Adobe Buzzword Beta

Recently i looked at Microsoft SkyDrive as online storage mechanism and actively use Google Docs to hold a lot of my documents. Adobe is coming out with a similar offering in terms of online document storage and collaboration.

Main Features

• Its an online word processor
• It allows you to store and access your documents from anywhere (internet access permitting)
• Its got an excellent collaboration functionality – allows multiple authors to make changes to the same document
• Key to any collaboration tool is tracking changes, versioning and reviewing edits. It comes with an tools to do all these things.
• Ability to add comments to the document inline as well as controlling access to documents/functions through roles.
• It supports image imbedding and formatting words around these images.

Right.. so lets take this for a quick test drive…

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GRUB Menu tips for Linux

If you have installed Linux (any format) onto your machine, either standalone or as part of a dual boot system, you would have seen the GRUB menu pop up. This screen usually appears when you start your machine and offers you a choice of operating system to install.

Sometimes, you may want to hide this menu (ie, go straight to the login screen) or show it if it is hidden or change the amount of time it stays up.

This article shows you how to change the above parameters. While you can use packages such as "start up manager" to do your changes, I wanted to edit the configuration files manually just so that we can get a bit of practice on how to use the terminal window and editing text files :)

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Windows Live SkyDrive – 25 gigs of space for free!

One of the more popular online storage providers out there currently is Google with their GoogleDocs application. This is a pretty cool application that allows you to upload and share all manner of documents.

Microsoft has done it one better with their latest offering called Microsoft Skydrive. Similar in concept, it’s one of the services provided by Windows Live that gives you your very own online drive where you can store just about anything.

More impressively, the space you are allowed to store is a mind boggling 25gigs! Thats a whole lot of space :)

So what would you store in these 25 gigs? Here is an idea.. practically everyone out there now has a digital camera of their own (my four year old has her very own.. in pink). And how many people out there keep back ups of their photos? I bet a lot of folks out there have no back up strategy and dump all their photos on their local hard drive only to lose it in the next boom-event (ie, virus, hard drive failure, accidentally formatting your hard drive while trying to install Linux on a separate drive – yeah.. that happens too ;) ).

So how do you get access to this free space and use it as an alternative to Google Docs and other sharing systems (such as Picasa and/or Flickr, etc)?

Right.. lets start shall we? 

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Microsoft IE 8.0 Browser Security best of all browsers?

Erm.. surely it can’t be true? Where has Firefox and Chrome gone? Could this be just another marketing hype released to coincide the release of Microsoft IE 8.0?

 

How to use SecureShare in GBridge

As part of a series of how to articles for GBridge, lets look at how to share files across your sessions. There are many ways to keep files stored in a central server (such as Google Docs) to access whenever you wish to, however, this method is slightly different. For newbies like me, its an easy way to get access to your documents stored on one of your computers from another. For example, if you have some nice mp3’s stored at home, instead of putting them onto a USB drive and bringing them into work, you can share your mp3 folder on your home machine and listen to them on the fly at work :)

The types of files that can be accessible is varied and includes popular media files such as mp3, flash video, images and even provides functionality to show the images as a slideshow :) The cool thing about this method of sharing is that because the files are not stored in a central server, you are accessing them directly from your shared PC. This means that your documents/files never stored on machines unless you authorize them :)

Right, so lets begin by creating a simple share that can be accessed from your “work” machine.

Assumptions

1. You have already set up two connections (follow my earlier guide if you need a refresher).
2. You have a folder on your home pc which contains the files you wish to access from work.

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Internet Explorer 8 is now out..

Microsoft just released a new version of it’s web browser today. Packed with features and add-on’s, its trying hard to retain its user base. A lot of people prefer Firefox as their browser, but the fact remains that with the advent of technology such as Ajax etc, a lot of developers out there are trying to provide a richer user experience and sometimes, providing this level of interactivity results in issues when rendering the pages in any browser other than IE.

It will be interesting to see if this new version is smaller, faster and more secure than the previous versions. I thought I’d upgrade my work machine just to see how easy it is to upgrade and see if there are any major differences in browsing experiences.

I’m assuming at this point that most people out there are now on IE7, so this will be an upgrade.

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New Version of Google Chrome out

For those who may not know, Google Chrome is Google’s version of a web browser. Currently the market is dominated by clients such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari, etc.

Chrome is Googles’ attempt to create a light and fast browser first released around 6 months ago.

While its still a relatively new application and subject to little quirks, I’ve very quickly made it my primary browser in terms of general use :)

Note: The latest version of Chrome may not play nice with Windows 7 (read: slow), so please be aware of that if you are interested in installing the latest version and you are running Windows 7 beta.

We will write up a quick article on how to download, install and configure Google Chrome soon, but for now, here is the news item regarding its latest version:

From Reuters (Mar 18):

Google released a new version of its Chrome Web browser on Tuesday, as the search giant continues its efforts to get a foothold in a market dominated by Microsoft Corp.

Small Basic Introduction

I stumbled across Small Basic on DevLabs. And its catch phrase caught my attention: “Small Basic is a project that’s aimed at bringing ‘fun’ back to programming.” I wasn’t a believer at first, and I simply had to try it.

It turns out that its simplicity is captivating. Sure the functionality is limited, but it was simple enough that almost anybody can use it. Start coding, then click Run, and you get instant results. I think this is the perfect tool to get somebody to be interested in programming. One of our colleagues was looking for something to get his kid started in programming, and there is no need for him to look further :)

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How to Connect to your Home Machine via Gbridge

There are many reasons to connect to your home pc while you are at work. And there are many methods. As a lot of people have Windows Vista or XP at home, methods such are Remote Desktop Connections may work well, but can require fiddling with firewalls, and configuration knowledge that most of us technology newbies may not know much about.

Connecting via RDP (Remote Desktop) also “takes over” the PC at home so its not suitable for desktop sharing (ie, there is someone at home looking at what you are doing). The PC is effectively “locked out” while you are connected remotely to it. This is frequently the case when my wife needs a little help in doing something and I just can’t talk her through on the phone.

This is also valuable when “assisting” people such as parents or grandparents. Have you tried talking your grandparents through setting up their email application at home? If you have, then you may understand the pain heh.

So what is GBridge? Its an application that sits on both your work pc and home pc and allows you to remotely control one or the other. It has many other uses such as file sharing etc, but the purpose of this article is to detail out how to get the remote desktop sharing working. You can go here for additional information about its functions if you are interested.

Anyway, lets begin.

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DreamLinux no more.. bring on Linux Mint

Well, the experiment with DreamLinux didn’t last for very long. While the install went well, I found the following issues around getting it to work with my Dell 9300 laptop:

• The wireless network drivers didn’t work off the install – i had to use ndiswrapper to load up the windows version of the wireless adapter’s drivers.
• World of Warcraft didn’t work with Wine. That was pretty much the deal breaker for me. While others may have got WoW to work successfully with DreamLinux, I unfortunately couldn’t make it work – even after trying numerous suggested solutions.
• The XFCE windows manager, while being good and lite, was just a bit too different for my liking. I am just not used to the button placing and the windows elements seem to be floating in the windows.

In the end, i knew i had to go back to Gnome as my main environment. Back to Distrowatch and onto Linux Mint I went..

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