Hosting Plan for Black Friday and Cyber Monday at almost NO COST! $97 Discount

It was the Thanksgiving week and Black Friday. So now it's coming the Cyber Monday. There are lot of people who are looking for great deals out there. So here we go. Following are the web hosting plans from one of the best hosting company "DreamHost" and you can use the redemption codes upto 2 years plans. After using this code which gives $97 Discount it will be only $22.4 for one year hosting plan with two free domains.

Redemption Code: CYBERMONDAY

How to use:

1. Click Sign Up Here
2. At the payout put the above code.
3. Whoa... You have got a $97 discount

Enjoy!!! Happy Cyber Monday!!!

Apple Products

Apple is a well-know computer manufacturer and seller among the most popular brands. Frankly Apple Inc is an American based multinational corporation which has come through its successful path in 3 decades from 1976. The most popular product from the corporation is the iPhone, which is one of the most commonly used smartphone all around the world, but especially in USA, UK and Europe.

Products of Apple:

1. iPhone 3G (Newest version to the date iPhone 3Gs), Price: $199 with AT&T contract
   
2. iPod products 
• iPod shuffle - Capacity: 2GB - 4GB, Price: $59 - $79
  
• iPod shuffle Apple Store Exclusive - Capacity: 4GB, Price: $99
  
• iPod nano  - Capacity: 8GB - 16GB, Price: $149 - $179
  
• iPod classic - Capacity: 160GB, Price: $249
  
• iPod Touch - Capacity: 8GB, Price: $199
  
• iPod Touch - Capacity: 32GB - 64GB, Price: $299 - $399
3. Apple Mac Computers
• Notebooks
• MacBook
  
• MacBook Pro
• MacBook Air
• Other Models
• iMac
• Mac mini
• Mac Pro
4. Operating Systems - Mac OS X - Newest version 10.6 Snow Leperd.

Every product mentioned here are widely spread and very popular among their users. Not only  because of the shiny designs but also the stability and easy use interfaces with wide variety of software availability

Discounted Web Hosting

DreamHost is one of the biggest web hosting companies and it provides very nice interface as well as great 24x7 support. I have bought a web hosting package from them and once when I had a problem on my side and contacted them, they replied very quickly with the relevant solution. So personally, I recommend DreamHost as a good web hosting company.

There are some promotion codes that you can use to get discounts when you buy a package from DreamHost. You can use one of below codes when you buy a plan from DreamHost

• SUMMERPARTY - $50 (Forever)
  
• SLHAOFFER - $57 (Forever)
  
• SLMAXOFFER - $97 (30days Remaining)

Enjoy and check back. There will be some more codes.

Twitter Applications for Your Browser and Phone

The Twitter is the most popular micro blogging tool in the world. Because of that there are lot of people who are searching for application for ease of use of twitter. Following are some of Twitter applications for your browser and phone.

For Browser 

Twit Kit

Integrate Twitter with your Firefox browser. This plugin can work on Windows, Mac and Linux. You can also customize the look to fit your tastes.

Twitterfox

Find out the statuses of your friends on Twitter right on your Firefox browser

Shareaholic

Share webpages with your friends on Twitter. Can be integrated with your Firefox Browser

Twitbin

Receive and send tweets at the side of your Firefox browser

Firefox Search Plugin

Find out how you can post to Twitter right from your Firefox search bar

Twitterbar

Post to Twitter via the address bar

Tweetbar

A twitter sidebar for Firefox and Flock

Twippera

Twitter widget for Opera

Power Twitter

Twitter plugin for Firefox that have photo and video sharing capabilities.

Yoono

Firefox add-on that add different social networks to your browser

Twitzer

Firefox plugin that let you post more than 140 characters.

Twitterlights

Firefox addon that lets you Tweet any page you see.

