Dbus and WPA for WiFi.

Extended laptops compatibility :
Thanks to "Smolt" software. Development crews focused on the "Standby mode" problems as the "Suspend to Ram" and the "Suspend to Disk".

Package management:
Pirut, the package management, had many modifications to satisfy many users' request. The new Pirut will make package setup easier specially for new users.

Fedora 8 Themes :
With every new Fedora version we find a new theme. The last one had some modifications titled " Nodoka ". The Wallpaper is softer titled "Infinity". Buttons and windows has also changed. The most original about this theme is the wallpaper. Its color change during the day progressively from blue in the morning to smooth purple in the evening.

Virtual mode :
it's a mode of use progressively increasing the number of its users. F8 developers focused on the security issue. In fact, thanks to the integration of a new library it's possible to encode the SSH/TLS format inorder to make access more secure. Other graphic modifications of the virt-manager made it more clear and compatible with the newest system functionalities.

FEL (Fedora Electronic Lab) :
This product was developed by the embedded crew. It's goal is to integrate a huge number of application dedicated to professional electronic developers in order to make a LIVE-CD dedicated to universities.

After Ubuntu Dell is offering SUSE

2007-11-11T11:55:00.000-08:00

Dell is responding to linux users and starts to sell computers with Linux installed on instead of Windows. It was after Ideastorm made in its Dell Blog. The costumers first asked for Ubuntu Feisty Fawn it was released in UK,USA,France and Germany. Now Dell is trying another Linux distribution in a different market. Actually, Dell and Novell has made the deal ; to buy Dell OptiPlex™ 330 and 755 business desktop with SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 installed on in China !

Mr. Francis Kam, Marketing Director of Dell, said, “In the past few years, more and more users have begun to pay attention to the good value, ease-of-use and safety of Linux. We cooperated with Novell to launch computers with pre-installed SUSE® Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 operating system to better meet user demand.”

So it's clear here that Dell is working on something which is to be the first first constructor to invade to Linux fan market. And through Dell staff statements we can read they aren't satisfied with latest edition of Windows, something that were said by Acer director.

Eee PC ... everybody walks with a laptop

2007-11-09T04:39:00.000-08:00

It was in the 16th of October 2007 when Asus has announced its new Eee PC.
It's considered as a UMP computer ( Ultra-Mobile Personnal Computer ). A UMPC is a small laptop with a screen of 7" to 10". UMPC arent' very famous because they used to be very expensive until this new Eee PC which could make a revolution of the UMPC market because Asus made this computer to make it accessible to everybody with low prices. The price should be between 200$ and 300$.
Eee PC is and abreviation of « Easy to learn, work, and play, Excellent Internet experience and Excellent mobile computing experience ». There 4 versions of Eee PC for the moment Eee PC 8G, Eee PC 4G, Eee PC 4G Surf and Eee PC 2G Surf and They have in common the following caracteristics :

Screen of 7"
weight : 920 gr
Distribution : Linux Xandros. a Windows XP compatible
Micorphone.

The diffrence between these versions is the memory capacity and the integrated camera in PC 8G and PC 4G. The PC is able to establish a WiFi connection as well.
The release of This laptop will be in mid novembre in United States.

Ok you may be wondering : "who made this device? Asus ? I've never heared about that name before !!"
Asus or ASUSTEK is an enterprise made by 4 engineer ACER. Asus is a hardware constructer It made graphic cards and several ships for computer.
Asus has many innovations in the hardware field like the " AUDIO DJ " that allows PC to play audio VD even if the computer is shut down. Asus is the author of the «Artificial Intelligence Non-delay Overclocking System» named "AI NOS" for overclocking CPU.

The basic forum.. a nice and simple forum CMS

2007-11-09T03:54:00.000-08:00

It's a forum created with PHP and MySQL by "Spintronik" a member of The SDZ programming community. This forum can be distinguished from ordinary forums CMS as PHPBB and Invision Power by being Free and more simple to use.

The Codes are very clear and simple and can be modified easily
Very nice layout which respect the W3C norms.
Stable forum and safe..

The TBF is downloadable under the GPL liscence. The technical support is provided by some tutorials found in the "Freewebmaster.fr" and the forum of TBF ( using French language).

> Official website of The Basic Forum
> Download The Basic Forum

Best Digg strategy to hit the first page !

2007-11-08T09:10:00.000-08:00

You always wonder how do people get dugg that much! After some days i figured out how to get some extra diggs and it's time to share it.

1- You should have friends.. a lot of them.. let say about 1000 friend on digg and let's hope you're using a junk mail for shouts notification or you'll have to unsubscribe from it. Having a lot of friends will allow you to broadcast your post to many people. So once you post your article on digg click on "share" and shout it to everybody.

2-So what you should say to your friends when you shout you should say something to urge your friend to digg your post. Let me tell you that : diggers are very lazy ! They find responding to your shout and digging your article is exhausting specially when they feel that they'll get nothing in return. So you should :

Make a clue to the content of your post and tell your friends it's interesting and you should take a look
Tell them that you will digg them back if they digg your post.
Be nice, don't be pushy and don't forget to say "Hello.. please... thanks etc..."

3- You should add recent diggers. New diggers don't have friends and they will feel excited to have people interested in them and they will do everything you ask until they'll discover the "truth". Because diggers who have more than 1000 friend won't respond to shouts. Because they recieve hundreds every day and they won't waste their time with them.

Following these steps you will get valuable diggs that could allow you to hit the first popular page. Just to mention that traffic coming from digg.com is a quality traffic because you'll receive only interested readers and that means an extension of your audience.

Coming soon.. Google announcing its first open source Mobile OS

2007-10-30T13:33:00.000-07:00

This is considered as a big step in the software industry. This mobile OS will be OpenSource in order to allow developers to hook into specefic hardware features In exchange Google will put some specefic ads. Moreover, Google will integrate his web services in it as Gmail, YouTube and Google Maps.

The new OS will have impacts in the mobile OS market. Specially because of being Open source and that will attract most developers those who will work on add-ons and some creative applications. Second, the new OS will be compatible for most applications and will allow any code contrarely to other OS which block competing software and prevent it from running.

This OS is having great echoes arround the world, specially with handset markers and carriers. LG is working on a hardware that will suit the OS. Implementing the software in most hardware will take time.. Google won't rush to launch the full Software because the longer he waits the better the software will be. It has to suit ever kind of device so they will be sure that the OS will be a great success.

I think Google is taking the Open source / proprietary software war to the mobile front. My predictions for this software that it will follow the Firefox model. It will attract the attention of some creative developpers and they will make some astonishiing apps that will attract the crowd and make them install it on their phones. I guess that some constructers won't accept to buy their products with Google's software with it because of their attachements with giant mobile software developers ( such as Symbian) but that won't be a problem since hacks are made to make able to format and setup the software with out losing the hardware capabilities.

Facebook ..The solution for Microsoft Network losses

2007-10-28T15:36:00.000-07:00

Microsoft Network is having great problems... msn.com was a great way for Microsoft to publish its products but.. Google is taking over now.. the msn search engine, the Hotmail all of them are left behind by most people.
Microsoft is very disappointed with its Online services which were marked by great losses , up to 264 million dollar despite of the sales rise by 25% and 33% of ads income. Here comes the role of Microsoft strategists. Microsoft made a deal with Facebook to provide advertising. Microsoft invested 240 million dollar, is it a good deal ? Will it get something back from that..?

Actually, Microsoft has already lost a deal with Myspace against Google for the same purpose. For the notice, Myspace is the number 1 social networking site ever. But MS didn't put hands down and looked for a deal with No.2. They don't want to see Google "The only man standing" in this field. I guess they're afraid of a potential Web monopoly from Google that could affect the future of Microsoft.

The duration of this deal is ti 2011. Facebook is counting over 50 million user and getting about 250 000 new subscribers every day. If Facebook keep these rates they will be having more than 300 million users by the end of this deal duration. Microsoft is counting of this deal for more targeted advertising.

Huge Pagerank updates..

2007-10-28T10:13:00.000-07:00

I'm very happy to see my PageRank jauge coloured in Green !! My PR jumped from 0 to 4 after only two months of blogging.. Sounds wierd doesn't it ?
This huge change is caused by the changes in Google PR algorithm which is trying to fight paid links. There are many programs of selling links where you get paid to link to a certain website using some targeted keywords. This will increace the PageRank of the website so he can get a great deal of visitors from search engines. As a result, Links in first pages will be for those who pay more. Google is responsible of keeping his search results meaningful and ranked for their content not for their money power.
Blogs are a big links market, so google started to penalize bloggers for selling links. That meant a full blogs reviews by spiders. At the same time, good content bloggers were rewarded by some PR points.

Losing PR is bad for your blog, it affects your traffic because you will not hit the first pages of google search. At the same time Paid links make good revenue for bloggers. So we are between two choices. It's really confusing...!

