I’ve been using Google Reader for about as long as I’ve been using Delicious. When it comes to finding new content I greatly prefer Google Reader over any other resource available, I also prefer Delicious over any other method for storing bookmarks. While sharing and starring items in my feed reader is convenient, it has steadily caused me to become remiss in saving items to Delicious over the years.

In my search to find a convenient method for syncing items from my account to Delicious I ran across a script by Rick Mans to just that. Unfortunately, the method he uses to attempt to detect recommended tags for future bookmarks often leaves the saved bookmarks without any tags at all or with too many tags. Which left me having to go back later and edit each bookmark to add relevant tags, essentially negating any time saved by using automated syncing.

Luckily over the past year I’ve gained a cursory knowledge of PHP so I decided to modify the script to work a bit differently, though I did rely quite heavily on a friend for guidance. I’ve set up a page for the script on Google code which contains the documentation needed to configure the script. For convenience sake I’ve reiterated them here.

First, grab a copy of the script.

Open the file greader2delicious.php with your text editor of choice and follow these instructions to get started. In order for the script to function you will need to insert your Delicious Bookmarks username and password between the quotation marks on lines 26 and 27 respectively.

You will also need to insert your unique Google Reader ID (a string of 20 digits) into line 43 of the script:

$googleReaderURI = “http://www.google.com/reader/public/atom/user/20-digit-ID-goes-here/state/com.google/broadcast”;

If you are unsure how to find your 20-digit ID go to Google Reader and click “Sharing settings” below your friends list. You should see your 20-digit ID under the heading “Choose a custom URL”:

http://www.google.com/reader/shared/20-digit-ID

That takes care of configuring the script itself, in order to run the script you’ll need to have the packages php5, php-cli, and php5-curl installed. You can install them by entering the following command into the terminal:

sudo apt-get install php5 php-cli php5-curl

Once the installation has finished you can run the script by using the command below (which assumes that you’ve saved the script in your home folder):

php5 -f ~/greader2delicious.php

If you’ve properly configured the script you should see many new bookmarks in your delicious account assuming you’ve used the “share” function on Google Reader before. If you notice, none of them will have any tags and you may have seen the following error in the terminal after running the script:

Notice: Undefined index

To take advantage of modified tag function of my script use the “Share with note” option in Google Reader. The script searches for the following syntax in your note:

TAGS(tag1 tag2 tag3)

Wherein tag1 tag2 tag3 and so on are replaced with your tags, such as cars school funny etc. Sharing bookmarks is also possible using this method, simply use the tag for:username (replacing “username” with the Delicious username of the person you would like to share the bookmark with). To sync older items simply add ?n=100 to the end of the Google Reader URI on line 43 of the script, replacing “100″ with the number of previously shared items you wish to retrieve just remember to remove this tidbit once you’ve run the script once so you don’t redundantly attempt to save the same bookmarks again.

Note: Previously shared items will in all likelihood not have the TAGS(tag1 tag2 tag3) pseudofunction syntax and will therefor be synced without any tags to Delicious.

If you’ve made it this far and want to make the entire syncing process even easier why not run the script on a regular basis to automate your syncing entirely. You can do so easily by using cron. Simply enter the line below into the terminal:

crontab -e

Then paste/type the following into the CLI based editor:

0 0 * * * php5 -f ~/.scripts/gr2del.php

(Hit Ctrl+x to exit and type Y when prompted to save changes)

What this does is tells your system to run the script at 12:00 AM every day. If you’d like to run it less often visit this tutorial for more instructions. If you have any problems running the script feel free to leave a comment or send me an email via the contact form in my contact page.

I love Inkscape, it’s no secret. Most of the images in my portfolio were created using Inkscape. It has a clean interface, just the right tools to do what I want, and it’s free. I prefer it over any other available vector image editing program out there so I jumped at installing the newest release when it was made available. Some great new features include timed autosaves, spell check, better PS and EPS export. Unfortunately, the Ubuntu repositories don’t contain this version yet. On the bright side, installing 0.47 is a breeze using the apt-get build-dep function to install everything needed to put you on the path to vector editing zen.

First, make sure you’ve removed/uninstalled any previous version of Inkscape on your system and check that you’ve installed the build-essential package via apt-get. Once that’s all taken care of you should be good to go.

