The application includes a slew of features to customize email backup and restore functions. While it supports different switches to tailor the sync and restore modes, it saves all the emails from specified email account in a separate folder that can be moved to other systems for syncing and restoring emails. Apart from the full backup mode, it offers a quick sync mode that performs incremental backup operation to save only most recent mail items from your account. Additionally, Gmvault comes packed with quite a few customization options. You can even choose a set of emails that are to be backed up from a specific Gmail account. Using the custom sync mode, you can specify the date range to backup only required emails from your account.

Perhaps, the most useful feature of this utility is the ability to restore email to a different Gmail account. Once you’ve backed up your emails from one account, you can simply use the restore command to recreate the saved gmail mailboxes in any Gmail account. While restoring email to the other account, it preserves  all attributes like email labels to recreate them with each mail item.

The utility offers a straightforward usage. Once installed, double-click its desktop shell icon to run the application in console. Before you start the backup operation, it’s recommended to view the help manual to understand the usage of each command it’s to offer. Just enter gmvault –help command to view help topics. You can view help section associated with sync and restore functions by typing in gmvault sync –h and gmvault restore –help commands, respectively.

The full sync (backup) operation can be performed using the following command.

gmvault sync <email address>

Once entered, it will ask you to log into required email account in order to grant access to your Gmail account. Just press Enter and it will open Gmail app access authorization page in your default browser. Once you grant the access, move to console and press Enter again to begin the backup process.

By default, it saves all the email items from a specified account in C:\Users\<user name>\gmvault-db folder. However, you can change the backup folder by using –d DB_DIR switch with sync command. The quick sync mode lets you quickly scan and backup emails from last 2 months at default/specified location. You can use the following command to perform quick backup operation.

gmvault sync –type quick <email address>

Restoring backed up email to Gmail account is easy. All you need is to enter the following command to restore backed up email archive to specified Gmail account.

gmvault restore <email address>

This will scan the default backup location and then start restoring the backed up email archive to specified Gmail account. However, If you’ve backed up the email items at different location, then you need to specify the location with restore command to restore the email archive. The restore command also lets you specify custom label with email items and restart the restore process from last processed/saved email id via –label and –restart switches, respectively. In addition, you can choose to encrypt the emails saved in your email database (gmvault-db folder) to prevent unauthorized access.

Gmvault certainly provides an easy way to backup and restore email archive to multiple Gmail accounts. Using the restore command, you can easily copy backed up email items to any Gmail account. Furthermore, the application has the ability to automatically resolve IMAP-related issues while creating email item database. You can check out different usage scenarios and supported sync and restore commands’ switches here. As of this writing, the application is in beta testing phase and works on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux OS.

Download Gmvault

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The application features a Folder Manager, enter a comma separated list of Tree Tags, and include and exclude Filters for searching and listing specific file types. The main interface is divided into 3 panes: the left pane contains the Folder Tree, the middle pane shows a preview of folders contents, as well as selected images, while the right pane lists all the meta data of a file. Whenever available, important information about an image, including its File Name, ISO, Shutter Speed and Focal Length, is listed below the preview of a selected image.

Click Tools menu at the top left to access different utilities offered by the application. The Folder Manager lets you add folders to the list, which will be searched for files while creating the Folder Tree.

The Tree Tag tool lets you enter a comma-separated list of tags that will be used to build the tree hierarchy. You can either enter the tags manually or click Advanced and choose them from a list.

Filters can be added for different file types used for creating the Folder Tree, including Contains, Doesn’t Contain, Starts With, Ends With etc. The filters can be set to either Match all of the following, or Match any of the Following options.

The Configuration window allows you to change ExifTool Path, Slideshow Duration, Export Width and Height etc.

Since it’s a java based application, it works on Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems, provided JRE (Java Runtime Environment) is installed. We did not experience any stability issues during testing.

Download PhotoGrok

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The app starts off with a neatly laid out interface, with the tools you need to get started located in the left panel, just like most drawing and editing software. With different line presets available, you either choose to go with them and manipulate later to create shapes, or you can simply choose from the presets of shapes available.

There’s more than meets the eye when it comes to these shapes. Click where it says Flowcharts in the screenshot above, to open up an extensive list of sheets available. From circuits to Cisco network diagrams, the list is enough to accommodate diagrams of most sorts, as can be glimpsed in the screenshot below.

The properties of the objects inserted can be easily accessed by simply double clicking them, or by the rather-obvious Right click > Properties method. The screenshot below shows us the properties of the text inserted; however, doing the same for objects brings up options like line color, width, style, and more importantly, the fill color.

Concluding with saving your project, the application will preserve your work as a .dia file. However, you can save your file with numerous extensions by navigating to File > Export and selecting the format that you want to save your work in. Common image export formats include BMP, JPG, TIFF, PNG, and loads more.

Dia is a cross-platform tool with packages available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, and comes in both installable and portable flavors. Testing was performed on Windows 7 Ultimate, 64-bit edition.

Download Dia for Windows | Linux | Mac

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Developed by VideoLAN, VLC is one of the few media players, which support a huge array of codecs, compression methods and file formats, and is best known for the way it handles multimedia file rendering. There’re surely sheer number of media players available nowadays, but VLC is arguably the most powerful, open source media player that comes with an extensive list of features and options. Last month, VideoLAN announced that the next version of VLC (codenamed Twoflower) would be released soon, and provided some nightly builds of  VLC 2.0 for testing purposes. If you’ve been eagerly waiting for VLC 2.0 final version, you will be glad to know that it has just been released. In this post, we discuss some of the most significant improvements and features of this major update.

VLC 2.0 brings a slew of enhancements for both novice and skilled users alike. Apart from numerous major video and audio output improvements, it includes some changes for packagers, such as default UTF-8 encoding (non-UTF-8 file support will not be available in future versions), the plugins path can be overridden with VLC plugin path environment, default tarballs will come compressed with XZ/LZMA, and most importantly, all the web plugins are moved to git://git.videolan.org/npapi-vlc.git.

It also includes a wide range of additional devices and file formats support. You will be able to easily access and play media files contained in RAR container. The support for Blu-Ray discs has also been included. You can now specify Blu-Ray discs from Open Disc dialog, and tweak other Blu-ray playback settings. Moreover, the latest version supports all QTKit-compatible video and input devices. It also lets you capture partially hidden windows in the X11 screen input. The HTTPS access is also improved, and Windows version will be able to access media over HTTPS without facing any issues.

Major Interface Improvements And New Audio & Video Filters

Apart from under the hood changes and code improvements, the main interface has also been revamped and deeply debugged to give best media playback experience. If you use VLC as an audio player and often tweak with equalizer settings, you will notice a newly added Compressor tab alongside Graphic Equalizer. It lets you enable dynamic range compressor to change RMS/peak, Attack, Release, Threshold, Ratio, Knee radius and Makeup gain values.

