Cog: System Info App for Chrome and Android

Aug 25, 2014 GMT

Getting a system overview on Android and Chromebook can be a real head-scratcher, unless you use Cog. This open source app displays key system information and resource usage in an easy-to-grasp form. Processor architecture, CPU model and utilization, memory amount and usage, screen resolution, network interfaces -- Gog makes all these data immediately available for your viewing pleasure. You can even watch CPU utilization in real time. This might not be a very practical functionality, but it undeniably makes the dashboard look more stylish. Cog's source code is available in the project's GitHub repository, and you can install the app from...

Picturo: Simplified Photo Publishing

Jul 29, 2014 GMT

In many ways, Picturo is similar to many other simple photo publishing web applications. It requires only a web server with PHP and the GD library in order to run, and it's supremely easy to deploy. Grab the latest version of Picturo from the project's website, unpack the downloaded archive, and move the resulting directory to the document root of your server. Make then the cache folder writable by the server, upload photos to the content directory, and you are done. Despite being a lightweight application, Picturo does offer several handy features. For starters, it can handle folders, so you can organize your photos into albums. The application also sports a slick interface which lets...

The Simplest Bookmarking Solution

Jul 28, 2014 GMT

Both Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome (along with Chromium) are capable of keeping your bookmarks in sync across multiple platforms and devices. And there are plenty of third-party bookmarking services, too. But if you don't want to store your bookmarks up in the cloud or rely on Firefox's and Chrome's bookmarking capabilities, then you might want to take a look at a clever single-file solution devised by Steve Kemp. This HTML file spiced with a dash of jQuery can be used to maintain bookmarks as a searchable list. All bookmarks in the file are stored as items in a regular HTML list. For each bookmark, you can specify tags, which makes it easier to manage and search the bookmark...

dhcp.io: Dynamic DNS Service

Jul 22, 2014 GMT

DynDNS's recent decision to cancel its free plan sent many users scrambling to find alternatives to this popular dynamic DNS service. Fortunately, there are plenty of options to choose from, including the newly-launched dhcp.io service. Being free is only one of dhcp.io's many attractions. The service lets you control up to five hostnames, and you don't even need to provide your email address. The best part, however, is the fact that dhcpi.io relies on the good old curl tool to update IP addresses. When you add a hostname, the service conveniently generates a command that updates the value of the hostname. So all you need to do is to install curl (it's available in the software...

Dillinger: Markdown Editor Done Right

Jul 07, 2014 GMT

It seems that writing a markdown text editor is a popular pastime for many developers: hardly a day goes by without yet another markdown editor popping up somewhere on the web. Fortunately, not all of them feel like a weekend project waiting to be abandoned. Take Dillinger, for example. This web-based Markdown editor has been around for a while, and its developers continue to improving it at a steady pace. At first sight, Dillinger looks like just another Markdown editor. Its main window is split into two panes: one for editing and one for previewing the formatted text. However, Dillinger features several creature comforts that most users find handy. For starters, the editor has a word...

Automated Photo Sharing with Photocrumbs

May 29, 2014 GMT

Using a simple Bash script and a cron job, you can turn Photocrumbs into an automated photo sharing bot. This way, you can drop multiple photos into a separate directory, and the script/cron job combo will publish them one-by-one at specified intervals (e.g., hourly, daily, etc.). The basic version of the Bash script is simplicity itself: #!/bin/bash FILE=$(ls *.{jpeg,jpg,JPG,JPEG} | head -1) mv $FILE /var/www/photocrumbs/photos/The script uses the ls and head tools to obtain the name of the first photo in the current directory. The script then copies the photo to the photos directory inside the Photocrumbs installation. To set up the script, create a text file and paste the code above...

GeoLog: A Different Kind of Location Tracking App for Android

May 27, 2014 GMT

There are plenty of Android apps that let you track and record your movements, and they all work in pretty much the same way: when activated, the apps obtain and save geographical coordinates at specific intervals. Enter GeoLog, an app that offers a different approach to tracking location. GeoLog gathers location data depending on your activity. For example, when walking, you don't need to obtain and save location data as often as when you are riding a bicycle or driving a car. And when you are standing still you don't need to gather location data at all. When you're on a photo walk, you might want to track location while you're actually walking, and not when you are taking a coffee break...