Next, to grab a copy of 0.47:

cd ~/Desktop
wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/inkscape/inkscape-0.47.tar.bz2

You can extract it with the following terminal command:

tar xvjf ~/Desktop/inkscape-0.47.tar.bz2

Before moving forward you’ll need to install all the dependencies by entering the line below (please note that this does not install the package ‘inkscape’):

sudo apt-get build-dep inkscape

After that’s done you should have everything you need to finish the installation. We’ll change directories and then finish with three final commands:

cd ~/Desktop/inkscape-0.47/

./configure

Once that’s finished:

make

And lastly:

sudo make install

That should take care of it.

Mozilla Messaging announced on Tuesday that it had officially released Thunderbird 3 its open source mail client. I’ve written about Thunderbird 3 before. New features to the client include tabs, and an impressive search component. I’ve gotten a few emails asking how to install via apt. So I’ll post those instructions too.

You can install Thunderbird 3 via apt if you add the Mozilla Daily Build Team PPA found here: http://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-mozilla-daily/+archive/ppa

Then:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install thunderbird-3.0

That’s it for installing via apt. However, the branding will be different, it will be installed as Shredder 3 (its developmental codename).
Or, you can simply download/extract a folder and run it:

To install head over to the Mozilla Messaging website and download the release. Make sure to back up your profile if you remove any previously installed version of Thunderbird before upgrading.

Next, open a terminal and enter the following two commands to extract the archive you just downloaded:

cd ~/Desktop
tar xfvj thunderbird-3.0.tar.bz2

You don’t need the original archive any longer, so delete with the following command:

rm ~/Desktop/thunderbird-3.0.tar.bz2

After you’ve unpacked the archive enter the following command to move it to a more convenient location:

sudo mv ./thunderbird /opt/

Everything should be in order now, so let’s move to the directory and make sure it works:

cd /opt/thunderbird/

Finally, run the following command to launch Thunderbird:

./thunderbird

If everything works fine and you’ve set up your email accounts with little frustration. Next, you may want to create a clickable icon on your desktop so you don’t have launch the program via the command line. To create a desktop icon, simply right-click and select “Create Launcher…” Then fill out the dialogue box with the following information:

Type: Application

Name: Thunderbird 3.0

Command: /opt/thunderbird/thunderbird

Comment: This launches Thunderbird 3.0.

Alternately, here’s another method for creating a link. Open a terminal and enter the following command:

sudo gedit /usr/share/applications/thunderbird3.desktop

Once the text editor is open, paste the following text into the editor (which should be blank):

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Thunderbird 3.0
Comment=Check Your Mail
Exec=/opt/thunderbird/thunderbird
Icon=/opt/thunderbird/chrome/icons/default/default48.png
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Application;Network;

Abobe AIR 2 hit the net recently, it boasts a large number of improvements since its predecessors release a few years ago. Though it’s still in beta I’ve not had any issues with it so far.  Continue on below for installation instructions and a list of all the new bells and whistles.

To grab a copy for yourself head over to the Adobe website and download the .deb listed there to your desktop.

Before installing, be sure to remove any previously installed version of the AIR runtime you may have on your system. Then enter the following command to install the .deb you just downloaded:

sudo dpkg -i ~/Desktop/air2_b1_runtime_lin_111709.deb

That should do it. Below is a list of AIR 2’s improvements and added features:
Support for the detection of mass storage devices.

• Advanced networking capabilities like secure sockets, UDP support, and the ability to listen on sockets.
• Support for native code integration.
• The ability to open a file with its default application.
• Multi-touch and gesture support.
• New APIs for access to raw microphone data.
• Webkit update with HTML5/CSS3 support.
• Global error handling.
• Improved cross-platform printing
• Improved security and support for enterprise and government standards.

For the past few weeks I’ve been using Google Chrome as my primary browser. I find that it performs very well compared to Firefox as well as making better use of screen real estate, even with the tweaking I wrote about last month. However, I still haven’t decided if it’s worth making the jump completely from Firefox, especially with such interesting developments in that browser’s evolution as well. It’s no shock to anyone that Firefox has been whittling away at Internet Explorer’s hegemony over the browser landscape for some time now. With the introduction of Google’s Chrome browser Internet Explorer’s fall from power continues, albeit, at somewhat of a glacial pace.

To install the latest release of Google’s Chrome browser for Linux were’re going to make use of the Google repository for Linux.

