IT Gang - A place for tips and tricks

It feels rather strange reviewing a software program that does absolutely nothing. If you start Dud it will immediately terminate its process using 60 Kilobytes of computer memory in the short meantime. The question that is probably in your mind right now is about the usefulness of a program like Dud. Why would someone want to run a software program that terminates a second after execution? The answer is…

Original post:
Dud Is A Program That Does Nothing

I have just created a new Twitter account for my Software company. Since it's such a buzz and I am getting to like it more and more every day, I checked out to see if @simpatic is available and since it was, I have registered it. Then I tried to see if searching for my personal Twitter user (@vladges) will work (because in the my first few Twitter days I could not find myself...) so I searched for 'vladges' on Twitter's Find People page.

So guess what? Twitter said: "Did you mean ladies ?"




WOW! I must say that feels good (I guess) to know that my username on Twitter is considered a misspell of ladies!

Wait, what are you implying? That I am some sort of misspelled lady? Hey, stop laughing, I'm talking to you!!!

...


PS: Yes, I did find myself on Twitter this time. I think tweeting about a few times was worth it :) Get lost! :)

Since I installed my brand new Fedora 10 distribution a while ago I was unable to use Skype for more than just a chat engine. I had no sound and no recording device, so I was unable to call my friends. And since I am using Pidgin as a Yahoo Messenger replacement on Linux, which I am not really familiar (or fond on the other hand), I was getting a little frustrated of the silence and loneliness surrounding me.

Today I decided to fix this matter so I started searching for what to do to enable Skype sound. I found many threads, but none of which really fixed the issue. In the end, I started the plain old fashioned way of testing the configurations one by one to see which will work. And eventually, I did find the right one. I make a succesfull Skype test call to echo123 and also called one of my friends, Paul (thankx), to confirm that my "out-of-the-barrel" sounding is gone forever!

Please note that because of the many things I tried before getting this to work, I might miss something from this process. If this will not fix the Skype sound for you too, then what you can try is to remove the "Alsa to PulseAudio backend" (alsa-plugins-pulseaudio-1.0.18-2.fc10) rpm (I did it using the System->Administration->Add/Remove Software GUI tool, search for "alsa").

Ok, so I set my audio settings to look like the image below (System->Preferences->Hardware->Sound):



Then, in Skype Options (right click the tray icon, choose "Options", then in the left select "Sound devices") you should have something like below:



Again, this is not a general tutorial, guide or FAQ about how to enable Skype sound/mic, this is what worked for me and might also work for you. If you have problems, leave your comment and maybe we can sort it out for you too.

by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson, E-Commerce Consultant
Web Marketing Today, February 1, 2005. Originally published 2/1/2000
Easy Transfer Copy

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I admit it. The term "viral marketing" is offensive. Call yourself a Viral Marketer and people will take two steps back. I would. "Do they have a vaccine for that yet?" you wonder. A sinister thing, the simple virus is fraught with doom, not quite dead yet not fully alive, it exists in that nether genre somewhere between disaster movies and horror flicks.

But you have to admire the virus. He has a way of living in secrecy until he is so numerous that he wins by sheer weight of numbers. He piggybacks on other hosts and uses their resources to increase his tribe. And in the right environment, he grows exponentially. A virus don't even have to mate -- he just replicates, again and again with geometrically increasing power, doubling with each iteration:

1
11
1111
11111111
1111111111111111
11111111111111111111111111111111
1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111

In a few short generations, a virus population can explode.

Viral Marketing Defined

What does a virus have to do with marketing? Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message's exposure and influence. Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands, to millions.

Off the Internet, viral marketing has been referred to as "word-of-mouth," "creating a buzz," "leveraging the media," "network marketing." But on the Internet, for better or worse, it's called "viral marketing." While others smarter than I have attempted to rename it, to somehow domesticate and tame it, I won't try. The term "viral marketing" has stuck.

The Classic Hotmail.com Example

The classic example of viral marketing is Hotmail.com, one of the first free Web-based e-mail services. The strategy is simple:

1. Give away free e-mail addresses and services,
2. Attach a simple tag at the bottom of every free message sent out: "Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com" and,
3. Then stand back while people e-mail to their own network of friends and associates,
4. Who see the message,
5. Sign up for their own free e-mail service, and then
6. Propel the message still wider to their own ever-increasing circles of friends and associates.

