Dropbox is a great file backup service, or file transfer service depending on how you use it. In Linux though, you used to have little option. You could either use Gnome to have nice GUI integration or you had to use the command line. But not anymore. There is now a super easy way to integrate Dropbox into KDE. You do this with KDropbox.

Note: If you do not know what KDE or Linux is, then this post is NOT for you.

I previously wrote about how to get Dropbox running correctly in KDE here. It was a slightly round-about way to do it but it worked flawlessly and it was/is much easier than what the Dropbox WIKI says.

But, there is now the new and easier way. All you have to do is install KDropBox. Best of all, it’s super duper easy. Did I mention that it’s uber easy?

First thing you have to do it go to the KDropbox website on OpenDesktop.org:

http://opendesktop.org/content/show.php?content=123269

Then scroll down until you see the download links (the follow is just an image, not actual links):

If you do not know which ‘flavor’ of Linux you have, it’s probably best that you compile from source OR you use the method I wrote about previously.

For any future versions of KDropBox please go to the OpenDesktop site and download from there. As of this writing, the latest version is version 0.4.0, so here are the direct SourceFourge links:

Ubuntu x64

Ubuntu x86 – this is the 32bit version

SUSE i586

SUSE x64

Source code for version 0.4.0

Once you have downloaded the correct version for yourself, install it. From here on out, I’m using you’re using Ubuntu, or in this case Kubuntu (the KDE version of Ubuntu).

If you know how to install it via command line, then you need no more help from me really. For everyone else, here’s how to install the file you just downloaded:

1) If you have single click open enabled (default), then single click on the file you just downloaded. Else you’ll probably have to double click.

2) GDebi, or whatever the program in called in Kubuntu is called, will open up your file and it’ll look something like this:

3) Click “Install Package”.

4) A password dialog box will pop up, enter the root password. This is required. If you don’t have root, ask your sys-admin to install this for you.

5) It’ll take a bit to install, nothing too long though. Once it’s done it’ll show something similar to this:

Now you can run the application easily! There are a few ways:

• Press ALT-F2 to bring up the run dialog and type kdropbox. Press enter to run
• Kmenu -> Applications -> Internet -> kdropbox
• Kmenu -> search for kdropbox -> click on the icon
• run from command line with > kdropbox

Assuming everything goes correctly you’ll be presented with a happy Dropbox window! (click the image to see larger version)

Notice the nifty system tray icons! Woot! Why are there two? Ones for setup ones for the actual drop box. Don’t worry about it for now. Enter your information in the “Dropbox Setup” window and you’ll be good to go! WOOHOO.

You can safely close the “Dropbox Preferences” window.

With that everything else should be self-explanatory.

Let me know if this, or the older method worked for you! Good luck!

There are a plethora of WordPress Plugins and addons for tracking statistics. This is great because you then get your pick of the litter, but the problem is if you install three different tracking plugins you will get three different results. So what should you do with these choices and discrepancies in results?

Not to worry, I have a few answers to calm your worries. I do not have a definitive answer as to what is THE best stats plugin, but that’s mostly because ‘best’ is very relative in this situation. Though, lets start with probably the best known system: Google Analytics.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics has more or less anything you’d need. It has stats by hour, day, month and year. Keyword tracking, ‘segments’ (for tracking different time periods and improvements in those times), and a heck of a lot more.

There are several plugin that will tie Google Analytics into wordpress. The best known ones are:

• Google Analyticator
• Ultimate Google Analytics
• Google Analytics for WordPress
• WP Google Analytics

So which should you choose? They all do the same basic thing: add google’s code to your blog automatically so you don’t have to. In each of them you will have to configure the plugins. At a bare minimum you will have to add your Analytics Account ID. This looks something like:

UA-XXXXXXX-Y

The 7 x’s are your account number, and the Y is the number of the website attached to your account. So your first website will be -1, your second one added will be -2 and so on. You can find it these numbers at: https://www.google.com/analytics/settings/home

If you’re website isn’t added, all you have to do is create a website “Profile” as Google calls it. There is a button on that home page on the bottom left. It’ll look something like the image on the right.

