[141002220010] |<title>Fotoxx Review</title>
[141002220020] |Long gone are the days when we would take dozens of pictures and have no idea how they will turn out before going to a photo studio and have our film developed.
[141002220030] |With the somewhat high costs of this hobby, we used to be very selective about what we photographed.
[141002220040] |Nowadays, it's a totally different story...
[141002220050] |Digital cameras are dirt-cheap and we have our own "film developing laboratories" inside our PCs.
[141002220060] |Thus, we see absolutely no reason not to take random snapshots of... well, everything.
[141002220070] |Tens of gigs seem to be consumed in no time by questionable quality photos.
[141002220080] |Of course, pointing and shooting doesn't always yield the perfect picture and there is often the need of a bit of post-processing action.
[141002220090] |There are a lot of open source solutions for that, the most popular being, undoubtedly, GIMP.
[141002220100] |But, for today, I chose to review an application that you might not have heard of yet: Fotoxx, a featureful, yet easy-to-use image editor.
[141002220110] |Fotoxx can be downloaded either as RPM or DEB packages, a .BIN installer and, of course, the whole source code package.
[141002220120] |As I've tested it on an Ubuntu 9.04 machine, I went for the .deb and quickly installed it from there.
[141002220130] |Unfortunately, it will not create a shortcut for you in the Applications menu, so you will have to either open it through the terminal (simply type fotoxx and press Enter) or manually create a launcher.
[141002220140] |Or so I thought at a first look, as, after I opened it, I noticed the "Create Launcher" entry in the "Tools" menu.
[141002220150] |This will automatically create a shortcut for the program not only on the desktop, but also in the "Graphics" menu, complete with a nifty icon.
[141002220160] |The program loads in the blink of an eye and you'll be presented with Fotoxx's clean, simple interface.
[141002220170] |A top panel contains 11 buttons for navigation, undo/redo, zooming, opening new images, deleting, and quitting the app.
[141002220180] |Most functions, though, will be accessible through the menu categories, named in such a way that you'll be able to quickly find the feature you need: File, Tools, Tags, Area, Retouch, Sharp, Size, Bend, Art, Combine and Help (which is, by the way, truly helpful).
[141002220190] |Clicking the "Index" button will open the Image browser and, after you select the folder containing your pictures, their thumbnails will quickly be generated and they will be displayed in a resizable grid and, if necessary, on multiple pages.
[141002220200] |If you open a single image from another folder, that folder will automatically be set as the "active" folder.
[141002220210] |Not such a good idea if you ask me, as most of you probably have a single, main location for all your photographs, and, most of the time, you will browse that folder.
[141002220220] |Now, if you quickly need an image from the Internet, to download on the desktop, Fotoxx shouldn't, in my opinion, change the "Index" directory after opening that single image.
[141002220230] |But that's not such a big deal, so let's move on.
[141002220240] |When opening an image (exclusively through the menus, as there is no drag & drop support), regardless of its dimensions, it will not resize Fotoxx's window and will be scaled to fit the window.
[141002220250] |Zooming in and out is, unexpectedly, not done through the scroll wheel, but by clicking the left (in) or right (out) mouse buttons.
[141002220260] |If zooming in is done progressively, zooming out will take you straight back to the picture's original dimensions.
[141002220270] |Also, the maximum zoom is 200%, but you'll rarely need more than that to perfectly use what this program offers.
[141002220280] |When zoomed in an image, you will be able to move the view by dragging the image.
[141002220290] |Zooming, as well as dragging the active area, often feels a bit sluggish, especially when working on high-resolution images.
[141002220300] |Fotoxx can open all popular image formats, including RAWs that more professional digital cameras use.
[141002220310] |For that, though, you will need the Ufraw package already installed on your system.
[141002220320] |As for saving edited images, you can choose from Jpeg, tiff-24 and tiff-48.
[141002220330] |You can also print or burn several images to a CD or DVD, through Brasero.
[141002220340] |A full-screen Slide Show function is available too.
[141002220350] |Many images come with various data attached to them, or EXIF data.
[141002220360] |Provided you have the exiftools package installed, you will be able to access and edit such data through Fotoxx.
[141002220370] |The "Tools" menu also offers information about the brightness distribution through a useful "histogram," so you can quickly identify problematic over- or under-exposed photographs.
[141002220380] |The "Flatten Brightness" feature offered by Fotoxx is a great, quick way to fix such problems.
[141002220390] |For certain functions, you will need to select an area from the picture.
[141002220400] |If in most programs you can do that by dragging a selection rectangle, in Fotoxx you will have to drag lines or place auto-connecting dots until you create a polygon.
[141002220410] |You can, indeed, have more precision this way, but for basic tasks, the "rectangle" would be much easier and faster. 
[141002220420] |Adjusting brightness, contrast or color intensity and saturation is done through a single panel that also provides a powerful curve tool for adjusting brightness on specific darker or lighter areas.
[141002220430] |You can also apply blur, unsharp masks and reduce noise, from the "Sharp" menu.
[141002220440] |The "Size" entry lets you scale the image either by manually specifying desired dimensions or selecting a percent.
[141002220450] |There are also useful presets of 3/4, 2/3, 1/2, 1/3 or 1/4 and the aspect ratio can be locked.
[141002220460] |Trimming is done through this same menu, but it is a bit weird.
[141002220470] |Again, instead of letting you create your own rectangle from scratch, a resizable, predefined one is placed in the middle of the picture.
[141002220480] |The third entry in the menu allows you to rotate the picture by any degree, so you can quickly straighten your photos.
[141002220490] |After straightening a picture, you will also need to crop it, and Fotoxx has this function integrated in the rotate dialog and will automatically trim the photo to remove any "leftovers."
[141002220500] |Nice!
[141002220510] |The "Bend" menu gives you access to another three features: "Unbend Image," "Warp Area" and "Warp Image."
[141002220520] |The first one is especially useful for pictures taken with wide-lens cameras, as it will allow you to straighten the curved lines that usually appear at the sides of a photo.
[141002220530] |The "Warp Area" function is more for artistic purposes and it can help you put some life in some of your boring pictures, allowing you to distort a previously defined area.
[141002220540] |The "Warp Image" tool can be used to change the perspective of a picture in a plane. 
[141002220550] |The "Art" section contains a few effects you can apply to images.
[141002220560] |Changing the color depth, say from 16 bits to 2 bits, can help you reach some impressive results on some photos.
[141002220570] |You can also "simulate" drawings, paintings or tiles and apply a rather nice emboss filter.
[141002220580] |The "Edit Pixels" function lets you pick colors from an area of the picture and use that to paint over other parts of the image.
[141002220590] |The radius and blend variables can be changed to achieve better results. 
[141002220600] |In the "Combine" menu, you will find two of the greatest features of Fotoxx: "Make HDR Image" and "Make Panorama."
[141002220610] |The first will let you combine under- and over-exposed photos of the same subject into an impressive HDR image.
[141002220620] |The second one allows you to easily create panoramas from multiple pictures.
[141002220630] |Open all the pictures that need stitching, manually align them using the overlay, modify, if needed, the lens specifications, and let Fotoxx do the rest.
[141002220640] |Other functions in Fotoxx include a simple, effective "Red Eyes Reduction" tool, a display calibrator and the file renamer.
[141002220650] |When you send an image to the Trash from Fotoxx, it will be moved to a new folder on your desktop called "fotoxx-trash."
[141002220660] |And, finally, I can't end this review without mentioning again the great "User Guide" that is available online. 
[141002220670] |<em><strong>The Good</strong></em> 
[141002220680] |Fotoxx's suite of effects and modifications that can be applied to a picture, combined with a small memory footprint, make it a good choice for quick edits.
[141002220690] |Also, support for RAW images, panoramas and HDR are some other strong points of this application. 
[141002220700] |<em><strong>The Bad</strong></em> 
[141002220710] |Manipulating images in real-time is inexplicably sluggish and zooming in and out of images has room for improvement.
[141002220720] |Also, a drag
[141002230010] |<title>Songbird Review</title>
[141002230020] |If for May's Application of the Month we've selected Rhythmbox, it is now the perfect time to take a look at another great audio player, Songbird.
[141002230030] |This open-source project is the work of Pioneers of the Inevitable, an amazing suite of developers who previously helped with the creation of software like Winamp, Netscape Navigator or Mozilla Firefox.
[141002230040] |This last one is especially important, as Songbird is based on the awesome Firefox web browser. 
[141002230050] |I should tell you from the start that if you're looking for a simple, light audio player, keep looking; Songbird aims to provide a full-blown musical experience thus tipping the balance against a low-resource consumption profile. 
[141002230060] |A positive first impression comes from the Songbird official website, which offers community-created packages for most popular Linux distributions.
[141002230070] |As such, Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE or Gentoo users are happily provided with DEBs, RPMs or ebuilds.
[141002230080] |I tested Songbird 1.2.0 on an Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) machine, so, obviously I downloaded the 16.9 MB DEB package and quickly installed it.
[141002230090] |Once the installation process is complete, you will be able to find the new menu shortcut in the "Sound
[141002230100] |Songbird's interface is really well done and has a solid, professional feel to it.
[141002230110] |The fonts are very small (though easily readable), and the controls are also small, thus a lot of content can fit into the window.
[141002230120] |The main "Library" section contains your entire music collection and is split into several areas: Genre, Artist, Album, the actual songs (depending on what you choose on the first three categories) and information provided by the mashTape plugin.
[141002230130] |Underneath all that are the main controls: previous, play/pause, next, volume, track progress, 5-star scale rating and the usual shuffle + repeat switches. 
[141002230140] |On the left, a sidebar will give you quick access to all of Songbird's categories: Library, Downloads, Concerts, Radio, Stores, Playlists and Bookmarks.
[141002230150] |"Bookmarks in a music player?" you ask?
[141002230160] |Yep, Songbird, being based on Firefox, is also a web browser, so you can happily browse the Internet in a new tab, while managing your song collection in another one.
[141002230170] |Nice! 
[141002230180] |Right below the sidebar a small window presents you with downloaded album artwork for the currently playing song.
[141002230190] |Oh and, if for some reason, Songbird cannot find one, you can drag any picture from your computer onto that area and poof, it's there.
[141002230200] |I mentioned mashTape earlier and I have to elaborate a bit on that, as it's a very powerful information resource.
[141002230210] |Whenever you play a song five tabs will gather information from the Internet: Artist Info, Reviews, News, Photos and Videos.
[141002230220] |You will be able to learn a lot of interesting things about your favorite artists, view photos from concerts, read others' opinions, get updated with the latest news and watch related YouTube videos without ever leaving the Songbird interface. 
[141002230230] |Unfortunately, even if you have Flash already installed, it will not work by default and you will have to download its source code, extract the archive and copy (as root) the libflashplayer.so file to the /Songbird/Plugins folder.
[141002230240] |Once that's done, you're all set for a full Internet browsing experience through Songbird. 
[141002230250] |As I said before, I love Songbird's interface, but there is one issue I'd like to point out.
[141002230260] |As it was created to have its own separate window decoration, you won't be able to use it as any other window, meaning, for example, you can't drag it to another workspace, a feature that is quite useful to many of us.
[141002230270] |There are two alternative ways around that: either simply go to another workspace and open the interface there or use the Expo feature in Compiz, from where you can easily drag the window to any workspace you like. 
[141002230280] |Another peeve has to be the fact that Songbird doesn't have a tray icon, so you won't be able to close the main window while still enjoying your music.
[141002230290] |As it benefits from the plugin support blessing, I thought I'd quickly find one that would address this problem.
[141002230300] |Well, I found four, but none was compatible with the version I reviewed.
[141002230310] |This feature should really be integrated in the default installation of any audio player. 
[141002230320] |Songbird can be heavily customized with the help of a large collection of plugins.
[141002230330] |From song notifiers or lyrics finders, to iPod Support or BitTorrent capabilities, you will find a lot to like.
[141002230340] |Of course, not everybody will appreciate the default look of Songbird, so tens of "feathers" (skins) can also be applied to really make it yours. 
[141002230350] |Songbird uses the Gstreamer playback framework, ensuring support for a large variety of audio formats, as well as several radio stream sources.
[141002230360] |The "Smart playlist" feature is very similar to the one in Rhythmbox: creating playlists depending on various conditions that have to be met by your songs.
[141002230370] |Of course, you can also manually create playlists and place the songs you want in there.
[141002230380] |And finally, I was really glad to find out that Songbird lets you easily edit song tags (or metadata). 
[141002230390] |<em><strong>The Good</strong></em> 
[141002230400] |Songbird is an extremely versatile, featureful audio player, offering you much more than simply playing your songs.
[141002230410] |A good-looking interface, plugin support or the integrated Internet browser are only some reasons to give Songbird a try. 
[141002230420] |<em><strong>The Bad</strong></em> 
[141002230430] |The resource consumption of Songbird is similar to that of Firefox, so that's the main issue that could keep you away from using it as your default player.
[141002230440] |Also, the lack of a tray icon can be considered another minus. 
[141002230450] |<em><strong>The Truth</strong></em> 
[141002230460] |It's simple.
[141002230470] |If you want more than an audio player, use Songbird.
[141002230480] |If otherwise you only need something that stays out of your way and plays your music, I would recommend against Songbird. 
[141002240010] |<title>gPodder Review</title>
[141002240020] |If you've ever listened to Linux-related podcasts then you must have heard at least once the name "gPodder."
[141002240030] |If you're already a user then I won't have to say that gPodder is a podcast client, podcast catcher or podcatcher, if you wish, a kind of RSS aggregator that, instead of working with headlines, text and images, handles audio or sometimes video files.
[141002240040] |Also, I won't have to say that a podcast is a series of audio or video episodes that are released periodically and "broadcast" through syndication. 
[141002240050] |Let's have a quick look at gPodder and analyze its ability to serve your podcasting needs: it's small, yet feature-filled, it's written in Python and has a GTK interface.
