LongURL

Short Urls people love them and there are a number of services available (for example such TinyURL) but then so do the spammers, phishers and malware attackers who do not want you to see the real destination of a short url.

Personally I hate short urls because of the security risk but if people are going to send them then you might want to use LongURL which allows you to see the true destination of a link when you give it a shorturl. Currently LongUrl works with 208 Url Shortening services. You can also get a firefox extension for quickness.

Simple but very useful.

Enable Drag & Drop - GoogleWave and Ubuntu 9.10

You can drop content from a webpage into a wave but not by default. To be able to drop content into a wave you need to have Google Gears installed. In Ubuntu simply

1) Go to the synaptic package manager under system > system administration

2) Search for "gears"

3) Check the box for "gears" - Browser extension that enables more powerful web applications

c4) Click apply.

Once gears has installed you will be able to drag and drop content from a website into a wave, for example a photo from a website into a wave without having to download it and then upload it to the wave.

Amarok - No Sound When Playing Ubuntu 9.10

Finally finally found it. Amarok lost sound when I upgraded to 9.04 having completed an upgrade to ubuntu 9.10 i thought it was about time I got it back since I can't quite get Amarok out of my "I NEED IT!!!" media player favorite zone.

After some searching the solution is:

1) Download this file: libphonon.conf

2) Put it in /home/[your username]/.config/kde.org/ (you might need to create the directory, you will also need to view hidden folders to see the .config directory.)

3) If you don't have phonon-backend-xine install it.

sudo apt-get install phonon-backend-xine or use the synaptic package manager

4) Restart Amarok 2

You now have sound!