Kevin P. Inscoe

Article by Chris Pentago

I am one person who has been fascinated by the virtualization. The idea that software can be able to take a single machine and divide it up to act and feel like several independent systems has never ceased to amaze me. The geniuses that came up with virtualization environments must be some really bright minded individuals.

Well, I have particularly been impressed by the way it can be able to simulate an entire machine with that has all the required hardware such as memory, processors, networking and all the resources user can wish for.

I have a list of some of the virtualization technologies that I have been privileged to try out. Do not worry, I am not exactly the tech junkie that most IT enthusiast are so everything you get from me is nothing short of simple observations without really going into the deep technical stuff.

KVM

Let’s start with KVM, The Kernel-based virtual machine to me is simply a revolution of open source technology. I realized that it performs very well and is just better suited than others i tried. I loved the way it has been designed to take advantage of all the important features of Linux. It’s amazing the way it picks up the high performance of Linux and even the tight security that Linux has been able to keep up for many years now.

KVM requires a processor with hardware virtualization extension.
By itself, KVM does not perform any emulation. Instead, it simply exposes the /dev/kvm interface, with which a user-space host can then:

• Set up the guest VM’s address space. The host must also supply a firmware image (usually a custom BIOS when emulating PCs) with which the guest can bootstrap into its main OS.
• Feed it simulated I/O.
• Map its video display back onto the host.

On Linux, QEMU versions 0.10.1 and later is one such host. It will use KVM when available to emulate guests at near-native speeds, but otherwise fall back to software-only virtualization.

I also discovered that it is far much cheaper (actually free) especially when you take into account the fact that it offers a great experience and the peace of mind you have knowing that it’s very secure.

KVM tutorials:
http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/HOWTO

Xen

One other virtualization tool that I tried out is Xen which I learned is pronounced ‘Zen’ (makes you wonder why they didn’t just go for the ‘Z’ in the first place).

Anyway, it an open source virtualization technology which means that you can also get it for free in your distro. One thing that I noticed about Xen is that it is built for both home and business use just as KVM. However, I had to use a separate entry in my distro’s GRUB menu since it requires a totally separate kernel to boot.

It has been divided into layers called domains. The one with the highest number of privileges which I guess is the hypervisor is called the Domain0. Noticed that when I run guest operating system on it, they would run in what is referred to as Domain U.

I think it’s amazing that I can be able to run it even when the processor I am using has not been enabled for virtualization. However, you get full features when you enable virtualization. Intel and AMD virtualization helps you achieve this through Hardware Assisted Virtualization (basically, any newer processor has these features).

Xen is a virtualization technology that you not only enjoy for free, but is also very powerful and easy to manage due to its easily scripted command line syntax. I swear, administration of a virtualization environment has never been easier. I would advise that you configure your processor for virtualization (usually a BIOS option, depending on your motherboard/CPU vendor), this is the only way you get to access the full features.

Xen tutorials and howto’s:
http://www.howtoforge.com/howtos/virtualization/xen

Virtuozzo

I have also tried Virtuozzo, while being proprietary (Parallels), one thing that I can tell you about it Virtuozzo is that it runs a single OS kernel and it enables me to export container to different partition in order to create an independent unit.

I noticed that it has a kernel service that is able to manage the entire system by stopping any single unit from crashing the entire server if it drains too much resources. Partitions are also fully isolated so one partition cannot affect data stored in other. However, I noted that I can still be able to move data between the virtual environments with ease.

The command line is pretty simple to understand too. With Virtuozzo, I have the choice of using a GUI interface for general management through its Virtual Management Centre and a more web based interface that allows for remote access known as the Virtual Control Centre. To me, this is a true virtualization tool.

Personally, I use OpenVZ on my site’s VPS which is basically opensource port of Virtuozzo but haven’t played with it locally..yet. From what i experienced they provide similar set of functionalities but not so sure about performance.

Hyper-V

Hyper-V which is a virtualization tool that I came to know is codenamed Viridian and was initially known as Windows Server Virtualization.

It is a virtualization tool that is exclusive to Windows and it can work with both 32bit and 64bit systems. It contains it’s hypervisor which is one of the drivers in Windows Server. I have particularly noted that it has very favorable virtualization capabilities and can support several components too.
One thing that it can surely do is effective consolidation of servers without wasting resources.