Some ProBloggers see that we should forget about the PageRank and keep on improving our blog content. PR isn't everything and Google isn't the only source of traffic. We shouldn't make the PR enslave us. If it improves ok, if it doesn't keep on working and make your blog your piece of art where you can satisfy yourself and gain more readers to you thoughts.

Every Linux fan must have : Revolution OS

2007-10-26T14:42:00.000-07:00

It's a documentary about the birth of GNU/linux, Free Software and the Open Source mouvment. It contains interviews with the most important actors fo the revolution in the software industry as Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, Bruce Perens, Eric Raymond, Brian Behlendorf, Michael Tiemann, Larry Augustin, Frank Hecker, and Rob Malda.

The film describes the whole stroy. From the first steps of Richard Stallman in Unix labs to the rise of the Open Source mouvment and its impact. It also explain the philosophy of the Free software mouvment and presents the Open Source definition.

The film illustre the war between both proprietary software partisants and opponents. Bill Gates's thoughts about free software and the impact of this philosophy on great firms like Netscape. As well as new type of firms of paid support and their great success.

I recommend this film to every fan of the Open Source mouvment. It's essential to understant the whole story. You can watch it in direct streaming or command a DVD.

October 2007 : busy month for Linux distributions

2007-10-26T14:09:00.000-07:00

October 2007 was marked by a great activity of the linux distribution developers.. The release of new version of different distributions.

The beginning was with the OpenSUSE 10.3 released on Thursday 4th of October 2007.
The new OpenSUSE uses:

Linux 2.6.22
The updated KDE 3.5.7 with a preview of the KDE 4 BETA 2.
The newest GNOME 2.20 with the colors of SUSE.
Start up time optimized to 24 seconds.
The Compiz-Fusion Desktop design
GTK YaST : a control panel for hardware, connections, packages...
1-Click Install, or YaST Metadata Package: the new innovation of Novell, which consists on simplifying the install process of packages from complexes codes to one click.
OpenOffice.org 2.3.

The announcement of the new OpenSUSE.

One week later :
Mandriva Linux 2008
An RPM distribution developed by the French Firm : Mandriva
The price of this new version is 39€ and the access to the Mandriva club is free.. That means you can get free support.
The new Mandriva contains :

Linux 2.6.22.9
Firefox 2.0
Thunderbird 2.0
Compiz Fusion 0.5.2
draknetcenter : to manage different networks and connections.

The official download page
The mandriva Club

We previously talked about the Ubuntu Gutsy gibbon 7.10 which is considered as new step to a Linux "that just works". The release was in the 18th of October 2007.

GG7.10 contains new features we already talked about them.. The most important ones are :

The mobile and embedded version : a new step to the mobile Linux
Linux 2.6.22
CompizFuzion
X.org 7.3

As a conclusion, we remark some common parts in these new versions which are the use of the new Linux 2.6.22. It's really essential for those distribution to update their Linux kernel in order to get most drivers installed which still a problem with all Linux distros. The popularity of Compiz Fusion made all distributions use it. The same thing with the new Gnome and KDE.
I think that what urges developers to release a new version is to improve compatibility with most hardware which is usually assured by the Linux and some other features like X.org.
Second, Desktop designers are making a great job to increase Linux users. There are many Linux newbies who started to explore the Linux world after watching a video about the power of Compiz or Beryl in Youtube for example. Developers are using this point to prouve that their distribution is compatible with the desktop designs and they install it for them in order to get the attention of Linux newbies.

Thoughts on the new Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon 7.10 : a revolutionary Ubuntu

2007-10-16T11:23:00.000-07:00

"No summer vacations!" This is the least of what we can say about the work done by ubuntu developers, authors of the new Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon 7.10. The developers didn't wait so much after the great success of Ubuntu Feisty Fawn and its integration with some dell products. Ubuntu developers were so determined to put the Beta version download link in the same day of the last release of Feisty fawn..

Ubuntu 7.10 features overview :

The new ubuntu seems to be revolutionary in many ways:

The desktop revolution :
Gutsy Gibbon will be the first Ubuntu that uses the Compiz fusion desktop : a merged Compiz and Beryl porject which will be installed by default.It will also ship with it the latest version of GNOME 2.12.0 : actually the Ubuntu 7.10 BetaRelease was one week after the release of the new GNOME. Moreover, Kubuntu will be using KDE 3.5.7 the latest KDE desktop with the possibility of installing the KDE 4.0 RC2 packages. It will also use the new GNOME 2.12.0 . Actually the GG betaRelease was one week after the new GNOME release.

Better Hardware support :
It will use the Xorg 7.3 for a better Graphic card integration.
the new Kernel 2.6.22

First steps in the mobile world :
Powered by Intel, Ubuntu is walking with strong steps in the Mobile OS battle. We all know that the Linux's part in the Mobile market place is too small compared to the giants Symbian and Palm. Even Windows Mobile edition had some credits. So it's time for linux to get forward in this field. Intel want Ubuntu Os in her future mobile computing devices so they're collaborating to make some improvements and the new Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded edition is a good step so far.

Ubuntu Server edition :
Servers are the shining point of almost all Linux distributions. The new GG7.10 will empower his server with the " Novel's AppArmor security framework".

The coperation with giant hardware constructors (Dell and Intel) gived Ubuntu a great push forward. I think the future is hiding a better future for Linux specially in the Mobile Software.

Pidgin : Multi-platform Instant messaging client

2007-10-16T11:09:00.000-07:00

I was an MSN messenger user for years, I was very angry everytime they ask me for a new version. They did it very often and I was obliged to download the new version with my slow network connection. Actually, MSN messenger developers found many bugs to correct, there is no harm with that but what is so annoying is to publish the new version without taking all the time to explore more bugs and correct it. The worst is to oblige people to download the new version. What if they're using dial ups and they can't afford the dowload time ! When MSN messenger 8 beta was released it was a real mess. It was like almost every week a new version to download !!
So MSN was very buggy, bugs in instant messengers are fatal! Because any privacy intrusion could turn your life to a nightmare. ( hacked bank accounts, hacked email passwords etc..) So we should put our security in the first place.

How many popular Instant messnegers? let's count : Msn, Yahoo!, ICQ, Google Talk, AIM ... and more. Imagine if you got friends in all these and you want to load them all together in one contact list. Would it be possible with Yahoo messenger or MSN messenger ? NO, or at least let's say not yet. I think these guys are more thinking about competition than satisfying their clients. Ok, you'll say yahoo messenger is compatible with MSN messenger and yahoo seems so happy with it he keeps on announcing " Yahoo is compatible with your msn !!" But let me tell you this : They are not 100% compatible. They're just talking about importing your msn contacts to yahoo! (and the oppositec) the IM software showed many bugs. Like the emoticans sending : If you put an emotican with your MSN messenger to a yahoo messenger he will recieve nothing !
Ok, enough talking about these bugging IM. Let's find a solution for our needs. You want to load all your contacts for ICQ and GoogleTalk and so on in one list you should use GAIM : it's the former name of the Pidgin free software. It's a multi-platform instant messaging client using different messaging protocols. Chatting is more interesting with Pidgin. I recommend it to every body. It's free software under the GNU General public liscence. click here to download.

Supported protocols ( by Wikipedia) :

.NET Messenger Service (a.k.a. MSN)
OSCAR (AIM/ICQ/.Mac)
XMPP (Jabber, Google Talk)
Gadu-Gadu
Internet Relay Chat
MySpaceIM
Novell GroupWise
OpenNAP
SILC
Yahoo!
Zephyr
Lotus Sametime (previously supported by the third party gaim-meanwhile plugin)
QQ (previously supported by the third-party OpenQ plugin)
Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) (at the moment only with chat function)

Limits and criticisms:
Pidgin is almost perfect, it doesn't support Video and audio conversations. Actually it's planned by pidgin authors. We can imagine how difficult this task to accomplish with all messaging protocols but still as dark point of this software. It's also criticized for saving password in readable text files which could put the user privacy at risk but the authors are convinced that "they won't give a false illusion of security" by doing encrypted files ( because they can be broken too).

Screenshots:

Related links:
Pidgin official website
Wikipedia Pidgin article

Best Webmastering tools : Joomla! cms

2007-10-14T14:54:00.000-07:00

Are you thinking about building a website but you don't have enough resources to hire a web developer and designer. You don't have to worry about anything anymore. Since Content managment systems are ever improving their features, everybody can manipulate cms and build his own website with magnificent designs ! One of the most powerful cms is "Joomla!" an Open Source and free cms, an award-winning (best Opensource cms 2006). Moreover Joomla have a lare helping community and easy tutorials.

What can this cms offer ?

It has many features. You can easily create your members accounts, manage uploaded files, nice gallery presentations. New extensions can be integrated to the cms allowing new functionalities such as the Wikibot : creates wikitags witch generate links to wikipedia articles. Not to mention that Joomla is coded in a friendly way with search engines.

