[141000700010] |<title>Gobby Review</title>
[141000700020] |<img/>I've been looking for some time for a software like the one I'm about to review.
[141000700030] |Finding it was a thing of chance.
[141000700040] |I saw the name Gobby and because it didn't make me thing of anything I checked it out.
[141000700050] |Gobby is a software that allows multiple users to edit over a network one or several documents.
[141000700060] |It's a free and easy to use collaborative editor.
[141000700070] |It's not the first of its kind but the fact that is easy to use and cross platform might make it the best choice for most of us.
[141000700080] |I can see a huge potential for this software.
[141000700090] |Imagine how useful this would be for working on a project with your colleagues.
[141000700100] |Each one can do its part in putting together what should be the final result and if one has questions about something other members can help by editing the part of the project or can give pointers using the integrated chat.
[141000700110] |Working as a team is a lot more efficient and the final program should make everyone happy since you can see there what's going to be in every minute.
[141000700120] |Since Gobby works over the Internet the users can be ten meters away or on the other half of the world.
[141000700130] |Gobby is written in GTK and it's cross-platformed so it doesn't really matter what operating system are using the others.
[141000700140] |It works well also on Windows and OS X.
[141000700150] |Perhaps I should start describing it to give a better understanding of Gobby.
[141000700160] |When you open it for the first time you don't see anything special.
[141000700170] |It's a simple and clean interface.
[141000700180] |All the buttons are very intuitive so you don't need any previous experience or any related knowledge for using this software.
[141000700190] |Creating and joining a session can be made in a snap.
[141000700200] |When you create a session you'll be asked for a port, for a name, for a color and optionally for a password.
[141000700210] |Gobby also provides support for restoring a session so you'll have easy access to previous Gobby work.
[141000700220] |The server can either open a document from the hard drive or create a new one.
[141000700230] |When this happens the document will be available in a document list.
[141000700240] |If there are several users typing fast you should consider creating the session at a user that has a good Internet connection because even if it's just text, the server needs twice the bandwidth required for each user.
[141000700250] |This can be a problem for dial-up lines but in this modern world it's unlikely that such connection will be used.
[141000700260] |When joining a session you'll have to enter the hostname of the server, the port which in most cases will be the default one, a name and a color.
[141000700270] |In case the name or the color is already used you'll be asked to choose a different one.
[141000700280] |The server supports passwords so in case a password is set you'll have to enter it.
[141000700290] |After joining a session you'll just be able to chat with the users that are already there.
[141000700300] |If you want to start editing a document you'll have to open the document list and subscribe to one of the documents existing there.
[141000700310] |Each time the server opens a document it will be available in the list.
[141000700320] |When you start writing in a document the text will be highlighted with the color that you choose.
[141000700330] |So will be the text written by other users.
[141000700340] |If you want to see which users are currently available and what part is written by them just open the user list.
[141000700350] |There it can be seen the name, the color and what file each user subscribed to.
[141000700360] |Gobby is a great tool for teams of programmers.
[141000700370] |One reason is that Gobby supports syntax highlighting.
[141000700380] |A lot of programming languages are supported and this helps a lot when you are working at a project.
[141000700390] |Unfortunately it doesn't support automatic recognition for the language used but this should not be a problem since the one who is programming knows at least what language he is using :).
[141000700400] |Some settings related to different preferences are available in Gobby, but since it doesn't have so many features you can't expect too much from that section.
[141000700410] |I think there are two essential things that should be implemented in Gobby: a spell check and some file transfer.
[141000700420] |It's obvious how good would the spell check be for people that are editing documents in Gobby and the file transfer feature would be great for programmers that want to send a library or some documentation.
[141000700430] |I think that the chat also needs some improvements because at this stage it doesn't handle links and you can't send private messages.
[141000700440] |Since Gobby is a young application I'm expecting to see some of this features available in the future.
[141000700450] |The development of Gobby should definitely be encouraged because this software is one of a kind and has a lot of potential.
[141000700460] |<b>The Good</b>
[141000700470] |Mainly it is good that the software is easy to use and you can use it at full potential even the first time.
[141000700480] |In Gobby the focus is on the actual work and not at all on the interface and some other stuff.
[141000700490] |Sintax highlighting is a good feature essential for programmers.
[141000700500] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141000700510] |Not much bad things can be said about this software except that some features are badly needed.
[141000700520] |Some of the absent features are the spell checker, the file transfer feature and some stuff related to the chat.
[141000700530] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141000700540] |The truth is that Gobby has a great potential and a lot of people would have to gain using this software.
[141000700550] |It's so easy to use that even people with very little PC knowledge will be able to handle it.
[141000700560] |I'm really looking forward to see its evolution and I'll definitely spread the word about this great small software.
[141000700570] |The screenshots below show Gobby in action:
[141000710010] |<title>Audacious Review</title>
[141000710020] |<img/>Everybody went through a Windows phase at some point, undoubtedly, and I'm going to use that to make a point in the introduction for this review.
[141000710030] |I think that many of you used to appreciate Winamp as a music player and you had some good reasons for this.
[141000710040] |It does have a very simple interface, easy to manipulate and, of course, skinnable.
[141000710050] |Second, you can easily manage the songs in the playlist.
[141000710060] |Third, you have lots of plug-ins that enhance the musical experience.
[141000710070] |How about now?
[141000710080] |Do we, guys using Linux, have a good alternative?
[141000710090] |Is there an audio player on Linux offering at least some of Winamp's features?
[141000710100] |The answer is definitely yes.
[141000710110] |Actually, we have two players capable to compete with Winamp.
[141000710120] |One of them is the well-known XMMS and the other is Audacious.
[141000710130] |I will discuss about the latter in this material.
[141000710140] |Audacious is a fork of Beep Media Player 0.9.7.1.
[141000710150] |William "nenolod" Pitcock decided to fork BMP because the other members of the team which developed this player wanted a new and refreshed next generation player, BMPx. 
[141000710160] |So, let's start with the beginning: The visual aspect is an important factor of human experience and Audacious is at high stakes in this matter.
[141000710170] |The graphical interface is somewhat like Winamp's but we can see differences very quickly, Audacious being a little Spartan in this respect.
[141000710180] |Nevertheless, despite the simplicity of the GUI, the application's functionality is what developers focused on.
[141000710190] |A thing to note is that Audacious supports Winamp 2.x skins, called "classic skins".
[141000710200] |On the front panel, as in every music player, there are buttons for "Play", "Previous", "Next", "Stop" and "Pause".
[141000710210] |A good thing is that there are associations between buttons and commands for playing.
[141000710220] |On the same front panel we see the progress bar for songs, the sliders for volume and balance, a display for the time left of the playing song and the usual visualizations.
[141000710230] |Under the front panel, the equalizer is at its place and it's doing its duty.
[141000710240] |The playlist window has the usual functions like in Winamp and XMMS, nothing spectacular. 
[141000710250] |Let's try a right click on the front panel to see what is happening.
[141000710260] |Well, nothing extraordinary till now, because we are seeing commands for playing, settings for visualization and for graphical behavior.
[141000710270] |I've left for the ending the Preferences section because this is what I like most at Audacious.
[141000710280] |I'd say that this is the core of the player and reflects the philosophy of its purpose. 
[141000710290] |Clicking the Preferences section, we see a somewhat different look than what can be seen in Winamp and XMMS.
[141000710300] |The menu is not so sophisticated like Winamp's but it does look very good.
[141000710310] |The first dialog is Appearance where you can select different skins.
[141000710320] |Second dialog, Audio, is for selecting the audio output, OSS or ALSA.
[141000710330] |Third section is for Connectivity, which includes settings for listening to Internet radio stations.
[141000710340] |After that we have Equalizer, Mouse, Playlist options and finally, Plugins.
[141000710350] |Here I found some interesting plugins which enhance the audio quality, and, I must admit, for me, the quality of audio output is better than in Winamp or XMMS.
[141000710360] |It's hard to explain, but trust me, I know a few things about sound.
[141000710370] |We have plugins for different media types (mp3, wma, wav, ogg), general plugins, visualization plugins, and, the most important ones, sound effect plugins.
[141000710380] |These sound effect plugins are interesting, you can put different effects into sound, like extracting the voice, automatic level change for volume, extra sound effect (this is a very interesting one).
[141000710390] |Also, some additional plugins can be found on the official website.
[141000710400] |I've tried to show so far a good piece of work from open source community, a software which is at start of its evolution, but I think that in the near future we'll witness another interesting surprise from Audacious.
[141000710410] |So, get it, install it, enjoy it. 
[141000710420] |<b>The Good</b>
[141000710430] |Audacious, at this time, is a simple audio player which meets the wishes of most of the users, without useless features.
[141000710440] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141000710450] |For me, it has everything I need.
[141000710460] |So I can't say anything bad about it.
[141000710470] |Still, a weak point is the lack of documentation. 
[141000710480] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141000710490] |Audacious has a lot of potential and, in the near future, many people will find this player very attractive because of its features. 
[141000710500] |Here are some screenshots of Audacious:
[141000720010] |<title>Google Earth Review</title>
[141000720020] |<img/>So far, I think that Google deserves its success.
[141000720030] |Not everything is perfect about Google but it definitely makes our live easier and still manages to make a lot of money.
[141000720040] |Google is growing exponentially and in this process it acquires different companies, offers a lot of free services and a lot of paid ones and bothers a company that the Linux world doesn't like.
[141000720050] |In 2004 Google acquired Keyhole and transformed it in Google Earth.
[141000720060] |From that day on , Google started to improve that software by integrating it with many of its services, especially Google Maps.
[141000720070] |Now Google Earth is available for Linux too.
[141000720080] |We also have a free version that benefits from most of the software's functionality.
[141000720090] |What more can we wish for?
[141000720100] |It's an excellent one of a kind application that runs well on Linux; it's free (as in free beer) and makes money for Google so we don't have to pay for it.
[141000720110] |I don't really think people would pay for it, but I think this solution is a much better one.
[141000720120] |Google earth tries to be a software for anyone.
[141000720130] |Installing it is very easy as it comes in a binary file that takes care of all the installing process.
[141000720140] |If you haven't installed the graphics card you'll not have 3D support.
[141000720150] |Google Earth warns you about this and tells you that it might be an issue.
[141000720160] |I thought it was a great thing that it started without 3D support because I wasn't in the mood to install the card.
[141000720170] |After starting the software for the first time it took about 20 minutes until I used it.
[141000720180] |You can't imagine how slow are rendered some elements without 3D and how fast it is otherwise.
[141000720190] |This version of Google Earth is the 4th and it's the first one supported on Linux.
[141000720200] |Minimum system requirements are kernel 2.4, glibc 2.3.2, x.org R6.7 when it comes to software and for hardware you need at least a 500MHz CPU, 128MB RAM and 400MB free disk space.
[141000720210] |In this matter, I'll recommend using a fast Internet connection, because the high resolution pictures will hopefully use all the bandwidth you can provide.
[141000720220] |What is Google Earth good for?
