Sometimes, the maximum netbook resolution can be inconvenient for the end user. This is particularly the case for people who suffer from a weak eye sight. Newrez is a Nautilus-based script that enables enhancing the screen resolution of Linux computers by specifying a resolution higher than the available resolutions. For example, if your maximum resolution is 1024×600, then you can scale it up to 1280×800 or higher (depending on your eyesight). The good thing about Newrez is that it does not overclock the actual hardware of your laptop, and instead, it builds an image with a higher resolution, which is located in a buffer. This image is then scaled to fit your screen for better visibility. This means that you are not constrained to standard resolutions anymore.

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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Turbo-Secure is a package of Nautilus script that provides the option to safely encrypt & secure personal data. Gnome currently has a program called sea-horse for this purpose, but it is a bit difficult to configure. Apart from that, Turbo-Secure delivers quick SSL and GPG encryption by enabling users to encrypt files and text via right-click context menu in Ubuntu. While Turbo-Secure focuses on securely encrypting your data, it provides numerous encryption types including AES 192bit, 256bit, RC 40bit & 64bit, BlowFish and more.

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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Being the default file manager of the Gnome desktop, Nautilus seems to lack a few built-in advanced options. In order to acquire additional features, one has to often resort to the installation of third-party scripts, like the Shred File Script. Nautilus Actions Extra is a set of scripts for Nautilus 3, which adds many useful options to the Ubuntu Context menu. The available scripts and actions in Nautilus Actions Extra include advanced search, the option to set an image as a wallpaper, open a file with Gedit as a root user, mount/unmount ISO files, check file type, calculate file size, verify MD5 checksums, convert image and audio files, batch rename (pyRenamer), add emblems and more.

Nautilus Actions Extra can be installed in Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot and Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin by using the PPA given below.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:dr3mro/nautilus-actions-extra
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nautilus-actions-extra
nautilus -q

Once installed, the script options are automatically added to the right-click context menu, and relevant options appear when you right-click a specific folder or file type. For example, when you right-click a video file, the option to convert the video becomes available (among other options). Similarly, when you right-click a folder, the additional option to emblemize the folder becomes available. As you can see in below screenshot, the extra options in the context menu have appeared after right-clicking on a folder. These include, Advanced Actions (Emblemize, check file type and calculate file type), checksum verification, Visibility (the option to hide or unhide an item), Advanced Search (to quickly locate files and folders), batch renaming utility and filename repair feature.

If you would like to remove or organize any of the available features, then, launch Nautilus Actions Configuration Tool by entering this command in Terminal:

gksu nautilus-actions-config-tool

You can report bugs at the Launchpad link given below.

Nautilus Actions Extra

Update: In case you run into errors when installing Nautilus Actions Extra, check out the alternative installation method here.

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Twitter just revamped their web layout and it is definitely appealing. As opposed to text links, they have gone with buttons and they’ve also flipped things over, literally. Before the revamp, suggested users to follow, trending topics and your account summary appeared in a column on the right while the column on the left was made up entirely of your Timeline. The new design has moved the Timeline to the right and not everyone might be comfortable with it. Fellow geeks at How-To Geek have created a user script Fix Twitter for Chrome and Firefox  that should put the Timeline back where it belongs.

Installing the script is simple enough on Chrome, it will install automatically once you allow it to from the permission box that pops up. For Firefox users, you will need to install GreaseMonkey to get it running.

The script only re-orders the column back to the way they were and does nothing to the overall design. The new buttons are still there as are all the other new design functionalities.

Install Fix Twitter User Script From How-To Geek

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Sometimes it becomes necessary to not just delete confidential files permanently, but to shred them to avoid file recovery. While there are many file shredding applications for Windows (such as Moo0 File Shredder and Universal Shredder), there is a shortage of reliable file shredding methods in Linux. Shred File Script is a Linux script, which allows shredding files in Ubuntu via right-click context menu.

To use this script, download the compressed package from the link given at the end of this post, extract the package, head over to the Home folder and display hidden files and folders by using the CTRL+H hotkey. Once done, copy and paste the Shred File script to .Gnome 2 –> Nautilus Scripts. Now, right-click a file that you wish to shred and select Scripts –> Shred File.

This will provide you with a prompt to confirm if you would like to remove the selected file. Click Yes to remove the file. The confirmation prompt can be quite useful to avoid accidental deletion of important files, as a shredded file is normally hard to recover and even recovered files (that have been shredded) are too badly damaged to be of any use.