I think it has several features that I haven’t come to fully tryout. I can however point out that this tools has a more dynamic memory, its the only way it can be able to manage the high workload levels that I would not be comfortable trying with the other systems.

If you ask me of its benefits, I can say beyond any reasonable doubt that the Hyper-v is an excellent way to utilize the resources in your infrastructure at low cost. I think it is very simple and has the ability to work for organizations of any size. The performance is pretty impressive too given the workload that it can effortlessly handle.

When you try out Hyper-V, you immediately recapitalizes that all the knowledge you already have is fully relevant. I didn’t have to learning more than I already knew to be able to utilize this technology. Microsoft also offers helpful support so you can easily find solutions in case you come across any hitch with its applications or even the operating systems.

Collectively, these tools just increased system capability despite the physical resources available. All of them are unique in their own way and able to meet different needs.

I reckon most people would not read this to get idea on what to install next on their home boxes rather to try to understand these technologies more and possibly pick preferred one for their VPS or something.

One thing that can help (at least money wise) is ServerBear comparison chart which seems updated regularly and can help guiding you if you’re in hunt for new hosting solution.

Here’s how it looks (click image to enlarge):

As for recommendation, some budget solutions are Prometeus, IperWeb and BudgetVM where VPS with some of mentioned technologies can be bought for as low as 5$/mo. As for my people from Australia , i’m overly satisfied with Ninefold.

I’ve written before about my love for reading, but I also have a side of me that loves bargains and hates spending unnecessary coin. What’s a man to do when he wants to buy and consume as many books as he can while preserving the health of his wallet? Use the Internet, of course! (Legally.)

Continue reading the article

Read full article: How To Find The Cheapest Books Online

I have GnuTLS setup on numerous Apache web servers. It's just better than OpenSSL because with GnuTLS I can use the more secure TLSv1.1 or TLSv1.2. The only problem I've had with it, until now is that it's trusted by every browser I've used with the exception of Firefox.

When I browse to one of my GnuTLS enabled sites in Firefox I get an error saying The certificate is not trusted because no issuer chain was provided.

cat intermediate.crt >> server.crt

I had never heard of the magician, Dynamo, until I read about how he floated alongside a double-decker bus in London recently. I watched the video. Personally, I think it was legit. I believe this was a paranormal event and an authentic example of levitation. But it's not like this sort of thing is completely unheard of today.

A cellphone and an iPad helped pilot Raymond Cody land safely after the single-engine plane that he was flying across western Colorado to Grand Junction Regional Airport malfunctioned and his communications and navigation system failed on him.

After the pilot experienced technical issues he picked up his cell phone and called the Transportation Security Administration’s customer service hotline. Gene Manzanares, the TSA Agent on the other end, used his iPad to help Cody navigate his position and land the plane.

The Daily Sentinel has the story: “While maintaining contact with Cody on one phone, Manzanares called on a second phone to the tower, alerting controllers they had an inbound plane flying electronically blind. Cody had the advantage of an iPad app that showed him his position, which he could then pass on to Manzanares, who relayed it to the tower and the tower passed along instructions to Cody via Manzanares.” (Via The Huffington Post).

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Cox Communications is testing a new lower-priced TV and cloud-based video streaming service which targets cord-cutters — people who don’t pay for cable but instead get all of their programming from connected devices.

Variety has the story: “The operator’s flareWatch service is $34.99 per month, with access to 97 live channels and 30 hours of network DVR storage. The service is currently available to Cox broadband subscribers in the Orange County market.”

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

National Penn has created an infographic called, “What Does Your Handwriting Say About You?” that examines personality types based on their handwriting.

According to the graphic, the way you write can indicate more than 5,000 personality traits. The infographic explains that everything from the size of your letters, the spacing in between words, and the slant you put on your letters says something about your personality.

Check it out: “Handwriting analysis (also known as graphology) can even be used for detecting lies and revealing possible health ailments.” We’ve embedded the entire graphic after the jump for you to explore further. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Looking for something wholesome to watch with your family over the holiday weekend?

Check out SpiritClips from Hallmark, a movie streaming app that is similar to Netflix, but features only family-friendly content. The app includes Hallmark Hall of Fame movies, Hollywood classics, as well as original documentaries. The app has no R-rated movies and no films that contain political agendas, irreverence or excessive violence, nudity and language.