[141002240060] |The interface is pretty simple and clutter-free, but don't be fooled –underneath it hides a very powerful podcast management solution. 
[141002240070] |Upon first start, gPodder greets you with a welcome screen that offers the option to choose some podcasts from a list of examples or import your subscriptions from gPodder's on-line service, which we'll discuss a bit later.
[141002240080] |Assuming that you've got some podcasts added, either through the two aforementioned options or via the feed addresses manually, you should now see their titles and icons in the left-hand column and the episode list for the selected show on the right.
[141002240090] |Now you can choose to download the episodes you want.
[141002240100] |Wait a minute, where do the downloads go?
[141002240110] |Easy, check out the gpodder-downloads folder in your home directory. 
[141002240120] |This is one of gPodder's powerful features, meaning that it sorts through your podcasts and organizes them neatly, each with its own folder and playlist.
[141002240130] |If you have too many of them and you're afraid that they will eat up all your Internet connection bandwidth, there's an option to limit the number of downloads or the speed at which they are brought in. Also, if you don't want to have old episodes that you've already gone over laying around and occupying valuable disk space, you just have to tick an option in the configuration window and gPodder will take care of that too, removing them a while after you're done listening. 
[141002240140] |Talking about listening, you get more time to do that while gPodder automatically gets the feeds and downloads the new episodes, if you wish.
[141002240150] |It will even get files over BitTorrent, if your podcast of choice uses that distribution channel.
[141002240160] |Also, you can pick your preferred audio or video player for each podcast type.
[141002240170] |And if the podcaster promised some goodies in the show notes, links, pictures or attached files, you just have to right-click the corresponding episode in gPodder, select "Episode Notes" and you'll get all the info in a new window, with no extra effort or the need to wait for a web browser to load. 
[141002240180] |Now, let's see some of those powerful features that gPodder has.
[141002240190] |Podcasts may be nice, but sitting through a whole show in front of the computer may not be exactly your idea of an entertaining afternoon.
[141002240200] |Well, there's an effortless cure for that itch too: you plug in your portable media player, let gPodder know what kind of device you have and where the internal memory is located, click the "Transfer" button and watch the episodes copy neatly to your player.
[141002240210] |If you use your mobile phone as a media player and don't want to mess around with wires, right-clicking an episode and selecting "Send via bluetooth," then picking your device from the list is all that it takes to have the podcast in your pocket. 
[141002240220] |gPodder can even do some pretty extreme automation for the lazy and more tech-inclined users.
[141002240230] |If you have an iPod (even the Touch, if you've jailbroken it), you get the option to automatically mark as listened or to delete the files that you've listened to from your player when you synchronize it with gPodder.
[141002240240] |Rockbox users can have that same functionality, but for them that means clicking the "Advanced" button in the "Preferences" window and setting the "update_tags" and "mp3_player_use_scrobbler_log" options to "True" by double-clicking on them –this will only mark them as listened to.
[141002240250] |To also delete them you need to set an extra option to "True," "mp3_player_delete_played", and that's it. 
[141002240260] |Be weary though, iPod, MTP device and Bluetooth file transfers might require additional dependencies, so check the "Additional Components" window to see what you're missing in order to enable them. 
[141002240270] |Let's see how gPodder can manage your subscription list.
[141002240280] |Since most of the programs that handle web syndication can work with OPML files (that stands for Outline Processor Markup Language; they are basically xml descriptions of your subscriptions), gPodder can seamlessly import and export such files, so you'll never have to manually enter your subscriptions after reinstalling the operating system or switching computers.
[141002240290] |As I've hinted earlier in this review, there is also a lazy man's way to do that.
[141002240300] |It's called My gPodder and it is basically a web service that, together with the corresponding gPodder functionality, can back up your subscription list to the cloud, update it or download it to another computer; you just have to create an account and supply your login credentials.
[141002240310] |You can also send them through e-mail, although that won't work with web-based providers.
[141002240320] |It didn't work for us either, although Thunderbird was working alright; all it did was open a new e-mail window and set the subject. 
[141002240330] |<em><strong>The Good</strong></em> 
[141002240340] |gPodder is quick, unobtrusive and simple to use.
[141002240350] |Although it has plenty of functions, it is in no way bloated and maintains its speed no-matter what. 
[141002240360] |<em><strong>The Bad</strong></em> 
[141002240370] |On the negative side, what gPodder's new users would find appealing is an integrated podcast directory that would be able to list content titles from different genres and do custom searches.
[141002240380] |Connected to a web appliance that would crowdsource podcast details, a solution like that might even surpass iTunes' podcast directory in functionality. 
[141002240390] |<em><strong>The Truth</strong></em> 
[141002240400] |If you're a subscriber to more than two podcasts, then gPodder is a must have.
[141002240410] |It handles all the file management and lets you concentrate on enjoying the content. 
[141002250010] |<title>Kdenlive Review</title>
[141002250020] |Everyone agrees that it's impossible to shoot video perfectly on the first try.
[141002250030] |Even birthday videos or amateur productions can use the kind of touch-ups that a video editor has to offer, like titles or transitions.
[141002250040] |The truth is that the open-source world lacked a proper non-linear video editor with similar features to the ones found on other proprietary platforms for a long time.
[141002250050] |This aspect is certainly changing, and one of the applications that come with that change is Kdenlive. 
[141002250060] |Kdenlive's name stands for KDE Non-Linear Video Editor, and that pretty much summarizes what this application is all about.
[141002250070] |It supports all the formats that FFmpeg can handle (and it's quite an impressive list), multiple aspect ratios for your videos, various standards (PAL, NTSC, AVCHD, HDV), capture and export to DV devices, DVD creation.
[141002250080] |I can safely say that if what you need is video editing related, then there's a strong chance that Kdenlive can do it. 
[141002250090] |If you've just set up Kdenlive on your computer, the first time configuration wizard will definitely give you a smooth introduction to it.
[141002250100] |You'll have the opportunity to check out the features of that release, make sure your software configuration is correct, choose the default format of your video files and configure some basic options. 
[141002250110] |What you will immediately notice about the main window is the clear division between the different panes.
[141002250120] |The user interface model that they work on allows you to reorder them, drag them out into separate windows or size them up as you will.
[141002250130] |You won't notice on the spot, but the tabs that appear on the bottom of the panes aren't built in them, but change according to what panes you have aggregated into that particular frame.
[141002250140] |This way you can group functions than you don't expect to use simultaneously into a single place on the user interface, thus reducing clutter.
[141002250150] |Video editing by nature requires you do to a lot of input, dragging and reordering so, even with all of Kdenlive's graphical flexibility, your workflow will be greatly impaired by using this application on a small screen.
[141002250160] |Still, there is one more trick that you can do to gain a little more space: enable the full screen mode. 
[141002250170] |Having overviewed the graphical interface, let's see how we can put a video through its paces.
[141002250180] |Adding one can be done in a multitude of ways, from right-clicking somewhere on the Project Tree's list, to left clicking the little film roll icon on it, or by using the Project -  Add Clip menu.
[141002250190] |If you have many videos to handle in a single project, you will surely find the search box in the Project Tree useful.
[141002250200] |The same applies for the Effect List category and search filter.
[141002250210] |Once you have some videos added, the next natural step is to drag them over down to the timeline and order or align them to your liking. 
[141002250220] |Once you get familiar with the way the timeline works, managing the media in it becomes a snap.
[141002250230] |The contextual menu that appears when right-clicking has all the essential functions, like cutting and deleting clips, changing their speed or applying effects.
[141002250240] |When you think you're finished working with some clips, you can also group them, essentially managing them like a single clip. 
[141002250250] |If you get the feeling that the built-in transitions and effects aren't enough for you, Kdenlive has a quick way to help you add more.
[141002250260] |Just go to the Settings menu, and you'll find the option to Download New Wipes.
[141002250270] |Also, if you think that the video you are making may require specific encoding parameters, try the "Download New Project Profiles..." or "Download New Render Profiles..." since someone may have already shared them. 
[141002250280] |When the sound for your project doesn't suit your ideas, you don't need to go running to Audacity or another audio editor, as Kdenlive has inbuilt support for LADSPA and SoX plugins.
[141002250290] |That way you can concentrate on creation, not on switching applications. 
[141002250300] |When your project reaches a state that you're happy with, it's time to hit the Render button and have a first glance at the results.
[141002250310] |You'll need to have a look at the "Destination" drop-down menu, since it has options that can better optimize your video for sharing websites or specific devices.
[141002250320] |Hitting the "Render to File" button won't behave exactly as you expect.
[141002250330] |Instead of displaying a big progress bar and locking up the application, Kdenlive will put your file in the job queue and let you work on other projects or even improve the current one while rendering.
[141002250340] |Of course, you need a pretty powerful computer to do both editing and rendering simultaneously.
[141002250350] |If you don't have one, there is another option to help you keep working: you can create a script for your current operation by clicking the down arrow on the "Render to File" button.
[141002250360] |Then, upon finishing all your video projects, you just have to load up the scripts and fire up the rendering process, leaving it overnight for example. 
[141002250370] |<em><strong>The Good</strong></em>
[141002250380] |Kdenlive is easy to use and supports a lot of media formats out of the box.
[141002250390] |The interface is carefully laid out, with very few rough spots. 
[141002250400] |<em><strong>The Bad</strong></em>
[141002250410] |The resource consumption and response speed could be improved –you need a powerful computer for a smooth experience.
[141002250420] |The features aren't on par with the more popular video editors. 
[141002250430] |<em><strong>The Truth</strong></em>
[141002250440] |For home video editing, Kdenlive is probably one of the best applications that you can use.
[141002250450] |It can handle your small-sized projects quickly and with low overhead. 
[141002260010] |<title>sK1 Review</title>
[141002260020] |sK1 is a vector graphics editor that, unlike Inkscape, which focuses on the SVG format and web design usefulness, caters to the professional designers that are working in pre-press environments.
[141002260030] |It has many features that allow it to act as a replacement for Corel Draw or Adobe Illustrator, wrapped up in a Ttk-based interface with clean lines and no bells and whistles to distract the user. 
[141002260040] |Of course, when talking about applications that handle graphics, it's best to start the conversation by discussing formats. sK1 cuts no corners in that department, as it includes the core of Uniconvertor, which is also used in Inkscape and Scribus.
[141002260050] |Let's have a look at what you can import or produce without worrying about compatibility: 
[141002260060] |I<strong>mport filters:</strong> ·CorelDRAW ver.7-X3,X4 (CDR/CDT/CCX/CDRX/CMX) ·Adobe Illustrator up to 9 ver.
[141002260070] |(AI) ·Postscript (PS) ·Encapsulated Postscript (EPS) ·Computer Graphics Metafile (CGM) ·Windows Metafile (WMF) ·XFIG ·Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) ·Skencil/Sketch/sK1 (SK and SK1) ·Acorn Draw (AFF) 
[141002260080] |<strong>Export filters:</strong> ·AI (Adobe Illustrator 5.0 Format) ·SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) ·SK (Sketch/Skencil format) ·SK1 (sK1 format) ·CGM (Computer Graphics Metafile) ·WMF (Windows Metafile) ·PDF (Portable Document Format) ·PS (PostScript) 
[141002260090] |Since Uniconverter is also developed by the sK1 Project, you can be sure that new formats will be added and development will continue as long as sK1 is maintained.
[141002260100] |Also, the fact that the Skencil, Sketch and sK1 formats are grouped together in the table should come as no surprise, since sK1 is a fork of the Sketch 0.6.15 codebase. 
[141002260110] |But support for those formats by itself wouldn't mean much to a professional designer.
[141002260120] |That's why sK1 includes some more professional publishing features, like CMYK colorspaces, separations, ICC color management and PDF output that is ready for printing. 
[141002260130] |The renderer support is also pretty feature-rich, as you can have your documents rendered either by going bare-bones and using Xlib, or by employing the well-known Cairo software library for vector graphics.
[141002260140] |If your design has a problem that's hard to spot with all the visual clutter, you can also use contour rendering to simplify things a little. 
[141002260150] |If you're used to Inkscape's user interface, you will need a little while to get used to sK1's.
[141002260160] |The color strip is set vertically on the right side of the window, the toolbar buttons are arranged a little differently and the object ordering and positioning buttons are set in the lower left-hand corner. 
[141002260170] |The menu system is simple and, from what I could see, there is no formal way to set options, as you won't find a "Preferences" window anywhere.
[141002260180] |The "View" menu reveals extensive zoom and fitting functions that have predefined shortcut keys.
[141002260190] |"Layout" deals with guides, snapping and, a hint to the print media orientation of sK1, pages, whether you want to insert, delete or switch between them.
[141002260200] |Via the "Effects" menu you get access to some basic object transformations, like resizing, rotating and flipping.
[141002260210] |"Bitmaps" handles the usual tasks of conversion between colorspaces, while "Styles" takes care of the fills and outlines that objects receive, with the added benefit that you can name and save different configurations, then reload them in an instant. 
[141002260220] |The vertical bar that holds the tools is sensibly less crowded than Inkscape's, since you don't get all those fancy options to draw spirals, stars or emulate brush strokes.
[141002260230] |There is a basic set of selection tools, a zoom function, options for creating polygonal lines, curves, ellipses or rectangles, inserting text, a couple of buttons for bringing up the fill, outline and plugin panels and that's all. 
[141002260240] |Lower on the bar are the object layering buttons, which handle single movements (up or down a level) and absolute placements (top and bottom).
[141002260250] |Even lower are some buttons that set the way an object is positioned with respect to the guides or the other objects around it, enabling you to keep your designs permanently in line with minimal fuss, especially if you insert some guides to help you out.
[141002260260] |Once you do put guides in, initially I found no way of removing a single guide line, so I had to keep them around until I finished and then clear all the guides with the toolbar button. 