Joomla! community
This is the first place where you should look if you have any problems. there are over 1,030,238 Posts in 204,419 Topics by 137,604 Members and counting !!It contains many topics in several languages.
Unofficilal sites offer affordable help bu buying ebooks and extentions. Joomla! has created arround her a huge community of paid and free assitance. The fact of being an OpenSource software made joomla improve rapidly and have over 1900 extentions !
Webhoster are offering new packs called " Joomla! packs" It's a dedicated webhosting service with free Joomla! assistance.

Joomla! book
let's be honest it's not free, but cheap. Among all ebooks this is the best one.

Related links:
Wikipedia article about Joomla!
Joomla! Forum
Joomla! homepage

Shopping cart software : what you should know before you pick one !

2007-10-14T14:41:00.000-07:00

Nowadays, E-commerce is marking huge development thanks to the flexibility of the ever-improving ecommerce software. Before we propose some solutions this is what every e-merchant should wonder about to make his business work :

Security:
It's the most important thing to care about. We don't want to have our bank accounts hacked or our products sent without any money in return. So a good shopping cart Software is a secure one.

Flexibility :
Your Shopping cart software should be easy to set up and to manage. Nice looking designs in order to attract costumers. Before you choose your Software view its testimonials. Make sure that it's Search engine Friendly so you can get your products more potential visitors.

Tech support and customer service :
You have to make sure you get assistance whenever you need it because you don't want to lose a customer for a simple technical bug!

Integration with banks :
Make sure that your Shopping cart software is integrated with major banks and can easily manipulate paying process with Paypal, Visa and Master Card.

It has to be affordable !
You don't want to have a big monster that cuts almost all your money for allowing you to sell on the net! Hosting fees should be small.

Recommended solution :
So we have to find a software that fits all these criteria and we recommend Ashop : an award winner shopping cart software which provides you several features.
The pricing is between $69/Month to $349/Month with a ten days free trial.

Monetize your blog with Smorty :

2007-10-13T08:48:00.000-07:00

Most of bloggers are trying so hard to make money through their blogs. They keep on writing and trying to gain more traffic to capture a click or two on their text ads. Then they feel depressed when all these hours spent on that blog didn't pay well..
Now all that is just an old story ! With Smorty every post you write worth money. Smorty pays bloggers to write about a product and link back to its URL. It offers 6$ as a minimum for an article and that makes blogging a more efficient activity ! You can improve your earning through it once you promote your blog and make it get a better PageRank. Having a better blog can get you a 100$ per opinion post. What makes Smorty intresting is that they pay you weekly through your paypal account.

How does it work :
first of all, a PayPal account is obligatory to get your earnings. Then you submit your blog, after less than 72 hours they will inform you if your blog is approuved. Then you can log in and pick some tasks and write about them then submit for approval, it can take to 5 days to accept your post.

Smorty is useful for advertisers too. blog advertising is effective since it has loyal readers and a huge audience. So you can get real visitors and custumors if you are linked by someone who have credibility and several readers. You gain also important linkbacks that can improve your Pagerank. To advertise on blogs you are requierd to pay a minimum of 10$ per post. They higher amount you pay the better blogs you get linking for you.

In conclusion, I feel that Smorty is a heaven for newbie who want to get paid to blog and an efficient tool for advertisers. I highly recommend it for both bloggers and adervtisers.

Blogspot .. advantages and Drawbacks

2007-10-10T08:59:00.000-07:00

"Blogger" the newly customized blogging service made by google. Millions of bloggers around the world are using it. all google's blogs are under the "blogspot" domain. This free service is famous between bloggers but still have many limits and drawbacks.

Advantages :

The blog templates are coded in a way that they're well viewed by the Google's search engines. So we can consider this as an advantage since your blog will get much traffic from google if you're using his templates. In fact the blog is easily crawled by spiders and any new keywords you use will be rapidly saved.
Blogger is flexible with all kind of entries like the bookmarking tools in footers and RSS subscription like FeedBurner.
Easy comments moderation and posts edition.
Adsense blends better and easily with blogspot, you will just allow you're template to be connected to your adsense account then blend the ads will be blended automatically with the background. You can easily put ads after every post. You don't have to get the code from your adsense account.

Drawbacks :

The dot blogspot subdomain can affect the image of your blog when it comes to advertisers to choose where to advertise for their products. Actually, it's not only about Blogger but it's the drawback of having a free domain name..
Unlike other Blogging templates themes, blogspot's aren't really beautiful. You can do a better presentation with WordPress. Moreover, the columns are difficult to manipulate; you can hardly get three columns with blogspot while it's easy with wordpress..

So if you're hesitating whether use it or not , this is the whole story.
Or if you're a blogspot user let's share what you liked about it and what you disliked...

How to get dugg.. more diggs = more traffic

2007-10-08T08:23:00.000-07:00

Digg.com is a huge bookmarking community where a great number of bloggers meet to read posts and "digg" their articles to get more visitors to their blogs. Digg dot com is becoming a very famous website and it maintains crediblity because it uses a certain "voting" process to best articles. The better the article is the most is it dugg !! If you're not member yet you should do it now !

If you're already a member of Digg you must have already met the problem.. It's how to get dugg and dugg to hit the homepage or at least be in first pages for a while.. I learned some tips about it and it's time to share it :

Integrate the digg button to your posts :
Try to make it easier for people to digg you. Integrate the digg button in every post you make. It's easier if you're using a blogger or a Wordpress cms. You have just to paste the code given by the "digg-tools" in every post footer. It's better if you put it next to the title because most surfers don't get to the end of your page.

Put attractive titles and descriptive texts :
Try to attract digg readers by attractive titles that showing like "how to ", "best 10 tips...". don't put classic and non informative titles. In the small descriptive text about your post try to be funny and controversial. Motivate readers to click and find out what is it all about.

Ask your friends to digg : That can't increace your points and make you rank better

Join digging Bloggers network and exchanges diggs. Ask them to digg your favourite articles and digg them back in return. I use the "stumle group" in BlogCatalog. I feel free to ask people to digg me and bookmark me.. It's a good place for a "shamless blog promotion".

Create a nice profile , put an avatar and don't hang arround with an unknown shadow. Make your pseudo and avater funny. Add friends they will get "suspecious" and add you back.. comment other posts .. Be active that will give you a better image to diggers.

Timing matters .. try to submit your posts early in the morning because it's when people are free to read...

Now would you be gentile and digg it for me :p

Alexa ranking : is it Important ? How to improve it ?

2007-10-05T16:02:00.001-07:00

I was looking in seo forums about ways of improving my Alexa rank, I was stunned when I found seo people aren't interested in that rank. I read answers like "what would you need that for? It's not that accurate so it's just silly to do anything about it." but there are more than one reason to prove that Alexa rank is important.

Why is it important ?
I was frustrated to get kicked from Review me and Text ads links for lack of alexa rank!! May be I submitted my blog a bit too early in such affiliate programs. The moral of the story here is alexa rank is used to measure the value of advertising on your website. Look at this picture. Text ads link use alexa rank to sort blogs to the advertiser. So let us take it for granted now : you have to improve your Alexa rank !!

How does Alexa work ?
It's controversial. Everybody is criticizing alexa's way to rank websites. In fact, it's based on the number of visitors that surf on a certain domain using the alexa toolbar ! As we can see here, Website dealing with webmastering and have a great web savvy audience are more likely to get better ranking because most of their visitors use this bar. The main idea here is that alexa ranking can't be accurate, but as webmasters we have to deal with it.

How to improve my alexa rank ??
If you have one visitor per day. You have to make Alexa know abour him when he open your page!! So you have to :

Sensitize your audience about the importance of alexa rank by writing articles about its importance and ways of improving alexa rank.

Urge your visitors to setup alexa's toolbar: It's efficient , try to put a download link of the alexa's firefox add on you website. If you succeed to convince most of your readers to install this bar you'll see how your rank will grow up rapidly.

Put alexa rank widget in your website : don't be ashamed if your rank is way too far. putting this widget is important because everytime your page will load the widget will ping your domain into the alexa rank counter and that will make them feel that you have visitors.

Set up alexa navigation bar in every computer that comes on your hand. then bookmark your website as the home page. specially in cyber cafés . I know it sounds silly but it works. Maybe your URL will hang on as home page for days before somebody would change it.

Finally, be patient, as your traffic grows your alexa rank will boost rapidly in first millions but once you hit the top 100k the competition gets a bit more difficult. let's say it's an imperfect word, where such an inaccurate ranking tool would affect the monetizing of websites but we have to deal with that. The first step to take is to set up the navigation bar NOW !

Promote your blog with Blog carnivals

2007-10-05T15:55:00.000-07:00

As bloggers, we deal with many challenges to promote our blog. It's all about making more traffic, backlinks and readers. Blog carnival is a community that provides you a way to make that happen. It's an efficient tool to keep you on the challenge. Many successfull bloggers, as Steve Pavlina and John Chow recommend it.