First, we need to add the repository to our software sources. Open a terminal and enter the following command to get started:

sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Then, scroll to the bottom of the file you just opened and paste the following two lines:

# Google software repository
deb http://dl.google.com/linux/deb/ stable non-free main

Next, we’ll add the public package signing key on your system to prevent warnings or errors when installing packages from the Google Linux software repositories with this command:

wget -q -O – https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub | apt-key add -

Finally, to update your sources and install the latest browser release enter the following line into the terminal:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install google-chrome

That should take care of it. You’ll find the launcher for Chrome in your main menu along with all your other currently installed browsers.

Recently I read about an interesting Mozilla feature that allows users to create custom collections of add-ons to share with other users. Essentially making this post much easier for me to write now that I don’t have to drone on and on about which add-ons I use to streamline my favorite browser’s interface. I usually have about 20 tabs open at time and a lot of these are must-haves to make sense of everything. This group of plugins is a sure fire way to trim the fat off your Firefox browser. Also, for those of you lucky enough to own a netbook, they make browsing the web much easier on the eyes by maximizing the viewable content area. See the full post for even more space saving tips.

Minimalist’s Collection – A set of add-ons to streamline your browser without compromising usability.

5 More Ways to Slim Your Browser

Here’s a list of 5 tricks I use in conjunction with the add-ons I’ve collected that will put your browser on the road to minimalist zen — and it looks great too!

1. Remove the names from your bookmark toolbar – This allows you to keep many more bookmarks for quick access just a click away without sacrificing anything. Any website worth it’s salt should have a unique favicon which is as good as having a list of names.
2. Remove the activity indicator from your toolbar – The activity indicator is the tiny icon on the top right of your browser window that animates every time you load a new page. You don’t really need it. Right click one of your menus and select “Customize…” then drag it back into the box containing all the other buttons you don’t need.
3. Get rid of navigation buttons you don’t really need – Learn easy to remember Firefox hotkeys and save yourself the trouble of having to reach for the mouse every 5 seconds if you really don’t have to. I remove the Stop and Refresh buttons, but there’s no reason to stop there. At the very least make sure you’ve turned on the “Use Small Icons” option.
4. Consolidate your toolbars – This is one of the best ways to save space. You don’t need toolbars taking over your browser. After installing the Tiny Menu add-on listed in my collection move everything from the navigation toolbar up to the top, which is always displayed, and get rid of the empty space afterword by displaying only the bookmarks toolbar. Less is more!
5. Choose a theme that makes the most of your new layout – An important part of being happy about how you’ve setup your browser includes having it look nice. The NASA Night Launch Theme works best for me, but for those of you who enjoy a lighter theme, try the Elementary Theme.

The lesson here is that one of the great things about tweaking your browser and making it work for you is that there are other people out there wanting to do the same thing. So if you have any space saving tricks to add please share them in the comments section!

If you’re impatient like me you won’t want to wait for Firefox 3.5 to hit the repositories to take advantage of its slick new features such as location aware browsing, and native open audio/video support under HTML5 . Luckily installing from source is a piece of cake. Simply download the Linux source file most relevant to you and read on below:

Note: Whenever you’re compiling from source code you’ll need to make sure you’ve got the build-essential package installed. If you’re unsure, enter the following command in your terminal:

sudo apt-get install build-essential

After downloading the source file, a tar.bz2 file, you’ll need to extract it. To keep things simple, I recommend extracting the file to your home folder. First, use the command line to navigate to the directory to which you downloaded the file. Then enter this to extract to your home folder :

tar -xvjf ./firefox-3.5.tar.bz2 -C ~/ &&  rm ./firefox-3.5.tar.bz2

Note: this command also removes the downloaded archive after extracting to your home folder.

To run your updated Firefox simply enter this command:

~/firefox/firefox

You’ll want to redirect any icons on your panel/desktop/dock to that file for the time being. That is, until the most recent version of Firefox is added to the Ubuntu repositories. You’ll notice that this method leaves any previously installed versions of Firefox intact on your system. Which means that your plugins, add-ons, and profiles will all be fine. So, when the upgrade manages to percolate its way onto your system through the repositories simply remove the directory created above and point your icons back to ~/.mozilla/firefox to restore them.

