8 Useful Google Chrome/Chromium Extensions (for Firefox fans)

When Google Chrome first came out, I found it much too basic, too lacking in features, however it has since grown much more useful since lots of extensions have been available. I'm using Chromium (the source code of which filters down to Chrome) on my old Compaq N400C (850Mhz/256MB RAM) laptop. I've recently upgraded the hard drive (from a 4200RPM 30GB to a faster 5400RPM 40GB drive) and did a fresh install of Ubuntu 10.0.4 LTS. Having found the Gnome desktop to be a little sluggish, I've installed the Lubuntu (LXDE) desktop, which comes with Chromium. Lubuntu looks great and works at a reasonable speed. I still use Firefox sometimes, but Chromium is lighter on resources and not as basic as Midori. I've been searching for extensions similar to my Firefox add-ons and have found these so far:

Adblock

An essential extension! Though not quite as good as AdblockPlus in Firefox, this is the next best thing for wacker-moling those pesky ads.

Flashblock

Again, it's not quite as good as the Firefox equivalent, but good enough to prevent my old laptop from grinding to a halt under flash web elements.

Chromed Bird

On my desktop I love using Gwibber for keeping up with my Twitter (and Facebook) feed. However it's a little too resource hungry for my ageing laptop, so this is a good substitute. For Firefox, the equivalent add-on is Echofon.

Xmarks

I've been using this in Firefox for awhile, so I'm glad to have it in Chrome/Chromium, the only feature it lacks compared with the Firefox version is it lacks password sync. Syncing open tabs is a fairly new and useful feature.

Chromisious (aka Delicious Bookmarks)

Another useful bookmarking addon. I've been using in Firefox addon equivalent for a while.

Tampermonkey

For those who need their Greasemonkey scripts this extension gives "a little bit more Greasemonkey compatibility"

Addthis

This extension/add-on is for sharing URLs to social networking sites, automatically creating a short URL, and is available for Chrome/Chromium and Firefox.

StumbleUpon

One of my favourite ways to while the hours away when bored!

Update: Google Chrome has just reached the landmark stable version

Ubuntu 10.0.4 LTS: First impressions

10.0.4 LTS (codename: Lucid Lynx) is the latest version of Ubuntu, released just a few days ago. I did a fresh install on a HP D530 desktop (Pentium 4 2.8ghz, 2GB RAM, 40GB hard drive) and also upgraded my home-built desktop (AMD Athlon 64 2.4ghz skt 939, 3GB RAM). Here's my thoughts so far:





















Sometimes it's the little things that impress me about a new OS release. For instance, during a fresh install, Ubuntu detected my time-zone so I didn't have to carefully pinpoint it on the map. There's now an installer slideshow while you wait the usually short (around 15 mins on an average PC) time until it completes. Once it finished and rebooted I was amazed at the boot time, booting in seconds, I barely had time to admire the new boot-splash screen!





















The default desktop now looks pretty slick, feeling similar to OSX, especially with the default wallpaper and title-bar button layout. However, if like me you prefer it how it used to be, it's fairly easy to change. (click the screenshot for a better view).


1. Press ALT + F2 to get a run box
2. type gconf-editor and press return
3. Navigate to Apps --> metacity --> general
4 Find the entry "button_layout"
5. Double click "close,minimize,maximise" on the right-hand side.
6. Edit the entry so it reads: "menu:minimize,maximize,close"
7. hit enter and you're done :)


One of the main features of this release is the new MeMenu. Once you have setup your chat accounts in Empathy (now the default messenger client) or Pidgin (which i still prefer), you can now update your Facebook and/or Twitter status from the text box in the MeMenu. Ideal for a quick tweet! By default it updates both FB and Twitter, but if you want, you can set just one in Gwibber, Ubuntu's default social media tool. I've been using it since 9.10/Karmic, and it has become even better in Lucid. Tweets now show up in speech bubbles and it's easier to differentiate between others and your own tweets. My only niggles are the buttons to select just Facebook or Twitter are too similar in shade. It is also still impossible to retweet a full, 140 character tweet, as it counts the 'RT @username' bit as part of this tweet.