How does it work?
In this website you'll find a great number of bloggers. Once you create an account you'll find a huge number of "carnivals". A carnival is a room where you can submit a link to your post that deals with the same theme of the carnival. If you're a technlogy blogger you can find several blogs dealing with this subject. Once you submit your post, few days later the blogger will post an article where he puts all the links submitted. Few days later check you visitors source and you'll find new links directing to your blog. I checked my backlinks and I found some prestigious blogs with a good PageRank directing to my blog. That can help you to improve your PageRank and drive more traffic to your blog as well. Create your own Carnival and post some carnivals. You'll get credits from fellow bloggers as you. Nevertheless Carnival posts are provides a good and various content to your visitors. Why don't You start promoting your blog Now !

How to protect your Instant Messenger account from being hacked..?

2007-10-03T17:07:00.000-07:00

The new trend of new hackers is to screw your hotmail or MSN account.. It's really frustrating when they get your email and connect to Instant Messenger and start to mess with your friends. Create fights and your whole life could turn into a nightmare. It happened to a friend of mine. One day I opened my IM and started a conversation with her. I noticed a huge change in her language! Filthy mouth, aggression!! I figured out that her account was hacked and used by somebody else who just wanted to make her life harder. I blocked it and called my friend to figure how can we fix the problem. We couldn't get the account back.. but we learned a lesson about how to secure our hotmail accounts.

How can they hack my account ?
It's very simple and stupid. The hacker get to the hotmail and claims that he forgot the password and answer the stupid questions asked to get the password back. These questions are stupid because they're very easy to guess the answer. "What is your mother's birth place" Imagine that!! If you're a Californian there is a 80% chance that your mother's Californian too. Most people pick the easiest question because they're in a rush but they didn't know that they maid a bad choice !

How to protect my IM account from being hacked ?
First of all make a strong password : a long one with different characters and punctuation marks. Make it meaningful just for you. Let's have an example. Pick your best car name or pet and break it into syllables and write every syllable with a number:
my1best2car3name4
Then break the syllables with other characters like "; : | (" the result will be like : my1;best2:car3!name4(
This will make a good password. Don't give to anybody, don't save it down on your computer and never write it down !

Second, Never use these stupid questions to get your password . Use alternate email address , once you forget the password they'll email for you and make sure both email accounts are secure!!

SEO tips : A good keyphrase choice is the key of a successful content

2007-09-30T16:49:00.000-07:00

Are you tired from not being relevant to search engines. Are you spending a lot of time on writing but Google still not paying you back? These are some SEO tips that you should follow in every post you make. It's about developing a rich text with primary keywords.
Making a quality content is the main bloggers' concern. They use their writing skills to make a post that makes them feel satisfied... But for search engines ugly posts could rank first! How to prevent that from happening?

Choose your primary keyphrase.
You have just to ask yourself : what am I blogging the most about ? What ever the answer is , You will concentrate your work on ways to make your posts relevant to people on search engines results.. Put yourself in the surfer's shoes, what would you type in the google search bar to get informations about what you're blogging. Actually you should have done that during your long searches in blogs and websites to collect informations for your future posts. So you had a contact with the ranking issue and you visited your competitors (those who deal with the same subject as you). Your future goal is to make your URL rank before them for a certain keyword search. Go type this word in the Overture keyword suggestion tool . If you're blogging about "travel" type the word in it and after some seconds you'll recieve most popular keyphrases about your theme.

Two keyphrases strategies :
Once you get most popular keyphrases you have to choose between promoting your blog with the highest keyphrases and compete with well ranked blogs and websites. Or stick with lower one and try to get the first page as soon as possible. The challenge here is competition. You have to choose between ranking in the third page of google result for the most popular keyphrase or rank in the first page with non-popular one. Now it depends on your ambitions. If you have a long breath to make a long living blog, If you have the courage and the motivation to struggle in the keyword war, pick out most popular keyphrases and get to work !!

Smart coding... cater to spiders !!
Search engines use spiders to crawl your pages, 'read' your content and pick out relevant keyword. So you better read your post with the spider's eyes ! How?
<>keyphrase < / title >Spiders read from up to top. First the read the title of your page, that means what is between the title's html tag : make sure your keyphrase appear in it. Other tags are very important like <> emphasis < / em> , <> bold < / b > and <> strong < / strong > . Spiders aren't blind !! they detect blod caracters and italic etc... They detect paragraphs too, so you better break you text into paragraphs and use your keywords in it. Spiders read from the top down so you better not be late to reveal your what you're talking about : put your keyphrases at the beginning and avoid long introductions.
Spiders consider your linking and the way you describe the objects you're putting in your page ( images) so you should put the right html tag for it :

If you're linking to other site do not just put their domain name, describe the content you're linking to. example : instead of putting < title = "soechat.com" href = "http://www.seochat.com / "> < / a > you'd better put < title = "best keyphrases tips " href = " http://www.blogger.com/seochat.com "> how to improve your keyword with seochat < / a >

If your're putting a picture, rename it in order to fit your content. don't let the default name put by your camera or as you download it. for example instead of putting :
< alt = "my best photos" src = "http:photo008.jpg "> put < alt = " best travel photo in hawaï trip " src= " hawaibestphotos.jpg "> That will certainly help you getting more visitors through google images search.

Beware!! A double edged weapon
If you get lost in stuffing you're text with keywords it will end up with one of the worst webmaster's nightmare : getting banned by search engines.
If your text contain keywords more than 5% of it that will be considered as SPAMMING !! Search engines will put a filter to decrease your ranking for these keywords and will end up sooner or later with banning your URL form showing up in their pages!

Useful links :
Best search engine keyword tips
Choosing primary keywords strategies

Intel developer forum : new technolgies on the way ..!

2007-09-28T17:54:00.000-07:00

Three times per year, Intel organizes The Intel Developer Forum. The IDF is an opportunity for Intel to announce her future products in front of developers. Last IDF took place from 18th to 20th of september in San Francisco- USA. This forum has announced several novelties :

Laptops without fans..
This is one of the most innovating technologies announced in the Intel developer forum. The laptop manufacture Compal presented a new way of coolness system for laptops completely independent from ventilators. Until now, laptops using this technology can't support processors consuming more than 10 Watts. The same for PCpokets. Thanks to their new system, Compal maid possible to extend this energy consumption amount to 17 Watts allowing laptops to have more power for better processors with no ventilation. For processors consuming more than 17 Watts a hybrid coolness system is needed using both ventilator and radiator.
Although the compal coolness system increases the laptop weight, it has many advantages : it reduces noise and protect the computer from shocks and it remarkably saves energy.

USB 3.0 ... Coming soon
USB 3.0 promoters, as Intel,HP,Nec and Microsoft found the IDF the perfect opportunity to announce the USB 3.0
It's planned to be released in the first half of 2008. The new USB is intended to reach the 5 GB/s speed. For the notice, the actual USB is limited to 480 Mb/s. So promoters are intending to multiply this speed by ten !!
This speed increase will be based on using a second fiber-optic channel in the usb port. The new device is intended to be compatible with USB 2.0 and of course the speed will be limited to the USB 2.0 version.

how to make your pages fit most visitors...?

2007-09-27T17:33:00.000-07:00

Making your visitors navigate easily on your website is good to obtain the loyalty and more page views. Every web developer has to take care about the fluidity of navigation on his pages and enough flexibility to fit all users. That means fitting most used browsers and speed networks. So how can we make this task easier?

Pam Hoffman, one of our dearest readers asked previously in this blog:

Something I've been wondering for awhile - how many users are on what kind of machines?
My thinking is that you optimize your website for the majority of users on the most popular machine.
For example, if I wanted to add video to a blog post. Will it be viewable by the majority of visitors?

Well to answer that, let me explain that for such compability with your visitors, it's not the hardware that counts but the software. I mean if a visitor couldn't view your website content that is because of his browser capabilities: browser, Java support, flash versions, Operating system, Screen resolutions and Color bits.
Second, the speed network has an impact on his navigation ; if your putting a video in your homepage that will make the page more heavy and slower to show up. Nevertheless, streaming this video ( as youtube or google video) will take more time if he has a slow network. So he won't wait enough to play it.

For the notice, some statistics showed that more than 65% of Internet users still navigate with a connection between 28kb/s and 1 Mb/s. That means that the majority won't have enough time to open heavy pages and play video content. They will wait and wait then they will end up clicking the "X" button ! That doesn't mean not to post videos on your pages but do not exaggerate.
Here are some statistics about connection speed :

" CONNECTION SPEEDS Less than 14.4K bps 3% 28K bps 17% 33.6K bps 16% 56K bps 24% 56K - 1M bps 14% Greater than 1M bps 26% " source

1- Get to know your visitors..
You should have an idea what kind of software your visitors are using.. which browser,OS and can they run Java and flash with it. Than what are the connection speed do most of them have ( DSL, cable , 56k Dial up...). Then try to make your pages fit these criteria ; no heavy pages, no heavy Javascripts etc..

2-How can I get these information ?
As I previously posted, a good Web analytics tool will make all this job done.. I recommend Google analytics or Xiti.. Both of them give detailed statistics about your visitors.