So which out of the plugins should you pick?

For the easiest choice, pick (what I did) and use: Google Analytics For WordPress. It’s ‘basic’ configuration is very simple. In the image below, you can see both the simple settings, the top potion, and the more advanced settings on the bottom. It’s extremely customizable with click tracking. So I find that very useful. It’s the one I recommend everyone to use.

Here are two great plugins which can help you get a better picture of your site’s visitors. I recommend installing both:

• WordPress.com Stats
• StatPress

WordPress.com Stats

This is one of the simplest looking plugins you’ll ever get.  It connects to your WordPress.com account. This, like the Google Analytics, is all off-site. If you don’t want to deal with Google, this plugin will give you the best overall picture day to day. It’s not as accurate as I’d like it to be. For whatever reason it misses somethings here and there. But it’s pretty good overall and I check it regularly for referrals, keywords and clicks.

StatPress

This plugin is … something different. It gives you such accurate results it’s scary. But, there is a huge problem with this plugin. It’s onsite, which I love, but it’s so un-Godly slow. The website works the same, but loading the statistics view is SO slow I can make myself a cup of tea and it’ll still be loading sometimes. Then again that can be attributed to my slow server …..

It tracks significantly more than WordPress.com Stats does and not as much as Google’s. But it’s more accurate than either.

It’s the best for getting a quick overview of the recent visitors and it’s fun to ‘spy’ on current visitors. The screenshot above is of the landing page. There are other views including an ‘overview’ screen, spy screeen, details …. it really has a lot and it’s fun to check out exactly what users are looking at my site! I highly recommend this one.

Those are the 3 plugins I primarily use. I use all three to get the best picture and just one isn’t good enough. Each has it’s pluses and minuses.

Recently I started using two new services/plugins: So I haven’t really tested either yet, but both seem promising:

• WassUP with VStats (these are two plugins. Wassup is the plugin and service. Vstats is an addon plugin)
  
• QuantCast

WassUP with Vstats gives hourly information and is super fast. Plus it’s rather pretty. Though the interface isn’t as nicely and orderly laid out like StatPress. Wassup With Vstats gives you a great report of the latest visitors, which is nice. But I by default usually want to know more information than just about the last 10 people!

But like I said, I haven’t had time to play with it much yet. I’ll let you all know when I do. So far this plugin sounds promising.

As for Quantcast, I signed up for it today so it won’t really show me much for a few days. They say 4-5 days before anything ‘useful’ shows up. Hm .. ok. But it is #2 in XMarks for “web analytics”. So it should be good. Only time will tell. Also, they have many ‘versions’.

One for Marketers, one for site owners/publishers, and a few others. So far I only signed up for the site owner version. We’ll see how that turns out and then I’ll try the For Marketers version.

If you liked this article then let me know! Subscribe to my newsletter to find out even more information and details!

In this day-in-age security issues are abundent, and Google is no exception from ‘issues’. Though that’s today’s topic, today’s topic is what you the user can do to secure your online life/identity. And it’s not all about just having a good password.

Over at SecurityMusings.com, they have short but good article about some things that many people forget about: A plan! Most people forget about this part of their daily security lives. Recently the writer at Digital Inspiration.com had his gmail account hacked! He is a geek and he still had it hacked! Yikes!

Though, from that experience he learned a lot and shared his enlightenment with us the site at this article.

Point #2 on Security Musings was that “You Don’t Have A Contingency Plan”:

You Don’t Have A Contingency Plan – Security plans by smaller companies, as well intentioned as they may be, could very well be lacking a well thought out contingency plan. Having a tested contingency plan is important so that you know your backups will work, your applications will be accessible, and you can get up and running in a reasonable time.

In light of that, DI.com says this:

#3. Take a paper and write down the following information about your Google Account. You will need this to verify your identify to Google in case someone else takes over your Google Account and the secondary email address associated with your account.

