Tag Archive for 'Linux'

Spicebird 0.4 available for download

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on January 15, 2008
in Linux
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Spicebird is an open-source collaboration suite. Simply put, it is built on Mozilla’s Thunderbird code, and also includes calendars, instant messaging, notes, contacts, feed reading and an old-school news reader. It look nice, is well put-together thus far, has a lot of integration with Google applications such as gmail and calendar, and is shaping up nicely. It isn’t there yet, you can only use Jabber (including Google Talk) with it thus far, you can only import Google Calendars thus far, but I’m in the market for something that I can stealthily replace Lotus Notes with on Linux, and this has some potential.

I’ve tested Spicebird out quickly, it works on 64 bit Kubuntu without much complaint, it seems fairly intuitive, and definitely has a lot of potential. If I could have all my IM accounts in there (so MSN, AOL, Yahoo, ICQ, IRC as well as what it does at the moment) I’d be interested. If it could do social networking like Flock does, I’d be very interested. If they could build Firefox into it, so all my desktop tabs mixed with my web tabs, I’d be incredibly interested. All these all possible, I just wish I could sit down for the next few weeks and write them myself (if only).

Flock for 64-bit Ubuntu Feisty Fawn and Gutsy Gibbon

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on December 19, 2007
in Browsers, Linux and Social Networks
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I’ve been using the Mozilla-based Flock browser more in the past month, I do like how integrated the social networking side of it is. I can’t find extensions for Firefox that do it all so neatly and seamlessly. I’ve decided to start using it at work, and hit an issue, namely that the version supplied on the Flock site doesn’t work with 64-bit Linux. However, Getdeb.net does compile a 64-bit version for the current and previous versions of 64-bit Ubuntu, namely Feisty Fawn and Gutsy Gibbon. This worked fine for me in Gibbon.

Blogged with Flock

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links for 2007-12-19

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on December 19, 2007
in Links
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Firmware update for the Nokia N95

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on December 11, 2007
in Linux and Mobiles
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Nokia have recently released a new firmware update for their N95 mobile phone. I have upgraded to this, and have to mark it as an update worth having. The main benefit is supposed to be improved memory handling, and thus battery life. I can’t say I’ve noticed this in particular, but I tend towards using it for one thing at a time, so I wouldn’t have seen much difference.

However where it does score highly is in several little updates to the GUI, and to some of the applications. Search and the music player have been improved. In particular, the music player has had the podcast functionality merged into it more tightly, and the player will now remember a bookmark for each track you’ve listened to. This is very helpful with podcasts, as it means you can shut down the application, come back to it later, and if you play a track you had been listening to previously, it will remember where you were. I really missed this from the iPod, and in fact it is better, in that it seems to remember your place in multiple tracks. Also improved is the camera software, which definitely takes pictures much quicker than before. Finally, there are new applications as part of the Ovi rebranding, including a demo of the forthcoming new N-Gage platform

This is the first time I’ve properly upgraded the firmware, and I have two points to make. Firstly, I just can’t see a way to either upgrade using Linux, nor to upgrade directly on the phone (I’ve certainly done the latter in the past on previous Nokia phones). This is just wrong, even if you’re not going to support Linux, at least let me use the Wi-fi you’ve put on there to allow me to run an upgrade directly. Secondly, back up your files. This WILL wipe your phone. The way to do this is to go to the Memory Card application, and to select the option to back up the Sim card to the memory card. Once you’ve done the upgrade, you can restore from this back up.

Sync to your Nokia N95 using Amarok

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on November 13, 2007
in Linux and Mobiles
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I received an email today from a new reader, Mark, asking me if I had managed to sync music and podcasts to my N95 yet using Amarok on Ubuntu. This reminded me that I had been meaning to, but had been distracted by the podcasting application Nokia provide. So tonight I’ve had a look at it, and it is relatively straightforwards. This little guide assumes you’ve got Amarok installed and working in Kubuntu or Ubuntu.

1) Open Amarok.

2) Plug the USB cable into your Nokia N95, and select the Mass Storage mode on the phone. When connected, Ubuntu will ask you what you want to do, and choose to open the device in a new folder. Note the address of this folder (the mount point), it will be something like /media/name_of_your_memorycard .

3) Amarok should open up the following dialog box to allow you to set up the N95 as a device:

Manage devices in Amarok

If it doesn’t, go to Settings > Configure Amarok > Media Devices. In both cases, now click on Add Device.

4) Fill out the Add New Device dialog:

Add New Device in Amarok

Select the Generic Audio Player plugin, enter the name you want to call your N95, and the mount point for your device (that you saw in step 2). Click on OK, and OK again.

