Archive for the ‘OpenSource Software’ Category
Sunday, May 23rd, 2010
On the web, people have absolutely no patience. Your link pops up in Google search, someone clicks it, and the stopwatch immediately starts ticking. If your company’s website doesn’t pop up in two to three ticks, I can guarantee that before the fourth tick visitors will click the back button and try the next links in the search results. Whether you are building your website or contracting it out, make sure your site loads quickly.
You can certainly use a stopwatch to time your site, but doing so is actually a bad idea. Your browser may store graphics and other items in its cache to decrease load times on subsequent visits, so a stopwatch may not provide an accurate indication of how long a page really takes to load for the first time visitors. Better tools are available. My favourite is Pingdom Tools at tools.pingdom.com, where you type the URL of the site or page you want to test and click the Test Now button. Pingdom Tool tests the page and displays the total time required for it to appear on the screen. Results also include a chart that displays the loading time for each object on the page, useful for identifying bandwidth hogs. If your site seems slow, it’s imortant to assess what is slowing it down. Fortunately, a couple of other free tools can help. To get started,you’ll need to install the following on your computer:
- Mozilla Firefox web browser
- Firebug
- Page Speed or YSlow
To test a page, open it in Firefox, click Tools Firebug, Open Firebug and then click the Page Speed or YSlow tab and click Analyze Performance (for Page Speed) or Grade(for YSlow). Both the tools list factors that contribute to site speed, flag areas that need improvement and provide recommendations for fixing problems.
BUILDING FOR SPEED
Both You can do a number of things right now to speed the performance of your website, including:
- Keep it simple. Don’t let window dressing slow your site.
- Combine Cascading Style Sheets(CSS) into a single file.
- Streamline your CSS by eliminating all unused styles.
- If your site is running on a blogging platform, install a caching plug-in.
- Trim images whenever possible.
- Specify image dimensions.
- Use CSS Sprites to combine background images into a single file.
- Avoid flash-based websites
- Move your website from shared to dedicated server or choose a more dependable, higher quality hosting service.
- Use a content delivery network such as Akamai Technologies to deploy contents across geographically distributed networks.
Tags: Clocks, Firebug, free tools, Google Inc., Horology, search results, Stopwatch, Technology/Internet, YSlow
Posted in Ajatus, OpenSource Software, SEO, Web Development, web | 4 Comments »
Monday, March 8th, 2010
 Typing is sooo yesterday. Google Gesture Search, a freshman out of Google Labs, lets you find stuff on your Android phone by drawing letters on the touchscreen as if you were jotting on a notepad. In addition to Android’s existing search by voice, image, and barcode, Gesture Search is yet another keyboardless input method for your touchscreen phone. At the very least, Gesture Search is a fun proof-of-concept; at most, it will hook a few dedicated touch keyboard haters. Here’s how it works. With Gesture Search running, you write letters by swiping your fingertip on your touchscreen as if it were a whiteboard. With each character you input, Gesture Search live-searches your phone’s contacts, bookmarks, and music and displays the results on-screen. Tap an app, contact, bookmark, or song to launch it or view the contact. (For contacts, tap the green phone icon to start a call.)
When you start Gesture Search you get a plain black screen with a cursor-like pointer on the footer. You draw your first letter, and Gestures puts it at the bottom of the screen and displays matches in your phone’s application list, contacts, bookmarks, and if enabled, your music library. Then you draw the next letter to narrow your results further.
As you can see, a letter that can pass as either an H or an A will match both. You can’t be a slowpoke while you swipe, either: Gesture Search can recognize letters that involve more than one stroke–like a T–if they’re timed correctly. That is, don’t wait too long to cross your T, or Gesture Search will think it’s an I. (Hint: If you’re consistently not fast enough, in the app’s settings set “Writing Speed” to “Slow.”)
If you want to delete a letter, you can: to backspace, in the footer, just draw a line from right to left as if you were pushing the delete key back. Then you can re-enter the character.
