Backing up your information is very important to you, or at least it should be. One of my college professors once told me, “It is not a question of if your hard drive will crash; it is when your hard drive will crash.”

Rsync is a tool that allows you to keep two distinct directories in sync, either locally (two locations on the same machine, including attached devices) or remotely (local computer to server or even server to backup server). It is free and open source software and runs on Linux and most other Unix-like operating systems, including FreeBSD and Mac OS X.

Furthermore, those who prefer not to get their fingers dirty on the command line can use Grsync, a graphical frontend for rsync, available in most Linux distribution repositories. /> id="more-20248">

According to Fortune, Open Source is slowly gaining acceptance in the corporate world. More and more corporates are beginning to see the merits of Open Source and have started embracing it. But all these changes didn't happened overnight. It was rather a painful journey. 'Sharing' was never a good thing for Corporates until recently. These changes were largely brought about by a string of Open Source success stories that happened over the years.

GNU/Linux

Chrome: The Chrome to iPhone extension adds a handy button to your Google Chrome toolbar that, when clicked, quickly shares your current URL between your desktop browser and iOS device. More »

Ubuntu is already the most popular Linux distribution and probably the first ever Linux distro to overshoot popularity of Linux itself. Now, what Ubuntu needs is a lot of promotional activism from the community. Here is a few Ubuntu adverts from YouTube that I hope will inspire designers among you to get up and start working.

Short and Simple Ubuntu Ads You Should See

MeeGo is a Linux based open source mobile operating system project which was announced at Mobile World Congress in February 2010 by Intel and Nokia in a joint press conference. And according to arstechnica, Nokia's N9 could just be the first ever MeeGo powered mobile phone to hit the market.

Pictures started appearing in a Chinese forum of a reportedly new Nokia mobile handset prototype which closely resembles Nokia N8 but with a slide out QWERTY keyboard.

But that's not the hype is all about. It turns out that, the new Nokia prototype seems to have Linux based MeeGo platform as its OS instead of Nokia's own Symbian. And in the process, Nokia N9 could well become the first ever MeeGo powered mobile phone. But this news isn't confirmed by Nokia yet and hence it is still very much a rumor.

A huge usability problem for some users in Google Chrome is the fact that the browser exits automatically when the last open tab is closed. While that may make sense sometimes, some users would expect it to open the blank tab page instead and leave the browser open. The blank tab page feels like the natural option to display when the last tab has been closed in the browser, as it contains links to the most used websites and the history.

Users who want to close the last tab, and see the blank tab page instead need to first open the blank tab page, and then close the other remaining tab to keep the browser open.

close tab

Last Tab Standing is a new Chrome extension that changes the default behavior in the web browser. The extension overrides the default behavior of the browser to exit if the last tab is closed. It instead opens a new tab so that the browser window remains open, exactly the functionality that some Chrome users like to see.

The browser can still be closed by closing the newly opened tab, or by clicking on the x icon in the upper right corner of the browser window.

Last Tab Standing has some quirks right now, like the previously mentioned exiting of the browser if the new tab is closed. Another limitation is that it only works in one browser window. Users who work with multiple browser windows will notice that the extension will do its magic only in the last remaining window.

The developer has plans to improve the extension, but states that the browser currently has certain limitations that may prevent an optimal solution.

Chrome users who want to try out the browser extension can download it from the official Chrome extensions gallery.

GNOME Shell is a component of GNOME 3.0, the next generation of the GNOME desktop environment scheduled for release in March 2011. We did introduced Sonar, Elementary and Ambiance GNOME Shell themes before and we have one more to showcase, Equinox GNOME Shell theme.

Equinox GNOME Shell Theme

I'm unabashedly a Gmail fan, and have been using it for years. One of the things I love about it is its ability to search through a huge number of messages, and find exactly what I need quickly.

But what if I told you there's a way to make searching your Gmail even faster, and that it wasn't Google that did it?

