Productivity Sauce

Dmitri Popov
Create a Web-based Photo Gallery in a Jiffy with GMFoto

Sep 11, 2009 GMT

Looking for a quick and easy way to set up a Web-based photo gallery? Consider GMFoto. This application lets you create a snazzy Web-based photo album literally in a matter of minutes.Unlike many popular photo gallery applications, GMFoto doesn't use a database back-end, so it's dead-simple to install and configure. Grab the latest version of the application and unpack the downloaded archive into a directory (e.g., gmfoto). Now open the code/code.index.php file in a text editor and replace the loveunit_com string with the name of the resulting directory (in this case, it's gmfoto). Do the same in the index.php file in the user/00000 directory. The user/00000 directory also contains the...
Build a Personal Social Aggregator with Pubwich

Sep 08, 2009 GMT

Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, Flickr -- with new social services popping up almost every day, how do you make all your social activities easily accessible to your friends and followers? Enter Pubwich, a simple PHP script that aggregates data from several popular social services into a single HTML page. To run Publish on your server, you need the Apache server, PHP 5 with the SimpleXML and cURL extensions, and the crontab tool. To install Pubwich, download the latest version of the software, unpack the downloaded archive, and move the resulting folder to the document root of your server. Rename the cfg/config.sample.php file to...
Set up a Personal Microblog with Bilboblog

Aug 28, 2009 GMT

There are many reasons why you would want to run your own private microblog, but how do you actually do that? The easiest way is to install Bilboblog, a tiny, no-frills PHP/MySQL-based microblogging engine. Although Bilboblog is described as a microblogging application, it's not a drop-in replacement for Twitter or Identi.ca. It's actually more of a hybrid between a microblog and tumblelog. Similar to a conventional microblogging engine, Bilboblog lets you limit post length, but it also supports text formatting and sports the ability to embed images and videos. Bilboblog's major advantage is simplicity: it works right out of the box...
My Perfect Backup Setup

Aug 25, 2009 GMT

For a long time I relied on an external hard drive and Jungle Disk as my daily backup solution. This wasn't the most advanced backup setup, but it did the trick. Recently, however, I added a new device to my local network: a tiny Linux-based server with the silly name Bubba Two. Initially, I planned to use it for hosting my private wiki and testing LAMPP-based applications. But since Bubba Two can be used as a file, print, and streaming server, it made sense to put its functionality to some practical use, and use the server as a central storage for all my documents and files. There was only one problem with this: because Bubba Two is based on a PowerPC processor and Jungle Disk doesn't...
First Look at TonidoPlug

Aug 21, 2009 GMT

For Linux Pro Magazine readers, the name Tonido will sound familiar. I covered this sleek and user-friendly solution that lets you turn an Ubuntu-based machine into a nifty server in issue 105. Recently, CodeLathe, the company behind Tonido, launched TonidoPlug -- a tiny Ubuntu-based server running the Tonido software. In theory, this sounds like a great idea: plug the device, run a quick and simple setup, and you have a fully-functional Linux-based server that you can use to share files and photos, maintain a personal blog and collaborate with other users. But how does this idea work in practice? To find out, CodeLathe kindly agreed to send me a review unit of TonidoPlug, which duly...
Extension Watch: Transmogrify Long URLs with Shorten URL

Aug 19, 2009 GMT

Want to generate a shorter version of a long URL with minimum fuss? Enter Shorten URL -- the ultimate solution for all your link shortening needs. This Firefox extension supports over 100 shortening services, from the usual suspects like Bit.y, Tr.im, and Is.gd to the more obscure Clop.in and kl.am. Once you've installed the extension, you should add its button to the toolbar which provides quick access to Shorten URL's features. To do this, choose View -> Toolbars -> Customize and drag the Shorten URL button to the main toolbar. To configure the extension's settings, press the button and select the Shorten URL Options item. In the opened dialog window, you can specify the default...
Two Useful Commands for Your Linux Server

Aug 15, 2009 GMT

Want to back up files and documents on your laptop or desktop PC to a server? Assuming both machines run Linux, you can do that with just one command. First, install SSH server on the server and rsync on your machine. Both tools are available in the software repositories of most mainstream Linux distributions, so you can install them using your distro's package manager. Open then the terminal on your machine and run the following command: rsync --progress -avhe ssh --delete /path/to/local/dir user@host:/path/to/remote/dirReplace user with the name of the existing user on the server and host with the IP address of the server. Also, replace /path/to/local/dir with the path to the...
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