MeMenu:

















Gwibber:






















Overall, 10.0.4 feels like a slicker, improved OS over the previous 9.10 (Karmic) release, a worthy upgrade, especially considering it is an LTS (Long Term Support) which means you won't have to upgrade for a long time if you don't want to. The only other niggle I had to attend to the volume control applet to the main panel was missing from startup items (add gnome-volume-control-applet to startup items), but easily fixed. This is the first time I haven't immediately changed the theme on a fresh install. The slick new theme is a refreshing change from the previous yucky brown releases, unless you were the minority who really were into brown. I should also mention the Ubuntu Software Centre has improved since last time, it feels a lot easier to find and install packages now. There's also the new Ubuntu One Music Store integrated into Rhythmbox, that I have yet to fully play with but seems to be a good alternative to the iTunes store. Ubuntu One is more integrated this time and actually connected at login every time, unlike in Karmic.

Download Ubuntu here.

Choosing hardware and software for your next Linux computer.

Software

When choosing to buy or build a computer, I would first off think about what you want it for, and then choose the software then the right hardware. If you going to be doing professional graphics/audio/video work, I'd consider a Mac, as there are some good second hand deals out there. My Powermac G4 (dual 1Ghz MDD, with 2GB ram, room for 4 IDE hard drives) is still a good usable machine, even for light multimedia usage. The only real reason to use Windows is really for games, although there are quite a few, mostly non-commercial, games for Linux and Mac. Even then you can still dual-boot a PC or a Mac. I only boot into Windows for the occasional game of GTA SA and Need For Speed games. You can also play a certain amount of Windows games using WINE. For native Linux games, DJL is a great Steam-like game manager that makes it easy to find what you want.

If you need a machine for an everyday desktop work, web browsing, playing music, media server, and everything else, you can't go wrong with Linux. For me, Ubuntu is the most user-friendly distro. It's the one I have had the best experience with and I feel like it keeps getting better. Feel free to play the distro feild, as it costs nothing but a little download usage. In fact you can get an Ubuntu disc sent to your door for free! Distrowatch is a good place to find the right distro for you. These days there's no reason not to go 64 bit, unless your hardware doesn't support it, as it supports more than 4GB of ram and can give a performance increase.


Hardware

When building or buying hardware for use with Linux, do a bit of Googling to see if anyone has had problems with your chosen hardware. At the moment Nvidia is the best choice for a smooth Linux experience. You'll be rewarded with good performance and lovely compiz goodness! I would avoid onboard graphics as the performance is not so good and it usually borrows from your RAM. Motherboard-wise you can't go wrong generally, except with specific makers e.g. Foxconn. For wireless cards, I have had the best luck with those cards with ralink chipsets. I've had several Edimax and Belkin cards (USB, PCMCIA and USB) that work well with Linux. I have to say I don't like USB dongle-type devices anymore as i have had them overheat and die on me. Most soundcards seem to work OK with Linux, some better than others. Despite problems in the past most Creative cards work fine, though you might need to research a little with X-Fi cards. For printers, HP and Epson work well, avoid Lexmark/Dell. Similarly as HP/Compaq support Linux a lot of there hardware works well with it. There's a good list of hardware makers that support Linux here. Also have a look at the Linux Hardware Compatibility database. After choosing the main hardware, choose a suitable case to house it in, with a decent power supply.

Create a new XFS+ partition in empty space on OSX, without spending any money!

Having recently cloned my Power-Mac G4's failing 80GB drive to a larger 120GB drive (maximum size allowed for it's onboard IDE), I needed to make use of the empty 38GB or so of space. Unfortunately Apple's drive utility doesn't have the ability to make a new partition in this space, it's pretty basic really. Having Googled around for a freeware OSX partition tool, it seems there isn't any, all I could find were paid for partition software and some complicated command-line tutorials.

So here's how to get your HDD space back:

1. Attach the drive via a USB/IDE adapter or drive caddy. Make sure it is set to Master.

2. Plug it in to a PC running Linux (I use Ubuntu), the Gparted live CD, or any other live CD with gparted.

3. Open gparted and select the correct drive (your XFS+ OSX boot drive should be visible and your free space). Right click and select unmount.

4. Right click in the free space and select create a new primary partition and select FAT32 as the filesystem, then click apply.

5. Safely remove or just shutdown your PC, then remove the drive from it's adapter or caddy.

6. Re-attach it your Mac, (making sure the drive's jumper is set to the correct position) and power it on.

7. Open Disk Utility and select your new FAT32 partition, it will be named something unfriendly.

8. Select Erase, and set the filesystem to XFS+ (Journaled), then it will format and it will auto-mount on your desktop.

9. Re-name the new volume as something useful. I named mine 'storage' as it's handy for downloads, software etc.

Job Done!

