Greedy Web Applications

I was very confused about what would be the main topic of this entry.
At the beginning, I was amazed about this awesome demo developed by Adobe company. It shows a "live" transmission of a cycling race stage. It displays a well orchestrated set of web services integrating GIS, AJAX and multimedia technologies.

Today, we can found an impressive amount of web applications as useful as standalone applications, but they have serious performance problems.
I have mentioned how the browser now is our new productivity environment and I can enumerate a
popular set of "web applications" such as: gmail, youtube, google reader, scribe, zotero, among others; but they provoke an important performance decrease in my laptop.

At this moment, there are a respected number of computers with a low profile performance, further, the industry are producing them with high succeed, hence it's convenient consider seriously to develop profiling tools for environments where the web application are developed.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Patch your Fedora Distribution

Today, a friend of mine, alert me about an exploit found in most of the Linux kernels.
Promptly, I went to http://google.com and look for "kernel exploit linux". I found this in http://slashdot.org,
The announcement suggests that systems based on Ubuntu and Debian are vulnerable, but my FC7 distribution is vulnerable, too.
However, 30 minutes ago, I updated my kernel, using "Software Updater" from the Gnome menu, and the problem was fixed.

So, lets update your software.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Tools for Writers

The last year ends with a profound desire to becoming me in a great writer.
Undoubtedly, it's a challenge and different knowledge areas demand educated people that expresses his ideas in a clear and concise way.

Two key elements leverage the development of the new writer, I thought.

1. An indomitable personality and passion for sharing his ideas through written word.
2. A suitable set of writing tools.

Shortly, I will speak about the second item.

Thirty years ago, maybe, the typewriter machine was the suitable tool for a writer.
Twenty years ago, the desktop computer leverage the writing process to another level, saving paper and letting a process writing more iterative.
Today, powerful advances in web technologies bring us browsers as the almighty tools. As consequence, all the things that you as a geek can be accomplished from your web browser: read e-mail, read news, watch videos, listen music, chat, make a phone calls, among others.

My prefered browser is Firefox. It's an open source browser with a large add-ons base that brings the navigation process to next level.
So, as follow I will mention a couple of these add-ons:

1. Zotero: It's a free, easy-to-use extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources. Certainly, it's a powerful tool for the researcher. It will be hilarious when has support for PDF documents, too.
2. Scribefire: It supports the blog publishing process to your favorite blog site from your web browser.
3. Split Browser: You can split browser infinitely, as many as your RAM and your screen allow. It's a useful tool for editing over multiple-sites on a single screenshot.

Next time, don't underestimate what your browser can does for you.

Regards,

Powered by ScribeFire.

Pandora an amazing DJ

Years ago, I started to listen on-line music at music yahoo.
I have to confess, at beginning, was a painful task trying to conduct the programming provided by the "Yahoo's DJ".
However, as the time past, I felt more comfortable with the music played.
Just one BIG problem, Music Yahoo only works with IExplorer and I'm a Linux user.

Ok, I can live with that, live without music in my head during my work hours. :-(
But a ride the lighting shine over my head.
I try again Pandora and now I feel happy with the music that it provides me. :-D
Sure, the beginning was awful, but it's worth.

Enjoy it.

Web 2.0 and Grid

Certainly, Web 2.0 is here, likewise, Grid computing is out there.

Today, most of the Internet users have used some Web 2.0 application, due to her interaction with some popular web sites such as: google.com, gmail.com, youtube.com, flickr.com, myspace.com, facebook.com, del.icio.us, digg.com. These sites deal with either user communication or look up information, hidding to end user its complexity operation.

Every day, more Internet users have access to more information and more powerful tools to mine the new Internet. This user is not just a consumer, instead a prosumer (producer and consumer). Then, she demands a powerful and scalable computational infrastructure to carry out the tasks, in a near future, become a daily tasks such as: determine investment targets, forecast the weather for planning your next vacation, resolve complex mathematical models for her research at chemestry class, and so on.

The goal must be: keep closing the gap between access to complex computational infrastructures and non-geek user in order to do her daily task.

Then, "ask not what internet can do for you - ask what you can do for internet", next big web application is waiting for be developed.

Screencasting in Linux

Screencasting, according to wikipedia, stand for record computer screen output, often containing a narration. Then, screencasting can be used for many different and useful purposes. In particular, people working with computer systems can share their expertise with anothers posting video-howtos about, almost, any thing to deal with computers.

Now, many open source and free applications are available in order to do screencasting for the Linux platform.

Today, i want to mention two complementary tools to support the screencasting process in Linux. The first is xvidcap. It can be found in the ATrpms repository. You only need execute the command, yum install xvidcap. It allows you define a rectangular section of your screen, then you can record all the things to happen there.

When you end to recording, probably you need editing the video generated. Then, I recommend to use Kino. Kino, is a basic tool for edit videos and as easy to install as execute yum install Kino. If you are familiar with vi editor you will find many key sequence use for edit text in vi, works for edit video in Kino, for example: "x" key allows you delete a character in vi, similarly, when you are editing a video with Kino, "x" key allows you to delete a frame. Very funny and wonderful for us, the vi users. :-D.

USEFUL LINKS

• ATrpms
• Screencast
• Tools A complete article to describe different tools for screencast in Linux.
  
• ScreenKast is a new project under screencast category. Automatically, it allows upload videos and publish them on internet.
• Istanbul is an advanced video editing tool, however, demands a lot of hardware requirements.
  

I'm user of Fedora Core Linux distribution, release 6, although at this moment release 7 is available.

Fedora as every major Linux distribution due to licensing issues cannot distribute in its official repositories (Fedora Base and Fedora Extra) software to playback MP3 or DVD files. However, there exist alternative repositories such as:

• fedora.us
• Livna
• FreshRPMS
• DAG
• NewRPMS
• ATrpms
• Dries

Some packages are incompatible between them, e.g. you can get compatibility problems if install livna and freshrpms at same time.

Recently, i'm interested in work with to do video tutorials for grid tasks and found that freshrpms repository fulfit my needs.

Useful Links

• Fedora apt and yum repositories
• Managing software with yum
• Fedora Core 6: Multimedia support (freshrpms)