You have a spare PC lying around or you travel a lot and want to monitor your Bitorrent downloads. Well then what you could do is make yourself a mini seedbox, essentially what a seedbox is a spare computer that you use for torrent downloads now I am going to show you how to create one so that it may be easy for you to monitor your Bittorrent downloads on the go.

First thing’s first we need a torrent client in this case we will be using a modified version of Torrent Flux ( which is a php torrent client) called Torrentflux-b4rt. I choose the modified version because it has more features and also the option to use different back ends. you must be wondering why not just use the uTorrent with its webUI, let me tell you that utorrent webUI has very limited set of features as opposed to TorrentFlux and utorrent webUI cant be accessed from your cellphone if you decide to control it on the go and last but not the least torrentflux is very customizable as you can install plugins and theme to either change the look or to add more features.

Now first we need to install Xampp which will act as a way to execute the php scripts that make torrentflux. First download Xampp from here and make sure to download it into your home folder. Now execute these commands step by step

su

tar xvfz xampp-linux-1.6.7.tar.gz -C /opt

Xampp has been installed into your computers /opt directory.

Now to start Xampp enter this:



/opt/lampp/lampp start

once you are done you should see some conformation messages telling you that Xampp has started successfully. To test enter this URL into a browser http://127.0.0.1 .Before you start doing anything else i suggest you make your xampp installation secure. to do so enter this command.

/opt/lampp/lampp security

Remember the passwords that you set in this configuration because we will require them later on. Now get the files for Torrentflux-b4rt from the link mentioned above. Now extract the content of the zipped file that has been downloaded. Copy all of the contents in the directory /opt/lampp/htdocs directory. But there is one problem as a normal user you cant change any of the contents of that folder so you need to go into super user mode to edit that.

To do so For GNOME enter this:

sudo Nautilus

Or for KDE enter this:

sudo Konqueror

This will open up the respective file managers for each of the desktop environments in super user mode, with this you will be able to copy the torrentflux files into the xampp htdocs folder.

Once all the contents are copied point your web browser to the following URL http://127.0.0.1. This will start the the torrentflux installation.

The first step is selection of the database type, since we are using xampp the database type will be MySQL, since this is the default configuration you don’t need to change it

The second step is telling torrent flux how your SQL server is setup. Leave the host as localhost, in name enter the name of the database that you would like torrentflux to use, you do not need to create this database because torrent flux will create it for you. Next is the user name and password, this is the user name and password that you choose during the security script so enter that, then click continue

Before continuing to the next step, we need to make the config folder of torrent flux writable by the web server user, to do that enter this command:

sudo chmod 777 /opt/lampp/htdocs/inc/config

Once that is done click continue and torrentflux will save the provided SQL information into a file. Now for the next 2 or 3 steps just keep clicking continue because it is all automated. Once you reach the step where torrentflux asks you for the download location stop clicking continue.

Here is what you need to do first in the htdocs folder of xampp create a folder called downloads. Then enter this command:

sudo chmod 777 /opt/lampp/htdocs/downloads

Then in the user downloads path in the setup of torrent flux enter this:

/opt/lampp/htdocs/downloads

Now click continue and torrentflux will check for the third party utilities that are available

Torrentflux will report to you that some requirements where not found do not be alarmed by this as torrentflux functions just fine without these and so click Continue and do so for the next 2 steps once your finished you will be prompted with the torrentflux login screen:

Now in this login screen whatever user name and password you type will become your Administrator user name and password for torrentflux.

Your finished now upload torrent to the torrentflux interface and start downloading them

This is a guest post by Ruhaan Ahmed who is a hardcore linux fan and likes trying out different linux distros . Check out his Blog.

• Start a full fledged torrent tracker on your PC easily
• Install KDE 4.1 in Ubuntu/Kubuntu
• Control Another Computer Over A Network In Linux
• Use Utorrent or any other windows application in Linux
• Connecting To The Internet Via Your Cellphone in Linux

Mozilla Firefox by default opens links in the last tab in the tab bar if you open a link in a new tab  and if you have too many tabs open then it could be really annoying to browse to the end of the tab bar, I came across two Firefox extensions for changing this behavior and both are compatible with Firefox 3.0.1

First is called Next Tab which adds a “Open link next to current tab” option to your right click context menu so that you can easily open your desired link in a new tab next to the current tab, this is a very small and simple extension which gets the job done.

The second one is called Tabs Open Relative which changes the default behavior of firefox so that it opens every link in a new tab next to the current tab so that in can work with the links you open with the middle click but that isn’t what you always want to do.