You will also notice changes in Preamp, EQ sliders, and especially in Video Effects and Synchronization panels.  The Video Effects console’s tabs and their options are re-adjusted in a compact window. You no longer have to change the panel size or use the tabs navigation buttons. Apart from this, it now includes numerous new video effects and filters. For instance, the Basic tab is renamed to Essential, and now it has 2 extra effects including Banding removal and Film Grain. There is no Transform control in Essential tab, but you can access it from Geometry tab.

You will find Color fun controls in Colors tab. It also adds extra color controls including Negate colors, Posterize and Sepia. Since Image modification tab has been removed, its controls are placed into other tabs. For example, you can now access Gradient controls, which include Gradient mode and color & cartoon effects, from Colors tab.

Alongside Magnification/Zoom, Rotate and Puzzle game, you will see Transform and Wall controls (from vout/Overlay tab) in Geometry tab.

Another major change that you will notice is re-adjustment of Logo controls. You can find all the options and controls which were accessible from Logo tab, in Overlay tab. It also adds a new feature namely Add text that allows you to overlay text on both local and streaming video. You can also enable/disable this filter with a click, and set the text position.

Similarly, you can access almost all the controls of Image Modification from Advanced tab. It includes controls like Waves, Water effect, Motion detect, Psychedelic and Motion blur from Image Modification tab, and Clone effect control from Vout/Overlay tab. You will find 2 new controls namely Anti-flickering and Spatial Blur to control/reduce flickering on the video, and apply special blur effect, respectively.

The audio/video and video/subtitles synchronization features have also been improved. If now offers a new subsdelay filter that allows you to change subtitles delays by specified value. Unlike previous versions, VLC 2.0 synchronization filters are more responsive, and immediately apply custom subtitles playback settings.

Apart from supporting 3 playlist view modes, VLC 2.0 now adds iTunes-like cover art playlist view. You can access the coverflow playlist view by clicking the change playlist view button, present adjacent to search bar.

If you switch to playlist view while watching a video, it will show a video thumbnail preview in left side bar. Unlike previous versions, which show only the sample VLC cover art, VLC 2.0 displays the associated cover art, and if it doesn’t find one, it simply shows the live thumbnail preview of the video. You can double-click it to watch video in full-screen mode.

Talking of video window-related improvements, the full screen view mode now shows the docked video controller. It becomes active whenever you move mouse pointer to select the required option. A small button besides volume control lets you dock/undock the full screen video controller.

VLC 2.0 also makes it easy to choose and play other multimedia items in playlist while watching the video in full screen. Now, you don’t have to switch to compact mode to select audio/video file from playlist. You can access playlist from right-click context menu while watching video in full-screen. Just move to Playlist option, and it will show all the items on the screen. Moreover, you can now easily select subtitle file and access Tools menu from Subtitle and Tools options, respectively.

VLC 2.0 comes with a real-time search feature, which lets you easily find the options you want to tweak. The Preferences includes a search bar at top-left corner, allowing you to quickly search any option from  preferences’ categories.

The Mac OS X version also includes a great deal of new features and options. The Main window and Video window is re-written from scratch. VLC 2.0 Mac version comes with both Mac OS X Lion skin (grey color) and QTX style skin (black color); you can switch between the default Interface styles from VLC—>Preferences.

Additionally, it includes Compressor and Spatializer filters, track Synchronization panel, new video effects filters. VLC 2.0 supports Mac OS X Full-Screen mode, allowing you organize media collection without any distractions.

As far as codecs support and improvements are concerned, VLC 2.0 will allow you to use ffmpeg-mt to balance the decoding load. This will significantly reduce the time it requires to decode following formats: H.264, VP3, VP8, JPEG-2000, Mpeg-4 ASP/DivX and RV3/RV4. Moreover, the MKV file container playback improvements have also been incorporated. The latest version brings update for both RealVideo 3.0 and RealVideo 4.0 file playback. For those who play around with subtitles, it now supports decoding EBU subtitles files (.stl), and brings improvements for EIA-608 closed captions. Other notable improvements include support for WMV images (WMVP and WVP2), Lagarith Loseless video codec, ProRes 422 – 10 bits, DNxHD and JPEG-2000 – 10bits, and encoding of MPEG1/2 files via MP2 fourcc codec.

VLC 2.0 comes with quite a long list of features, interface-related improvements, code fixes, audio and video filters, demuxers, and streaming abilities. We’ve tried to cover only the most salient features and improvements. It must be noted that VLC 2.0 doesn’t include some modules from previous versions. You can view complete list of both added features and removed modules here.  VLC 2.0 is available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. The 64-bit version for Windows is in works, and will be available soon.

Download VLC 2.0

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Additionally, it provides sample connection strings and other options to help you quickly create connections with your database. Once database is connected or data sets are retrieved from specified DB, it lets you view complete Metadata information of DB tables, enabling you to easily modify the required fields and rows. Moreover, it includes an extensive Filters feature that may help you view only the required part of database. You can apply numerous conditional filters on the database including Equals, Max rows, Null Check, Number range, Single word, String pattern match, and String value range. You have also the liberty to tweak with selected filters to meet the data mining requirements.

DataCleaner comes with an transformer feature that allows you to pre-process the data to extract, combine and generate separate values. The built-in Analyzer provides comprehensive Data Quality and Data Profiling operations to assist you in analyzing the content of selected Database.  It includes a number of analysis features such as Boolean analyzer, Character set distribution, Data gap analyzer, Matching analyzer, Pattern finder, String analyzer, Weekday and Value distribution and more.

The main interface shows the supported datastore types. All you need is to pick the database type and configure the connection details. For example, if you want to clean and analyze MySQL database, enter Database name, Drive class name, connection string, and username & password. You can open Excel or Access database file by just specifying the complete path. Once connection is established, it adds the database to the list. Now,  check the database you want to analyze, and click Analyze.

The left sidebar holds databases from selected datastore, allowing you to explore the datasets. You need to select the fields to perform analysis. Just double-click the fields you want to include, and it will list them in Source tab. You can check the datasets and their type, and remove any unnecessary fields.

Under Metadata tab, you will find all the meta data information, including Table, Column, Type family (based on stored data), Type, Native Type, Size, Nullable condition, Index status.

The Filters tab lets you include any aforementioned filters to extract specific information from columns. It lets you add multiple types of filters to the list, so that you can easily filter out the required data sets. Once you’ve added a filter, collapse the filter window, and then click Add filter to choose the type of filter you want to use.

Analyzer is probably the most useful feature of the application. As mentioned before, it allows you to select numerous kinds of analysis. Not only does it give you detailed analysis report, it also lets you create analysis graphs. Just select the required type of analysis, and fill in the required information. Once done, click Run analysis.

