Author: Admin

Link: Adjust The Notification Center Banner Time in OS X Mavericks

I came across a rather interesting post today on the various newsgroups on the web, it was a discussion in changing the length of time in which a notification banner persists within the left hand side of the screen. These are the ones that appear when your get a new mail message, iTunes track, or a variety of other messages. With a nifty terminal trick you can change the length of time in which this message is displayed.

Full article here:
Adjust The Notification Centre Banner Time (MacTricksAndTips.com)
Related:
Best OS X Mavericks tips and tricks (TrustedReviews)

Link: How to Do IP Address Geolocation Lookups on Linux

You have probably noticed different services on the Internet which automatically know roughly where you are in the world. From music and video stream services to online stores, these services use a technique, called IP geolocation, which matches your approximate physical location with the IP address you are using. Whenever you connect to the Internet, your device is assigned an IP address from a pool of addresses which are allocated to the different telecommunication companies. The way these addresses work can be quite complicated, but because they are assigned in blocks, it is possible to build a database which maps a block of addresses to a country or even a particular area or city.

The good news is that doing these geolocation lookups isn’t only for the big corporate and mega websites. There are a number of free online services and even a command line tool for Linux which allows you to lookup IP addresses and get information about where that address is assigned. This can be very useful when you are investigating a suspicious email or strange comments left on a blog. It is also useful when using services that mask your IP address, like a VPN, to ensure that they are working as advertised.

Full article here:
How to Do IP Address Geolocation Lookups on Linux (Make Tech Easier)

Link: How to turn the new Firefox 29 into the old Firefox

Firefox 29 will introduce changes to the web browser that will rock the world of some users of the browser. The version of Firefox ships with Australis, a design, layout and feature change that introduces major changes to Firefox and is in my opinion comparable to the major switch from Firefox 3 to 4.

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Good news is that you can modify the browser to your liking or restore the interface so that it looks similar to the one you used to work with. Bad news is that you have to rely on third-party authors to do so.

Full article here:
How to turn the new Firefox 29 into the old Firefox (gHacks Technology News)
Related:
How to restore Firefox’s classic theme after the Australis interface update (gHacks Technology News)

Link: Schedule Your Jobs in Linux With CRON

Most of the Linux users are aware of how commands are run, processes are manipulated and scripts are executed in terminal. But, if you are a Linux system administrator, you might want them to start and execute automatically in the background. As an example, you might consider running a backup job every day, at a specific time, automatically. Or you might consider an example of collecting inventory data of the systems deployed across your network, by running a script automatically on monthly basis. But, how to schedule these jobs and execute them automatically in Linux?

There is an utility in Linux known as CRON with which you can start your jobs automatically at a desired time and schedule them to get executed periodically.

Full article here:
Schedule Your Jobs in Linux With CRON (Your Own Linux..!)
Related:
Crontab and cron job (G. Garron)
How to Schedule Routine Tasks with Cron and Anacron on a VPS (DigitalOcean)
Run java application as CRON job in Linux (Preet Prasannan)
Advanced Job Scheduling With Cron (OStatic)
MTE Explains: How CRON Can Automate Your Tasks And Make Your Life Easier (Make Tech Easier)
How to Schedule Routine Tasks with Cron and Anacron on a Linux Server (DigitalOcean)

Link: Useful FFmpeg Commands

FFmpeg is an extremely powerful and versatile command line tool for converting audio and video files. It is free and available for Windows, Mac and Linux machines. Whether you want to join two video files, extract the audio component from a video file, convert your video into an animated GIF, FFmpeg can do it all and even more.

Full article here:
Useful FFmpeg Commands (Digital Inspiration)
Related: OS X installers (second line below contains link to newer version at this writing):
Run ffmpeg On Mac Without Compiling Anything (peppoj.net) (UPDATE to this article)
FFmpeg installer for OS X (Rudix)

Link: Managing the Exif Data on Your Photos From the Command Line [Linux]

ImageMagick is a suite of tools for Linux which allows you to manipulate images from the command line. The “convert” command allows you to perform image conversions and image transformations; however, there are several other tools included in the suite, some of which allow you to work with the Exif data in JPEG photos.

