Category Archives: applications/software

Open Source Living – a Directory of OSS Apps

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There maybe countless arguments for using open source applications, but one of the strongest is having a single interface to learn when working on Windows, Mac or Linux systems. Website directory Open Source Living helps you to find just those kind of programs. It’s not an extensive, all-in-one directory, but it seems to narrow its choices based on quality and widespread acceptance. Open Source Living is an archive of the best open source applications. Software is sorted by categories, such as Web, Graphics, Audio. And while not every application listed at Open Source Living is entirely cross-platform, a good deal of them are.

Check out also Mohawke’s Best of the Best Free and Open Source Software Collection: Mac OS X and Windows software Collection and Open Source Apps on Mac. Ah, and this one.

Start your new year with open source software :-p

Syncing your BlackBerry on Linux, a howto guide

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If you use Linux on your desktop, and you also happen to have a BlackBerry handheld device, you’re probably aware that Research in Motion, the company that develops the BlackBerry platform, offers nothing in the way of support for its devices on Linux — but the intrepid geeks in the free software world do. Thanks to to the efforts of the Barry and OpenSync projects, I just finished syncing my BlackBerry 8800 with my Evolution contacts on my Ubuntu 7.10 desktop.

Blackberry

If all you want to do is share data between your Linux box and the BlackBerry, no sweat. The 2GB Micro SD storage I inserted in my 8800 is available to my Linux system just like any other USB storage device. When I connect the USB cable to the BlackBerry, I simply say yes when Ubuntu asks if I want to enter Mass Storage Mode, and I can copy music and photos to the phone. I have run into a problem getting the audio for videos that were created with Kino to work correctly, but other than that, moving data back and forth between the PDA and the desktop “just works.”The Barry and OpenSync projects aim to provide a little more functionality than just moving data. According to its home page, the Barry project “is a GPL C++ library for interfacing with the RIM BlackBerry Handheld. It comes with a command-line tool for exploring the device and a GUI for making quick backups. This project’s goal is to create a fully functional syncing mechanism on Linux.” Release 0.11, which I’ve been playing with the past week, goes a long way toward meeting those goals. With it, you can explore, backup and restore, and — with a little help from OpenSync — sync databases. There is, however, some assembly required.

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How to sniff or hack someone’s username and password even if it is over an SSL encrypted connection

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Introduction

Do you think you’re safe if you type https :// before paypal.com? I hope you’ll think twice before you login from a computer connected to a wireless network after reading this guide. Let’s start at the beginning. Let’s say you have an evil neighbour who wants your paypal credentials. He buys himself a nice laptop with a wireless card and, if you are using a wep encryption, he cracks your wep code (click here to see how). After cracking the key he logs into your network. Maybe you always allowed him to use your network because you thought it can’t do any harm to your computer. You aren’t sharing any folders so what’s the problem? Well, in the next few steps I’m going to describe the problem.

The guide

1. Let’s assume your neighbour uses linux to crack your wep key. After cracking it, he installs ettercap (http://ettercap.sourceforge.net/) on his linux system. If you want to do this at home, I would recommend you to download BackTrack because it already has everything installed. Look at the WEP cracking guide I mentioned above for more info about BackTrack. If you want to install it on your own linux distribution, download the source and install it with the following commands:

$ tar -xzvf ettercap-version.tar.gz
$ make
$ make install

2. After installing, you need to uncomment some code to enable SSL dissection. Open up a terminal window and type “nano /usr/local/etc/etter.conf”, without the quotes. Scroll down using your arrow keys until you find this piece of code:

# if you use iptables:
# redir_command_on = “iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i %iface -p tcp –dport %port -j REDIRECT –to-port %rport”
# redir_command_off = “iptables -t nat -D PREROUTING -i %iface -p tcp –dport %port -j REDIRECT –to-port %rport”

You need to uncomment the last two lines.

# if you use iptables:
redir_command_on = “iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i %iface -p tcp –dport %port -j REDIRECT –to-port %rport”
redir_command_off = “iptables -t nat -D PREROUTING -i %iface -p tcp –dport %port -j REDIRECT –to-port %rport”

3. Press CTRL+O, press enter to safe the file and then press CTRL+X.

4. Boot Ettercap and click on Sniff > Unified Sniffing > type in your wireless interface and press ok.

5. Press CTRL+S to scan for hosts

6. Go to MITM > ARP poisoning, select sniff remote connections and press ok.

7. Now you (and your neighbour!) can start sniffing! Press start > start sniffing. Walk to another computer on your network and open up paypal or any other site where you need to type in an username/password (gmail, hotmail, digg.com, etc.). All credentials will appear on the computer running Ettercap!

