Brandless Notebook from China

I got this notebook as a present of sort from a friend who bought a bunch of these Chinese notebook for his business. He gave me one and told me if i fix it its mine. So after the Christmas rush, after sending out the last orders from my online store i went about fixing this thing. The problem was very simple the power cord/charger needs replacing. Since this is a brandless notebook i couldn't find the supplier here to replace the charger. So the next best thing to do is get a charger from a different brand with the same specs. I was able to find a HP charger with the same specs and now i am able to charge and turn on the notebook... yey! At first the OS didn't load but a couple more tinkering with the BIOS i was able to load the Chinese version of windows XP. And since i don't know Chinese i nuke the OS and installed Ubuntu 10.10. Now i have a new notebook. The only thing to gripe about is the measly 2 cell battery that i can't replace. But hey its a free notebook who am i to complain. :)

Specs i gathered using Hardinfo in Ubuntu.

Intel Atom N280
Intel Graphic 945GM/943/940GML Express Chipset
Intel HDA Audio
1gig DDR2 Ram
Samsung 160gig HD
12.1 Screen with 1366x768 resolution
Realtek Wireless RTL8187SE
1.3 Megapixel Builtin Webcam
2 cell LION Battery

Firefox Addons/Extensions I Can't Live Without

I have been using Firefox for a  couple of years now. Through the years i have added and deleted addons/extension that at first are useful then i have to left go because A.) i found a better extension B.) no longer useful to me and C.) the developer no longer update the said extension. So now i'm listing my Firefox extension i have been using for quite some time now.

1. DownThemAll! - The first and only download manager/accelerator built inside Firefox!
DownThemAll is all you can desire from a download manager: it features an advanced accelerator that increases speed up to 400% and it allows you to pause and resume downloads at any time.

DownThemAll is fast, reliable and easy-to-use! It lets you download all the links or images contained in a webpage and much more: you can refine your downloads by fully customizable criteria to get only what you really want![addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/201]

2. ScribeFire Next - A reboot of the full featured blog editor that integrates with your browser and lets you easily post to your blog.
This is a redesign of ScribeFire, one of the most popular add-ons for Firefox. ScribeFire is a full-featured blog editor that integrates with your browser and lets you easily post to all of your blogs.

You can post to blogs from Wordpress, Blogger, TypePad, Windows Live Spaces, Tumblr, Posterous, Xanga, LiveJournal, or any other blog that supports the MetaWeblog or MovableType APIs.[addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/199790]

3. Xmarks Sync - Xmarks is the #1 bookmarking add-on.
It takes only a moment to get up and running with Xmarks. After you install the add-on, click on the notification to set up Xmarks and start backing up and synchronizing your bookmarks. Install Xmarks on each computer you use, and it seamlessly integrates with your web browser and keeps your bookmarks safely backed up and in sync.

Xmarks works seamlessly across browsers. Today we support Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari (MacOS only), and Google Chrome. Please visit our website at xmarks.com for more details.[addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2410]

4. Live HTTP Headers - View HTTP headers of a page and while browsing.
[addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3829]

5.  WebMail Notifier - WebMail Notifier checks your webmail accounts and notifies the number of unread emails.
WebMail Notifier checks your webmail accounts and notifies the number of unread emails...
Supports : gmail, yahoo, hotmail, aol, daum, naver, nate, paran, POP3/IMAP and more. [addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4490]

5 Useful Online Tools I Use

5 online tools I use at home and in the office. This is just a short list i will be adding more soon.

1. ProCSSor - Advanced CSS Prettifier
A powerful (and wholly free) CSS prettifier that lets you format CSS in the exact way you want.[www.procssor.com]

2. Thumbalizr - A website screenshot tool
Lets you take thumbnail screenshots of any webpage and save it on your PC. No sign-up required, just enter the website URL and press the “thumb it” button. [www.thumbalizr.com]

3. Browsershots - Check Browser Compatibility, Cross Platform Browser Test
Browsershots makes screenshots of your web design in different operating systems and browsers. It is a free open-source online web application providing developers a convenient way to test their website's browser compatibility in one place. When you submit your web address, it will be added to the job queue. A number of distributed computers will open your website in their browser. Then they will make screenshots and upload them to our central dedicated servers for your review.[browsershots.org]

4. colr.org - Play with colors and color schemes!
It's a tool to let people fiddle around with colors.[www.colr.org]

5. Fresh Badge Generator - Create Very Web 2.0 Badges
Quickly freshen your site/blog, sales page, or scrapbook with your own uniquely designed, and very web 2.0 "fresh badge"! [www.freshbadge.com]

Using Blogger's Custom Domain with a Dot TK URL

Been using Dot TK redirection service for 5 years now. Recently i learned that they are now offering free DNS service. I wanted to test this out by using Blogger's custom domain. If you are currently using a DOT TK domain just login to your My.Dot.TK account and modify your domain, select "Use Dot Tk Free DNS Service" and configure using blogger's A and CNAME records.