It also changes the behavior for new tabs so that they open next to current tab but if you want to disable that the extension developer has given the instructions for that:

If you don’t want new tabs to be affected, go to about:config (see http://kb.mozillazine.org/About:config for more info) and disable the preference “extensions.tabsopenrelative.includenewtabs”.

• Modify Incompatible Firefox Extensions to make them work with Firefox 3
• Increase The Number Of Addons Firefox 3 Recommends
• Two Extensions that you won’t need with Firefox 3
• Backup Your Firefox Profile With FEBE
• See your Gmail Unread Mail Count on the favicon

FlashGot is one of the most popular Firefox extension which allows you to seamlessly integrate your download manager with Firefox, by adding a new option to the Firefox download window and when you select that option it adds the download link in your favorite download manager.

I have been using flashgot since Firefox 1.5 and it keeps on getting better and better and this time the flashgot developers have added an exciting new feature to flashgot called “FlashGot Media” which adds a new item to the right click context menu of Firefox (this only shows up whenever a video is playing) so that you can easily download Youtube videos from inside Firefox without installing any separate software’s and it is the easiest and the quickest way to download Youtube videos, here’s how it works:

open any Youtube video and right click on an empty area (not the Youtube player) and click on “FlashGot Media” or just press Ctrl+F7 and it will detect the the embedded video in that page and it will start downloading that video in your default download manager (chosen in flashgot settings) ,that’s it once your download manager finishes downloading the video file you can watch it.

Get the latest version of flashgot (v1.1) from here

Edit: This doesnt only works with youtube!

• Download embedded videos from any site using GRAB (Orbit Downloader Extension)
• Mozilla Firefox 3.1 Alpha 1 Released
• Add a “Clear list and close Window” button to Firefox download manager
• Modify Incompatible Firefox Extensions to make them work with Firefox 3
• Mozilla Firefox 3.0 Final Released

I wanted to replace the default Wordpress search with Google Custom Search because replacing the WordPress’s default search feature with Google Search allows you to use the years of search experience and power of Google. Besides, it also lets you earn from the sponsored results.

I found this guide on Dosh Dosh but it is quite basic and doesn’t have all the details that are required to integrate Google Custom Search to your Wordpress blog properly, I will tell you the proper way to integrate Google Custom Search with your Wordpress Blog like I did mine (you can try it from top right search box)

First you need to create a WordPress page where your search results will show, to do that go to your Wordpress dashboard and then go to write–>Page

Type “Search” in title tab and save it (don’t publish it yet) and now copy the permalink/URL of this page as you will need this later ,in my case the permalink is “http://www.geekishblog.com/search/“, scroll down a bit and uncheck “Allow Comments and “Allow Pings” check boxes, leave the contents of the page for now we will add this later

Now you need to create a Google custom search engine

Assuming you have a Google Adsense Account, Goto Google Adsense, Sign In using Your Adsense Account (which is same as your Google Account), Once you sign in You will be see your Adsense reports

Click on the Adsense Setup tab on the top

Now click on Adsense For Search

Now Fill in the required Info As Shown in the above screen shots

Here’s What you need to fill in those fields

Search Type: here you will select “Only sites I select” radio button because we want to search only our wordpress blog

Selected sites: here you will put the URL of your wordpress blog

Optional Keywords: here you will put some keyword about your blog like what your blog is about

Site language: Select your blog’s language

Your site encoding: you wont need to change this

Country or territory for Google domain: you wont need to change this too

Custom channel: here you will need to add a channel so that you can easily track your custom search earnings, to do that click on “add new channel” and then put something approriate like “Search Ads in the text box that shows

SafeSearch: uncheck Use SafeSearch check box here otherwise it will show a annoying safe search ON message on the top when anyone performs a search on your blog

Now when you are done with filling all the feilds click on continue button at the bottom

now it will give you a page where you will setup the search form for your blog, select the second option in the “look and feel” field like in the above screen shot and leave other things alone and click continue

Now it will present you with a page where you will configure the Ads on the result page

Here In the “Opening of search results page” field select “Open results within my own site” and put the url of the page we created in the first step in the text box

now select the “Top and Bottom” in the ad location field (you need to this before specifying the page width otherwise it will give you an error)

now enter the width of the content area of your your theme in “Enter width of results area:” field in my theme it is around 550 pixels so i put 550 in that field so check what’s the width of the content area of your wordpress theme and put the value according to that otherwise the results wont show up properly or just experiment with this value until you get your optimum result

You can also customize the ads that show up in your search results here so that they blend with your blog theme

Once you are done click continue

Now it will tell you to name your search engine, put something like Yourblogname Search and tick the checkbox next to the terms of usage and click on submit and get code button

