Trying out Sun Microsystems’ VirtualBox

Just a quick note to tell you all that I’ve started experimenting with Sun Microsystem’s Virtual Box as a way to try out other distros of Linux that I find interesting. This allows me the opportunity to test them out, play around and see if I run into any issues before committing to installing one of them to my regular production machine.

Admittedly, I’m probably behind the curve on this as a lot of folks have been doing this already. However, not all distros come as a LiveCD for testing so this virtual environment scenario will allow me to give them a go without wiping my base Linux installation of Linux Mint 8.

So far, I’m pretty stoked about this as I really liked trying out different distros from time to time. I’m going to follow this up soon with more details on my experience with VirtualBox.

I’d appreciate any input from you folks on a good distro to try too. At this time, I have CentOS 5.4 and CrunchBang Linux 9.04.01 lined up for starters. What others would you recommend?

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An Experience with Live Chat! Really!

Had an interesting experience the other day with a service provider that my wife and I use quite often. We had to contact them over a discrepency on our bill and decided to do so via their online chat function. At first thought, we were under the impression that this would take no time at all really to work out. We were wrong.

Now, before I get into this story too deep, let me refresh you somewhat on the small fact that I too used to work as a CSR for a couple of fairly well-known web hosts in the last couple of years. I was tasked with online chat among other duties and worked as a remote. For you readers that don’t understand this last part, it means I worked from my home. ;) Loved the commute to work!

Anyway, having spent time in online chat or live chat as it’s also known, I understood the fact that there are simply times when the technician can get over-whelmed with visitors. See, usually the tech has others working with him/her so that the work flow can be as seamless as possible. This is optimum as depending on the company and it’s service/product, the more working in live chat, the better. On this particular occasion, it was most definitely NOT an optimum experience. Read the rest of this entry »

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Newspapers – Paper or Electronic, please?

There has been a lot of talk lately about newspapers going with paid-for-online-content over offering it for free as has been the norm for some time now. This is in effect something they’ve been headed for since the industry has been in dire straights economically speaking for a while.

The overall idea is to pad their income with online content by charging subscribers a fee. This way, they can get customizable content along with a few ‘perks’ delivered right to their virtual inbox or browser. This, along with paid subscriptions to the printed version would hopefully, add to their bottom line since it’s headed for the bottom anyway with the high costs of ink, paper, overhead, etc. on the constant rise. Read the rest of this entry »

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Pandora One – Music App for the Ages

With the trusted recommendation of a friend of mine (Thanks @michaelramm), I’ve subscribed to and downloaded the Pandora One desktop app. It’s been one of the easier apps to install as it does so with the Adobe Air Installer and runs under this as well.

Did I mention I installed it on my Linux Mint laptop? :D

After first setting up a station and naming it, adding some music to it I prefer (Classic Rock), it’s all set. Pandora suggests songs and artists I might like and all I have to do is give it a ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’ to continue. I can even bookmark certain songs or artists I like. How’s that for cool? And all for $36/year? Now, that’s way cool!

From what I can tell, it’s not too bad on the processor in my HP dv9335nr laptop either. From the screenshot below, you can see what it was pulling while Firefox 3.5.7, Twhirl, Gedit and Pandora was running along side of it.

Now, this app will run on Mac as well as Windows. Linux was also named but with all the many different distros available, they couldn’t support it. Pandora DID however, provide a page for helpful suggestions on how to best install it so they weren’t leaving us Linux folks out in the cold. Another way cool point when considering what type of music app to use.

Just as an after thought, this also will enable me to free up some hard drive space by eliminating my Music folder if I wanted to. So far, Pandora One has been playing all my favorites anyway. So, why need the space used for Music? Add to this the fact that subscribing to Pandora One also eliminates any break in the stream with an ad and so on, you have one sweet music app that will be there with you all the time. How’s that for way cool?

Pandora also is available for mobile too! ;)

How do you get your music fix?

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Unwinding with Linux backgrounds

Been killing time this morning after work downloading and trying out some new themes and backgrounds for my laptop. Kind of like the general look of things so far.

Background is called ‘GreenGnomeDebug’ from gnome-look.org and the theme is called ‘Ubuntu-Dawn-X’ from the same site. Took some basic fiddling to get things the way I wanted them but so far, so good.

Think I’ll call it a day. ;)

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Re-evaluating my Social Network

Most people come up with some resolutions for the new year that most will never follow up on. They range from losing weight to saving more to doing better at something to who knows what else. We all tend to fall back on our set ways in a few weeks or so. I thought long and hard about what mine might be and decided on not spending as much time on the internet as I used to.

Now, THAT got your attention didn’t it? Actually, my intention is to eliminate the social networks that I gain no real benefit from in all reality. I won’t go on to mention them all here as most of the readers of this humble blog don’t even know where to find me on them. My reasoning however, is this: Why take precious time out of the day to scroll endlessly over postings that really have no interest for me in the first place? One such social network that has blossomed has become such a hodge-podge of add-on applications that it’s more like a carnival than a social networking app. But, hey! To each their own.

My idea is simple. To cull the networks that I’ve not really gained much benefit from in the past year. To keep the ones that have kept my interests peaked and inspired me to try new things as well as learn more about what interests me. This is not to say I’ve become snide or elitist but, more to the point, I’m becoming more focused on my interests and trying to fine tune them.

I like Twitter for it’s ‘real time’ updates. You can’t beat it IMHO. As things happen, it hits this social network almost immediately. I like my Google Reader for more in depth information that I can catch up on when I have the time. Tweetmeme has it’s place in my bookmarks as well for the technology tag. Alltop is a source for stories that cater to my interests too.

Music and Video interests are focused on Youtube, Hulu and Last.fm Pandora for the time being.

There are some blogs that I subscribe to that interest me in this mix that have to do with SEO, web hosting, GNU/Linux and friends whom I’ve made it a point to keep up with as their families grow and experience things in life. These I won’t let go of as they mean something to me.

It’s the time-wasters that I have nothing for anymore. The ones whose creators have been quoted as not caring for your privacy anyway, the ones that don’t do much more than leave another place on the ‘net for your private information to get scraped are on the chopping block. ;)

I may come across something that might prove interesting but it’ll be on a trial basis for a while to see if it actually allows me to benefit from it. Guess that may sound odd to some but hey! Like I said previously, I’m in this to gain knowledge and to share it when I can. I’d expect the same from anyone else.

So, if you had seen me on some other social network and now you don’t, my account closed…guess that means it was one of those that got the axe today and that I won’t be back. I kind of doubt that I’ll be missed. ;)

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