Ubuntu Quick Reference Command Line Wallpaper

Helpful terminal commands on your Linux desktop!

Originally from gnome-look.org.

Color Correct then Beautify Your Monitor

The average person spends 4-7 hours a day  staring at a computer monitor. Unfortunately, most of these monitors have not been calibrated and are not displaying colors correctly which can cause a less than optimal computing experience. Calibrize is  free windows only program that helps  you correct the coloring of your monitor in three easy steps:
1. adjust the brightness and contrast
2. Adjust the Gamma level
3. Save the color profile

A color corrected monitor is a must have if you do any video or photo editing!

Once the coloring on your monitor looks great, you may want to display some great designer wallpapers on it! Desktoptopia is a free Windows/Mac program that downloads high resolution wallpapers from Desktoptopia's master archive and then apply's them as your wallpaper. You can pick wallpapers from eight different categories and have them changed at any interval that you specify. Great!

Fix more things by going to CaseyTech!

R.I.P. Textbook Torrent

 

For over two years, College students everywhere could turn to Textbook Torrent to get free PDF versions of over 6,000 textbooks. Now because of concern of legal trouble and server issues, Textbook torrent so down for good.

The homepage of Textbook Torrent currently reads:

Textbook Torrents is now permanently offline.

There are a number of reasons for this, but I would be lying if I claimed that the concern of legal action wasn't a major factor in the decision. However, it was by no means the only reason. Upkeep of a site this size is a lot of work, increasingly so as time progressed. What's more, two years is a long time to be running a site of this nature.

I am at heart an activist, a crusader for the underdog. When I see something that I believe is wrong, I do what I can to fix it, if only in some small way. I believe this is what Textbook Torrents has stood for, and what we have done. The amount of attention that we have garnered would not have been possible by simply running around with a sandwich board and shouting slogans. We have opened people's eyes, and gotten them talking. At its true purpose, the site has been successful beyond my wildest dreams.

What we have started here does not stop with one site. It is real, and it is now up to you to continue. Take what you have learned and experienced here and go forth. If you're able, start new sites. Find new ways to open new eyes. Keep the revolution going. It is not a revolution of one, not even of eight staff members: it is a revolution of 100,000. We have done nothing here but provide you with a venue to voice your discontent, and the ideological sentiment that we all share need not end with Textbook Torrents. Indeed, it must live on.

For my part, I have other causes that need fighting for. There are all kinds of ways to fight all kinds of battles, and it is unlikely that I will find myself running a BitTorrent tracker again. I will step back from this and hope that you will carry on in our place.

Thanks for everything, folks. Thanks for making Textbook Torrents everything that it was, and for adding your voices to mine. Now it's your turn.

Geekman
(Former) Textbook Torrents administrator

Due to the large cost of textbooks, approximatly 40% of the cost of college, Textbook Torrent was a financial haven for the millions of students who go into debt every year trying to pay for college. Now these students have no site to turn to if they want to save money while furthering their education.

Until another book torrent site goes online, college students may able to find torrents for the textbooks they need by googleing the name of your text book with +torrent at the end.

Legal Disclaimer: While downloading copyrighted material is legal, uploading it is not. PDF versions of textbooks should only be used if you have already ordered a book, and are using the PDF version while you are waiting to receive it.

Due the popularity of the Bit Torrent protocol, I will try to feature more Bit Torrent related articles in the future.

 

Read. Learn. Do. CaseyTech

Easy ways to keep your programs and drivers up to date

When I'm fixing a software problem with a persons computer, a lot of times the problem is caused by out of date programs. By updating your software, you can fix many security, stability and compatibility problems. A lot of times you may also get a nice easier to use interface like with the latest update of the free image editor , the GIMP.

One way resolve many minor problems is to run Ccleaner, to get rid of old useless files that are bogging down your computer, then run Microsoft Update and then restart your computer.

There many third party programs that can scan your computer and check for newer versions of programs or drivers, but most of them cost money and don't work very well. I have found three great programs that are free, work great and help keep you up to date.

Update star: Update star is a new program that doesn't rely on any special lists of programs, like most update checkers do, instead, it tries to find the website that each program came from, and then it checks the site for and updated version. This is a very clever method to use for update checking because most programs include their author's site in the program's help file, or in the programs about box. Currently I have had about a 60% success rate with update star. Which is very good because the programs was still in beta. Now it is at version 2 so it should be even better. 