Now you will get a page with two codes copy the second that is for search result page to the wordpress page we created in first step to do that goto wordpress dashboard–>manage–>pages–>click on the page name (Search), now switch to the HTML tab and paste the code here

now publish this page , don’t only save as the dosh dosh’s tutorial says otherwise no one except you the editor would be able to access it and they will get a 404 page, now the problem is that when you publish it ,it will start showing up in the navigation bar of your blog which you don’t want to because when someone clicks it he will get an empty page, so to hide that first you need the page id of that page for that goto your wordpress dashboard–>manage pages and now click on the the page you created for search results and now when the edit page opens up see the address in the address bar in your browser it would be something like this:

http://www.yourblogname.com/wp-admin/page.php?action=edit&post=523

in the above link the page id of this page is 523, so now figure out the post id for that page and move to the next step

now that you have the page ID you need to edit the header.php file in your wordpress template to exclude this search ID from showing up in the navigation bar

now that you have the page id you need to add this line in your header.php file to the “wp_list_pages();”  function:

(exclude=PageID here) (e.g in my case: (exclude=523))

so the final output is something like this:

<?php wp_list_pages('exclude=17,38' ); ?>

though wp_list_pages function code may vary from theme to theme

like in my theme the wp_list_pages code was this:

<?php wp_list_pages(’depth=1&sort_column=menu_order&title_li=’ . (”) . ” ); ?>

so I changed it to this:



<?php wp_list_pages('sort_column=menu_order&depth=1&title_li=&exclude= 523); ?>

In the above code,

exclude is used to hide Pages with IDs of 561, 587, 590, 491 and 650 from the list. Please note that excluding a Page will also exclude all of its sub-pages from the list.

sort_column=menu_order is used to list the Pages in the order defined by the Page Order settings

depth=1 is used to show only the top level Pages and

title_li= is used to prevent displaying the default heading text above the list

Thanks To JohnTP

Update: if you don’t want to go through all that hassle you can use this plugin for wordpress

Now we are done with it, we now need to add the search form code to our existing search box

this is how to do that

go to your wordpress dashboard–>design–>theme editor and now click the search form file (usually searchform.php) of your theme on the right

Now copy the the first code from that Adsense page and paste it here replacing the default code (remember: backup the code somewhere else)

That’s it! I wanted my new Google CSE search box to look just like my theme’s default search box so I had to experiment with it a bit and the outcome was perfect, this is what i did

from Adsense search form code i removed these lines from the top of the code

<style type="text/css">
@import url(http://www.google.com/cse/api/branding.css);
</style>
<div class="cse-branding-right" style="background-color:#FFFFFF;color:#000000">
<div class="cse-branding-form">

and these line from the bottom

</div>
<div class="cse-branding-logo">
<img src="http://www.google.com/images/poweredby_transparent/poweredby_FFFFFF.gif" alt="Google" />
</div>
<div class="cse-branding-text">
Custom Search
</div>
</div>

so I was left with this:

<form action="http://www.geekishblog.com/search/" id="cse-search-box">
<div>
<input type="hidden" name="cx" value="partner-pub-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:wbmpkx-sc3q" />
<input type="hidden" name="cof" value="FORID:11" />
<input type="hidden" name="ie" value="ISO-8859-1" />
<input type="text" name="q" size="31" />
<input type="submit" name="sa" value="Search" />
</div>
</form>

then I replaced this line which is for the submit button:

<input type="submit" name="sa" value="Search" />

with your themes submit button’s code if its there or otherwise leave this alone, for me it was there so i replaced it with this:

<input type="image" class="sgo" src="<?php bloginfo('template_url'); ?>/images/b_go.png" alt="Submit button" />

my theme also had a css class for the search box so i replaced the size=”31″ with class=”s” because the css class s has the size for the search box

my theme also shows “search here…” in the search box and when you click the it clears the box, so i had to add the onfocus element of my default search box to the new code to the sixth line

that’s it now my code looks like this:

<form action="http://www.geekishblog.com/search/" id="cse-search-box">
<div>
<input type="hidden" name="cx" value="partner-pub-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:wbmpkx-sc3q" />
<input type="hidden" name="cof" value="FORID:11" />
<input type="hidden" name="ie" value="ISO-8859-1" />
<input type="text" value="Search here..." onfocus="if (this.value == 'Search here...') {this.value = '';}" onblur="if (this.value == '') {this.value = 'Search here...';}" name="q" class="s"/>
<input type="image" class="sgo" src="<?php bloginfo('template_url'); ?>/images/b_go.png" alt="Submit button" />
</div>
</form>

here’s the default code of my theme if you want to see it for reference:

<form method="get" id="searchform" action="<?php bloginfo('home'); ?>">
<input type="text" value="Search here..." name="s" class="s" onfocus="if (this.value == 'Search here...') {this.value = '';}" onblur="if (this.value == '') {this.value = 'Search here...';}"/>
<input type="image" class="sgo" src="<?php bloginfo('template_url'); ?>/images/b_go.png" alt="Submit button" />
</form>

this wont be same for you so you have to experiment with it a bit if you don’t know php or css like me

That’s It Congrats you have integrated Google custom search with your Wordpress blog, now try it out

To customize your newly created Google Custom search like changing the colors of the search result text goto Google CSE Homepage, now click on “manage your existing search engines“, then log in using your google account that you use for Adsense, now click on control panel link next to your newly created Google CSE.