The app is available online, as well as on stream-to-tv devices such as the Roku box and Google TV. There is also an iOS app edition. The app will be updated on July 11th with an upgraded user interface and new search functions, as well as with new content. The service costs $4.99 a month, or $35.99 a year. You can sign up for a free week to try it out.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Download the Declaration of Independence to help you remember what tomorrow’s holiday is all about.

The free iPhone app from Clint Bagwell Consulting includes the entire text of the decree, along with historical notes, images of original document and images and biographies of the signers. The free Android app from MTC apps includes the Declaration of Independence along with the Constitution, the United States Military Ranks, and The Bill of Rights among other documents.

For more free eBooks, check out our 10 Websites to Download Free eBooks list, as well as our Free eBook of the Day archive.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

In this final episode of Tech Chop, I talked about how I decided to give up my free Google Apps email account and setup my own email server on an Ubuntu Linux VPS using iRedMail.

As you can see in the video, iRedMail is probably the easiest email server you will ever setup. You basically stand up a plain Ubuntu server with no other applications, then you run the install script from iRedmail which installs just about everything you need.

I am personally doing this to avoid the NSA's PRISM program, as well as to stop giving Google unfettered access to my private email information that they can then turn over to the feds, or sell to marketers.

What's RSS? And should you use it? Find out with our latest manual, "Newspaper 2.0: Your Guide To RSS". This guide, from MakeUseOf staffer Kannon Yamada, explains everything you ever wanted to know about RSS. You'll find what this powerful information gathering tool is, its surprising history and its future in a post-Google Reader world.

Continue reading the article

Read full article: READ or DOWNLOAD Newspaper 2.0: Your Guide To RSS

The jet steam is exhibiting unusual behavior over the U.S., a pattern we've seen become increasingly common in summertime over the past decade. There's a sharp trough of low pressure over the Central U.S., and equally sharp ridges of high pressure over the Western U.S. and East Coast. Since the jet acts as the boundary between cool, Canadian air to the north and warm, subtropical air to the south, this means that hot extremes are penetrating unusually far to the nor...<br /><a href="http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2452">Read More</a>

A 200-year-old rockfish has been caught by a fisherman in Alaska, amazing locals.

Lebanese tabbouleh salad originated in the mountain region of Zahlé, according to Claudia Roden’s The New Book of Middle Eastern Food. In the Bekáa Valley of Lebanon during the 1920s, open-air cafés served various local mezze to tourists from all over the Middle East. Tabbouleh became a regional favorite. Originally, it was made with lots of bulgur wheat and bits of fresh herbs. Over time the preference shifted, and bulgur became a side note as fresh green herbs took over. Today, tabbouleh is more often made with lots of fresh parsley and mint, with bulgur and other additions like tomatoes included as mere accents.

In this modern take on tabbouleh salad, I’ve lightened up on the chopped herbs and replaced bulgur with quinoa. Inspired by a salad I enjoyed at Le Pain Quotidien café, I’ve added ripe avocado and grated cucumber to the mix. Toasted pine nuts and a creamy dairy-free basil dressing take this salad from tasty to entrée-worthy. It’s a seriously satisfying meal, packed with protein, healthy fats and lots of flavor. It’s my new favorite lunch recipe!

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Note: Any purchase you make from The Shiksa Market helps to support my website, my recipes, and the free content I provide. If you have an Amazon login, it’s even easier to make a purchase. Thanks for browsing!

Other Great Recipe Ideas

100 Days of Real Food: Lime-Cilantro Quinoa Salad

Simply Recipes: Cucumber Salad with Grapes and Almonds

Kalyn’s Kitchen: Southwestern Quinoa Salad

UPDATE: 17:32 - That was quick! The telephone man got the line rearranged so things are back up and running. I hope it stays up for a good long time now.

***

The Key West feed is down. Its DSL pair must have gotten a surfeit of H2O yesterday with the rain storms training over Key West. I hope to get it repaired by the end of the weekend.

If Sol comes out and dries it out before then it might come back on its own, who knows?

