The PC Enthusiast

It’s official, VP8 is free!

thepcenthusiast — Wed, 19 May 2010 17:27:25 +0000

And it’s being released under the name of WebM (http://www.webmproject.org/). I wrote about it earlier when it was still just a rumor, but now it’s official.

WebM is an open, royalty-free, media file format designed for the web.

WebM defines the file container structure, video and audio formats. WebM files consist of video streams compressed with the VP8 video codec and audio streams compressed with the Vorbis audio codec. The WebM file structure is based on the Matroska container.

For more information about WebM, see the FAQ.

What does this mean? Why is it good? Is it good? First of all, yes it’s great! It means no one has to worry about being charged for encoding or decoding video on the web in the future.

Bad Apple

thepcenthusiast — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 23:01:02 +0000

I, for the most part, am a happy Apple customer. I sell products through iTunes on my various websites as an affiliate for a commission. I also bought myself an iPod touch for my birthday – the next month I bought 2 more for family members. When I was in elementary school we used Mac’s. I am familiar with the great products they put out.

However, something has got to be done about that App Store. I am a traveler and as such I need to see what WiFi networks are open around me. I don’t want to open my computer every time I need to find a network just to see which signal is best. Luckily I downloaded eWIFI, which helps me see what networks are open around me. Unfortunately, Apple decided to remove every WiFi access point locater because they use “hidden frameworks”. Once again, this is unacceptable. Thankfully I downloaded it on my iPod before they banned it. I mostly just feel bad for the developers. Fix this Apple.

Free video and a new operating system

thepcenthusiast — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 19:57:35 +0000

This has been a great week for computing news. These announcements and innovations will have an impact on the entire internet ecosystem.

iPhone OS 4
On April 8, Apple unveiled plans for the biggest and most exciting iPhone software update yet. iPhone OS 4 will include over 100 new user features for iPhone and iPod touch owners to enjoy. And for developers, a new software development kit (SDK) offers over 1500 new APIs to create apps that are even more powerful, innovative, and amazing.
Google to open source VP8 for HTML5 video
Let me see if I can break down why this is so big. Essentially all the videos we watch online right now have been created using a codec that is privately owned. A codec just encodes and decodes the video so we can watch it streaming beautifully online. Since it is privately owned, everyone was worried the company that owns it (even though they have provided a free license through 2016) might start charging to use it. So Google, having acquired another company with another nice video codec that could work on the web, decided to release it for free forever. This is big.
Oscar-winning video editor goes open source
This is equally amazing. Look at this list of movies produced with this software. Academy® and Emmy® award-winning Lightworks was introduced in 1989 as the first and most advanced non-linear editing system on the market. Used by editors such as Chris Gill and multi Oscar-winning Thelma Schoonmaker, Lightworks offers intuitive controls, advanced real time effects, 2K native support with DPX or RED, and multi-camera editing features that remain unmatched. With wide support for codecs, including EditShare’s Universal Media Files, Lightworks achieves a level of unsurpassed interoperability by offering seamless media sharing with Avid and Final Cut Pro. This new workflow enables Lightworks artists to collaboratively edit projects with a much wider group of editors.

Could a webcam mouse be used to make a touch screen with multi-touch support?

thepcenthusiast — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 18:15:24 +0000

I previously reviewed Camera Mouse, which is a great utility that will convert your webcam into a mouse that you can control with your face or any other object for that matter. Well Microsoft just released a demo from their labs called Touchless and this software, while still in development, allows for multi-touch-like support. You can essentially control computer input with the wave of a hand, but multiple markers can be used so it could be made to work like a multi-touch display. It has a few built-in demo’s, but there is no way to use it as a mouse or input device quite yet unless you’re a programmer or developer. It’s a little shaky right now, but the technology is moving along rapidly and soon we may be able to point our inexpensive webcams at our computer monitors and turn them all into multi-touch displays.