If you encounter any problems or need any help just leave a comment below!

• Exclude Your own visits from Google analytics on your WordPress Blog
• Wow! Google now indexing One Trillion Web pages
• Exciting new feature added to Google search
• WordPress 2.6 Final Released
• Changes to GMail Contacts Manager

Google Search keeps on getting better and better and this time the Google team has added a cool feature to Google search which shows suggestions in the drop down box as you type in real time.

To try it out Open Google.com and type few letters and you will see suggestions related to your typed query in the drop down box, if you cant decide the right keywords to search for or if you don’t know the correct spelling of what you are looking for then this comes handy and this also saves you a bit of typing, the suggestions also show the number of results for that specific keyword in the drop down box.

The suggestions feature isn’t working with some localized versions of Google Like Google.com.pk yet, it will be added to all localized versions of Google search in the coming weeks

This suggestion isn’t something new, this feature was there in the past but it was part of the Google Labs under the Search Experimental Category and If you use Firefox you must have already used this feature in Firefox search box. A similar kind of suggestion feature can also be seen in youtube search box.

• Changes to GMail Contacts Manager
• Open Search Result using Your Keyboard In Firefox
• How to perfectly Integrate Google Custom Search in your Wordpress blog
• Wow! Google now indexing One Trillion Web pages

I have always used windows infact ever since I started using computer and honestly I have never been a fan of Linux but Mandriva Linux One has changed my opinion about Linux, it has been called “almost perfect Linux distro” by many and rightly so. It is the easiest to use Linux distro i have ever came across and I have started recommending it to every person that wants to switch to Linux from windows.

Now back to compiz fusion, well enabling compiz fusion effects in Mandriva Linux One was a no brainer and easiest to do compared to other Linux distros like ubuntu, when you are done installing Mandriva Linux one it asks you whether you want to use Metisse (that is the 3d desktop effect manager that comes with Mandriva which doesn’t have all the features that compiz has) , Compiz Fusion or no 3d effect at all, just select compiz fusion or if you missed that you can manually select compiz fusion by clicking on the Configure Your Computer icon in the panel (near the show desktop icon) and goto hardware tab and click on Configure 3D desktop effects under the Configure graphics heading. When Mandriva loads up for the first time you will immediately start seeing compiz fusion effects if you chose it. Mandriva installs CompizConfig by default so that you can configure compiz fusion easily, to access compiz config goto menu–>Tools–>CompizConfig Settings Manager.

Now there is a problem Mandriva by default doesn’t have some cool extra compiz fusion plugins like “3D windows” plugin which presents open windows in 3D way by elevating them from the desktop, “Paint Fire on the screen” plugin allow you to write on your screen with fire text which looks uber cool, “Snow” plugin which shows snow on your desktop and few more.

now its time to install those extra plugins, here’s how to install the extra plugins:

Goto Menu and click on Install & Remove Software

it will now ask you for root password enter it

Now the software management window will open up search for compiz here using the search box and now you have to install two packages here by ticking the check boxes next to these two packages:

1. compiz-fusion-plugins-extra

2. compiz-fusion-plugins-unsupported

now click apply and let it download the packages from internet once its installed you can goto compiz config again and you will see some new effects there, enable them and enjoy the eye candy

remember: make sure you have updates all the packages and have selected “all” in the drop down menu next on left of the search box

Yeah that’s it you are done!

here are the screenshots of the plugins that i mentioned above

Compiz Fusion Snow Effect in Mandriva Linux One

Compiz Fusion Paint Fire on the screen effect in Mandriva Linux One

Compiz Fusion 3D Windows Effect In Mandriva Linux One

Well these were just few examples, there will be many more plugins for you to select when you are done with this guide.

remember some plugins are in experimental mode so you should know what you are doing!