Typing is sooo yesterday. Google Gesture Search, a freshman out of Google Labs, lets you find stuff on your Android phone by drawing letters on the touchscreen as if you were jotting on a notepad. In addition to Android’s existing search by voice, image, and barcode, Gesture Search is yet another keyboardless input method for your touchscreen phone. At the very least, Gesture Search is a fun proof-of-concept; at most, it will hook a few dedicated touch keyboard haters. Here’s how it works.With Gesture Search running, you write letters by swiping your fingertip on your touchscreen as if it were a whiteboard. With each character you input, Gesture Search live-searches your phone’s contacts, bookmarks, and music and displays the results on-screen. Tap an app, contact, bookmark, or song to launch it or view the contact. (For contacts, tap the green phone icon to start a call.)When you start
Gesture Search you get a plain black screen with a cursor-like pointer on the footer. You draw your first letter, and Gestures puts it at the bottom of the screen and displays matches in your phone’s application list, contacts, bookmarks, and if enabled, your music library. Then you draw the next letter to narrow your results further, as shown above.As you can see, a letter that can pass as either an H or an A will match both. You can’t be a slowpoke while you swipe, either: Gesture Search can recognize letters that involve more than one stroke–like a T–if they’re timed correctly. That is, don’t wait too long to cross your T, or Gesture Search will think it’s an I. (Hint: If you’re consistently not fast enough, in the app’s settings set “Writing Speed” to “Slow.”)If you want to delete a letter, you can: to backspace, in the footer, just draw a line from right to left as if you were pushing the delete key back. Then you can re-enter the character.
Gesture Search is available for Android 2.0+ only. Search for it in the Market, or scan the QR Code below with your Android device to install it.
Tags: Android, computing, Google Inc., Google Labs, Input/Output, Mobile software, Smartphones, Technology/Internet, Touchscreen
Posted in OpenSource Software, Web Development | 2 Comments »
Sunday, October 18th, 2009
Two PCs that are both running on Ubuntu can share files in a number of ways. We use USB devices & swap them to synchronize files between two PCs in what was called a ‘sneaker network‘. One better way is to use an SSHFS or ‘Secure Shell File System’ network.
SSHFS uses OpenSSH to provide secure communication between PC’s/With the network connected the local PC user will be able to transfer,open as well as edit files on the remote PC as if they were on his own machine. The remote files will look and act just like the files on the local PC
To create an SSHFS network all you need are two PCs connected to the same router or gateway. Ubuntu comes with most of the software to make this work, but needs two applications available in the repositories to be initialized on both PCs. Here is how to set it up:
- From System>Administration>Synaptic Package Manager install the following packages: sshfs and openssh-server
- Also in Synaptic, confirm that openssh-client is installed(usually comes with Ubuntu)
- Go to System Administration>Users and Groups>unlock>Manage Groups, confirm on Fuse group
- Create an empty folder in your home directory
That completes the installation of the networking tools. To activate the network from one PC to the other,you just have to invoke SSHFS and indicate where the files are coming from, and where they are going to be displayed (that the new folder you made)
Go to Applications>Accessories>Terminal & enter:
1
| sshfs remoteusername@remotepc:/home/remoteusername ~/newfolder |
Once you supply the password for remote PC (their password, not yours) which indicates that you have permission to access it, and for the first time only, confirm the other PC, then the network will be established and an icon will be displayed on your desktop. You will be able to access the other user’s home directory by simply clicking on that ‘newfolder’ icon in your home director.You can then copy,move,edit and delete as if they were on your PC. Password protected documents will, of course remain password protected.
To disconnect your PC from the network, enter in the terminal:
1
| fusermount -u ~/newfolder |
Tags: Cryptographic software, OpenSSH, same router, Secure Shell, sneaker network, SSHFS, Technology/Internet, Ubuntu
Posted in OpenSource Software | 18 Comments »
Monday, October 12th, 2009
In my last post I gave an insight on how empathy is a challenge for pidgin.Today I am going to run through the steps as found on livegnome.org for installation of empathy.