Upon click, it will start creating analysis report. The Progress information tab shows all the processes it run while generating the analysis.

You can double-click the graph button present in first field to plot the data on the graph. DataCleaner allows you to save the jobs. It creates an XML file that holds the analysis report. Analysis job files can be viewed by opening the XML file from File –> Open analysis job.

DataCleaner offers write data option during different stages of data analysis. For example. the Filters feature lets you write cleansed data to a separate file. You can export the filtered data to CSV file, create Excel spreadsheet, make staging table or insert the data directly into a table.

DataCleaner is a massive data analysis and cleaning utility that supports Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. We have tried to cover the most salient features of the application, and might have missed out few useful tools and options. You can find detailed help manuals and usage guides from product page. It must be noted that it requires latest JRE (Java Runtime Environment) to work.

Download DataCleaner

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When launched for the first time, Scup will present you with an authentication box, requiring connection with your SoundCloud account. Hit the Yes please, move ahead button to launch the authentication page in your default browser. If you are not logged into SoundCloud at present, do so at this point.

The browser pane will ask you for a confirmation of the operation, after which you will be given a unique authentication code. Enter that in Scup, and your account should be linked. In our experience, copy/pasting the code didn’t work, and you’ll need to manually key it in for Scup to recognize.

With authentication out of the way, you will be greeted by Scup’s main interface. Please note that this interface is all that is to this application, as there are no options or customizations. Everything that you get in this interface should cater to all your SoundCloud uploading needs, and you can not only batch upload tracks, but also specify their parameters, such as the genre, set and track type, license version, keywords, record label, release number, release date, EAN/UPC and buying link for the set.

To begin, drap and drop audio files over Scup and define the parameters for the whole set. Some fields under More Options are text entries, while others will let you select one from the drop-down menus. As soon as you drop files, they will start uploading to your SoundCloud account.

You may also configure these parameters for individual tracks by clicking the arrow next to each file’s name in the list. This will expand the view, bringing the same fields for individual tracks. Scup will even let you add album art to your set, making it ready for publishing in almost every sense. The bottom panel of the application lets you control settings such as sharing, making originals downloadable and allowing 128 kbps streaming.

As with all Adobe AIR applications, Scup has a really pleasing outlook. The application is quite user-friendly, and since it is based on an open platform, it will work on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, provided you have Adobe AIR installed. Testing was done on Windows 7 Ultimate, 64-bit version.

Download Scup

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You can install Replace-me in Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot using the following Terminal commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:atareao/nautilus-extensions

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install replace-me

After installation, either use the below command or log off and log in again to refresh Nautilus.

nautilus –q

With Replace-me, you can easily search and replace words and phrases by right-clicking a file and entering the search and replace string.

This will open a new window which will display the path of the selected file. Enter the text that you wish to replace, followed by the text string that is to be replaced. As you can see in the below screenshot, you can replace an entire text string with specified text easily within any document. this can help you replace hundreds of text strings in several files, easily. For example, if you have a code file which contains a line of code that is recurring in the file and needs to be replaced with a different line, then you can simply right-click the document, enter the text string that should be replaced (in the Replace section), and enter the text string that is to replace the text (in With section). This will replace the text string wherever it may be present in the respective document.

For more information, check out the developer’s website.

Replace-Me Nautilus Extension

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You can install Nanoshot by entering the following commands in Terminal. While its compatibility with the raw build of Precise Pangolin is unknown, we successfully tested it in Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot and the below PPA works with earlier Ubuntu versions, including Lucid, Karmic, Maverick (as specified by the developer) and probably Natty, as well. You can get a list of dependencies for older versions here. The reason I have labeled Natty as a probable supported version, is because we did not test Nanoshot on it, but it worked fine in Oneiric (during testing).

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nanoshot/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nanoshot

Once installed, launch and select options from the app-indicator menu. You can capture the entire desktop, the current window, a selected desktop area, a webpage, a media player, add cursor in screenshot, select a time delay for capturing screenshots, enable auto-run for Nanshot and select a video file for capturing screenshots via the app-indicator menu.

If you wish to capture video frames, then you will have to specify a video file and select the number of frames that are to be captured, as well as the output directory. You can also pick videos from recently viewed video files.

When capturing a selected area, select an area and hit Enter to save the screenshot.

Captured screenshots can be uploaded to Flickr, ImgUR or ImageShack, or saved to a local directory.

You can download the package for Nanoshot from the links given below.

Download Nanoshot

Download Nanoshot [Fedora and Tarball Source Package]

[via WML Cloud]

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i-Nex is written in Gambas, which is, “A Graphical Development Environment based on a basic Interpreter, with object extensions.” The program works pretty much like CPU-Z. i-Nex comes separated in numerous tabs, with each tab providing information regarding a specific system component. As visible from the screenshot below, you can get detailed information about the CPU, Motherboard/BIOS, Sound and Graphics card, as well as other components such as the Kernel, Memory, Network etc, by clicking the respective tabs. To move across tabs, use the left/right arrow buttons. i-Nex is capable of displaying precise information about a system, including the manufacturer’s name, model number, processors cache information, hard drive sectors, RAM information (total, used, free, shared, buffers, cached and swapped), host name of the system, operating system version, time zone (being used), and more.

You can also check out similar Ubuntu tools for listing hardware information, including HardInfo and dmidecode. You may install i-Nex for your Ubuntu version, from the packages available at Launchpad. The packages are available for all latest Ubuntu versions, including Oneiric Ocelot and Precise Pangolin.

Download i-Nex

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Ubuntu users can install Mounty by entering the following command in Terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kokoto-java/omgubuntu-stuff
  sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install mounty

When launched, you can mount a disc image via the app-indicator menu applet. To mount a virtual disc image, click Open disk image option and select your virtual disc. You can also enable the Remember mounted images option to make sure that recently opened virtual disc images are auto mounted for quick viewing. You can also load Mounty at system start up by selecting Load at startup option.

When a disc is mounted, a bubble message alerts you that the image has been added to Mounty. You can open the content of the mounted disc image to explore the files inside it. Mounted discs can be ejected anytime and reloaded when required.

What makes Mounty quite handy is the fact that it does not consume a lot of the desktop space and provides a minimalist menu for quickly mounting/auto mounting and ejecting disc images. Furthermore, its ability to remember recently opened disc images makes it even more useful, as compared to other applications of its kind. It is also worth mentioning here that Mounty additionally supports the ability to load (disc) image files from your file manager. You can grab the source code and submit bug reports of this application at Launchpad.