• Customize Compiz Fusion effects In Ubuntu

Google Analytics is the most popular web analytics software and no doubt the best out there and many blogger’s use it for tracking thier visitors but many blogger’s complain that their own visits are counted in their Google Analytic’s report and that is annoying if your blog in new because sometimes you are going to be the only one visiting your blog, I will show you three ways to exclude your own visits from Google Analytic’s Reports:

First Method: Exclude your IP by creating a filter in Google analytics

to do that open Google analytics , click on access analytics button and sign in

now you will get the analytic’s settings page, click on filter manager

now click on add filter

now on the page that shows up put the information required to make the filter, the information will be as follows:

Filter Name: put anything you like like My IP or Myself

Filter Type: “Exclude all traffic from an IP address”

IP Address: Put your IP Address here (find it on whatismyipaddress.com)

Apply Filter to Website Profiles: Select your Website in the left pane and click add

And now click save changes button

*remember this tip doesn’t only works with WordPress it works with every kind of site

That’s it from now on traffic from your IP wont be counted, but if you have a dynamic IP this thing wont work as your IP will change when you restart your Internet connection, or even if you have a shared IP on a big network because other users from your network aren’t going to be counted so if you are either of the two then you should try other methods

Second Method: Add a PHP code around your Google analytics tracking code (in the footer.php file of your theme) which identifies if a user is logged in and it wont load the tracking code for that user

here is the php code:

<?php if (!$user_ID) { ?>
your Google Analytics code here
<?php } ?>

you will implement this in a way that your code looks something like this:

<?php if (!$user_ID) { ?>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
var gaJsHost = ((”https:” == document.location.protocol) ? “https://ssl.” : “http://www.”);
document.write(unescape(”%3Cscript src=’” + gaJsHost + “google-analytics.com/ga.js’ type=’text/javascript’%3E%3C/script%3E”));
</script>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker(”UA-XXXXXXX-X”);
pageTracker._trackPageview();
</script>
<?php } ?>

The above is an example of the new ga.js code

that’s it you are done now with the help of this code google analytics will not load for logged in users but from what I see it will not track any kind of logged in user including your blog subscriber/commenter’s which maybe bad if you have lots of subscribers/registered commenter’s

Source For this Code: JohnTP

Third Method: Using the Google Analytics For WordPress Plugin instead of manually adding the google analytics code to your footer.php file, I too am using this Plugin and it has some cool features that includes excluding the administrator from Google Analytics Stats

Once you install this Plugin you just have to enter your unique Google Analytics User Account string that can be found in your tracking code for google analytics like the one above. you can get more information on how to get your user account here.

to exclude your own visits just uncheck “Track The administrator too” which is the default behavior of the plugin

that’s it save settings and you are done and as I mentioned earlier this Plugin has few other options too that you can see in the above screens like tracking Adsense clicks which isn’t too accurate but still good enough to track click bombing and it does it without modifying the Google Adsense code

• How to perfectly Integrate Google Custom Search in your Wordpress blog
• WordPress 2.6 Final Released

There are many Multimedia applications available for various linux distro each one of them provide very exciting and unique features. But what sets VLC( which is the most used media player) apart from the rest is that it has built in codec support which is why most people use it, even though its feature set is not as comprehensive as the other media players. To try and compete with VLC media player dragon player was created. It like VLC is a simple media player that comes with support for many different codecs.

When you first launch dragon player its the simplicity that hits most people

Dragon player has large and easy to understand media control buttons. One thing which Dragon player has is an video interface where dragon player overlays playback controls on ur full screen video

An intresting Feature of Dragon Player is that it remembers your last played media files and then the next time you start Dragon Player it will prompt you to select your previosuly played media files.

One other thing about Dragon Player is that it can resize the video file bein played to fit your screen automatically rather then you havin to set the aspect ratio manually. To enable this click on Settings, then click on Aspect Ratio and select Window Size

Hope you enjoy using dragon player.

This is a guest post by Ruhaan Ahmed who is a hardcore linux fan and likes trying out different linux distros . Check out his Blog.

• How To: Take Screencasts Of Your Linux Desktop
• Use Utorrent or any other windows application in Linux
• Connecting To The Internet Via Your Cellphone in Linux
• Visual Walkthrough Of KDE 4.1
• Control Another Computer Over A Network In Linux

I Personally don’t like the Firefox 3 theme for Windows XP in fact the windows vista’s Firefox theme looks much better and I badly wanted to change my theme to that of vista’s but I don’t like to use third party themes with my browser as they can slow down my browser, I came across this post on how-to geek and ever since I have been using the vista theme in Firefox and it looks just great and doesn’t slows down the browser unlike other third party themes because this theme is integrated in Firefox by default and you just need to activate it.