Like tiny waves spreading ever farther from a single pebble dropped into a pond, a carefully designed viral marketing strategy ripples outward extremely rapidly.

Elements of a Viral Marketing Strategy

Accept this fact. Some viral marketing strategies work better than others, and few work as well as the simple Hotmail.com strategy. But below are the six basic elements you hope to include in your strategy. A viral marketing strategy need not contain ALL these elements, but the more elements it embraces, the more powerful the results are likely to be. An effective viral marketing strategy:

1. Gives away products or services
2. Provides for effortless transfer to others
3. Scales easily from small to very large
4. Exploits common motivations and behaviors
5. Utilizes existing communication networks
6. Takes advantage of others' resources

Let's examine at each of these elements briefly.

1. Gives away valuable products or services

"Free" is the most powerful word in a marketer's vocabulary. Most viral marketing programs give away valuable products or services to attract attention. Free e-mail services, free information, free "cool" buttons, free software programs that perform powerful functions but not as much as you get in the "pro" version. Wilson's Second Law of Web Marketing is "The Law of Giving and Selling" (http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmta/basic-principles.htm). "Cheap" or "inexpensive" may generate a wave of interest, but "free" will usually do it much faster. Viral marketers practice delayed gratification. They may not profit today, or tomorrow, but if they can generate a groundswell of interest from something free, they know they will profit "soon and for the rest of their lives" (with apologies to "Casablanca"). Patience, my friends. Free attracts eyeballs. Eyeballs then see other desirable things that you are selling, and, presto! you earn money. Eyeballs bring valuable e-mail addresses, advertising revenue, and e-commerce sales opportunities. Give away something, sell something.

2. Provides for effortless transfer to others

Public health nurses offer sage advice at flu season: stay away from people who cough, wash your hands often, and don't touch your eyes, nose, or mouth. Viruses only spread when they're easy to transmit. The medium that carries your marketing message must be easy to transfer and replicate: e-mail, website, graphic, software download. Viral marketing works famously on the Internet because instant communication has become so easy and inexpensive. Digital format make copying simple. From a marketing standpoint, you must simplify your marketing message so it can be transmitted easily and without degradation. Short is better. The classic is: "Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com." The message is compelling, compressed, and copied at the bottom of every free e-mail message.

3. Scales easily from small to very large

To spread like wildfire the transmission method must be rapidly scalable from small to very large. The weakness of the Hotmail model is that a free e-mail service requires its own mailservers to transmit the message. If the strategy is wildly successful, mailservers must be added very quickly or the rapid growth will bog down and die. If the virus multiplies only to kill the host before spreading, nothing is accomplished. So long as you have planned ahead of time how you can add mailservers rapidly you're okay. You must build in scalability to your viral model.

4. Exploits common motivations and behaviors

Clever viral marketing plans take advantage of common human motivations. What proliferated "Netscape Now" buttons in the early days of the Web? The desire to be cool. Greed drives people. So does the hunger to be popular, loved, and understood. The resulting urge to communicate produces millions of websites and billions of e-mail messages. Design a marketing strategy that builds on common motivations and behaviors for its transmission, and you have a winner.

5. Utilizes existing communication networks

Most people are social. Nerdy, basement-dwelling computer science grad students are the exception. Social scientists tell us that each person has a network of 8 to 12 people in their close network of friends, family, and associates. A person's broader network may consist of scores, hundreds, or thousands of people, depending upon her position in society. A waitress, for example, may communicate regularly with hundreds of customers in a given week. Network marketers have long understood the power of these human networks, both the strong, close networks as well as the weaker networked relationships. People on the Internet develop networks of relationships, too. They collect e-mail addresses and favorite website URLs. Affiliate programs exploit such networks, as do permission e-mail lists. Learn to place your message into existing communications between people, and you rapidly multiply its dispersion.

6. Takes advantage of others' resources

The most creative viral marketing plans use others' resources to get the word out. Affiliate programs, for example, place text or graphic links on others' websites. Authors who give away free articles, seek to position their articles on others' webpages. A news release can be picked up by hundreds of periodicals and form the basis of articles seen by hundreds of thousands of readers. Now someone else's newsprint or webpage is relaying your marketing message. Someone else's resources are depleted rather than your own.