I’m not sure if I’ve ever mentioned my alma mater, Boston University, in a article I’ve written about technology. But BU is all over Techmeme today: It’s suing Apple over a 1997 patent. The university says that display technologies used by the iPhone 5, iPad and MacBook Air, among other products, violate the patent. It’s seeking damages and an injunction which would ban sales of the products in question. (Further full disclosure: Multiple family members other than myself also attended the university, and my parents worked there for a combined total of something like sixty years.) Unlike certain pundits, I cheerfully admit that I don’t know enough about patents to have a well-informed opinion about every news story that involves them. BU’s suit does seem to involve a patent on something specific invented at the university. That sets it apart from the trolls which acquired bizarrely broad software patents they can use to shake down everyone in sight. But whether Professor Theodore Moustakas’s  patent on “highly insulating monocrystalline gallium nitride thin films” is a genuine landmark which deserves to stand up in court, I do not know. So I’m not rooting for either side. I am willing to make one prediction, though: Whether it wins, loses or settles out of court, BU will take a public-relations hit as it sues Apple and asks the feds to force the company to pull some of the world’s most popular consumer-electronics devices off the market. (The school had already filed suits against Samsung and Amazon, among others, without attracting much attention.) However the lawsuit turns out, BU can continue to brag that it helped make not just the iPhone but all phones possible. Alexander Graham Bell was a professor at the university when he invented the telephone in in 1876. You can, um, learn more about that connection in the Mr. Peabody and Sherman cartoon below, which further reveals that Mr. Peabody deserves at least as much credit for the telephone as Bell did. Come to think of it, everyone who grew up on Rocky

Aviosys have launched the second generation of the their  IP Power unit.  The new model has upgraded components for more reliablity and integrates WiFi 802.11n-b/g as well as Ethernet.  Aviosys say that typical uses include server / appliance remote operation and even some basic lighting control… Five years after its initial launched, the IP Power 9258W has [...]

[Brittliv] made the mistake of getting her friends into Nerf weaponry, and so began the race to mutually secured destruction via foam darts. She may have the upper hand in this war, because her Nerf Vulcan sentry gun is both incredibly powerful and is able to be operated autonomously with a webcam featuring a friend or foe identification system.

The azimuth and elevation mount for the gun is made out of plywood, with each axis controlled by a single servo attached to an Arduino. Of course a stock Nerf gun would be fairly boring, so [BrittLiv] increased both the voltage going to the gun’s motor and the strength of the gun by replacing a 2kg spring with a 5kg spring.

Targets are tracked with a webcam using Processing and a bit of code from Project Sentry Gun. One interesting feature is a friend or foe tracking system; if the gun sees someone wearing a t-shirt with the Instructables logo, the target is identified as a friend and is not brutally mowed down with plastic darts.

Filed under: toy hacks

So you need an RSS reader, or maybe you don’t because a zillion sites have been mourning Google Reader’s demise for months (it’s alive for a few more hours, then sayonara) and you’ve already found your lemonade-out-of-lemons substitute. Or maybe you’ve never used RSS, content to flick through a social feed like Twitter for your daily digest. Let’s talk about why you might want to rethink that strategy, then run through the top RSS services in a post-Google Reader world. What’s RSS again? RSS, aka Rich Site Summary, aka Really Simple Syndication (but never Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the Hindu nationalist paramilitary group), is a way to keep tabs on news sites, blogs or anyone else publishing in the abbreviated notification-oriented format, eliminating the need to revisit websites throughout the day and manually scan for new content. When an RSS-enabled website updates, it generates an RSS-specific view that an RSS reader can scrape, proactively notifying you with a stack of headlines and (usually) short summaries and links to the content. You configure the client to scrutinize and pull story info from each site (or a subcategorized feed within a site), then sit back and watch the content roll in. Yes, you can sort of do this with alternate tools like Twitter Lists, but it gets tricky. If you care about timeliness, you need to be certain your sources are updating their Twitter feeds simultaneous with the site update (many don’t, including TIME). Others don’t use Twitter at all, or do so inconsistently, piping only some of their content over. If you don’t care about immediacy, or you’re sure the sites you follow are Twitter-synchronous, Twitter Lists may be for you. Otherwise you’ll want to think about an RSS reader, which remains one of the only dependable mechanisms for grabbing published content from sites in near-real time (depending on your settings). How do you subscribe to a site’s RSS feed? Everyone handles this differently, but in most cases, you’re looking for a button (usually orange) on each site that reads “RSS” or an icon

Say hello to Ryan Finlay, the entrepreneur behind ReCraigslist.com, a site dedicated to helping people buy and sell on Craigslist. For the past three years, Ryan has earned his entire living on Craigslist. He's now building a thriving appliance business and writing a blog to chronicle what happens along the way. Ryan has seen a little bit of everything over his thousands of transactions, and is here to field your Craigslist-related questions. He's hanging out for the next hour, so ask away!