• The month and year when your created your Gmail / Google Account. You can look at the last page of your Gmail Inbox (or go to Sent Items) to get an approximate idea of the date when you created the account.
• If you created a Gmail account by invitation, write the email address of the person who first sent you that invite for Gmail. Use a search query like “in:all has invited you to open a free Gmail account” to find that invitation email.
• The email addresses of your most frequently emailed contacts (the top 5).
• The names of any custom labels that you may have created in your Gmail account.
• The day/month/year when you started using various other Google services (like AdSense, Orkut, Blogger, etc.) that are associated with the Google account that you are trying to recover. If you’re not certain about some of the dates, provide your closest estimate.

You should always know the full information. Why? Because if you get hacked, you will then know what to do, where to do and you will have all the available information to help you prove your point (or in the case of gmail, that you are you).

Other tips from the blog:

• Log-in to your Gmail / Google Account and associate a phone number. You’ll then receive an SMS text message whenever someone tries to recover your Google password.
• You should also consider copying emails from Gmail to another service (like Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail – it is effortless) so when your Gmail account is compromised, you at least have access to all your previous emails. Or you can configure a desktop email client like Outlook or Thunderbird with your Gmail account (via POP3 or IMAP) and thus you’ll have an automatic offline backup of your Gmail Inbox.

I rather like the idea of e-mail backup, though the one problem with that idea is space. Though, what you can do to do this automatically is open up another Gmail account and forward all your mail to that account.

Here are good Top Tips for keeping your Gmail safe:

• Don’t access your mail from public computers
• Use Google’s/Gmails HTTPS feature
• Use a long randomly generated password (you can use a software like Keepass to generate a secure password for you)
• Use separate passwords for different logins.
• To help remember all your passwords use a secure program like Keepass (it’s portable and free!)

Photo by akashgoyal @ Flicker .

Digital Inspiration Article [via Lifehacker.com]

Security Musings Article

XBMC is a beloved application by many. It is cross-platform, running on a multitude of systems ranging from the original Xbox to computers with graphic card processing enhancements. The application is a huge success, going toe to toe with the best that the commercial applications have to offer! One of the great reasons is due to it’s open source nature and mentality. Any and everyone can contribute. With this people are free to design for it, code for it and make it their own. And for a home entertainment center it is extremely important how your entrainment center looks when we bring over guests. It must have the right mood for you and your party.

Edit: Update: XBMC Beta 2 is now out in the Karmic PPA’s. You can read about it here.

One of the best things to do with XBMC is to run it as application ontop of Linux, particularly Kubuntu (or Ubuntu if you’re one of those ‘weird’ Gnome lovers ). Up until Kubuntu Jaunty we’ve been able to enjoy XBMC with ease, with Karmic 9.10 it’s a bit more difficult. It’s do-able but takes a little extra work. You can read by post here on how to install XBMC on Karmic.

Now why do I post something everyone knows already? Because not everyone knows this information from the XBMC blog:

Rather than wasting the time and effort required to update the current stable release of XBMC (Babylon) to work with Karmic, we’ve decided to focus on getting a new version out the door.  This means that until the next XBMC release, it is recommended that most users stick with Jaunty.  But there’s no need to panic; despite the fact that it’s taking a bit longer than we had hoped, development is shaping up nicely and the first 9.11 alphas should be rolling out very soon.

Reads: No XBMC in Karmic until new version is out. Darn … So we’ll have to wait a bit. How long? Dunno. We’ll have to wait and see. Hopefully their new version which they claim will have a plethora of new toys and joys will be out soon in Karmic for us to party to very soon.

Happy Partying!

No XBMC in Karmic Yet via the XBMC blog

Credit Card skimming sucks. Really sucks. Spotting it isn’t all to easy either. Thankfully NetworkWorld.com has a great article about it: Credit Card Skimming: How thieves can steal your card info without you knowing it.

Credit card skimming is a bit more prevelant than you might think. Even The Consumerist has a story or two about it recently. There isn’t too much we can do about it, except report it when we see it. Spotting it though can be really difficult. Best bet is to use your brains and be vigulant.