Mounty at Launchpad

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Agave can be installed via the Terminal in Ubuntu, by entering the following command:

sudo apt-get install agave

Once done, launch Agave, and select a color format from the drop down menu given at the bottom of the interface (web safe colors, Gnome icon palette, Visibone or Tango theme Palette). You can also choose between compliments, split-compliments, triads, tetrads, analogous and monochromatic color schemes from the drop down menu given above the color graph. After creating a desired color combination, you can add it to your list on the right sidebar. Brightness and saturation may be increased or decreased using the arrows given at the top of Agave interface. The top left arrows allow managing brightness, whereas the top right arrows are for managing saturation of the color schemes (generated after selecting a single color from the given color graph).

You can also generate random color combinations via the Random option, and switch to the previous color combination via Back. Agave has versions available for most Ubuntu variations at Launchpad, including Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal and Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot, with development active for Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin.

Download Agave

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The application has File, View, Streams, Chat, Favorites and Window menus at the top. File allows you to open multiple windows to view more than one stream at a time. Streams menu contains a lot of pre-saved video streams offered by the application. Tools allows you to search among the saved video streams. Favorites allow you to Add new video streams and Manage existing ones, while Windows menu lets you Cascade, Tile Vertically and Tile the opened streams Horizontally.

The Favorites menu has Add & Manage windows to Add Stream, Add Folder, rename, Remove and Move the saved streams from one folder to another

The complete list of features provided by the developer is as follows.

• Community built stream list
• Simple stream list with single level category sorting
• Database update
• Full updater with downloader
• Easy to use favorites
• Keyword search

It works on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Mac OS X and Linux operating systems.

Download StreamDesk

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At first run, users are required to either login or sign up for a free Mendeley account and get 500 MB of free storage space, which is sufficient for storing a lot of PDF documents. The credentials of this account are used to synchronize data with Mendeley servers, which is then accessible via the internet and Mendeley application (available for mobile and desktop platforms).

You can drag and drop PDF documents to open them with the Mendeley viewer. The options on the top toolbar allow users to pan, highlight text, add notes, copy/paste data, rotate (right/left), zoom (in/out), email and sync the document. All opened documents are opened in convenient tabs.

It must be noted that Mendeley is also a social network, and therefore, the collaboration can be extended to a lot of Mendeley users for seeking help and managing your research. You can even share bibliographies with your colleagues through a private group, and any member can add or edit a cited reference. Mendeley has clients for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and iPhone. Additionally, you can also login to the Mendeley website to research and collaborate with other members. Furthermore, you can also invite friends to add them to your Mendeley network. You can download Mendeley for various platforms from the link given below.

Download Mendeley

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The application allows you to manage your tasks by providing you with a comprehensive set of features, such as Quick Add for adding new tasks without wasting time, Tags that allow you to create and apply tags to simplify managing a large number of tasks, Dates with both due date and schedule date calendars for settings up tasks that need to be performed the same day or at a later date. Conqu also allows you to manage tasks that you have delegated to others, and receive notifications when they have completed it.

The application has tabs in the left pane, including Inbox, Today, Next, Future, Waiting etc, to manage tasks separately according to importance, tags, time limits, while their details and edit options appear in the right. Tasks can be added by typing them in the top bar and clicking Add Task.

Once a task has been added, you can edit and enter more information about it, including Project, Due Date, Context, Flag it with different colors, set Energy Level, Time, Tags, set Schedule Date, and enter details of contacts if tasks are assigned to them.

Different type of tasks can be organized into different projects and managed according to their tags, time, flags, schedules etc.

Click Conqu menu in the top-left corner and select Preferences to set up ConquSync if you are using the application on more than one device. Sharing allows you to let others know that you have delegated a task to them. They will receive an email, and when the task is done, check the task in the web-based task manager of Conqu.

The best thing about this application, is that it is available for all the major platforms, so you can manage your tasks from almost every device, including your tablet, phone, laptop and desktop computer. The supported device are Android based tablets, iPad, Blackberry Playbook, Amazon Kindle Fire, Barnes & Noble Nook, Android based phones, iPhone, Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

Download Conqu

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Gnome Photo frame can be downloaded and installed via the Deb packages (download link at the end of this post). Once installed, Gnome Photo Frame can be launched in both the Unity desktop environment, or the Gnome desktop. This gadget is quite scalable, and image size and other attributes can be easily adjusted to suit the needs of the user. You can open the frame image (in your default browser), view recent images, head over to the next image, enable full screen mode (ESC to exit), lock photo frame position, access Preferences and quit the frame, via right-click context menu. As you might have guessed from the Fix Photo Frame option, the gadget can be easily dragged across the desktop and placed anywhere (unless locked).

The General tab (in Preferences) provides options to change the time interval for picture rotation within the frame, set a maximum display size (height and width), enable visibility on visible workspace. and to auto start Gnome Photo Frame with system startup. You can specify image sources from the Plugins tab. Here, you can select a local folder, or authenticate an online account to import album images from Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, Tumblr, etc. Similarly, the Photos tab enables users to  manually add a new source (e.g., an RSS Feed). It must be noted that all online accounts will have to be authenticated, and access will have to be allowed to the Gnome Photo Frame application for the images to become available to the desktop frame.

During testing, we found Gnome Photo Frame to run quite seamlessly, without any lags or functionality issues. It also detected the source images quite easily; however, it seems that it is impossible to specify any sequence for the images, as they seem to appear randomly from the selected source(s). Perhaps the developer can provide some kind of image sorting options to allow users to define an image rotation sequence, in upcoming versions of the application.

Download Gnome Photo Frame

Related Articles:

1. Batch Resize & Export Photos To Digital Photo Frame [Live Photo Gallery]
2. Customize Your Gnome Desktop With The Gnome Color Chooser
3. Flickr2Frame – Flickr To Digital Photo Frame Downloader

At the beginning of each year, we at AddictiveTips compile a list of the best applications from numerous platforms, to deliver a summary of the most useful applications (of the previous year) for our readers. We have already brought you a compilation of the best Windows applications, Mac OS X applications, Windows Phone 7 applications, Android and iOS apps of 2011. Additionally, we also brought you a list of the best Cydia tweaks, as well as the best browser extensions and web apps of 2011. Last, but not least, it is now time to take a look back at the best Linux applications of last year. While there has been extensive development at the end of the aforementioned platforms, Linux has not lacked behind either. There have been numerous OS version coming out for numerous Linux flavors, and Ubuntu itself saw Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal and Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot in the same year. With the release of these new operating systems, came new applications and updates for old ones. Let’s take a look at some of the very best Linux applications that we covered in 2011.