[141000720230] |First of all Google Earth is a very fun software.
[141000720240] |It provides a bird's eye view for many locations on the planet.
[141000720250] |You can visit almost any place in the world and see some spectacular things that perhaps you've never even dreamed of visiting.
[141000720260] |If you are lucky you might even be able too see your own home.
[141000720270] |As you can imagine not all the places in the world where scanned by the satellite and even less where mapped by Google Maps but this software is still useful.
[141000720280] |Residents of USA will benefit the most since it has the most complete line of services.
[141000720290] |You can visit places like The Grand Canyon or Mount Saint Helens and you'll see a lot more than a 2D texture on a spherical globe.
[141000720300] |In those places, and I'm certain there are others too, you can view the 3D terrain.
[141000720310] |Google Earth uses layers to display a variety of data of general interest.
[141000720320] |Some of the things included in this layers section are borders, roads, populated places, transportation, 3D buildings and a lot of other points of interests.
[141000720330] |It even has a layer with stuff added by the Google Earth community.
[141000720340] |As you read before, Google Earth has a layer with 3D buildings.
[141000720350] |This is a very interesting feature and since satellite pictures are 2D, this feature opens this software to a lot more possibilities.
[141000720360] |In version 4 this software has a new great feature.
[141000720370] |It has the possibility to have textured buildings and this allows Google to create a realistic model of the Earth.
[141000720380] |Since this version is not even final yet, you will not be able to locate many textured buildings.
[141000720390] |If you want to see something really nice just go in Manhattan and if you activate the 3D buildings layer you'll see a bunch of non-textured buildings.
[141000720400] |Imagine how cool would this be if they where all photo-realistically textured.
[141000720410] |I don't want to spoil your happy thoughts but imagine the amount of bandwidth that will be required for viewing Manhattan this way.
[141000720420] |I have a good news that comes packed with a bad one.
[141000720430] |For creating 3D models of buildings, Google provides a freeware software called Google Sketchup.
[141000720440] |This software is only available for Windows and OS X and hopefully it will also be available someday for Linux too.
[141000720450] |The file format that Google Earth uses to add and share data (KML) has expanded capabilities since version 4.
[141000720460] |Since Google tries to integrate the creativity of millions of users who are adding and sharing geographic data it had to make KML better.
[141000720470] |Now when you import a KML you are not loading everything, but only the focused view, as it happens when you are flying around.
[141000720480] |If you'd like to measure the distance from your house to work or from Paris to London this can easily be done.
[141000720490] |It is supported by both a line and a path and the unit of measurement can be easily changed.
[141000720500] |It seems pretty precise but I can't locate anywhere what's the precision of this tool.
[141000720510] |Currently there isn't a Plus or Pro version for Linux, but since Google Earth 4 Linux is in beta stage we can expect that those will also be available.
[141000720520] |At least the plus version would be great to have since it should have support for GPS.
[141000720530] |Since the Google Earth data can't be updated very often and since not even the whole planet was photographed you can imagine that some of it can be a little outdated.
[141000720540] |Google states that most of the imagery is approximately one to three years old.
[141000720550] |<b>The Good</b>
[141000720560] |Google Earth is an excellent unique software.
[141000720570] |It's free for personal use and perhaps it will not be another one like it for some time.
[141000720580] |It worked flawlessly in my case and it had all the features that you are expecting to see here.
[141000720590] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141000720600] |The only downside of this software is that some of the data is inaccurate and unfortunately Google puts accent on providing more data for USA than for the other places.
[141000720610] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141000720620] |The truth is that Google Earth might be part of our every day's live some day.
[141000720630] |This software really has a shining future.
[141000720640] |When the maps will be complete and the small devices will get more powerful, this software might find its real potential when used with a GPS device.
[141000720650] |Until that day, Google Earth is more fun than useful.
[141000720660] |The screenshots below show Google Earth in action:
[141000730010] |<title>Internet DJ Console Review</title>
[141000730020] |<img/>A hundred years ago, voice was transmitted for the first time through radio waves.
[141000730030] |Now the space is so clogged that it's very hard to obtain a license for broadcasting.
[141000730040] |If you want to have your own radio station a lot of money and time are required.
[141000730050] |Since the apparition of the Internet the world changed a great deal.
[141000730060] |The radio is not what it used to be.
[141000730070] |A lot of stations are also broadcasting on the Internet and more and more are starting there.
[141000730080] |Some develop in huge magnets for crowds.
[141000730090] |A solution for your own on-line radio is Internet DJ Console.
[141000730100] |Other programs are also available but this one is perhaps the most full featured and perhaps the easiest to use.
[141000730110] |It has built in almost everything you need.
[141000730120] |It features twin media players, a crossfader, audio level meters, a nicely thought microphone feature and support for jingles.
[141000730130] |It has built-in preferences for the server and many preferences for this software.
[141000730140] |Those are great features, but before you get too excited you should know that sometimes it's hard to compile this software.
[141000730150] |Using compilation parameters might get it up and running.
[141000730160] |This software badly needs binaries for the most common distributions.
[141000730170] |The main interface is nice and intuitive and therefore it's easy to use.
[141000730180] |The twin media player supports all the common controls you are used to and also has support for some original controls for the playlist.
[141000730190] |You can add an entry at some point in the playlist and when it reaches it, the player will either stop playback, streaming, recording or start crossfading or just transfer you to the other playlist.
[141000730200] |Files in the playlist can be easily rearranged and it's safe to say that you can pretty much automate a midnight show.
[141000730210] |Unfortunately this software lacks any form of automatic beat matching.
[141000730220] |When you do unattended fading the songs that fade should be chosen carefully.
[141000730230] |Fortunately you can set the speed of the fader and.
[141000730240] |In this case, a faster fading might be helpful.
[141000730250] |Under the playlists we find three interesting buttons: Stream, Listen and a button with an X on it.
[141000730260] |As you can imagine the first one makes the player's output available for streaming and the second one allows you to mute and unmute that player.
[141000730270] |Until I accidentally clicked the playlist with the X button pressed I didn't know what it does.
[141000730280] |When it's pressed, it removes from the playlist the songs that are clicked.
[141000730290] |If you are unlucky it crashes IJDC.
[141000730300] |In case you noticed the Stream Monitor button and you haven't figure out what it does you should know that it's very useful because when it's pressed you hear exactly the same thing as the listeners.
[141000730310] |On the right side of the players you have audio levels for the microphone and the streams.
[141000730320] |Optionally you can also display VU meters for those but you should know that VU meters aren't really useful.
[141000730330] |An indicator for the amount of the compression that is applied to the microphone is also available in the right part of the screen.
[141000730340] |You will see two telephone icons.
[141000730350] |They are in close relation with the VoIP feature and some mixer functions.
[141000730360] |They are great for the purpose of this software.
[141000730370] |Pressing the Green Telephone allows you to stream audio from a VoIP service like Skype and talk live with people during your show.
[141000730380] |The red telephone button allows people to hear the show via the VoIP service.
[141000730390] |You even have a volume control related to the red telephone button.
[141000730400] |Connecting Skype with IDJC is done using the idjcskype script.
[141000730410] |Near the telephone button is one with a jack icon.
[141000730420] |This allows streaming audio for an auxiliary line.
[141000730430] |From the preferences window you have available a lot of settings.
[141000730440] |You can even switch IDJC to a very basic streamer.
[141000730450] |I find this idea as being great if you want to make a radio for the local network and leave it unattended to stream a playlist.
[141000730460] |Settings regarding the microphone are very interesting and you can achieve acceptable results even with a cheap microphone.
[141000730470] |It is also available a track announcer for X-Chat.
[141000730480] |Regarding the server settings you should know that supported servers are Shoutcast and Icecast.
[141000730490] |There are a bunch of settings here but they shouldn't pose any difficulties for anyone.
[141000730500] |In this window you also have an offline recorder.
[141000730510] |For both offline and online modes several encoding bitrates are available for the mp3 and ogg codecs.
[141000730520] |Several information can be sent with the stream including the file's metadata.
[141000730530] |<b>The Good</b>
[141000730540] |This software has many good points.
[141000730550] |Here I'd like to mention the ease of use of the full featured interface, the support for VoIP and the advanced preferences.
[141000730560] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141000730570] |This software is easy to use if you manage to get it up and running.
[141000730580] |Unfortunately it doesn't have binaries for many distros and it doesn't compile without problems on some distros.
[141000730590] |Some features are still needed but focusing on an easy way to install is essential.
[141000730600] |Some tooltips would be great.
[141000730610] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141000730620] |Perhaps this is the only application that has a solution so complete for making an easy online radio, until now.
[141000730630] |It's a very young application since development started a year ago but it promises much more.
[141000730640] |I like it a lot and I'll keep an eye on it because it deserves our attention.
[141000730650] |Hopefully one day it will have other cool features like automatic beat matching, graphical equalizer and some integration with a web server.
[141000730660] |The screenshots below show Internet DJ Console in action:
[141000740010] |<title>Opera Review</title>
[141000740020] |<img/>Innovation is the first word that comes in my mind when I think of Opera.
[141000740030] |They always added new features into their browser and they created very powerful browsers for mobile devices and in a way, they reinvented the web browser, pushing it further into the future.
[141000740040] |Opera 9 is nothing less than what I expected.
[141000740050] |It brings a lot of new cool stuff and also improves some of the things that have been there for a long time.
[141000740060] |Opera 9 is by far the most full featured web browser.
[141000740070] |Perhaps you want to know what the new features are.
[141000740080] |The most notable are: support for BitTorrent, site preferences, widgets and thumbnail previews.
[141000740090] |The support for content blocker and for the favorite search engines is greatly improved and with the new features great versatility is added to Opera. <img/>
[141000740100] |<img/>BitTorrent is a great protocol that is expanding fast.
[141000740110] |Many users have the tendency to avoid torrents because the need of external software for downloading files through it.
[141000740120] |Opera 9 changes all that because it has integrated support for BitTorrent.
[141000740130] |The support is very basic but it's what most users need.
[141000740140] |It blends well in opera and it feels just like downloading a file the classical way.
[141000740150] |You can set the most important stuff like download, upload limit and the port.
[141000740160] |I managed to download without setting anything but then I had to modify the port because I'm behind a firewall and I want to make my contribution by uploading to other users.
[141000740170] |The conclusion is that BitTorrent support works well out of the box but remember that download/upload stops when you close Opera.
[141000740180] |<img/>Site preferences are great for customizing how a certain site behaves.
[141000740190] |Right-clicking on a web site and selecting site preferences allows you to block cookies or pop-ups only for that site.
[141000740200] |You can also select weather you want to enable java or javascript, plug-ins, sound or animations in that site.
[141000740210] |Actually you can modify many settings related to websites behavior because, based on your settings, Opera decides what code is ignored or not.
[141000740220] |Even though usually site preferences will not be used in some cases they can come in handy if you fully understand what they’re about. <img/>
[141000740230] |<img/>The widgets are trendy these days and Opera made them available here.