Twitterbook

Post to twitter like Bookmarking

Twitterline

Displays your friend's public timeline on your toolbar

Maxthon

This is a toolbar you can download so you can tweet via your browser

For Mobile Phone 

Twitterfone

Update Twitter using Voice

Twitsay

Record Voice Messages on Twitter

Twitter for iphone

Self explanatory

Itwtr

Another Twitter client for iphones

Pocket Tweets

another twitter client for your iphone

Twittai

mobile phone software with retweeting capabilities

CCtwit

windows mobile twitter client written in c# leveraging the .net compact framework.

Twapper

send updates from your 30boxes calendar to your phone via Twitter.

Twittelator

Integrate your iphone with Twitter

Twitterberry

Integrate Twitter with your blackberry

Vlingo

Another tool to integrate your blackberry with Twitter

Email Twitter

Get your Tweets on any email-enabled mobile phone

iTweet

Twitter Site for your iphone

Qik

A tool that let you share videos via your phone.

Jargong

Twitter client for your phone that has Flickr and other social network integration

MoTwit

Application for Palm OS

Widsets

Get content without sending SMS

Moby Picture

Post to your blog or sites like Twitter on your mobile phone

Twixr

allows you to share pictures on Twitter via your mobile phone

Locify

Send twitter updates on your mobile phone along with GPS location

Fring

Post to Twitter + other sites using your mobile phone

Abiro Jitter

Abiro Jitter (Java Twitter) is an easy-to-use and fully-featured Twitter client for mobile phones

Jtwitter

Java application which you can install on your phone

Twidroid

twitter client for android mobile phones

Twitteresce

Twitteresce allows you to access your twitter feed using your mobile phone.

Twobile

Twitter client for users of Windows Mobile Pocket PCs

Tiny Twitter

Client for any Java enabled device (that's a bunch & includes the CrackBerry) and any Windows Mobile Pocket PC or Smartphone

Twitter SpellCheck

Check your spelling while twittering on your mobile phone

Surf Internet In Your Own Language Through Opera Mini 5

I suppose that everyone of you have already seen my earlier post about Opera Mini 5 Beta version. There I have posted that Opera can be configured to see the blogs or sites, in sinhala language. It will also show any  language since the content is rendered as images. So if you configure it as I did, then you will also see your blog on your mobile in you own language (If it's written in a language other than English. Sites written in English will render as usual)

Before configuration:

How it is done is simply like this:

Open up Opera Mini 5 and type "config:" in the address bar (without quotes) and then press "Go" button.

Now go to the bottom of the screen that you get after "config:". There you will see a parameter named "Use bitmap fonts for complex scripts".

Now click it and from the menu select "Yes" instead of "No"

Now press "Save" buttom at the bottom to confirm your selection.

After configuration:

So, now it's done. Now you can surf your own blog or website through your mobile phone and check whether it works for your language. Belowing is for my blog for the same post which was shown as squares as I showed you in the very first picture of this post.

 

Well, now it's your turn... :) Good Luck!

Opera Mini 5 on Nokia 5800 XpressMusic

Opera is not a newbie to the browser world. It has been with mobile users for a long time. It has become one of mostly used web browsers in the world of mobile users. There are various factly for this.

1. Based on Java - So that it can run on many platforms.
2. User-friendly interface.

But there was a lack during last few months in Opera since they didn't have a good version of their browser to newest symbian system 9.4v5, which is becoming one of the most popular mobile platforms.

However Opera innovative teams has been able to give the users a new version with so many new features including tab browsing. It is one of the expected items that I have been looking from a mobile browser for some time. At last, Opera has done it. There are so many other features too.

1. Speed Dial.
2. Power Scrolling.
3. Password Manager.
4. Google search box.

So I thought of showing you some of screenshots I took running Opera on Nokia 5800 XpressMusic.

Tab Browsing

 

Speed Dial

Google

 

Onscreen Keyboard 

Google Web Search

Google Image Search

Read Sinhala

Read Sinhala

Main Menu

Get Opera from here

Windows XP on Linux Mint (Virtualization)

Most of the time the inability to move totally on to Linux is that some softwares aren't working well even in WINE on Linux (yet). But it is really annoying to move on to Windows and back to Linux when we want to run certain softwares on both of the system. But how if it's possible to run windows inside Linux?