Put into practice

Viral marketing is (fairly) easy to define, but very difficult to accomplish successfully. MarketingSherpa's How to Viral Market toolkit is the best book available on the nuts and bolts of developing a successful viral marketing campaign. Strongly recommended for serious marketers. Dr. Wilson's review Buy the book.

I grant permission for every reader to reproduce on your website the article you are now reading -- "The Six Simple Principles of Viral Marketing" (see http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt5/viral-principles-clean.htm for an HTML version you can copy). But copy this article ONLY, without any alteration whatsoever. Include the copyright statement, too, please. If you have a marketing or small business website, it'll provide great content and help your visitors learn important strategies. (NOTE: I am giving permission to host on your website this article AND NO OTHERS. Reprinting or hosting my articles without express written permission is illegal, immoral, and a violation of my copyright.)

When I first offered this to my readers in February 2000, many took me up on it. Six months later a received a phone call:

"I want to speak to the King of Viral Marketing!"

"Well, I'm not the King," I demurred. "I wrote an article about viral marketing a few months ago, but that's all."

"I've searched all over the Internet about viral marketing," he said, "and your name keeps showing up. You must be the King!."

It worked! Even five years later this webpage is ranked #1 for "viral marketing."

To one degree or another, all successful viral marketing strategies use most of the six principles outlined above. In the next article in this series, "Viral Marketing Techniques the Typical Business Website Can Deploy Now" (http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt5/viral-deploy.htm), we'll move from theory to practice. But first learn these six foundational principles of viral marketing. Master them and wealth will flow your direction.

"Copyright © 2000, 2005, Ralph F. Wilson, E-Mail Marketing and Online Marketing editor, Web Marketing Today. All rights reserved. Permission granted to reprint this article on your website without alteration if you include this copyright statement and leave the hyperlinks live and in place."

I have downloaded some very old and nice Romanian songs played by Compact, my wife's favourite band. After I have unzipped the archive, I double clicked on it and then Totem Movie player started. But then I got an error because I was missing some codecs...

It was not the first time I got an error from Totem player, but this time I was really getting mad! Instead, as the famous saying says ("Don't get mad, get even!") I googled for "winamp for linux". I found a version 3 alpha that did not look very nice, nor stable, and then I found this on the winamp support forum:

Some people reported that Winamp can run under Linux using Wine (with limited features, eg. only classic skins). No guarantees though, Winamp is a Windows program.

(source)

Ok, so no linux version for Winamp... Not good, but I can live without it. But what player to use?

And so I found amarok which looked nice. But, most important, they had instructions on how to get the needed codecs to play mp3!

To enable MP3 support, the rpmfusion repository should be added to Yum. Click here to find out how to do that.

Once rpmfusion is enabled, the easiest way to enable all the freeworld/nonfree codec support, is to:

yum update @sound-and-video

This will enable mp3 support for Totem player also. But you can still go ahead and download amarok if you need a more robust mp3 player. I for one am using amarok.

PS: This command will also update all video codecs for Totem player. This means that from now on you can also play movies that were not able to play before (this includes compressed AVI, WMV format and more!)

I'm new to Twitter. One of my friends told me about it and I decided to look into it. I found out since then that it's kind of addictive, so if you don't have a "few" minutes to spare every hour to write 140 characters, then twitter isn't for you.

So What is Twitter?




To put it very simple, it's the simplest and easiest way to express what you feel, how you feel, what you are doing at some point. It takes 20-30 minutes to write a blog post, you have to style it, review it, add some photos to the post, set the labels for it... A pretty long process.

But what if you just want to shout something, like "i'm alive, i'm still here and kicking!"? Do you write a blog post for that? No, you don't, 'cause your readers will say "your roof is no longer on your house" (if you get my point :) ).

So this is where Twitter comes in the place. You just type what you feel at some moment of time, no styling, no photos, no nothing, just pure old fashioned FEELINGS! Yeah, you do write sometimes about other subjects as well, but this is (as I see it) the main benefit.

At the beginning you won't feel much to it, but then, when you start adding some friends/people to follow, you will realize the most refreshing feeling of all: YOU ARE NOT ALONE! What if you hate your job? Just write that on twitter. Maybe some of your followers hate their job too, so they will start tweeting answers to your tweet, and their friends will do the same, and their friends, and their friends... Get the picture?

