3 SeaMonkeys

Well I setup a new GMail account today with a more normal name for the address. Thusly, I needed to a way to run an extra browser session, without messing up my current setup. So after a little research, I decided upon SeaMonkey. Why?

• Supports multiple profiles.


• Uses the same engine as Firefox.


• Has a small memory footprint.

To make this happen, you need to do a couple of things

1. Setup a profile for each browser session you want to run. The session manager can be found under Tools --> Switch Profile.


2. Setup a shell script for each session.

The shell script for each browser session looks something like this on OS X.

#!/bin/bash
/Applications/SeaMonkey.app/Contents/MacOS/seamonkey-bin -P profileName &

That's it. Enjoy your monkeys!

Linux updates

If you use Google Gadgets for Linux, be sure to get the 0.10.2 version, which was released Saturday. It fixes over 20 bugs, enabling support for many more gadgets.

Don't feel like compiling the code? No problem! It's now easy to find binary packages created by the community, thanks to a new page that points to Google Gadgets binaries for the major Linux distributions.

Posted by James Su and Kathy Walrath, Google Desktop Team

Adding Rotating and Scaling to CSS

Ajaxian has this good post on some browser specific CSS features that have been added to Mozilla and Webkit. Basically, the new properties allow you to rotate and scale parts of the DOM using CSS properties. Looks like cool stuff. In my opinion, no point in playing around with this much until its standardized. But, it looks like this is something that will be added.

When you speak, we listen

Here in Google Desktop land, we value two things: 1) feedback from people who use Google Desktop and 2) chocolate malt balls (good to eat, good to throw). While we love hearing how much you enjoy Google Desktop, we also want to know what we can do better.

As our Tech Lead pointed out on the official Google blog, one thing you really stressed to us was performance. So what did we work on? A really cool comic. (Just kidding.) No, we doubled down and cranked out our latest release of Google Desktop 5.8, which focuses primarily on � you guessed it � performance.

Although performance was our main focus, we also wanted to release some features and fixes in response to your other requests. Many of you still rely on Outlook, so we made our search cover more Outlook folders, with better speed and stability. We also made a number of additions to the Desktop APIs, including support for Flash in gadgets!

So if you use Google Desktop, please download the latest version. If you've never tried Google Desktop (or are a "former GD user"), why not give it a try? And remember, we love to hear feedback!

Posted by Ryan Tabone, Product Manager

Acer Aspire One: painless skype install

I installed Skype on my Acer Aspire One. The Aspire One is a perfect skype platform (having a built in web camera). Here's how I installed Skype for fedora 7 linux:

UPDATE: 2009-01-02 - Please read the notes on my Google site to track the comments and changes since this original post.  The instructions below are now out of date when Acer released a Skype installer.

Download the skype rpm (fedora 7)

Go here to download the fedora 7 version of skype. I downloaded and installed skype-2.0.0.72-fc5.i586.rpm














Run the Installer:

Once downloaded double click the skype rpm to run the installer. Note: you will be prompted to supply an 'authentication code' which is the 'root' password to run the Linpus package installer. The root password was assigned (hopefully by you) when the AA1 was first turned on.













Install additional rpms

Additional rpms are required by skype so those have to be downloaded and installed as well.












Chose Install anyway when presented with a warning from the installer.













Configure the desktop to display the Skype icon

Edit the file /home/user/.config/xfce4/desktop/group-app.xml using the mousepad (default) editor.  Type the following in the xterm window.

$ mousepad /home/user/.config/xfce4/desktop/group-app.xml

And add the line:

/usr/share/applications/skype.desktop

to the appropriate section as per the image below.












Once added and the Acer Aspire One is rebooted the Skype icon is available:

Updates

I started a notes page on Google sites to track the comments and changes since this original post.

A Little More Info about Adsense

Found this post on ProBlogger today about updates to Google Analystics. Looks like we are gonna get some detailed reports on what page are getting all the clicks and making the most money.

Very Good news. The current Adsense reports are pretty vague and not very helpful.

Acer Aspire One: increased security using GDM

I use my minty fresh Acer Aspire One for work. I work in the financial markets, ergo, it has to be rock solid secure. So to increase the security of my netboook I disabled the auto-magic login functionality and run the Gnome Display Manager (GDM) on startup to force a login. There are other benefits to doing this as well (like being able to switch window managers from Xfce to blackbox (which I'll explain in another post).

How to disable auto-logon:

WARNING: take extreme caution doing this or you will have a non-functioning netbook when rebooted. Be sure to read all instructions completely before making any changes and double check your work . You will need to remember the password you used when first turning on the Aspire One- good luck!

Edit the file /etc/rc.d/rc.S

Find and comment out the line

/usr/bin/xinit -- -br>/dev/null 2>&1 &

thusly

#/usr/bin/xinit -- -br>/dev/null 2>&1 &

and right below this line add the invocation to the Gnome Display Manager (gdm):

/usr/sbin/gdm

as shown in the screen shot below:

If all is done correctly, when rebooted the GDM will present you with a welcome menu for user. I do hope you remember the password you used when you first turned on your Acer Aspire One.