Enjoying the internet…
How To’s
How to set up NX server free on your Linux box?
4What is the NX server?
The NX server and client application is developed by the Italian company NoMachine and provides a way to efficiently and securely access X-server based GUIs.
It compresses the X-server rendered screens and enables the client to access it via SSH. Thus making it possible to even access your remote linux server using an dial-up internet connection conveniently.
Is it expensive?
You can download and use the NX server and client for free. The free version is restricted to 2 concurrent client connections at the same time. If you need to set it up for more users you’d need to buy a license.
How do I get started?
If you use Ubuntu or Debian, you need to download the nxserver, nxnode and nxclient DEB packages and install them.
Download all 3 deb packages which suite your distribution (x86 or x64 packages are available) to your server from here:
http://www.nomachine.com/download.php
Now first install the nxclient package and then the nxnode and last but not least the nxserver. Make sure to meet the dependencies.
The packages get installed in the directory: /usr/NX/
After you installed all three packages you just have to start the nxserver by typing:
sudo /usr/NX/bin/nxserver --start
Basically you’re done now! That was easy, right?
Now it’s time to install the nxclient on your client machine and set up the connection using the wizard which appears when you start the client for the first time.
If you have any questions regarding further settings just comment on this post!
How to capture video streams using VLC player?
2
What is VLC?
VLC is a free, multi-format and open source media player application written by the VideoLAN project.
But playing your favorite movie or audio files is not the only thing it can do. It is also able to encode and stream audio or video content.
The other nice fact is, that it is running under a multitude of operating systems like Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, BeOS and BSD.
What types of streams can I record with it?
With VLC you can easily record MMS, WMF and ASF streams.
Tell me how already!
To record a stream you first need to get the streaming URL. You can mostly do that be right-clicking the video picture and selecting “Properties…”:
Look at the “Location” info on the Properties dialog:
Mark and copy the link by pressing CTRL+C and start up VLC. Now go to Media -> Convert/Save… click on the Network tab and paste the URL you copied from the stream earlier into the text box. It should look like this:
The next thing you have to do is to click on Convert / Save and you will see this dialog:
First, enter the file name of the destination file including the extension, e.g. NasaTV.asf
Tick the “Display the output” check box to see how the stream looks like while you’re recording. Then you select the Profile, which defines how the file format will be recorded as and click “Start”. I usually use “Video – WMV + WMA (ASF)”.
Now you will have to be patient, because it can take up to 1 minute, depending on your internet connection, for VLC to start displaying and recording the stream. When you think you have recorded enough, just click on the stop button to close the file you’re currently recording into.
You can download the VLC player on the official website.
How to remotely fix computer issues?
5
Average users…
Most of the people nowadays turn on their computers and just start to browse the Internet to read news, update their Facebook status or check their emails. They don’t really care about how things work. But then, someday, they run into a problem. Some application doesn’t start anymore or suddenly something looks different and they start to panic.
Due to the fact that an average computer user doesn’t know and maybe doesn’t want to bother with the basic structures behind applications or even an operating system they often seek help from expensive IT experts who charge a lot of money for a simple task or just a quick change of some rogue setting.
Click on more to read on… (more…)
How to create tutorial videos?
3The problem
You need to make tutorial videos to teach your new colleagues how to work with a certain application. Now you could create training documents and have some long or boring training session to teach them stuff they often don’t get after the training anyways.
The other option would be to just record step-by-step tutorials of your application. Your new colleagues would just copy over some training videos and watch them to see how to use that new software right.
The solution
Exactly for this reason, and probably because of my lazyness, I found a very nice free application called “Wink” coded by Debugmode.
Here’s the description from the official Wink website:
| Wink is a Tutorial and Presentation creation software, primarily aimed at creating tutorials on how to use software (like a tutor for MS-Word/Excel etc). Using Wink you can capture screenshots, add explanations boxes, buttons, titles etc and generate a highly effective tutorial for your users. | ||
That sounds great, right? It is! You can just download it, install it (Windows or Linux with GTK 2.4 or higher) and create great looking flash videos of how you perform a certain action you want to show to your friends or colleagues. The tool itself has a pretty straight forward user interface which allows you to create a professional looking tutorial video. Either you capture your whole screen, a predefined area or a custom area of your screen.