[141000740240] |Widgets are supposed to be small web applications that make the desktop experience more fun.
[141000740250] |In Opera 9 widgets are not very useful and personally I consider them a waste of valuable time.
[141000740260] |They are supposed to blend nicely in the desktop but not all of them do.
[141000740270] |Installing them in Opera is very easy.
[141000740280] |You just have to go to widgets.opera.com, choose some of the many, click the download button and they get installed automatically.
[141000740290] |I can see their great potential but it in a real life situation I haven't found real use for them.
[141000740300] |The biggest problem with widgets is that they close when you close Opera and they also consume space in the panel.
[141000740310] |The bottom line is that widgets haven't yet reached their full potential but I'm confident that one day they will. <img/>
[141000740320] |<img/>There is a saying.
[141000740330] |A picture worth’s a thousand words.
[141000740340] |Sometimes this is true and because of this, developers of Opera implemented a new feature that shows thumbnails of the websites opened in tabs.
[141000740350] |The title should be enough for knowing what site is opened in what tab but in some cases, generally when many tabs are opened, you might want to hover the mouse over a tab to see what content is there.
[141000740360] |Perhaps this is not the best practice, since you can click it and see a lot more, but definitely it is a nice feature to have. <img/>
[141000740370] |<img/>Since a lot of websites have many useless graphical elements you can block them with Opera so you can benefit from a faster loading of the page and a simpler one that doesn't distract you from the content.
[141000740380] |When blocking a picture with Opera it actually blocks everything from the directory where that picture comes from.
[141000740390] |Using this technique, Opera generally guesses what pictures you want to block and if something is not as it should it can be configured. <img/>
[141000740400] |<img/>Adding a new search engine is easier than ever.
[141000740410] |Actually I can't see how it can be easier.
[141000740420] |You have to right-click a search field and click the create search button.
[141000740430] |Now you just have to assign a keyword and you're set.
[141000740440] |This feature is very useful if you often search through a forum or a favorite website or perhaps an online store.
[141000740450] |My advice is to assign a very short keyword because you can type it in the address bar followed by what you want to search and Opera will automatically display the page with results.
[141000740460] |This is so sweet that I'm almost addicted to it. <img/>
[141000740470] |<img/>But you should know that many changes where made to Opera's internals.
[141000740480] |One of the most significant is the rewriting of the SSL/TSL implementation from scratch.
[141000740490] |This new engine is supposed to be more flexible so in the future improvement can be done easier.
[141000740500] |TLS (Transport Layer Security) is now enabled by default and in case of secured sites with problematic implementation of security this will still work but it would take a little longer to detect the server's capabilities.
[141000740510] |In case of poor security with SSL/TLS, the security toolbar will not be yellow, but grey.
[141000740520] |Last but not least you should know that now Opera supports 256-bit encryption.
[141000740530] |This is excellent from a security point of view and I think that I can safely say that security will be better in Opera 9.
[141000740540] |Those presented so far are some of the latest features implemented in Opera 9.
[141000740550] |Don't be surprised if I left something out because there are so many features present in Opera that sometimes, they make your head spin.
[141000740560] |I'm not going to say much about the old features because this review will go on and on.
[141000740570] |I'll just add a few words about some of my favorite stuff in Opera that are not considered by most of us.
[141000740580] |Opera provides cool features for web developers.
[141000740590] |All major web standards are supported by Opera and if developers want to validate their code they can do it with the shortcut Ctrl+Alt+V and an online validator will analyze the source code of the page that should be validated.
[141000740600] |There is also a small screen mode for seeing how the page will look on a mobile phone but there was a big difference in what my phone displayed and what small-screen mode displayed on the computer screen.
[141000740610] |Perhaps I should install Opera mobile.
[141000740620] |Full screen mode is one of my favorite features and I use it sometimes when I want to concentrate on the content.
[141000740630] |I'm not proud to say this but I got used to the wing full screen mode from IE.
[141000740640] |Anyway in Opera is a lot cooler since I can use it with mouse gestures.
[141000740650] |The kiosk mode is a feature that will take Opera in the street.
[141000740660] |Information stands will benefit from a great browser that offers a lot of features for this environment.
[141000740670] |There are many switches to restrict users from a lot of actions that shouldn't be allowed in a kiosk and there is also a nice URL filtering feature for restricting access to certain sites or certain file types or to limit browsing only to some websites that revolve around a point of interest.
[141000740680] |In the end you should know that Opera amazed me again and that even though I've been a Firefox user for over six months I'll make the switch.
[141000740690] |I'm actually enthusiastic about Opera 9.
[141000740700] |<b>The Good</b>
[141000740710] |It's hard to focus only on some things to put here.
[141000740720] |There are way too many good things about Opera.
[141000740730] |I am trying to pick some but the truth is that you should figure out which features are good for you. 
[141000740740] |If I had to pick three I must say I appreciate a lot the possibility to easily add my own search engine, the mouse gestures and the keyboard shortcuts.
[141000740750] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141000740760] |I really don't know what's bad in Opera 9.
[141000740770] |Could it be that it has too many features?
[141000740780] |Not for me!
[141000740790] |Could it be that I don't find this widgets very useful?
[141000740800] |Not really.
[141000740810] |At some point they could be useful.
[141000740820] |If I think better there is something that I don't like.
[141000740830] |When I close Opera my downloads stop.
[141000740840] |Perhaps they should make at least a warning message if not a download manager that docks and doesn't close with Opera.
[141000740850] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141000740860] |Opera tries to integrate as many features as possible related to the Internet.
[141000740870] |Support for web pages is great.
[141000740880] |It can download files using the most common protocols.
[141000740890] |It can be a mail client, a news reader, an IRC chat and a lot more.
[141000740900] |It's actually more than I've ever imagined a web browser can be.
[141000740910] |It's the web at the fingertips of an application.
[141000740920] |As I said in the beginning...
[141000740930] |Innovation is the first word that comes in my mind when I think of Opera.
[141000740940] |Below are some screen shots that show Opera in action but, if you haven't already did this, I recommend downloading.
[141000750010] |<title>Sweep Review</title>
[141000750020] |<img/>I first heard of Sweep two or three years ago.
[141000750030] |I knew all along it is an interesting audio editor but I never had the kick to give it a try.
[141000750040] |I don't really know how but it got installed on my computer and for this reason I finally decided to see what's it all about.
[141000750050] |The first thing that surprised me was the support for many audio formats.
[141000750060] |It is able to work with Mp3, WAV, AIFF, Ogg Vorbis, Speex and many more.
[141000750070] |Most of the support is provided by libsndfile, which is very good at supporting most PCM sound file formats.
[141000750080] |The biggest surprise was the support for Speex, which is an open source codec designed for VoIP. 
[141000750090] |One of the coolest features of Sweep is the support for LADSPA plugins.
[141000750100] |LADSPA stands for Linux Audio Developer's Simple Plugin API and it provides a standard base for developing audio processors as plugins.
[141000750110] |LADSPA is supported by applications like Gstreamer, MusE, Rosengarden-4, Ardour and many more.
[141000750120] |This means that once a plugin is created it can be shared between all this applications.
[141000750130] |Plugins give great versatility to applications and the good news is that I was able to find over 40 plugins that can be used with Sweep.
[141000750140] |The most useful are included by default, but if you want a little more from this software, others should be used.
[141000750150] |Sweep automatically finds the plugins and builds a simple user interface for them.
[141000750160] |The intuitive visualization is present; it can't really miss from this type of application.
[141000750170] |It has all the features you expect from it, like zooming, auto scrolling and even support for eight color schemes.
[141000750180] |Color schemes are useful if you work with multiple files at the same time.
[141000750190] |They allow an easier differentiation.
[141000750200] |The color schemes can be found in the View menu.
[141000750210] |For zooming in and out the waveform you can easily use the mouse wheel. 
[141000750220] |Sweep has a feature that makes its developers very proud.
[141000750230] |It is Scrubby, a tool that can be used to play the content of an audio file.
[141000750240] |An interesting thing is how it works.
[141000750250] |You are able to drag it around the waveform and play the file from that point forward.
[141000750260] |This is useful for choosing exactly the point where you want to make an edit.
[141000750270] |When you move it over the waveform it gives a "scratching" effect and, if you have the skills, perhaps DJ-ing is possible with Sweep.
[141000750280] |Sweep has an advanced history function that allows unlimited undo/redo.
[141000750290] |In the history window you can see all the actions related to that file and at any point you can revert to a previous state.
[141000750300] |Recording is very flexible.
[141000750310] |You can record sound in a loop and even in reverse.
[141000750320] |Levels can be set either for the previous sound or for the recorded one, so you can record your voice over a present wave.
[141000750330] |This is pretty cool, but usually it's done by using a different channel for the voice.
[141000750340] |Since here you work directly with the sound file and a proprietary format to retain more info doesn't exist, you can't use different "layers" and this approach should be used.
[141000750350] |<b>The Good</b>
[141000750360] |Sweep is easy to use and has support for LADSPA, so this makes it pretty versatile.
[141000750370] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141000750380] |The latency is somehow high so it can't be efficiently used in real time.
[141000750390] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141000750400] |Sweep is a very nice application and provides enough functionality to get the job done.
[141000750410] |It is a strong competitor for Audacity.
[141000750420] |I can't really find a strong reason but I like Audacity more.
[141000750430] |Check out some screenshots of Sweep:
[141000760010] |<title>GSubEdit Review</title>
[141000760020] |<img/>Until recently I never new there are special applications for editing and converting DivX subtitles.
[141000760030] |I've heard about a piece of software called GSubEdit, short from GNOME Subtitle Editor, and it stirred my curiosity, so I installed it.
[141000760040] |Because I never have time to do stuff, only a month later I managed to take it for a spin.
[141000760050] |The first thing you should know about it is that it's nowhere close to being a final product.
[141000760060] |You shouldn't expect something spectacular but since this software is unique, in a way, I decided to let you know about it.
[141000760070] |When using version 0.4pre1 you should keep in mind two words: Backup often!
[141000760080] |You never now when a "segmentation fault" might ruin all your work.
[141000760090] |You can do many things with GSubEdit and first of all, you can use it to translate subtitles.
[141000760100] |The integrated spell-check is excellent with this software since a mistake can always slip into the translation.
[141000760110] |When you select the spell-check from the edit menu you'll be asked to enter the language code.
[141000760120] |Keep in mind that if you are translating to other language than English you'll have to install the right dictionaries.
[141000760130] |You have many features for correcting the errors that may appear in subtitles.
[141000760140] |Let's say you notice a misspell somewhere and you want to correct it.
[141000760150] |There are available a find and a replace feature.
[141000760160] |Keyboard shortcuts, F6 and F7, are assigned to those two because this is a software that should be used easily just with the keyboard.
[141000760170] |Other features available for correcting subtitles include frames displacement, framerate convert and the possibility to remove comments added for impaired people.