The real problem is when it happens to us. What can we do once it happens? Several things.

• Call the credit card company and report the fraud. Most companies will be very helpful with this. Tell them what happened, and ask for the money back that was stolen. Make sure you know which charges are legit and which are not. Makes things easier for them and you.
• Ask the CC company for a new card number. This will hopefully prevent the old number from working ever again.
• Ask for a freeze on your credit card. Can’t charge a card that has been frozen.
• Let the bank who owns the ATM where you thing your card got skimmed know of the machine. Also, let the people who manage the machine know. If it’s inside a store, let the store owners know. Also might be a good idea to let the police know.

Good luck and keep your eyes peeled!

Do you have a Wacom Tablet and Kubuntu? Lucky you, very easy to have it working really. Kubuntu comes prepackaged with Wacom Tablet support, but it’s not perfect.

It will work plug-n-play … but the tablet buttons wont work and you may have a few issues. As documented on the Wacom – Community Ubuntu Documentation site, you’ll be best off (for full features) just doing it the “manual” way.

So what is the manual way? The manual way means you will need root access to your xorg.conf file. This file usually sits in /etc/X11/ . But before you go off editing xorg.conf, make sure you install the wacom tools and nessisary files:

sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-input-wacom wacom-tools

This will install all the things required to enable the full features of the Wacom Tablet. After the install finishes, go into your xorg.conf file and edit it.

kdesudo kate /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Then add the following into the file:

Section "InputDevice"
  Driver        "wacom"
  Identifier    "stylus"
  Option        "Device"        "/dev/input/wacom" # USB ONLY?
#  Option        "Device"        "/dev/ttyS0"      # SERIAL ONLY
  Option        "Type"          "stylus"
#  Option        "ForceDevice"   "ISDV4"           # Tablet PC ONLY
  Option        "USB"           "on"               # USB ONLY
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
  Driver        "wacom"
  Identifier    "eraser"
  Option        "Device"        "/dev/input/wacom" # USB ONLY?
#  Option        "Device"        "/dev/ttyS0"      # SERIAL ONLY
  Option        "Type"          "eraser"
#  Option        "ForceDevice"   "ISDV4"           # Tablet PC ONLY
  Option        "USB"           "on"               # USB ONLY
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
  Driver        "wacom"
  Identifier    "cursor"
  Option        "Device"        "/dev/input/wacom" # USB ONLY?
#  Option        "Device"        "/dev/ttyS0"      # SERIAL ONLY
  Option        "Type"          "cursor"
#  Option        "ForceDevice"   "ISDV4"           # Tablet PC ONLY
  Option        "USB"           "on"               # USB ONLY
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
  Driver        "wacom"
  Identifier    "pad"
  Option        "Device"        "/dev/input/wacom"    # USB ONLY
#  Option        "Device"        "/dev/ttyS0"         # SERIAL ONLY
  Option        "Type"          "pad"
  Option        "USB"           "on"                  # USB ONLY
EndSection

# Uncomment the following section if you you have a TabletPC that supports touch
# Section "InputDevice"
#  Driver        "wacom"
#  Identifier    "touch"
#  Option        "Device"        "/dev/ttyS0"       # SERIAL ONLY
#  Option        "Device"        "/dev/input/wacom" # USB ONLY
#  Option        "Type"          "touch"
#  Option        "ForceDevice"   "ISDV4"            # Serial Tablet PC ONLY
#  Option        "USB"           "on"               # USB ONLY
# EndSection

Also, in the ServerLayout Section add this:

  InputDevice   "stylus"  "SendCoreEvents"
  InputDevice   "eraser"  "SendCoreEvents"
  InputDevice   "cursor"  "SendCoreEvents" # For non-LCD tablets only
  InputDevice   "pad"                      # For Intuos3/CintiqV5/Graphire4/Bamboo tablets

# InputDevice   "touch"   "SendCoreEvents" # Only a few TabletPCs support this type

Now all that’s left is to restart Xorg. Several ways to do that:

• Reboot
• Log off and then on again
• Ctrl-Alt-Backspace (this basically just kills X)
• as root: /etc/init.d/kdm restart

Pick your favorite, and get back into your session. You should now be able to use your pen as you like (with eraser and all) and the buttons on the pad. Best of luck to you and your Wacom’ing days.