[141002260270] |After closing some of the panels in the right sidebar, I discovered one that enabled guide line management, but it was hidden below all the others and the panel wasn't tall enough to fit all that content.
[141002260280] |Since most of the other advanced functions, like resize and rotate, are fine-tuned also through a sidebar panel, the bar can quickly become crowded and things get out of sight until some panels are closed. 
[141002260290] |No surprises when switching renderers.
[141002260300] |While the Cairo output has crisp graphics and shades, the Xlib one is choppy, without antialiasing or any other visual treatment. 
[141002260310] |A feature that doesn't fully expose its functionality is the plugin support.
[141002260320] |While most of the plugins appear to integrate their functions into sK1's interface, I wasn't able to access the Text Find
[141002260330] |'t provide a list or a way to choose other than adding the file extension manually.
[141002260340] |Another quirk was with the SVG export; the text I entered in the document had the actual carriage returns stripped off, effectively creating single-line paragraphs and requiring some editing if I wanted to return the document to its original form in another editor. 
[141002260350] |<em><strong>The good</strong></em> 
[141002260360] |sK1 doesn't overwhelm you with options; in fact, it hardly has any.
[141002260370] |Once you get used to it, all the basic functions are there and they are easy to access, enabling good productivity. 
[141002260380] |<strong><em>The bad</em></strong> 
[141002260390] |Advanced functions are almost completely lacking.
[141002260400] |In fact, some of the implemented features need some more polishing.
[141002260410] |The interface could use some functionality redesign too, since it isn't very customizable.
[141002260420] |Note that this is pre-release software, so most of the negative things will most likely be fixed in the release version. 
[141002260430] |<em><strong>The truth</strong></em> 
[141002260440] |sK1 might be a useful tool for professionals, but right now it can't cut it.
[141002260450] |If you prefer to use it, you will probably need another application that can handle some of the tasks that this program lacks. 
[141002270010] |<title>Gnote Review</title>
[141002270020] |It's time for another weekly review, and in this one we are going to look at another way to make the move to the paperless office: get rid of all those annoying post-it notes that you have around your computer's display.
[141002270030] |There are many programs that can aid in that transition, but we are going to concentrate on one of the free solutions, both as in speech and as in beer: Gnote.
[141002270040] |If you are expecting a show-down between Tomboy and Gnote, you are going to be disappointed, because we don't want to get on the Mono vs. Free Software battlefield yet.
[141002270050] |You can compare them yourself if you please, just take a look at the <a>Tomboy 0.14.0 review</a>. 
[141002270060] |A little introduction is in order: Gnote is, as you were expecting, a note-taking application.
[141002270070] |It is largely looked at as a clone of Tomboy, a previous development based on the Mono .Net libraries.
[141002270080] |Gnote stays away from that controversy by basing itself on C++ and the GTK+ libraries.
[141002270090] |Even so, it manages to replicate Tomboy's performance without many hitches. 
[141002270100] |On the first start-up, you will be greeted with a small introduction that demonstrates some basic functionality, like wiki-words and linking between notes.
[141002270110] |After you close it, you are able to see what I think is one of Gnote's most important features: you don't even feel it's installed, as it occupies a minimal screen space by displaying just a notification panel icon.
[141002270120] |I feel that it is a great feature, because other applications, like KDE's note-taking plasmoid, insist on creating little, yellow squares on your desktop, but, if you actually want to reach them, you have to either minimize your current running applications, resize their windows, close them or switch to another desktop. 
[141002270130] |The menu that can be accessed from the icon gives you instant access to your recent notes, options to create new ones, plus search and organization functions.
[141002270140] |By right-clicking it, you can modify the preferences, bring up the documentation or the About window, or, if you're done taking notes for today, exit the application.
[141002270150] |The search window doubles as a graphical management utility for your notes, allowing you to create, put them into notebooks, or delete them. 
[141002270160] |When actually typing a note, you will notice that the interface looks pretty barren, but that is just because you don't actually need graphical access to all the tools, you will learn to use them employing hotkeys very quickly.
[141002270170] |If you need to take complex notes, you don't need to keep them in one monolithic document.
[141002270180] |Just highlight a keyword in your current note, hit Ctrl+L and a new window will pop up, automatically linked to the initial keyword.
[141002270190] |If you used the link function too much and lost track of the relation between your documents, a quick trip to "Tools -  What links here?" will certainly be of help. 
[141002270200] |Another thing that will feel to be awkward at first, because of the way we are used to handling documents, is the fact that the application lacks save buttons.
[141002270210] |That's because you don't need them, your notes are updated as you modify them.
[141002270220] |Even so, if you want to scrap a whole editing session, your only hope is to use the Undo option to its fullest extent. 
[141002270230] |If you're a power user, the Notebook function is a welcomed one.
[141002270240] |It allows you to group your notes into notebooks, similar to the way you group posts in categories on a blog.
[141002270250] |Then, you will be able to access your different notebooks, grouped in a sub-menu, by left-clicking Gnote's icon. 
[141002270260] |Needless to say, Gnote has all of the basic formatting functions covered, like text styles and sizes, even bulleted lists.
[141002270270] |Still, it's not intended to be a full-blown word processor, so you won't be able to insert neat tables or images.
[141002270280] |Even so, you can go a bit past its original design and use it as an above-average text editor for writing all those formal letters, or even as a very simple HTML editor, if you don't feel like coding a web page by hand today.
[141002270290] |In fact, this whole review was written using Gnote. 
[141002270300] |Most of those advanced functions are provided by plugins, you can find or configure them in the preferences window.
[141002270310] |Also, they give you the possibility to import your notes from other applications, like Tomboy or StickyNotes, export to other formats, or add formatting capabilities.
[141002270320] |In that same preferences window, you can enable or disable spell checking, set your hotkeys (which act globally and, once you get used to them, allow you to be more efficient), or even set a template for all your future notes, if you want them to have a specific look. 
[141002270330] |Let's see how you can get Gnote 0.6.2.
[141002270340] |Well, if you're on Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope), you have a little bit of work to do adding a personal package archive, since you won't find the application in the official Ubuntu repositories.
[141002270350] |On Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala), you can get it directly with Synaptic, but, at the time of writing this review, they only had version 0.5.2, quite a far cry from the current 0.6.2 release, so the <a>Gnote PPA</a> is probably the better solution for this operating system too. 
[141002270360] |<em><strong>The Good</strong></em> 
[141002270370] |It only needs about 5MB of hard-drive space, dependencies included.
[141002270380] |The Mono bindings aren't necessary at all, so the installation remains simple and fast. 
[141002270390] |<em><strong>The Bad</strong></em> 
[141002270400] |It doesn't have synchronization support, a great feature when using multiple computers, but the developers are working on that.
[141002270410] |The interface could be further optimized. 
[141002270420] |<em><strong>The Truth</strong></em> 
[141002270430] |For the regular Linux user, the difference between Gnote and Tomboy is pretty fuzzy, and they probably won't use the advanced functions.
[141002270440] |The patent-aware, anti-Microsoft crowd will probably lean towards Gnote. 
[141002280010] |<title>Truecrypt Review</title>
[141002280020] |If you ever kept important files on a USB drive, then you certainly thought about the prospect of misplacing that flash disk and exposing the contents of those files to unwanted people.
[141002280030] |Even when sending data over the Internet, no one can guarantee that they won't be hijacked during the passage from server to client.
[141002280040] |Truecrypt is an application that can add an extra layer or two of security to your data storage.
[141002280050] |It allows you to create encrypted containers that appear to be simple files filled with random data, scramble partitions or whole disks and even protect your operating system by installing it onto an encrypted partition. 
[141002280060] |It's well known that encryption is a computationally intensive process, so you might think that using it for your day-to-day file operations will only slow you down.
[141002280070] |It's not so bad if you're using Truecrypt, because its encryption functions are pipelined, parallelized and heavily optimized, so the impact they have on your system's resources is minimal.
[141002280080] |Also, since the desktop computers nowadays have multiple-gigahertz processors and plenty of memory, the performance penalty induced by the use of encryption is almost unnoticeable. 
[141002280090] |Another nice feature of Truecrypt is its extensive support of encryption algorithms.
[141002280100] |You get to choose from AES-256, Serpent, or Twofish, and, if you think that neither of those is enough by itself, you can also chain them, but, by doing so, you will have to take into account the noticeable performance penalty.
[141002280110] |Also, if you feel that your password isn't secure enough, you can strengthen it by using a keyfile, which might be your favorite song or a photo.
[141002280120] |You just have to remember that you must not modify the file if you want to maintain access to your encrypted container, no id3 tag edits or picture resizing, and it would also be a good idea to choose an inconspicuous file.
[141002280130] |If you went ahead and bought a dedicated, secure-token device, you can use that too. 
[141002280140] |An advanced feature gives you the possibility to create a hidden volume inside another encrypted container, but the complications that arise from choosing this mode of operation make me think that it's only for the more paranoid (or just security conscious) of us.
[141002280150] |It basically allows you to create an encrypted container in which you're supposed to put decoy files, and that serves as a cover-up for another volume where the truly sensitive data is stored.
[141002280160] |That way, if you're forced to hand over the password, you can just divulge that of the decoy volume and no one will be able to prove that some other data is stored there.
[141002280170] |But, if you're not careful when adding data to either one of those volumes, you might end up corrupting data to the other one. 
[141002280180] |Because it's a multiplatform application, one doesn't need to worry about accessing their data when using different operating systems.
[141002280190] |Also, the learning curve is quite steep, because Truecrypt's interface is simple enough to allow users to learn about its functions as they use it.
[141002280200] |Power users aren't left out either, because they can control all of Truecrypt's functions from the command line. 
[141002280210] |Actually creating an encrypted volume requires the user to go through a simple, step-by-step wizard that has descriptions for every option.
[141002280220] |Once they get used to it, it takes less than five minutes to create a new volume.
[141002280230] |If one thinks about the so-called "sparse" volumes that expand to accommodate the files that are added to them, they're out of luck, because such files can only be created on partitions that are formatted using the NTFS file system, which is proprietary to Windows platforms. 
[141002280240] |When you're happy with the encrypted volume that you created, accessing it is pretty straightforward.
[141002280250] |You pick one of the 32 slots in the interface, then you hit the "Select File..." button to load up your volume and press "Mount."
[141002280260] |You will have to supply your password and keyfiles, then enter your user password to allow TrueCrypt to mount the volume.
[141002280270] |After that, you will be able to use your encrypted volume just like a normal storage device and copy or move files to it.
[141002280280] |Don't forget to press "Dismount" when you're done with it. 
[141002280290] |There are many other Truecrypt options that can make the use of this program more straightforward.
[141002280300] |If you're unsure about the keyfiles that you want to employ, just look in the "Keyfiles" menu for the function that generates files filled with random content.
[141002280310] |Also, if you have enough faith that the computer you're using won't be compromised, you can also set default keyfiles that will be loaded automatically when you mount a volume, or even select favorite volumes, saving you of the hassle of browsing the filesystem every time you want to access your encrypted containers. 
[141002280320] |Unfortunately, system drive encryption isn't possible for Linux-based operating systems.
[141002280330] |However, there are other ways to achieve full system encryption on Linux, by using Dm-crypt, but that isn't as easy and it often requires changing configuration files by hand. 
[141002280340] |If you think that Truecrypt looks like a nice piece of software to protect your data, but you want to learn more about it, you will find out that documentation is included in a pdf file, as well as online, and it's well structured and comprehensive.
[141002280350] |It has screenshots that highlight the discussed functions and quick, step-by-step walkthroughs for the common functions that Truecrypt offers. 
[141002280360] |<em><strong>The Good</strong></em> 
[141002280370] |It's easy to use and performance is great.
[141002280380] |The documentation is well written and it covers even the prophylactic aspects of ensuring file privacy. 
[141002280390] |<em><strong>The Bad</strong></em> 
[141002280400] |The license isn't OSI-approved, so Truecrypt is considered a non-free piece of software, although the source code is available.
[141002280410] |Also, encrypted operating system creation is only available for Microsoft Windows. 
[141002280420] |<em><strong>The Truth</strong></em> 
[141002280430] |If you want to keep your files encrypted, you probably won't find another free-as-in-beer solution that is as easy-to-use and as feature-filled as Truecrypt. 
[141002300010] |<title>WinFF Review</title>
[141002300020] |Handheld devices like mobile phones, PDAs and ultra-mobile PCs are getting more and more ubiquitous, as almost everyone has in their pocket a device that can do multimedia playback at various levels of quality.
[141002300030] |The problem that most owners face is getting the audio or video content that they want to enjoy into the proper format for the device.
[141002300040] |Some of them require specific video and audio codecs, fixed bitrates and framerates, while others are more lax in their requirements, but they still represent a problem for less tech-inclined users.
[141002300050] |Simply, you can't hope that a mobile phone will play DVD-quality media off of its memory card, or at least not yet.
[141002300060] |The way to go: transcoding the media into a format that is appropriate for the device. 
[141002300070] |In Linux, the options are both feature-rich and with limited graphical interfaces, you have powerful media manipulation utilities, but most of them require typing very long and intricate commands into a terminal, then waiting (in some cases quite a long time) for the transcoded file to be completed, so you can check if the settings you gave were correct.
[141002300080] |So, what would you prefer, something along the lines of <em>"ffmpeg -i infile.avi -deinterlace -vcodec xvid -ac 2 -ar 44100 -acodec libmp3lame -r 23.97 -s 320x176 -vb 512k -ab 128k -f avi Outfile.avi"</em> or a nice graphical user interface to get all those command switches just right?
[141002300090] |Most people I know would choose the second option, and for them WinFF was created. 
[141002300100] |Don't worry, although that name might make you think about Windows software, WinFF is quite platform-independent, with packages available for Ubuntu, Debian, Redhat and Fedora, openSUSE and even PCLinuxOS, to name only the operating systems that are GNU/Linux-based.