[141000760180] |In case of frame displacement you have to enter a numerical value for how many seconds should be added or removed and you can also select to do this from the current line.
[141000760190] |Frame convert does just what the name suggests.
[141000760200] |You select a source FPS and a destination FPS and convert the file to a new framerate.
[141000760210] |The four most common framerates can be selected from a dropdown box and if you have something special you can type a value manually.
[141000760220] |The last feature mentioned here is for cleaning out subtitles of comments added for people with hearing problems.
[141000760230] |This comments are usually added for subtitles that are in the same language as the movie and when you want to translate them, the comments are usually removed and don't get translated.
[141000760240] |I saw a tendency to skip the comments entirely.
[141000760250] |I actually tried to find a subtitle in my native language for people with impaired hearing and I failed.
[141000760260] |I think it would be fair if two versions of a subtitle would be available since not much extra work is required.
[141000760270] |In the Actions menu you have the options to split and join files.
[141000760280] |Some DivX movies have several versions of the rip.
[141000760290] |Some come on two CDs and others on one.
[141000760300] |Those features are very useful for creating subtitles if you have them for one of the versions.
[141000760310] |The truth is that DivX movies are usually illegal and my advice is to buy the DVD if you can afford it because it's the right thing to do and also has many advantages over a ripped CD.
[141000760320] |Leaving this aside, since it's not the purpose of this review, you should know that this software does the job and when it will be stable I think it will be a good one.
[141000760330] |<b>The Good</b>
[141000760340] |The neat features include support for framerate displacement, conversion and also for spellchecking, joining and splitting files.
[141000760350] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141000760360] |It crashes very often and this is a huge downside of this software.
[141000760370] |The interface uses GTK 1.2 and for this reason it looks pretty ugly.
[141000760380] |More keyboard shortcuts are needed.
[141000760390] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141000760400] |When this software will be stable, it will be a good one.
[141000760410] |It's been more than eight months since a complete rewriting started and I hope to see some progress soon.
[141000760420] |I'm almost sure we'll see GTK2 in a new version and even though, most certainly, I'll never translate a subtitle, this software would be excellent for the community if it was stable.
[141000760430] |The screenshots below show GSubEdit in action:
[141000770010] |<title>Skencil Review</title>
[141000770020] |<img/>The first application I used for vector drawing was Inkscape.
[141000770030] |I was so impressed that I had to write a review.
[141000770040] |Now I encountered a new piece of software useful for vector graphics, called Skencil.
[141000770050] |Even though they are somehow similar, I learned that they are actually very different applications.
[141000770060] |The development for this software started a decade ago, so it's a lot older than Inkscape, perhaps one of the first software for creating vector graphics.
[141000770070] |The problem is that the development is very slow and it feels like it stands still.
[141000770080] |In the meantime, Inkscape makes a very fast progress - it became a (almost) professional application in a very short time.
[141000770090] |The interface of Sketch uses GTK+.
[141000770100] |It uses it since 99', when it switched from Tcl/Tk.
[141000770110] |At that moment, GTK+ was great for any software, but now it's a bit of old news.
[141000770120] |This one is a graphics application and it truly deserves to have a pleasant looking interface that uses GTK2.
[141000770130] |This API has evolved quite a lot since then and, taking into account the differences, the old one feels like something Fred Flintstone would appreciate.
[141000770140] |Anyway, I'm exaggerating because it does the job, but the truth is that a good implementation of GTK2 would open new horizons for it.
[141000770150] |The best thing about this software is that it's well implemented with Python.
[141000770160] |Since this programming language is very versatile and in the same time easy to use, it allows other users to create extensions for this software.
[141000770170] |I was a bit surprised when I saw that Skencil supports several known formats.
[141000770180] |It also has a proprietary format that is selected by default, but most users prefer to use either the most common one or the best format.
[141000770190] |Since I am familiar with SVG from Inkscape, I tried to open some of those files.
[141000770200] |At that very moment I realized that when SVG was implemented in this software most of the advantages that we have today weren't there.
[141000770210] |Skencil was able to display correctly only very simple SVG drawings.
[141000770220] |In fact, this software is quite capable of nice graphics.
[141000770230] |I located some good ones on the website, I downloaded them and played a little with the software.
[141000770240] |I think the .sk proprietary format was a lot more capable than SVG at that time.
[141000770250] |Other supported formats are cmx, cmg, wmf, aff and ai.
[141000770260] |I can't really say how well are this formats supported, but since they haven't evolved like SVG had, I can speculate that the support for those is good.
[141000770270] |Creating and editing shapes in Skencil is quite easy.
[141000770280] |Nice results can be obtained with little effort in case of very basic drawings.
[141000770290] |If you want to create a banner or logo that has a professional touch, this software can't be used because it hasn't support for anti-aliased drawings, for TrueType fonts or for different encodings.
[141000770300] |The lack of this features limit its use a lot!
[141000770310] |Related to the line style and the fill style, many options are supported and the related windows can be easily accessed using the F6 and F7 keyboard shortcuts.
[141000770320] |I think that this feature gives a lot of functionality to this software.
[141000770330] |Raster and postscript images can be imported and easily transformed to fit in your project, and then, they can also be exported in the same format.
[141000770340] |This feature is supported by Python and in theory all the common bitmap file formats can be used.
[141000770350] |Pretty powerful editing is supported and learning the shortcuts from the curve menu can greatly improve your productivity, but this generally applies to any program. 
[141000770360] |<b>The Good</b>
[141000770370] |Bezier curves are well implemented and behave just fine.
[141000770380] |Fill and line properties are good.
[141000770390] |Python provides a lot of extensibility to this software.
[141000770400] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141000770410] |The GTK+ toolkit that is currently used for the GUI is legacy.
[141000770420] |Support for the SVG format is very outdated.
[141000770430] |An advanced text editing is impossible with this software.
[141000770440] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141000770450] |This software can't really go too far if there isn't support from the community.
[141000770460] |I'm not sure it will actually go a lot further if the development is done at this speed.
[141000770470] |Anyway, to be realistic, I have to say I can't think of any good reason for using this software over Inkscape.
[141000770480] |The screenshots below show Skencil in action:
[141000780010] |<title>IPTraf Review</title>
[141000780020] |<img/>I am a person who uses very much the Internet and sometimes I am be curious about some aspects of this big domain, especially what is happening to my computer when it is connected to Internet.
[141000780030] |And because I'm curious, I must have the ways to investigate and monitor my network connection (heh, maybe because once I was a network administrator).
[141000780040] |I choose Iptraf, a great tool for monitoring a network connection. 
[141000780050] |I'm not trying to offer an expert's opinion in these lines.
[141000780060] |I just want to show other people a great application which is very easy to use and quite useful.
[141000780070] |Iptraf is a console-based application which runs on Linux and other UNIX-like systems.
[141000780080] |It gathers a variety of figures such as TCP connection packet and byte counts, interface statistics and activity indicators, TCP/UDP traffic breakdowns, and LAN station packet and byte counts.
[141000780090] |Now let's see why it is so attractive and what its features are.
[141000780100] |I must say that Iptraf is an application that can be run only as root (administrator account on Unix systems).
[141000780110] |It has an ncurses interface, which is a good-looking improvement over the traditional text interfaces.
[141000780120] |That's why Iptraf is easy to use and you don't have to write long text commands, somewhat specific to Unix systems. 
[141000780130] |Let's type the "iptraf" command in a console.
[141000780140] |We will see a blue window and a message which tells us to press any key to continue, to enter to main menu.
[141000780150] |In the application menu we can navigate with the help of directional keys, up, down, left, right.
[141000780160] |The menu options are: IP traffic monitor, General interface statistics, Detailed interface statistics, Statistical Breakdowns, LAN station monitor, Filters, Configuration and Exit.
[141000780170] |The first menu, IP traffic monitor, is very useful to watch for the IP addresses your computer is connected to (or what computers are connected to you).
[141000780180] |Many of us have more that one network card in computer and with Iptraf we can monitor the interfaces separately or together.
[141000780190] |You can also see what TCP ports are used for the connections, on the local endpoint and at the remote computers.
[141000780200] |Another important aspect is that you can see the speed of connection for every connection.
[141000780210] |The second menu is General interface statistics and it shows you the speed of your connection if you are downloading from the Internet.
[141000780220] |Again, it can show all the network interfaces and the traffic which flows through them.
[141000780230] |Detailed interface statistics has the ability to show only separate statistics for every network interface.
[141000780240] |We can see here the total rate of traffic through one interface, incoming rate (the inbound traffic and speed, the data which is downloaded by us), outgoing rate (traffic which is uploaded from us).
[141000780250] |There is detailed information about the nature of incoming and outgoing packets, but this is not so important for a normal user to know.
[141000780260] |The Statistical breakdown takes the interface's Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) size and divides it into 20 brackets, each bracket containing a range of sizes.
[141000780270] |As a packet is captured, its size is determined and the appropriate bracket is incremented.
[141000780280] |This facility provides an idea as to the packet sizes passing over your network, and can aid in network (re)design decisions.
[141000780290] |This information will be of interest to you only if you are a network administrator.
[141000780300] |The LAN station monitor is another facility that can be useful for the specialists, but it is very helpful for normal users as well.
[141000780310] |The aforementioned facility discovers MAC addresses and displays statistics on the number of incoming, and outgoing packets.
[141000780320] |It also includes figures for incoming and outgoing kilobits per second for each discovered station.
[141000780330] |The entry above each line of statistics is the station's LAN type (Ethernet, PLIP, Token Ring, or FDDI) and the hardware MAC address.
[141000780340] |Each statistics line consists of the following information: total packets incoming, IP packets incoming, total bytes incoming, incoming rate, total packets outgoing, IP packets outgoing, total bytes outgoing and outgoing rate.
[141000780350] |This facility works only for Ethernet, PLIP, Token Ring, and FDDI frames.
[141000780360] |Loopback, ISDN, and SLIP/PPP networks are not monitored here.
[141000780370] |Filters are used to control the information displayed by the IP traffic monitor, general and detailed interface statistics, and TCP/UDP statistical breakdown.
[141000780380] |If you want to view statistics for a particular type of traffic, you must restrict the information displayed with filters (they also apply to logging activity).
[141000780390] |This is what I had to say about Iptraf.
[141000780400] |I hope that the information provided was easy to understand and can be assimilated if you will also browse through the Iptraf documentation a little.
[141000780410] |<b>The good</b>
[141000780420] |Iptraf proves to be an application which is addressed to normal users and security and network specialists, too.
[141000780430] |<b>The bad</b>
[141000780440] |I think that a normal user should see what is happening with the Internet connection, not only the administrator (if possible).
[141000780450] |<b>The truth</b>
[141000780460] |Iptraf is a strong network utility which offers many features, is user friendly and is very well documented. 
[141000780470] |Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
[141000800010] |<title>Stellarium Review</title>
[141000800020] |<img/>I've never been very interested in astronomy and perhaps I'll never be.
[141000800030] |Some curiosity is in me, but watching Discovery from time to time satisfies my limited thirst of knowledge in this field.