Firefox Security add-ons

2007-09-26T08:38:00.000-07:00

When it comes to security, Firefox is the best browser. Not only because of the way that browser is built and how fast all bugs were fixed in it, but also because of its add-ons. Security add-ons are very effective to detect viruses before download, stop any sort of malicious scripts that could be injected to your computer. It also advice you which site you should avoid in order to be away from any bad cookies that could come from it.

Dr.Web anti-virus checker
This add-on will put an end to your doubts. If you're hesitating whether to download a file found on the Internet or not. You have just to check it with this add-on if it's virus-free or if it's infected.
Download

NoScript
IT blocks Java and javascript form being executed only for trusted websites. It's very effective against XSS attacks (cross-site scripting attacks).
Download

Mcfee Site advisor
It allows you to identify potentially dangerous websites. Mcfee rely on a bot that download files from websites and check if there are any malware.. It uses a small bar in your browser that turns into green if the site is clean, Yellow: if you have to be careful and RED if the website is potentially dangerous.
Download

How to avoid getting banned by search engines ?

2007-09-24T12:12:00.000-07:00

It's the worst thing that could happen to the traffic of your website. Being banned is search engines is a sort of penalization of a misleading act done by the webmaster in order to improve his ranking. So you'd better not cheat the spider !!

1- Avoid bad linking :
Never link to "bad ones" like gambling sites, adult sites and Warez. Specially when it has no relationship with your content. You have to administer your visitor's input like comments and censor any type of offending words or those who try to spam you with a lexical farm related to adult content in a way to create a group of keywords thus the spider will consider it as adult site and ban it!

2-Duplicate content :
Search engines can get too severe with copyright violation specially if somebody has claimed that your using his content. Even if you're trying to make a quot make sure that you put quotation marks (") and don't exaggerate.

3-Keyword spamming :
If you mess with the spider, it will bite you !! Some people try to blend keywords with the background of their design in a way that it will be only readable by spiders when they come to check keywords content. Another way of spamming called "sneaky redirects" it's to put a huge number of keyword in a page and redirect it to home page. Once you click on it in the result page you will be redirected to another page inviting you to buy something. Annoying isn't it ? That's why search engines get too severe about it.

If you want to improve your ranking you have to do it in the right way. Any misleading acts will put an end to your website growth !

Prevent your website from being hacked

2007-09-23T06:03:00.000-07:00

I'd rather put : "prevent the nightmare from coming true" as a title.. anyway.. let's get to the real thing.. If you want to do

Pick a pro webhoster :
Professional webhosters are experimented in this field. There are people you can trust who know how to protect the server from eventual hack attacks.

Choose good password :
The easiest thing that a hacker would do is to get you password and use it against you.. So you better pick a good one. Good passwords are unguessable, long and contains various caracters type ( letters, numbers, puncts...etc etc), above 15 charachters. This an example of a good password : "g8@"ju$por£%99ç>llop" . Hackers usualy use software to guess your password. So you better make it hard for them as much as you can.

Never use Internet explorer :

Hackers use "Phishing techniks" to "hunt" your password from you browser. If you're using I.E you're increasing the risks of bening hacked. I.E 6.0 was a great disaster to webmasters. I highly recommend Firefox for webmasters because it's safe and contains many web developer tools.

Code properly :
You have to be careful about html and PHP forms that you put into your websites. If you're using PhP/MYSQL hackers could inject codes into your database through you comments form for example.. you can lose all your data. So you'd better learn how to code properly and disable injected scripts into forms.

Make your own backups :
Don't rely on the webhoster to keep a backup for you because it may be hacked too. So you should make your own backups and save them in your hard disk. if you get hacked you'll just change the server or password and use your backup and you website will survive.

Every Webmaster's nightmare !

2007-09-23T06:00:00.000-07:00

It's just frustrating ! because building a website is like raising a baby : you feed him with good content, you register his "name" in directories.. and you'll have this emotional relation with your website specially if you start communication with others through it or when you get credits about your work. You'll even get angry and furious if you start to make a living with it.
I'm having problems writing this article because it's really a nightmare for me as a webmaster if some of these events could happen to me. What this nightmare is about ? and could we prevent it from becoming true?

The worst nightmare : being Hacked !

Imagine that one day you open you homepage and you find this black page informing you that you're hacked. You'll certainly have black clouds everywhere you look!! All your work : coding, writing articles, advertising, submitting into directories, communicating with visitors... all these hours of hard work will just vanish away ! Follow these tips in order to prevent this disaster from happening !

Second nightmare : Your server has lost your website data !
Most newbie webmasters choose the free webhosting.. but they don't know that they're putting theirselves under the mercy of the webhoster.. Once the server is full and the need more space for paid webhosting they'll just announce : " We had a problem with the server we lost your website data" and you'll have nothing to do about it ! So if you think about making a long living website you should think about paid webhosting..

Third nightmare : Getting banned in search engines
When it comes to this point, you're just getting what you deserve ! If you get banned by google that means that you maid something bad ! Being banned from google is like slowly killing your website. Because the visitors number will decrease and the whole thing will collapse like fall leafs..
Learn how not to get banned by search engines..

Vulnerability found and fixed in Firefox and Seamonkey

2007-09-23T05:57:00.000-07:00

It is the reason behind the new Firefox update (2.0.0.7). It's sort of an infecting code could be excuted in the browser via QuickTime links. This vulnerability is described as critical because it could shut off your system. It allows the attacker to inject and execute codes into your computer, install malware...

On his blog Petko D. Petkov reported that QuickTime Media-Link files contain a qtnext attribute that could be used on Windows systems to launch the default browser with arbitrary command-line options. When the default browser is Firefox 2.0.0.6 or earlier use of the -chrome option allowed a remote attacker to run script commands with the full privileges of the user. This could be used to install malware, steal local data, or otherwise corrupt the victim's computer.

How to fix it? just update your Firefox browser to 2.0.0.7

The reporter's blog
Mozilla foundation security advisory
Update your browser

Web analytics tools... Why?

2007-09-23T05:54:00.000-07:00

Every webmaster has to know how many visitors he has, Where do they come from, what are the keywords that they're using to get into his website... These kind of informations are vital to promote your website !

How to exploit my web analytics tool ?

If your visitors used Google and they opened your website. You'd better know which keyword did they use to get into your website. Then develop content about these keywords so you can be in first pages in google search results.

Second, your web analytic tool presents the browsers that your visitors are using, If most visitors are using firefox you'd better have pages that suits it. Probebly new browser will show up.. so you have to get ready to have your pages suiting all browser by following W3C rules.. The same thing with Operating systems, if you're talking about software you should offer something for both Windows and Linux users for example. That's how you'll win more visitors.. Your web analytic tool can inform you about the resolution of the monitor too... So you better have pages to suit that..

Geolocalisation : Be more close to your visitors..
Your Web analytics tool shows the nationality of your visitors.. you should follow your visitor's most concerns and issues.. If most of them are from Asia and you're posting news you'd better not to have detailed info about another part of the world! And if you presenting a service you should give informations about locations suiting your visitor's nationality..

Is there a tool that can present all these informations ??
Yes! and it's free too.. It's XITI 7.. you have just to create an account and put javascript in your pages.. It's very effective.. the graphics are cool.. the informations are detailed. I recommend it to every Webmaster.

How to improve my PageRank ?

2007-09-21T13:11:00.000-07:00

Any webmaster or blogger has to understand PageRank and how it functions.. The best explanation I found is in the wikipedia :

"PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important"."

So as you can see, increasing your pagerank is vital for your blog success. If you can make your website important in the eyes of google search engine you're saved! The main question is how...?

First of all, Google use spiders that visit your URL regularly.. So you'd better have something new for the spider or else you will be badly indexed. You have to show google that your site is worthy to be visited.. and that's by building a huge and updated content about the subject you deal..

Second, you have to make websites linking to you ? If people are linking to you that means your website is important.. But don't wait for them until they link for you ! Do it by yourself! submit your website or blog in directories and blog search engines. If you're a blogger submit your articles in E-magazines with putting your URL as the source of the article.

Third, visit other websites and ask the webmaster for partnerships. Exchanging links will help improving your PageRank and will increase the number of your visitors too..

Finaly, never copy and paste other's content. Any copyright violation could index your URL in the black list !!

You can check your pagerank using the google bar or visiting this website.

Tips for a new blogger...

2007-09-21T12:08:00.000-07:00

The fact of making money from your blog is very motivating, isn't it? It's by putting ads in your blog and get paid for clicks like the Adsense program. But it doesn't seem as simple as that ! Because you will face the biggest Blogger challenge : Traffic !

Once you start blogging, don't expect to have dozens of visitors to read your posts and put some comments. Simply because you are unknown in this large network. Imagine that there are millions of people writing about the same subject as you. So how can you beat them first to the visitor? Do not feel that pessimistic, it's hard but not impossible! There are some tips to follow and the job will be a piece of cake.

1- Choose your blog main theme :
Just choose the nearest subject to you. Something you love talking about or you're addicted to ... that will help !! If you are a Football addict and Sport is what you like telling to you friends why don't you write about it. If you have some professional skills in some fields why don't you share it with others.. (gardening tips, cooking riecepees, computer skills ....) Something you're good at, and you can talk about it. Just don't talk about everything and nothing ! It will disturb the visitor...