A Beginners Guide To Ushare (Using Ubuntu)

This is a brief guide to getting UPNP sharing with Ushare working on Ubuntu, though should work on Debian and Debian-based distros.

Installing:

In a terminal, type:

sudo aptitude install ushare
(then enter your password when prompted)

(you could also open synaptic and search for and double-click ushare)

Quick configuration:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure ushare

Go through the dialogues, you can keep the default name 'ushare', then tell it where it will find your videos or audio, with a space between directories, something like:

/home/carl/music,/home/carl/video

..and that's the basic configuration done.

Advanced Configuration

To get ushare streaming to your Xbox 360 you need to edit the config file:

sudo gedit /etc/ushare.conf

and find and edit this line so it reads

ENABLE_XBOX=yes

Also enable the web interface:

# Enable Web interface (yes/no)
ENABLE_WEB=yes



..and then restart ushare with:

sudo invoke-rc.d ushare restart

You can now access the web interface by pointing your browser to
http://ip-address-of-server:49152/web/ushare.html

You will also need to invoke that command when you add more music/videos (or reboot) to make them appear in ushare, or refresh from the web interface.

You may need to do a little more fiddling, I don't have an Xbox to try it with, there's a more advanced guide for ushare and Xbox 360 here. and also here

For accessing your ushare server from another Linux desktop, I found a tutorial using djmount.

Update: Djmount is now available in the Ubuntu repositories, so there is no need to compile it, just 'sudo apt-get install djmount'

Here's how to start djmount on startup, reposted here just in case the source disappears:The following steps do work for autostarting djmount under ubuntu:
cd /etc/network/if-up.d
gksudo gedit ./djmount

contents of script:
#!/bin/sh

# Not for loopback!
[ "$IFACE" != "lo" ] || exit 0

Then do
  
sudo modprobe fuse
cd /media
sudo mkdir upnp
sudo djmount -o allow_other /media/upnp
sudo chmod 755 ./djmount
sudo chown root ./djmount
sudo chgrp root ./djmount

Accessing a Sandisk Sansa Clip+ with Banshee on Ubuntu 9.10

I've been given a Sandisk Sansa Clip+ 4GB mp3 player for my birthday. I requested the Clip+ as it has a microSD card slot (that supports up to 16GB SDHC cards) and I have an 8Gb card to use with it. I am amazed by the clarity of it's sound for the price. The player supports Mp3, WMA, FLAC and Ogg (no AAC), and arrived in a large box compared to the tiny player itself:





















It supports replaygain and is gapless, is much cheaper than an Ipod shuffle and has a nice bright little screen. As you can see it looks like an ipod that's shrunk in the wash!






















I set the player to use MSC (Mass Storage Class) in it's settings (you can also use MTP - Media Transfer Protocol) and plugged it in to my desktop machine that has Ubuntu 9.10 64bit. With MSC, the player and it's microSD card show up as drives, however it took a little searching on the net to get the Clip+ to show up as a device in Banshee. I'm using the newest version from the Banshee Team Repos (named 'banshee-1'). Eventually i found a solution here, and here. You need to create a text file in the root of the player and it's card called ".is_audio_player" (without the qoutes). The period is essential to make it a hidden system file, press CTRL+H in Nautilus, to show hidden files. Copy and paste this text into each file, then save:

audio_folders=Music/
folder_depth=2
output_formats=audio/mp3

This makes sure the files go in the right folders and with the right format, mp3 in this case. Then safely remove the player, unplug and plug back in, and now it will show up in Banshee in it's side pane like so:

Additional Links:

Read CNET's review of the Clip+

Finding An Alternative to Winamp, Foobar or iTunes for Ubuntu 9.10

Whenever i am on Windows I prefer Winamp for general use. It has reasonable tagging, good album art and info support, the media library is excellent and it's gapless. For transcoding music files i use Foobar. As a player it is good and has great tagging support but lacks decent visualisations and is tricky to setup. On my Mac i use iTunes mainly as i can access my Firefly (mt-daapd) servers. However, on Windows iTunes is a different, more hideously bloated, beast. I used to really like Amarok 1.4 for awhile before i switched to Exaile, and I'm not keen on Amarok 2. I find it lacks the features I liked in 1.4 and does not fit in well with Gnome, it being a KDE program. There are not many gapless audio player for Linux other than Aqualung, which is a little bit too bare-bones for me, and struggles with large music collections and also Rhythmbox is now gapless. There is also Music Player Daemon but it can be difficult to setup.


