Productivity Sauce

Tweak Images with Converseen

Jul 21, 2011 GMT

ImageMagick is a powerful command-line tool for batch processing graphics files, but it could definitely use a graphical front end for performing the most common editing and conversion operations. Enter Converseen, a user-friendly GUI tool for tweaking and converting graphics files powered by ImageMagick. This tool offers only a subset of ImageMagick functionality, but if you often need to quickly resize, downsample, or convert one or several graphics files, Converseen is right up your alley. Binary packages of Converseen for Fedora, Ubuntu, and openSUSE are available on the project's website, so you can install the utility on these distros with a few mouse clicks. Using Converseen is not...

Do Python Coding with NINJA-IDE

Jul 13, 2011 GMT

I'm not a programmer, but when I need to cobble together a Python script, I find a dedicated IDE (integrated development environment) a better tool for the job than a regular text editor. After I've tried several existing IDEs, I settled for a relatively new software called NINJA-IDE, which stands for Ninja-IDE Is Not Just Another IDE. For starters, NINJA-IDE allows you to work with single scripts as well as manage complex projects consisting of multiple files and libraries. As you would expect, NINJA-IDE features a number of creature comforts that make coding more efficient. This includes code completion and syntax coloring as well as error warnings. The latter is a rather clever feature...

Manage Conference Schedules on an Android Device with Giraffe

Jul 11, 2011 GMT

When my good buddy and lead DokuWiki developer Andreas Gohr started posting links to Android development resources on Twitter, I had a suspicion that he was up to something. It turned out I was right. Recently, Andreas released his first Android application called Giraffe. It is a simple yet genuinely useful app -- especially if you attend conferences and events, and you need to keep tabs on their schedules. If the conference or event provides its schedule in the iCal format, you can use Giraffe to pull the calendar data and present them in a readable format. Better yet, you can use Giraffe to star the desired entries and view the current items. That's pretty much all Giraffe does, but if...

Compile and Run Syncany on Ubuntu 11.04

Jun 30, 2011 GMT

Syncany is a relatively young project, but it already garnered the attention of the open source crowd as a potential replacement for Dropbox. Syncany's major attraction is its support for a wide range of storage back-ends: from good old FTP, to Amazon S3, WebDAV, and even Picasa. Better yet, additional back-ends can be easily added via plugins.While Syncany is far from ready for prime time, you can compile the current version of it from the source code to see for yourself what all this buzz is about.First off, install the required packages using the following command (don't forget to enable Canonical Partners' repository in Synaptic first): sudo apt-get install bzr sun-java6-jdk...

Use Klipper Clipboard Actions for Better Productivity

Jun 28, 2011 GMT

The Klipper clipboard manager is one of many great KDE tools. It not only maintains a clipboard history, making it easier to recover previously copied items: the utility also sports a few nifty features like the ability to edit the contents of the clipboard and generate a QR code for the current item in the clipboard. However, Klipper's most useful, yet often overlooked, feature is so-called clipboard actions. It allows you to configure Klipper to run user-defined actions on specific types of clipboard contents. For example, when you copy a URL, you can configure Klipper to automatically open it in the browser of your choice. To create a new action, click on the Klipper icon in the system...

Publish Tomboy Notes on Ubuntu Pastebin

Jun 27, 2011 GMT

Pastebin services like Ubuntu Pastebin are handy for sharing text and code snippets with a minimum of fuss. And if you happen to use Tomboy as your tool of choice for storing and organizing scribbles and code snippets, you'll appreciate the PasteBinIt addin which lets you publish any Tomboy note on Ubuntu Pastebin. To install the addin, grab its latest version from the project's website, and move the downloaded PasteBinIt.dll file to the ~/.config/tomboy/addins/ directory. In the Tomboy, choose Edit | Preferences | Add-ins and enable the PasteBinIt addin under the Tools section. To publish the currently opened note, press the Tools button and choose the Paste Bin it! command.Via OMG!Ubuntu!

Extension Watch: Google Font Previewer

Jun 22, 2011 GMT

The Google Web Fonts repository is a real treasure trove for anyone looking for high-quality open source fonts, but finding the font you like among dozens of available typefaces can be a time-consuming task. Fortunately, there is a nifty tool that can help you to quickly preview the fonts available in the repository -- provided you use Google Chrome or Chromium as your browser of choice. Using he Google Font Previewer extension, you can access all Google web fonts with a single mouse click. What's more, when you select a font, it's automatically applied to the currently viewed web page, so you immediately see what the font looks like in a real-world situation. You can apply the font to...