2- Be Brief, clear and Informative :
Statistics has shown that Internet users are quick readers. They don't stick so long with the page.. If they don't get what they want they will click on X or get back to research page to find something else. Unless you attract them with good content ; brief, informative posts. Just get directly to the point, don't make long introductions and avoid useless chattering. Express yourself! write as you talk, because your communication with the reader counts to attract him and make him come again. Post regularly because quantity counts.

3- Help your readers :
It's by giving them some important links, be generous to show your source of information and anything that could enlarge the subject you deal . Use every way possible to explain : pictures, graphs...

4- A nice layout:
Don't disturb your reader with colorful background and don't make your pages too sad either.

This is just for the beginning and you will see more detailed tips to make your own successful blog.

First steps in Webmastering..

2007-09-20T16:26:00.000-07:00

Don't you feel the necessity of having your own website or blog ? The number of websites is blowing up, and it's time to give up being passive.. It's high time to be productive and contribute with a webpage. Your website will allow you to communicate with others, may be to promote your business or just to have a space to express yourself and to have people to read what you think..

The purpose is noble but you have to choose the best means to make this work done. Because once you start developing your web pages and your visitor counter doesn't move you may feel disappointed and that would discourage you to continue and the whole thing will fail. I keep on saying it everytime : " the biggest webmaster challenge is traffic". There are many things that could keep visitors away from your website , the worst reason is to have a bad web page coding !! You may say " What's with these codes, I'll just use a webpage editor like Dreamweaver or Frontpage and I'll have my work nicely done, I don't understand these codes anyway..Learning them will be a waste of time !" and there are several reasons to prouve you're wrong!

First,Your webpage is a group of codes destined to be read by your browser to convert them to text, pictures and so on.. And the biggest source of visitors is search engines which have spiders that crawl into your pages to get informations about your site and save them in the search engine directory but once you have a crowded page with heavy codes the spider will have big problems with indexing you website and that is bad for your website reputation in search engines. Just for the notice : Webpage editors are the worst code makers!

Second, bad coding will cause bowser compatibility problems. There are various browsers (I.E, firefox, Opera, Safari ..etc) and they don't convert codes the same way. So you'd better have a code that suits everybody. There are some rules to follow so you can code properly (W3C normes). Frontpage for example doesn't follow these rules. Actually it was created by microsoft to have websites that suits only Internet Explorer (Microsoft's browser) just to beat Netscape navigator its biggest rival at the time ( Take a look at "The browser wars").

Third, heavy codes will slow the connection to your page, the visitors won't spend time with you to get it opened. And you'll have maby problems with modifications and website promotion.. What if you pasted a javascript for a visitor counter and the page was spammed with popups and ads what will you do ? And how could you recognize the code you pasted in your crowded page !! What if you wanted to paste ads and to blend them with you page layout and give them the best location you want. Do you think that you will have the flexibility to manage you website with these editors? The answer is NO !

In conclusion, if you want to be a successful webmaster you have to learn xHTML/CSS coding. It's not that hard. It will be fun if you follow these lessons. They written in a very creative and detailed way. The site is called "Newbies paradise". I promess, you'll never feel bored!

Microsoft in numbers

2007-09-18T09:59:00.000-07:00

Microsoft, The biggest software industry on earth ! I think every computer user used a Microsoft product at least once. What about taking a brief review about this huge company!

Creation : 1975 in Redmond USA by Bill Gates.
Staff : 79,000 employees in 102 countries, 60% in USA.

Industry :
Computer software: Windows presents 92% of the operating system market. It has other products like Microsoft Office, Microsoft Servers, Developer tools...
Microsoft has other interests away from software, like the Internet industry ( Research engine and directory ; Microsoft Network) , In the world of Media with the channel MSNBC. It has other activities in hardware industry like constructing the famous Game console : Xbox.

Financial Status :
Revenue : US $51.12 billion (2007)
Operating income : US $18.52 billion (2007)
Net Income : US $14.06 billion (2007)

Website: www.microsoft.com
Wikipedia article

Best free antiviruses... safety shouldn't cost a dime!!

2007-09-15T12:49:00.000-07:00

There a lot of computer users who don't feel the threat of viruses.. I have friends telling me all the time that "Anti-viruses are useless. I've been using computer for years and I've never been infected by one ! why should I get one ! They just slow down my start Up... " . If you share this view, believe you are facing a lot of troubles. The Virus infection does not have explicit symptoms but once they get activated you'll be just shocked for have your system not turning on .. or behaving oddly..Specially if you're an Internet user.. Your safety won't cost a dime ! just download these free tools and set them up in your computer..

Free tools... doesn't sound like : "not enough" ?
The answer is NO ! Famous and expensive anti-viruses are not that reliable !
There is rule in picking an anti-virus : " Never pick the most famous one " why? because if you put yourself in the Virus creator shoes ; your first aim of creating a virus is to infect the greatest number of machines so you'll create a virus that can defeat the most famous anti-viruses ! So, free and unknown anti-viruses can do a better job !!
Actually.. You'll need an Anti-virus, Anti-spyware and a Firewall..

Anti-virus: AVG Anti-virus Free :

I tried it, it's very efficient, not heavy and easy to run.. it will protects you from viruses, worms and Trojans ( the feature-limited freeware version is enough to keep you away from troubles.
Download

An anti-spyware.. ewido..
it searches for spyware (programs allows their creators to get into your system, spy your private data..) it's free and a little bit hard to update but very efficient.
Download

Firewall : all in one secretmaker
It's kind of shield against intrusion attempts by spy and adware. Most of users recommend Zonelabs firewall. I was using it and i got infected by a Dialer while this firewall was perfectly working.. I just experienced his failure.. until I found this tool. This firewall is too suspicious !! he asks about every program trying to attempt to connect to Internet.
Download
Home page

A secret weapon !!
After BMW, I was never been fascinated by a German product as this piece of art : Hijackthis ! It allows you to find nasty programs discretely running in your computer and "hijack them !!" but be careful what to choose to hijack because there will be no way to get it back ! It's simple .. after scanning your disk the program will gives you a logfile.. You have just to copy and paste it in the Textbox of Hijackthis home page and it will tells you what are the most threating programs to hijack.

Home page

"Prevention is better than cure"
First,to prevent your computer from such viruses, you need to put your firewall always on, scan your computer regularly and "clean" your computer from tracking cookies and other spyware with this tool.

Second, you need to use a safe browser : Firefox of course !

Third, be careful while you download files, specially with P2P programs... never open attached files in unknown emails.

Computer Virus ! get a clue about your enemy..

2007-09-15T08:18:00.000-07:00

A computer virus is a small program (written by a bad guy) who lands in other programs body.. When you run your infected program, the virus moves to the RAM of your computer and starts his dirty work: Data destruction, hard disk format, system errors.. A virus is a parasite who propagate rapidly thanks to Internet. Each virus has his own signature ( a sort of DNA). Such signature allows other anti-virus programs to detect this famous virus in order to erase it..and that's why you should regularly update your anti-virus.

First of all, you have to get a clue about what you'll be facing... There is many kinds of virus and you have to recognize your enemy in order to defeat him !

Worms : able to spreat through networks (Internet, Intranet...)

Trojans : creating a rift in the system allowing its creator to penetrate through it and take control.

Logical bombs : a remote virus, can be activated after certain events.

We can classify viruses as following :

Boot virus : Infects the boot sector (MBR : Make Boot Record), this sector allows the execution of your operating system.

Polymorphe virus : it changes its appearance just like a chameleon. It's an intelligent virus which can take many forms and different signatures.

Macros virus : Infects the MS.office documents macros.. It lands in a simple Word or Excel and executes a simple code once you open the infected document. It affects windows files too. This kind of viruses is usually sent by mail in attached files, easy to recognize with their .VBS extension.

that was a brief introduction, if you want to get more information check the Wikipedia definition.

Bebo and Yahoo partnership

2007-09-12T15:31:00.000-07:00

Well used in UK and Ireland, Bebo has just concluded an advertising and technological alliance with Yahoo..

Considered as the third social network in USA.. (after myspace and Facebook) and the first in UK, Ireland and New Zealand, BeBo has just signed a partnership with Yahoo. This alliance will be about the Graphic ads, the integration of Yahoo! Questions/answers and the creation of a tool bar for yahoo..

Via Yahoo ads, BeBo will publish most of Yahoo graphic ads in two big markets, UK and Ireland where Bebo has 1.6 million users.

Finally, this social network has an active partnership politics, They have just signed another alliance with Microsoft to facilitate the implementation of Windows life messenger features on BeBo..

Best download tools

2007-09-10T14:34:00.000-07:00

People keep on asking what best download tools to use. Well i recommend a peer to peer download tool and a BitTorrent one.