[141000800040] |Still, every time I come across software that maps the sky I feel a strong impulse to fire it up and check it out; unfortunately, after a few minutes I get bored and move on. 
[141000800050] |My last discovery is Stellarium and it’s the most interesting software of this kind, I've seen so far.
[141000800060] |<b>Space ...
[141000800070] |The Final Frontier...
[141000800080] |Explore and Enjoy...</b>
[141000800090] |To “explore and enjoy” in the comfort of your home, you should probably use Stellarium.
[141000800100] |I've seen other software that lets you “explore”, but Stellarium is the only one that makes the experience pleasant.
[141000800110] |This is because it has a very nice OpenGL interface that creates a smooth, photo realistic map of the sky.
[141000800120] |As you can imagine, this software requires proper drivers for the graphical card because otherwise the software will run *very* slowly.
[141000800130] |There are some similar programs that aren't accelerated by OpenGL but the experience isn't nearly as good as with this one.
[141000800140] |Probably the most important thing is the number of the stars available in Stellarium.
[141000800150] |In this version there are over 120.000 of the, gathered from the Hipparcos catalog.
[141000800160] |I don't find this to be an impressive number since I think that over 1 million stars are actually in the catalog, but it will do very well for most users of this software.
[141000800170] |The placement of stars looks very realistic and a powerful zoom is available.
[141000800180] |The stars move and, even though the movement can't be observed from Earth, when you go deeper and deeper into the space you'll clearly see what I'm talking about.
[141000800190] |Stellarium knows what the time is in your location and is able to draw the exact map of the sky that corresponds to that time.
[141000800200] |The planets are textured and their satellites are also available in this software.
[141000800210] |This is a very cool feature and it gets even better because more nebulae textures are available.
[141000800220] |There are over 100 textures for the nebulae and I really enjoyed zooming into some of them.
[141000800230] |I think this feature can get even better if higher resolution textures are used.
[141000800240] |I think high resolution pictures and detailed information for the planets and for the nebulae would fascinate some of the users.
[141000800250] |Regarding the stars I can say that they are well implemented because for them are used colored dots of different sizes.
[141000800260] |When you click each object in the sky it gets selected and in the left upper corner you can see some info about the name, distance and coordinates.
[141000800270] |By default the software starts in full screen mode and with the atmosphere switched on.
[141000800280] |The atmosphere is very realistic because it supports well implemented transparency and also sunrise and sunset simulations.
[141000800290] |Since this is the main problem of observatories, I take advantage that I use this cool piece of software and turn it off to fully enjoy the simplistic beauty of space.
[141000800300] |Stellarium is able to draw the Equatorial and the Azimuthal grid so you can orientate yourself on the map.
[141000800310] |Anybody would like to be able to locate a constellation in the sky.
[141000800320] |Now it's easy to learn to do that.
[141000800330] |In the bottom left corner of the screen you have buttons for drawing the constellations, their names and even beautiful art that can be displayed to please the eye.
[141000800340] |If you take a look in the configuration window you'll see that it gets even better because other sky cultures can be used.
[141000800350] |Stellarium supports several types of projections so it can be used for a lot more than just the desktop computer.
[141000800360] |An advanced fisheye projection can be used in planetarium domes, a spherical mirror projection is available for those who own a dome and I can also see that a stereographic projection is available.
[141000800370] |For your own computer, a perspective projection should be used.
[141000800380] |Last but not least, you should know that most of the operations can be done with the keyboard, though not very precisely.
[141000800390] |The most useful is definitely Ctrl+F (the good old “find”) but it would be nice if more work would be done so this software can be used in planetariums.
[141000800400] |<b>The Good</b>
[141000800410] |The sensation of realism is great with this software.
[141000800420] |The interface looks nice and behaves well and stable with Open GL.
[141000800430] |The textures are really enjoyable.
[141000800440] |The support for scripting greatly increases versatility.
[141000800450] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141000800460] |More stars with more info are needed for the sake of completeness.
[141000800470] |Higher resolution textures would be great.
[141000800480] |An advanced control of the sky would get this software in planetariums.
[141000800490] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141000800500] |Since I'm not a fan of astronomy I rarely enjoy looking at the sky.
[141000800510] |When I look at the sky I ask myself a question.
[141000800520] |What's with the edge of the universe?
[141000800530] |Scientists say the universe is finite but that it doesn't have an edge.
[141000800540] |What's up with that?...
[141000800550] |Perhaps I should read more!
[141000800560] |The truth is that in my case this software is the only enjoyable thing related to astronomy.
[141000800570] |Other attempts have been made but none better than Stellarium.
[141000800580] |Check out the screenshots of Stellarium:
[141000820010] |<title>KImageMapEditor Review</title>
[141000820020] |<img/>One of these days, a friend of mine paid me a visit.
[141000820030] |He's a PHP programmer and, at some point, we started talking about his work.
[141000820040] |He needed to create a presentation for a website that he was working on but that was far from being thoroughly designed.
[141000820050] |For the presentation I suggested he can either create a HTML lookalike with a few working links or he can map a nice image of what the designer sketched.
[141000820060] |Since he had some sketches in bitmap format he decided to go with an image map editor.
[141000820070] |I remembered that Quanta was able to do something like this and after a little digging I realized that Quanta was very well integrated with a little software called KimageMapEditor.
[141000820080] |This is exactly what was needed here and what I'm about to review.
[141000820090] |KimageMapEditor is a very easy to use tool that allows adding and editing image maps in HTML files.
[141000820100] |Since it is based on KPart technology it can be easily integrated with other KDE applications and, more importantly, it is well integrated with Quanta.
[141000820110] |If you start with a blank file you'll see that in the workspace there is a big text that tells you to open either a picture or the HTML file you want to edit.
[141000820120] |If you intend to start from scratch with an image file you should know that the supported formats are JPEG, PNG and GIF.
[141000820130] |This is fair enough since these formats are generally used for online content; however, modern browsers support a lot more image formats than this software does, so the choice shouldn't be limited only to the aforementioned three file types.
[141000820140] |When choosing to open an existing HTML file, the software will automatically detect the images contained in the code and the image maps assigned to that image, if there are any.
[141000820150] |<b>The Interface</b>
[141000820160] |The interface is very intuitive and getting used to it takes only a few minutes.
[141000820170] |At first you get the feeling that it is an over simplistic drawing program, because you can see a toolbar with different shapes that can be used to create maps on images.
[141000820180] |I guess it involves some drawing but not in the way an artist does it; it's actually more of a child's play.
[141000820190] |In the main toolbar you have all the stuff that you get in most software that involves modifying things.
[141000820200] |I would like to mention that the undo / redo feature is pretty cool because it has a history function.
[141000820210] |If you hold the mouse clicked a little more on those buttons you get a drop-down list of all the actions available.
[141000820220] |The second toolbar is the drawing toolbar and here you have different icons for creating circles, rectangles and polygons.
[141000820230] |The last two buttons give a lot of power to the software.
[141000820240] |They are used for adding and removing points to / from the polygons.
[141000820250] |If you have a very complex shape and don't manage to get it right from the first time, adding more points will make the map very precise.
[141000820260] |Removing points is useful mainly when you use the freehand polygon tool.
[141000820270] |It would be cool to have a tool that automatically selects an area based on the color similarity but unfortunately this might never be implemented in this software since development stopped in 2003.
[141000820280] |In the right part of the screen you can see three tabs that show the created areas, maps and the used images.
[141000820290] |In the areas tab you can see the HREF field and a preview of the area.
[141000820300] |Several maps can be used and they all can be created or selected from the second tab.
[141000820310] |This is very useful when you have objects of different types because it helps keeping things organized.
[141000820320] |The images tab shows all the images that are in the HTML file that is to be modified.
[141000820330] |Double clicking an area opens the area tag editor where you can see the HREF, the "alt" text, the target and the title fields that correspond to that area.
[141000820340] |In the HREF field you can also browse your way to the file that is to be linked.
[141000820350] |In the second tab of the area tag editor you can see the coordinates of your area.
[141000820360] |They can be precisely modified from here, even though it is not much of a help because this task is much easier to do visually.
[141000820370] |The last tab shows several fields for adding JavaScript actions.
[141000820380] |This is pretty cool if you know JavaScript and it would have been a lot better if it had drop-down boxes for selecting parts of the code from there.
[141000820390] |Configuration options for this software are pretty poor.
[141000820400] |You can only set the maximum image preview height and it's supposed to also support setting for the undo / redo limit but it doesn't work.
[141000820410] |Anyway, I said in the beginning that my friend used it to create a presentation to a website that was only sketched.
[141000820420] |I've seen the results and I must say I was pretty impressed.
[141000820430] |<b>The Good</b>
[141000820440] |It is very easy to use and still powerful enough to provide precise mapping of areas.
[141000820450] |It integrates with Quanta and also provides very basic JavaScript tags that can be altered from this software or better from Quanta.
[141000820460] |Points from the polygons can be freely moved with the mouse and when needed they can be easily removed.
[141000820470] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141000820480] |Sometimes when you want to map an image from scratch the generated code is broken and modifications have to be made in order to get the job done.
[141000820490] |This is a big downside that eclipses all the other bad things.
[141000820500] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141000820510] |I actually played with it for several hours and I can safely say that it's a good program that helps a lot when you have to map images.
[141000820520] |The fact that it integrates nicely with Quanta is good for both programs.
[141000820530] |Unfortunately, the code generated by this software doesn't seem to work all the time, but with minor adjustments it can be fixed.
[141000820540] |Too bad that development stopped in 2003, because with little help this software can be great at what it does.
[141000820550] |Check out this screenshots of KImageMapEditor:
[141000830010] |<title>YaKuake Review</title>
[141000830020] |<img/>Almost everybody is a GUI person these days.
[141000830030] |The good old fashion command line interface will never be as popular as it was a few years ago.
[141000830040] |Anyway, Linux without a terminal is inconceivable and, in a way, incomprehensible.
[141000830050] |Weather you like it or not, in the Linux world you have to use the terminal from time to time.
[141000830060] |Now you can do that in style, using a cool KDE terminal emulator called Yakuake. 
[141000830070] |Yakuake uses all the technology that was perfected in Konsole over the years.
[141000830080] |Before Yakuake I've been enthusiastically using Konsole because it is perhaps the best terminal emulator out there.
[141000830090] |Using the CLI allows you to work much more efficiently even in the GUI.
[141000830100] |I use the terminal because it allows me to do things much faster and transparently than the graphical interface, but the problem for me was the small amount of time it took to open that terminal.
[141000830110] |Yakuake is great at this.
[141000830120] |After you start it for the first time, you'll notice there is a tooltip which tells you that F12 will fire Yakuake.
[141000830130] |If you don't close this terminal from the little x that is located in the bottom right part of the screen, it will be launched automatically the next time you log in KDE.
[141000830140] |This is perhaps the coolest thing about it, because with just a keystroke you have instant access to the terminal.