5) In Amarok, you should now have something that looks like this in the top left:

Connect to your media device in Amarok

If you’ve connected an iPod before (Amarok is pretty good at managing iPods in Ubuntu too), you may need to change the device showing in the drop-down menu. Click on Connect, and it should pick up the N95 and show you the folders on your memory card:

Nokia N95 connected to Amarok

This is the view on the Devices tab in Amarok. Go to the Collection tab to search for music, and right-click on tracks or albums, and choose Transfer to Media Device to add them to your transfer queue. Podcasts take a little setting up, but once done, you have the option to automatically add new episodes to the transfer queue.

When you’re done, click on Transfer, and then Disconnect when it’s finished. Once this is done, go to the icon for your phone on the desktop, right-click, and select Safely Remove. Your phone will been and show a message to let you know when you can remove the USB cable.

Let me know if this little guide is useful to you. I think personally I am going to go back to managing my podcasts through Amarok, it is a good podcasting application, and a bit better to use than the built-in Podcasting app on the N95.

My current list of podcasts

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on October 24, 2007
in Mobiles
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Last night I entered a list of podcasts I listen to into delicious. I’m going to try later to turn the full list into an OPML file, so they can be loaded into a podcatcher or indeed into the Podcasting app on the Nokia N95 if you want. They’re a good mix, obviously leaning towards tech, but if nothing else you’ll get some new shows to try.

Set up an FTP folder in Kubuntu

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on October 16, 2007
in Linux
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Small tip today, I found this the other day, and it’s very handy to have FTP folders set up, rather than use a separate FTP program. Just saves on a few clicks here and there.

To set this up in Kubuntu, go to System Menu > Remote Places, then click on Add a Network Folder. You then get a dialogue where you can choose the type of ftp folder you want. You can choose from Webfolder (Webdav), FTP, Microsoft Windows network drive, secure shell (SSH) or recent connections. It’s pretty useful. Pick FTP, enter your settings and click on Save and Connect. You’ll be prompted for your password, which you can choose to save, and then you’re done, and have a permanent connection you can now connect to from the Remote Places folder.

Sync Gmail Contacts with Kontact

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on October 15, 2007
in Linux
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So I’m on a quest to get, well, everything on everything. I want everything in sync. Now that’s quite a project, so I’m taking little steps. What I’ve done today is to get my Gmail contacts to sync with my desktop contacts app, Kontact (in Kubuntu). I do all my email in Gmail, so it makes sense to me that I have that as the base point. I thought that if I could get my contacts onto the desktop, then I’ve got a place to then figure out how to get them onto my N95 later on.

What I used was a rather nifty piece of software called GCALDaemon. What this is designed to do is to sync Google Contacts and Google Calendars to, well, pretty much most things you can think of. And it runs on Windows, Mac and Linux (as it’s Java-based). Follow the detailed instructions, and then you can have both sync’d. I’ve got it working nicely fairly quickly. The only thing I can’t do yet, rather embarrassingly, is get the Daemon itself to run automatically on login. I’m going to hassle someone to help me out with this.

One gotcha is to make sure you are running Java 1.5 or higher as your default Java JRE, I missed this first time round.

And I found this thanks to the lovely people at Lifehacker.

Moving to a new phone - Nokia N95

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on October 8, 2007
in Linux and Mobiles
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Well I’ve been away for a week in New York, which was rather exciting and relaxing. Upon my return to work, I was somewhat delighted to find my new phone had arrived. I’m now the proud owner of a Nokia N95. So naturally I’m going to be testing out just what I can do with it and Linux. Baby steps tonight, I’ve managed to copy over a few files manually, just so I could check that video Drum n’ Bass podcasts work okay on it. I’ve just been listening and watching the Hospital Records video podcast #3 on it, which looks and sounds great, especially with headphones on. Definitely happy with how the N95 handles such things.

However the challenge is now to get it really working for me as best I can. I want to replace my iPod with it, so I need to see if I can get it to sync with Amarok like my iPod nano does. I’d like to get a reasonable level of contact management working, better than I have managed with the 6300 so far. And I would like to see what else I can do with it. Of course I’ll be tracking my progress on here too.

What I also hope to do though, is to try these things out on a few Nokia models, so I’ll hang onto the 6300, and may try and revive my previous phone as well. I’ve got a little collection now, so it makes sense to try a few things out on them, and see if I can broaden my knowledge a little further.

The Easiest Way to install a LAMP server in Ubuntu Feisty 7.04

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on September 21, 2007
in Linux
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I’ve had to install a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) server before, and it can be quite a hassle. Well under Feisty 7.04, it seems like the process is a lot more painless. Thanks to the wonderful Ubuntu Guide Wiki for Feisty Fawn 7.04 (which is where I start for instructions on setting up most things in Ubuntu), I found this fantastic little tip. You can install a complete LAMP server package from the Synaptic Package Manager:

System-->Administration-->Synaptic Package Manager-->Edit-->Mark packages by Task-->LAMP Server-->OK

Then apply the packages update, and all is done for you. So far, it looks like Apache 2 and PHP5 have been set up for me properly. I’ll test some more, but this was a real timesaver compared to the last time I did this.