Open Source Archives - Page 11 of 32

May 10, 2008

OpenOffice- Howto Print Multiple Slides (Handout) in One page

There are times when you want to print multiple presentation slides in one page, especially when you are making handouts to give away to your audiences. Here’s how you can do that easily using OpenOffice.org Impress.

First click at the “Handouts” tab.

Printing Multiple slides on a single page in OpenOffice.org

Then you will see the slides arranged on a single page. Typical number of slides is usually between 4-6 on a single page. You can select layouts option to determined the number of slides.

Alternatively, you can change the page layout to to Landspace to give it a “wider” feeling to your handouts. Just right click and select Page Layout.

Finally you can print your handouts by selecting File->Print, and clicking Options at the bottom of the Print Dialog. Select Handouts, and print the documents as usual.

That’s all, hope it will help you in your daily works.

April 28, 2008April 29, 2008

Bloat alarm : We need a another “Firefox” to Mozilla Firefox

Back few years ago, there are a bunch of dude released a lightweight browser named Phoenix (way back in 2001-2002) as an alternative to the current Mozilla browser release.

This lightweight browser which contains no more than bare component (Gecko) to enable web browsing was a major attraction by itself. Then they changed the name to Firebird and finally to Mozilla Firefox because of legal issues. Its not about the naming problem though, a rose by another name is still a rose.

Mozilla Firefox gain the fame of being a lean and mean web browser, as in its original vision. But then things started to change. As the user grew, they started to add features that make the browser become more complicated. Bugs and usability problem begins to rear its ugly head. One of the things people might notice is it began to eat up much of valueable resources. CPU usage starts to shoot up, memory leaks being the norm since 1.5.x release. It does not feel like a “lean and mean” browser anymore.

What matter most is not the bell and whistle, if people want that, they would just download Seamonkey, because why else it is being offered in the first place? Fix memory and CPU resource problem because it is so damn obvious it failed to act as lightweight browser there. We dont need all the bell and whistle, a “simple lightweight” browser would suffice.

Perhaps we need another “Firefox” to Mozilla Firefox, this time for real…

April 19, 2008

FLV2MPEG4 : Convert FLV to MPEG4

Here is an easy way to convert Adobe Flash Video files (FLV) to MPEG-4 using a tool called flv2mpeg4.

First you need to download flv2mpeg4 using svn from its project websites
svn co https://vixynet.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/vixynet/trunk vixynet

.
Install ffmpeg, libavcodec-dev, libavformat-dev and libavutil-dev package
read the docs and compile flv2mpeg4

You can convert flash video file to mpeg4 by executing :
flv2mpeg4 youtube.flv youtube.mpeg4

Alternatively you can install flv2mpeg4 from GetDeb.net website.

April 3, 2008April 4, 2008

Upcoming OpenOffice.org 3.0 supports Microsoft OpenXML (docx) out of the box

The popular Free and Open Source Office application, OpenOffice.org is going to have OpenXML (*.docx, *.xlsx, *.pptx) support by default. Scheduled to be release on September 2008, OpenOffice.org 3.0 packs a lot of features you might find interesting :

Import PDF files support. PDF documents can be edited in Writer
Official Mac OS support, now includes native “Aqua” interface
Multiple page view in Writer
Error bars in OpenOffice.org charts
Supports OpenDocument 1.2 specification

The BETA is scheduled to be released on April 30th, 2008. For the time being, OpenOffice.org 2.x users can open Microsoft OpenXML files (*.docx, *.xlsx) using odf import filters

Thanks to Andrew Ziem for the original article, OpenOffice.org 3.0 new features, an early look

April 2, 2008

New features in Ubuntu Hardy Heron (due in 20 days)

Though the main focus of the upcoming release of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy Heron) is for long term support and bug fixes of existing features, Hardy Heron still packs quite a few notable features to look forward to :

Wubi and umenu

Installation without creating a separate partition for Ubuntu Linux is made easier with Wubi! Inserting Ubuntu CDROM will display a start up application which enables you to install Ubuntu on your windows partition using a loopback device.

wubi ubuntu installer

umenu ubuntu installer using wubi

After installation, Ubuntu will be added as one of bootable operating system in your Windows boot menu.

Install Ubuntu without the need to repartition, format and hassle.

Fine-grained User Permission Control
Ubuntu Hardy Heron integrates PolicyKit on administrative user interfaces. This allows you to have better control over user access on specific administrative task. For example, you can assign privilege for one user to access network controls but not software installation.

PolicyKit in Hardy Heron

Easy to use host-based firewall
The new Ubuntu release, Hardy Heron also includes ufw (uncomplicated firewall) that is easy to setup and use by end users without bothering network admnistrators.

New default bittorrent downloader
Transmission replaced Gnome Bittorrrent as the default bittorrent downloader in Ubuntu Hardy Heron LTS. Transmission is a lightweight bittorrent client with automatic banning feature and protocol encryption.

Additionally, Ubuntu 8.04 LTS also includes GNOME 2.22 and Firefox 3 Beta, which is better integrated with GNOME desktop environment. I’m looking forward for the next Ubuntu release, due on April 24th, 2008, that is three weeks from now!

January 20, 2008August 22, 2015

exifprobe – easiest way to get GPS location from JPEG files

I’ve seen few photos taken from a GPS capable camera and the photo can be traced back to its original location using photo-navigation capable GPS devices.

These GPS coordinates are stored inside JPEG files which comforms to EXIF specification (using GPS IFD). However, I found out the f-spot photo manager while capable of reading EXIF metadata from JPEG, it can’t display the GPS coordinates properly upon reading the JPEG files.

This is rather annoying to me as I can’t possibly know the location where the photo was taken.

exifprobe to the rescue
Fortunately there is exifprobe. A CLI tool which able to display GPS coordinate on JPEG files among other things. The displayed coordinate from EXIF probe are in this format

degree, minute, second

so this output

Latitude                    = 5,47,39
Longitude                   = 100,24,10

would become 5° 47′ 39″ N, 100° 24′ 10″ E which you can enter on google maps to get its location.

Easy isnt it

p/s: btw, The location is within Gunung Jerai camping area where it is a popular camping spot for locals and tourists in Kedah (Malaysia).