Tools to Make You a Power Twitter User

A post from TechRepublic that listed 10 tools to help you not only stay connected and informed by twitter but they might also be able to help you by getting most out of it for your social networking. Below is a summary of this list:

1. Summize

A company that was recently acquired by twitter, and it’s now integrated as part of twitter service (search.twitter.com), which can help you search a specific topic that is discussed on twitter

2. Tweetburner

Works similar as Snurl or TinyURL which can help you avoid hitting the 140 character limit when sharing long URLs, but this one provides a nice extra feature by giving you “personal statistics” to show the number of clicks that your links generated.

3. Twitter Mobile

As there’re various mobile clients of twitter such as TinyTwitter, or Twitterific. Let’s not forget the good old mobile version of twitter by going to http://m.twitter.com with your browser on your mobile device.

How to Remove Blogger Top NavBar

All Blogger users get a top NavBar shown on top of their blogger page like the one shown above. In my opinion, it just doesn’t go with the whole appearance of a blog especially if you have some nice looking theme installed. Blogger doesn’t really offer an option to hide it unless you publish via FTP, however, you can still do it by manually inserting a snippet of code if you are on the freely hosted blogger site. To do so:
1. Log in to your blogger account
2. Under Dashboard, select “Layout“
3. And under “Template”, click “Edit HTML“
4. Find the section looks similar to the one show below in the template code:

5. Paste the following code right after it:

6. Save settings and re-visit your site again

[Original Source Here]

Surveillance Notes 07232008

Summary of “2007 J.P. FREEMAN REPORT ON INTELLIGENT VIDEO & SMART CAMERA MARKET”

1. Top 5 important business issue

Technology development, IV software design, Market Pricing, Reduction Guard Costs, Reduce Guard Forces

2. Significant increased in strategy emphasis

Integrating with HD video, Worker Safety Applications, Industrial Machine Vision, IV Video Stabilization

3. Top 5 factors to drive value for users

Extraction of info, Min. FALSE/Nuisance Alarm, User Awareness Alerts, Certain detection, Lower user cost

How to Install Google Gadget in Ubuntu

Found the easiest way to get Google Gadget installed in Ubuntu from Ubuntu Unleashed. Thought I’d take a note of it:

To install, add the below repos in the apt source list first:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/googlegadgets/ubuntu hardy main

deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/googlegadgets/ubuntu hardy main

Save the file then do "sudo apt-get update". Finally, enter the following command to install:

sudo apt-get install google-gadgets

To start after it's installed:

Press "Alt+F2" then type in "ggl-gtk"

To autostart upon startup:

System –> Preferences –> Sessions
Then click Add and input the fields like this:
Name:Google Gadgets
Command Line:sleep 10 ; ggl-gtk

Click ok and then make sure it’s check marked to startup

[via Ubuntu-Unleashed]

"$HOME/.dmrc file is being ignored" — Ubuntu Permission Got Messed Up

Last week, I setup an Ubuntu workstation with Ubuntu 8.04. I went straight away and downloaded Ubuntu-tweak and Lazybuntu because they could help me install tons of popular software all at once. I restarted after the installation was finished, upon logging in, I got the following error message:

“User’s $HOME/.dmrc file is being ignored. This prevents the default session and language from being saved. File should be owned by user and have 644 permissions. User’s $HOME directory must be owned by user and not writable by other users.”

I wasn’t sure exactly what I did that got me this error, but repaired the permission by using the following commands did fix my problem:

sudo chmod 644 /home/youruserfolder/.dmrc

sudo chown username /home/youruserfolder/.dmrc

sudo chmod -R 755 /home/youruserfolder

sudo chown -R username /home/youruserfolder 

Tweak Your Ubuntu With "Ubuntu Tweak"

Ubuntu, a derivative of Debian, has been one of the most popular Linux distributions for the past few years. I am an occasion Ubuntu user myself (I use Mac mostly) and I do appreciate its easy and simple to use user interface especially when it comes to installing software.

If you are like me and Ubuntu is your favorite Linux operating system, you sure don’t want to miss this application called “Ubuntu-tweak”.

It’s an application that’s absolutely painless to install. And it’s probably easiest and fastest way to get your freshly installed Ubuntu up and running with software you need and look that’s tweaked to make your friends envy.

To get it, head over to their download page and grab the Deb package and install it with the friendly Ubuntu Deb package installer, or you can get it from the command line by doing the following:

Modify your source list:

sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

And put the two line into it:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/tualatrix/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/tualatrix/ubuntu hardy main

Then update the source and install or upgrade Ubuntu Tweak:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-tweak

Once you have it installed, run it from the "Application" menu:

As you can see, it can help you install a lot of popular software like amule, Avant Window Navigator, or Compiz fusion. It also provides you options to tweak your Gnome desktop with options that are normally hidden to you.

For more information, be fure to check out Ubuntu-tweak or grab a copy and try it for yourself.

Be More Productive With Your Social Media Life With Flock

Got couple of things I’d like to make a note of today, I think I’ll start off with “Flock”, a social media friendly browser, that’s designed to make your social media life more productive.

