Nowadays, floppy diskettes are passé when it comes to portable storage. Even burning CDs don’t even come close to innovation as the current portable storage device called the usb flash drive. If you are using this pen drive that has a disk space of 1Gb and up, read the tips below on how you could maximize the use of this tiny but powerful gadget.

1. Operating System

Little did you know that you can actually carry with you your own choice of operating system via your usb flash drive. This will allow you to log in to virtually any PC available with a unique password and you will be able to fix bugs and crashes. A wide array of options are available, but most likely, it will be a Linux OS. You can follow the link for pendrivelinux.com or you can also click here for some recommended options.

2. Virtual PC

Do you know that your pen drive could actually work as a virtual PC? Yes, you heard that right. All you need to do is to get a virtualization software such as Mojopac and install it in your pen drive. Now you can bring all your files and data wherever you need to be.

3. Readily Available Security

A wide variety of anti-virus software that is small enough to actually fit in your flash drive is available at your disposal. With this, you will be able to bring security anywhere you may be, minimizing the transfer of viruses via USB flash drives. Some of the highly recommended software are the following: McAfee Avert Stinger, ClamWin, and Avast Virus Cleaner.

4. On-the-go Applications

You need not use huge software all the time. Nowadays, a portable variety to the original software is very common and almost all software has this. Instant messengers, games and web developers are all available in smaller size to fit your pen drive. Save what you need from these and use this on-the-go, in any computer that you need to use worldwide. If you want to get a list of applications and details, you can visit portableapps.com or pendriveapps.com.

5. Value added software

Some applications are actually useful when installed directly to the pen drive. It makes the pen drive’s performance better and more enhanced. Websites such as Pendrive.com and Snapfiles list some of them here and here. If you need to have data recovery software available wherever you go, there are applications that could help you. Some of the examples include Restoration, Memory Stick Data Recovery, and Pro Data Doctor.

6. Et cetera

Windows Vista users actually have the luxury of using the usb flash drive as RAM. There are some software that makes it possible for Windows XP too, but they are not that effective. If you stumble along one that actually works with Windows XP, please let me know because I am still using that OS.

You can also use your pen drive with Winamp and use it as an on-the-go music device. I would have added this as the 7^th use but it is not that much useful, anyway.

If you think that the uses above do not apply to you, you could always use it for its actual purpose – to transfer and back up files.

There has been talk of big time hardware companies teaming up for the soon-to-be released Google Chrome OS. In case you didn’t know, this OS will become an addition, a rival some hope, to Windows and other popular operating systems on Smartbooks/Netbooks.

At the recent COMPUTEX, people have been abuzz about major hardware manufacturers possibly using the Google Android as an OS – Qualcomm and ASUS plans to use it for the Smartbooks, while Acer wants to adopt it on Netbooks. If you’re wondering what netbooks and smartbooks are, this writer will provide a simple overview. A Netbook is a smaller (usually 7”), lighter (about 1.2 kilograms) and inexpensive (US$300) version of a laptop. A smartbook on the other hand, is a cross between a Netbook and smartphone in that it uses an ARMS processor instead of the usual x86 Atoms (Intel).

With the recent announcement from Google, it will be interesting to see how the Google Chrome OS will affect hardware company partners’ development plans. The Chrome OS is, for some, a better OS than the Android. It seems to be a top candidate for the Smartbooks OS, and an addition on Netbook.

Chrome OS: ARMS vs. X86 Atom

Netbooks, function poorly under ARMs processors. It cannot support all the functions, features and performance expected of the Netbook or similar machines. The same thing can be said for the Android OS. As far as operating systems go, Android does deliver on its promise (light and fast) but it still remains as a mobile OS, thus unsuited for the Netbook.

The ARMS however was implemented into Smartbooks (Netbook-based). With the current OS (Android), the full potential of the Smartbook has not yet been utilized. What the smartbook needs is a stronger processor, in terms of performance, and a heavy duty OS, in terms of browsers. The browser part has been answered by Google. Hardware on the other hand, leaves much to be desired.

For the Netbook, the Google Chrome is an excellent secondary OS. This writer won’t be surprised if the Atom-based Netbooks are shipped with the Chrome OS and Windows in one package. Basic, small, and browser functional, this is definitely suited for the machine along with the Windows OS. Users who love using Google apps can surf safely by booting to Chrome OS and booting to Windows if any Windows application needs running. Those who have Chrome browsers will be glad to know that it works perfectly with the Chrome OS.

Vendors may retail Netbooks/Smartbooks with either OS or both. Ultimately, it is left to you which one to pick.

Google’s Chrome OS was recently announced for release next year. It is an open ware so programmers rejoice for customization it offers. It is specifically designed to run Google’s other application, the Google’s Chrome browser, along with other services such as Gtalk, Gmail, Google Doc, and others. The Linux is a lighter version of the popular operating systems on the market.

