IM, Pidgin, Amsn and the others

I'm a Pidgin (former Gaim) lover. I've been using it for 3 years now. In 2001 we were all using ICQ in the university residences, even to talk to our neighbour (and even if our doors were open, shouting wasn't the way to communicate at that time. Internet was!)

And then 2004 the new promotions arrived and brought us MSN, so we had to stay in the progress and switch. But I didn't want to have 17 different IM softwares on my computer, so Gaim was the solution: one platform to talk to all my friends at the same time, even if they are talking via icq, msn, or yahoo. Well, I must say, I started with Trillian, but it's not an open source software (even if it's free), so I choose the open source one.

And I'm very happy with my Pidgin, I can talk to my world of friends, and many at the same time without a big bunch of windows (tabs are the best things on earth ;)).

But today another technology gap to face: Pidgin doesn't support webcam conversations. Argh !! It's planned in the 3.0 release, but for when? Please don't ask!? Luckily, if you are like me, a Linux user, and you would like to see your friend (or them to see you) while sending them messages, then you've got to urpmi (i.e. install) AMSN.

The webcam is working with AMSN. There is no sound, but the image is good and clear, so it's worth it. But I can't wait for my Pidgin to be the best again !! And of course my Pidgin groups are not appearing in Amsn...

I'm a Hoaxbuster !!

I read an article from 01Net[fr] yesterday saying that 96% of the e-mails in the world are spam. But in these ones, I don't think they include the mails of hoaxes that our friends send us, believing they are saving the girl who disappeared or the boy who needs a bone marrow transfusion...

We call these emails hoax ou canulars. Most of the time it's a chain letter, and if you don't forward it you to your best friends will die of sudden death, have 7 years of misery of any other bad thing... They can also be a emergency call because a girl/boy disappeared, or is going to die if they don't find the right blood/bone/brain/lung/kidney/nose donor...

If you receive any email like this, please, please, please, DON'T SEND IT BACK !! Go and check
http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org/ if you speak English, or http://www.hoaxbuster.com/ if you speak French.

Just type or paste a sample of your email in the hoaxbuster search engine, and click go to see if the email you received is true or not. If not, please stop the chain and delete the mail. If it's true, you can send it back, but write a word saying that you checked the truth of the content.

Et pour les Français qui sont sur Facebook, je vous conseille de devenir fan de hoaxbuster. Recherchez HoaxBuster dans les groupes, et devenez fan !!

Change your shortcuts in Firefox "Save As" dialog box

When you are saving a file that you found on the internet, Firefox default choice is to save it on the desktop. This parameter can be changed in Edition>Preferences, then in the General tab change the bottom option to "always ask me".

Now that Firefox is always going to ask you where you want to put it, a first dialog box shows up asking if you want to see the file, or if you want to save it. If you decide to see it, it will open the file in the corresponding software and save the file in a temp folder.

If you decide to save it, a "Save As" dialog box shows up, with on the left part of it a tree with some of your folders. Your shortcuts. You can add and remove these shortcuts, except the first 5 ones. To add a folder as a new shortcut, go to it in the Save As dialog box, and then the Add button under the left menu will be accessible. If you click on it, you will see the new folder appear under your list. This is pretty easy and so much time saving !

Create a tag cloud

As you maybe noticed, blogger can give you the opportunity to tell what every post is about, and then you can, with the new interface, create a list of the categories you used, and class these categories by number or alphabetically. But rather than a boring list with mixing numbers, I think that a tag cloud is more fun.

So here I am, looking for a way to create tag cloud in this blOg.

Technacular lists all the way to do it, from programming your own code to get help from another website.
As I'm a bit lazy, and mostly because blogger doesn't give me the categories database that I need, I decided to go for the second solution and I found a few:
Tag Cloud Builder from OCLC Research. But you can only save your tag cloud as a file, no way to keep it "alive".
Tag Cloud Generator. Whatever the way I do it (via the links or via the 30 most used words), the tags chosen are never the one I really want...And I need to re-run the process everyday if I want a cloud up-to-date!
ToCloud.com. Results are better than with the TagCloud Generator, but idem, the HTML code is generated at a time X, and no automatic update at the time Y in the future. You have to run the process again. But the good thing is, the tag cloud is very easy to edit !! You can delete all the tags you don't like.

For any of the sites above you need to create an account. Which is also why you can't update your tagcloud :)

ZoomGroups I endedup signing in ZoomGroups because they were telling that yes, I could create a tagcloud with ZoomGroups. But now that I am logged in, no sign of any way to create a tagcloud. And of course, they propose to create a blog, but if you want it free of ads, it's not free for you (55$/year!) Guess I'll be signing out of this one pretty quick !!

ZoomClouds. Héhé. The first time the server seemed to have lost my request somewhere, but a little refresh in my browser, and POUF, I have a tagcloud! I can edit everything, the style, the colors, and I know that the tagcloud will be updated, because it has been created via my atom feed. Bad point: the only way to get a tag in or out of the tagcloud is to add it in the filters. And even when you put them in the no-no filter, they stil show up. Maybe after a couple of refreshings it'll change. Second bad point: when you click on the tag, you end up on the ZoomCloud site, where you can see all the latest articles with this tag. But all my tags were empty of articles...

So, ok, a long way just for this, but if you want a tagcloud directly in your blOg without trouble, you'd better log directly in
ZoomClouds.!! But just don't click on the tags!!

RSSOwl

urpmi rssowl: v.1.2.3. But the version 1.2.4 is available on the official site. The version 2.0 is on its way.

I used to have my RSS links in my Firefox bookmarks toolbar, but if you put too many in the toolbar, you end up not having enough space for your other bookmarks. And I already created some folders to sort my bookmarks, but I still have a nice collection of bookmarks in my bookmarks toolbar.

So I decided to look for a RSS reader. And I picked up RSS Owl, euh, I don't remember why. Maybe because of their slogan: May the owl be with you.

The install via urpmi went easy. But it's the first time I have that many supplementary packages to add. In the end, 93 packages to install.Be sure you have a bit of time when you launch the install.

When you start RSSOwl, your screen looks like your web browser, open on an empty page (white). You can see the address bar, like in a web browser, and a toolbar at the top. RSSOwl is compiled with a whole database of rss feeds, already set up in the favorites. If you press [F11], or Display>Favorites, a left frame will appear, with this database.

If you want to gain time, there is a search engine, that you can call with [CTRL+G] or Tools>Search. It will look for the RSS on the internet, and tell you if the RSS link you're looking for is already in the database, or if you need to add it: if the bow next to the result is ticked, it means that the RSS is not in your favorites, and you can add it by clicking on "import" at the bottom of the search dialog box.

When you click on one of the favorite, it will open as a tab in the frame on the right. A list of all the news will appear, leading you to be aware of everything that is going on in the world in only one quick glance. If you double-click on any of the title in the right frame, your favorite web browser will open the page with the full article.

Of course, you can edit your list of favorites, by creating new categories, deleting the existing favorites,...
No more reason not to know what's going on in the world :)