Get Free Domain Names

These free domain names are more of a free URL redirection that look like and sometimes act exactly like a paid domain. So instead of getting www.somedomain.com/YOURACCOUNT/WHATEVER you get www.YOURDOMAIN.co.cc.

Listed below are three URl redirection that I use or recommended to friends.

Dot TK - Renaming The Internet
Dot TK is one of the well known free domain services, Dot TK ( .TK) is the the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Tokelau, a territory of New Zealand located in the South Pacific. I have been using Dot TK for 3 to 4 years now. There are times that the service is slow and sometimes unreliable. There are also pop-up ads and frame ads . If you don't want ads and want full control of your domain you'll have to shell out $10 a year.

Domain Name Example: www.YOURDOMAIN.TK

.CO.NR Free Domain Name - www.YOU.co.nr !!!
Using .CO.NR gives you a www.YOURDOMAIN.co.nr. Dot NR (.NR) is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Nauru. CO.NR is not the ccTLD registry for .NR they are just the administrator operator of the CO.NR domain. Registering for a free account gives you the following features namely: free URL redirection, free URL cloaking, free path forwarding, meta tags support, favicon support and no banners & no popups. Although its free and like they say there are no ads, there is a catch... you have to link back to them which is just fine since its free.

Domain Name Example: www.YOURDOMAIN.CO.NR

Free .Co.CC - supports for CNAME, A, MX, NS records!
This has to be the best Free Domain name service out there. Aside from giving you a free domain you get to have full DNS control and domain management like you can change your CNAME, MX, A and NS records. That means you can use Blogger.com's custom domain by pointing or mapping your CO.CC domain to your blog. The .cc is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Cocos (Keeling) Islands, an Australian territory. CO.CC is just the Administrator and Operator of CO.CC domain name.

Domain Name Example: www.YOURDOMAIN.CO.CC

Apps on My PC: MikSoft Mobile Media Converter

I have been watching some 3gp videos using my LG KU250 cellphone and i decided to convert some of my wmv and mpeg movies to 3gp. So i search the net for a good converter and i found lots of junk but among the junk i found this gem, Miksoft Mobile Media Converter. Its does what its suppose to do perfectly. I have converted a bunch of wmv videos to 3gp and it ran flawlessly. Here's the description from the developer:

The Mobile Media Converter uses ffmpeg to convert MP3 / WAVE / WMA audio files to AMR files (Adaptive Multi-Rate Codec, *.amr) and vice-versa (AMR to MP3). Also, it can convert your WMV (except WMV ver.9) / MPEG video files to 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project, *.3gp) and vice-versa (MPEG to 3GP).
The program has a very easy-to-use and simple GUI (Graphical User Interface) that helps even the most amateur user. Most of the times, the only data that you must enter is the input file(s) or just drag 'n' drop the input file! The 3GP and AMR formats are used by mobile phones for MMS, for video and sound recordings, etc.

and the best thing of all is it has a linux version which is always a plus point for me.

Download Mobile Media Converter



Miksoft Mobile Media Converter[www.miksoft.net]

Apps on My PC: µTorrent

For me this is the best torrent client ever! Why do i like so much well for starters its small like its only 220kb and its not a resource hog like some other torrent clients. I can go on on on how great this little app is but really you should try it.



Download µTorrent 1.7.7


µTorrent[www.utorrent.com]

Apps on My PC: Virtualbox

I'm a jealous type of guy, last week i got jealous because my boss has "spaces " installed on his mac and so i Googled and got Virtuawin. Now i'm jealous of his mac because it's running parallels with Windows Vista as his guest and i said to myself I want one too!!! And so with the help of the mighty google i found a bunch of virtualization software and tried them. I tried VMware, Qemu and Virtualbox. Among the three i really like Virtualbox, I like it because its not that big of a download its around 16.9mb compared to VMware's 100+mb and its user friendly.

What is Virtualbox? Virtualbox is a hardware emulation virtualization software(say that 10x faster), by mapping the host computer’s hardware resources directly to the virtual machine’s resources, it creates a virtual copy of your computer. With this virtual machine you can install and run different operating system within your host computer.

I'm currently running Virtualbox on an Windows XP (XP being the host) and gOS Linux as guest. Everything works out of the box. :)

Screenshots:

Virtualbox[www.virtualbox.org]
gOS Linux[www.thinkgos.com]