What I require in a Linux music player:

• Gapless playback
• Last.FM support
• Album cover support (from embedded and/or folder image, and ability to download covers)
• Good Mp3 tag support and tag editor
• A context view with information from the internet (lyrics etc)
• Reasonable Gnome integration.
• To just play music, i have VLC or Totem for video files.
• Shuffle mode and custom playlists - especially Recently Added)
• Decent visualisations.
• Firefly (mt-daapd) support
  

The Linux alternatives:


Exaile
















Exaile was my choice of media player for the Linux desktop, until now. I have just upgraded to Ubuntu 9.10 and sadly it has version 3.0.1 of Exaile. In this version there is a very annoying bug. Exaile refuses to close, even when I attempt to close the player's tray icon it just sits there. if i have the icon disabled and close the player, the music will just keep going without the GUI. When this bug will be fixed is uncertain. It's a shame as if it was not for that bug it would be great player. Consequently I am now looking for a replacement media player, at least until Exaile is fixed.


Rhythmbox















Rhythmbox is many users' choice as it's the default Gnome music player, however it has it's problems. it takes a long time to scan my music as i have a very large collection but that's not the biggest problem. Unfortunately the main problem with Rhythmbox is it keeps scanning non-audio files and giving error messages, and trying to download codecs for them. It does this on startup whether it has already found them before or not. This is made worse by the lack of a manual rescan library function.

Banshee















Banshee seemed to take the longest (more than an hour!) of all the players I've tried to scan my music collection as it found my 31299 tracks (i actually have around 27500) then re-scanned them for some reason. Visually, the interface is a bit messy at first but once i had it configured to how i like it, it's fine. It is similar to Rhythmbox really, except with a better interface. the only problem I have at the moment is it is not submitting songs to Last.Fm. I should also say I tested using the Beta from the Banshee Team Repository.


Listen Media Player
















This is the first time I have use Listen Media Player for a long time, and it looks a lot better than it used to. Once I set my music folder in it's preferences, Listen scanned my music collection. it was quicker than Banshee but not as quick as Exaile, and gave good feedback along it's progress bar, although it used quite a bit a lot resources doing it. Upon trying to play however it became unresponsive and my CPU peaked out at 100% and memory usage skyrocketed, then Listen crashed with a python error. When I restarted the player, it had to rescan the media library again *sigh*. I managed to get it to play again but with such high resource usage that I had to close it down. So no joy there, which is a shame as it does have a gapless setting.


Conclusion

Well for now it seems I'm going to stick with Rhythmbox but only because Last.Fm scrobbling actually works otherwise I would choose Banshee. I have disabled automatic scanning of tracks though to avoid it trying to find codecs for non-audio files everytime it starts up! If the bugs in Exaile are worked out then I'll switch to it instead. For editing tags in mp3s I use Mp3tag in Wine, and for normalising volume i use Mp3gain in Wine. I long for a decent substitute for Winamp/Foobar on Linux.

Update: I managed to get last.fm plugin to submit tracks on Banshee - it's now vieing to be my choice of player on Linux! My only annoyances: lack of a visible Skip button on the interface - where is it? EDIT: When you disable Shuffle the Skip forward button appears. I use the Cairo Dock Audio Player applet or the media buttons on my keyboard to control the player. the best thing about Banshee is the cover fetcher, it is a lot better than Rhythmbox's.

Resource Usage:

This is the output of 'top' on the command-line, when each player is playing an mp3 (separately):

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND

16998 carl 20 0 779m 141m 22m S 11.9 7.1 64:39.88 banshee-1

21623 carl 20 0 817m 120m 26m S 5.9 6.0 0:19.64 rhythmbox

10958 carl 20 0 565m 27m 15m S 4.6 1.4 0:25.57 aqualung

12041 carl 20 0 1212m 355m 17m R 89.7 17.7 23:00.49 listen

4579 carl 20 0 743m 219m 20m R 94.7 10.9 0:27.39 exaile

Notice the astronomically high resource usage of Listen!

Update 2 - 3/11/09: For some reason, possibly because it uses Mono, I've recently found Banshee (1.6 beta) to be using more and more ram the longer it is left usually around 900mb and peaking the CPU quite a bit, I hope this is fixed soon. Until then I'll keep looking for alternatives.

Update 3 - 29/01/10: I've settled on Gmusicbrowser for now as it does just about everything I want, although transfering to USB drives is a bit cludgy.