[141002300110] |If your distribution isn't among the ones that have WinFF packages, or you just want to compile it yourself, you can also get the source code, licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.
[141002300120] |Also, you will need FFmpeg installed, but if you are using a package manager that resolves dependencies automatically you don't need to worry about that. 
[141002300130] |WinFF's interface is simple, you won't see an overwhelming amount of buttons or options upon starting it up, which is the way the GUI should be if it is supposed to address regular users.
[141002300140] |Along the top of the window there are six buttons, which let you add, remove, preview and convert your files, and another one that gives access to the more advanced settings.
[141002300150] |Under the file list there is a drop-down menu that sets the destination file type, with some nice options like the "Audio", function that extracts the sound track from a video file and even handles music file conversion, some device-specific formats, like "Blackberry" and "Google Android", and even an option to create Rockbox-compatible video files.
[141002300160] |Under this selector there is another drop-down box that handles the presets for the chosen format; the options contained in it differ depending on what you selected before.
[141002300170] |If your device already has a preset, all you need to do is add your files to the list, pick an output folder and just press "Convert". 
[141002300180] |If you have a specific device that isn't supported by WinFF directly, or you want to customize the transcoding parameters, click the "Options" button.
[141002300190] |Another pane will be displayed, allowing you to manually set the bitrates, framerate and samplerate, video size, whether 2-pass encoding or deinterlacing will be performed, and it even allows you to supply command line parameters that will be fed to FFmpeg when the coding process is started. 
[141002300200] |But before you start fiddling around with video sizes and bitrates, take a look at WinFF's forums or wiki; someone might have already created a preset that suits your needs.
[141002300210] |If it comes in a file, you just need to open it using "File -  Import Preset" and it will appear in the list, no other configuration needed.
[141002300220] |Complex preset modifications can be done from the "Edit Presets" window, in which you can change existing presets or create your own, and even export them so you can share them with others. 
[141002300230] |You have a lot of files and you don't want to wait around the computer until it finishes?
[141002300240] |No problem, check the "Shutdown on Finish" option and your computer will automatically power off then all the files have been converted.
[141002300250] |Also, you might want to have a look at WinFF's preferences, since enabling multithreading and increasing the priority might save a lot of time when encoding. 
[141002300260] |The documentation describes all the options that this application has, but it doesn't go into media encoding details, which I find correct since it isn't supposed to be a multimedia processing guide, but a piece of software's documentation.
[141002300270] |There are screenshots that detail every window, and if you want to do a little bit more research you can even access the forums or project wiki. 
[141002300280] |<em><strong>The Good:</strong></em> 
[141002300290] |It's simple to use and the details are abstracted from the user by employing conversion presets. 
[141002300300] |<em><strong>The Bad:</strong></em> 
[141002300310] |It lacks more advanced features, like encoding preview or video cropping. 
[141002300320] |<em><strong>The Truth:</strong></em> 
[141002300330] |WinFF is an FFmpeg front-end that strives to make life as easy as possible for users that have simple media encoding needs, and it largely achieves its goals. 
[141002320010] |<title>MP3 Diags Review</title>
[141002320020] |If you have a large music collection scattered on different types of memory devices, from SD cards to hard drives or CD-ROMs, you must have at least once had problems with corrupted files, bad tagging or doubtful metadata.
[141002320030] |Since the MP3 format is still the most widely used and best supported when you don't want to carry around a bag of original CDs of your favorite bands, having a good MP3 tag editor and file repair tool is absolutely necessary. 
[141002320040] |There are many tools out there that can tackle the task of editing audio file metadata, and there is even minimal support for this in most audio players, but they aren't able to do advanced edits, embed the cover to the file or even repair some messed-up headers.
[141002320050] |For those kinds of problems, I find it better to just use MP3 Diags.
[141002320060] |While this isn't a tool for the novice user, spending a short time getting used to the concepts and the functionality bundled in this program can help you save a lot of time when you do the actual edits. 
[141002320070] |When you fire up MP3 Diags for the first time, you will be greeted with a session creation tool.
[141002320080] |Use it to pick the folders in which the program will look for MP3s, set a backup folder, choose the place where your settings will be stored and even manage the way in which multiple sessions will be handled.
[141002320090] |The backup folder acts like a safety net, because once you have committed your edits to a file, the only way to undo them is to reach for the copy that was automatically made in that folder. 
[141002320100] |Once you are comfortable with the setup you have made, click "OK" and MP3 Diags will start looking into your folders for some MP3s in need of attention.
[141002320110] |I only used two albums that add up to 25 songs and the scan took close to two minutes, but remember that this isn't your favorite audio player adding music to a playlist, the analysis that the files undergo is quite thorough. 
[141002320120] |The next window gives you the chance to enable a feature that automatically checks if a new version of the program is available.
[141002320130] |The detailed description of this procedure is a nice addition that lets you make sure that no unwanted operations will happen.
[141002320140] |I strongly recommend you to allow the checks, because MP3 Diags' developer is quite active and new versions are released frequently. 
[141002320150] |After those few initial configuration steps you will finally see the "business end" of this piece of software, where most of the editing and fixing takes place.
[141002320160] |The main window has a pretty simple design, with a row of icons on the top and three panes below it.
[141002320170] |One lists the files, the one in the middle can be set to display file information, notes or tag details, and the one below lists the file's tags or other data structures contained within.
[141002320180] |You will think that tag editing has nothing to do with this layout and you're right, because MP3 Diags is manly a file repair tool and advanced editor, but the tagging functions are there, make no mistake about it. 
[141002320190] |So, what kind of repairs can this application do?
[141002320200] |We counted 17 different functions that range from cleaning up tags that have a different encoding and display badly to repairing variable bitrate headers –a key clue that shows a file with this problem is the inability to skip through it.
[141002320210] |When you have multiple files that suffer from a common set of problems, you can group the fixes on four different quick access buttons that apply that group of operations with a single click. 
[141002320220] |The tag editor has its own dedicated window, which has a better layout for this kind of job.
[141002320230] |The file list is on the upper part of the window, while the lower section covers the details for the selected file.
[141002320240] |The album art, if any, is placed in between the two panes.
[141002320250] |What you will notice is that not all your files are listed.
[141002320260] |That is because the tagger works in one folder at a time, a mode of operation that is especially useful when you have grouped your albums that way.
[141002320270] |Should you be unsure of the specific details or even the spelling of the artist's name, the information retrieval functions from Discogs and MusicBrainz should come in handy.
[141002320280] |You can also do pattern editing and even mass tagging or renaming. 
[141002320290] |Next up on the toolbar is the normalization function.
[141002320300] |When applied to an album, it makes sure that all the songs in it have the same overall volume, so that one doesn't sound louder than the other.
[141002320310] |Doing this to a single file isn't all that useful, since there is no reference to compare it to. 
[141002320320] |An extra look to MP3 Diags' settings window is well worth it, as it allows you to change the way your files will be handled, what temporary folders should be used, and there are even some options that allow you to hide notes or transformations that you don't use.
[141002320330] |Also, there is a Quality tab in which you can set thresholds for file quality; if any, if your file is below them you will be notified about it.
[141002320340] |Certain options can really improve the usability of this program, like the custom coloring that can be applied to different tag types and the custom font settings. 
[141002320350] |MP3 Diags has a comprehensive on-line user manual that goes beyond the options of the program and even has details about the basics of the MP3 file structure and the technical terminology used.
[141002320360] |Also, when the function that you are trying to use has a mode of operation that isn't obvious, a note containing a short description and a link to the relevant documentation section will be shown. 
[141002320370] |<em><strong>The Good</strong></em> 
[141002320380] |There is a wide range of options that can handle even the most complex editing tasks.
[141002320390] |MP3 Diags is very a customizable and powerful utility. 
[141002320400] |<em><strong>The Bad</strong></em> 
[141002320410] |Aside from the well-structured and comprehensive documentation, novice users aren't catered for.
[141002320420] |A simplified interface or a "push-button" version of the program should exist. 
[141002320430] |<em><strong>The Truth</strong></em> 
[141002320440] |It's an audiophile's dream come true.
[141002320450] |If you know what buttons to press, MP3 Diags will get the job done. 
[141002330010] |<title>LyX Review</title>
[141002330020] |Most users, when they need to write a document of some sort, will most likely use a "what you see is what you get" office suite that requires things to look just right on the screen before anything can be expected from the printed version.
[141002330030] |This type of document creation is good for small and medium length papers and where style consistency and advanced formatting aren't particular concerns, but if you want to write a scientific work that will be scrutinized by a great number of people and, on top of that, contains mathematical formulas or other special features, you're in for a world of trouble.
[141002330040] |Of course, various typesetting systems have been created for this kind of work, but they require you to get familiar with the special formatting language or with a convoluted interface, both very time consuming. 
[141002330050] |Well, all of that can be avoided if you pick up a copy of LyX, a document processor that harnesses the power of the TeX/LaTeX typesetting systems and exposes it through a simple and familiar interface.
[141002330060] |I could stop at saying that you don't actually need to learn much, you just have to get the hang of using the styles drop-down box in the top left of the window, and you will be able to create almost any kind of document.
[141002330070] |However, since this is a review, let's look at some of the features that LyX brings and how they put up with other document editors or with what we would expect.
[141002330080] |If you've ever tried to set and use styles when typing a large document in OpenOffice.org you will notice that with LyX it's all much easier. 
[141002330090] |LyX's interface appears to be similar to the one of many WYSIWYG word processors out there, but on a closer look you will observe that you don't have font style and size selection boxes, nor text format or alignment buttons.
[141002330100] |That fits in with the Lyx editing philosophy that "what you see is what you mean."
[141002330110] |When you say that you want to add a title to your document, you don't mean "a text that is centered and has a larger font size," you mean just that –a title –and all you have to do is pick the "Title" style from the box and start writing.
[141002330120] |The same goes for paragraphs, sections, lists and just about any other text element that you can think of. 
[141002330130] |The tabbed interface removes the internal clutter that happens when you try to use a windowed multiple document interface to its fullest extent, and we certainly appreciate the extensive list of premade styles that can be used directly or, if you need something similar, customized to your liking. 
[141002330140] |Since a regular document doesn't contain more that two or three font styles and a handful of text sizes, all the related toolbar items can be done without.
[141002330150] |Instead, you pick (or create) styles for all the text elements that you want to customize, choose a font that will be used throughout the document, and you're done.
[141002330160] |Don't worry, you can still customize the appearance of certain individual elements if that is what you require.
[141002330170] |Also, the bold and underline hotkeys are the ones we are all accustomed with, but there is no italic text style –in LyX it is called "emphasis" and it's quickly accessible through Ctrl+E. 
[141002330180] |If you're into mathematics, you will certainly enjoy the comprehensive support for symbols and formulas.
[141002330190] |You don't need to look up symbols in character maps or to navigate numerous menus until you find the necessary function.
[141002330200] |Everything is two clicks away; pick a category from the toolbar then select the relevant entry from the menu.
[141002330210] |Also, Table of Contents are generated on the fly should you use styles correctly, and you won't have to edit page numbers manually or trudge aligning everything up. 
[141002330220] |Should you already be familiar with the LaTeX document markup language, you can employ LyX to reduce the amount of typing that you have to do.
[141002330230] |If LyX doesn't support some feature that you need, but it can be done with pure LaTeX, there is a dedicated toolbar button that allows the direct and seamless insertion of LaTeX markup into the document. 
[141002330240] |Since LyX isn't a word processor, importing a document made with one isn't an easy task.
[141002330250] |You can only import LyX documents created by older versions of this program, HTML markup, plain text or LaTeX documents.
[141002330260] |Even if you do import your documents, they will probably need quite a lot of editing to take advantage of LyX's consistent styling and automatic functions.
[141002330270] |The same goes for exporting a document; you won't be able to switch from a conventional document editor and back.
[141002330280] |You can save it as a PDF or DVI file, various forms of LaTeX, postscript or plain text.
[141002330290] |If you are technically inclined you can also plug your own renderer into LyX and export into whichever format you want, but that is not a task for the novice user. 
[141002330300] |Let's not forged the documentation, which, I must say, is so abundant that it's more daunting than the program itself.
[141002330310] |The default installation has a lot of support content included, and if you can't find the answers that you need in it, head for the community wiki.
[141002330320] |There you will find a lot of how-tos, not to mention screencasts and complete user guides, and the content there is so rich that you won't know where to start. 
[141002330330] |<em><strong>The Good</strong></em> 
[141002330340] |Creating large documents with consistent styling is very easy once you get to know the interface.
[141002330350] |The PDF export feature allows for the documents to be read on many platforms and operating systems. 
[141002330360] |<em><strong>The Bad</strong></em> 
[141002330370] |Fine-grained modifications can be hard to make and advanced edits require knowledge of the LaTeX markup language.
[141002330380] |LyX is in no way fit for the creation of flyers or leaflets. 
[141002330390] |<em><strong>The Truth</strong></em> 
[141002330400] |If you want to create scientific or otherwise long publications, spending some time to get familiar with LyX will save you a lot of time during the actual editing.
[141002330410] |However, LyX isn't a universal document editing solution, it's a matter of choosing the right tool for the job at hand. 
[141002340010] |<title>KeePassX Review</title>
[141002340020] |System administrators and computer security experts keep reminding users that they should use strong passwords and change them regularly.
[141002340030] |Unfortunately, strong passwords are usually complicated and hard to remember, therefore prone to be forgotten or misused.
[141002340040] |Even if you do manage to remember one or two complicated passwords, using them for all your different accounts is a pretty bad idea, since if one of them is compromised the others that share the password are sitting ducks. 
[141002340050] |But what if you could use a single password to open a secure container holding all your login credentials and other data that you might want to store in it?
[141002340060] |It would be great, and KeePassX is just the program to do all of that.