8. When you’re done, don’t just close Ettercap, but go to Start > Stop Sniffing, and then go to MITM > Stop mitm attack(s).

But how does all this stuff work?

Look at the following scheme:

Normally when you type in a password, host 1 (your computer) directly connects to host 2 (your modem or router). But if someone launced Ettercap on your network, host 1 isn’t sending it’s passwords to host 2, but to the Attacking host, the host that’s running Ettercap! The attacking host sends everything to Host 2. This means that host 1 isn’t noticing anything! Exactly the same happens with everything that host 2 is sending. Host 2 doesn’t send packets directly to host 1, but forst to the attacking host.

25+ Sources For Royalty Free Creative Commons Content and Resource

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We’ve talked about about all the ways to design and build your site, but where are you ever going to get content to fill it with? We’ve gathered 25+ sources of content licensed under Creative Commons. Enjoy!

Audio

    ccmixter

ArtistServer.com – Thousands of MP3s for you to download and try out smaller bands.

ccMixter.org – A site to try your hand at mixing and mashing music that is all offered under the CC.

Jamendo.com – A music site providing free, full-length albums for you to download. You pay the artists what you want, or just spread the word about them.

PodShow.com – A site filling your MP3 player with Creative Commons licensed music, that allows you to discover old and new music alike.

SoundClick.com – A site for bands, both signed and unsigned, to be promoted. Offers free, downloadable, legal MP3s from some bands.

TheFreeSoundProject – A huge collection of CC licensed sound effects files.

General Searches

    Yahoo cc search

Archive.org – Known mainly for their “Wayback Machine” as a means for seeing old pages on the net, they have also collected together a huge collection of free-to-use recordings and texts.

Freebase.com – A community powered search engine to search the web for CC licensed work for you to use.

Google Advanced Search – Google gives you the option to include forms of licensing in your search.

Wikimedia Commons – The central clearing area for the Wikimedia projects CC files.

Yahoo Creative Commons Search – Yahoo allows you to search the entire web for what you need based on the licenses attached to the content.

Images

    everystockphoto.com

DeviantArt.com – A site for artists to display their works. Some are nice enough to license under CC for your use.

EveryStockPhoto.com – Indexes over 1.4 million Creative Commons photos for your use.

Flickr Creative Commons search – Search Flickr for all the derivatives of the Creative Commons licensing.

Geograph.org.uk – An attempt to photograph the entirety of the British Isles, and at the same time, license all the photos under the CC.

OpenClipArt.org – An archive of free-to-use clipart numbering around 11,000 pieces.

PhotoEverywhere.co.uk – A travel & tourism photo site offering stock photography for everyone’s use.

TakeIdeas.com – Share your photos, or find ones that inspire you.

TravellersPoint.com – A wiki for travellers with a large collection of CC licensed travel photography.

Yotophoto.com – Indexes photos in the public domain and free-to-use licenses.

Texts

    unearthtravel

IntraText.com – A site featuring thousands of texts from 900 B.C. to this decade. Most works are under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

UnearthTravel.com – Read travel guides about your favorite destinations.

Videos

    lulu.tv

Blip.tv – Allows video makers to assign multiple types of licenses to their content, users can search on each type.

Lulu.TV – A CC license site with embeddable videos

OurMedia.org – A video specific service run by archive.org, allowing users to host their videos under the Creative Commons license.

Revver.com – A video upload site very like YouTube, but all content defaults to the Creative Commons license.

SpinXpress.com – Share your video, audio, and images through various versions of the CC license.

How to build the Perfect Server – with Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon (Ubuntu 7.10)

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This tutorial shows how to set up a Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon (Ubuntu 7.10) based server that offers all services needed by ISPs and hosters: Apache web server (SSL-capable), Postfix mail server with SMTP-AUTH and TLS, BIND DNS server, Proftpd FTP server, MySQL server, Courier POP3/IMAP, Quota, Firewall, etc. This tutorial is written for the 32-bit version of Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon, but should apply to the 64-bit version with very little modifications as well.