It is advised that you do not use this script on files like DEV or HDA. The script is fully compatible with Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot. In case you are unable to use the script immediately after placing it to the Nautilus directory, then restart your system and log back in.

Download Shred File Script

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SoundCloud is a great place for listening to songs, as you can find both popular tracks and seemingly obscure ones, too. It’s also a great place to share your music with friends, see what they’re listening to, and join groups that have similar taste in music. Soundcloud Super +2 is a user script that adds two more features to this service; it gives you recommendations as to which songs are good, and allows you to download any song you want in MP3 format. The script is available for Chrome, Firefox and Opera, and adds the features within the SoundCloud interface.

Once you’ve installed the User Script (no brainer – you need Grease Monkey to run it in Firefox), visit SoundCloud and search for any track. A Use right click save as to download button will be added just above each song’s stream.

Without the script, if you were to right-click on the song, the context menu would have the same options that you would normally see when right-clicking on an image. With the script installed, the options in the right-click context menu change, and allow you to download the song. Right-click the song and select Save link as to initiate the download. The script does not automatically add the song and artist name to the title, and hence, the file is saved in MP3 format with the same name as it was uploaded with.

You can always change the name of the file name in the save file as dialog box. Suggestions for good songs is a feature that is dependent on the number of users of the script, and will kick in after 24 hours of installation. It shows recommendations for songs from EasyRec search engine.

Install Soundcloud Super +2 User Script

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Downloading a large file that has an hour left to complete, and you don’t want to stay up just to shut down your PC? Stepped out in a rush and forgot to put your system to hibernate? Perhaps you want your VPN connection to terminate after a certain interval, or want a certain application to automatically launch at a certain time? For all these cases, Airytec Switch Off comes in handy.

Available in both installable and portable flavors, this light and small tray application can automatically turn off, suspend, lock or hibernate your computer, based on either a pre-defined scheduling or through remote access. It can also launch any program through its highly configurable script support.

When running, you get a tray icon with some preconfigured options, with intervals of 30 minutes, 1 hour and 2 hours. They can also be based on CPU inactivity. Selecting ‘Schedule Task’ gives you more freedom, where you can program a task to execute based on a timer (including one for CPU idle time) or a one-time task with time and date setting. The program can be set to run silently,where it won’t generate any alerts before running the defined task.

One of the most powerful features of Switch Off is its predefined scripts. By default, the software comes with only one; Open calculator, but you can add as many as you like. Click Edit predefined scripts to access the scripts folder. You can create any new scripts in the notepad, saving them with .cmd extension, and they will appear in the pull-down menu. In the screenshot above, the Open Notepad script being shown is my own creation.

The options dialog offers three sets: General, Other and Remote. You can set language, notification and quick-action parameters here.

The Remote tab is of more interest (not available in the portable version) since it allows you to enable and configure remote access parameters for Switch Off. You can also set a remote access password (recommended but not required) to keep your settings secure.

To access remotely, you need to enter your PC’s external IP address followed by the port that you have specified, so that it looks something like http://12.34.56.78:8000, where 12.34.56.78 is assumed to be your PC’s external IP address. Enter this in any web browser, including mobile web browsers, and you get access to your PC’s remote Switch Off panel. Please note that the application must be running in order to access web interface. Check out more details here.

Airytec Switch Off is a user-friendly and useful utility that can come in handy at many a times. It works on all versions of Windows starting with 2000, all the way up to the latest Windows 7, and is gentle on memory usage.

Download Airytec Switch Off

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Malware comes in all shapes and sizes and so do malware removers. While most of them are effective at what they do, not all are able to fix certain persistent malware strings, specifically rootkit kernels, corrupted registry keys, etc. Sometimes, these operations require specific tools to be handled, but the downside is that you need a variety of tools to fix a variety of problems. There hardly ever is a one-stop solution.

Threat Killer is a free malware remover engine that can remove any type of malware and fix any error utilizing custom, user-generated/defined scripts.

The program’s interface is very simple. You have an Execute tab, where you will load the script to be utilized, and another Settings tab where you can control the program’s behaviors. Usage is even easier. Simply browse and load the script that you want to use, and hit Execute. The software will perform all the actions specified by the script.

The scripts themselves are very straightforward and easy to build/use. Under the help menu, you can find a sample script which will provide the syntax for all operations supported by Threat Killer. You can simply modify all commands to your choice, or use only those that you require. In the screenshot above, I used the program to delete a folder ‘AT Virus’ on my desktop. Here’s the script content for this operation:

[DELETE FOLDERS]
C:\Users\Aatoo\Desktop\AT Virus\
[END]

Check out the sample file or Help section of the software to learn about more script usage.