[141000830150] |When you press F12 you'll see that Yakuake smoothly rolls down from the top of your screen.
[141000830160] |It is a pretty nice effect and the animation duration can be easily changed within the interval 0 - 500ms.
[141000830170] |Since setting a greater animation time interferes with the scope of fast and easy access to the terminal I think that the maximum of 500 ms is more than enough.
[141000830180] |As I said before, Yakuake inherited the most of the features set from Konsole, as well as the illusion of transparency.
[141000830190] |The settings are identical and they all can be accessed in the same way you do it in Konsole.
[141000830200] |You have to right-click in the Yakuake window and hover with the mouse over the settings button.
[141000830210] |You even have a button that allows you to use the settings stored in Konsole.
[141000830220] |This is very cool because it allows migrating from Konsole very easy.
[141000830230] |Yakuake has only a few new features, but the redesign is very cool and really increases the day to day usability.
[141000830240] |You can see several discrete buttons that allow different actions.
[141000830250] |In the bottom right there are three of them.
[141000830260] |The first one is for keeping the terminal on top all the time and the second one is for accessing properties specific to Yakuake.
[141000830270] |The last one is for closing it.
[141000830280] |The properties specific to Yakuake are terminal width and height, horizontal location and animation duration.
[141000830290] |Other options are to show the tab bar, retract when focus is lost and to force refreshing the background.
[141000830300] |Since everything is about shortcuts in a software like Yakuake, you should know that the shortcuts can be easily configured.
[141000830310] |Currently, only the most important shortcuts available in Knosole are also implemented in Yakuake, but, hopefully, the new developer that took over the project will implement more.
[141000830320] |Something that you might miss in Yakuake is the possibility to create a new tab by double clicking the tab bar.
[141000830330] |Here you have a plus button in the right part of the screen for creating a new tab and a minus button for removing the selected tab.
[141000830340] |Shortcuts are the practical thing here, but some bugs are still present regarding the tab features.
[141000830350] |I have no doubt the bugs will be fixed because the project is very popular and people will certainly want to contribute.
[141000830360] |<b>The Good</b>
[141000830370] |First of all, the smooth sliding of Yakuake is pretty cool.
[141000830380] |Secondly, the fact that it's based on Konsole makes it quite powerful.
[141000830390] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141000830400] |Bugs are still present and more features should be implemented.
[141000830410] |Skins are supposed to be supported by Yakuake but I wasn't able to find any online or a menu that suggested the skins support.
[141000830420] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141000830430] |The truth is that Yakuake is cool and actually more practical than the conventional terminal emulators that were available for the GUI.
[141000830440] |This terminal emulator has a lot of potential and I'm looking forward to see what new features will be implemented when KDE 4 will be available.
[141000830450] |Check out the screenshots below:
[141000840010] |<title>KDE DVD Authoring Wizard Review</title>
[141000840020] |<img/>When it comes to advanced software for creating multimedia content, Linux is not yet a good player.
[141000840030] |The main reason for this is that Adobe and the others don't consider Linux a platform for their software.
[141000840040] |Today I found an Adobe DVD and I remembered how cool is their software and how annoying is that Linux is not supported. 
[141000840050] |DVDs are very popular these days and many people are considering creating their own DVDs.
[141000840060] |For this purpose I will present you a little software that does DVD authoring.
[141000840070] |It's called KDE DVD Authoring Wizard and it's designed to be very easy to use.
[141000840080] |In fact, you don't need to know anything about authoring; all you have to keep in mind is that the files you use are DVD compatible MPEG-2 video files.
[141000840090] |The support for MPEG-2 only is a big downside of this software, but the good news is that the developer created another wizard, called KmPg2, for encoding to MPEG-2.
[141000840100] |The DVD Authoring Wizard is built with kommander, so it will not run if it's not available.
[141000840110] |Now you open the binary file and the wizard is launched.
[141000840120] |The first screen is just general basic information.
[141000840130] |The only thing that caught my attention was the Help button.
[141000840140] |I found it an interesting asset for some of the steps that could appear at some point.
[141000840150] |It seems that Help isn't implemented yet, but I'm guessing it will be, because this software is still young.
[141000840160] |The next screen asks you for a title and a subtitle for your DVD menu.
[141000840170] |In this software you can easily skip the creation of a DVD menu and, if you don't want it, you should leave it blank.
[141000840180] |I still recommend a menu because that's a cool feature of DVDs.
[141000840190] |In the next screen you'll be asked for a storage folder, where I recommend that you have about 5GB of free space.
[141000840200] |The next step is where you select an introduction movie.
[141000840210] |I selected a short 8 seconds movie here because I didn't want to wait too much for getting in the menu.
[141000840220] |Then I reached the step where I had to create the playlist.
[141000840230] |Here you add the files in the playlist, select the order you like for playback, set if you want a pause between movies and provide a title for each file that will be displayed in the DVD menu.
[141000840240] |A very nice feature is the check compatibility option; it helps you rest assured that you have the right file format.
[141000840250] |After all the content is selected and nicely arranged in the playlist, you'll reach a point where you have to select the fonts that must be used for the menu.
[141000840260] |This feature hasn't reached its full potential though, because a lot more things can be implemented here.
[141000840270] |The wizard will now get you to setting the menu background.
[141000840280] |You can choose either the default moving chequers or you can pick an image or a video file.
[141000840290] |After background, there is sound and animations, which need to be set-up.
[141000840300] |You can easily select a soundtrack for the menu, either in ogg, mp3 and wav file formats, and the wizard will automatically add fade effects to it.
[141000840310] |Unfortunately, mp3 didn't work for me.
[141000840320] |Regarding the animation you can choose to have a fully animated menu that contains running thumbnails of the video files in the playlist or a static one that is generated a lot faster.
[141000840330] |After this you have to select the aspect ratio that you like to use for the menu and the television system that is used in your country.
[141000840340] |In the next step you'll chose a decoration for the thumbnails in the menu.
[141000840350] |At this point, only two decorations are available, and you can also choose a plain rectangle.
[141000840360] |Now we're getting near the end result.
[141000840370] |At this step we can preview how the menu will be like.
[141000840380] |If errors are detected, the program will warn you, but if all the steps are followed accordingly, a picture will be opened and it will show a screenshot of what the menu will look like.
[141000840390] |That's nice, because you can go back and change the settings until you get them right.
[141000840400] |After you're all set it will come the step where you actually build the menu.
[141000840410] |If you don't want it, just skip this step and no menu will be generated.
[141000840420] |As you can see, most of the wizard is about the menu, but after you're done with it the DVD has to be generated.
[141000840430] |At this point all files in the playlist will have to be organized into a DVD structure and stored on the HDD.
[141000840440] |One more button is to be pressed now.
[141000840450] |The Cerate ISO one, that packs everything for easy burning.
[141000840460] |It would have been cool to have a burn DVD button too, but unfortunately we don't.
[141000840470] |<b>The Good</b>
[141000840480] |The wizard is very easy to use and has enough features to get a nice end product.
[141000840490] |The most important feature is perhaps the MPEG2 DVD compatibility checking, but the others are nice too.
[141000840500] |This software is great for creating your own DVD fast and easy.
[141000840510] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141000840520] |Menu fonts are not very configurable.
[141000840530] |MP3s didn't work as a menu soundtrack.
[141000840540] |Other aspect ratios should have been available.
[141000840550] |More thumbnail decorations would have been nice.
[141000840560] |Help hasn't been implemented yet.
[141000840570] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141000840580] |As you saw, the process was pretty straight forward and the required knowledge was minimum.
[141000840590] |The wizard is good at what it does, but it still has a lot to grow.
[141000840600] |Most probably you'll also need KmPg2 to create the MPEG-2 files, but hopefully some day the conversion will be done automatically by the DVD Authoring Wizard.
[141000840610] |The screenshots below show a walk through DVD Authoring Wizard:
[141000850010] |<title>KmPg2 Review</title>
[141000850020] |<img/>In my latest review I've presented a wizard for creating DVDs from MPEG2 files.
[141000850030] |The software was all nice and stuff, but had one inconvenient: the use of MPEG2 files.
[141000850040] |If you want to get your video files on a DVD with that wizard you'll have to use an encoder. 
[141000850050] |Probably the best solution is KmPg2, another wizard that can convert all sorts of video files to DVD compatible MPEG2 files.
[141000850060] |KmPg2 is developed by the same person as KDE DVD Authoring Wizard and I can easily say that's a very similar piece of software even though it serves totally different purposes.
[141000850070] |The similarities between these two are related to the interface that was built with komander and has the same style regarding the layout, the size, the font and even the help feature, which hasn't been implemented in this one too.
[141000850080] |This is a very good thing, because the interface is very easy to use and, as far as I can see, these wizards are complementary.
[141000850090] |For the sake of completeness, you should know that the wizard uses mjpeg tools for encoding the video.
[141000850100] |MJPEG Tools are pretty powerful and have an interesting set of features, but the wizard uses only their encoding capabilities.
[141000850110] |In the KmPg2 package there is another interesting wizard that is very useful for interactively creating optimization profiles for specific types of video materials.
[141000850120] |The processing tools are pretty powerful and can really make a difference in terms of improving the quality of the material that is encoded.
[141000850130] |When you open a video file, the software tries to detect information like video and audio format, playing time, resolution, intended TV systems and whether the video is interlaced or not.
[141000850140] |This info is cool to have, even though I can't really figure out a use for it.
[141000850150] |The next step is to add the subtitle and select a font for it.
[141000850160] |The available fonts are the same as the ones in KDE DVD Authoring Wizard, but the options regarding other settings to the fonts are even less.
[141000850170] |After the video file and fonts are selected, you'll be asked for a storage folder.
[141000850180] |An interesting thing is that the wizard automatically calculates if the space required is enough and prints the result on the screen.
[141000850190] |This doesn't work very well since I haven't got to the point of selecting the desired bitrate.
[141000850200] |We’ve now reached the step where we select the desired profile for image processing.
[141000850210] |This is a very nice feature, but you should be aware that this process takes a lot of time.
[141000850220] |If the quality of the content to be processed is good enough for you, I strongly advice you to select no filtering.
[141000850230] |At some point you'll reach the window where an image aspect ratio and a television system should be selected.
[141000850240] |This wizard presents a little more features than the previous one, but there’s still room for more.
[141000850250] |The supported aspect ratios are 4:3, 16:9 and 2.35:1. I like it that you can preview your movie with the aspect ratio you’ve selected and see if you’re happy with the results.
[141000850260] |Now you're at the color correction window.
[141000850270] |Here you can adjust the brightness, the saturation and the contrast, and then play the preview to see if the results meet your expectations.
[141000850280] |After this you are presented with the window for setting the image quality.
[141000850290] |You have two options here: either to select a value for a constant bitrate or to select one for the quality percentage when you use the variable bitrate.
[141000850300] |As a last result for obtaining a good result for the encoded content you are presented with some advanced settings.