I will use the following software:

  • Web Server: Apache 2.2
  • Database Server: MySQL 5.0
  • Mail Server: Postfix
  • DNS Server: BIND9
  • FTP Server: proftpd
  • POP3/IMAP: I will use Maildir format and therefore install Courier-POP3/Courier-IMAP.
  • Webalizer for web site statistics

In the end you should have a system that works reliably, and if you like you can install the free webhosting control panel ISPConfig (i.e., ISPConfig runs on it out of the box).

I want to say first that this is not the only way of setting up such a system. There are many ways of achieving this goal but this is the way I take. I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!

1 Requirements

To install such a system you will need the following:

2 Preliminary Note

In this tutorial I use the hostname server1.example.com with the IP address 192.168.0.100 and the gateway 192.168.0.1. These settings might differ for you, so you have to replace them where appropriate.

3 The Base System

Insert your Ubuntu install CD into your system and boot from it. Select Install to the hard disk:

The installation starts, and first you have to choose your language:

Then select your location:

Choose a keyboard layout (you will be asked to press a few keys, and the installer will try to detect your keyboard layout based on the keys you pressed):

The installer checks the installation CD, your hardware, and configures the network with DHCP if there is a DHCP server in the network:

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Mozilla: We’re Ready to Rock the Mobile Web Now

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Mozilla and Mobile

People ask us all the time about what Mozilla’s going to do about the mobile web, and I’m very excited to announce that we plan to rock it. Here’s some information about what we’re planning to do with hiring, technology, partnerships, and products, and how you can get involved. Short summary: we are serious about bringing the Firefox experience and technology to mobile devices.

Why increase Mozilla’s presence in mobile?

* A large portion of the world accesses the Internet from mobile devices, and this will become increasingly true over time (mobile devices outsell computers 20-1). Each Firefox install is an individual choice by a person to download something that didn’t ship by default on their computer. Why not offer that option for mobile devices?

* Firefox the most popular open-source browser on the planet with > 100 million active users. Bringing Firefox add-ons, the Mozilla platform (including XUL), open source, and a large and passionate community to the closed and fragmented mobile platform will do the world some serious good.

* Firefox and Mozilla give device manufacturers the best of both worlds: shared investment in the core open-source project plus the flexibility they need to customize the browser for their devices.

* You can already get a Mozilla-based browser for the Nokia N800 and Firefox is a key part of Ubuntu Mobile and the new Intel Internet Project, and most recently ARM has put serious effort towards Firefox on mobile devices.

* Through Joey, we’ve seen how the desktop and mobile browsing experiences can be bridged to build a better experience for both. Wouldn’t it be great if your bookmarks, history, extensions, etc. from Firefox on your computer just worked on your phone?

Just what are we announcing?

* Mozilla will add mobile devices to the first class/tier-1 platform set for Mozilla2. This means we will make core platform decisions with mobile devices as first-class citizens.

* We will ship a version of “Mobile Firefox” which can, among other things, run Firefox extensions on mobile devices and allow others to build rich applications via XUL.

* Mozilla will expand its small team of full-time mobile contributors to focus on the technology and application needs of mobile devices. In particular two new folks just joined:

** Christian Sejersen, recently the head of browsers at Openwave which has shipped over 1 billion mobile browsers, joined Mozilla Monday. He’ll be heading up the platform engineering effort and setting up a R&D center in Copenhagen, Denmark.

** Brad Lassey just joined Mozilla from France Telecom R&D. He’s already been an active contributor to our mobile efforts and can now focus on Mozilla mobile full time.

These folks will accelerate the tremendous work already done by Doug Turner, Chris Hofmann and the entire Mozilla community. The efforts in mobile will be magnified by all aspects of our kick-ass community in everything from testing, to UI design, to core engineering. Together we will accelerate the development and use of mobile-ready Mozilla technology.

Why now?