But you can do much more than just record your desktop. You can add a voice recording to your video, add text comments, draw shapes, add weblinks links, etc. This tool is really advanced when it comes down to features. Also, editing your recording frame by frame can by done easily.
You can download this piece of software goodness by clicking on the Wink logo:
I really hope you’ll enjoy this tool as much as I did 
How to use a BlackBerry Curve 8900 without BIS/BES?
2My first BlackBerry phone
To start off, this is the first BlackBerry phone I ever owned. My girlfriend bought a used Curve 8900 for me and I didn’t know what to expect from it.
I got it and was immediately very pleased with its looks. It is not too chunky and the hardware keyboard is also pretty nice to write SMS. So far so good.
At this point I wasn’t aware that a BlackBerry device is pretty useless without having a BlackBerry data plan. The only things I could do with it was calling people, writing and receiving SMS messages and taking photos. I wasn’t very excited anymore because I could do the exact same things with my old Nokia phone.
There has to be a way…
So I started to do some research.
The problem is that the complete management of network related communications on BlackBerry devices is usually done by the BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS). As I don’t have a BlackBerry contract I needed to find another solution.
1. Plain GPRS internet access
The first thing you have to do is to make sure that applications can access the internet via GPRS (can’t help with 3G as the Curve 8900 doesn’t have 3G!). To be able to do so you first have to configure the APN settings. You can find them via Options -> Advanced Options -> TCP/IP. Enter the APN name and if needed the user name and password for the APN. You can get the settings by searching Google.
If the APN has been configured correctly you’ll see “gprs” in small letters in the upper right corner of the device’s display.
So far so good. Now the unit is able to communicate with the APN but by default the unit tries to route all traffic via the BIS service of your mobile provider. This is the time where you need to do some stuff to your “Service Book”.
You can access the Service Book list via Options -> Advanced Options -> Service Book.
Go to this website and follow the instructions update your Service Book:
http://bb.anworm.com/enable-blackberry-browser-without-bisbes-2/
After you have done this your BlackBerry webbrowser will work via GPRS and WiFi!
2. Browsing the web
The built-in BlackBerry browser is ok but it tends to be very slow and sometimes it won’t load a certain website at all. So the solution for that is to download and get Opera Mini. It’s nice to use, pretty fast even via GPRS and free.
You can download Opera Mini via this address:
http://www.opera.com/mobile/download/blackberry/
3. Using Twitter
Unfortunately the original Twitter client is strictly bound to the BIS. So there’s no way to use it (correct me if I’m wrong!).
I’m using the free Twitter client “Seesmic”. It supports posting pictures to TwitPic, location data and you can shorten URLs. Basically that’s everything I expect from a Twitter client.
To download and install it, point your BlackBerry webbrowser to www.seesmic.com (I don’t think it works with Opera Mini but I’m not sure…).
4. Facebook?
The newest Facebook application for BlackBerry devices is also restricted to only work with BIS. In my opinion the only reason to use the Facebook application is to be able to post pictures. For just status updates and so on, you can simply access the Facebook site via Opera Mini.
If you really want to use the Facebook app, you need to find the version 1.6. The best way to get it is via searching the forum on Crackberry.com
5. Email and PIM syncing
Now the last and probably most important part.
As there’s no hack to be able to use the built-in email application (btw, the instant messanger doesn’t work as well without BIS!) you need to use Funambol. Funambol is a open source synchronisation server which allows you to sync your contacts, get push email from IMAP or POP3 servers and other PIM related objects like notes, tasks, etc.
The quickest way to get started is to create a free account on my.funambol.com. Be aware that the account is only active for 90 days. You can only extend the period by contributing on the Funambol project. The other possibility is to setup an own Funambol server but the how to for that will be an article on its own.