[141002340070] |Also, you don't have to worry about accessing your programs from other operating systems, hidden backdoors that would expose your data or cumbersome installation procedures.
[141002340080] |KeePassX is open source, so you can see the source code yourself and even contribute if you want, multiplatform, and it even provides prebuilt packages for a number of well-known Linux distributions. 
[141002340090] |The interface is pretty simple, but the toolbar icons will take a while to get used to, because their functionality isn't exactly obvious and they have no text.
[141002340100] |On the left sidebar you will find the groups, the top part of the window holds the actual entries and the bottom half displays their content.
[141002340110] |What will throw you off a bit at the beginning is the fact that KeePassX doesn't save its information after each action you take.
[141002340120] |You can either choose to manually click the save button on the toolbar or wait until you close the application, when you will receive a notification about your unsaved data.
[141002340130] |That is both a good and a bad thing, because it minimizes the risk of corrupting information by doing an automated save during a power failure or another unfortunate event of that type, but it also puts your unsaved data in danger should something of that sort happen. 
[141002340140] |Adding a new entry is a straightforward task; you either press the corresponding toolbar button, go to Entries -  Add New Entry in the menu or just press Ctrl+Y. A new window will appear, where you can choose a group and a custom icon for your entry, add a title to it, the usual login credentials (username and password), a URL address, a comment and even set an expiration date.
[141002340150] |More interesting is the little "Gen." button that is located to the right of the password fields.
[141002340160] |By clicking it you will open a very flexible password generator with customizable character set and length, a strength indicator.
[141002340170] |Whether the generated passwords are "Pronounceable" is something that can be argued upon, but if it's security that you want, you might want to spare a moment for the "Enable entropy collection" function.
[141002340180] |Enabling this option further enhances the security of the generated password by sampling random data from your mouse movements or the letters typed while the "Entropy Collection" window is selected. 
[141002340190] |Once you insert a couple of your accounts in KeePassX's database, the next step is to extract the required information, like usernames and passwords, when needed.
[141002340200] |The basic way would be to right click an entry, select "Copy Username to Clipboard," paste it in the login form where it is needed, then do that all again for the password, but this process requires quite a lot of mousing around.
[141002340210] |You can do it faster by remembering that Ctrl+B will copy the username to the clipboard and Ctrl+C handles the password, but there is a better way still.
[141002340220] |It's called AutoType, and it works like this.
[141002340230] |First, click on the field where your username is required, then switch to KeePassX, select the appropriate entry, press Ctrl+V and presto, your account details have been automatically entered in the required fields and you're already logging in. 
[141002340240] |The Auto-Type function can be further enhanced by choosing a global hotkey for the function, in KeePassX's Advanced Settings.
[141002340250] |Using it globally can be problematic because the application can't really guess where you want to enter your credentials, and you won't be very happy if they get pasted into your instant messaging application or IRC client.
[141002340260] |That can be avoided by selecting a target window when you create or edit an entry.
[141002340270] |To do that, open the application or page where these credentials are needed, then switch to KeePassX and, in the New Entry window, click "Tools -  Auto-Type: Select Target Window."
[141002340280] |You will be able to pick the desired application from a drop-down list.
[141002340290] |Also, the login screen of some applications may not work with the "Username TAB Password ENTER" sequence that KeePassX uses by default.
[141002340300] |To fix that, in the "Tools" menu there is an option to define a custom sequence.
[141002340310] |You will have to do it by hand, using a few simple macros, but it's better than just being stuck with a feature that is not working.
[141002340320] |Although Auto-Type is tagged as an experimental feature, it worked as advertised and I haven't had any problems with it. 
[141002340330] |KeePassX takes good care of your passwords and encrypts its container with the proven AES algorithm, but if you don't trust it you can switch to using Twofish.
[141002340340] |This can be done in the "Database Settings" window, where you can also choose the number of encryption rounds to be performed.
[141002340350] |Putting a higher number into that box further increases the security of the database by encrypting it for as many times as the number says, at the cost of performance.
[141002340360] |The clock button next to that field is very useful in that case, because it computes how many rounds your computer can do in one second and then fills in that number.
[141002340370] |This way you don't have to worry about loading times; the one second delay only applies when you unlock the database.
[141002340380] |Still, no matter how advanced the encryption is, it is only as good as your database password and its security. 
[141002340390] |KeePassX's documentation is pretty scarce.
[141002340400] |You only get a short description of the KeePassX project, the system requirements and an installation guide which isn't useful at all if you already installed the application from your Linux distribution's repository.
[141002340410] |The largest part of the documentation is represented by the Quick-start Guide, which covers the basics of using the application and in which you will find a short guide on setting up Auto-Type.
[141002340420] |KeePassX is currently available in 17 languages, but if you feel like adding one yourself you will find the necessary information and tools on the project's website. 
[141002340430] |<em><strong>The Good</strong></em> 
[141002340440] |KeePassX is very secure and customizable.
[141002340450] |The number of supported platforms is large enough, and it will be pretty hard to find yourself in the impossibility of accessing your passwords. 
[141002340460] |<em><strong>The Bad</strong></em> 
[141002340470] |The settings window can be confusing with all the options spread out across multiple categories.
[141002340480] |The documentation isn't complete, and it doesn't have any screenshots. 
[141002340490] |<em><strong>The Truth</strong></em> 
[141002340500] |If you are an advanced user that has many accounts and you don't want to risk having them compromised, don't write them down into a file called Passwords.txt, just use KeePassX instead. 
[141002350010] |<title>PS3 Media Server Review</title>
[141002350020] |PS3 Media Server is, as its name suggests, a multimedia server that is designed to interface with the PlayStation 3 gaming console.
[141002350030] |You install it on a computer that is on the same network with the PS3 and, thanks to the Digital Living Network Alliance-compliant Universal Plug and Play support in both the console and the server, a connection will be created between the two, without any intervention required (except having correct network settings, of course).
[141002350040] |But what's a connection useful for by itself?
[141002350050] |As its name suggests, PS3 Media Server is designed to transcode videos and stream them in real time, enabling you to watch media residing on the server on the display that your console is connected to.
[141002350060] |However, if the files that you want to view aren't in one of the formats that the PlayStation understands, you will need a pretty beefy computer to do the transcoding, especially if you want it to happen in real time.
[141002350070] |Our first impression was that trying to exploit a Java application for real-time streaming would be impossible because of the memory limitations that the JVM imposes, but in fact all the heavy lifting is done by one of the backends that are selected in the PS3 Media Server's configuration options, like the well-known open-source MEncoder and FFmpeg applications.
[141002350080] |Unfortunately, PS3 Media Server's interface is laid out in a pretty complicated way.
[141002350090] |There are a few buttons on the top, "Save," "Restart HTTP Server" and "Quit," and under them there is a strip of tabs.
[141002350100] |This is where the interface's unfriendliness really shows, and it's quite obvious that this program isn't oriented towards the novice user as we had thought.
[141002350110] |There are some minor details about the "Status" tab, however it shows quite clearly what the state of the connection is, as well as some information about the transcoding buffer and the connection.
[141002350120] |If the buffer doesn't manage to fill up or the content that is being streamed to the PlayStation is skipping, your computer might be underpowered for that task.
[141002350130] |However, computing requirements vary greatly between codecs, optimization options and media types, so you might have better results with some videos and poor with others.
[141002350140] |Be advised that, from our experience, if your connection isn't ok and PS3 Media Server says that your PlayStation wasn't detected, that status won't be updated even if you correct the situation and you will have to restart the application.
[141002350150] |The second tab is probably the most cryptic for new users, because it contains a run/event log of the server.
[141002350160] |Unintuitively named "Traces," it displays a text box that gets updated every time something happens, like a PS3 connecting or a network event taking place.
[141002350170] |This is where you may find clues about the possible causes of any problems that you will encounter, but I'm afraid there won't be any instructions for fixing them attached.
[141002350180] |In "General Configuration" you'll find the basics, like program language and, essential for a server, network configuration.
[141002350190] |Ideally, it shouldn't be necessary to change any of the network settings, but if you have a custom setup and it's generating problems, you should already have a pretty good idea about what to put in those fields.
[141002350200] |The gateway to your media is hidden in the "Navigation/Share Settings" tab.
[141002350210] |Through it you will be able to set a variety of options related to video thumbnails, album covers and navigation settings but, more importantly, you can pick what folders will be accessible from the PlayStation.
[141002350220] |To save yourself the trouble of navigating to the folders that hold your music and movies all the time, why not just add them directly to this list and be done with it.
[141002350230] |"Transcoding Settings" is much simpler than it looks, because only three option pages are implemented.
[141002350240] |You can set some general options that apply to all the transcoding processes, tune the way PS3 Media Server interfaces with MEncoder and set a couple of settings for tsMuxeR.
[141002350250] |However, we couldn't get the bundled TsMuxeR or versions downloaded from its official web page to work no matter how much we tried, so we recommend that you disable the "Switch to tsMuxer when H264 video is ps3 compatible" option under "MEncoder."
[141002350260] |If your computer isn't powerful enough or the network can't handle the volume of traffic generated and you get stuttering, try different "Maximum bandwidth" values in the "Common transcode settings" page.
[141002350270] |The next two tabs make up what is an impromptu help system, with a readme and some frequently asked questions.
[141002350280] |They are very valuable and we recommend that you look over them before using the program.
[141002350290] |Even so, a proper documentation system would have been more manageable, and probably easier to search.
[141002350300] |<em><strong>The Good</strong></em>
[141002350310] |If it works, it will do its job in a stellar fashion and you will be enjoying your multimedia comfort directly from your living room.
[141002350320] |<em><strong>The Bad</strong></em>
[141002350330] |Sometimes it doesn't work, and the fact that it is a Java program doesn't help it.
[141002350340] |Hardware requirements are high, but they are rightfully so.
[141002350350] |<em><strong>The Truth</strong></em>
[141002350360] |The added comfort of viewing movies on a big TV connected to your PlayStation is worth the tinkering that you will have to do until you get everything working.
[141002380010] |<title>Amarok Review</title>
[141002380020] |For a long time, Linux has struggled to be a real alternative on the desktop operating system market.
[141002380030] |Recently, this hasn't been too much of a problem with modern Linux distributions, the likes of Ubuntu coming with all the software and functionality most users would need.
[141002380040] |But a few years ago, one area that was still clearly lacking was multimedia.
[141002380050] |There were plenty of media players out there, yet, for music, most Linux users still relied on XMMS, a decade-old Winamp clone.
[141002380060] |Then Amarok came along and showed that a great music player and management tool could exist on Linux as well.
[141002380070] |Not only that, but by that time matured Amarok was considered by many, not just Linux fans, to be the best music management software on any platform, including our very own <a><strong>Softpedia reviewer</strong></a>.
[141002380080] |The Amarok 1.x series was built on the KDE 3.5 platform and by the time KDE 4 came out with all its eye candy goodness, the Amarok developers decided to completely reboot the project and build Amarok 2 from the ground up, using the lessons learned from Amarok 1, but not aiming to be a complete replacement of it, at least not at launch. 
[141002380090] |And it certainly wasn't, many complained about missing features in Amarok 2.0 and the software also seemed a little more buggy than its older brother.
[141002380100] |This, coupled with the rough early days of KDE 4, didn't make for a very impressive launch.
[141002380110] |And by that time others had risen to claim the title of the best audio player on Linux, projects like Rythmbox and Banshee.
[141002380120] |However, Amarok has been getting a steady stream of updates in the meantime, and <a><strong>Amarok 2.3.0 was launched this week</strong></a> further refining the audio player, so let's see what the developers have managed to do in the year or so since Amarok 2 was launched.
[141002380130] |<strong>Amarok 2</strong>
[141002380140] |Amarok 2, like its predecessor, is an iTunes inspired music player with a heavy emphasis on music management.
[141002380150] |It also supports a number of web services, like Last.fm and Magnatune, if you want to get your music from the cloud.
[141002380160] |All the usual features of good music players are here, a rather complete library and a smart playlist, but one of the most interesting aspects of the player is the customizable Context section which allows users to get song lyrics and even Wikipedia entries inside Amarok.
[141002380170] |For this review, we will be using Amarok 2.3.0, which comes with brand-new main toolbar and other small tweaks and features.
[141002380180] |We'll be testing it on the latest <a><strong>Ubuntu/Kubuntu 10.04 LTS Beta 1</strong></a>.
[141002380190] |You can grab the packages for Amarok 2.3.0 from the download link above.
[141002380200] |<strong>The look and feel</strong>
[141002380210] |By default, Amarok 2 is dominated by three main components, Media Sources, Context and Playlist.
[141002380220] |The three are rather self-explanatory, and all three are crucial for a fully-featured music player.
[141002380230] |There was a small visual revamp with Amarok 2.3.0 in the form of a new main toolbar, making the whole thing look even sleeker than it already was.
[141002380240] |Amarok 2 certainly looks good, but the emphasis is on functionality, which is a very good thing in this case.
[141002380250] |There are too many media players that try to dazzle users with flashy interfaces but which fall flat in the usability department.
[141002380260] |The interface is completely based on KDE 4 so it comes with all of its flaws and strong points, but overall, it makes a good impression.
[141002380270] |Amarok 2 strikes a good balance between looks and practicality, leaning towards the latter.
[141002380280] |<strong>Interface and features</strong>
[141002380290] |<strong>Music Sources</strong>.
[141002380300] |This is one of the main sections in Amarok 2, where you'll be doing all of your music management.
[141002380310] |It's basically a music library which brings together all the places where you may get your music from.
[141002380320] |In the <strong>Local Music</strong> section you'll find, well, your local music, all the files you have stored in the folders you selected as part of your music collection.
[141002380330] |The tracks are sorted by artist and further by album.
[141002380340] |All of these can be customized and you can sort and group them in any way you want.