People say that, because of this phenomenon, Twitter is the latest trend in marketing, as if you have someone say "I love IT Gang - itgang.blogspot.com", automatically hundreds of people (if not more, depending on how many followers they have) will visit the site. And it all happens almost instantly!

How to keep an eye on what other people are tweeting about?

First, create an account with Twitter. Then, you need to setup an easy way to be in touch with your twitter account and get updated when someone tweets about something. To do that, you just have to get one of applications/plug-ins out there that suit your need. Refreshing the Twitter homepage from time to time will not work, trust me (although it will actually work, the whole purpose is to get your friends feelings as soon as they tweet them, not 2 days later...).

I'm using TwitterFox, as I spend most of my day in front of my Firefox browser, but there are many tools out there.

Now that you're up and running, just go ahead and search for your friends (by name, location, keywords, anything will work), or follow somebody that you find interesting or has something interesting to say :)

Who uses Twitter? Twitter stats (statistics)

The answer is simple, again: Everybody uses Twitter! They say if you don't tweet you don't exist! So just search for your favourite actor/actress, singer, politician, you name it, and you can follow what they say every time they have something to say, not when you find out about it from the evening news.

I was curious to find who is the number one Twitter, who has the most followers, and I was able to find just that. At the time of this posting, the #1 World Twitter is ... Ashton Kutcher (2 million followers and counting)! (I don't know if he's the real thing or not, but anyway). The site I took this information is called twitterholic.com and it can show what's your ranking on Twitter based on the number of followers (http://twitterholic.com/vladges)

Yeah, ok, but who is the twitter who tweets the most every day? That's also something we can find in twitter stats. Just point your browser to tweetrush.com and look around! OMG, about 600+ tweets a day! Do they have time for anything else? I seriously doubt it.

Anyway, here you have it, folks! Tweet away!

PS: You can follow my tweets by clicking below:

As I promised, I have submitted the 3 columns itheme blogger template to www.eblogtemplates.com. They say it will probably take 2-3 weeks to review it:

Thank you for your submission! Your blog template, "iTheme with 3 columns and drag-n-drop (Blogger)" was uploaded successfully.

Please allow at least 2-3 weeks for your template to be reviewed. You will receive an email and see the status change on your dashboard once a decision has been made.

Note, due to the increased volume of new template submissions we have recently received, there might be a delay in reviewing your template. Please be patient and check back regularly.

To submit another template, click here.

Thanks again for choosing eBlog Templates as a distribution channel for your blog templates!

In the mean time, you can download the template from my site:

www.simpatic.ro/i3theme/itheme-3c-blogger.zip

Enjoy!

After hours and hours of stress, searching the Internet for a 3 column itheme template for Blogger, I finally made one myself...

It has all the cool features that the guys in MangoOrange have created for the Wordpress template, but this one is for Blogger (aka blogspot.com). So if you're a blogspot user and not a wordpress one, then this template is for you!

For now I have uploaded the template on my site, but later on (probably tomorrow) I will upload it to www.eblogtemplates.com



Click here to download the template (.zip archive containing the xml)

Update: I have changed the download link to a more friendly one. Once people at www.eblogtemplates.com will accept the template, I will post back with their link. Also, there seems to be some problem with Google Chrome, as it will (only sometimes...) click in the box while you drag-n-drop it. Don't know why.

This is a very short post, but since I posted the link to the Myth Busters show in the previous post, I also wanted to post the printscreen of their website that looks really nice with the 3 main characters: Adam, Jamie and Buster :P

I decided it's time to change the look and feel of my blog. So I started searching for the perfect template to use. Of course, I wanted a free, good looking, user friendly template, in XML format. I had found one in the old HTML based Blogger format, but it was to difficult to customize and I wanted something easy. With Blogger's XML templates, adding widgets is a 1-2-3 process that can be performed by anybody, including a not so experienced blogger like many of us out there.

Anyway, I found out a cool site that I even registered with and downloaded this brand new template for my blog:




(I'm posting a screen shot for the days when I would change to a new template so that this post will still make sense)

The website is called www.eblogtemplates.com and they offer exactly what they say on their front page: Free High Quality Blog Templates



The template I am using is itheme. I had to do some modifications for it to work, but you can find my comments on the itheme page (currently the latest comment, but I hope it will not remain like this forever :p )

So my next task is to transform this template from a 2 column one in a 3 column template, by adding a column on the left side. It's not that I don't like it this way, but nowadays, with extra wide screens, it's useless to have a very loooooong but not wide enough page.