Full article here:
Managing the Exif Data on Your Photos From the Command Line [Linux] (Make Tech Easier)

Security alert for users of the FreePBX Distro

We do not normally provide security alerts but since we have several articles on this site dealing with tweaks to Asterisk and FreePBX, we thought we would just pass this along. If you are a FreePBX Distro user, go read this thread and this security notice now. You should particularly do this if you are noticing high CPU usage.

The problem is that there is an exploit in the FreePBX Distro caused by a piece of software that turns itself on when installed. Some users want it, but many have never heard of it and don’t use it, so it should be turned off by default. One side effect of this software is that it has given attackers a way to install and run bitcoin mining software on affected PBX’s, which can degrade performance and increase power consumption. It’s a simple fix to keep this from happening, so do it now!

Link: Get hardware information on Linux with lshw command

Lshw is a nifty small command line utility that generates detailed reports about various hardware components on the system. It does so by reading different files in the /proc directory.

Lshw is capable of reporting memory configuration, firmware version, mainboard configuration, CPU version and speed, cache configuration, bus speed etc.

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Lshw also comes with a gui frontend called lshw-gtk that reports the same information in a minimal graphical user interface. Here is a screenshot.

NOTE: Some Linux distributions may already have a tool similar to this, that is installed during the initial installation of the operating system.

Full article here:
Get hardware information on Linux with lshw command (BinaryTides)
Related:
Basic troubleshooting commands in linux (Webkul)
2 GUI tools to check hardware information in Linux (Linux and Life)

Link: Best Alternative App Stores for Linux

The concept of app stores, though popularized by Apple, followed by Android, has been around for a long time. In fact, Linuxians know that it was in the penguinian world of software that the concept of app store basically originated. A software housing a collection of apps stored in a convenient location was something Linux users have loved and still love.

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That said, if you are an Ubuntu user, you probably must have gotten tired of using Ubuntu Software Center already. It’s clean, sleek, and does what it says on the tin; however, as a FOSS enthusiast you might be looking for something different. If that’s the case, then we have for you a list of alternative app stores for Linux that will help you get the software you need instantly.

Full article here:
Best Alternative App Stores for Linux (TechSource)

Got an older Sony Walkman mp3/video player that occasionally locks you out? Here’s a possible quick fix

We’re talking the newer technology Walkmans here, that play music from internal memory as opposed to an old-school cassette player (for those old enough to remember those). The specific problem is that you are out somewhere with your Walkman and you turn it on and attempt to play something, and are greeted by this message:

There is a possibility that the connection has been canceled during transfer. Please connect to compliant software or device and transfer data again.

But you don’t have the device’s USB cable with you, and maybe no computer to plug it into.

Resist the urge to hurl the thing into the nearest deep lake (we’ve been there) and try this first. Put it into test mode, then exit test mode without changing anything. It should rebuild the library, which is the same thing it does after you connect it to a computer and then disconnect it again.

And how do you put it into test mode? Well, you have to bring up the Service Menu to do that, and the instructions for doing that for a few models can be found here:

Sony NWZ-E430, NWZ-E350, NWZ-E460 Service Menu (Averbouch.biz)

This page also covers a couple of different models:

Sony Walkman Service Menu Access (Update 2012) (The Walkman Blog)

If neither of those pages covers your model, try the instructions for a model in the same series (for example, the NWZ-E350 instructions work with a NWZ-E354), or go to your favorite search engine and search on your Walkman model number and the words “Service Menu”.

Take heed of the warnings on these pages about how if you screw this up, you could brick your Walkman. Even so, if you’re seriously considering throwing the thing across a parking lot, you might want to take a few deep breaths and try this first. No guarantees, but it might work.

You may want to print out the pages and carry them with you (in your car or wherever) since you probably won’t be near a computer when you need them, and unless you have a photographic memory you probably won’t remember the button sequence. If you’re young enough to be able to easily memorize things like that, chances are you’re now using your smart phone as your music/video player, but some folks don’t have/use that newer technology yet! 🙂