Read more...

Today we are introducing a new client library that will reduce the development effort needed for you to perform atomic transactions that can encompass multiple DynamoDB items in one or more tables. This allows you to develop those applications more easily on DynamoDB that until now either required relational databases (with their attendant scalability issues) or required you to do a lot of work in your application tier to implement atomicity.

Let's review the concepts of atomicity and transactions before digging in...

In many cases, several related database storage operations must be treated as a transaction. Within the scope of a transaction, all of the storage operations must succeed or fail as a unit. This is referred to at Atomicity. When all goes well, a transaction proceeds as follows:

1. Begin transaction.
2. Put item #1.
3. ...
4. Put item #N.
5. Commit transaction.

If an error is detected before step 5 completes, or if the program terminates unexpectedly, then the transaction fails and the Put operations (Steps 2 through 4) are undone, leaving the database items in the state that they existed in prior to step 1. If you are writing code that transfers money from one bank account to the next, you'd definitely encapsulate the operations in a transaction, otherwise you could lose money (and prevent the accounts from balancing) if an interruption or fault occurred at an inopportune time.

The DynamoDB Transaction Library
The new library has been implemented as an extension to the existing DynamoDB in the AWS SDK for Java. This library tracks the status of ongoing transactions using a pair of DynamoDB tables. The first table stores the transactions and the second one stores pre-transaction snapshots of items modified within a transaction. You must call the verifyOrCreateTransactionTable  and verifyOrCreateTransactionImagesTable functions from the TableManager class to create the tables before you initiate any transactions.. Be sure to provision sufficient read and write capacity to avoid undue delays.

Here's a code sample that creates the necessary tables:

Here's some code that performs a transaction on the Thread and Reply tables, as described in the Amazon DynamoDB Developer Guide.  In the example Forums application, there is a Thread table, which stores one item for each question that has been asked on the forum, and a Reply table, which stores one item for each response to each question.  The Thread table also contains a count of the number of total replies for each question and whether or not the question is answered.  The following transaction both adds a new Reply, and increments the “Replies” counter in the associated Thread item:

In addition to atomic writes, the transaction library offers 3 levels of read isolation: fully isolated, committed, and uncommitted.  Fully isolated reads are performed through obtaining locks during a transaction, just like writes.  Committed reads provide a consistency guarantee similar to eventually consistent reads, and are performed by reading the old copy of the item if a lock is detected.  Uncommitted reads (also known as “dirty reads”) are the cheapest, but are the most dangerous, since they may return data that will later be rolled back.  Here’s some code that performs a read operation at the “committed” isolation level:

More code examples are available in the README file distributed with the transactions library.

A single transaction can span one or more DynamoDB tables. Transactional puts are more expensive (in terms of read and write capacity units). A put that does not contend with any other simultaneous puts can be expected to perform 7N + 4 writes as the original operation, where N is the number of requests in the transaction.

Getting Started
To get started, download the AWS SDK for Java, pull the DynamoDB Transactions library off of the AWS Labs GitHub repository, read the documentation, and start coding!

-- Jeff;

"Mozilla today announced that the regional launches of Firefox OS smartphones will begin soon. Deutsche Telekom and Telefonica will release the first Firefox OS devices, the ALCATEL ONE TOUCH Fire and the ZTE Open, soon. Individual partners will announce specifics about launches in each market soon." Lots of soons in there.

As I’m sure most of you know by now, Google Reader is being shut down. With the service gone and our feeds exported — you did export them, right? — it’s time to find other ways to get our RSS Feeds and news fix. Or maybe you’re new to the RSS game and wondering about the best way to get started now that Google Reader is gone.

Well, fear not, we’re here to help you out. Our colleagues at Web.AppStorm published a fantastic article detailing five great online RSS services you ought to try but we’ve also compiled an exhaustive list of great RSS Readers and news solutions specifically available for your Android device. Whether you’re new to RSS or a seasoned veteran, this list should get some ideas generating and help you move on from Google Reader.

Like the article? You should subscribe and follow us on twitter.