The tool can be put to work in background or added to Windows’ right-click context menu. The settings window will also allow you to choose whether to create backups or not, among other features.

Some of the key features of Threat Killer include:

• Fully Scriptable Engine
• Kill Processes
• Unregister DLLs
• Copy/Move Files
• Delete Files
• Delete Folders Recursive
• Delete Folder
• Empty Folders
• Delete registry keys and values
• Empty registry values
• Set registry values
• Programs to launch
• Stop Drivers
• Unload Drivers
• Delete Drivers

Threat Killer is multilingual and works with all versions of Windows operating system, including Windows 7 on which we tested it.

Download Threat Killer

Another effective tool for automatic removal of various known, persistent malware types that we previously reviewed is ComboFix. You may also want to check it out.

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Greasemonkey scripts may prove to be highly useful and can change the entire browsing experience for a user. They change the way your browser behaves or displays content, and the enhancements offered by some are really addictive. These days, with the explosive growth of Firefox add-ons, there may be many that combine the functions of several scripts, yet the power of the scripts running cannot be ignored. Hence we bring to you our top six picks in Greasemonkey scripts that can alter your browsing experience, hopefully for good.

Though obvious, it must be remembered that you need to have the greasemonkey add-on installed in Firefox before you can install these scripts.

TOCMonkey

This script is basically a ‘table of contents’ injection tool. It lists the contents of the webpage in the form of a table based on heuristic judgment of H1, H2 tags etc. The table integrates with the page as if it were a part of the original.

The table created is a single-level content displayer. To generate a table, right click the monkey icon in bottom left of Firefox, select User Script Commands –> TOCMoneky and that’s it.

Install TOCMonkey

Rapidshare AutoWait

Rapidshare is one of the most-used file sharing platforms. While their premium services may be wonderful, majority of the users rely on the free version of the service, which happens to be full of certain annoyances including wait times, excessive need for clicks, errors, limit exceeded messages and what not. This script handles all of that on its own, and will simply start the download once it becomes available for any Rapidshare URL provided. As the developer puts it, “Just open all links in the tabs and go play outside;-)”

The script will handle most commonly occurring errors on its own, saving the user the need to be in front of the system at all, hence making it unique from others.

Install Rapidshare AutoWait

Google Reader Unread Count

This script will come in handy for those who rely on Google Reader for their RSS feed management. As we know, Google Reader shows the unread count for All Items up to 1000, and beyond that it simply says 1000+. This script will sum up the unread items in each feed and display the real number against All Items.

One limitation is that if any of your individual feeds has over a 1000 items, then the script will fail to work, probably due the ‘+’ sign getting in the way of summation. (Developer Screenshot below)

Install Google Reader Unread Count

IMDB for TPB

This script benefits users who frequent The Pirate Bay. It will simply add information from IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes pertaining to entertainment media torrents on the torrent detail pages.

The script primarily searches for an IMBD link in the torrent detail page itself, and if not found, it will do a search based on torrent name and return the most logical potential match.

Install IMDB for TPB

View Google Images Full

This Greasemonkey script changes the way Google Image search behaves. Using this script, when you click any link in Google image search results, it will open the image directly without the need to click “See Full Size Image” or wait for the original hosting page to load. Can prove really helpful to those who need to perform a lot of image searches.

Install View Google Images Full

SSL Certificates Pro

This script is one of the most useful ones that I have come across. Many websites support the secure HTTPS protocol, but do not implement it by default, unless the user enters the ‘https’ part manually in the URL. This script forces many websites like Facebook, Twitter, Google Accounts, Wikipedia etc to switch to the secure protocol by default, hence improving the user’s privacy protection.

Install SSL Certificates Pro

That’s it for today. Let us know how you found these and don’t forget to share your favorite script in the comments.

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If you are like me who’s website is hosted on Ubuntu server, there will arise a need when you will need to block certain IP addresses. These IP addresses are mostly spam and malicious that never benefits you in any way. In my post a few weeks back I discussed how to add IP addresses to Iptables quickly. But in a worse case scenario when you need to restart your server, all data in iptables will be lost. So how would you make sure that the data is not lost and can be restored?

For those who don’t know, Iptables is the default firewall in Ubuntu through which you can block certain IP addresses. Before configuring so that the IP addresses can be restored after server restart, first lets make sure that the iptables configuration is saved.

You can save the configuration by typing this command in your Terminal using PuTTY or any other tool:

iptables-save > /root/working.iptables.rules

This command will save your iptables configuration in root folder and name it working.iptables.rules.