CloudMagic is a Google Chrome and Firefox extension which indexes your email locally on your computer, and provides ridiculously fast results when you search. The extension provides a CloudMagic search field right in Gmail with a shortcut key of Ctrl-/ (rather than just / for Gmail's regular search field). It features search-as-you-type that seems to react instantly to your keystrokes, and uses many of the same search operators that Gmail already uses, so you don't need to re-learn how to search.

From a privacy standpoint, CloudMagic creates the index locally on your machine, so there's no risk of someone snooping through your messages. It also stores your password locally, much like a regular email client does.

It's not clear to me what CloudMagic's revenue plan is, but I sure get a kick out of the idea of someone coming along and beating the pants off Google at search in Google's own email service. CloudMagic reports that Google Docs search is the next feature they will be releasing. I can't wait.

A virtual keyboard provides two main advantages over a hardware keyboard. First, it defeats most keyloggers as the keys are not typed in but clicked on, and second it may offer faster access to special characters, especially from other keyboard layouts.

An example would be an English user who needs to write a German ö. Sure, the user could press the combination Alt+0246 on the numpad to write that letter, but only if the code is known, and chance is it is not if it is not commonly used.

Virtual Keyboard is a Google Chrome extension that offers both benefits. It supports a wide variety of different keyboard layouts, including the default English keyboard, but also German, French, Spanish, Greek, Russian or Cyrillic keyboard layouts. More than 80 different layouts are supported by the extension.

virtual keyboard

The virtual keyboard is automatically displayed on every web page that displays at least one text form. Like the previously reviewed Virtual Keyboard userscript it fails to work on secure (https) sites which severely limits its protection against keyloggers. One would expect an add-on like this to work on secure sites as well, considering that those are often prime targets of attackers.

Only the English keyboard layout is available after installation. The Chrome user can use the options to add layouts to the program, to switch between them on the web pages it is displayed.

It is possible to switch between layouts in the header, or by pressing Ctrl-Q.

keyboard layouts

The lack of support for https sites makes it less usable from a security perspective. It is nevertheless helpful for users who have to type characters from different languages regularly in the web browser.

Google Chrome Virtual Keyboard is available at the Chrome extensions gallery.

Google Chrome is a fast moving name in the web browser world now. It is undoubtedly the best web browser around and with the Google backing; it has made a reputed position for itself. The development cycle has undergone a considerable change and Chrome has attracted bug fix bounty hunters just like Firefox. In short, Google Chrome is on a perfect roadmap.

Keeping up with this, Google Chrome has moved to the next version with the release of a development version of Google Chrome 7, named 7.0.497.0. A test version of this is available already and the dev channel version is scheduled to arrive this week.

The settings and the look and feel of version 7 is the same as that of Chrome 6 till now. However, expected features like the support for web applications and the Chrome store are missing as well! They are scheduled to arrive later in September this year.

Google recently fixed ten security bugs in Chrome and spiced up the process with bounties amounting to a total of ten thousand dollars.

With the chrome web store coming in October and web-application support coming in September, Chrome has a busy year ahead of itself.

What do you think of the new version of Google Chrome? Try it out and do let us know.

(Source)

We introduced to you guys probably the best combination of gtk theme and icon set for Ubuntu/Gnome[Equinox gtk theme + Faenza icon theme]. Now take a look at Awoken icon theme. I won't say it is better than Faenza icon theme, but it is almost as good.

Download Awoken Icon Theme

Google Aug. 19 opened Chrome Web Store to developers in a preview, preparing for an October launch to the public.

Developers can upload apps, package them and install them in Chrome using the latest Chrome dev channel. They may also integrate Google's payments and user authentication technology.

Google May 19 introduced the Chrome Web Store at Google I/O to help developers put free and paid Chrome Web apps in front of consumers.

The store will enable the roughly 70 million users of the Google Chrome Web browser to not only find Web apps, but create shortcuts in Chrome to access them easier.