1.  Desktop Flickr Organizer (Manage Flickr albums offline)

2.  PDF Mod (Modify PDF documents)

3. eSpeak Speech Synthesizer (Multi-lingual text to speech synthesizer)

4. Arista Transcoder (Transcode files between various media formats)

5. AcetoneISO (Mount, rip, extract, convert, burn, encrypt and decrypt DVD and CD images)

6. Firestarter (Firewall for securing Linux computers)

7. News-RSS Ticker (Feed ticker that brings the latest news to your Linux desktop)

8. Ubuntu One (Dropbox like cloud storage service for Linux and other platforms)

9. Giver (Transfer files easily on a Linux network)

10. KTorrent (Lightweight Torrent client with advanced configuration options)

11. Nanny Parental Control (Parental Control application, with restrictions to limit internet usage time for children)

12. Deja Dup Backup (Backup and restore data)

13. Steadyflow (Minimalist download manager)

14. Comix (Comic book reader that supports CBZ, ZIP, RAR, TAR, JPG, PNG, GIF, TIF, BMP, ICO, XBM and other formats)

15. Liferea (Desktop RSS feed reader)

16. Gnome Activity Journal (Keeps a log of all activities, opened files and folders)

17. Blogilo (Blogging client for Linux)

18. HomeBank (Finance management application)

19. Starry Hope Uploader (Upload photos to Facebook)

20. gPoddy (Subscribe and download podcasts)

21. MyPaint (Application for making digital paintings)

22. Parcellite (Lightweight clipboard manager)

23. KTimer (Automate Commands in Linux)

24. Hardware Lister (List hardware configurations)

25. LibreCAD (Create computer aided designs)

26. Cairo Dock (Mac style dock for Linux operating systems)

27. Tea Time (Receive important reminders)

28. Eve Installer (install multiple applications in batch)

29. YeoWorks Ubuntu Solutions (Resolves commonly faced Ubuntu problems)

30. Psensor (Monitor temperature of system components)

31. Super Boot Manager (Boot manager for Plymouth, Burg and Grub)

32. Sunflower (Dual pane file explorer)

33. Boot Repair (Fix Ubuntu boot problems)

34. Lookit (Screenshot taking application, with the option to upload it to FTP server, SSH, Imgur, Omploader and CloudApp).

35. Slingshot (Mac OS X Launchpad style application launcher for Ubuntu)

36. Cryptkeeper (Encrypt folders)

37. Bleeding Edge (install software unavailable in Ubuntu repository)

38. Y PPA Manager (Easily delete and purge Private Package Repositories)

39. Synapse (Quickly Find applications, documents, videos, images, etc)

40. DesktopNova (Wallpaper Rotator for Ubuntu)

41. Hamster Indicator (Time Tracking Applet)

42. gm-notify (Gmail email notifier)

43. eMount (Create and mount encrypted disk images)

44. Gnome Subtitles (Edit, split and marge subtitles)

45. Scribes (Text editor with support for 70+ Programming Languages)

46. PlexyDesk (Widget based desktop transformation application)

47. Activity Log Manager Zeitgeist (Control Zeitgeist logging)

48. Touchpad-indicator (Automatically disable touchpad when mouse is connected)

49. LightDM Manager (Ubuntu Logon Screen Changer)

50. Gnome-Pie (Hotkey based application launcher)

51. Gnome Tweak Tool (Tweak Gnome settings)

52. Remmina (GTK+ based Remote Desktop application)

53. QMediaInfo (Get attribute information for media files)

54. MyUnity (Comprehensive tweak for Ubuntu Unity)

55. LiveUSBInstall (create live Linux USB, CD/DVD and download ISO images)

56. Natural Scrolling (Get Mac OS X style natural scrolling in Ubuntu)

57. Radio Tray (Minimalist internet radio player for Ubuntu)

58. X Neural Switcher (Automatically switch keyboard layout & fix typos)

59. Furius ISO Mount (Mount SO, IMG, BIN, MDF and NRG Images)

60. Kazam Screencaster (Record screencasts and upload to YouTube)

With the introduction of Precise Pangolin aka Ubuntu 12.04, and other Linux operating system versions in 2012, we are likely to see a rise in application development and update. Please note that these applications are not the ones released in 2011, but the ones reviewed by us. Also, this list is not exhaustive in any manner, and if you think you have a good application that we did not cover, leave us a tip in comments below.

Related Articles:

1. 150 Best Windows Applications Of Year 2011 [Editor's Pick]
2. 150 Best Android Apps Of Year 2011 [Editor's Pick]
3. 100 Best Mac OS X Apps Of Year 2011 [Editor's Pick]

To get started, download and extract the Newrez script archive from the download link given at the end of this post, and copy the files (newrez and newrez-v) to ~/.Gnome2 –> Nautilus-Scripts (after hitting CTRL+H in the Home folder to reveal hitting directories, including the Gnome 2 directory). This will add the two scripts to the right-click context menu of your operating system. For example, if you are an Ubuntu user, then the script can be accessed from the Ubuntu context menu. Select the newrez script to change your resolution. The newrez-v script is for users who may not be able to run the newrez script. Selecting the script via the context menu will provide you with an option to choose a new resolution.

Please note that this script depends on the “xrandr –scale” option for creating a framebuffer at a chosen resolution, which can then be scaled to fit the screen. This requires xrandr version 1.3, and also a supported video driver. You can also try “xrandr -v” (in case the former does not work). It is also worth mentioning here that this script currently does not support “non-free” nVidia and ATI drivers, as they do not support xrandr 1.3.

Download Newrez

[via WML Cloud]

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Since it is a java-based application, you can run it directly without any installation. It allows you to edit many images at a time, keeping the progress on each image saved. The application lets you change different image settings, such as its brightness, contrast, saturation, hue, exposure etc. Other than that, you can also apply different effects to the image including blur, sharpen, convert to grey scale, motion blur etc. You can either select the whole image, or just a part of it, to apply effects. The interface has toolbars and menus at the top, image list in the left while the image appears in the center. To load an image into the application, click File menu and select Open File or Open Folder depending on your requirement.

The toolbar at the top contains different selection tools. You can toggle between square and circular selection tools, and choose different preset aspect ratios, such as Free, Original, 4×3, 5×7, 16×9 etc. When you select a ratio, expanding or contracting the selection box will make it stretch with the ratios intact.

The application allows you to apply different effects to the images. Under the Effects menu, you have a list of tools for changing Brightness/Contrast, Intensity/Hue/Saturation, Colors, and add different effects, including Blur, Motion Blur, Sharpen, Despeckle and Convert image to Gray scale and Invert its pixel colors. The Brightness dialog allows you to change the Brightness, Exposure, Contrast and Midtones of an image, either by moving the slider, or entering values in digits. You are able to view the results of all the changes being made to the image in the Preview Pane.

The HIS Dialog lets you increase and decrease the Saturation, Hue and Intensity of an image. For the Brightness Dialog, multiple methods for changing the values, as well as a preview are also provided.