Now to restore these iptables anytime, run the following command:

iptables-restore < /root/working.iptables.rules

But this method only restores the iptables when entered manually. What we want is to actually restore the iptables automatically when the server restarts. For this, you need to navigate to /etc/network folder and then edit Interfaces using WinSCP or any other tool.

Copy/Paste the following code under auto eth0,

pre-up iptables-restore < /root/working.iptables.rules

as shown in the following screenshot.

Now go ahead and restart the server to see if your iptables have been automatically restored. Enter iptables –L in Terminal to confirm. That’s all. Enjoy!

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We have covered few clipboard utilities before, they sure come handy in different circumstances but but when it comes to copying and pasting repetitive text, they do not handle it quite well. Suppose you want to paste four different words or sentences repeatedly, what will you do?

This is where Sanvient comes in. It is a powerful clipboard utility for Windows but the developer likes to call it an ‘Input Support Utility’. It not only helps the general users, but also helps the developers because it supports copy/pasting of file, regex, key, command, and scripts as well.

Right-click the treeview window and you can add Data, Sets, Import and Export data, and access Settings.

Everytime you create a new data, it is added to the Buttons window, click the buttons and the text will be pasted instantly. This helps in pasting repetitive texts more easily.

There are various other useful features, such as apart from pasting templates text you can also paste template files, execute shell commands, execute scripts, and much more. It works on Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.

Download Sanvient

And yes, don’t forget to watch the demo video which is available on developer’s website. Enjoy!

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Lately, I have been writing about many interesting Greasemonkey scripts. Even through the Greasemonkey add-on has been installed 17.5 million times, many users still don’t know what it is, how to use it, or why to use it. In this post, I will do my best to explain what is this add-on is all about.

What Is Greasemonkey

Just like there are hundreds of add-ons out there for Firefox, one among them is called Greasemonkey. So what does this add-on do? Wikipedia has explained this superbly,

This add-on allows users to install scripts that make on-the-fly changes to most HTML-based web pages. As Greasemonkey scripts are persistent, the changes made to the web pages are executed every time the page is opened, making them effectively permanent for the user running the script. Greasemonkey can be used for adding new functions to web pages (for example, embedding price comparison in Amazon.com web pages), fixing rendering bugs, combining data from multiple webpages, and numerous other purposes.

Why To Use It

This is one of the most important questions people ask me. Suppose you are listening to a song on YouTube and can’t understand the lyrics properly. Now to search for it’s lyrics you will have to Google it, but wait, there is even an easier method. YouTube Lyrics is a Greasemonkey script which adds a widget on the right sidebar that can show you the lyrics of the current song being played.

Greasemonkey scripts generally make the website look the way you want it to be, in other words, you can modify the look of the webpage instantly. So if you want to modify the webpage to give it a more friendlier look, or you want to add more features to the website, give this add-on a go.

How To Use It

Now that’s a good question. Just like you use every other add-on for Firefox, this one is no different. Greasemonkey is basically a platform that allows you to install various scripts. Once Greasemonkey add-on has been installed, just head over to UserScripts where you will find all types of useful scripts. To install any script, first click the Install button, then click Install again when a pop-up window shows up and you are done. To manage your scripts, disable them, or uninstall them go to Tools > Greasemonkey > Manage User Scripts. Enjoy!

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Editor’s Notes: Almost every website use some kind of tracking code, leaving all websites for the sake of privacy would mean visiting no website at all. If you see tracking services such as Google Analytics, Quantcast, etc on a website, you don’t need to fret. Such services are used by webmasters to check how many people are visiting their websites. This add-on is for advanced users who hate being tracked by few services for the sake of their privacy. In other words, if you are a normal internet user then you shouldn’t worry.

Ghostery is a free add-on for Firefox that lets you know which websites are tracking you. Since more and more websites are using the tracking codes and scripts to monitor their visitor’s behavior, you can keep check on these websites by using this add-on.

According to the developer,

Ghostery alerts you when you visit a web site that has web bugs on it. Web bugs are hidden scripts that track your behavior and are used by the sites you visit to understand their own audience.

Once installed, it will load up in the status bar and alert you whenever it finds tracking codes(web bugs) on any website that you visit.

This add-on supports over 135 services and keeps updating them weekly. I am currently using Google Analytics(to track the number of visitors) and few other Google services on my blog.

Note: Some scripts are also used for advertisement, custom search, etc, so they are not a big threat to one’s privacy.

If you don’t want a specific serve to track you, then you can simply leave that website. Enjoy!

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