The site for K/Ubuntu Wacom is: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wacom

Let’s say you finally got a new laptop and installed your favorite Linux distro on it. Only to find out that the new NVidia drivers have PowerMizer installed. Which is great for battery life, sucky for everything else. So what is PowerMizer? Straight from NVidia’s page:

As the world is faced with ever increasing demands on its resources, every opportunity to eliminate wasted power can help. NVIDIA® PowerMizer® technology is an intelligent power management solution available on all NVIDIA graphics processing units (GPUs) that can effectively extend battery life and reduce wasted power – all while providing performance on demand even while plugged in the wall.

Key Benefits

• Extends battery life
• Intelligently adapts performance based on a user’s needs so it saves power even when the notebook is plugged into the wall
• Runs in the background to provide the best balance of performance and battery life
• Helps the notebook run cooler and quieter under normal operating conditions by dissipating less heat in the GPU

So how do we “fix” PowerMizer so that it works correctly? Currently no solution exists as PowerMizer is a proprietary NV thing, so we have a few workarounds to get your laptop gaming at it’s best.

The site NVnews.net has a great forum post all about this problem. It’s a widespread problem with only a few plausible workarounds. Most work for most, but your milage may vary. See what works for you. Straight from the site, here are a few things that worked for me:

• Adding Option “PixmapCacheSize” “200000″ to the Device section in your xorg.conf should improve 2D quite a bit. (or “300000″, try one and the other, see what works for you)
• Option “OnDemandVBlankInterrupts” “True”

One of the best changes you can do (or so the site says) is this:

nvidia-settings -a InitialPixmapPlacement=2 -a GlyphCache=1

You will have to do that at every boot. So, easiest solution is to just stick that into a script and have it run at every boot (or login). For me, I put it into “nvfixes.sh” into my “~/.kde/Autostart/” folder. Here is my whole script:

#!/bin/bash
nvidia-settings -a InitialPixmapPlacement=2 -a GlyphCache=1

The website also states that you can change the settings in KDE to use “Shared Memory”. You can do it in the following way (in KDE 4.1 of course):

• Open System Settings
• Desktop
• Desktop Effects
• Advanced Options (Enable desktop effects has to be checked)
• Change OpenGL Mode to Shared Memory

Word of caution: Make sure DIRECT RENDERING is enable before you do that. The website claims that you will experience corruption if you do otherwise.

From my experience so far, the Shared Memory change will make KDE work a bit smoother/faster(?). But the caviet here is that it requires a lot of memory. So if you don’t have more than 2gb, it might freeze sometimes when trying to do something (ie switch desktops) because it has to reload things into memory. This never happens in the “Texture From Pixmap” mode (though this mode has it’s own problems for me).

When other fixes are found I will try to keep us updated. If anyone finds another solution, please let me know. The forum post can be found here: http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=115916&highlight=powermizer

If you’ve migrated to the new Kubuntu 8.10 which came out on October 30th, you definitelly noticed the changes. Kubutu 8.10 runs on a brand spanking new KDE 4.1. Plasma interferce, built in compiz, fresh looking and feeling. It’s great, unless you use hotkeys.

For some reason KDE 4.1 (in Kubuntu at least) does not play nice with the hotkeys. And my hotkeys I mean any application shortcuts or what not you have. For example, I used to have “Ctrl-Alt-M, K” to open up Konqueror (I was using multi-level keybindings). Now I’m forced to use only a simple “Ctrl-Meta-K” because multi-level keybindings don’t work for whatever odd reason. Also, application keybindings like that are now rather hidden and hard to get to AND once you find them, it’s a bit of work to get them to work. Here is how I got it to work, after the jump.