That is possible using the process called "Virtualization". This method is not very new but still is developing. There are bunch of virtualization softwares but some use lot of resources while others do a petty job with less resource eating.

VirtualBox is one of the nice low weight softwares used for virtualization. So I though of using it for a while on my Linux Mint machine and see how far windows can go inside Linux. Still doing some configuration stuff. So I'm leaving here showing you the first welcome note from Windows XP running inside Linux.

How To Change Root Password Of A Linux OS If You Have Forgotton It

Someone can say that "Root is the god of the system", where it bears the literal meaning regarding the root user of a Linux system. Because he has the full access to each and every corner of the system and can change or modify it as he wishes. As a matter of fact, if the root user does something wrong with what he is doing, the system may stop working.

Anyway, if you have forgotten the root password, what can you do? It will make the system less operative since you need the root password to configure and change lot of things in a Linux System.

Assuming that you have access to BIOS, there is a possibility to change the password using a Linux Live CD.

Stuff Needed:

1. Change the first boot device to the CD Drive or to the DVD drive. You can do this from the "Boot Settings" menu under the "Boot Sequence" sub menu. These entries change according to the BIOS system you have and the above is in general.
   
2. A live CD or DVD of Ubuntu, Fedora, Linux Mint, etc (For this explanation Linux Mint Live CD has been used)
   

Method:

1. After changing the first boot device put the live CD or DVD in the drive and boot up the computer.
   
   
2. 
   Now when it is finished loading the desktop, right click on the desktop and from the menu select "Open in Terminal". In the terminal you get, you have to give all the commands as shown and explained in the following figures. (Every command is without quotes)
   
   
3. "sudo fdisk -l" From this you can identify the disk partition in which you have installed Linux. In this case it is /dev/sda2.
   
   
    
     
4.  Now create a new folder using the command, "sudo mkdir /media/temp". Then you will get a folder named temp in /media.
   
     
5. Now what you have to do is to mount the partition at temp folder. Use the command, "sudo mount /dev/sda2 /media/temp"
   
   
6. Then you have to tell the system to identify this partition as the root partition. Use the command, "sudo chroot /media/temp"
   
   
7. Now it's the final stage, where you have to change the password to a password you prefer. To do this, as in the figure, type "passwd root". It will ask you two times for the password and put the same password correctly. When it's done you will see the message "passwd: Password updated successfully".
   
   
   

Now restart the machine and when it comes to the login prompt, use the password you put just now. Using this method, one can change not only the root password but also the password of any existing user.

"Still waiting for the root device" problem

This is an annoying message given by the startup process of linux and I got in to the same situation after installing Linux Mint.

Linux mint is a reconfiguration of ubuntu so that it make ease of use for the beginners to Linux. You have everything installed out of the box such as flash plugin for Firefox and MP3 decoding.

After sometime, I got this annoying problem when I was going to do a cold boot (starting up the computer after a shutdown) and later I figured it's not only happening even after a hot boot (reboot). I had been searching a lot about this problem and there were so many posts in forums saying to change the label of the root partition and adjust the grub->menu.lst and etc->fstab. Some had said to use the UUID of the device as the value for the root parameter for the kernel. But all of them didn't work in long term for me.

After all time I though there would be a problem with the bootloader itself. Having that thought I removed the default bootloader for Linux Mint, the grub-gfxboot bootloader and installed the legacy grub bootloader. Here we go, it has fixed the problem for me (so far).

So according to my experience with this I think the grub-gfxboot bootloader sometimes forget how to find the root device no matter how the parameter value is given. So if you also have this "still waiting for the root device" problem and couldn't figure out a solution, it's time to go back to the good old (legacy) grub bootloader.

Cheers

How to check UUID, Label & Filesystem type in Linux

First there should be a little clarification what these things are.

1. UUID - Universally Unique Identifier
This is a kind of an identifier that you can give to a device. Since it is a universally unique identifier, the identification of the device is easy.

2. Label
Label is another way to identify a device but it's not unique. Like in Microsoft Windows you can have more than one device with the same label.

3. Filesystem
It is the method for storing files in a computer system. Different operating systems use different types of file systems such as,
* EXT3/4 - Linux
* HFS/HFS+ - Mac
* NTFS - Windows

In Linux there is a method how you can find these things with a single command.

* Open up a terminal and issue this command without quotes "sudo blkid"

The output will be like this,

How to mount a Mac (iAtkos - mine) dvd on Linux

use the command with the specific filetype

Mount DVD: sudo mount -t hfsplus /dev/hdc /media/test
Mount ISO: sudo mount -t hfsplus /media/hdc1/iAtkos.iso /media/test

(here the strings /dev/hdc and /media/hdc1/iAtkos.iso should be replaced according to your filesystem)

if you simply mount this without -t option you will not see all the files on the DVD

Further: More

Honda Accord Commercial

Honda is one of the huge brands worldwide. When that name comes to my mind I remember the great Honda motorbike that we had couple of years back, Honda CM125. Wow, I still remember the proud hum it gives when the engine screams. Hearty...

Anyway, here I'm not going to talk about Honda bikes, but a commercial for Honda Accord car.

Commercial Video

Here they have used all the main parts of the model. Pretty cool, huh?

Check out more
Official Site
Wiki

Website Designing

One of the main and very popular methods of communication in the business world is web sites. So a good design of a website is very important to give customers, relevant and necessary ideas. In technical aspect, basically, a website should be compliant with most of the web browsers, which are currently being used. It should also have comparable technologies to provide customers a better and quality service to compete with the fast moving business world.

Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope

Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope is still in the Alpha 5 stage. But couldn't prevent installing that because of the curiosity I had towards it. :)
So finally upgraded the system from Hardy Heron to Jaunty Jackalope. Following commands were used.
1. Alt+F2 -> gives the 'Run Application' dialog.
2. There entered 'update-manager -d'
3. After the processing it showed that a new system is there to make an upgrade.

Everything went okay except compiz as I can see for the moment. But it is a minor problem. Display problem with lower graphics went okay after removing the following lines from xorg.conf and rebooting the system,
1. Driver "fglrx"
2. Option "VideoOverlay" "on"
2. Option "OpenGLOverlay" "off"

System seems to be having smaller icons than the previous systems. But I am not 100% sure about that, but I feel like that. Have to try a little bit more to find out what's new. It's still alpha. :)

Cheers

How to remove the audio track from an AVI file (using mencorder)

Issue the command from the folder in which the files are located. Change the .avi file names to the relevant ones.

Using the following command one can remove the audio track from an AVI file.
mencoder -ovc copy -nosound video.avi -o video_nosound.avi

The following command will add a new track to the AVI file.
mencoder -ovc copy -audiofile soundtrack.mp3 -oac copy video_nosound.avi -o video_new.avi

How to Rotate a Video Taken by a Camera Using Mencoder

It was really essential to rotate a video before you post on to your blog or somewhere else if the video is taken in the other orientation from your camera. If you have mencoder, you can fire this command on the command line (I am considering Linux) from the place that you have your video file that you want to rotate.

mencoder -vf rotate=1 -ovc lavc -oac copy name_of_your_video_file.avi -o new_name_of_the_converted_file.avi

Change the names of the video file as described. Write the command continuously on the command line with relevant spaces.

If you don't have MPlayer or Mencoder you can download it from here.
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/dload.html

Nautilus Scripts

Nautilus scripts are scripts embedded to nautilus file manager which is the official file manager in GNOME. These scripts can be run from the menu you get by right clicking somewhere, probably on a file so that you can fire an instant command on that file.

There were lacking some scripts for linux earlier but now it is not true anymore. These two scripts will be very useful to anyone who works with images and videos frequently.