Back to work now, I hope to post the 3-column template in a couple of hours so wish me good luck :D

When I first found out about Linux, it was during one of my High School classes. We were using a text based Internet browser to navigate the world wide web. Oh, those days were beautiful! No worries, no cash, just pure old fashioned teenager fun! :)

Since then, I had always thought of Linux based systems as being a very simple text based window in which you type commands and hope to correctly interpret the text results printed on the screen. Many of my friends still see Linux as a "geek" thing, something that needs to be fed with lots and lots of text commands in order to do just a simple task. Way not user friendly in what all Windows users are used to.

But now that I have installed my own Fedora distribution and started using it on a daily basis, I keep getting amassed how simple things really are and how similar to what I had been trained for so long in my Windows days :)



In the first couple of days after I installed my brand new, soon to become old (since the release of Fedora 11), Fedora 10 distribution, I had convinced myself to learn and use the terminal and learn as many commands as I can so I can, someday, rule the Linux World. As I needed to perform an action, I would search for the proper command to use, learn how to use it, and then write it down on a paper to remember. I filled this way both sides of an A4. But today, a couple of weeks since my Fedora installation, I realized that I am no longer using the commands I laid on that paper, nor am I using the terminal. I do get prompted for the root password on a daily basis, for the administrative tasks, but no more Mr. Terminal for me.

What is the explanation for that? Simple: I discovered the UI tools that do most of what I need (actually even more than I need) so I am now back in the world of mouse moving and clicking, no need for commands anymore. I far far away of being a Linux master, but I am one of those who actually enjoyed MS Dos and the command prompt in Windows. Still, I do not feel the need to use commands on a daily basis, I prefer to use the visual tools that allow a more user friendly interaction. And since I am a Linux novice, user friendliness is exactly what I need!

If I were one of the Discovery's Myth Busters, I would say a BIG "BUSTED" to the "Linux is a text based commands geek tool" myth. This to say at least, because I find the Windows equivalent UI tools to be even better than what I was used to on Windows. Just take a look at the System Monitor tools (monitors CPU, RAM, HDD usage, processes, etc.):



And another screen shot:



One cool feature that I remembered now (because of the two above screen shots) is that on Windows, when you print screen, you need to open Paint and paste, then save the image. On Fedora, you are automatically prompted to save the file. You can also copy it to clipboard if that's your desire:



To conclude this post I would ask you to always try something before you jump with conclusions. I know this is an old advice, but the least you can do is ask around about Linux before you categorize it as a text based tool.

Well, if you've read my previous post you probably know that I am the proud owner of a brand new Linux machine! Yeeeee!

So, as a Linux newbie, my next question after installing Linux was: how to protect myself and my computer against computer viruses?

Believe it or not, the most answers you get when asking "what is the best Linux antivirus" is: LINUX! No, don't laugh, it's not a joke! It really seems that you don't need an antivirus when running Linux. Yes, you need one if you are running a server based linux, used as an email server (for example) in order to clean the viruses from emails so that the WINDOWS based end users (the person whom the email is addressed to) reads the email...

Confused already? :) Let me put it this way: Person A sends an email containing a virus to Person B. The email server, Server E, will scan the email from A and remove the virus, so that when B reads the email, his Windows PC will not be infected. If you have a linux server (Server E in this example) you need an antivirus. If not, you don't need one.

Yes, there is malware for Linux, but in order to allow such a program inside your PC you really need to allow it to access it. As you can read in the post "How to write a Linux virus in 5 easy steps" ( http://www.geekzone.co.nz/foobar/6229 ), it's fairly simple to write a malware. Please be aware of the difference between the term "VIRUS" and "MALWARE". (If I got this right) A malware is an application that a user installs on his/her PC and which causes damage/propagation/bad things to that user's PC. A virus is a malware that installs itself, without the user's "agreement" (intervention) on one's PC.

So writing a Linux malware is very simple, but convincing a Linux user to blindly double-click on an email attachement to install the malware is ... well, usually not that easy :)

In conclusion, it really seems that you don't need an antivirus when running Linux, which is indeed a comforting though. But remember to keep an eye open on the "evil looking" email attachements. They just might ruin your faith in Linux, and if they do, you're the only one to blame!