To use Update Star, just download it from the website, install it and have it check for updates.

File-Hippo Update Checker: Filehippo.com has hundreds of great free programs that you probably already use. The File-Hippo Update Checker is small, free, and only 150kb, and takes only a few seconds to run. After you download and run it, the program will take you back to Filehippo.com and show you a list of every program that you have, that they have an updated version of. Then all you do is click the download icon next to the program and then install your new, improved software.

DriverMax: Drivermax has thousands of hardware drivers that are all up to date. In order to use their driver update checker, you will have to register, but registation is free, and you don't have to sign up for any thing. then you can download the update checker, log-in and scan your computer to see if any of your drivers are out of date. If any out of date drivers are found, then the DriverMax driver updater will take you to their website, were you can download the latest drivers for your hardware Note: most drivers will require you to restart your computer in order to complete the installation.

Stop reading EULAs!

A  recent study discovered that if everyone in America read the End User License Agreement of every program that they installed, then over $300 billion dollars would be lost in productivity. This would be a terrible lost, but you should not install a program without reading the license agreement first because you may not like everything that you have agree to. To solve this dilemma, a group called JavaCool Software made a program called EULAlyzer.

With EULAlyzer, you can copy and paste the EULA of a program into the main menu of the program, then click analyze. After a second, you will get a list suspicious wording that is in the EULA. This makes it really easy to know whether or not you should  agree and install the software, or fine a better equivalent.

You can get EULAlyzer and other great free software at JavaCool Software.

Read more at CaseyTech!

Windows Media Player, or WinAmp?

Windows Media Player and WinAmp are both great media players that don’t use a lot of resources, play most file formats and launch quickly (unlike iTunes which is bloated, slow, a memory hog and only handles like 3 formats.). The other day I was uninstalling extra programs on my computer and realized that I don't need WinAmp installed since Windows Media player is also installed. This got me wondering why I never use Windows Media player even through it has all of the features that I like. It can sort by file path, has an equalizer that always displays, it can play media from a library or a playlist, it handles large amounts of files with out freezing, it is fast, light on memory, has lyric plugins available, plays most files (free plugins are available for ones it can't), works with an iPod [though not a Zune :( ]and even uses multimedia keys if you have them. Both WinAmp and Windows Media Player have all of the same features that matter to me, so why do I not like Media Player?

I decided to switch over to Windows Media Player and see if there was any real reason that I never used it. I was getting it set up and when I went to play a song I realized what was wrong.

WinAmp shows you everything at a glance. You can see all of your music, the equalizer, the now playing information, a search box and even song lyrics if you have a lyric plugin installed.

With Windows Media Player, everything is divided into two main tabs. The Now Playing tab and the Library tab.

The Now Playing tab will show album art, the current playlist, various enhancements (I have the equalizer shown) and song lyrics if you have a lyric plugin installed.

The Library view in Windows Media Player displays all of your songs and a search box.

I believe that more people would use Windows Media Player if it had a more condensed interface like WinAmp has. Clicking back and forth between the Now Playing tab and the Library tab gets old rather fast if you are listening to music for a long period of time.  The easiest way to fix this problem would be to have the option of replacing the playlist pane in the Now Playing tab with a library pane, or by redesigning interface so you can see everything in one main tab or series of panes.

So, now that you're thinking about the layout and design of user interfaces for programs, are there any programs that you just love using because of the user interface? What about programs that you just hate because they are so clunky and awkward? Let us know what you think in the comments!

Read, think, learn, CaseyTech.

GIMP 2.6 is here!

The long awaited version 2.6 of the GIMP is here! For those how have never heard of the GIMP before, it is a free open source photo editor that is fast and is great for use at home or use at work. It has many of the great features of Photoshop and PhotoPlus, but it has none of the cost because it's free!

Version 2.6 mainly has interface and usability changes. After the initial configuration launch, it take only about 3 seconds to launch, this is much better than the previous version which was plagued with slow launch times. The toolbox menu and image menu have been merged and now when you launch  the GIMP, the image window opens by default, so you can now quickly edit an image from the Internet, or a screen shot by clicking edit>paste, instead of making a new image, and then pasting it, or saving it, then opening it. In Linux, the image window no longer covers floating windows like the toolbox or layer window, and floating windows no longer appear on the task bar or kicker panel. To see the full list of changes plus handy screen shots, read the official changlog. Then you can download it. Linux users can just check for updates and it will be updated for you. 

Find out more at Caseytech!