For more on Touchless, check out Microsoft Office Labs at: http://www.officelabs.com/projects/touchless/Pages/default.aspx

If you’re a developer and want to get straight to the good stuff or just try out the demo, check out: http://touchless.codeplex.com/Wikipage

Top 11 Linux Terminal Applications

thepcenthusiast — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 15:53:00 +0000

Most folks who have used Linux for any substantial amount of time or who use it to get real work done have undoubtedly used the oft dreaded command-line interface (cli) or terminal. Because knowing your way around a terminal can save your computer, nay, your life… I have begun compiling a list of must-have terminal apps. I love how fast these applications run and I love how easy they actually are to use once I became accustomed to their keyboard shortcuts… actually in many cases you can only use a keyboard. I plan on updating this list as I find more terminal apps that strike my fancy. One could run a complete workstation from the terminal if one were so inclined.

1. Screen – While this app does not get me excited like the following apps, it is invaluable for managing multiple applications within the terminal. Know Screen, love Screen, GNU Screen.

2. Irssi – Irssi is the IRC client to use. In my opinion it is the best IRC client for Linux. I load up the terminal and use Irssi on a daily basis. The internet is awesome – while looking up the official website for Irssi, I found this tutorial on using Screen and Irssi efficiently.

3. BitlBee (+Irssi) – BitlBee runs a small IRC server on your computer in the background and when you load up your favorite IRC client, just type /connect localhost or set the server in your preferences to localhost, then simply follow the directions to setup your online chat accounts. You will then be able to use Irssi or whichever IRC client you choose to access other chat networks such as AIM (AOL Instant Messenger).

4. ELinks – I specifically chose ELinks for the text-based browser because of its intuitive design and how it handles web standards. w3m is not an intuitive terminal-based browser and lynx as well as links are outdated. Links2 could be considered a runner-up in this category, but ELinks, in my opinion takes in hands down.

5. rTorrent – Aside from being a terminal-based app, it is actually one of the best torrent clients available. There’s even a web-based gui for it!

6. Raggle – Raggle is an RSS feed reader like Google Reader or any other number of web-based or desktop-based RSS readers. While I have had a few issues with resizing in XMonad (my favorite tiling window manager), for the most part it does its job and it does it well.

7. Htop – Htop is one of the most feature-rich system monitors or process viewers available in the OSS world. I prefer this over the one that ships with Ubuntu by default because it takes up far less memory, which is pretty crucial if you’re trying to kill a frozen app.

8. Midnight Commander – a visual file manager that features a rich full-screen text mode allowing you to copy, move and delete files and whole directory trees, search for files and run commands in the subshell. Internal viewer and editor are included.

9. SSH – While SSH is technically a protocol and could have been featured higher in the list, most average desktop users will not need to know or use it. However, it is extremely useful for managing remote servers or workstations.

10. Nano – a curses-based text editor for Unix and Unix-like systems. It is a clone of Pico, the editor of the Pine email client. Most power users will go for vim or emacs, but nano is great for beginners and makes text-editing easy.

11. Mutt – Mutt is a text-based e-mail client for Unix-like systems. The mutt slogan is “All mail clients suck. This one just sucks less“. Mutt supports most mail formats (notably both mbox and Maildir) and protocols (POP3, IMAP, etc). New messages are composed with an external text editor by default, which is why I included Nano just above Mutt.

Honorable mentions…

Fortune - print a random, hopefully interesting, adage
newsbeuter – newsbeuter is an open-source RSS/Atom feed reader for text terminals and is a viable alternative to raggle
MoC - Music On Console (MOC) is an ncurses-based console audio player for Linux/UNIX

Install fonts in Ubuntu GNU/Linux

thepcenthusiast — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 08:04:25 +0000

Inspired by a list of 16 Best-Loved Font Bits In Wen Design I was determined to install Century Gothic for web development. I have never installed a font in Ubuntu or any other Linux distribution for that matter. I hit up Google and found a fairly quick and easy way to do it, although it wasn’t documented very plainly anywhere for anything but the Gnome environment and I’m using LXDE. Here is what I found:

Create a new directory (or folder) with the name “.fonts” in your home directory. Your home directory is located at /home/(username) or simply ~ if you’re creating a directory from the terminal.
Now you can download or copy any true type font into this folder and once you’re done adding new fonts press Alt+F2 (or just use this command in the terminal) and type: sudo fc-cache -f -v
Press Enter and give your computer a minute to scan for new fonts. Afterward you should be able to use your favorite fonts in almost any application you want.