BitTorrent download tool: BitComet

BitComet is a BitTorrent/HTTP/FTP download management software, which is powerful, fast, very easy-to-use, and completely free. It contains many advanced features for BitTorrent download and extends its leading BitTorrent technology to HTTP/FTP to accelerate downloading up to 5 - 10 times faster, or more.

BitComet Website

Download BitComet

P2P Download tool :

eMule is one of the biggest and most reliable peer-to-peer file sharing clients around the world. Many developers contribute to the project, so the network gets more and more efficient with every new version.

This new version eMule 0.48a (May 13th, 2007) fixes most problems with Windows Vista, adds a spam filter for searches, includes several graphic interface improvements, fixes some bugs and adds a lot of small changes.

eMule Website

The Ministry of French education is migrating to Red Hat OS

2007-09-08T14:20:00.000-07:00

RedHat France has just finished the migration of 2500 servers of the ministry of the French national education to Linux OS , hosted in 30 local administration authorities. They used to work with several proprietary systems supplied by Bull ( Gcos 7, DSP 7 and AIX).

Michel Affre, the responsible of information systems for academic institutes explained this migration for better organization of these systems and their costs by distinguishing between the hardware and the software suppliers.

By including 2500 new machines, the ministry of education will be hosting 3000 servers running with Linux OS. That means 100% of their operating systems are free software !

These servers are intended to do financial management, exams administration, staff and students management and acts of daily administrative acts.

A useful Firefox extention : Foxycode

2007-09-07T04:40:00.001-07:00

What is your text editor.. MS. Word? ...OpenOffice Writer ? imagine that you have all the tools you want in your Browser .. Helping you typing and editing texts in forms ... Like those in Wikipedia ( using WikiCode) or in ordinary forums (using BBcode for example )...

The author's Overview:

FoxyCode is an extension for Firefox, Mozilla’s Web browser. This extension offers you many ways to insert advanced tags into your forms in order to format easily your posts in forums and blog. FoxyCode supports 5 languages:

BBCode
NCode
WikiCode (WikiMedia/DokuWiki)
ZCode
XHTML

FoxyCode appears either as a context menu, or in the form of a toolbar. The context menu is a heritage from other extensions like BBCodeXtra. Toolbar is a more innovative concept which offers an access even faster to insertion functions. It is particularly useful in quick reply forms where there are no javascript functions to insert tags.

In addition to basic functions like centered text, bold and italic, FoxyCode offers you functions enabling youto insert combinations of tags, like a centered image with a clickable link, and this, in only some clicks, as the screen shows it hereafter.

You can get this extension for free here.

The Browser Wars

2007-09-05T14:43:00.000-07:00

We have to take for granted the existence of a navigators war ! And before we choose which side we will be let's take look at the history of that war...
How things got started
In 1993 , it was the first web browser that have ever seen "light". It was the NCSA Mosaic.. But it didn't last for long.. Because June 1994 was marked by the appearance of new Web browser that made an end to mosaic by recruiting most of its developers !

Netscape is taking over !
In 1995 Microsoft was preparing for the big move : Windows95 with launching the "Microsoft Network" .. In the same period of time Internet is moving with big steps.. Specially after the appearance of the JAVA language that made Netscape Navigator more sophisticated.. Microsoft felt the threat of having this navigator taking over so they bought the liscence of the "SpyGlass Mosaic" ( not to mix with NCSA Mosaic) to create the Internet Explorer 1.0 included in the Windows95 Plus Pack in August 1995 .. Three months later , the IE 2.0 was declaring the war with Netscape navigator...

The Real War (I) :

The Browsers race went crazy for some years.. New versions were appearing every two or three months. Both Netscape navigator and IE developers were so hurried with making new version and their work lacked many essential details ; many errors and security holes appeared on surface !
The scene of war marked an act made by IE developers while the IE 4.0 release on 1997.. A huge "e" Logo was hanged in the Netscape local.. Netscape employees reacted and posted a huge dinosaur marked with « Netscape 72, Microsoft 18 » ( to show their market dominance).
IE 4.0 was a real turnover in this war.. the IE's marketplace value is boosting and that was a result of a whole intelligent strategy with illegal actions :

The economic model of Netscape consisted on offering the navigator and selling other server applications. Microsoft used that point so they sold the same services for free
Microsoft signed license contracts with hardware manufactures that obliged them to post the IE icon on the desktop. And would penalize them if they install Netscape navigator on.
Microsoft signed a license contract with AOL so they create a IE-only-compatible version of their product
Microsoft released a WYSIWYG web page editor (MS.Front page) that only gets along with IE
Microsoft used its monopoly on the operating system marketplace to include IE into the windows for free. Actually the Windows revenue was enough to cover the costs of developing IE unlike Netscape navigator which has no other way to cover these costs.

All these actions have as consequences the fall of the Netscape in 1998. But before it falls the Netscape company has bought her code source.

IE alone in the battle field :
After the fall of Netscape navigator, IE has no serious competitors. Therefore, there was no more important browsers innovations. IE 6.0 released in 2001 was a real mess !!
Navigators war (2) !

Late 2004, the flame of war got lit up again by the release of Firefox , based on Gecko ( Netscape navigator source code) The project was lunched by the old Netscape employees who joined the OpenSource Community with their Mozilla Foundation.
Late 2005, after 50 million downloads, Firefox started to take over IE in the marketplace by 10%.
In 2006, Microsoft hasn't updated IE 6.0 yet. It started to provoke Web developers and security managers complaints! which maid the statistics go more to the Firefox side.
Late in 2007, IE 7.0 was released , expert said that it will make another IE get back in his feet in browsers battle !

Finally, we hope this war will still be going on so we can enjoy the fruits of browsers innovations

Why should we use firefox ?

2007-09-05T12:41:00.000-07:00

How many navigators do we have to try until we find "the one"?.. And how many time do we have to risk our most vital informations while surfing the net ?.. I'm hearing everyday about new technics of hacking VIA our navigators.. It's called the " fishing "... using injection in our navigators that brings our confidential data to the hacker's hand.
A way to prevent that ? Just use a reliable navigator that's all!

Well.. the security issue is the main problem with the navigators but it's not the only thing ! Actually we need a browser which has some extra features that make our Internet use more fluid and funny ... Actually the fact that Firefox is an OpenSource software made everybody able to take part of developing new features and Add-ons .. and I think that these addons made Firefox so special ! Imagine that You have a text-editing tool bar compatible with BBcode and W3, a mp3 player integrated with the navigator, a spell-check with any language you want, a RSS feed container and more... Nevertheless, tabs allow one browser window to contain multiple pages!

Setting up Firefox takes five minutes (and it's free!). The installation imports all your bookmarks, settings, etc. from Internet Explorer. After installing, you can download add-ons from the official site.
Are you convinced?... now what you've got to do is to is to get Firefox from the link on the right of this blog !

Dell is selling computers operated by Ubuntu Feisty Fawn !

2007-09-04T07:58:00.000-07:00

After an "Ideastorm" made by Dell in their blog, costumers asked for ubuntu for their new computers and notebooks.. Dell responded to enthusiastic Linux users and started to buy Ubuntu equipped products in USA, than expanded it to reach UK, Germany and France.

ubuntu.com
Dell today unveiled two consumer PCs in Europe – the Inspiron 6400n and the Inspiron 530n – with the Ubuntu 7.04 Linux operating system factory installed. Available now in the United Kingdom, Germany and France, the systems are Dell’s first steps to meet the needs of the Linux enthusiast community outside of the United States.

As it seems to be a Wild decision, but there are many reasons behind it. First of all, the industry of I.T hardware is disappointed with Microsoft new Operating system: Windows Vista . Actually that what Acer superiors said.. and dell has just proved this disappointment with acts: changing the Dell's OS ! Second, a OpenSource Lisence will help to decrease the price of the product because when we buy a hardware with Windows installed in we pay for both the hardware and the expensive software ! Third : the fact of buying Linux equipped hardware is a publicity for Dell, because it will take the headlines of I.tech newspapers for weeks !

Personly, i see that as another stab for Microsoft.. an implicit message telling them that they're not the biggest monopole anymore and if they want a product that sells they have to try harder !!

Acer is disappointed with Vista !

2007-09-04T03:30:00.000-07:00

"The whole industry is disappointed with Windows Vista" Said Mr. Gianfranco Lanci the Acer president..
Actually, he publicly attacked Micorsoft and its new product : Windows Vista !
He seems angry ? What makes him so upset !?
In fact, he just realized that Windows Vista will motivated nobody to buy a new PC ! How is that ? Windows Vista requires a high level of hardware .. People prefer to spend less to buy a computer ( less than 1000$) and stick with Windows XP which still better than Vista in the eyes of many consumers of Microsoft products.. In fact, many hardware manufactures will stick with buying PCs and Laptops with XP installed !! It's just how custumors like it ...
Windows Vista has the image of a slow operating system with heavy graphics and requires a huge RAM and Graphic card memory to run applications.... Even Acer president sees that it still immature operating system when he said "Stability is certainly a problem".

