Manage Tasks on Android with Maniana

Jan 07, 2013 GMT

The Maniana task manager app is described as "a perfect solution for every procrastinator." In reality, though, it is a perfect tool for anyone looking for a no-frills solution for keeping tabs on your to-dos and tasks. There are, of course, dozens of apps on Google Play Store in this category, but Maniana has two traits that make it stand out from the crowd. Firstly, the app features a somewhat unorthodox approach to scheduling and managing tasks. Maniana does away with the calendar metaphor, offering only two screens: Today and Tomorrow. You can push any task in the Today screen to the next day by tapping the arrow next to the task (that's what makes Maniana ideal for...

Flick through Photos with the Photo Image Viewer

Dec 17, 2012 GMT

Photo is not the most sophisticated image viewer out there, but it offers a perfect blend of simplicity and flexibility that makes it a handy utility, indeed. This lightweight application has a full-screen keyboard shortcuts-driven interface which doesn't stand in your way. This alone makes Photo an ideal tool for showcasing your snaps. As you would expect, Photo supports a wide range of graphics formats, including JPEG, TIFF, PNG, and PPM. Practically all common actions in Photo (zoom in out, show next or previous previous photo, open file, etc.) can be performed using keyboard shortcuts. The application also allows you to edit the default key bindings as well as specify custom...

Enable Support for Android MTP in KDE

Dec 14, 2012 GMT

Since many mainstream Linux distros still lack proper support for the Media Transfer Protocol (MTP), making a Linux machine play nicely with an Android device can be a bit tricky. Unless you happen to use Kubuntu. In this case, you can add MTP support to the Dolphin file manager by installing the MTP KIO slave using the following commands: sudo apt-add-repository ppa:philschmidt/ppa-kio-mtp-daily sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install kio-mtpOnce you've done that, connect your Android device, and you should be able to manage it as a regular storage device using Dolphin. Not using Kubuntu? Then follow the instructions on the Afiestas blog on how to compile and install the MTP KIO...

Set up a DLNA Server in a Minute

Nov 29, 2012 GMT

DLNA provides a hassle-free solution for sharing digital media between devices, and you can put this technology to good use on your local network. Install DLNA software on a server on your network, and you can easily access photos, videos, and music from any device that has a DLNA client on it. Using the minidlna application, you can turn any Linux machine into a DLNA server in a matter of minutes. Here is how to do this on Debian and Ubuntu. Since minidlna is available in the official software repositories of both distros, installing it is a matter of running the apt-get install minidlna command as root. Once the package has been installed, open the minidlna.conf configuration file in a...

How to Quickly Configure Wireless WPA Connection on Raspberry Pi

Nov 13, 2012 GMT

The latest version of the Raspbian Linux distro for Raspberry Pi contains a graphical tool for configuring and managing wireless connections, but you can easily set up a wireless connection to a WPA-protected Wi-Fi network without booting into a graphical desktop environment. Assuming that you are using a wireless adapter supported by Raspbian, run the iwconfig command to find out the correct wireless interface (in most cases, it's wlan0). Create then a backup copy of the /etc/network/interfaces network configuration file using the following command: sudo cp /etc/network/interfaces /etc/network/interfaces.oldOpen the file in the nano editor: sudo nano /etc/network/interfacesLocate...

Read RSS Feeds with EasyRSS for Android

Oct 31, 2012 GMT

While the official Google Reader app does a decent job of managing RSS feeds, it's hardly the best RSS reader for Android. This title should belong to EasyRSS, an open source app which provides a better user experience. EasyRSS relies on Google Reader as its back end, so you need a Google Reader account to be able to use the app. EasyRSS features a sleek interface, and the app makes extensive use of gestures for navigating and reading RSS articles. The built-in rendering engine does a great job of formatting and displaying RSS articles, while the app's synchronization capabilities keep everything in sync with your Google Reader account. Using EasyRSS's sharing feature, you can push...

Turn Raspberry Pi into an Email Archiver

Oct 29, 2012 GMT

Having your email up in the cloud is very convenient, until your Internet connection is down or email provider is having technical issues. In situations like these, having a searchable backup of all your emails which you can access locally can be a real life-saver. Fortunately, setting up an email archiving solution isn't all that difficult, and you can use a Raspberry Pi (or any spare machine for that matter) for that. If your email service provides IMAP support, then the best tool for the job is OfflineIMAP. This software is available in the Debian official software repository, so you can install it on RPi (assuming it runs the Raspbian distro) using the sudo apt-get install offlineimap...