After a bit of google’ing, I came across a rather interesting page (here) on the Ubuntu forums. It’s a whole slew of complains about it. One user (flying_icarus) had a interesting suggestion that worked for ‘me’. Other’s said it didn’t work, for some it did. Try it and see if it works.

1) Start menu editor, assign a shortcut to an application (i.e. for Firefox, I chose “Meta+F”)

To start the ‘start’ menu editor, type the following into the run menu or into the command line:

> kmenuedit

That should do the trick. Find your application (in the examples case, Firefox). The next step gets a bit annoying to do, so many do a few applications at once.

2) Open system settings applet, go into keyboard & mouse under computer administration, choose Keyboard shortcuts and in the fall-down menu instead of “kmix” or something chosen by default select “khotkeys”

An entry “K Menu – firefox.desktop” should now be present. Now, it can happen that it doesn’t appear instantly, or at all untill you start menu editor again and save the configuration again (even if it wasn’t altered), I’m not sure exactly when it appeared. ~/.kde4/share/config/khotkeysrc is instantly updated with the new commands and shortcuts, but it takes some trial & error to get the entries to appear in khotkeys configuration. It may also help to terminate any running khotkeys process and start it again (i.e. from konsole with “pkill -15 khotkeys; khotkeys &” without the quotes and definitely without any sudo prepended).

Essentially, you fiddle with alternatly starting menu editor and system settings untill it appears.

Also, do NOT forgot to close out of the System Settings window completely. For some reason, things did not refresh for me until I restarted khotkeys and closed the settings window (not just back, actually closing the window [Alt-F4 or whatever]).

3) The new “K Menu – firefox.desktop” has preselected the custom shortcut which is “none”, but the default shortcut is “Meta+F” as set in the menu editor in step 1). Now you need to select the default shortcut for this item and confirm to “reassign from menu editor”. After this the shortcut should start working.

If that does not make the hotkeys work, try restarting the khotkey deamon again. That helped me the most.  Sadly multi-level keybindings don’t work yet, but oh well. I’ll get used to this single level somehow. If were is a better solution AND if I find it I’ll let ya’ll know asap. Otherwise keep me posted

Getting support from Dell has never been a fun thing, going to another country makes it even less fun. As it turns out, the only way to get support overseas is to fill out a “international tag transfer” request form. This form will ‘somehow’ allow you get support.

I was talking with Dell tech support in Poland (all of one person it seems), and was informed that this proccess can take up to 20 days. Well great, the heck am I going to do without a laptop for that long of a time?!

Don’t have much of a choice do I? We’ll see how ‘actual’ support will work once this transfer is complete.

Got VMWare installation problems? VmWare complaining during compile that it can’t find libraries that DO exist? Got a x64 bit system? Then this is the right patch for you!

The vmware-any-any patch allows you to complile vmware on a system where it usually won’t be able to, note though this won’t work for all problems. You can click on the more link to read a bit more about the Any-any patch and what it does (and doesn’t do). And without further adue, here is a convenient link to the 116 any any patch.

vmware-any-any-update-116

So what is the “VmWare-any-any” patch anyway? It is a patch that replaces (or patches is the better word) several files in the vm install directory. These updates files now allow you to easily compile VmWare on a 2.6.x kernel where before it failed with this possible error:

…./compat_kernel.h:21: error: expected declaration specifiers

You’re milage and scenery will vary, so give the patch a try to see if it helps. So how do you use this patch? Simple!

1. Attempt to install (and compile) VmWare server
2. Have the compile fail
3. Download the above any-any update (and extract)
4. From the command line, run (with super user privileges, ie as root): runme.pl
   1. Probably a good idea to have perl installed for this
5. Follow the steps from runme.pl all the way through compile
6. Enjoy custom compiled VmWare server modules!

Now, I know there is a any-any-update-117 out. Though I do NOT recommend it. Why? Most of the ones I’ve found seemed like just repackaged 115 versions … so I have no clue what is with that. 116 has very faithfully worked for me so far, thus I recommend it.

Good luck and happy VM’ing.