[141000850310] |This is the only place where you need to have some strong knowledge related to encoding, if you really what something out of this window that is.
[141000850320] |In my opinion, the best think about this step is that you can add custom mpeg2enc command line parameters.
[141000850330] |If you don't recognize any of the stuff here, you can just click the next button to get to the step where you can preview 10 seconds of your next-to-be-encoded video file.
[141000850340] |If you're happy, click the next button and then just begin encoding.
[141000850350] |On my Athlon XP 2200+ processor, this seemed to last forever.
[141000850360] |It is definitely not something I want to do while I'm working on the PC.
[141000850370] |I'll reserve this task to be done during the night, because while I sleep I can't be frustrated that my PC doesn’t all the resources assigned to encoding.
[141000850380] |An interesting feature is that the encoding process can be run with low priority, but I’ve tried this and it still makes my PC almost unusable.
[141000850390] |Another interesting feature should be something that shows the progress on the screen.
[141000850400] |This didn't work in my case and I was a bit disappointed, because I can't know whether I have to wait an hour or ten for the encoding to be done.
[141000850410] |Up to this step I was very happy with this wizard and I wanted to give it 5 stars, but because of those last downsides I can't do it anymore.
[141000850420] |<b>The Good</b>
[141000850430] |The wizard is very easy to use and, in the same time, it combines an interesting set of features.
[141000850440] |It's a pretty powerful software that makes good partnership with KDE DVD Authoring Wizard.
[141000850450] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141000850460] |The bugs in the last window set it back a lot.
[141000850470] |I don't know why the progress isn't shown but it's very important for the comfort of it's users.
[141000850480] |I with I had more aspect ratios and more fonts.
[141000850490] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141000850500] |I'm pretty happy with the wizard and I recommend it to anyone who doesn't need fancy options or a lot of control.
[141000850510] |It's a perfect application for easily encoding video content to MPEG2, without being worried that you have no previous experience with encoding.
[141000850520] |Check out some screenshots below:
[141000860010] |<title>GKrellM Review</title>
[141000860020] |<img/>When I first started to understand how my computer works, I began to monitor the system more often, trying to make sure that everything works just fine.
[141000860030] |I tried many programs that gave more or less information but, after a while I got bored of that.
[141000860040] |My computer works whether I use a system monitor or not and somehow I began to believe there's no point in wasting time and desktop real estate with those applications.
[141000860050] |Anyway, I'm always tempted to install system monitors on my desktop, and generally I do that.
[141000860060] |In Gnome I prefer to use one that docks nicely in the panel, called System Monitor; in KDE I prefer Superkaramba and there are also GKrellM and Torsmo, which I can use in any desktop environment.
[141000860070] |This review is going to describe GKrellM because this one is perhaps the most complete system monitor that works on all desktop environments pretty well and can be configured easily.
[141000860080] |I'm pretty sure that Superkaramba can do all this stuff, but it will be a lot harder to get the same info, plus the fact that Superkaramba is designed for KDE.
[141000860090] |GKrellM uses GTK2 and this allows it to support interesting themes and also integrate well with all the desktop environments.
[141000860100] |The looks are very important to a software like this; most of the people use it because it makes their desktop look sophisticated.
[141000860110] |The good news is that there is a wide variety of themes that can be used to match the equilibrium of your desktop.
[141000860120] |Themes can be changed easily using the Page Up and Page Down buttons on your keyboard.
[141000860130] |GKrellM has an impressive amount of features for a software of its kind and things actually get even better, because you can use plugins with it to extend its functionality.
[141000860140] |For example, you can use several multimedia related plugins for controlling the volume, XMMS and even for viewing a sound scope.
[141000860150] |There is an additional software called GKrellMd, which is actually a daemon that can be used to send data over TCP/IP to GKrellM.
[141000860160] |This daemon only depends on glib and doesn't even require a graphical interface for running it on a machine.
[141000860170] |It can be used for easy remote monitoring of server machines or other workstations.
[141000860180] |Since multiple instances of GKrellM can run, you can create a simple solution for remote monitoring multiple machines.
[141000860190] |I just found out about this feature and I'm pretty happy about it.
[141000860200] |Things get even more interesting if you have a Linksys router that you want to monitor with GKrellM.
[141000860210] |Some Linksys routers support Linux and on the Internet you can find third party firmwares that integrate gkrellmd.
[141000860220] |<b>Configuring GKrellM</b> is easy.
[141000860230] |Just press F1 when its window is selected and the configuration window will appear.
[141000860240] |Here you can see that everything is nicely arranged to provide ease of use even to inexperienced users.
[141000860250] |The first things I do after installing is tick the "Do not include on a taskbar" check box and choose another theme.
[141000860260] |I find the default theme of GKrellM very ugly, but, fortunately, there are many nice themes out there.
[141000860270] |The first thing can be done from the general menu, in the properties tab and the themes can be changed from the themes menu.
[141000860280] |In both menus you'll see that the last tab is an info tab.
[141000860290] |This is very useful and provides valuable information that really helps understanding this software and its features better.
[141000860300] |<b>What is displayed</b> in GKrellM can be chosen from the built-ins drop-down menu.
[141000860310] |I can't think of anything here that misses or that's extra.
[141000860320] |In my opinion, the best implemented feature here is the Internet monitor that is a highly configurable function to display TCP port connection.
[141000860330] |This is a unique feature among system monitors and can be really useful in some cases.
[141000860340] |The mail monitoring feature is very good too and has a lot of configuration options that can be performed easily.
[141000860350] |There are many features and sensors here, so it will take some time getting through all of them.
[141000860360] |I don't want to keep boring you any further, so I'll just say that some of them monitor the temperature, the fan speeds (if you have lm_sensors kernel module loaded or a running mbmon daemon), the hard disk, the network interface, memory and swap space, and the list goes on.
[141000860370] |For most, GKrellM plots charts about their activity and for some you can even setup alerts.
[141000860380] |The alerts are very important for a system monitor, but rarely one supports them.
[141000860390] |This feature is well designed, so you will not get a false notice and it can also be automated to take action for you in some circumstances.
[141000860400] |<b>The Good</b>
[141000860410] |The impressive set of features, combined with plugins and gkrellmd provide all its versatility.
[141000860420] |This software is excellent for both desktop computers and server machines.
[141000860430] |If I'll ever need a serious system monitor that displays everything nicely in a graphical manner, I'll use GKrellM.
[141000860440] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141000860450] |Its biggest drawback regarding the use on desktop computers is the support for themes.
[141000860460] |I think these themes are way too simple, because of the limitation to the rectangle shape.
[141000860470] |If it had the versatility that Superkaramba has for its themes, then it would blow its competitors away.
[141000860480] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141000860490] |This software is the most complete system monitor available for Linux at this moment.
[141000860500] |The rest of them can't come even close to the features and versatility present in this one.
[141000860510] |In the introduction of this review I said that I use different ones in KDE and Gnome.
[141000860520] |The reason behind this is that I don't really need one and I don't care much about a system monitor.
[141000860530] |If you want the best of the best, that works well on all environments, you should use GKrellM.
[141000860540] |If you want something that takes little space or comes in different shapes, then GKrellM is not for you.
[141000860550] |The screenshots below show the GKrellM configuration window:
[141000860560] |Take a sneak peak at some themes:
[141000860570] |<b>Follow the editor on Twitter <a>@mariusnestor</a></b>
[141000880010] |<title>Kooka Review</title>
[141000880020] |<img/>The first software application you usually come across when you need to scan documents is Kooka.
[141000880030] |I will not be able to tell you if this application is better or worse than others, mainly because this is the first scanner software I've ever used in Linux, but I will try to analyze its features and see how it does the job.
[141000880040] |For this purpose, I burrowed a scanner from a friend of mine and, if chance is on my side, everything should work out of the box and pretty well.
[141000880050] |As a last introductory word you should know that this is not the first time I use a scanner, but it will be the first time when I'll do it in Linux.
[141000880060] |I have some technical knowledge about how scanners work but I never had any reason to use one in Linux.
[141000880070] |As most of the softwares that work with hardware in Linux, Kooka also relies on some software application to get access to the scanner hardware.
[141000880080] |This is the SANE library and, generally, it is considered a standard when it comes to scanning in Linux.
[141000880090] |Building Kooka on SANE is considered good news and more good news are yet to come, because using GOCR or OCRAD Kooka can perform OCR.
[141000880100] |That acronym stands for optical character recognition and it's used for extracting the text from the pages you want to scan.
[141000880110] |There is a lot to say about OCR and the scope of this review doesn't include it.
[141000880120] |As a parenthesis, you should know that for OCR to work well you need a very good quality printed document.
[141000880130] |My USB scanner was recognized perfectly by Kooka (actually by SANE) and the nice thing is that you can use other stuff too, like camera connected to a capture card.
[141000880140] |The start-up preferences suggest that the scanners available on network can be used too.
[141000880150] |This is a great feature especially for small businesses and, hopefully, detection works well because I can't see where to add a network scanner manually.
[141000880160] |Though is not extremely nice or very well optimized, Kooka's interface is easy to use and provides an interesting set of features.
[141000880170] |Usually, in the bottom left corner of the interface you'll find scanner-dependent settings and the buttons to make preview scan and to do the final scan.
[141000880180] |Upper you'll see a navigation area.
[141000880190] |Here you have the Kooka Gallery.
[141000880200] |All the scanned images are shown, with some additional data like the size and the format.
[141000880210] |Things can be kept ordered here because you are allowed to create folders in the gallery, to import other images and, if you wish, you can unload them from the gallery.
[141000880220] |In the right part there is the preview / scanned image area.
[141000880230] |It contains two tabs; one is for the scanned image and shows how the image appears after it was scanned, and the other is for previewing the image that should be scanned.
[141000880240] |An interesting feature is the auto selection, which can be set to be active on black or white, and even the threshold can be adjusted.
[141000880250] |The tools available in the top of the screen are very useful, because, if you are not careful to put the thing you want to be scanned in the right position, they can help you fix this very easily by rotating or mirroring your image with just a click of a mouse.
[141000880260] |However, it's a lot of room left for interfering with a software like GIMP if you wish to correct other defects that are a little bit more complex than that.
[141000880270] |Unfortunately, there are no options for automating the process a little and, if you want to scan large volumes of content, the process could turn out to be a little slow.
[141000880280] |<b>The Good</b>
[141000880290] |The software is good and does the job just fine.
[141000880300] |Using SANE for hardware detection assures the best support for hardware and the possibility to use OCR extensions comes as a very pleasant surprise.
[141000880310] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141000880320] |The interface is not very good looking and doesn't provide flexible options.
[141000880330] |I think that more control should be available and a way to automate the scanning process would really come in handy to some users.
[141000880340] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141000880350] |This is a pretty straight forward software and I was quite satisfied with it today, considering it's the first one I've used in Linux.
[141000880360] |The support for OCR extensions is a big plus and, if I would use a scannerfrom time to time I don't think I'd bother to find a better one.