To use this theme you just have to copy paste a file in your Firefox’s application data folder and restart Firefox that’s it

Complete Steps:

Close Firefox Completely and make sure that it is properly closed by looking up Firefox.exe in the Task Manager

Then download this zip archive and extract it

Now open the folder where you extracted the files and browse to Strata\Aero

copy the classic.manifest file from here and paste in the X:\\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\chrome (X is the drive where windows is installed) either by manually browsing to that folder or by Going to start–>run and typing:

%programfiles%\Mozilla Firefox\chrome

*remember to backup the current classic.manifest file by renaming it to something like classic.manifest.bak

That’s it, You are done!

Now Open Firefox and feel the freshness

Some of the Changes that you will see After changing the theme:

The vista like back/forward buttons, bookmark button and few new buttons

vista like close tab button

bookmark dialogue with a yellowish background

Glowing arrows in bookmark menu

To revert back to The default theme (arghh) close Firefox completely and delete the new classic.manifest file and restore the backup you created by renaming it back to classic.manifest

• Modify Incompatible Firefox Extensions to make them work with Firefox 3
• Firefox 3 Release Candidate 3 appears on the Official Mozilla FTP site
• Mozilla Firefox 3.1 Alpha 1 Released
• Add a “Clear list and close Window” button to Firefox download manager
• Mozilla Firefox 3.0.1 Released Fixes Two Severe Security Flaws

Today when I opened my Adsense account to check my earnings, I saw a new tab in the earning sections for Adsense For Feeds and I was quite excited because I was looking for a way to monetize my feeds and what could be better than Adsense ;), actually one could see it coming earlier.

Once you login to your Adsense account you will see a new column in your earning’s report with a link to “Get Started”
click on it and you will be taken to the setup page for Adsense for feeds which looks like this:

or alternatively you can access it by going to Adsense setup page

To apply for Adsense for feeds you have to transfer your feeds from FeedBurner to your Google account or burn a new feed by clicking the burn a feed button link on the Adsense for feed setup page

for transferring your feeds from FeedBurner to your Google account you have to email at adsense-support-aff@google.com with your Your FeedBurner account username and The Google Account email address you use to sign in to Adsense, that’s it

when your feeds are transferred you can then setup your feeds the way you want

I Tried It and the Ads don’t show up in FeedDemon but they show up fine in Google Reader, I Hope the Google guys fix this

here are some screenshots:

They look much similar to Adsense for content Ads

Read More Here

Update: Google is no more taking feed migration request on that email address above. Read More here

• Monitor Your Adsense earnings from your windows taskbar

On the internet, losing all sense of time isn’t that hard. One link leads to another and suddenly we realize that we’ve spent an hour killing little stick figures in a flash game on some ad-laden site. Hey, a good bout of violence once in a while helps exercise the heart!

When I finally do get off and into the ‘real world,’ I’m asked–and wonder myself–how time passes so quickly. And frankly, the answer is – I don’t know. The interwebs are just that kind of place.

And that is where RescueTime comes in. RescueTime is free time management software that lets you see how much time you spend on the computer and internet, including where you spend it. It logs the time and places you visit on the internet, and can also record usage of regular programs such as a music player or word processor.

For example, it can show me how much time I spent on Gmail or that flash games site I was talking about. It can also log other computer activity so I can see how much time I spend writing or listening to music by recording how long these programs are active.

The logger stops recording when the computer is inactive, so I don’t have to worry about the time I’m away from the computer still being logged and counted in my total.

Although RescueTime cannot force you to spend less time on anything, it can give you pretty graphs and charts showing you exactly how you spend your time on the computer and online. For some responsible folks, a straight hard look at this information can be enough to make them think about cutting back on their dosage.

For the rest of us, looking at our computer usage like RescueTime presents it is actually pretty cool!

To get RescueTime up and running you’ll need their data collector (which needs to be installed, download from their website), and a user account at their website which will allow you to see all the collected data. The data collector is a small download of less than a megabyte in size and installation takes only a few seconds. There are no browser plug-ins or toolbars needed for this to work as all logging is done by the collector and works across all browsers on Windows, Mac, and a third-party Linux version is also available. Setting up an account at rescuetime.com is completely free and very easy to do as well. Of course, an internet connection is required for the collector to send the information in the first place. The data collector runs at just 2MB of memory, which isn’t much considering some of the memory hogs we’re used to running these days (*wink, wink*).

The RescueTime website is where you can see and manage all the data that is recorded. It can take a couple of days for the recorder to gather enough information to make an interesting first look, so I recommend you install it and then forget for 2-3 days. Believe me, its worth it looking at those graphs populated with data!

