larryni.me.uk

Using a VPN gives you some extra protection/privacy when browsing the net from your laptop on a public or work network. If you haven’t done so yet, then head over to itshidden.com and sign up for a free account. Keep in mind that this is really only meant to be used for browsing, the free account is not an option for P2P or similar heavy usage. A paid account will give you a static IP with port fowarding and better speeds.

The following instructions should work on any Linux distro with GNOME.

First add PPTP support to the Network Manager:

sudo apt-get install network-manager-pptp

Click the Network Manager icon and open VPN Connections > Configure VPN… Click Add… Select the Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol and click Create…

Enter a connection name, add vpn.itshidden.com as the Gateway, and enter your login credentials.

Click Advanced… and select Use Point-to-Point encryption (MPPE). Set security to 128-bit.

Click OK, then Apply. Close the Network Connections window.

You can now connect to the VPN by clicking on the Network Manager icon and selecting the connection under VPN Connections. You will have to restart your PC if the connection fails. Once the connection is established you should see a padlock on the network manager icon. You can also head over to WhatIsMyIPAddress.com to check if it worked.

You might have seen my earlier post on how to disable the DiggBar. I just came across a post that explains how the DiggBar works. It really does not play nice. I didn’t realise that all the link credit actually goes to digg.com and not to the site that provides the content!

The fun stops there. Like lin.cr, it does a 200 code. That means the page is actually on Digg itself — they’re making a page with the DiggBar and pulling in your content without permission into a frame. That’s not illegal, but it’s a tactic that died off years ago. It also means that if you use the Digg short URLs, none of the link credit passes to your page. It’s all kept with Digg.

That sucks.

The above quote is from Search Engine Land’s post about link shortening services. They also provide a way to get out of all frames, not just Digg’s. All you need to do is put the following bit of Javascript between the head tags of your pages:

<script type="text/javascript">
<!--
if (top.location!= self.location) {
top.location = self.location.href
}
//-->
</script>

The bar still loads, but then just disappears shortly after.

The new DiggBar really annoys the tits off me – I cannot see which link I’m going to when I’m on Digg’s front page and before I bookmark something I have to remember to close the damn thing or I end up with the short Digg URL bookmarked. Even worse, some morons start submitting the short URLs to other sites like Stumbleupon and I even came across submissions on Reddit. WTF! It’s not like your browser can’t handle long URLs. And if i want to submit a page to another social site then I’ll use a bookmarklet or one of the many submit/share buttons found on most pages.

You can disable it in your Digg profile settings:

• click the My Profile link at the top of Digg’s front page
• click the Settings tab
• click viewing preferences under Options on the right and select Never show DiggBar for external links under Site-wide Preferences
• save the changes.

To automatically get rid of the bar on pages that you come across out in the wild you can use a Greasemonkey script like DiggBar Killer or Anti Diggbar.

Update: check out my follow-up post if you run your own website.

If you, like myself, get frequent phone calls from not so computer literate friends and family to sort out their PC problems then you’ll love WizHelp. It’s a remote screen sharing tool, and best of all, it’s cross-platform as it runs on Java. Well, at least for some platforms The supported/tested OS list is as follows: Windows 2000/NT/XP/Vista, MacOS X, and Ubuntu/Mythbuntu (i386). And more Linux distros are to be supported soon.

Using the site is easy. First sign up for a free account. Then send the link of your personal Help Center to your friends, or just give them your username so they can search for you from the WizHelp front page. Once they access your page you’ll see them pop up in a list:

As you can see in the screenshot you have several options now – initiate a chat session, take control of the remote computer, give control to the remote computer, view the remote screen or share your own. Either yourself, or the person you are helping can initiate a session:

Once the session has been accepted by the other party a Java applet is loaded, the remote desktop is displayed in its own window and you can get to work:

The above screen shot was taken whilst on remote assistance on another Ubuntu box. I also tried it with Windows XP as a client, and it worked just as well.

Considering that most computer problems are often easily solved with just a few clicks (for my friends and family anyway), this will save you a lot of time. No more traveling to people’s homes or waiting for them to drop off their machine for you to fix it. Go on, take WizHelp for a spin.

I launched Skype on my mobile phone yesterday for the first time in a while and to my surprise my non-Skype contacts started to show up, before it would only let me call other Skype users. And in the Options menu is now an entry to check my SkypeOut credit balance.

I quickly found out that it is only to call landlines/mobiles outside the UK, but that’s pretty much all I use Skype for anyway. I hadn’t heard about 3 allowing their subscribers to make interntational calls through Skype until now. A quick search brought up an article on The Register saying that it started on 1 October:

UK operator 3 is to allow Skype users to make international calls with their SkypeOut minutes, bypassing the operator completely, while the VoIP pioneer’s desktop client continues its slow progress towards version 4 with a new beta release.

Punters equipped with a Skypephone, or compatible handset such as an N95 or C902 on 3, are already able to call up other Skype users for free. But from today they’ll also be able to make international calls using the Skype network with the rate being deduced from their SkypeOut minutes.

The customer will be able to choose if a call should be handled by Skype or the traditional 3 network, and will pay appropriate rates. Chief Executive at 3 Kevin Russell said: “Although 3 customers enjoy the best value international calling tariffs in the UK, we know that people are apprehensive about using their mobiles to call internationally, especially as international minutes aren’t typically included in mobile calling bundles.”

SomaFM has some of the best online radio stations available. My favourite one is Boot Liquor – Americana Roots music for Cowhands, Cowpokes and Cowtippers.

A while back I came across a link that let’s me listen to some SomaFM stations on my N95. Just enter http://somafm.com/soma.xhtml into your mobile browser and you get the station menu: Groove Salad, Secret Agent, Indie Pop Rocks, Illinois Street Lounge, Space Station Soma, and Boot Liquor.

Just make sure you have a decent data plan or are using wifi!

Back in April I wrote a post about scrobbling from S60 phones in which I mentioned mobbler. I have been using it ever since. Until recently you could only scrobble tracks which you played through the Nokia Music Player, but the application has now been updated and you can listen to any of your last.fm streams.

You can skip tracks, adjust volume, it even takes you to the Amazon store to search and purchase the current track. The only option I miss is to love/hate tracks. You can download the latest version here. And there’s a Mobbler Users group on last.fm that you can join.

Wordpress 2.5 was released yesterday. I’m just after upgrading and everything went smoothly as far as I can tell. Let me know if you see anything strange.

I’ve come across several methods in the past to download tracks off MySpace, but this has got to be the easiest one:

MySpace Music Downloader

Just enter the MySpace URL of a band’s profile, hit the Decode button, and the tracks are available for download in seconds.

Update: Looks like that link doesn’t work anymore. Here’s another one: MusicGrab

Not sure yet how I feel about this bit of news:

Social music site Last.fm has been bought by US media giant CBS Corporation for $280m (£140m), the largest-ever UK Web 2.0 acquisition.

There had been rumours for some time that a media giant was going to buy last.fm. But it was Viacom as far as I remember, so this comes as a bit of a surprise.

The good news is that:

As part of the deal, Last.fm’s managing team will remain in place and the site will maintain its own separate identity.

Mr Stiksel said: “This move will really support us to get every track ever recorded and every music video ever made onto Last.fm.

“With a strong partner like CBS, this is now within our reach.”

I really hope that they will let the last.fm team get on with things and not meddle too much.