[141002380350] |It's a good idea to have quality files with accurate and complete song info for the collection to work properly, but if you don't, you can always use the automatic tag generator (or rather, guesser) that comes with Amarok 2.
[141002380360] |It looks at the file name and aims to extract all the necessary info, like artist name, track number etc.
[141002380370] |It's pretty feature rich, but in practice, I've found it to be rather flaky and I couldn't get it to work properly. 
[141002380380] |An interesting addition to Amarok 2 are the <strong>Internet Sources</strong> which allow you to listen to online tracks right from the music player.
[141002380390] |Several services are supported: Jamendo.com, Last.fm, Librivox.org - a repository for public domain audio books, the Magnatune.com store and a Podcast Directory powered by digitalpodcasts.com.
[141002380400] |The <strong>Playlists</strong> section allows you to browse your saved playlists, but it also features an interesting and very customizable Dynamic Playlists feature which should come in handy especially for large collections.
[141002380410] |You can browse for local files which aren't in your collection folder or folders in the <strong>Files</strong> section and subscribe to online podcasts in the <strong>Podcasts</strong> section.
[141002380420] |<strong>Context</strong>.
[141002380430] |This is one of the most innovative features in Amarok 2.
[141002380440] |Powered by KDE 4 Plasma, it's a widget container which comes with several tools by default.
[141002380450] |You can add or remove these widgets at will.
[141002380460] |The Current Track widget doesn't need any explanation and is an obvious choice as the first widget.
[141002380470] |You can also add a Lyrics widget if you're the kind of person who likes to sing along to the tunes, or just want to understand whatever the artist is saying.
[141002380480] |And if you're looking to find out a bit more about the band you're listening to, the Wikipedia widget should be right up your alley. 
[141002380490] |<strong>Playlist</strong>.
[141002380500] |The playlist is everything you'd expect from a modern music player.
[141002380510] |You can add tracks from multiple sources, either local files or from online services, and the sorting options are practically limitless in Amarok 2.3.0, something missing in the first Amarok 2 release.
[141002380520] |There are several views available with the tracks either grouped by album and artist or everything bundled together.
[141002380530] |You can add various sorting options, by album, artist, BPM, anything you can think of, and there's even a Random sorter.
[141002380540] |<strong>Customization</strong>
[141002380550] |The best thing about Amarok 2, though, is the customization option.
[141002380560] |Virtually, any feature can be customized to look and function just the way you like it, and you can add and remove features and components at will.
[141002380570] |On one extreme, you can have a minimalistic player which features just the basic controls like volume and play/pause and little track info.
[141002380580] |On the other, you can have multiple panels brimming with information - a detailed playlist, the local collection explorer, Wikipedia widget and so on.
[141002380590] |<strong>Under the hood</strong>
[141002380600] |The main reason why the Amarok 2 project was started was to make use of the new KDE 4 framework, so much of the technical underpinnings were created based on KDE 4 technologies.
[141002380610] |The interface, of course, has been greatly revamped and is a great example of what can be done with KDE 4 and Plasma.
[141002380620] |On the backend, it uses the Phonon multimedia API and the Solid framework for devices, things like MP3 players, for example. 
[141002380630] |<strong>Conclusion</strong>
[141002380640] |Amarok 2, especially the latest release Amarok 2.3.0 is a well-rounded and feature-packed music player that likely has plenty to offer most users if you take the time and effort to customize it to your needs.
[141002380650] |It's not perfect by any means, but it comes as good as any multi-purpose music player is expected to be and still maintains its mainstream appeal.
[141002380660] |And in the end, it may have succeeded in maintaining the legacy of Amarok 1 as it is, now that it has matured enough, probably the best music player for Linux.
[141002380670] |And thanks to its cross-platform capabilities, Windows and Mac OS X users can enjoy it as well.
[141002390010] |<title>Parole Media Player Review</title>
[141002390020] |Everything is moving online these days, it seems, and entertainment is no different.
[141002390030] |With YouTube, Hulu, Netflix and plenty of other sites and services to choose from, it might seem that the days of actually owning a movie are gone.
[141002390040] |But we're not quite there yet, there's still a place for DVDs and you're going to want to keep your home videos on your computer, even if you may also upload them to YouTube.
[141002390050] |And if you do that, you're going to need a video player. 
[141002390060] |If you're a Linux user, things used to be murky.
[141002390070] |We've all had files encoded in some esoteric format and seen video players coming with lists of tens of dependencies.
[141002390080] |Fortunately, things have evolved in the past few years and multimedia support on Linux has reached a more mature state.
[141002390090] |There are plenty of movie or media players to choose from on Linux, each with their own advantages and goals, but, for this review, I've gone outside the beaten track and tested Parole Media Player, a lightweight and somewhat spartan video player designed for the XFCE desktop environment. 
[141002390100] |Installing Parole Media Player</strong> 
[141002390110] |Given that Parole is specifically targeted at XFCE, I've used the latest Xubuntu 10.04 Beta 2 as the underlying operating system.
[141002390120] |It really shouldn't make any difference what distro you're using, as long as you have XFCE and GStreamer you should be set.
[141002390130] |There is a recent stable build, Parole 0.2.0.2, but getting it up and running on your system may be a bit tricky. 
[141002390140] |The player isn't available in Ubuntu's default repositories and there aren't any handy .deb packages (or anything else, for that matter) available from any official source, so you're left with two options.
[141002390150] |Either roll up your sleeves and compile the thing from scratch, or get it from an unofficial PPA, which, luck would have it, happens to exist. 
[141002390160] |If you decide to go with the first option, you’re now faced with another choice, getting the latest builds from the Git repository or playing it safe and getting the source code for the latest stable build.
[141002390170] |You can grab the source code for the latest stable build, Parole 0.2.0.2, right here on Softpedia from the download link above.
[141002390180] |Unzip the archive and start baking with the typical set of commands. 
[141002390190] |<b>CODE</b><code>./configure make make install (as root)</code> 
[141002390200] |If you're feeling more adventurous, you can check out the latest Git source code and compile it.
[141002390210] |Grab the code: 
[141002390220] |<b>CODE</b><code>git clone http://git.xfce.org/git/apps/parole</code> 
[141002390230] |And then run: 
[141002390240] |<b>CODE</b><code>./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr make make install (as root)</code> 
[141002390250] |Finally, if you want to save yourself the hassle, you can get the Launchpad build of Parole 0.2.0.2 for Ubuntu/Xubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala and 10.04 Lucid Lynx <a><strong>here</strong></a>. 
[141002390260] |<strong>The looks and feel</strong> 
[141002390270] |Now that you've gotten everything working, let's find out if it was worth the trouble.
[141002390280] |Parole Media Player aims to be a general-purpose player, in a way, XFCE's answer to GNOME's Totem Movie Player.
[141002390290] |In fact, the similarities are striking, Parole replicates most of Totem's features, but with an XFCE flavor.
[141002390300] |The layout is split into three main areas, the actual video overlay, a playback toolbar at the bottom and a sidebar/playlist.
[141002390310] |Everything is built using the native GTK framework, so there's no flashy graphics and animations like those you'd get in a bunch of other media players, thus a welcomed relief. 
[141002390320] |Parole tries to keep things simple, which is probably its biggest advantage, but maybe its biggest drawback as well.
[141002390330] |It has everything you need to play a video or an audio file and nothing else.
[141002390340] |You get the usual playback control buttons and a volume slider in the bottom toolbar and you can add and arrange files in the playlist on the right.
[141002390350] |And that's pretty much it. 
[141002390360] |<strong>Media-file support and playback</strong> 
[141002390370] |One thing that you don't have to worry about with Parole is media-format support.
[141002390380] |Because it's built on top of the very capable GStreamer multimedia framework, Parole should be able to handle any media file you can throw at it, including DVDs.
[141002390390] |It can also play live streams from your local network or anywhere online. 
[141002390400] |<strong>Video.</strong>
[141002390410] |If all you want is to load a movie and start enjoying it, then Parole is for you.
[141002390420] |You get all the expected controls and settings for playback, there's nothing spectacular in this part, but there really doesn't need to be.
[141002390430] |You can also adjust the image settings, all the basic stuff is there, brightness, contrast, hue and saturation, until you get things just the way you like them.
[141002390440] |As far as video is concerned, Parole gets the job done, but doesn't provide anything above the strict necessities. 
[141002390450] |<strong>Audio.</strong>
[141002390460] |Parole can also double as an audio player, but again, don't expect anything too fancy.
[141002390470] |You can create a playlist, arrange the tracks in the order you want and hit 'play,' and you also get 'shuffle' and 'repeat' options.
[141002390480] |There's not much else to say other than the fact that it works. 
[141002390490] |<strong>Conclusion</strong> 
[141002390500] |Parole Media Player is definitely not aimed at even the moderate movie enthusiast.
[141002390510] |If you want to turn your machine into a multimedia powerhouse, Parole is not for you.
[141002390520] |But, if your desktop environment of choice is XFCE and all you want is to play a video or watch a movie once in a while or listen to the occasional MP3, then look no further.
[141002390530] |Parole is a simple tool with a simple goal and, in that, there's nothing you can fault it for.
[141002390540] |It does what it was intended to, namely play media files, well and nothing more.
[141002390550] |However, Parole is still in early development, so new features should be coming as things progress. 
[141002400010] |<title>Midori Review</title>
[141002400020] |For Linux users there’s only been one real choice in terms of web browsers in recent years, Mozilla Firefox.
[141002400030] |Sure, there are plenty of other browsers out there, each with its own unique traits and loyal fans, but, by and large, most users opted for Firefox.
[141002400040] |Very recently, Google Chrome has also become a viable alternative, though the ‘political’ issues, Chrome is not really open source, have kept it back so far.
[141002400050] |Its twin brother Chromium is completely open source and it looks like Canonical, makers of Ubuntu, are contemplating making it the default browser in the upcoming Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook Edition. 
[141002400060] |In this landscape, one project has been flying mostly under the radar, the Midori web browser, and, as you’ll see, perhaps undeservedly so.
[141002400070] |The Midori team has a simple mission statement, create a web browser built with GTK+ 2 and based on the WebKit web rendering engine all wrapped in a lightweight package.
[141002400080] |And now, after several years in development, it’s safe to say they’ve reached their goal. 
[141002400090] |<strong>Midori means ‘green’ in Japanese</strong> 
[141002400100] |Midori means ‘green’ in Japanese and it’s a name that suits it well, the browser is light and fast.
[141002400110] |It found a home as part of the semi-official XFCE Goodies bundle and is considered the default web browser for the lightweight desktop environment.  
[141002400120] |That doesn’t mean you need XFCE to make the best of it, Midori feels right at home in GNOME as well.
[141002400130] |Development cycles are pretty short so most Linux distributions are going to have trouble keeping up with the latest release.
[141002400140] |In my case, on Ubuntu 10.04, the latest official build in the default repositories was Midori 0.2.2.
[141002400150] |The newest release, however, at the time of writing, is Midori 0.2.6.
[141002400160] |Luckily, if you use Ubuntu as well, you can find <a><strong>PPA builds</strong></a> of the latest release or, if you’re feeling adventurous, you can build it yourself from the sources. 
[141002400170] |<strong>Midori is lightning fast</strong> 
[141002400180] |So, with that sorted, let's get things moving.
[141002400190] |Midori, as advertised, is fast.
[141002400200] |It loads pretty fast, depending on how many tabs you have open, and it shuts down instantly.
[141002400210] |Moving from tab to tab is seamless even with a large number of tabs.
[141002400220] |Its swiftness rivals that of <a><strong>Google Chrome</strong></a>’s, which is largely regarded as the speed king across all platforms, so that’s saying something.
[141002400230] |If performance is an issue for you, whether you’re on an underpowered machine or netbook or just want to keep things light and fast, Midori certainly fits the bill. 
[141002400240] |<strong>Desktop integration - Midori is built on GTK+ 2</strong> 
[141002400250] |Of course, speed is just one part of the equation.
[141002400260] |A fast browser doesn’t necessarily make for a great experience.
[141002400270] |So how does Midori stack up in the looks department?
[141002400280] |Well, right off the bat I’ll tell you that it does pretty, pretty well.
[141002400290] |It’s a completely native GTK+ 2 application so it’s at home in XFCE, GNOME or any other similar environment.
[141002400300] |In this regard, it does a lot better than Firefox.
[141002400310] |It’s the little things, like the desktop notifications integration, when a download is finished, for example , that make all the difference.
[141002400320] |If you want the same look and feel across all of your applications, you’d be hard pressed to find a better option. 
[141002400330] |<strong>Customization options</strong> 
[141002400340] |One thing I love about Midori is the customization options.
[141002400350] |By default, Midori comes with a pretty lightweight but standard choice of UI components, things like the menu bar, the status bar and so on.
[141002400360] |It’s the safest option, but those who’ll appreciate Midori will want to keep it as minimalistic as possible.
[141002400370] |Fortunately, Midori delivers, the UI components can be stripped down to just the tab bar and nothing else.
[141002400380] |A usable minimum configuration would be to have just the tab bar and the navigation bar visible.
[141002400390] |Smartly, if you disable the menu bar, Midori will add a menu button, in the veins of the ones in the latest Opera or the upcoming Firefox 4.0, to access the most common settings. 
[141002400400] |<strong>Usability</strong> 
[141002400410] |So far, everything looks good, but us, human beings, are creatures of habit.
[141002400420] |Once we get accustomed to a certain way of doing things, it’s hard to change it.
[141002400430] |This is extremely true for software, so a perfectly good app may not get a second chance if it comes off as too ‘alien’ on first try.
[141002400440] |Midori does have a few hiccups in this department, especially for a long-time Firefox and Chrome user as myself.
[141002400450] |It has gotten better with the latest releases, but the default settings may seem a bit strange to most people. 
[141002400460] |For example, by default, the first option in the right-click menu when clicking on a link is to open it in a new tab in the foreground, meaning that you’ll get switched to that new tab.
