Creating Ebooks with Sigil

Nov 05, 2009 GMT

There are plenty of places on the Web where you can find ebooks in the EPUB format, but what if you need to create an ebook yourself? Sigil can help you with that. This nifty application allows you to create ebooks using the graphical interface without getting your hands dirty with coding. Despite being a relatively new application, Sigil already sports all the essential features that simplify the process of formatting ebooks and generating ready-to-use EPUB files. Installing Sigil is as easy as it gets. Download the installer .bin file. and run it in the terminal as root: ./Sigil-x.x.x-Linux-x86-Install.binSigil supports most common...

Blogging on the Move with wpToGo

Oct 23, 2009 GMT

Feel the urge to update your blog while on the move? As an Android user, you'll be pleased to learn that you can manage your WordPress blog from your device courtesy of the wpToGo application. This nifty blogging client lets you manage multiple blogs and it has a few clever features up its sleeve. On the first run, you are prompted to configure a new blog account. To do that, you have to enter your login credentials and specify the exact path to the xmlrpc.php interface of your blog. If you have a hosted WordPress blog, then the path to xmlrpc.php is yourblogname.wordpress.com/xmlrpc.php Once the account has been configured, you can enable...

Speed up Photo Transfers with Rapid Photo Downloader

Oct 16, 2009 GMT

When you need to offload photos from a digital camera onto your computer, you can do this using the default browser, a photo management application, or a dedicated tool like Rapid Photo Downloader. Despite its name, transferring photos is only one of Rapid Photo Downloader's many talents. For starters, it can simultaneously download photos from multiple sources, so if your camera has two card slots, you can transfer photos from both of them in one go. More importantly, using Rapid Photo Downloader's preferences, you can configure the way the utility processes and sorts the downloaded photos. In the Download Folder section of the Preferences dialog window, you can specify the destination...

Five Super Simple Photo Fixes with the GIMP

Oct 09, 2009 GMT

While the GIMP offers a plethora of advanced and powerful photo editing tools, it also sports a few easy-to-use features that can help you to instantly improve your photos with a minimum of effort.Most digital cameras do a good job of figuring out the correct white balance. But tricky lighting conditions or wrong white balance settings can result in a less than perfect photo. The GIMP provides an easy fix for that: choose Colors -> Auto -> White Balance, and the application does the rest.The red eyes problem is the bane of many point-and-shoot cameras. If your camera doesn't have an automatic red eye removal feature, you can use the Filters -> Enhance -> Red Eye Removal...

Quick Tip: Upload Photos to TwitPic with cURL

Oct 08, 2009 GMT

You can upload photos from your machine to TwitPic using the following command: curl -F "username=[username]" -F "password=[password]" -F "message=message" -F media=@/path/to/photo.jpg http://twitpic.com/api/uploadAndPostYou need the cURL tool installed on your machine for this command to work. Since cURL is available in the software repositories of most mainstream Linux distributions, you can install it using your distro's package manager.You might wonder why you'd want to upload photos from the command-line when there are many other ways to do that. The answer is automation. For example, you can write a simple Bash script that transfers all new photos...

OpenOffice.org Basic HTML Macro Redux

Oct 03, 2009 GMT

While the markup macro described in the previous post does the trick of formatting Writer documents, it has one tiny drawback: it doesn't save the formatted text in a separate file, which can come in handy in many situations. So here is an updated version of the macro that formats the currently opened Writer document and saves it as a plain text file in the same directory. Sub HTMLMarkup Dim Args(0) As New com.sun.star.beans.PropertyValue ThisDoc=ThisComponent MarkupHeadingsFunc("Heading 1", "<H1>", "</H1>") MarkupHeadingsFunc("Heading 2", "<H2>", "</H2>") MarkupHeadingsFunc("Heading 3",...

Extension Watch: Improve Your Flickr Experience with Better Flickr

Sep 28, 2009 GMT

Although Flickr sports a functional, lightweight interface, it still has some room for improvement. And if you are using Firefox as your primary browser, you can turbocharge the photo sharing service by installing the Better Flickr and Greased Lightbox extensions. Greased Lightbox is a one-trick pony, but the trick it does is a pretty clever one. Normally, clicking on a thumbnail in a Flickr gallery or your photostream opens the related photo page. The Greased Lightbox extension changes the default behavior, so when you click on a thumbnail, the related photo appears as a slide on top of the main window. You can then use the Left and Right...