Adobe AIR for linux works great !!! and it runs Pownce too

Adobe AIR alpha is finally out for Linux. I had been eagerly awaiting for this release . Now let us give it a test drive. We'll also try out the Pownce AIR client.



1. Download the Adobe Air binary from the website to your desktop.

2. run and install the package via terminal
$ cd ~/Desktop
$ sudo chmod u+x adobeair_linux_a1_033108.bin
$ sudo ./adobeair_linux_a1_033108.bin

3. Now let us try some applications. You can find some sample applications from the Adobe labs website. I am more interested in the Pownce client.

4. Download the client from the Pownce website.

5. Install it using Adobe AIR
$ sudo /opt/Adobe\ AIR/Versions/1.0/airappinstaller Pownce.air




6. To run Pownce either click on the new shortcut created in the same folder where the original air file was kept or from the terminal
$ /opt/Pownce/Pownce


7.Here is the Pownce AIR client running in full glory on the beautiful KDE4 desktop


PS: For subsequent runs, you can also double click on the air file of an application to install it. You might need to login again for the mime type to be associated.

Taaz is a breath of fresh air

Taaz is derived from the Hindi word Taaza, which means fresh. Taaz.com aspires to be a fun, easy-to-use website that gives women the opportunity to “try on” the hottest makeup and hairstyle looks from the convenience of their homes.



Initially, when a friend of mine described this site to me, I gave it a pass as it seemed like another Picnik or FotoFlexer with an ability to easily manipulate images, add some cool filters and edit them online.

What sets Taaz apart is their proprietary facial recognition technology which can figure out for instance, where your lips are, your hair alignment etc. The killer feature of Taaz definitely is the ability to upload your photographs and experiment with different makeovers - hair, eyes, makeup, etc. They seem to have tieups with major cosmetic companies - revlon, MAC etc and you can try out their products virtually before actually buying them. That's what I call a smart consumer targeted product advertising.



Finished makeovers can then be shared with other users, rated, commented, etc.Overall, it's a fun tool, especially for women, who spend hours deciding on what shade of lipstick goes well with their contacts and hairstyle ;)

Installing Mozilla Prism on Ubuntu Gutsy

Mozilla Labs is launching a series of experiments to bridge the divide in the user experience between web applications and desktop apps. Prism let's user run web applications right from their desktop. It's a great initiative and an offline integration is close on its heels.

Prism packages are not out yet in the gutsy repository. So, let me show you how to install and configure prism..

1. Get the package
$ wget http://starkravingfinkle.org/projects/webrunner/prism-0.8-linux.tar.bz2


2. Extract the archive into /opt
$ sudo tar jxvf prism-0.8-linux.tar.bz2 -C /opt


3. Change the permissions
$ sudo chown -R root:root /opt/prism/
$ sudo chmod -R 755 /opt/prism/


4. You can either run it from shell
$ /opt/prism/prism

or, create a menu entry



$ sudo gedit /usr/share/applications/prism.desktop

add these lines in
[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Prism
Comment=Prism
Exec=/opt/prism/prism
Icon=/opt/prism/chrome/icons/default/webrunner48.png
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Application;Network;
StartupNotify=true


5. Launch prism, select the URL of your web applications and the shortcut options.





6. Start using your first desktop-prism-app



7. Now, you can create your own suite of desktop-web apps. From an end-user point of view, these apps launch and feel like normal traditional apps. You can add them to your applications menu, desktops, launchers etc.




Tip: If it complaints of missing plugins, copy or link your firefox plugins folder to your prism folder
$ sudo cp -r /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/ /opt/prism/


Digsby on Linux: Revisited

This is a followup to an my older post: Digsby: No love shown for linux where I was trying to run Digsby's window's client on Linux.

Trick was to get gdiplus.dll. Here's the link to gdiplus.dll
http://www.dll-files.com/dllindex/dll-f … ml?gdiplus

$ cp gdiplus.dll ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/system32


Now install digsby using wine
$ wine ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Digsby/digsby.exe




It still doesn't run that smoothly but it should sustain your interest till their native linux client comes out.

Src: Digsby forums
The Linux Blog

South Park Studios Beta: All shows online for free

For all the international fans of south park, who used to get their share of uncensored comedy via torrents and blogs, Matt and Trey, with association with comedy central have launched the new southpark studios website, where each and every show of the past 12 season are available in HD quality. Hats off to you guys, we all really appreciate the effort.

This endeavor is close in lines with Hulu, which does the same with it's partnership with major tv studios like Fox and NBC.
The best part is that I from Singapore, am not authorised to Hulu's content, but comedy central has no such restriction. Strange, why can't Hulu support this. Anyways, enjoy your South Park.

[Src: Natali Del Conte : Loaded]

Ubuntu: Twittering from the command line

I found this neat post in Hackszine recently. It shows a cool way of posting to twitter from your command line.

1.Let us convert it into a shell script. Open your favorite editor and create a file called twitter and enter these in it. (replace username and password with yours)

#!/bin/bash
curl -u username:password -d status="$1" http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml


2. Save the file and change the permission
$ sudo chmod u+x twitter


3. Now, let us try our cool twitter script
$ ./twitter "shell twitter script is up and running"


If you don't have curl, you'll need to get it via apt. It's simple..

$ sudo apt-get install curl


Once the twitter script finishes sending the post, it sends back an acknowledgment in form of an xml response with your account details.

Hope you had fun experimenting with twitter, I definitely did ;)

Ubuntu Hardy Heron Coming Soon...

Ubuntu 8.04 is realeasing in April. You can check out the beta here. There are some nice new features, especially the new Gnome 2.22. Here is the release schedule.

Ping.fm : One click posting to all your social networks

I had always wanted a service that could integrate my pownce, facebook and twitter accounts. 1 post to update all my statuses on all these networks.
I was contemplating of writing my own mashup to do all these but luckily folks at Ping.fm have launched a product that serves all your social syncing needs. One click posting to all your social networks. They currently support Twitter, Jaiku, Facebook, tumblr and pownce.

It is currently in private beta so the only challenging part is to get an invite. Setting up Ping.fm is really easy. You set up all your social network accounts and you are good to go.
Overall a satisfying service. I am still not sure how scalable their platform is when the user base increases (twitter still has troubles). Anyways, watch out for Ping.fm.

Here are some screenshots..