[141002400470] |Most of the time, this is not what you want to do.
[141002400480] |It seems like nitpicking, but you’re going to open links many times a day so it can become annoying pretty fast.
[141002400490] |Thankfully, you can customize this behavior in the Preferences menu and make ‘Open tabs in the background’ the default option in the right-click menu. 
[141002400500] |<strong>Standards compliant - Midori is based on WebKit</strong> 
[141002400510] |It’s starting to look like we have a winner on our hands.
[141002400520] |But so far we haven’t touched on the core functionality of a web browser, to display web pages.
[141002400530] |It may be fast, it may be smart and customizable, but if the pages don’t look or work properly, it’s all for nothing.
[141002400540] |Midori starts off with a major disadvantage, it’s not a mainstream browser by any stretch of the imagination.
[141002400550] |As such, by default, many more 'advanced' websites will refuse to work in the ‘unsupported’ browser or just display a basic HTML interface.
[141002400560] |Gmail doesn’t work straight out of the box, Yahoo Mail doesn’t work, Google Docs is largely unusable and so on. 
[141002400570] |But Midori’s secret weapon is that it’s based on WebKit.
[141002400580] |That means that, not only is it fully standards-compliant, it also comes with great support for HTML5 and one of the fastest and most popular rendering engines around.
[141002400590] |So most of the problems with compatibility can be ‘fixed’ with a very simple trick, just change the user agent of the browser.
[141002400600] |Go to Preferences  Network and choose either Safari (since it’s also based on WebKit) or Firefox.
[141002400610] |This won’t solve all of your problems, some websites still won’t work, partially or even at all.
[141002400620] |It’s a shame too, but the developers can’t really do that much about this, it comes with the territory when you’re a small-time web browser. 
[141002400630] |<strong>Conclusion</strong> 
[141002400640] |So, adding it all up, Midori is surprisingly good.
[141002400650] |It’s fast, it’s light and looks great with GNOME or XFCE.
[141002400660] |It’s faster than Firefox and on par, subjectively, with Google Chrome.
[141002400670] |It’s a much tighter fit for your desktop environment than Firefox, not to mention Chrome.
[141002400680] |And it also comes with the great WebKit rendering engine.
[141002400690] |Stability doesn’t seem to be an issue so far, like it was in earlier builds.
[141002400700] |It’s only real but minor downside is the lack of extensions.
[141002400710] |There are a few built-in, but nothing on the scale of Firefox or even Chrome.
[141002400720] |It does support Greasemonkey scripts though.
[141002400730] |On the whole, Midori is great, and the only thing keeping it from becoming my default browser are the issues with lack of support at some websites. 
[141002410010] |<title>UNetbootin Review</title>
[141002410020] |One of the thrills that come with being a Linux user is that of testing a new distribution.
[141002410030] |While more often than not we go back to our actual distribution after the test, don’t deny yourselves the anticipation of possibly discovering that worry-free, perfect Linux flavor every once in a while.
[141002410040] |All this can be put off, however, UNetbootin gives users the possibility to create a bootable USB drive, without the need of burning a CD.
[141002410050] |You can use the command-line to do just that, a Linux connaisseur would say.
[141002410060] |But I for one wouldn't mind not having to remember commands in order to play around with Linux.
[141002410070] |<strong>Installation</strong>
[141002410080] |It’s hard to say there even was an install procedure.
[141002410090] |The downloaded file ran straight away as soon as I made it executable (<em>chmod +x ./unetbootin-linux</em>).
[141002410100] |<strong>Ease of use</strong>
[141002410110] |UNetbootin’s interface is basically a simple to use and intuitive window.
[141002410120] |The first section allows you to choose from a list of available distributions.
[141002410130] |They range from lightweight ones (i.e. xPUD, SliTaz or Puppy Linux) to the more common distributions (OpenSUSE, Debian, Ubuntu, Mandriva, Fedora, Gentoo, etc).
[141002410140] |For each one, you can select the type of version to test (live, net install, stable, unstable, specific version number, etc.).
[141002410150] |Then, simply skip to the lower section of the window –the Type section –and choose where you'd like to install it.
[141002410160] |You can now opt for extracting the distribution's installer either on a USB drive or hard drive.
[141002410170] |If you choose a USB drive, the next step is a matter of time: simply wait for UNebootin to download the installer files.
[141002410180] |It will go on to install a bootloader entry for them.
[141002410190] |Reboot when prompted and select the distribution from the bootloader menu.
[141002410200] |If you plan on installing the distribution on your hard drive, the procedure is much the same as with the USB drive, just make sure you select an empty partition where to install it.
[141002410210] |UNetbootin can also load several useful system utilities such as Partition Magic for managing your partitions, or SystemRescueCD for system rescue, recovery and backup (don't get intimidated by the name, there's no CD needed this time).
[141002410220] |It can also download and install several other boot and password recovery utilities, software for removing Windows malware or for network analysis.
[141002410230] |<strong>Ease of use</strong>
[141002410240] |My favorite feature of the software is that of the flexibility it allows for.
[141002410250] |Besides the option of downloading and installing specific pre-defined distributions, it supports installation of distributions not available in the drop down menu.
[141002410260] |According to the available files you have for the install, there are two ways of doing this.
[141002410270] |Select ”Disk Image” install in order to supply the location of the appropriate ISO or the floppy/hard disk file already downloaded on your hard drive.
[141002410280] |Alternatively, choose a “Custom install” to specify the kernel and initrd files, together with special boot options.
[141002410290] |But if you'd rather just see how a distribution looks like before installing it, here's where one of the best features of UNetbootin comes into play.
[141002410300] |You can try out the live version of a distribution (where available) directly on your hard drive, no Live CD or Live USB needed.
[141002410310] |You do that by selecting the live version from the distribution's menu and then choosing your hard drive as the installation type (no special partitioning needed).
[141002410320] |After rebooting, the live version will simply load into the RAM.
[141002410330] |You'll be given the option of deleting the entry the next time you run UNetbootin.
[141002410340] |<strong>Bugs</strong>
[141002410350] |While UNetbootin is very much usable by novice Linux users, it’s difficult not to get intimidated by words such as “ISO”, “Kernel” or “Initrd” in the main window.
[141002410360] |A help menu would have made the few words in the window slightly less confusing, particularly when seeing “use with care” on the screen.
[141002410370] |Also, I found myself wishing I knew how much space I'd need for each download and install, without actually having to check out the distribution's website.
[141002410380] |The only serious issue I encountered came up when selecting the Live version for SliTaz, using a hard disk install.
[141002410390] |The download and extraction showed no errors, but I constantly got an Error 15: File not found, when selecting the bootloader entry.
[141002410400] |It had no problem, however, once I actually supplied the location of the pre-downloaded ISO file.
[141002410410] |<strong>Conclusion</strong>
[141002410420] |Ultimately, UNetbootin spares you the hassle of searching for those console commands that create a bootable USB drive.
[141002410430] |The best part is that it does this in a way that gives anyone a chance at an intuitive experience when trying out Linux distributions.
[141002410440] |<b>Follow the editor on Twitter <a>@mariusnestor</a></b>
[141002420010] |<title>Shotwell Review</title>
[141002420020] |We’ve all got an image collection.
[141002420030] |Some we keep for sharing on Facebook, some are there for when we’re looking for inspiration, while many get lost in the clutter inside our folders.
[141002420040] |Making sense of our photo collection can be time consuming and irritating.
[141002420050] |That’s why photo organizing applications such as Shotwell are useful.
[141002420060] |<strong>Installation</strong>
[141002420070] |If Shotwell isn't already listed in your package repository, you can install Shotwell by adding the Yorba Personal Package Archive to your repository (for Ubuntu: <em>sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yorba/ppa</em>), update your repository list (<em>sudo apt-get update</em>) and then simply install it (<em>sudo apt-get install shotwell</em>).
[141002420080] |This will install the latest version, Shotwell 0.7.2.
[141002420090] |<strong>The Interface</strong>
[141002420100] |Shotwell's sidebar has three basic entries (Photos, Events and Trash).
[141002420110] |Once the camera is plugged in, an additional entry is added to the list, with the name of the camera or, a more technical description of the camera, including the connection type (USB) and the protocol used for digital image transfer (Picture Transfer Protocol).
[141002420120] |The left hand panel allows for two viewing modes, either “Photos” or “Events”.
[141002420130] |Once you assign tags (a rather intuitive operation) to your digital images, a third viewing mode, Tags, becomes available.
[141002420140] |“Photos” displays all the images from your collection, while “Events” sorts them according to the date they were taken, with no extra effort on my behalf.
[141002420150] |The 'date' tag itself can be changed into a more explanatory one (i.e. sister's graduation day).
[141002420160] |Each viewing mode changes the menu bar with corresponding options.
[141002420170] |Generally, the Edit menu gives a list of commands that apply to your photo collection, such as undo, duplicate, remove, select, etc.
[141002420180] |The Photos menu entry, unavailable in the “Events” viewing mode, enables you to edit a picture (rename, rotate, flip, etc).
[141002420190] |The View menu offers image information (date, size, title) and allows the user to choose how the images are sorted.
[141002420200] |The Events menu helps categorize your photos according to specific moments that you set your photos in.
[141002420210] |You can use the Tags menu to assign, modify or remove tags.
[141002420220] |Or, simply drag and drop the photos to an already created Tag entry on the left panel. 
[141002420230] |<strong>Features</strong>
[141002420240] |Unlike other photo editors, Shotwell doesn’t modify the image collection itself, unless you choose to.
[141002420250] |It operates on its own database, after importing the images from specific folders or devices. 
[141002420260] |Besides the enhancing utility, there are five editing tools already built in: rotate, crop, red-eye, adjust, and enhance.
[141002420270] |Since it’s a non-destructive photo editor, you can always easily go back to your original image (<em>Photo  Revert to Original</em>).
[141002420280] |Also, when deleting an image, Shotwell will report on any missing photos from the database it created last time it ran.
[141002420290] |They become available in the “Missing Files” entry (left panel). 
[141002420300] |Shotwell’s support for RAW files is available from version 0.6 onwards.
[141002420310] |While it’s not always reliable, RAW support in version 0.7.2 covered my basic needs.
[141002420320] |RAW files were chronologically displayed at the end of the thumbnail list, after listing the .jpg files.
[141002420330] |To find out whether a thumbnail is that of a RAW file, click on it and look in the information box at the bottom left corner for the file name extension.
[141002420340] |Shotwell can also upload images to online accounts.
[141002420350] |Currently, it has built-in support for Facebook, Flickr and Picasa.
[141002420360] |<strong>Bugs and enhancements</strong>
[141002420370] |On rare occasions, Shotwell freezes when stopping the import process before it ends.
[141002420380] |This happens even when importing a rather small number of images.  
[141002420390] |Also, modifying tags for multiple pictures can be tricky.
[141002420400] |The actual menu entry is unavailable when selecting multiple images with identical tags.
[141002420410] |The only way to do this is by dragging and dropping them to your desired tag entry.
[141002420420] |This means that you first need to assign a new tag to a file and then drag the rest of the images to your new tag.
[141002420430] |Note that although you can assign tags from the “Photos” mode, removing tags of multiple images can only be done from the “Tags” viewing mode.
[141002420440] |Zooming in and out of thumbnails is only available for imported images (simply hold down the CTRL key while scrolling up or down).
[141002420450] |This is not possible when viewing images that are not imported.
[141002420460] |While Facebook image publishing is a nifty feature of Shotwell, the built-in support is limited.
[141002420470] |Uploading an image or group of images is always done by creating a new Facebook Album.
[141002420480] |Regrettably, adding an image to an already created album doesn’t work.
[141002420490] |I often found myself needing to know how much space the application uses.
[141002420500] |Personally, I find this information helpful, particularly when knowing the software creates its own database when editing images.
[141002420510] |<strong>Conclusion</strong>
[141002420520] |While some may argue that creating a separate database when dealing with photos is resource consuming, I didn’t experience any real issues with it.
[141002420530] |Frankly, many of us are at ease knowing we can revert to the original images anytime.
[141002420540] |Shotwell is a reasonable alternative to F-Spot, offering signposts to image organizing that most of us would do better with, than without.
[141002420550] |<b>Follow the editor on Twitter <a>@mariusnestor</a></b>
[141002430010] |<title>Google Picasa Review</title>
[141002430020] |<strong>With a name that puts Picasa in the Google family tree, this photo management software creates a lot of expectations among Linux users even before it's tested.
[141002430030] |So let's see how this software helps users organize their image collection, edit photos and shared them on the web.</strong>
[141002430040] |<strong>Installation</strong>
[141002430050] |In order to install Picasa, either download the right package for your Linux distribution or simply add the Google testing repositories to your repo list (<a>http://www.google.com/linuxrepositories/testrepo.html</a>).
[141002430060] |Then, use your favorite package manager to install the package (or type <em>sudo apt-get install picasa</em>, in Ubuntu).
[141002430070] |Downloads will be around 30 MB, including Wine and Gecko engine.
[141002430080] |In my case, the installation went very smooth on my Ubuntu 10.04, but feel free to write us if you encounter any problems.
[141002430090] |As a side-note, once installed, Picasa automatically registers itself within Mozilla Firefox, enabling you to use the Download Album feature from the picasaweb.google.com web page.
[141002430100] |<strong>Interface</strong>
[141002430110] |The interface has three main areas.
[141002430120] |On the left side of the window, the 'folders bar' lists the directories and tags available in the Photo Library.
[141002430130] |Personally, I prefer viewing them in Tree view mode, instead of the default Flat folder view.
[141002430140] |To swap between these two viewing modes, just go to <em>View →Folder</em> view.
[141002430150] |In the Folder View sub-menu, you'll also notice that the images can be organized according to specific criteria (size, last modified, etc).
[141002430160] |The folders available in the 'folders bar' are defined in the Folder Manager (Tools).