* Getting a no-compromise web experience on devices requires significant memory (>=64MB) as well as significant CPU horsepower. High end devices today are just approaching these requirements and will be commonplace soon For example, the iPhone has 128MB of DRAM and somewhere between a 400 to 600 MHz processor. It is somewhere between 10x-100x slower on scripting benchmarks than a new MacBook Pro and somewhere between 3-5x slower than an old T40 laptop on the same wifi network. But rapid improvements in mobile processors will close this gap within a few years. There are chips out there today that are faster than the one in the iPhone and integrate graphics, cpu, and i/o (wifi/3g/wimax) on one die. Intel has recently re-entered this market which will keep things interesting. Most exciting of all ARM has announced that by 2010 devices will be shipping with a processor 8x faster than what’s in the iPhone!

* The user demand for a full browsing experience on mobile devices is clear. If you weren’t sure about this before you should be after the launch of the iPhone.

* We’ve seen through Mozilla on the Nokia N800 and Minimo that it is possible to build a great experience on devices by using the Mozilla code.

* We are wrapping up work on Gecko 1.9 and there is room post 1.9 to make significant changes to the architecture for improved performance and memory use on devices. Things like reducing the use of XPCOM, unifying memory management under MMgc, and other improvements from Mozilla 2 will make Mozilla a great platform for all devices from mobile phones to your desktop. The use of a single source base gives us the leverage that makes OSS work so well.

Is this the right time?

Absolutely! Up until very recently device limitations required writing new mobile browsers from the ground up. Being able to leverage all the investments in the Mozilla platform across both desktops and devices is the right approach. There is far from a dominant player in this marketplace and even the best mobile browsers today have compromises in user experience, performance, and compatibility. There is still *plenty* of room for innovation.

When?

As mentioned above, Mozilla browsers are already available to N800 users and you can use Joey today to extend your Firefox desktop browsing experience to your phone. We’ll continue to invest in Joey and will work closely with partners who want to ship Mozilla browsers today. Mobile Firefox will arrive later (certainly not before 2008).

What about Minimo?

Minimo was an experiment in mapping the desktop browser experience to a specific mobile context. While we don’t currently plan to develop that project further, it has already provided us with valuable information about how Gecko operates in mobile environments, has helped us reduce footprint, and has given us a platform for initial experimentation in user experience.

Does this mean that Firefox 3 will run on my phone?

No. This project is focused on Mozilla technology that will ship after Firefox 3. We’re at least as excited as you about getting Mozilla’s great web capabilities into your hands, literally, but it’s a big undertaking, and won’t be something that we can wrap up in time for Firefox 3.

What mobile devices will Firefox run on?

We haven’t yet determined what our target platforms will be. If you’re a mobile device or software-stack developer, your insight and support will be very helpful in determining which configurations we can and should support in our initial efforts.

How can I get involved?

Join us on IRC at #mobile, in the newsgroups, or ping me. We need your help!

OpenOffice.org 2.3: New features, extensions and the much anticipated charting tool

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Unlike previous 2.x releases, OpenOffice.org 2.3 is a new and enhanced feature release rather than a bug fix. There are several smart changes, a whole new approach to adding new features and of course the much anticipated new charting tool. This is definitely a release to get to know.

I’ll plunge right into what’s new:

  • A bunch of new and enhanced features like restoring the user-defined movement path in Impress and applying better default print settings in Calc. Check the release notes for complete information from OpenOffice.org.
  • A significantly different chart tool.
  • New extensions provided by Sun and other vendors. You will need to run 2.3 for the extensions to work. Read more about the new extensions on the OpenOffice.org web site.

Fluxbox 1.0 Released! Finally!

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Finally after almost four and a half years with 0.9.x release we got to 1.0.0! This release includes a lot of bugfixes, new styles, updated language support, better shaped corners nd much more. Grab it here!

More info about the release here.

What is FluxBox
Fluxbox Fluxbox is a windowmanager for X.
It’s based on the Blackbox 0.61.1 code. Fluxbox looks like blackbox and handles styles, colors, window placement and similar thing exactly like blackbox (100% theme/style compability).

So what’s the difference between fluxbox and blackbox then?
The answer is: LOTS!
Here is a list of features that fluxbox already has, or is in the works…

Features
Implemented:

  • Configurable window tabs. |
  • Iconbar (for minimized/iconified windows) |
  • Wheel scroll changes workspace
  • Configurable titlebar (placement of buttons, new buttons etc) |
  • KDE support |
  • New native integrated keygrabber (supports emacs like keychains)
  • Maximize over slit option
  • Partial GNOME support
  • Extended Window Manager Hints support
  • Slit dockap ordering
  • Other minor features

Control multimedia applications with ReMoot

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You can manage most of today’s multimedia applications easily with ReMoot, a universal remote control program. ReMoot even provides an esoteric way of controlling your PC remotely from your cell phone or PDA, earning it top geek points.

