sudo add-apt-repository ppa:olivier-berten/misc
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install mysql-workbench-gpl

Recent developments have only confirmed this suspision:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Facebook
• http://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2011/08/08/facebooks-privacy-issues-are-even-deeper-than-we-knew/
• http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/ln2e0/facebook_patent_to_track_users_even_when_they_are/

Instead I will concentrate all of my content inside this blog (including as a backup for other social services I create). I believe the control over my own content is important enough for me to warrant the extra effort.

Facebook Delete

As the saying goes: ‘You are not a Facebook User – you are the Product’

  by  cogdogblog 

Thanks to a discussion on the Google Help forum (where 100′s of people wonder how this could have been called ‘upgrade’) I discovered this hack.

1. Create an empty document in LibreOffice or OpenOffice (MS Office is also reported to work)
2. Change the default styles (using Format –> Styles and Formatting (F11))
3. Upload the resulting document to Google Apps (Note: you will need to convert to GoogleDocs) and use as a template

To get the ARIAL font on Ubuntu I also had to do install the MS Fonts package

1. Why can’t you have Microsoft Office ?
2. I can not find ‘xyz’ font on this …. – why ?

I have managed (after some time) to convince my kids that there is no need for having a particular Word Processing Software and they are much better off knowing the concepts of text processing rather than some particular office package. Unfortunately I have had no look convincing many teachers that they should follow a similar principle ….

However the second is a bit harder as some schools specify the font that has to be used (go figure). The fact that this might not be available for all and choosing an open font family has obviously not occurred to many schools.

Hence the need to install some of these fonts:

sudo apt-get install msttcorefonts
#to refresh the font cache (or you can reboot)
sudo fc-cache -fv

Note: You will have to enable the “multiverse” repositories in “Software Sources”

We are currently reviewing the following services:

• http://www.adbrite.com/
• http://chitika.com
• http://www.admob.com/
• https://pubcenter.microsoft.com/Login
• http://advertisingcentral.yahoo.com/publisher/index
• http://www.clicksor.com/
• http://www.infolinks.com/
• http://adhitz.com/en
• http://buysellads.com/

Once we have some results I will update this post. Please add your comments should you have any (good or bad) experiences with similar services.

Hat tip goes to the following listing pages to get started:
http://generoustroopers.com/websites/the-biggest-list-of-google-adsense-alternatives/
http://www.tech-faq.com/alternatives-to-google-adsense.html

Unfortunately this is not yet a very straight process on most Operating Systems and Ubuntu is no difference.

Edit: all the commands need to be run with root privileges. so either run “sudo su” or prefix all with “sudo ” (thanks to Paul for the comment below)

Remove Evolution (thanks to Grant Likely for the comment below)

apt-get remove evolution evolution-indicator

Install Gnome-Gmail

apt-get install gnome-gmail

Create entry for gnome-gmail using your preferred text editor and copy the following into the created file:

vim /usr/share/indicators/messages/applications/gnome-gmail
#insert this line
/usr/share/applications/gnome-gmail.desktop

Edit this file: /usr/share/applications/gnome-gmail.desktop and add the following line:

MimeType=application/mbox;message/rfc822;x-scheme-handler/mailto

Update desktop database for Gnome Gmail to be recognised as an email program:

update-desktop-database

Go to System Settings –> Preferred Applications and choose gnome-gmail as the default e-mail client

Log out for the changes to the indicator to take effect (or kill gnome-indicator process).

http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.xml?screen_name=[screen_name]

This will show the users timeline in XML format revealing the Status ID in the XML result. The following URL can be used to then construct the permalink to the specific status update:

http://twitter.com/[screen_name]/status/[status_id]

Not a particular hard thing to do, but annoying and time consuming if you have to remember. Hope this saves somebody some time.

Enjoy !

Unfortunately since there is approximately 17.000km between us, there was a limited amount I could do to help him get set up. So my eldest sister (as she always has to do) ended up having to help out instead. Finding hardware was the easy part and very cheap these days (and since it was bought online I could help with the technical aspects). However the machines in that particular shop came as white-boxes without an Operating System (which is a good thing in my book).

So rather than forking out another 90 or so Euro for Windows Vista, which I personally dislike with a passion, I suggested her to download Ubuntu and give it a try. If things did not work out you could always get it later. While I personally have a very pragmatic approach to OS selection and no particular ‘religious’ views when it comes to Linux, I do generally choose an Open Source alternative over a Proprietary system all other things being equal. I was a bit worried about people not being familiar with it, but in the case of my father he has never had any experience with computers so did not have any Windows ‘baggage’. And his usage would mainly be for Internet access, e-mail and maybe some comms (Skype and similar).

But the ease of setting up the whole system surprised even myself. My sister only had one problem with the whole install. She burned the downloaded ISO file to CD (as .iso) rather than using some burning software to convert the ISO to a CD image. The rest was smooth sailing and did not even involve any intercontinental phone calls to myself. When it came to connecting the machine to the Internet I got a call asking me what she needed to do to access the net. When I replied if she had already tried to open the browser I was told ‘no’. When she opened Firefox everything was already working.

As a result of this she is now converting her old computer (which she has unsuccessfully tried to re-install WindowsXP for months because of driver problems) to Ubuntu

The 90 Euros saved on the Operating System will go to a webcam and some peripherals so the grandkids in Australia can hopefully see Opa more often.