You can get the latest version of Empathy by changing your repositories as follows: First add the public key from the developers:
1
| sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com FA3A1271 |
Next add the following repositories depending upon your Ubuntu version to /etc/apt/sources.lst or graphically in System->Administration->Synaptic Package Manager->Settings->Repositories:
For Jaunty(9.04) Users
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/telepathy/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/telepathy/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
For Intrepid(8.10) users
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/telepathy/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/telepathy/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main
For Hardy(8.04) users
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/telepathy/ppa/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/telepathy/ppa/ubuntu hardy main
You then need to update the source list using the following command
Installing the appropriate packages
Then in a terminal, enter the following command:
1
| sudo apt-get install empathy telepathy-mission-control telepathy-stream-engine telepathy-gabble telepathy-butterfly telepathy-haze telepathy-idle telepathy-salut telepathy-sofiasip python-msn empathy-megaphone-applet |
Optionally, you can add more functionality/integration with the following:
1
| sudo apt-get install nautilus-sendto-universe galago-telepathy-feed libtelepathy-farsight0 python-tpfarsight galago-eds-feed python-galago python-galago-gtk |
The application will show up in Applications->Internet->”Empathy Instant Messenger”
Tags: Debian, install empathy, Linux distributions, Package management system, Synaptic Package Manager, Ubuntu
Posted in OpenSource Software | 6 Comments »
Friday, October 9th, 2009
 Empathy for pidgin
The choice is yours.Such is the power of open source.But that doesn’t mean that there are no favourites.Vi editor is the most used text editor while open office remains the most powerful office suite platform.Gimp is a lovely image editor.And if we talk about Instant messaging client Pidgin has been ruling the roost. But things are moving fast, fast enough for Pidgin earlier known as Gaim(GTK AOL Instant messenger).
 Empathy Screenshot The new kid off the block is known as Empathy which rides on a new framework providing a real-time communication on Linux desktops.Empathy is another instant messaging program which supports numerous networks and has lots of features.The project was introduced into GNOME with release 2.24 as the desktop’s messaging client. Empathy was built to take advantage of the new Telepathy framework which enables system wide communication not previously possible.Empathy also utilizes libpurple (the same library as Pidgin) and as such inherited support for all of its networks from the onset. Although a young project, it has quickly grown an impressive set of features, including the geolocation of contacts and support for video and audio chat over both XMPP (Jabber) and SIP. The XMPP protocol is used by numerous networks, including Google Mail and is considered a very important feature of the application.
Empathy, which literally translates as ‘in feeling’, is the capability to share and understand another’s emotions and feelings. It is often characterized as the ability to “put oneself into another’s shoes”.
Telepathy framework has three main benefits:
Real-time: Telepathy supports instant messaging (both one-to-one and in groups), voice calls and video calls; it’s less suited for store-and-forward applications like email.
Unified: Many different programs can take advantage of these communications; Telepathy lets these programs work together.
Framework: Telepathy allows the different aspects of communication handling to be divided between different parts of the system, meaning each part is simple.
The GNOME project has adopted Telepathy into the environment so that all applications can have system-wide communication. Just where this technology will take the desktop is not yet clear, but the possibilities are endless. This simple game of Sodoku is a good example of what’s possible with the Telepathy framework.Due to its use of the Telepathy framework, Empathy can tie itself into the desktop far more closely than Pidgin ever could.As free software improves over time and applications come and go, it only stands to reason that what is a common tool today might not be tomorrow. The fact that there is lots of choice is naturally a good thing, after all, competition encourages innovation. It is sad to see Pidgin replaced in GNOME because it has been (and continues to be) a great instant messaging client.
Install empathy
s
Tags: Comparison of instant messaging clients, Cross-platform software, Empathy, Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol, GNOME, GTK AOL Instant messenger, Instant messaging, Linux, Pidgin, store-and-forward applications, Technology/Internet, Telepathy, XMPP protocol
Posted in OpenSource Software | 14 Comments »
|