Other than allowing users to change these image values, the application has tools to resize, crop, rotate, add border, add watermark, fix red eye and apply effects according to edge detection. The Rotate Dialog enables you to rotate your image to the left or right to any angle.

The Watermark Dialog lets you set custom text, change the text color, its font style, font size, X-Alignment and Y-Alignment from Left, Right, Center, Top and Bottom or apply custom alignment from (x, y) values. You have the option to add watermark to a single image or to the complete batch.

SharpShot flawlessly performs all the functions that a basic image editor should, and everything is easy to understand and readily available in the interface. It has a memory footprint of around 128 MB, and works on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Mac OS X and Linux operating systems.

Download SharpShot

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There are certainly sheer number of benchmarking utilities available for PC, which put primary system components, including CPU, Main Memory, GPU etc., through a diverse range of tests to measure their health, ability and performance. The benchmarking apps are generally built to diagnose PC problems and check the actual ability of a component and its performance in presence of other installed system devices. For instance, a high-end GPU may not be able to perform at its peak ability with one or more incompatible system components. Similarly, main memory requires compatible motherboard and CPU to give its best performance. Unfortunately, there isn’t a simple way to benchmark all the system components, and therefore, one needs to manually check each component’s performance while using the installed OS.

If you’ve just bought a new/old PC and haven’t installed OS on your computer, you could use Ubuntu Live Disk to thoroughly benchmark PC hardware to check system performance without having to install Windows. For those who are not familiar with Ubuntu Live CD/Disk, it’s a simple testing platform that allows user to check quick demo of Ubuntu OS without changing the system. Ubuntu Live CD/Disk can be used to diagnose numerous system issues, run tools to fix complex problems like reset Windows admin password, hard wipe disk partitions, recover hard disk data and repair lost partitions, scan hard disk for potentially dangerous viruses etc.

Since Ubuntu open source software repository holds a multitude of system testing and benchmarking tools to test the stability of different system components, one can use it to conduct tests for measuring overall performance of the system and identifying compatibility issues of various installed system components.

To get started, you need a persistent Ubuntu Live Disk that allows installing additional utilities to run heavy benchmark tests. In our previous guide, we showed you how to create a persistent Ubuntu Live Disk. Just follow the steps to create one, and then plug it into system whose components are to be checked for performance. You need to change the boot order to run Ubuntu without installing it on hard disk. To do so, move to BIOS menu by pressing F2, F10, Del, F9 or other specified key at system startup. Now, move to Boot menu and set External hard disk/USB as first boot option. Now, save the changes made to BIOS menu and reboot the PC. It will take you directly to Ubuntu boot menu. Select Run Ubuntu from this USB option to load Ubuntu 10.10.

Using Memtest86+ To Test Memory

If you’ve created Ubuntu Live Disk (Ubuntu 10.10) using Universal USB Installer, you will find Test Memory option in Ubuntu Boot menu. This option runs Memtest86+ tool to thoroughly scan each sector of main memory for discrepancies, and immediately report the problems. It can also help you identify damaged/unusable memory modules and other like issues. MemTest86+ is an advanced diagnostic application to check that whether main memory faces any problems while reading or writing data or not. It puts main memory under stress by writing different patterns to all memory locations, and then read them back.

When you select the Test Memory option, it will immediately start testing the main memory by writing patterns. You will find L1, L2 and L3 cache memory details on left side, while main memory details are shown in main window. You can see total wall time, cached memory, reserved memory, memory map value, ECC, current test, Pass and Errors etc.

During testing, you can change the configuration by hitting ‘c’ on keyboard; it lets you skip current test, select test type to run, specify address range, enter into Error Report Mode, show DMI Memory info, choose ECC polling mode and more.

It must be noted that Memtest86+ runs indefinitely unless you manually stop the testing process by hitting ESC or C.

Getting Detailed System Information & Testing CPU Computational Strength

Ubuntu doesn’t come with an advanced utility to get information on installed system components including hard disk, CPU, Main Memory (RAM), Network, GPU, Available Ports, PCI slots and devices, Network Interfaces, Battery statistics, For this reason, you need an application called Hardinfo to display information about the installed hardware devices and operating system. To download and install it, enable community maintained open-source software repository option from Synaptic Manager, which can be accessed from System—>Preferences menu.

Now, open Settings menu and select Repositories.

In Ubuntu Software tab, enable Community-maintained Open Source software option, and then click Close. 

This requires updating the default package list; just click Reload on toolbar to start downloading open source software list.

Once the list is refreshed, click All present underneath the Reload button, and enter hardinfo in search bar. It will show hardinfo tool in main window, letting you mark it for installation. Now, right-click it and select Mark for installation, and then hit Apply on toolbar to begin installation.

The Hardinfo tool can be accessed from Applications –> System Tools.

The application is designed to provide users with a detailed insight into system installed hardware. The left sidebar holds 4 categories including Computer, Devices, Network and Benchmarks. Under Computer section, you will find information on Boot, Filesystem, Display and Users, whereas Devices section provides details about Processor, Memory, USB Devices, Battery, Sensors, attached Storage devices, Input Devices and more.

The Benchmark category includes a total of 6 CPU benchmarking tools including CPU Blowfish, CPU CryptoHash, CPU Fibonacci, CPU N-Queens, FPU FFT and FPU Raytracing. These tools basically help you test computational power of CPU by putting it through various tests. Clicking the test immediately starts it, and once the test finishes, it will show the results in main window.

Checking CPU’s Ability To Withstand Extreme Stress

Although Hardinfo provides a handful of CPU benchmarking tools to test computational power, it doesn’t show how CPU will behave under extreme stress. Since resource-hog applications mainly use CPU to perform the required operation(s), you can put your CPU through stress test using cpuburn tool. It’s worth mentioning here the it puts your CPU under extreme stress and maximize heat production to check how your CPU behaves, and therefore, it’s recommended to use it for only 5-10 minutes. The application can be downloaded and installed from Synaptic Package Manager. Just enter cpuburn in search bar, right-click it in main window, and select Mark for installation. Once marked, hit Apply to install the application.

cpuburn packages numerous applications to test CPU performance under stress. It comes without any interface nor does it have a configuration console to tweak stress test settings. First off, open Terminal app from Applications –>Accessories menu.

You can use burnP6 command to begin the CPU stress test. Just enter burnP6 and hit enter. It will begin putting stress on the CPU. You can use System Monitor app (accessible from System –> Administration) to check the CPU usage.

Benchmark GPU Performance / Perform FPS Test

In order to completely test each attribute of your GPU, you may need multiple GPU benchmarking utilities. Just like Windows and other OS platforms, Ubuntu supports various GPU performance test and benchmark applications to check its ability to render glass shadows, pixel shades, FPS for 3D objects and more. The widely known glxgears lets you run a 3D gears in a small window (300×300) to show number of frames that can be rendered in 5 seconds. It’s basically an OpenGL application that does nothing except reporting FPS numbers. It is packaged into Mesa Utilities that can be downloaded and installed from Synaptic Manager. Once open source repo list is added,  enter mesa-utils in search bar, mark it for installation and hit Apply to download and install it on Ubuntu.