In the other hand, Windows Vista still a best seller in the history of Microsoft.. the sold over 20 million copy in the first 100 days compared by 17 millions for windows XP in the same period of appearance of XP.. but these statistics can be misleading because this growth of sells doesn't match the growth of hardware sells that jumped up since 2004..

In conclusion, things aren't getting any better for Microsoft, and personnly I'm getting one more proof that "windows sucks" !!

A Linux newbie ...and the story begins

2007-09-03T07:00:00.000-07:00

I've been a Windows user since 1999 .. At that time i was a real newbie in the computer world.. I didn't know that other operating systems exist ! Well I took Windows for granted.. And now i blame the hardware companies for it.. Because once we buy their product , we just find MS.Windows in it and we don't have the choice to pick the operating system that will take care of our hardware!
Anyway, I grew up with windows, I used Win98 for a long time.. as i was young i was a videogame addict so i found many problems and system instabilities that i had to deal with : Virus, Fatal errors, weird system behaviors...and i had to format and reinstall the system several times because it was , in most times, impossible to fix the problem without formatting.. In all windows versions that i used i found the most instable version is Win2000 and the most stable is WinXP...
Time comes by, and i started to hear about Linux until i saw i video clip in youtube that shocked me ! It was a demonstration of the XGL/Compiz 3D desktop running on ubuntu.. I was estonished because I've never saw such windows that get burned once we close them, Desktops presented as 3D cube.. and this is an example of it:

So i thought i have to find out how could it be possible ! I thought it's in the operating system ( I didn't know that there is several desktop versions) I googled ubuntu and i was also astonished how things work with it.. First of all i liked the fact that I could ship CD's for free !! not only this but they're praying me to share their copies with my friends! It was completely the opposite of what i saw with proprietary software that i 've been using for years! I commanded the CDs and i was so glad to get them.. it was the ubuntu LTS 6.04 i run the "safe graphic mode" and it was so useful because i makes you try it because you install it.. It was using the GNOME desktop so it wasn't a 3D desktop.. i didn't find what i was looking for but i discovered another world of operating systems... I found many features that was equivalent to windows and sometimes better.. I liked the OpenOffice . It was easy to manipulate... then i tried to play an MP3 stored in my disk but the file type wasn't known for ubuntu the same thing with .MPEG and others and that freaked me out ... Because i was thinking what if become a Linux user what will happen to my songs libraries, films , games, and all what i enjoyed
doing with windows ? And that's how i turned down the idea of installing ubuntu..

How does ubuntu started to take over Windows with me ..
I returned to the windows, and i talked to my friends about that ubuntu version..One of them was excited to know that it contains a safe graphic mode because he had a problem with his hard disks , they don't work anymore.. and with ubuntu he could run his computer by booting the whole system in his RAM ! I was so excited to see him back in our forum happy to get over his hardware problem and that was thanks to ubuntu Another event that maid the image of ubuntu get bigger. It was my cousin who was preparing his PhD and he had problem with his old scanner that only worked on WIN98 .. The drive CD doesn't contain driver for XP.. So he came by trying to look in the internet for a driver to get his work done.. We spent hours and hours looking for this soft! We found a website that offers it but we had to vote and watch and click on several products and my e-mail box got ravagated by spams, it was such a pain in the ass! While the driver was downloading i suggested to run the scanner with ubuntu in my brother's PC.. and imagine what happend! once we connected the scanner a windows showing the logo of tha scanner constructer showed up and a message saying that a scanner has been connected and ready to work.. And that's what we did!! We started scanning the pictures that he needed and editing them and we finished the work before the downloading was finished !I gave my cousin a copy in case he needed to scan more picture.. and i had more proof that Linux ubuntu is better than windows...

What comes next ?
I'm really concerned about the Internet connection because I'm using an aDSL modem , its CD doesn't contain a Linux version of the driver.. I found in the its website how to run it but it looked a bit complicated with codes i didn't understand. Second, I'll setup WInE to run windows applications specially games !
Hopefully it won't be complicated.

Related links :
Ship ubuntu CDs for free
Visit ubuntu.com

Pro6 hacks: get new changes in your favourite football game

2007-09-03T03:05:00.000-07:00

The world of football is so dynamic ; Players are moving around, new stars are showing and new talents growing everyday.. So how can you make your game be up to date without spending money to buy new versions or spending more time in the "edit mode". We found a hack in the Internet that makes it easier.

1-change the formation of the clubs:
To get along with new transfers you have just to download this option file and paste it in its folder
example: C:\my documents\KONAMI\save\folder1
Let's take the most important transfer for the season 2007/2008 in Spain for an example : Henry in Barcelona!

Downlad
2-Get new football stadiums:
about 500 new stadium
Download

3-Get new face looks :

Some players' faces aren't really well painted in this game ..Let's take Frank Ribery for an example:
Download

4- Get new hair cuts:

1st Link
2nd Link

5- Get new clubs:
as River Plate, Sao Paulo, Boca Juniors
Download

Remote your computer by your Cell phone

2007-09-02T17:53:00.000-07:00

Imagine that you can use your phone as a computer mouse ; you can click with it , open windows, shut the system down, play music on, get the playlist on your phone and choose what to play.. the same thing with movies.. That kind of tricks that makes you feel more comfortable. You don't have to get up from your warm bed just to change the movie on your PC.. Well I think i'll feel guilty to make people more lazy.. but it's not me it's the "Salling Clicker"
It works with almost everything ( around 300 devices and this is a list of them). It recommends a Bluetooth dongle ..

Now you can enjoy laziness , just still one click here

How to turn your phone's camera into a Webcam

2007-09-02T15:50:00.000-07:00

Well .. first your read the title it's kind of exciting ! Turning your phone's camera into a webcam is no more a thought of a crazy chat addict .. Well to say the truth, this kind of tricks make us save some money .. Nevertheless, your phone's camera is more "dynamic" than a webcam ; you can move all around the place, you can take your friends in a walk around the house.. your no more a slave the chair! The only thing you need is a bluetooth dongle and everything should work properly !
Let's see how it works :
Now enough talking.. let's get that thing working on our phone!
P.S: ONLY FOR SYMBIAN s60 !!
For the s60 1st edition: the "FLYCAM"

Nokia 3230
Nokia 6260
Nokia 6600
Nokia 6620
Nokia 6630
Nokia 6670
Nokia 6680
Nokia 6681
Nokia 6682
Nokia 7610
DOWNLOAD
For the s60 3nd edition : "Mobiola"

for:
Nokia 3250
Nokia 5500d
Nokia E50
Nokia E70
Nokia N71
Nokia N73
Nokia N80
Nokia N91
Nokia N92
Nokia N93
DOWNLOAD
Hopefuly you enjoy it !

A monster in a prison

2007-03-15T13:00:00.000-07:00

I put my heart in prison
convicted for his short vision
Spending years in his cage
his frustration turns into rage
Start acting strange
He's hitting his head into the walls
He screams and yells until he falls
But..someday... somehow
He started to smile
He stopped screaming for a while
He wiped the tears from his eyes
He felt happy every sunrise
Because he had a belief
That you own the way of his relief
That you have the key
to uncoff him and make him FREE !!

Good bye tears

2006-10-28T15:18:00.000-07:00

For three happy years
She was always wiping my tears
Fighting my fears
She’s my lovely sister
But the time is going faster
I won’t be with her no more
I won’t be happy as before

At any time, without hesitation
She reads and corrects perturbation
In my sicking piece of poetry
She won’t be erased from my memory
How will I support the pain
without her in my lane?
I didn’t thought that I would cry
And a piece of me would die
When she runs and flies
Kissing me good bye

My friend, my dear
You have nothing to fear
I know you‘re going nowhere
Forget about it, don’t care
I’m so sorry
To make you worry
Please forgive my foolishness
That’s an obvious carelessness

A precious tear

2006-10-28T14:54:00.000-07:00

NO! Don’t let this tear drop out from your eyes
Don’t care about their lies
Their pathetic rumours
That spread in the world like tumours

They don’t deserve you as a friend
The joy you make wherever you land
Angels belong to the sky
It’s high time you fly
Spread your wings and don’t be shy

There is nothing in the world worth you cry for
Whatever the pain soar
Just wait for love to knock on your door
Then joy will be you sky and your floor

knock…knock…knock…

Somebody is waiting
To get in

Even if he doesn’t
He swear
That for the rest of his life will stay there
Just to fight your fear
And wipe your precious tear

Beautiful

2006-10-28T12:04:00.000-07:00

This is the secret which I can’t hide anymore
It make me confused, don’t know what I ‘m looking for
I can’t stop looking for you, I don’t know why
When I find you I loose my tongue, I become so shy
Maybe because I love staring to your eyes
Your skin sparkles more when the sun shines
Such pretty face, such pretty smile
That makes me numb for a while
I can’t bear the shine in your eyes
We should find a compromise
To let me dive in the dark sparkling ocean
And in your heart, I get a promotion
I can’t bear the look of you silky hair
Hanged like a murder, that’s not fair
It should be free, teased by the air
Treated like a queen’s hair