The Chrome OS is a lighter version of Linux.  That is saying a lot since OS design nowadays concentrate on compact and performance. The cloud computing services (virtual applications and virtual drives) the Chrome OS offers are definitely an advantage. There is one flaw however. Since most of the computing services are online and hosted on servers, the big question on everyone’s mind is what will happen when those servers crash/deleted?

The news of the release was months ago and yet the problem hasn’t been addressed. Power outages can affect servers, and not in a good way.  In a week alone, outages at data centers hosting popular websites have affected their service. Even Google App Engine is not immune to outages as it suffered performance problems.

Once the power is restored it takes time for the server to fully function. In the case of the OS, which millions of people might use, this will seriously impact the OS performance. Outages are not the only problems cloud services face when it comes to their hosts. If the host shuts down, what then?

The market also plays a factor, with more and more entrepreneurs being turned off by cloud services.

IT experts from companies have stated that reliability is one issue cloud services have to answer for. That is why they feel uneasy about putting more than half of their business parts on cloud services “box-style”. Though vendors try to downplay the reliability, one can’t help but notice how many users still rely on cloud services. No one can deny how flexible, inexpensive and quick development it offers.

Be prepared, because the deeper your business is immersed in cloud services the more vulnerable it is to downtime. There is no getting out since you’re locked into that providers server. This writer guesses that it is left to the IT people to figure out how to balance the development and business impact it will encounter during downtimes.

In conclusion, cloud services offer a lot potential enterprise but the fact remains that it has a great weakness. It is left to the user to decide whether to get it or not.

Linux is a staple brand name when it comes to computers. Over the years, it has been creating programs and operating systems that are very much in tune with the world’s need these days. Actually, there is a variety of Linux programs that I find better than its counterparts. However, this program called the Amarok music player, can not run on a Windows platform. I scoured the worldwide web to find out how I can possible use this program that is originally for Linux and have come up with a solution.

Because I really really want to use Amarok Music Player in my Windows based computer, I looked all over the web. Just when I was thinking that it is a dead end search, I found out about a marvelous application called andLinux.  andLinux solved not just my problem with Amarok Music Player; it also allowed me to use any Linux based software and application in my Windows. andLinux is actually a software based on Ubuntu but lets you use Linux in some Windows based systems such as Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 2003. However, andLinux can only be used in the 32 bit versions.

andLinux has two versions that you can use. If you will be using this at home and have quite a large amount of disk space free, the KDE based version is for you. It is around 500 MB in size and is more than three times is smaller counterpart. If you need to carry around the program in your pen drive, you could opt for the smaller and lighter XCFE version which just takes up around 150 MB of your free disk space, sure to fit even old school 512 MB flash drives.

To test drive andLinux, I installed the XCFE version. Like I said, this is the smaller one and I do not really need to add up more files to my chock full hard disk. A lot of Linux based applications did run on it so I was very very impressed. Hurray! However, my Amarok Music Player, which is the main program that pushed me to find a good solution to my problem, didn’t work much to my dismay. I really do think, though that it will run in the KDE version because it is an application that is based on KDE but I got to free up some more disk space, I guess.

andLinux is perfect for people who would want the flexibility of using Linux based applications on the more common Windows platform. All you need to do is put up a shared folder in Windows so you can log in and view the files in Linux.

This is much like hitting two birds in one stone, running on Windows and using Linux applications!

A friend of mine came to me asking, “Hey, can you convert some videos for me for my girlfriend’s PSP? It seems the converters we downloaded are either bogus or trial versions.”, with that I tried googling for psp movie converters available for UNR Karmic.

(@jspalding: yeah I know I told before that i’m using Eeebuntu, I removed it from my system. Battery life was decent but somehow I craved for UNR Karmic’s sexy and accesible interface. )

Back to topic, well, I found this quality/free software available at Ubuntu Software Center (popularly known as add/remove programs),  It is called Avidemux. Avidemux can be used for simple cutting, filtering and encoding of videos.

Here is a nice tutorial I followed to get me started with Avidemux. Took me 1hour to convert an unsupported HD .mp4 movie to a PSP supported HD .mp4 movie, FULL SCREEN!

Avidemux is also available for Windows under the GNU GPL license.

There is a simple trick that will allow you to open several different gmail accounts on the same instance of Firefox

1. Open ‘Run’ dialog. For Windows users, press WinKey and ‘R’. For Linux users, press the Alt key and F2.

2. Once the dialog box appears, enter “Firefox – p – no-remote”. Once you have done this, another dialog box, this one containing Firefox’s profiles will appear.

3. Create a new profile by clicking the “Create Profile” button and following the simple wizard. Name the profile, for example: gmail2.

4. Close any open dialogs before returning to the desktop.

Open the “Run” dialog once more. This time, enter “firefox – p gmail2 –no-remote”.