 If you are an active user of various social media services out there, such as Facebook, or twitter, you might already be using this social-specific browser. It’s a browser that’s built on top of the open source “Firefox” code and it’s nicely integrated with all these popular social media services as part of its user interface.

In summary, it allows you to manage multiple of your social networking service accounts, get updated, blog with its built-in blog tool, upload photos to service providers like Flickr, or Picasa, manage your RSS feeds and your online bookmarks. 

It is sure a must-have app to me and if you wanna get productive, be sure to check out Flock. It’s free download for Windows, Mac and Linux.

* Maybe I’ll write up a more detail review later once I get familiar with it 

[via Lifehacker] 

Surveillance Vertical Market — Retail Shrinkage

A note from an article about “Retail Shrinkage” for surveillance vertical market.

1 ) It is estimated to take 1.36% of retail sales in 2007 which translates to US$98 billion
2 ) If breaks down in categories:
shoplifting (42%)
employee theft (35%)
administrative error (17%)
vendor fraud (6%)
3 ) In 2006, US only, 41.6 million retail establishments, and spent US$650 million on electronic security devices
4 ) Retailers in the US typically budget 0.5% of sales for loss prevention related services. It could exceed US$2.7 billion in 2008 (most on video surveillance and electronic article surveillance)
5 ) Retail stores is a fairly new concept in India (more than 13 million stores). Only high-end users ask for system integration. Most opt for recording only. 9/16 channels DVRs are most popular.
6 ) Retail sector in India expected to grow 30% in 2008 and is forecast to be among the five largest consumer markets by 2010.
7 ) Third is China, retail market grew to US$1.18 trillion in 2007, more than 15,000 stores opened. Expect to have growth rate of more than 11% until 2012.
8 ) Retail loss in South Africa are estimated at US$920 million per annum.
Internal theft 65%
Processing errors 10%
External theft 25%.
9 ) In North America, IMS Research had the electronic security market valued at over US$550 million in 2006 and retail video surveillance market was valude at US$437 million. (Pelco/Bosch/March Networks/Panasonic)
10 ) In Europe, IMS valued the market at $421 million in 2006 with Honeywell, GE, Bosch, Panasonic, Dedicated Micros, Siemens, Tyco, and Pelco. The retail video surveillance market was valued at over $322 million
11) Popular EAS (Electronic Article Surveillance) system: Sensormatic (Tyco) and Checkpoint Systems. More than 80% of top 200 retailers use Sensormatic

[from A&S International June 2008, Vertical Market Section]

Boot and Install Ubuntu From USB Flash Drive

Just to make a note for myself, although this has been posted on various blogs.

I am using the latest Ubuntu (8.04) for this note. 

What you’ll need:

a) Ubuntu 8.04 Live CD (the image can be downloaded here)

b) Working Internet Connection

c) 1GB or above USB flash drive

How to get it done:

1. Boot your computer with the Ubuntu Live CD and choose the first option

2. Insert the USB flash drive

3. Open a terminal window and type sudo su 

4. Now type fdisk -l to list available drives/partitions (note which device is your flash drive Example: /dev/sdb). Throughout this tutorial, replace all instances of x with your flash drive letter. For example, if your flash drive is sdb, replace x with b

5. Type umount /dev/sdx1 

6. Type fdisk /dev/sdx 

• type p to show the existing partition and d to delete it
• type p again to show any remaining partitions (if partitions exist, repeat the previous step)
• type n to make a new partition
• type p for primary partition
• type 1 to make this the first partition
• hit enter to use the default 1st cylinder
• type +750M to set the partition size
• type a to make this partition active
• type 1 to select partition 1
• type t to change the partition filesystem
• type 6 to select the fat16 file system
• type n to make another new partition
• type p for primary partition
• type 2 to make this the second partition
• hit enter to use the default cylinder
• hit enter again to use the default last cylinder
• type w to write the new partition table

7. Type umount /dev/sdx1 to unmount the partition

8. Type mkfs.vfat -F 16 -n ubuntu8 /dev/sdx1 to format the first partition

9. Type umount /dev/sdx2 to ensure the partition is unmounted

10. Type mkfs.ext2 -b 4096 -L casper-rw /dev/sdx2 to format the second partition

11. Remove and re-insert your flash drive (if prompted that a new medium has been detected, select to open in a new window and click ok)

12. Back at the terminal, type sudo apt-get install syslinux mtools

13. Type syslinux -sf /dev/sdx1 

14. Type cd /cdrom 

15. Type cp -rfv casper dists install pics pool preseed .disk isolinux/* md5sum.txt README.diskdefines install/mt86plus /media/ubuntu8 

16. Type cd /media/ubuntu8 

17. Type wget pendrivelinux.com/downloads/u8/syslinux.cfg 

18. Type cd casper 

19. Type rm initrd.gz 

20. Type wget pendrivelinux.com/downloads/u8/initrd.gz 

21. Reboot your computer and set your system BIOS boot priority to boot from the USB stick.

To make a USB flash drive to boot and install your favorite Linux distro, check out Pendrivelinux 

[via Pendrivelinux]