Productivity Sauce

Connecting to proXPN VPN on Linux with the proXPN Bash Client

Sep 21, 2015 GMT

When the proXPN VPN service offered a premium lifetime subscription for a paltry $39, it was too good of an offer to pass up (this offer on StackSocial may still be valid). So I bought it on the spot. It turned out, though, that while proXPN provides support for OpenVPN, the service doesn't offer any help, tools, or configuration files for Linux users on their website. Of course, with some perseverance and a bit of googling, you can make proXPN work on Linux. But there is actually no need for that thanks to the proXPN Bash Client script devised by Matthew Surabian. Before you proceed, install the OpenVPN software on your system. To do this on Debian and Ubuntu, run the apt-get install...

A Foto Finder: A Lightning Fast Photo Browser for Android

Sep 18, 2015 GMT

When you have thousands of photos on your Android device, you might want to use something more speedy and efficient than Android's default photo gallery app. In this case, A Foto Finder might be just the tool you need. Despite being slightly rough around the edges, this app offers several ways to quickly find desired photos along with a handful of useful features. The folder picker can be used to view photos in a specific folder, while the powerful filtering capabilities make it possible to find photos matching specific criteria like date and geographical coordinates. Speaking of geographical coordinates, A Foto Finder lets you view all geotagged photos on the OpenStreetMap-powered...

Instant Web Stats with GoAccess

Sep 15, 2015 GMT

A web log analyzer can come in rather useful when you run a web server on your own host. And if you need an uncomplicated and easy to deploy web log analyzer, GoAccess is what you need. This tool runs in the terminal and provides real-time web log analysis. GoAccess is available in the official software repositories of popular Linux distributions, so you can install it in a matter of minutes using the default package manager. On Debian and Ubuntu, you can deploy GoAccess by running the apt-get install goaccess command as root. GoAccess requires no configuration, and it's dead-simple in use. On a machine running the Apache server, run the goaccess -f /var/log/apache2/access.log...

Marble Maps Open Beta Released and It Looks Rather Promising

Sep 08, 2015 GMT

Good news for Android-toting users looking for a decent OpenStreetMap-based open source routing app. Dennis Nienhüser announced on his blog a public beta release of Marble Maps. As the name suggests, this app is based on the excellent Marble library and it uses OpenStreetMap as its source. The goal of the project is to create "fast, visually appealing, easy-to-use free software", and if the current beta is anything to go by, the developers are on the right track. Marble Maps features a refreshingly spartan interface void of any bells and whistles. So there is no learning curve, and the app is supremely easy to use. Routing is Mable Maps'...

Tutanota: A Promising Privacy-Focused Email Service

Aug 31, 2015 GMT

Despite its somewhat silly-sounding name, Tutanota is a serious open source email service and software that shows a lot of promise. In addition to keeping all your emails and contacts encrypted, Tutanota also provides a relatively easy way to exchange encrypted emails with your contacts. When you add a contact to your Tutanota address book, you have an option to specify a password you and your contact agreed upon. This password is then used to encrypt and decrypt correspondence between you and the contact. This approach greatly simplifies the end-to-end encryption system, although it does have a couple of drawbacks. Firstly, you need to agree on a password in advance and do it...

Commie: Pastebin with Comments

Aug 28, 2015 GMT

Pastebin services are usually one-trick ponies: they allow you to publish and share code snippets, and that's about it. But Commie brings something new to the table: this pastebin service allows you to add inline comments to a code snippet after it has been published. This seemingly simple addition to the otherwise standard web app makes Commie ideal for collaborating on shared snippets. Adding a comment to the published snippets couldn't be easier: click on the desired line number, enter the comment, provide your name, and press Save. It's possible to add multiple comments to a single line, and Commie uses different color labels for different user names. As any pastebin service worth its...

BoZoN: Slick and Simple File Sharing Web App for Your Server

Aug 25, 2015 GMT

When it comes to self-hosted file sharing web apps, you are spoiled for choice. But if you are looking for a simple and user-friendly app that is dead easy to deploy, you can do much worse than giving BoZoN a try. Written in PHP 5, BoZoN doesn't use any database back end and it has no dependencies. Deploying BoZoN on a server requires a few simple commands. Assuming that you have Git installed on the machine, switch to the document root of the web server, clone the project's GitHub repository, and make it writable by the server: cd /var/www git clone https://github.com/broncowdd/BoZoN.git bozon chown www-data -R bozon/Point then your browser to http://127.0.0.1/bozon/admin.php (replace...