Once installed, open Terminal window, and enter glxgears command. It will start the test and provide you with current FPS info in real time. Closing the glxgears test window will show the final results in Terminals window. You can compare the results with glxgears official community

Since glxgears shows FPS for only a small window, and doesn’t really put your GPU through heavy 3D graphics tests, you can download Heaven benchmark utility to check if your GPU supports 3D games with extremely heavy graphics or not. It’s DirectX 11 GPU benchmarking tool that is based on Unigine engine. The application not only supports previous versions of DirectX including DirectX 10 and DirectX 11, but also OpenGL 4.0. You can watch Heaven benchmark test video below.

Testing All System Components With Phoronix Test Suite

Amongst the list of system benchmark applications, Phoronix is probably the most comprehensive and powerful testing and benchmarking plaform that supports more than 130 test profiles and 60 test suites. It provides users with one-stop solution to test numerous system components including Processor, Memory, GPU, Hard disk, Video Encoding and lot more. The application was primarily designed for automated Linux testing, and has the ability to perform both qualitative and quantitative benchmarks via an interactive menu. All you need is to download the DEB package, and install it using Ubuntu Software Center.

Once installed, select Phoronix Test Suite from Applications –> System Tools menu.

Upon click, it will launch the application in Terminal, showing the menu to run a test, run a whole suite by specifying multiple tests, perform complex system test, show system hardware / software info, display auto-detected system sensors and test run repetition.

Just enter the number of test you want to perform, and it will start the test. It must be noted that it may prompt you to install additional components to perform the test. It will first list down all the missing testing modules, and then automatically start downloading them from its online repository.

The Run A Suite option lets you select the tests you want to run in order to check the component’s performance. For instance, you may choose to run pts/gaming test to check if the system specifications meet the requirements of high-end games or not.

The Run Complex System Test option downloads additional packages, which are required to perform pts/apache. pts/c-ray, pts/ramspeed and pts/postmark tests. After downloading all the required components, it will start using each suite to test entire system. You can compare the results with openbenchmarking.org online community and get feedbacks on your system benchmark results.

Running Disk Benchmark Test To Identify Read/Write Issues

Although Phoronix includes a range of components to test the hard disk read/write functions, it prompts you to install the additional modules that are required to conduct a hard disk test. Alternatively, you can choose to install Bonnie++ tool to thoroughly test all sectors for finding read and write issues. It’s a disk benchmarking suite that performs a number of tests to check read and write functions’ performance & speed, and latency rate. Just like other disk benchmark tools, it writes a file on disk volume and then read the file to find the issues. Moreover, it automatically deletes the files after performing the tests, and shows test results. To download and install the application, open Terminal window from Applications –> Accessories menu, and enter the following command.

sudo apt-get install bonnie++

Once the application is installed, navigate to disk volume on which tests are to be performed, and enter bonnie++ to begin disk benchmark tests. The following screenshot shows the type of tests it perform to measure disk performance.

The application has been designed to test database type access to file(s), and check disk health by writing, reading and deleting small files. Once it’s performed all the tests, it will show the disk performance test results in Terminal window. You can check the time it took to write files on disk, read files, and then delete them from the disk. It also shows the average CPU time it took to perform the disk test operations.

We hope that, after using aforementioned benchmarking utilities, you will be able to diagnose potential hardware issues. We have previously brought you a guide on creating a customizable system rescue disk via SARDU to fix a wide range of system issue, and you can make a customized bootable system rescue solution by following the mentioned steps in said post, and then use the required utilities.

Related Articles:

1. Analyze System Components And Diagnose Issues With Fresh Diagnose
2. HardInfo – Benchmark CPU & Get System Hardware Information In Ubuntu
3. Create Disk Image & Clone Hard Disk Partition With Ubuntu Live USB

The main interface allows you to add wallpapers to the application, preview selected wallpapers and select wallpaper itself. The Auto Change in random order option allows you to randomly change wallpapers included in the list.

The Preferences tab allows you to define global hot key for changing wallpaper and set scheduling parameters, like Auto change at startup and Change interval.

At the bottom, the Display Parameters tab under Preferences enables you to share the image between multiple monitors, export image parameters to clients, choose the resizing method and apply special effects on the background. The Network tab allows you to synchronize your wallpaper by entering the Server and Port.

The application lacks the option to set separate wallpapers if you have multiple monitors connected to your computer. Otherwise, it’s a very useful cross-platform wallpaper manager. It works on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Linux.

Download SyncWall

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To perform IPv4 calculations, you can input the IP, Subnet mask and prefix length, in order to acquire the binary and hexadecimal output. The IPV4 Address Analyzer tab also displays the output IP address range and number of hosts, including net/broadcast, network address and broadcast address.

Similarly, the IPv4 Range to Prefix Converter can be used to acquire the prefix and subnet mask of a defined IP address range. Other subnet-based calculations, based on subnet to prefix, can be performed from the IPV4 Subnet Calculator tab.

Gip can be quite handy for primarily acquiring the subnet and binary values of IPV4  addresses, without having to manually calculate them through tedious methods. The only downside of this tool, is that, unlike many Windows based applications, such as Bitcricket IP Calculator, Gip does not provide IPV6 based calculations. Gip can be installed in Ubuntu either from the Ubuntu Software Center, or you can download the source package from the link given below.

Download Gip IP Address Calculator

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Once the Super Flexible File Synchronizer client is launched, it provides three options to either synchronize/backup data, edit/run saved profiles or run several profiles.

If you choose to select the backup or synchronization path, you can either select the local directories or click the Web icon to specify a cloud based server for data backup or synchronization. Both the source and destination locations will have to be specified.

In the following steps, you will be asked to select sync direction and sub folders, sync modes (Standard Copying, Smart Tracking or Exact Mirror), select a profile and sync or backup your data. Before you sync or backup files, the entire file data can be obtained from a preview log.

Ubuntu users can download and run the Super Flexible File Synchronizer client after downloading and extracting the compressed TAR file.

Download Super Flexible File Synchronizer

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ffDiaporama works pretty much like Windows Live Movie Maker, and merely requires importing pictures and/or videos to begin editing them. You can add files. projects, titles and edit the video from the Project tab.

After you have edited frames according to your desired criteria, head over to the Render Video tab, and select a format for viewing the video on smart phones (Smart Phone option, which contains presets for Apple, Nokia and other hand held devices), Web (HTML and SWF formats, along with an option to upload the video to DailyMotion or YouTube), and numerous Multimedia Systems, including gaming consoles, ADSL Box and media players.