The main page of your user account (or Dashboard) presents a weekly overview of activity in terms of hours spent each day and highlights the most used program for the week. For every piece of information (ie. website or program logged), you can set up tags that can help bunch different programs together as one purpose and so have them shown under one category in a graph. So for example, if I do my writing both online and off, I could tag MS Word and Google Docs as ‘writing’ to generalize their function. Similarly, Gmail and Yahoo! Mail along with my POP email client can be tagged as ‘email’ so I can see the total time spent on email in a day or week, or if I’ve been using it long enough, a year. The site also gives the ability to rate each tag as being positively or negatively productive or effectiveness on a scale of -2 to +2.

So MS Word gets a productive rating of 2 and that flash games site gets a negative 2 (well, of course!). A weekly score is calculated based on these ratings to give an overview of generally what’s being done, with the productive ratings taking it up, and the negative bringing it down.

You can also set Goals and Alerts based on the tags for your logged programs and sites. A goal, for example would be that I want to spend less than an hour on Facebook everyday. The site can also alert you via SMS or RSS feeds on completion or failure of the goals you specify, so it’s a great way of rubbing in the fact that you exceeded your daily allotted time for time-wasting!

A feature recently rolled out is called Groups, which allows you to set up a group of people whose data is logged as a team. This is especially useful for small business teams and allows managers to see what is being done in their team. It works on the same basis of productivity and effectiveness points albeit in a more general way in the sense that members of a group can only see how their time compares to an average of their team and not with individuals. Groups of up to 5 people are free but cost $12.95/mo (per user) for larger groups.

RescueTime is essentially software that sits in your system tray and logs online activity, and then uploads to the RescueTime website for you to sign in and see later.

For the privacy buffs who may be squirming in their chairs with uneasiness, remember that this is strictly opt-in software. It can be seen by anyone in the sense that it does not attempt to conceal itself in the system processes, and can be seen as a prominent red white plus sign (ie. their logo) in the system tray. The data recorder is not capable of stealing any passwords or key strokes either, and can only look at running processes. Logging can be disabled for any length of time in the program preferences, and the whole program can be uninstalled completely very easily. The RescueTime website even gives you the option of deleting data from your account, selectively or completely, that will remove all your data from their server.

The logger can also use a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) connection to transmit the data, which is an option in the logger preferences I recommend you enable so that your information cannot be intercepted on its way to the servers.

For added privacy, there is also a website whitelist option that, when enabled, will only let the collector log the sites you specifically tell it to log. All other websites will be seen as “other unknown website” in your logs and will be unknown to RescueTime as well.

RescueTime is a great free way to look at your computer usage trends. For corporate and personal use customers, it offers the possibility of an effective time management aide and a fun way of looking at what we do on the computer. The developers have done a great job of making a simple, easy to use app that does its job well. RescueTime runs in the background and only notifies you if an update is available, and with its 2MB memory footprint, it is basically an install-and-forget program. It’s a great app that can help you and your business become more productive with time management, and I recommend you at least give a try to see what it can do and how it can help in day to day use.

This is a guest post by Waleed Zuberi, who juggles his time between being a student, a freelance web developer and a writer — but most of the time, he’s just a geek. Check out his website, or follow him on Twitter!

This Article Was also published in october issue of Spider Magazine.

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Ever wanted to get help from your friends or wanted to help some friend in doing some specific task, and you wished you could do that using a remote desktop connection but you don’t know how to remotely control a PC, doing so is very easy in Linux I will show you how to do that in this tutorial

We will use two programs for this purpose the first is called KRFB which allows you to create a VNC server so that others can control your computer remotely and the other one is called KRDC which is a VNC client which allows you to control someone’s computer remotely. Both KRFB and KRDC are easily found in the repositories of almost all Linux distro’s so installing them isn’t too much of a hassle

Now if you want someone to control your computer remotely start up krfb and you will get a windows similar to this:

There are two ways in which you can assign a remote desktop session to a person the first is that you click on New Personal Invitation and KRFB will generate a random password and assign a random port and then you can email this info to the person who needs to access your computer remotely. If you don’t want to go through the hassle of having to remember a random password and port you can assign a permanent password and port so that you don’t need to create invitations every time. To do that click on configure and you will get a dialogue box similar to this:

Click on Security and you will get this window:

check allow uninvited connections and the password field will be now writable. Type the password you would like for this demo I am using “mushroomhead” as the password. Click OK and your done, now anyone with your can connect to your computer with any VNC client software they like as long as they have your IP address, port and the password you set.

That’s it you are done with this part now off to controlling someone else’s PC

Now if you want to control another computer remotely you can use KRDC as mentioned earlier when you open up KRDC you will get a windows similar to this:

To connect to a VNC server click on “Connect to a VNC Remote Desktop” and then in the address bar at the top enter the IP followed by the port of the computer you want to control remotely in the following way

192.168.15.248:5900

On pressing enter you will prompted to select the type of connection you are doing the VNC session over.

