Day 2 of 30 days with Ubuntu

I have created (yet) another blog, 30 days with Ubuntu. Two days ago, I reformatted my laptop (and lost all my photos which I cleverly forgot to backup) and installed the newest version of Ubuntu, version 10.04 which was released just a week ago. I will be using Ubuntu for 30 days, and as I go, every day I will may write my experience with Ubuntu, on things such as how usable it actually is, whether it can really eliminate my dependency on Windows, etc.

Do take a look at 30 days with Ubuntu if you are interested or considering to try a Linux operating system.

If you don't know what Ubuntu is...

Tip #31: Custom searches from the Google Chrome address bar

If you are using Google Chrome, then by now you should have probably noticed that you can immediately begin a Google search by typing directly into the address bar (aka "Omnibox"), instead of going to www.google.com and searching from there. But did you also know that you can perform custom searches, i.e. search using other search engines or websites, from the address bar too?

For instance, I can search for an article on Wikipedia, just by typing "wiki", followed by the search terms into my address bar and pressing Enter, like this.

Tip #29: Convert music files from any format to any format

If you read this earlier post on how to import FLAC files into iTunes on Mac and were like "damn, what about us iPod users using Windows?", then this tip is especially for you. dBpoweramp Music Converter (for Windows, can be run on Linux using Wine [sorry Macs! nothing for you this time] ) can convert your music files from nearly any format to any format you could possibly think of (and perhaps even formats you have never even heard of).

But wait - what does this have to do with our previous problem of iTunes on Windows not being able to deal with FLAC files? We will use dMC to convert the FLAC files into Apple Lossless format, which iTunes can natively support. Additionally, we can also use dMC to convert the FLAC files into Windows Media Audio Lossless format, so that those who are using Windows Media Player need not go through the process of installing FLAC codecs and tag support for Windows Media Player.

Tip #23: More ways to create Wordles

If you can't get enough of those arty word clouds Wordle has been creating for you, here are some ways to make creating Wordles easier.

First of all, you might have noticed that Wordle treats each word in a phrase as seperate words, so long as they have a space in between. Suppose you wanted to create a Wordle of things to do when you grow up:

get a job, buy a car, marry someone, become your own boss, live on a golf course, retire early

To us, the commas make sense in that they divide the words into items or phrases. But when we try to create a Wordle by pasting the above text... we get this on the right.

Tip #22: Create fancy word clouds for anything

Tags on Your Tip Jar so far, created using Wordle.

Word clouds (like the one shown here on the right) are fun, simple and artistic ways to convey a message. Creating a word cloud manually though, isn't really fun, and does require a certain degree of artisticness as well as computer drawing skills to achieve. Luckily, I've stumbled upon this online tool, Wordle, which lets you easily create nice-looking word clouds (called Wordles) like the one I created here, without needing much effort nor artistic capabilities.

The great thing about Wordle is that word clouds created using it are free for any use, as long as you attribute it to www.wordle.net (meaning, if you use a Wordle on your blog, you should have a link back to the website like in the caption on the right).

Tip #21: Get Dropbox

1. You have more than one computer (e.g. desktop and laptop), and you often find it troublesome to move files between the two.
2. You are working on a team project, and you want to share files with group members and keep the files always up to date.
3. You want to share some files for downloading from your blog, using a public link like this, but your file is too big for certain online file hosts. (e.g. Rapidshare has a limit of 200MB per file)
4. You just want to store your files online so you can access them away from home.

If any of your needs look like the ones listed above, you need Dropbox. Dropbox is an online file storage service which gives you 2GB (up to 5GB via referrals) for free. You can use this 2GB to store any of your files, synchronise them among your computers (and iPhone), and share them with others who may or may not be using Dropbox.

Tip #17: Become a tabmaster

Remember the old times when you had to do this?

Now that you can handle forms easily, today I'll show you how to master tabbed browsing. Back in the days of Internet Explorer 6, we would have to open one window for every single webpage, unless if you were using Firefox, Opera or Safari then. With the introduction of IE7 a few years back, tabbed browsing became mainstream. Yet, there are still some people around me who don't know how to use tabbed browsing!

Just in case anyone here is still not aware of what tabs do, tabs let you open multiple pages in a single browser window, so that you don't clutter your taskbar (the long bar with the Start button below) with lots of instances of your web browser. Having multiple instances of your browser open slows down your computer during heavy browsing. Of course, this doesn't quite apply in Mac OS X, since there is only one icon of the running program shown, but still you would have to right-click on the dock icon to pick which Safari window to show, like how Windows XP grouped similar taskbar items together.

Tip #16: Master the art of filling up forms

What if you could jump from field to field?

We spend most of our time on the Internet, and often we need to fill up forms online, especially when logging in to websites. Some websites' registration forms have tens, if not more fields for you to fill up. As mentioned in this previous tip, shifting one hand back and forth between the mouse and keyboard slows you down. To be able to fill forms more quickly, we will need to eliminate this inter-keyboard-and-mouse switching.

This tip should apply to any browser on any operating system. If something doesn't work for you, please let me know so I can help you find a solution for it.

For you to follow along, I have created a dummy form right here for you to try out the keyboard shortcuts as you read!

Tip #10: Add multiple-persona-disorder to Firefox

Firefox version 3.6 was released almost 3 weeks ago, but I just discovered one of it's new (probably the best) features - Personas. They're like themes, but simpler, since they only change the background of the menu bars.

Notice that I now have Totoro in my Firefox!!

Tip #9: Cut huge files into smaller pieces

Previously, we've learned that pendrives or hard disks formatted as FAT can not store files larger than 4GB. To overcome this, you would need to reformat your pendrive to NTFS or HFS+. Or, you could also find a way to split that file into multiple pieces, each smaller than 4GB, so that they can be copied onto your pendrive.

There are other situations where splitting files can be useful. Suppose you want to send a file which is 20MB in size, but your email provider limits attachments to a maximum of 10MB per email. No problem, just split the file into two 10MB pieces, and attach them to two emails seperately. What if you wanted to send a 100MB file via MSN Messenger? Messenger doesn't limit the maximum size of files you can send, but what if your connection gets dropped halfway while sending? A safer bet would be to split the file into 10 or 20MB pieces and send them one by one. If you get disconnected, you wouldn't need to send everything again.

Tip #6: Play any file format there is

In tip #5 I showed you how to steal videos from YouTube and other websites, but I left out the part on how to play those downloaded FLV files. If you don't already have a play-it-all media player application or necessary codecs installed, here is a simple (and dirty) trick for getting those FLV files (and other multimedia files you have trouble with) to play.

Tip #5: Download videos from webpages

If you wanted to save an image on a webpage to your computer, you can just right click on it and choose "Save Image". That's easy. How about videos, or perhaps songs? And by that I don't mean links which you can click on to download them, I mean those which are streaming in a Flash player (like on YouTube and other sites). For this, you will need a thingy, called a "download grabber".