The ‘-no-remote’ option creates a solitary session. This session is not different then the current open Firefox session or profiles. When the ‘no-remote’ command is not selected, a new window will open using the default or current profile. This is how session sharing happens and is what we need to prevent.

Because session sharing has been disabled by the ‘-no-remote’ command, it is possible to have two gmail accounts open at the same time.

As Firefox releases updates and new versions, it is hopefully that they will take a cue from IE 8. There is option under the file menu that allows you to open a brand new, and separate, session of Internet Explorer. Because the sessions are unique from each other, problems like session sharing do not occur.

hi!!, came across this site called Linux from Scratch, that teaches you to build your own, customised linux from the source code. The site is very interesting and would be very useful for adventerous guys (he he).

Also check the linux documentation project. The site has also documented the linux kernel.

A few of us at BotHack just realized how BotHack has been devoid of content relating to Linux, though most of us work on *nix machines. So we have created a new category for Linux related articles and keep an eye on it cauze we are gonna flood it with tips/tricks, tech news and hacks.

Since this post marks the beginning of a new category, here is a small introduction to Linux for all those readers who have no clue about it. I have absolutely no idea what to write here. It is all off the top of my head , anyways on with the article.

Let’s start off with pretty much the basics. Linux is open source development of operating systems. It has no real owners, the platforms are usually completely free, and they are all a great alternative to Windows/Macintosh.

But there are so many different versions of Linux to chose from, I have listed the major ones below:

-Mandrake
-Redhat
-Ubuntu (has many others like Xubuntu, nUbuntu, edUbuntu, Kubuntu)
-Debian
-Fedora (which is pretty much the same as Redhat)
-SuSe
-Gentoo
-BackTrack 2

And that’s all I can think of at the moment. I have tried and tested Redhat, Mandrake and certain Ubuntu platforms. My favourite is just Ubuntu. Good ol’ plain simple Ubuntu, arguably the most user-friendly Linux distribution on the net. (The tag line for Ubuntu reads – Linux for humans )

Now Linux is better in many ways to Windows and Macintosh because it is completely open source and everything is free! Yes completely 100% free! All the distros (different types of linux) usually are free (especially Ubuntu, it has shipit which delivers as many Ubuntu disks you want straight to your front door at absolutely no charge whatsoever).

Also, all programs made for Linux are completely free, you can get a lot more games too. Now you get a lot of skiddies who use Linux. They download a program like MetaSploit and think ‘zomg I’m so fr1ggan 1337 I can use someone else’s exploit to hack into a server zomg’. Well if you chose to do this then that’s your choice. But not only that, you have an amazing terminal which you can configure to look like anything you want (I have used a Matrix style layout, it rocks!) and with that you are pretty much in control of your computer.

It is worth learning CLI (Command Line Interface) as it is extremely powerful. The super user is sudo normally on Linux but on Ubuntu it works in a slightly different way for some reason.

Some more reasons for Linux over Windows, you can program php and Perl and mySQL <– (pretty much a programming language in itself) easily. You can set up Apache easily and set up your own website, and if you configure DNS and buy a domain on the internet providing that you have a static IP you can host your own website off of your Linux box. Many servers out there use Redhat as the OS on their box.

One of the best qualities about Linux is that you can dual boot it so it can have Windows XP (or w.e. Windows you have) and Linux. Heck you can tri-boot it and have 3 OS’ on, heck go ahead and have 50 OS’ on but you’ll need a wopping great HDD to do that usually though it’s best to install Windows and then Linux because it is easier to configure the grub that way, and Microsoft are a pain at making life awkward. I think that’s their speciality

Windows decided to move away from MS-DOS (Microsoft Disk Operating System) back in Windows ME (correct me if I am wrong) so that is another reason to switch to Linux. Linux has OO.o (Open Office.org) which is the free alternative to MS Office, heck why pay £250-£350 for something when you can get something just as good for free? I know it makes no sense

Anyway I’ve ran out of things to say about Linux for now, might post another article lol, sorry if this was a bit edgy and sh!t but it’s just supposed to be an intro, and I thought I’d just give everybody a little background information on good ol’ Linux.

If you have any interesting articles on Linux and related stuff, please do mail them to bothack [at] gmail [dot] com.

Dell is to provide the Ubuntu distro on its machines to customers seeking an alternative from the Windows operating system. Responding to a barrage of requests on its Ideastorm discussion board, Dell will now sell both desktops and laptops with Ubuntu pre-installed. The choice of the version is 7.04 code-named Feisty Fawn. This could however put-off customers who are more comfortable with Windows that Linux, an OS that is a choice of the tech savvy enthusiast, a major point being lack of certain drivers for Linux and usability issues.

Ubuntu is reputed to be a very user-friendly distro.

Read the rest of the article here.