[141000880370] |If using a scanner would be part of my day to day activities, most certainly I'd search for alternatives.
[141000880380] |Check out this screenshots of Kooka:
[141000880390] |<b>Follow the editor on Twitter <a>@mariusnestor</a></b>
[141000890010] |<title>SuperKaramba Review</title>
[141000890020] |<img/>Widgets are more and more popular nowadays and interesting alternatives are starting to show up on Linux too.
[141000890030] |SuperKaramba is probably the first software for using widgets on your desktop and initially was a system monitoring application.
[141000890040] |It was slowly developed over the years, but the community around it grew gradually, many themes appeared and now it is considered a part of KDE.
[141000890050] |First time I used SuperKaramba or Karamba (I don't remember which one it was at that time), I was amazed by the way I managed to make the desktop look.
[141000890060] |My Linux desktop looked like a computer from a SciFi movie.
[141000890070] |Today I rarely use it because I don't have the time to make everything look and work just right and because I get impressed a lot harder.
[141000890080] |When I say time you'll probably think that I'm exaggerating a little, but to make SuperKaramba look cool and be functional in the same time you need at least an hour to waste, an eye for aesthetics and a little more than basic Linux skills if you want your widgets to work as they should.
[141000890090] |The design of SuperKaramba gives it many advantages, such as themes that come in various shapes and sizes and which perform a lot of different tasks.
[141000890100] |Unfortunately there is an important disadvantage as well - SuperKaramba generally doesn't work right "out of the box".
[141000890110] |This software is popular for displaying system information on your Linux desktop and for doing it in style.
[141000890120] |I never thought of it as a widgets application, but, in fact, it can be considered as such.
[141000890130] |Most themes are for monitoring the system; others are for displaying the weather forecast, for controlling different multimedia applications and a lot more.
[141000890140] |The engine is built upon Python, which brings other advantages.
[141000890150] |Python is an easy to comprehend language and if a theme is documented enough, everyone can customize it to make their own.
[141000890160] |There is a small downside of using python and this is that you actually need it installed to be able to run SuperKaramba.
[141000890170] |Fortunately, these days, dependencies can be satisfied easily and it's actually nice to have python because chances of finding other interesting applications that use it are pretty high.
[141000890180] |You might ask yourself what are the things that SuperKaramba does out of the box.
[141000890190] |The answer is: not much.
[141000890200] |It has no default themes (widgets) that you can use and when you start it there isn't much to see.
[141000890210] |When you click its icon that's docked in the system tray, a themes window appears but with no themes.
[141000890220] |Instead it has two buttons, one for getting new themes form the Internet and another for opening a local theme.
[141000890230] |Adding this Internet feature is pretty cool because now it's easier than ever to install themes.
[141000890240] |If I were you I'd check out the kde-look.org website because there it's very likely you'll find a lot more stuff for SuperKaramba and, why not, for your KDE desktop.
[141000890250] |This software has various ways of displaying information about the CPU load, memory load, disk usage, network load, fans, temperature, e-mail, weather and so on.
[141000890260] |These ways of displaying all those things can be combined with graphics designed by different users and the result will be a vast amount of very different themes.
[141000890270] |If at some point you are considering to design your own theme, reading the documentation about all the parameters is crucial.
[141000890280] |Using some examples will definitely help because it greatly accelerates the speed of understanding how this software works.
[141000890290] |I'm telling you all this because SuperKaramba wasn't designed to be configured from an interface, but from a fairly complex text file.
[141000890300] |While playing with it for the purpose of this review I found a severe bug.
[141000890310] |If you modify a theme while it is opened, the system will become unusable because SuperKaramba will use up all the resources of your PC.
[141000890320] |I remember this bug wasn't present in earlier versions but I do remember that modifying a theme was a lot easier because right-clicking on it would show up an edit theme button.
[141000890330] |Once opened and set-up, SuperKaramba will automatically start in the last state you left it.
[141000890340] |This is very good because it saves you from having to create a script that does that.
[141000890350] |<b>The Good</b>
[141000890360] |SuperKaramba is versatile and provides eye candy to the KDE desktop while still being able to be a functional software.
[141000890370] |A desktop with a proper setup of SuperKaramba was a cool desktop a few years ago when few people used it and still is today .
[141000890380] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141000890390] |This software is by no means easy to use and unfortunately still has some major bugs.
[141000890400] |For an application that doesn't actually do something important maybe it needs a little too much processing power.
[141000890410] |However, considering the specs of today's average computer, I don't think this should be an issue for most of you.
[141000890420] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141000890430] |SuperKaramba is a very nice application for the desktop, and when I found out it was included in KDE I made a happy face.
[141000890440] |Analyzing the facts a little better I'm not sure it deserves it, but then again I'm not sure it doesn't.
[141000890450] |It's perhaps a little too complicate to fit in KDE's "ease of use" philosophy but maybe this way things would start developing faster and when KDE4 reaches release date with all the cool things like real transparency we'll have a much better SuperKaramba.
[141000890460] |After all it's a pretty interesting piece of software.
[141000890470] |Check out some screenshots below:
[141000890480] |<b>Follow the editor on Twitter <a>@mariusnestor</a></b>
[141000920010] |<title>Nessus Review</title>
[141000920020] |<img/>I'm so excited, I just can't hide it, I know, I know, I know, I know I like it!
[141000920030] |It's no doubt in my mind that Nessus is the best free-of-charge vulnerability scanner in the world. 
[141000920040] |I feel obliged to warn you from the start that this is not a tool for the average user.
[141000920050] |It's a tool for network administrators and security experts but if you are a curios person, I can't see why you can't give Nessus a try.
[141000920060] |Nessus is mainly composed of a server which is usually accompanied by a client.
[141000920070] |This design allows you to deploy your Nessus infrastructure in respect to the design of your network and opens a broad range of possibilities.
[141000920080] |In large corporate networks, where security is treated seriously in a possible setup, several Nessus servers should be deployed to perform scans either from inside the network, perhaps on different subnets and also from outside the network.
[141000920090] |From a central client or multiple ones, all the servers could be controlled allowing you to perform a tremendous amount of scans considering different scenarios at the same time.
[141000920100] |While the servers will most probably use all the power available, the client could be run from some of the most modest machines.
[141000920110] |The server contains all cool features that give Nessus an incredible power that comes from the smart design of the software and the client provides the software with a user friendly interface.
[141000920120] |I was able to install both the server and the client with no special intervention but I must confess that an installer and different directory structure would be very nice for this excellent piece of software.
[141000920130] |Setting up a Nessus computer is by no means user friendly, but... it doesn't necessary have to be.
[141000920140] |Perhaps the greatest thing about Nessus design is NASL (Nessus Attack Scripting Language).
[141000920150] |It's used for writing the plugins that Nessus uses to perform its various scans.
[141000920160] |Plugins could be written easily and any plugin could be read and modified allowing a better interpretation of complicated results.
[141000920170] |The plugins are very safe in terms of security because Nessus runs them in a virtual machine so, in theory, there is no way a plugin could affect your server machine.
[141000920180] |At this point, there are over 11600 plugins available, and even if this number is very impressive, there's always room for more.
[141000920190] |You'll definitely want to update the list of plugins and if you are not critical about getting them while they're hot, there is the possibility to sign up for a free account that allows you to get all the updates with a one week delay.
[141000920200] |If you want or need them hot, you'll have to take out of your pocket a sum of 1200$.
[141000920210] |If you really need to be paranoid, you should know that there is also a RSS feed with the newest security plugins added in the database.
[141000920220] |Other cool features that Nessus has are "smart service recognition" which allows Nessus to detect services even if they run on non-standard ports, "full SSL support", that is used to test secure services and the possibility to perform thorough tests that throw everything at remote hosts to see how they performed.
[141000920230] |I was also very happy when I found out that the traffic between the server and the client is encrypted.
[141000920240] |This feature is essential for Nessus because with credentials, Nessus can log in remote hosts to obtain an impressive amount of data about the local configuration.
[141000920250] |Encryption protects this credentials and the report delivered to the client.
[141000920260] |In the local configuration is data that cannot be detected from a routine scan like what software is installed and what are the version numbers.
[141000920270] |This helps detecting the unauthorized software and the outdated one that might contain known security holes.
[141000920280] |Now I'd like to say a few words about <b>the NesssusClient</b>.
[141000920290] |It is based upon GTK and it manages to be a nice, easy to use and still very functional client for Nessus server.
[141000920300] |The client allows you to set several tasks and scopes that fit the needs of specific segments in your network.
[141000920310] |For those, you can set what Nessus server should be used, which plugins will be loaded and many other options.
[141000920320] |All the reports will then be saved in that scope and it will allow you to keep track of all the past scans in a nicely manageable order. <img/>
[141000920330] |<img/>Reports are extremely important for the client because if you understand them, you'll be able to increase the security of your network.
[141000920340] |In the client, the reports are displayed fairly nice and one of the best things about them is that solutions are often provided to help you solve the possible problems.
[141000920350] |I love that you can export your reports to several interesting formats like HTML, PDF, XML.
[141000920360] |The formatting of these reports is performed very well and the most interesting is probably HTML with pies and graphs.
[141000920370] |You can, of course, export to a NessusClient proprietary format that can be then imported in another NessusClient.
[141000920380] |Perhaps a little more transparency regarding the export feature would have been nice because some user might not know it's there.
[141000920390] |The NessusClient integrates a wizard that's called "Scan Assistant" which takes you through a 4 steps process of creating a task, a scope, selecting the targets and then executing your task.
[141000920400] |Even though I was skeptical about it at first, this might be a useful feature for some inexperienced users.
[141000920410] |As I've said before, a Nessus scan should be carefully planned before it's executed and the wizard is just the opposite of that, but it might be useful for allowing some users to get started with Nessus or to perform very simple scans.
[141000920420] |<b>The Good</b>
[141000920430] |Nessus is good!
[141000920440] |Its server/client design is good.
[141000920450] |The NASL language for writing plugins is good.
[141000920460] |All the other features like smart service recognition, SSL support, thorough tests and the extended level of control and the reports provided by the client are excellent assets in Nessus and NessusClient.
[141000920470] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141000920480] |Nessus is a closed source and this provides a certain level of discomfort to some people in the Linux community.
[141000920490] |Even though NessusClient is pretty good, I feel that there's room for improvements.
[141000920500] |Would be great if Tenable would provide a web client for using with Nessus, but unfortunately, it doesn't.
[141000920510] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141000920520] |Like I've said in the beginning, Nessus is the best free-of-charge vulnerability scanner in the world.
[141000920530] |The free-of-charge part is great for the end user which is not willing to pay for a software like this one but it's also great for companies, because it saves them from all the legal aspects that might appear.
[141000920540] |Nessus is great because it's a cross platform.
[141000920550] |Even if I'm thinking that GFI LANguard Network Security Scanner might be a vulnerability scanner better than Nessus, that's not free-of-charge, doesn't work on Linux and doesn't have the server/client architecture.
[141000920560] |Check out some screenshots of the client: