The first time I used Zotero, I was not impressed. After recently meeting one of the founders of Zotero from the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, and following the litigation with Endnote over file formats, I decided to give it another try. I was very impressed. In fact, I now think that anyone who writes should install and use it. Read the rest of this entry »
This morning, when trying to remove a duplicate icon from the Gnome panel on the top of my screen, I deleted the whole top panel, by mistake. It is not obvious how this is fixed. Like most Ubuntu users, I looked at some forums. Even with the top panel missing, you can bring up the applications menu from Alt-F1, or run a command from Alt-F2. I started up Firefox, and found a solution offered by Harvey Muller, who, in helping someone else with the same problem, deleted his top panel to see how to fix it. His solution, which worked fine for me, is here: Read the rest of this entry »
Yesterday I installed Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) on two Dell laptops, the XPS m1530, and an Inspiron 1420n. Both installations went smoothly. Read the rest of this entry »
Today I installed a Linux version of tweetdeck, specifically for a Ubuntu 8.10 version of Linux. First step was to install Adobe Air: http://get.adobe.com/air/ Adobe knew I wanted a Linux version, and downloaded the install program to my computer. Read the rest of this entry »
These are two pictures from the April 7, 2009 demonstration in front of the Authors Guild over text to speech in Kindle 2. Details about the issue and the demonstration are available here and here. The pictures were taken by Manon Ress, and may be used under any of the Creative Commons attribution licenses.
Two of my kids have three hard drives they would like brought back from the dead. Read the rest of this entry »
I just installed Ubuntu 9.04, beta, on a Dell M1530. The install program asked if I wanted a dual boot configuration with the older 8.10 version, and I said yes. That resulted in a longer install, but it worked fine. Then I was asked if I wanted to migrate my data settings from the older partition. This was a nice option, but since I didn’t have much on the older partition, I couldn’t evaluate how well it works.
I did notice right away the cursor worked fine, without having to tweak the grub loading commands, as was necessary for the m1530 for Ubuntu 8.10. Open Office 3.0 is also supported, which is a good reason to consider upgrading when the final version is ready.
I turned on the “partner” repositories, and installed the “Ubuntu restricted-extras” packages, which I highly recommend.
I next went to www.medibuntu.org, and followed the directions for adding the medibuntu repositories.
I installed Cheese to see if the webcam worked, and it did, without any problems. More important for me, I used the Synaptic Package Manager, to install Skype, which I tested with a USB Logitech headset and also a USB VOIP phone. Skype recognized and used both devices without any problems. The voice quality from the USB Logitech headset was particularly good, which show shows the value of a good microphone. It also found and worked well with the m1530 webcam. The built-in webcam seems to work quite a bit better with skype than with cheese.
So far, the beta version looks pretty polished, and it works better on this machine than did final 8.04 or 8.10 releases.
The Dell XPS m1530 is in some ways a nicely designed machine. Mine has a very high resolution screen 15.4 inch screen, 1920 x 1200 (16:10), and a fast NVIDIA video card. It has a fingerprint reader you can configure for log-in, an SD/MMC (8 in 1 they claim) memory card reader, built in web cam and microphone, bluetooth and lots of I/O, including HMDI and S-Video for video. It is also pretty light, and has a decent keyboard.
Despite all of this, right now I am using my older Dell 1420n, which is heavier, and has a smaller, but still pretty decent screen. The reason I switched back was that when using Ubuntu 8.10, the m1530 was not as dependable as the 1420n when I used suspend. And even more important, the battery life for the m1530 has been terrible for me, and this is a big deal when I travel.
If I can resolve the battery issue, I would probably switch back to the XPS m1530. But for now, I am more comfortable using the older laptop.
I can’t say much for the name, and the appearance isn’t great, but Twitux seems like a serviceable Twitter client for Gnome based Linux distribution. I have found Twibble for Blackberry to work fine.
Like many others, I have had considerable difficulty getting the internal microphone to work, or even one that uses the front microphone jack, on a Dell Inspiron 1420n, currently using Ubuntu 8.10. I found, however, that USB microphones seem to work quite well. A Logitech USB Headset worked fine, as did an older USB VOIP phone I had laying around, both with quite good sound quality.