Credit: Fonts – Ubuntu Wiki

Ubuntu with a Windows XP theme

thepcenthusiast — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 15:14:46 +0000

I don’t have any idea why anyone would want to do this, other than for the novelty of it or to make conversion a little less painful for first time Linux users. Just don’t forget to install VNC before you leave so you don’t have to make house calls!

1. XpGnome – This is a Windows XP theme (with installation and removal scripts). It worked flawlessly when I tested it on a vanilla install of Ubuntu 9.10.

2. Yimf – A Chinese company (or perhaps just one man) created a distribution based off of Ubuntu with a Windows XP theme. While the English version was just released, it looks promising. Yimf takes it one step further by installing OpenOffice and similar ‘replacement’ programs on Linux and has used the Microsoft Office and Windows XP icon set.

Cloud computing… NOW

thepcenthusiast — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 06:14:13 +0000

Cloud computing is supposedly the next best thing in desktop computing. There is much aversion, however, because of issues like security with personal data and the ability or lack thereof to own and manipulate the software on the user’s preferred computing device.

According to the wholly unreliable Wikipedia: The term cloud is used as a metaphor for the Internet, based on how the Internet is depicted in computer network diagrams and is an abstraction of the underlying infrastructure it conceals. Typical cloud computing providers deliver common business applications online which are accessed from a web browser, while the software and data are stored on the servers.

However with a little know-how you can setup your own cloud service at home. Like every other service on the internet, cloud services require a server and a client. The open source cloud desktop (the server in this cloud project) comes to us in the form of eyeos. From the website: eyeos is an open source web desktop following the cloud computing concept. It is mainly written in PHP, XML, and JavaScript. It acts as a platform for web applications written using the eyeos Toolkit. It includes a Desktop environment with 67 applications and system utilities. It is accessible by portable devices via its mobile front end. eyeos lets you upload your files and work with them no matter where you are. It contains applications like Word Processor, Address Book, PDF reader, and many more developed by the community.

Throwing eyeos on an Ubuntu server will allow every user in your network access to the eyeos cloud desktop. You can even demo eyeos at eyeos.info before you install it on your network server.

That’s the server part of your cloud network, but now we need a client to experience the cloud. Chrome OS would be nice, but it’s not quite ready to be used yet… enter Webconverger. “Webconverger is the easiest way to deploy Firefox on kiosks for public Internet access.” Webconverger is based on Linux and when using the Webconverger live CD, your operating system is essentially the Firefox web browser.

Point your browser to your server, setting eyeos as your start-up URL and you are now cloud computing with a completely open source system.

Wubi

thepcenthusiast — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 14:47:56 +0000

Install Linux through Windows with a simple program. This allows you to dual boot both Windows and Linux without worrying about damaging your hard drive. It is now officially supported by Canonical (Ubuntu’s parent company).

Wubi – Ubuntu Installer for Windows

Chrome OS

thepcenthusiast — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:17:10 +0000

Google has just released the initial source code to its new operating system, Chrome OS. It is based off of their Chrome web browser, built on top of Linux. I needn’t bore you with the details as the news about Chrome OS is plastered everywhere across the internet. It’s a big step towards the hyped up reality of “cloud computing”. So here’s the good stuff:

Chromium OS
The official Google website for Chrome OS
Getting and building the Chromium OS source code
Screenshots: Basic UI, Apps Menu, Panels
Chromium OS vmdk torrent
It’s roughly 702 MB. Virtualbox can use it as a disk with Ubuntu to boot it. Test user information: “Jackolas” for the user name and nothing in the password field, just hit Enter. The sudo password is: “paranoiduser”