News Curators

There are several apps that aren’t necessarily traditional RSS readers, but can still help you find great reading material. Maybe you don’t need RSS or maybe you just want a great way to discover fantastic content without having to look for it. These apps should do the trick.

Other news curators worth considering include newscover, NewsWhip, Flud News, MATERIAL, Zite and Vu. You can also look at umano, which uses human voices to read important news items to you.

Feedly

Feedly [read the full Web.Appstorm review] has quickly become the most popular Google Reader alternative around. It offered an easy one-click import of Google Reader and kept most of what made that service so popular — including similar keyboard shortcuts! The web service uses a clean, easy-to-use layout that offers lots of simple customization. What makes Feedly so interesting, however, is that it not only has its own great apps, but a very open API. And in a lot of ways, Feedly is already way nicer than Google Reader ever was.

The only real warning I could give about Feedly is that there is no way to export your feeds right now, so you’re locked in to the service even if you want to try something else. The developers say exporting data is on their roadmap, but if it never happens, don’t say we didn’t warn you. If you’re switching to Feedly, give some of these Android apps a whirl.

Many other Google Reader third-party Android clients have also switched to Feedly’s API, including Reader and D7 Google Reader.

Other RSS Services

Whether Feedly doesn’t hit the right notes with you, or whether you prefer to use a paid service that will likely stick around, there’s a wealth of RSS options that are currently supported on Android.

Here are some other RSS services with Android apps released, in beta, or potentially coming:
• Ridly is in beta and currently working with Reader on Android
• The Old Reader has an optimized website for mobile devices and an open API so third-party apps might be coming soon
• Bloglovin is more visually oriented and has an Android app
• FeedHQ has an open API so third-party apps could be coming soon
• Rolio has a first-party Android app in the pipeline
• Bazqux is currently integrated with the beta Android app News+ from the maker of gReader.

Local RSS Readers

Sometimes, you don’t need apps that sync with web services or other devices, and you just want to get your reading done on your Android phone or tablet. Here are some local RSS readers for Android.

Also worth considering are these other local RSS readers for Android: RSS News Reader, RSS Junkie, Holo Reader, FeedEx and PaperBoy.

The services and apps mentioned above should help you move on after Google Reader’s demise. There’s a lot of choice, many different approaches to RSS and news reading, and most of the companies have worked quickly and relentlessly to be ready before Reader shuts down, but have also promised a lot of innovation once the dust settles.

Did we miss any other important RSS and news service or Android app? Did you decide what option you’ll be using to replace Google Reader? Let us know in the comments!

There’s something to be said for slow and steady progress, but there’s also something to be said for decisive and sweeping action. When it comes to negative relationship habits, there’s no time like today to quit cold turkey. Of course that’s a lot easier said than done, but with practice we can do better almost immediately.

Lately I’ve been making it a point to bring more awareness to the specific negative relationship habits our coaching clients have been repeatedly complaining about or engaging in. And perhaps more importantly than that, I’ve also been noticing how frequently many of the same habits and behaviors surface in my personal relationships. I mean let’s be honest, we all misbehave in our relationships sometimes. None of us are immune to occasional negative mood swings. But that doesn’t excuse what we do to each other on a daily basis. 

Over the years, through our coaching practice and live events, Angel and I have literally worked with hundreds of individuals looking to fix or strengthen their relationships, and we’ve learned a lot about what it takes to make that happen. One of the most significant realizations, again, is the fact that most problems in our relationships (both intimate and platonic) arise from the same basic negative habits and behavioral issues. Here are some of the more prevalent ones to be aware of… (more…)

OS X: Previously-mentioned ReadKit has always been a great way to catch up on your Instapaper, Pocket, or Readability queues, but the app recently expanded its scope to include support for several RSS syncing solutions to help ease the transition from Google Reader.

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Have you ever encountered situations in Firefox where supported file types like text were not displayed directly in the browser but only offered to be saved to the location system? While that makes sense for file types the browser does not support, like executable files, there is no real reason to display a save dialog for text files or images.

The web browser decides usually whether to display files right away or display a save option instead. This can be partially customized by the user, for instance to automatically save files of a certain type to the system whenever they are requested.

Web servers can however use the Content-Disposition header to override this behavior of the browser. This is sometimes used to force the browser to ignore that it is capable of displaying the contents right away so that a save or open dialog is shown instead.