Start by going to the ReMoot site and clicking on Source Download to get the latest version, 0.4. The software consists of Perl and Ruby scripts. After the quick download completes, open a console, go to the directory where you downloaded everything, and type these commands as root:

tar zxf remoot-0.4.tar.gz
cd remoot-0.4
chmod +x re*
cp remoot* /usr/bin
cp rewww00t* /usr/bin

ReMoot comprises three scripts: the basic remoot script itself, which you use to command the different multimedia applications; remoot-remote, which shows onscreen graphical controls; and rewww00t, which lets you govern your PC via a Web interface. You need Perl to use remoot, and you need Ruby to use rewww00t. If you don’t already have these available, use your favorite package manager to get perl, perl-Tk, and ruby. You’ll also need Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA), but most distributions already include it, so that shouldn’t be a problem.

Begin by checking that ReMoot is actually working. Open your favorite music program, such as Amarok, and start playing something. From a console, try some commands, such as remoot volup and remoot voldown to turn the volume up or down, or remoot next to advance through the tracks.

Remoot commands Description
remoot voldown Turn the volume down.
remoot play Start playing.
remoot stop Stop playing.
remoot prev Go back to the previous track.

ReMoot supports several different programs, all with the same commands. For example, whether you’re listening to music with Amarok or watching a video with xine or Kaffeine, the remoot stop command will produce the same effect in the player program. As long as you’re running a program known by ReMoot, you’ll get consistent results. This lets you configure the multimedia keys on your keyboard in a single way that will work no matter which program you happen to be using at the time.

Programs known by ReMoot
Amarok Kaffeine Quod Libet
Audacious KsCD Totem
Exaile MPlayer xine

However, some of these programs require tweaks to work properly. Check the ReMoot wiki site if something doesn’t work as expected.

ReMoot can control several programs at the same time. If you pause Amarok, for instance, and then want to start it again, the remoot playpause command won’t start any other programs that might be running but instead will continue with Amarok. If you want to continue with other programs, you have to reactivate them manually before ReMoot will work with them.

If you are more graphically oriented, the remoot-remote program shows a bare-bones window with all available commands. No matter which program is running, you can click on one of these buttons to command the currently playing program. The company promises that a new version will feature icons instead of text.

If you really want to earn a “geek award,” start the rewww00t program (check the name carefully; it usually includes a version number) and navigate to yourOwnURL:14300. You’ll see clickable links that operate on your multimedia. With rewww00t, you could use your cell phone or PDA to connect to your server (though you’d have to open firewall ports and do some other things in order to get this to work) and turn the volume up from anywhere in the world. That may be of little use, but it’s interesting!

Program the multimedia keysWith the scripts installed and working, you can get Linux to perform certain commands whenever you press a multimedia key. Following the instructions in the article “Customize your laptop keyboard with X and KDE,” you should:

  • Open the Control Center.
  • Click on the Regional & Accessibility tab.
  • Pick the Input Actions option.
  • Add a group with the New Group command (give it a name such as Multimedia).

Then, for each key you want to program:

  • Add a new action to the group.
  • Go to the General tab.
  • Fill in the Action Name field.
  • Set the Action Type to Keyboard Shortcut -> Command/URL (Simple).
  • Go to the Keyboard Shortcut tab.
  • Click on the button and then press the Multimedia key (remember, you can use modifiers such as Shift, Alt, and Control).
  • Go to the Command/URL Settings tab.
  • Type in the appropriate command (for example, use remoot volup for the Volume Up key).

That’s all there is to it. ReMoot makes handling multimedia keys both simpler and more powerful.

PowerTOP – Check power consumption on Intel CPU’s

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I came across this little tool, which displays me many interesting information about power consumption on notebooks with an Intel mobile processor.
It will tell you how often the CPU is woken up per second and gives you suggestions on how you can improve it.

You can install it under Gutsy, don’t think it will be possible on a default feisty setup, with
sudo apt-get install powertop
and start with
sudo powertop