• 1920×1200px
• 1680×1050px
• 1440×900px
• 1280×1024px
• 1280×800px
• 1024×768px
• iPhone Version

In the spirit of sharing, here is a vector file so that you may build upon the work if you wish.

All-Star Wallpaper by Patrick Micka is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on these two works.

Earlier this month Google unveiled yet another of it’s favicons. Though some disagree, I feel that this version is a lot nicer than any previous iteration, especially the one they released June of last year. Popular productivity blog Lifehacker recently posted instructions on how to replace the old Google icon in the search bar with the newer version. Though they didn’t provide any instructions for Linux users.

Here’s how I changed the Google favicon in the search bar through the command line:

To download the new .xml file which stores the search engine plugin to the desktop, we first need to change the current directory with this command:

cd ~/Desktop

Next, grab the new file with the following command:

wget http://www.mozillalinks.org/download/google.xml

Then, delete, and subsequently replace, the old one by entering the two commands below:

sudo rm /usr/lib/firefox-addons/searchplugins/google.xml
sudo cp ~/Desktop/google.xml /usr/lib/firefox-addons/searchplugins/google.xml

If you get some sort of “no such file or directory” message when trying to delete the old google.xml file use the following command to locate it and modify the steps noted above to reflect the directory which it is located in.

sudo find / -name ‘google.xml’

After you’ve completed the switch successfully simply restart Firefox and enjoy responsibly.

Let’s face it. Not everyone likes orange and brown that much.

This guide will serve as a reference for future posts. Additionally, I hope that it will provide you with the framework and knowledge needed to customize your desktop in a way that reflects your personal preference. However, nothing in this post is set in stone, take as much or as little of it as you’d like. I’m open to criticism about what things you think I left off this list, so feel free to add more in the comments section. Take this as a list of ideas and suggestions to shape the feel of your desktop any way you’d like.

Compiz
Compiz is a compositing window manager for the X Window System that allows you to take advantage of all sorts of desktop effects, such as translucency, dimming, and desaturation. You should find a basic control panel in System > Preferences > Appearance > Visual Effects. Unfortunately, this set of controls does not provide the ability to fine tune individual effects and setting. Another program exists that will allow you to take advantage of a broader range of features, as well as turn off those you don’t want. However, this compiz settings manager is not installed by default. To enable it simply type the following command into the terminal:

sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager

After that’s finished installing, you should have a new entry in your main menu under System > Preferences > CompizConfig Settings Manager.

Emerald
Emerald is a window decorator for the Compiz compositing window manager. As opposed to the standard GTK+ engine packaged with GNOME this manager, in my opinion, allows for a much prettier overall look. Though not necessary, it’s worth a look. To install it just run the following command in the terminal:

sudo apt-get install emerald

Afterwards, you’ll want to download a theme from one of the many sites dedicated to customization such as www.gnome-look.org or www.beryl-themes.org and install them via the menu located in System > Preferences > Emerald Theme Manager.

Conky
Conky is a highly customizable free software system monitor for the X Window System that has been getting a lot of attention recently by websites likeLifehacker. To get started, install with the following command:

sudo apt-get install conky

Installation is simple, though customization can be tricky if you’re unfamiliar with using a text editor to do these sorts of things. I recommend simply running the program with its default setup by typing “conky” into your terminal as well as familiarizing yourself with the documentation on Conky’s website before proceeding. Once you’re ready to move on, create a .conkyrc file in your home folder or grab one from one of the many places where you might find one.

Avant Window Navigator
Avant Window Navigator, AWN, is a dock-like bar which sits at the bottom your screen and tracks open windows and provides useful applets. It is a bit more abstract than simply managing your windows as buttons or segments in a panel. I recommend changing the shape of the bar. Though it does use icons to minimize screen space and adds visual appeal, I do not recommend this application for users with smaller screens. To install AWN follow this steps:

First, add the AWN personal package archive repository to your sources with the following command:

sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Then paste the following three lines at the bottom of the text ediror:

#AWN PPA
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/awn-testing/ubuntu intrepid main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/awn-testing/ubuntu intrepid main

Install with the following two commands:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install avant-window-navigator-trunk awn-manager-trunk awn-extras-applets-trunk

You should then find AWN in your Applications menu.

This is by no means and exhaustive set of instructions for customizing your desktop. Though, it should provide you with some basic tools for customizing your experience. If you run into any problems with any of these instructions, let me know.