The user of the browser has no say in the matter, and there is no option to ignore the header on the user's site, at least not when it comes to the default options the browser makes available.

Firefox users can install the InlineDisposition add-on for the browser to ignore the header so that supported file types can be viewed again directly in the browser.

The extension works automatically once you have installed it in Firefox. A good way to find out if it is working is to open the following link in Firefox or another web browser. When you do that,  you will notice that a text file is offered for download or downloaded directly to the computer.

With InlineDisposition installed, the text file is displayed in Firefox so that you can read it right away. You can still save it then by right-clicking the page and selected to save it to the device.

The extension works well for all file types that the browser supports internally. This includes text files, pdf documents, image formats and other media types.

Please note that servers can still prevent the inline viewing of file types if they specify a content-type that the browser does not support.

Other extensions of use in the situation:

1. Open in Browser adds an option to Firefox's save window that enables you to open the selected file type directly in the browser.
2. Force Content Type enables you to change the content-type of urls in Firefox. Useful if the server is mis-configured or using the wrong content type on purpose.
3. Web Page Fixer fixes a number of annoyances including fixing the "do this automatically from now on" checkboxes in Firefox.

The post Fix for Firefox not displaying contents directly in the browser appeared first on gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials.

Google Reader is shutting down and you, hopefully, have backed up your Reader data for future import into your reader app of choice. As pointed out by Mihai Parparita of persistent.info, Google's Takeout service creates a backup of the RSS subscriptions, but fails to include all the data like starred items, tags, comments and more.

To grab all your data, Parparita has created a tool that uses Google's API to pull down everything but the kitchen sink from your Reader account. You can download the reader_archive tool from github and check out the article on persistent.info. The article details other tools like CloudPull and the readerisdead.com website that compiles tools, tips and tricks on extracting all your data from Google Reader. Happy Google Reader backup weekend, folks!

Github tool extracts all your Google Reader data, including starred items, tags and more originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sun, 30 Jun 2013 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In some ways the Qwerty-packing Q5, with its throwback BlackBerry looks, is a far more important device for BlackBerry than its current flagship, the all-touch Z10. Or the premium-priced Qwerty-clad Q10. The mid-tier Q5 should be priced to shift — because that’s what BlackBerry needs to happen to start regaining the ground it lost when it was forced to pause and reboot its OS to play catch-up with rivals. That’s what the Q5 should do, but will it?

The problem for BlackBerry is it may already be too late to turn things around. BlackBerry’s latest results, out late last week, made grim reading as the company missed analyst expectations, and its share price took a battering. It shipped just 2.7 million BlackBerry 10 handsets in its Q1. But it has only had two BB10 devices to sell, one of which (the Q10) only made it to market in the U.S. earlier this month. Which makes the Q5 even more important: BlackBerry needs more handsets in its portfolio attacking different price points to have a chance of ramping up sales.

The problem is the Q5 doesn’t feel like a saviour. It feels closer to a kludge. Likely it isn’t going to be cheap enough to really hit Android where it hurts (it’s mid-tier, not budget after all). Nor does it feel like enough of a leap forward to convert a new generation of users to BlackBerry. BB10 is still Blackberry playing catch-up with competitors, rather than streaking ahead in the innovation stakes.

Of course many Blackberry loyalists and long-time users aren’t going to be unhappy with the Q5′s old school Qwerty form factor. But that staid staple means it necessarily offers a crimped OS experience versus the full-touch Z10. On the Q5 — as with the Q10 — the touchscreen has had to be squashed into a square to accommodate yesteryear’s physical Qwerty keys. Which is a problem because BlackBerry’s new platform needs room for the user to manoeuvre.

BB10 is built around gestures and layering content — and that whole “peek and flow” dynamic comes into its own on a full touchscreen. But on the Q5′s small square it’s inevitably constrained. Yet, despite this squeezed screen, the Q5 is surprisingly big for a Qwerty BlackBerry. Certainly compared to past generations of RIM hardware — those ever-so-popular Curves and Bolds it apparently succeeds.

As well as being constrained by having to make room for the keyboard, space has to be found to accommodate the bevels where BB10′s gestures have to start. This makes the overall front footprint a bit, well, hefty. It looks like an oversized, top-heavy BlackBerry, which will feel like a step backwards to those accustomed to BlackBerry’s traditionally highly pocketable handsets. And who else is this Qwerty-packer really trying to woo?