After selecting your required preset, click OK to start the rendering process.

This way, you can create and share videos from your memorable pictures and recorded home videos.

ffDiaporama versions can be downloaded for Windows and a number of Linux distributions from the developer’s website, including Ubuntu, OpenSuse, Fedora, ArchLinux and others.

Download ffDiaporama

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To get started, download and extract the Roboto font and Ice Cream Shell (download link given at the end of this post). Now, install the Roboto font, followed by the User-Theme GNOME Shell extension, from the PPA given below.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/gnome3
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gnome-shell-extensions-user-theme

Once done, hit Alt+F2 or log out and log back in to apply the changes.  You will require the Gnome Tweak Tool to apply the Ice Cream Shell. If you do not have the Gnome Tweak Tool installed, then you can grab it from the Ubuntu Software Center or by entering the below Terminal command.

sudo apt-get install gnome-tweak-tool

After launching the Gnome Tweak Tool, you will require turning on the User Themes Extension from Shell Extension. After enabling the user themes extension, head over to the Theme section and select Ice Cream Shell. Also download and set the Android wallpaper (link given at the end of this post).

This will give your Ubuntu Gnome desktop the Android 4.0 ICS look. The below screenshots demonstrate the UI of the Ice Cream Shell.

Download Roboto Font

Download Ice Cream Shell

Android ICS 4.0 Wallpaper 1

[via WML Cloud]

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To create your bootable installer disc, select an ISO image or CD/DVD disc, and click Install.

This will create your Windows Vista/7 installer USB. It is worth mentioning here that the tool might also work with Windows 8; however, it has not been tested. Having said that, the developer has mentioned that the supported images include, “Windows Vista, Seven+.” You can install WinUSB either from the Deb package given at the developer’s website (for Oneiric, Natty, Maverick and Lucid), or from the PPA given below.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:colingille/freshlight
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install winusb

Since WinUSB also works from the command line, you can create a Windows 7 or Windows Vista USB installer by following the command line format given below:

sudo winusb --format <iso path> <device>

Once the USB is formatted using the above method, install a Windows partition and edit the Master Boot Record:

sudo winusb --install <iso path> <partition>

[via WEBUPD8]

Related Articles:

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2. Rufus: Create Bootable USB To Install Windows & Linux, Flash BIOS And More
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To configure Ubuntu session control settings, install the Ubuntu Tweak, launch it from the Unity Dash, and head over to the Session Control section.

This will provide you with a number of session control settings, such as removal of log out, restart and shutdown options, as well as their conformation dialog boxes. Under the User Menu options, you can enable/disable the entire user menu from the system tray and remove the user’s name from the Ubuntu panel.

As most Ubuntu users know, Ubuntu Tweak is compatible with all latest Ubuntu versions, including Oneiric Ocelot, and can be downloaded and installed via the Deb package from the developer’s website.

Download Ubuntu Tweak

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In order to edit Cinnamon settings, you will first require installing dconf-tools by entering the following Terminal command.

sudo apt-get install dconf-tools

Once done, launch dconf tools from Applications –> Others ->Dconf Tools. Now, head over to Org –> Cinnamon and enable/disable your desired features. For example, you can enable/disable panel-auto hide, panel-launchers, development-tools, app monitoring, etc. If you end up messing up your Cinnamon settings, you can easily revert the changes by clicking Set to default. Expanding the Cinnamon section within the configuration editor allows you to enable/disable additional options, like the week date and clock view. If you are confused about the functionality of a section within Cinnamon settings, then simply click the respective option (and not the check box), to view additional information about the configuration option.

Cinnamon is available for a number of Linux platforms, including Ubuntu, Linux Mint 12, Fedora, OpenSuse and Arch Linux.

Download Cinnamon

Related Articles:

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Turbo-Secure works pretty much like any other Linux script; all you need is to download and extract the compressed archive, and then run the Turbo-Secure-Files-Installer.sh and Turbo-Secure-Text-Installer.sh files. Executing each file will start a wizard that will guide you through the encryption process. In the first step, you will be asked to select either the GPG or SSL encryption standard. GPG is used for protecting personal data (especially text), whereas, SSL is recommended for encrypting personal data.

In the following steps, It presents a number of dialog boxes to configure the security settings. It asks you to specify manual or automatic password input mode, i.e store your password in such a way that you will have to type the password each time you encrypt a file or store passwords on hard drive for ease of use.

During the script wizard, you will be asked to select an encryption type, e.g. AES 256-Bit, AES 192-Bit, 3DES, DESX, AES 128-Bit, DES, RC4 40-Bit, BLOWFISH, CAST, CAST5, RC2 40-Bit and RC2 64-Bit.

Once the wizard completes, the encryption options will be added to the Ubuntu right-click context menu. You can use these options to encrypt files and text.

You can download Turbo-Secure from the Gnome look link below.

Download Turbo-Secure

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The application has Open (load a new 3D model), Examine (examine the current 3D model), Walk, Fly and Collisions buttons on the main interface, while File, View, Navigation, Animation, Edit, Console and Display menus allow you to access extended options. Information about the loaded animation is displayed on the bottom-left corner.

The Navigation menu allows you to Jump to Viewpoint, change interaction method with the model from Examine, Walk, Fly and None, Adjust Walk, Fly Settings, etc.

The View menu lets you adjust viewing options such as Fill Mode, Screen Effects, Lightning, Shaders, Textures, Blending and other details of the selected 3D model.

Under Display menu, the application also has a built-in screenshot feature, allowing you to take screenshots of the loaded model. You can capture image screenshots for still 3D models, or capture frames for animation.

The application does much more than described in this article. For a complete listing of its features, visit the product page. view3dscene is a cross-platform application, and works on Windows, Mac OS X (32-bit only) and Linus operating systems.

Download view3dscene

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To install Nautilus Actions in Ubuntu 11.10, open a Terminal window, and enter the following commands:

wget -O nautilus-actions-3.1.5.tar.gz http://goo.gl/qitnX
tar zxvf nautilus-actions-3.1.5.tar.gz 

cd nautilus-actions-3.1.5 

./configure --with-gtk=3 

make 

sudo make install

This will install Nautilus Actions, and you can start Nautilus-Actions from the Terminal with the below command, or via the Unity Dash:

nautilus-actions-config-tool

It is unfortunate that such issues have become frequent with Ubuntu applications, as the frequent development cycle updates and kernel changes for Ubuntu seem to be one of the root causes of compatibility issues and errors that are being caused for applications and scripts. In case you come across any further issues or bugs related to Nautilus Actions, you can report them at the Launchpad link given below.

Nautilus Actions Extra

[via Up Ubuntu]

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