Select the one you think is correct. Once you click OK you will be asked to enter the password of the VNC server we set this earlier as “mushroomhead”

Once you enter the correct password you will be authenticated and will be able to control the other computer remotely.

Remember: If you are behind a firewall or a router you need to forward the designated port in your firewall/router so that other people can connect to you, You can find easy to follow guides on how to forward ports on PortForward.com

• Connecting To The Internet Via Your Cellphone in Linux
• Remotely Control your Torrents on Linux
• Install KDE 4.1 in Ubuntu/Kubuntu
• Use Utorrent or any other windows application in Linux
• Customize Compiz Fusion effects In Ubuntu

The KDE 4 desktop environment was released to much criticism many of which said that it was severely limited, to face those criticisms the KDE organisation worked on KDE 4.1 to battle many of the problems,  I will take you through the new features in KDE 4.1

(click on thumbnails to see larger version of images)

1)Upon first boot up of KDE 4.1 the first most prominent feature is the inclusion of a new desktop management widget

When hovering over the left or right side of the widget clear navigation options can be seen to resize and option for the widget.

2) One new addition is the option to resize the panels which previously was not possible because many distro’s did not integrate the feature.

Resizing the panel is very easy simply moving the arrows resizes it

3) The functionality of widgets was planned to be released in KDE 4 but it wasn’t but now it has been included in KDE 4.1 and no compiling is required to install new widgets simply click install new widgets and new widgets can easily be downloaded from KDE-look.org

4) On the release of KDE 4 the first complaint people had was that the default theme could not be changed without tweaks in the root folder this problem was eliminated in KDE 4.1 and an automatic theme installer has been added

5) KDE 4.1 now includes an improved version of the sound management application called KMix

6) To create further competition in the desktop effects markets KDE 4.1 includes its own native desktop effects engine

7) To Improve file management a new application called Dolphin was created which focuses mainly on file management.

• Install KDE 4.1 in Ubuntu/Kubuntu
• Use Utorrent or any other windows application in Linux
• Customize Compiz Fusion effects In Ubuntu
• How To: Take Screencasts Of Your Linux Desktop
• Advanced Power Management in Ubuntu

Ever came across an extension that you badly want to run with Firefox 3 and are in no mood to downgrade to earlier versions of Firefox, and you aren’t comfortable with modifying about:config, the other day I came across this extension called minimize to tray and I badly wanted it to run with Firefox 3 ,actually what it does is that it minimizes Firefox to tray when you press CTRL+SHIFT+M, now whenever I am done with with Firefox I don’t close it instead I minimize it, it is working great so far in Firefox 3.0.1, I am using the same extension as an reference in this post:

first step is to get the .xpi file of the addon you want to make compatible with Firefox 3.0.1, to do that go to Mozilla addons site and open the page of your desired extension, now the problem is that the add to Firefox button is greyed out because its not compatible otherwise we would have right clicked it and chosen “save link as” option but now you  can get xpi file by changing your browser e.g Internet Explorer (you can use IE tab too) as it will turn the add to Firefox button to download now button and then you can easily save the xpi file to your hard disk

there are two other methods but this is the easiest

once you are done with saving the extension’s XPI file you need a compression software like Winrar, you can also you 7zip but I haven’t tried it and I am only going to use winrar as reference in this post

once you are ready with the compression software right click the xpi file and click on “open with”, now in the window that shows up select winrar

when this xpi file opens in winrar, now just click on extract to and extract using the default setting (this will extract the file in the same folder where the xpi file is)

now open the the install.rdf file from the extracted files in a word editor like notepad and you will see the code similar to that above

now you need to edit the code that is highlighted in the screenshot above, change the line <em:maxVersion>2.0.0.*</em:maxVersion>  to  <em:maxVersion>3.0.*</em:maxVersion>, to make it compatible with Firefox 3.0.0 onwards

that’s it! now save the file and close it

now repeat the second step that is opening the xpi file in winrar

once you have opened it drag and drop the install.rdf file we just edited to the winrar archive

now it will show you a window click on OK and you are done you have just modified the extension

now to install this newly modified extension you just have to drag and drop this XPI file to Firefox addons manager window and it will install it without giving you any incompatibility error

actually the advantage of using this method instead of using that about:config hack is that you have a ready to use XPI file that you can use the next time you want to install this extension

Bonus: Here’s the Modified XPI file of MinimizeToTray Firefox extension

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• Add a “Clear list and close Window” button to Firefox download manager
• Make Firefox open new tabs next to current tab instead of last tab
• How to Make Firefox Use Windows Vista theme in Windows XP