[141002430170] |By default, the My Documents, Pictures and Desktop folders are set.
[141002430180] |The bottom horizontal toolbar has 8 shortcut entries set by default: upload, e-mail, print, export, shop, blog this, collage and movie.
[141002430190] |They can be removed or added in the <em>Tools →Configure</em> buttons entry.
[141002430200] |Mostly self explanatory, they apply to your Photo tray selection.
[141002430210] |'Export' allows you to copy photos to a specific folder in the hard disk, 'collage' lets you create a photo collage with your selection, and the 'movie' button is a helpful tool for creating a movie with your photo selection.
[141002430220] |Unfortunately, at the moment Picasa doesn't support MP3s while playing the movie.
[141002430230] |<strong>Photo management</strong>
[141002430240] |The Photo Tray is representative for Picasa's ability to surprise the user with useful features.
[141002430250] |Sliding through each folder displays the thumbnails of the available images, together with a semi-transparent bar.
[141002430260] |This bar lists some extra options: play (creates a a slideshow of the images), create movie presentation, create gift CD with selected images, upload and sync future changes to the Web.
[141002430270] |Every time you download a file or add a new image to your Library Folders, Google Picasa will display a pop-up indicating the location and name of the item.
[141002430280] |You can edit the folders that are scanned in the Folder Manager (Tools menu).
[141002430290] |Above the thumbnails area, there is a list of predefined filtering options.
[141002430300] |The "show only photos with faces" is particularly interesting to play around with.
[141002430310] |The results are not always accurate, but it's definitely worth giving it a try.
[141002430320] |Google Picasa allows the casual user to share his or her images via Google Web Albums or Blogger.
[141002430330] |This gives Picasa a sure head start to other photo management applications.
[141002430340] |Simply click on the appropriate buttons in the lower section of the window to share your photos online.
[141002430350] |<strong>Editing</strong>
[141002430360] |Double click on an image to start editing it.
[141002430370] |Once you've done this, Picasa's "one click" edit feature enters the “cool features” scene.
[141002430380] |The editing options are split in 3 tabs: basic fixes (i.e. crop, straighten, auto contrast, retouch, auto color, red-eye fixing, etc), tuning (of light, shadow, color or temperature) and effects (i.e. black and white, sepia, saturation, etc).
[141002430390] |A "one click" fix that users will either love or hate is the "I'm feeling lucky" button.
[141002430400] |This button automatically adjusts the lighting and color of the image.
[141002430410] |Personally, I was pleased with the result every time I tried it.
[141002430420] |Don't shy playing with the effects buttons.
[141002430430] |Picasa is proof that basic digital image optimization doesn't have to be time consuming.
[141002430440] |If you're not pleased with the result you can always revert to the original by clicking on the <em>Picture -  Undo</em> all Edits menu entry.
[141002430450] |A feature that becomes addictive in Picasa, although not immediately obvious, is the ability to resize groups of photos.
[141002430460] |Use the Export button to do this.
[141002430470] |Click it and and select the resize option.
[141002430480] |This  neat button is also helpful if you need to watermark certain images.
[141002430490] |<strong>File and Camera Support</strong>
[141002430500] |One of the most important qualities of a photo management software is the file and hardware support.
[141002430510] |Picasa uses the gphoto library, so all the cameras listed on <a>http://www.gphoto.org/proj/libgphoto2/support.php</a> should be supported.
[141002430520] |Also, RAW file support includes cameras from Canon, Nikon, Minolta, Kodak and Pentax.
[141002430530] |One of the things that Picasa for Linux doesn't support is movie files.
[141002430540] |If you look under the movies checkbox in the File Types (Options) you'll notice that it cannot be checked.
[141002430550] |<strong>Conclusion</strong>
[141002430560] |Of course, the line between software complexity and fruitless variety can be a very thin one.
[141002430570] |Particularly when there are a number of alternatives capable of doing operations that Picasa also supports.
[141002430580] |But the paring between Picasa's surprising variety of options (face recognition, passport photo creation, easy adding of watermarks to groups of files, red eye correction etc.) and its ability to sync to Picasa Web makes this application an inviting playground for image collection owners.
[141002430590] |<b>Follow the editor on Twitter <a>@mariusnestor</a></b>
[141002440010] |<title>Calibre Review</title>
[141002440020] |<strong>Whether you get frenetic when asked about your eBook collection, or happen to be a peaceful eBook reader, the software used for handling these files can greatly influence your efficiency.
[141002440030] |And by handling, I don't just mean organizing or reading them.
[141002440040] |I also mean sorting, converting, creating, reading and actually transferring them to a specific device.</strong>
[141002440050] |Calibre is the open source, cross platform application for eBooks that doesn’t just manage your eBook collection, but it is also capable of transforming news sources into eBook format, as well as syncing them to a specific device.
[141002440060] |In order for Calibre to handle your eBooks, you first need to tell it where to look for them.
[141002440070] |When Calibre first starts, it asks for you to select the directory where you wish to store your eBooks.
[141002440080] |If you already have an eBook folder, you can select that particular folder.
[141002440090] |In case you've missed the startup wizard, you can go through it again by selecting it from the Preferences menu (the upper right icon).
[141002440100] |<strong>The Looks</strong>
[141002440110] |The latest Calibre version has a very flexible interface.
[141002440120] |Let’s say you want to create a yes/no column for the eBooks you’d like to share with your friends.
[141002440130] |You do that by going to the Preferences menu, clicking on "add your own columns", and then on the "+" button.
[141002440140] |Don’t forget to choose yes/no for column type.
[141002440150] |Calibre has three areas for displaying eBook information.
[141002440160] |The main one is the "Book list" section, listing them and their corresponding metadata (details such as author, publisher, date, etc).
[141002440170] |The right side of the window shows "Detailed information" about the selected eBook.
[141002440180] |As the name says, it gives you more data on the specific file, from cover to metadata.
[141002440190] |Click on the eBook icon in the bottom right area to show or hide the "Detailed Information" area.
[141002440200] |Another way for viewing book information is the "Tag Browser" in the left hand side.
[141002440210] |Again, click on the appropriate icon, in the bottom right side of the window, to hide it or show it.
[141002440220] |Tip: the bright yellow lines around the "Book list" section shows you that the other eBook information areas are hidden.
[141002440230] |I am a big fan of colors and images, so my favorite mode of browsing my eBooks collection is "Cover browser".
[141002440240] |Simply click on the little icon to the bottom right of the window, named "Cover browser."
[141002440250] |It has a bit of the feel of an iPod’s "Coverflow".
[141002440260] |But it has a lot more functionality, since you can access and modify the eBook's metadata or send it to your mobile device by using the menu buttons.
[141002440270] |<strong>The Features</strong>
[141002440280] |Undoubtedly, many discussions on the subject of eBooks are about the eBook format.
[141002440290] |We obviously need our software to handle the formats supported by our device.
[141002440300] |The main benefit of using Calibre – and this is how I started using it –is that it does a good job at converting eBooks to specific formats.
[141002440310] |It constantly converted them better than any third party applications I had previously used.
[141002440320] |Conversion from some PDFs to EPUB isn't always the best, but Calibre did a fairly decent job at creating a readable eBook in an open format.
[141002440330] |Now, if you read your eBooks on your laptop or desktop computer, things are simple.
[141002440340] |Calibre has a very flexible built-in eBook viewer that does a great job at displaying my eBook formats, from DJVU to LIT and PDF.
[141002440350] |Another great feature is that of organizing your news sources in eBook format.
[141002440360] |To do this, simply click on the fetch news button and choose from a list of predefined news sources.
[141002440370] |Alternatively, those of us more source code oriented can try adding a custom news source.
[141002440380] |<strong>Hardware support</strong>
[141002440390] |Calibre is widely appreciated for its speed at integrating support for the latest eBook devices.
[141002440400] |While we haven’t had a chance to try out Calibre with most eBook readers, follow us in two weeks time for a more detailed article on using the latest Kindle device in Linux.
[141002440410] |The "Save to disk" button allows you to export eBook files to any device that acts as a USB disk.
[141002440420] |This means that there’s no need to worry if you can’t find your eBook reader in the official list at <a>http://calibre-ebook.com/user_manual/faq.html#what-devices-does-app-support</a>.
[141002440430] |Currently, Calibre supports a long list of eBook readers, including the more popular Amazon Kindle, Sony eBook readers, Barnes
[141002440440] |'t really Calibre's best feature.
[141002440450] |Neither when downloading news or converting eBooks.
[141002440460] |On a fairly low spec system, with a 1 GHz processor and 2 GB of RAM, Calibre's bulkiness and memory hunger proves to be quite troublesome. 
[141002440470] |Occasionally, Calibre 0.7.24 froze when I was working with long lists of eBook files in HTML format.
[141002440480] |To be honest, I found the previous versions (up to 0.7) more stable.
[141002440490] |Their interface, however, was less flexible (dragging items to Tag entries wasn't quite a la mode those days).
[141002440500] |<strong>Conclusion</strong>
[141002440510] |Undoubtedly, we all have our own reading habits.
[141002440520] |An application that touches on the area of reading has to satisfy a wide range of finicky users.
[141002440530] |That’s why Calibre’s impressive features make it an exciting and complex application for eBook management.
[141002440540] |<b>Follow the editor on Twitter <a>@mariusnestor</a></b>
[141002460010] |<title>BottomFeeder Review</title>
[141002460020] |<strong>Offline newsreaders are useful for reading news when Internet access is not available.
[141002460030] |Particularly when you're looking to actually read them instead of browsing through titles.
[141002460040] |BottomFeeder is such a tool,with one clear feature in mind: geeky simplicity.</strong>
[141002460050] |<strong>Installation</strong>
[141002460060] |Installing Bottomfeeder is not a complicated procedure.
[141002460070] |After downloading the archive file from Softpedia, unpack it and then run <em>./bottomFeeder bottomFeeder.im</em> within the unziped directory. 
[141002460080] |Running the executable opens a BottomFeeder window with a three panel view: a feeds tree, an item list and the item viewing window itself.
[141002460090] |The fonts and menu aspect make BottomFeeder look more like ten years ago.
[141002460100] |Thankfully, at least the font size can be changed from System- Settings →User Interface →Text size and the style from the “Stylesheet” menu entry.
[141002460110] |Be warned: simplicity is the 'language' BottomFeeder uses.
[141002460120] |The closest you'll get to something less “terminal” lookalike is the “Lookout” stylesheet.
[141002460130] |Personally, I'd recommend using it... unless you're in a particularly geeky mood. 
[141002460140] |Us, RSS addicts enjoy knowing what other people's newsreaders look like, so reading through the predefined feeds BottomFeeder comes with can be quite a treat.
[141002460150] |BottomFeeder supports .opml files, so you can use the import button from the “File” menu to add your saved feed sources.
[141002460160] |It loaded all my feed sources from the file in a folder tree view in the left panel.
[141002460170] |Coming from a Google reader background, the easiness off adding/removing/renaming folders is refreshing.
[141002460180] |Simply right click on  any folder to add/rename or move a folder.
[141002460190] |<strong>The Good</strong>
[141002460200] |If you enjoy simplicity, BottomFeeder also includes some potentially useful plugins alongside the console looking news reader.
[141002460210] |The plugin menu comes with a blogging tool, BottomLine, but also with what I call “entertainment” plugins: MSN, IRC and a consistent list of classic games (remember Minesweeper?).  
[141002460220] |Bottomfeeder allows for tabbed news browsing.
[141002460230] |This can be useful when you need to have multiple feeds opened  at the same time.
[141002460240] |It also uses syndic8 to discover new feeds based on a subject that you've typed in.
[141002460250] |You can do that either by going to Feeds →Feeds auto-discovery, or by accessing the right click pop-up menu on any feed.
[141002460260] |Unfortunately, BottomFeeder 4.6 refused to do anything when adding a query so we weren't able to actually check how this feature works.
[141002460270] |It'd be great to hear if you managed to get this feature going. 
[141002460280] |As a short guideline for BottomFeeder, the easiest way to know what this software allows doing and what features it has, is to use the right click pop-up menu on any folder, feed or item.
[141002460290] |You'll soon discover that a particular feature of BottomFeeder is that it organizes your searches in feeds.
[141002460300] |Just go to Items →Search BottomFeeder to define a search.
[141002460310] |<strong>The Bad</strong>
[141002460320] |BottomFeeder for Linux doesn't display images.
[141002460330] |Quite often it doesn't display accompanying text neither, so you'll end up with bits of a news entries or an actual empty blog entry whenever trying to view an article with pictures.
[141002460340] |Also, it takes a while for a feed to load.
[141002460350] |And this isn't particularly attractive when most of us are used to instant news updates.
[141002460360] |Unfortunately, BottomFeeder can't handle special characters such as “È™,á ”making it difficult to read blogs in non-English languages.
[141002460370] |Aspect wise, the actual thread pane is lacking in margins for most stylesheets.
[141002460380] |It would be much easier to read if it had some margins.
[141002460390] |<strong>Conclusion</strong>
[141002460400] |Unless the BottomFeeder team considers us Linux users know-it-alls, I was a bit disappointed to see that the documentation for a Linux installation is absent in both the online or downloaded documentation files.
[141002460410] |This leaves us plenty to look for in future releases, particularly since the existing documentation is written in a rather friendly and careful style.
[141002460420] |Personally, I train myself to close my browser when I write.
[141002460430] |It helps me stay focused.
[141002460440] |If you're like me, offline news readers are a good way to stay in touch with the world while keeping away from all the distractions.
[141002460450] |The simpler the better.
[141002460460] |But, unfortunately BottomFeeder does not exploit its potential to the maximum.
[141002460470] |Image browsing and special characters shouldn't be an issue in this day and age.
[141002460480] |And, let's not forget the looks.
[141002460490] |Seriously, it's like an application from early 2000.