Android users have so much choice when it comes to keyboard software that even if they don’t get on with the stock Android virtual keyboard they can switch to Swype, or Swiftkey or any one of the growing number of Qwerty alternatives cooking up interesting new ways to type. The Q5′s immutable plastic keys feel terribly dumb phone in comparison.

Even the BlackBerry exec demoing the Q5 at the press event I attended to pick up a review device described the physical keyboard as “infamous”  (Freudian slip?). And said he found typing on it “a bit strange” because “I’m used to typing on the [full touchscreen] Z10.” That says it all really.

The Q5 is a deeply conservative device. It continues to look backwards to BlackBerry’s legacy keyboard-chained past — a compromise between old technology and new software. And like most compromises, it’s unlikely to entirely please anybody. It’s not that it’s terrible, it just doesn’t feel good enough to make an impact — and that means it’s not good enough because BlackBerry needs something remarkable to stand out in this crowded mid-tier segment.

Yet you can see exactly how and why BlackBerry has arrived here. In its current shrunken state, as its user base and revenues have diminished, the company has had to retrench. It can’t afford to lose any more users, yet it can’t afford to ramp up the number of devices in its portfolio quickly enough — making it super important that it retains its one remaining heartland: corporate users. Those are the last really sticky BlackBerry users, even as fickle consumers have wandered off elsewhere.

So BlackBerry can’t cut its ties with the past as it’s now even more dependent on its most conservative demographic. Its focus has to be on servicing that existing corporate user-base — because their loyalty is locked up far more than the average consumer. Some 90 percent of the Fortune 500 are BlackBerry customers, according to the company. And some 60 percent are apparently trialling BB10. BlackBerry needs those bulk-buyers to migrate to BB10 and continue pumping money into its coffers. If they abandon ship BlackBerry really will be an adrift ghost ship.

Selling mobile email to corporates is how BlackBerry built its original mobile empire. And selling to corporates is where BlackBerry has had to retrench to now. An army of cheap Androids is sweeping away its other former stronghold: teens. While free, over-the-top messaging apps like WhatsApp have eroded the appeal of BBM (BlackBerry’s licensing of BBM to Android and iOS this summer also feels like too little, too late). Now, with the mid-tier-priced Q5, BlackBerry is apparently hoping to woo those kids back. But the Q5 compromises on target demographic, too.

On the one hand BlackBerry says it’s aiming the Q5 at younger users. But it also cites SMEs and corporates as targets — flagging up the Balance feature that allows segmentation of work and personal content on the device. Little wonder then that, design-wise, the Q5 looks like it’s trying not to be too much of anything, so no one feels like disowning it. If I had to use one word to describe it, it would be generic. Or plasticky. It’s as if it’s been deliberately left as blank as possible to be as inoffensive as possible — to try to appeal to as wide a group as possible. In other words: another compromise.

The other problem BlackBerry has is that corporates are famously conservative about technology upgrades, which explains why it has no plans to sunset BB 7 any time soon. Corporate investments in BES 7 “have to be protected,” as one BlackBerry spokesman put it. Which means the company has to keep supporting BB 7 and producing devices running that last-gen OS for the foreseeable future. Which stymies change, and hampers BB10′s progress as a portion of resources have to go on the old platform.

Plus, if BB 7 devices are still on offer, why should corporates risk the upheaval of upgrading to a device like the Q5? They’ll stick with what they know, and leave this compromise on the shelf. So while BlackBerry youth users are going — or have already gone — elsewhere to check out shinier hardware, its business users are foot-dragging and in no hurry to move on. Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place. No wonder turning this tanker is so hard.

Pricing will of course play a key role in whether the Q5 sits on shelves or not. The mid-tier is where the largest Android army roams. But carrier tariffs for the Q5 are going to need to be a lot lower than the early EE pricing of £26 a month to be competitive enough to win over consumers. That price is pitting the Q5 against iPhone 4S or Galaxy S3 tariff prices. Which makes BlackBerry’s mid-tier offering a tough sell, whichever tech camp you prefer to sit in.

Regardless of whether this middling handset ends up selling well or not, it may make little material difference to BlackBerry’s prospects. The perception that the mobile maker is now locked in a death spiral will only increase shareholder pressure on the management team, and make acquisition a more likely end. BlackBerry would need to sell an awful lot of Q5s to calm that spin.