Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category
Monday, August 24th, 2009
There have been numerous reports lately about employers checking up on employees or potential employees on Facebook, MySpace, and other forms of social media. I do not have a problem with this in principle. I am one who has always believed that you should be real wherever you are. If the real you is a crazy, backbiting, vendetta-seeking drunk, it is going to catch up with you.
Being denied employment because someone found out ahead of time instead of firing you later might actually do you a favor. It might just give a person the motivation he needs to get his life together. What bothers me more than extreme cases like that is, in most instances, the information that people provide about themselves on Facebook and other social media sites is personal information.
(more…)
Tags: discrimination, employers, facebook, myspace, social media
Posted in Technology, the Dunya | No Comments »
Monday, August 17th, 2009
One of the many ways KDE makes our lives easier is by providing graphical interfaces for many of the tasks that computer users want to perform. Web browsers typically accept certain protocols that connect them to resources, such as http, https, and ftp. In KDE, these are called KIO slaves, and nearly all KDE applications can interact with them.
What makes KDE unique is that there are over 50 KIO slaves available for use. These include everything from basic file management (file:/directoryname) to remote network management (remote:/). I have selected a few notable KIO slaves to demonstrate how they are used and have also included a list of useful ones at the end of this post.
Read the rest at MakeTechEasier
Tags: ftp, kde, kio slaves, linux, protocols, ssh
Posted in Free Software, Technology | No Comments »
Monday, August 3rd, 2009
KWin is a free and open source window manager and is the default in KDE. It is a powerful, highly customizable window manager with a plethora of both aesthetic and nuts and bolts features. With the release of KDE 4, the developers added 3D desktop effects, but they also carried over many customization features from KDE 3. Here are some of the window-specific settings that you can use in KWin.
Read the rest at MakeTechEasier
Tags: kde, kwin, linux, window manager
Posted in Free Software, Technology | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 29th, 2009
I am a little behind, but here are parts two and three of my article series on formatting a book in OpenOffice. Both articles are available on MakeTechEasier.com.
Part 1 (if you missed it)
Part 2
Part 3
Tags: article, book, openoffice, writing
Posted in Free Software, Technology | No Comments »
Monday, July 20th, 2009
In an effort to bring more exposure to KDE and its features, I have created two videos. One is a brief introduction to KDE and some highly acclaimed features. The second is about a specific application: Krunner. It is based on an article I wrote for MakeTechEasier.
Both videos are available for streaming and download.
Introducing KDE 4.3
10 Awesome Features of Krunner in KDE 4
The production plan is also available in PDF format.
Tags: Free Software, kde, linux, open source, video
Posted in Free Software, Technology | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, July 14th, 2009
It is all in your head: the plot, the characters, the locations, and even the scenes, but for some reason, staring at the blank page and blinking cursor makes you freeze. You like the idea of writing a book but cannot imagine actually completing it. If that feeling sounds familiar, then this might be the right article for you. Even if you have written a book and have it all ready to go, you may intend to self-publish it, start your own publishing company, send it to an editor, or just layout your book so you can see how it looks.
There is a long list of reasons why you might need to prepare an OpenOffice.org document in book form, and once you have learned how to do it, you will have a useful skill that you or people you know may need in the future. You can use this method for both print publications and e-books.
Read the rest
Tags: Free Software, open source, openoffice, publishing, writing
Posted in Free Software, Technology | No Comments »
Thursday, July 2nd, 2009
I just installed KDE 4.3 RC 1, and it is fantastic. This will undoubtedly be the best KDE release to date and will answer a lot of the complaints about missing features and stability that people have raised.
The drop shadow glitches from 4.2 are gone from Kwin, but it seems as though they fixed it by regressing back to their earlier unmodifiable shadows. Nevertheless, I can live with that for now, and that is not the topic of this blog post.
(more…)
Tags: kde, kwin, plasma, plasmoids, widgets
Posted in Free Software, Technology | No Comments »
Tuesday, June 30th, 2009
Many KDE 3 users depended on Krun, a simple yet effective application used to execute commands. Executed simply by pressing “Alt-F2″, it was much easier to start applications using it, rather than navigating through a launch menu or opening a terminal window. The only catch with Krun was that you had to know the exact name of the command you intended to launch. With the advent of KDE 4, that has all changed.
Krunner operates independently of the Plasma desktop system as a standalone application. It includes a ton of features that make it useful beyond simple command launching. It has retained many of the features present in KDE 3 and greatly expanded them. We would fail to do it justice if we did not give it a top ten list.
Read the rest…
Tags: command launcher, Free Software, kde, krunner, linux, open source
Posted in Free Software, Technology | No Comments »
Friday, June 5th, 2009
Four weeks after Ruper Murdoch tried to kill our fun by announcing that many of the newspapers you (not I) read will soon charge for access to certain online content, his new attack dog (a.k.a. chief digital officer), Jonathan Miller, claims that Hulu will start charging for content as well.
Forget the fact that Miller’s company is only a partial owner of Hulu, along with NBC and Disney, but let us just stop and think for a moment. What was it that attracted people to Hulu in the first place? I will give you a few minutes to think about it.
Give up? It is free! And I use the term loosely since their content still contains advertisements. For those people who had not already ignored Hulu and reconnected their BitTorrent clients, Miller might as well be Hulu’s messenger of death. No silly, people will not pay for your content when they can get it elsewhere for free.
I am beginning to wonder if News Corp and the cable companies are not all in league together in a final desperate attempt to ruin our lives. Nice try. Instead of trying to exploit people to make themselves rich, they should try working for a living like normal human beings. Then again, we all know they are aliens. They told us on national TV.
Tags: bittorrent, hulu, internet, news corp, Technology, television
Posted in Technology | No Comments »
Monday, June 1st, 2009
Dual monitor setup in Linux has never been easier. While methods such as the xinerama extension sometimes drive people insane, using RandR (Resize and Rotate) is quick and painless. This will allow you to use both monitors as one big screen instead of two identical ones (cloning). Follow these simple steps to get started.
Note: This HOWTO assumes that you are using the opensource drivers for your video card (ATI or Intel). Nvidia and AMD proprietary drivers come with their dual screen components.
Read the rest at MakeTechEasier
Tags: ati, intel, kde, linux, monitors, screens, xorg
Posted in Free Software, Technology | No Comments »