1. nautilus-image-converter
You can just run this command on the command line
sudo apt-get install nautilus-image-converter
2. nautilus video converter
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=193754
Click on the link and follow the instructions given by the author carefully.

Enjoy the scripts.

Cheers

Lynda.com Ruby on Rails Training

Lynda.com provides multimedia learning experience to many computing subjects and I found that this Ruby on Rails training videos to be very interesting.

*Ruby on Rails Essential Training
*Ruby on Rails Beyond the Basics

cheers ;)

Install Ruby on Rails on Ubuntu

If someone is not quite sure what he/she is doing, then installing Ruby on Rails on Linux could be tricky. I found this documentation in official Ubuntu website and it seems really useful for a Ruby on Rails beginner.

Ruby on Rails on Ubuntu

Enjoy.

Ice Skating

That was an amazing experience to do ice skating for the first time in my life.

First I couldn't at least stand up on the skating field. Because I didn't have any balance. So I started to shiver on the field and always used to grab the fence. But then my friends grab me a support which is used to practice children for skating. I didn't have another choice :)

After a while I was so exhausted of using the support because it was too and my backbone started to pain. So I decided to stand up by myself. Amazing, now I can stand and walk a little bit. A little progress. But my friends said who are really good at skating, that I am not bad on the first day. :)
Hope to do it again

Cheers

BrainStore Workshop "Shaping the Siemens Employer Brand"

Siemens is a huge and an international brand. BrainStore is a well organized IdeaFactory. What if someone get a chance to work for both of them? Amazing... Isn't it?
Well, I got this opportunity to be a part of the workshop called "Shaping the Siemens Employer Brand" of which the main goal was to make Siemens the most admired company.

I joined it as a FreeThinker who (all the FreeThinkers) helped to maintain the flow of the process with the generation of new, innovative and creative ideas.

People work in Siemens in 40 different counties also took part in the workshop while 10 external experts fertilized program. BrainStore technicians and the team leaders kept the flow perfectly.

It was organized very well with a smooth flow of extraction of ideas from the participants while they are offered with nice snacks. ;)

Two of great days (20.01.2009 - 21.01.2009) in my life, spent having lot of fun. I believe it is another milestone in my life.

"Be inspired and inspire the world!"

Amazing Human Body

The fingers which were squeezed in last year just before the Christmas days are now getting better. It seems that I am going to loose the two nails and at the same time coming new nails. Have to be so careful when working, not to stick with anything around. Otherwise the nails will be forcefully removed making a great disaster. ;)

I am really wondering how nicely the human body works. It is wonderful and amazing.

-- cheers

500 GB External drive

Hi,

It is really nice to tell you that I bought a 500 GB portable hard disk of Western Digital. It is very cheap. I think it is because of the season. So I have lot of space now. So I am going to install my favorite Linux again on my computer. :D

Cheers

How to remove NavBar from a blog (blogger.com)

Go to your blog's customize page and then on the Layout tab select Edit HTML.
In that in Edit Template section just enter the following code.
paste Code as in Example.

----- Code ------

<!-- #navbar-iframe {
display: none ! important;
}
-->

------End Code--------

------ Example ------------

Blogger Template Style
Name: Rounders 2
Designer: Douglas Bowman
URL: www.stopdesign.com
Date: 27 Feb 2004
Updated by: Blogger Team
----------------------------------------------- */

<!-- #navbar-iframe {
display: none ! important;
}
-->

/* Variable definitions

---------- End of Example ----------------

New Year

In the new year 2009 started to work after the accident I have met with.
But still working only with the computer and preparing a manual for a measuring device used with pressure sensors.
I have to calibrate all the sensors and store those data for later use.
It's fun since I love to work with electronics and computers. Already I have done a rough calibration of two sensors and have to fine tune them.
Finally have to write the manual of the process of calibration.

Happy New Year

A year has gone like a wind with ups and downs.
This year will be a great, happy and joyous new year for everyone.

-Cheers