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Ubuntu 8.10’s issues with Skype
Yesterday I wanted to chat with my friend in Skype but I didn’t have Skype in my Ubuntu OS. Didn’t feel like going back to Vista just for Skype.
Finally went ahead and downloaded the Skype Set-up for Ubuntu which is for Ubuntu 7.04 – 8.04 and installed it on my Ubuntu 8.10.
When I initiated the voice call, I was getting an error message “Audio Error”. I was tired and searching for a solution. Finally come across the solution for the problem from YANNB.
It seems pulseaudio is somehow responsible for this bad behaviour. To bring back everything to the normal situation:
killall pulseaudio
sudo apt-get remove pulseaudio
sudo apt-get install pulseaudio ubuntu-desktop
Execute the above command in terminal, and get rid of the program that causes the problem.
After executing above command, I’m able to do voice and video chat on my Ubuntu 8.10.
Install µTorrent in Ubuntu
Finally I managed to install Ubuntu in my HP Pavilion dv9000. Usually HP Recovery Disk will not allow you to partition the disk. I was looking for several methods and couldn’t find a method.
Later I got Chanux on Yahoo messenger and found that even Ubuntu OS got an build in Disk Partition tool. Believe me unlike Window’s partition tool, its very straight forward and graphical interface.
So things are fine with Ubuntu but I was missing Utorrent so badly. Utorrent is not supported by Linux OS but you can do some work around and make it work in Ubuntu.
First you’ll need Wine to run uTorrent in your machine. To get wine execute following command in Terminal (Application → Accessories → Terminal).
sudo apt-get install wine
This command will install wine.
Then its time to install uTorrent.
wget http://download.utorrent.com/1.8.1/utorrent.exe
You check the latest version of utorrent in the download page and give the url of the download in above command.
Then it’ll be like installing utorrent on Windows it’ll ask location to install and all.
µTorrent in Ubuntu 8.10
Whenever you wanna run utorrent double click the shortcut on the desktop or go to Applications → Wine → utorrent.
Have fun 
PS: Today onwards I’ll be having a new category “Ubuntu”
Blogger Vs WordPress.com
- Image via CrunchBase
As problogger.com says, blogger have more users than WordPress.com. Here in this post I’m not going to compare self hosted WordPress and Blogger. Self hosted WordPress is highly customizable but you can’t customize WordPress.com as you wish (as a free user).
To make it fair I’m going to compare Blogger and WordPress.com, because both of this blogging services are free. Blogger is owned by internet giant Google and WordPress.com is owned by Automattic.
- Image via CrunchBase
You can’t customize the theme or CSS in WordPress.com. If you really wanna edit those CSS files then you need to pay and get the permission. Personally I think you can buy a hosting for that money. In the other hand blogger offer you the opportunity to customize the template as you wish. XML enabled blogger themes helps no-voice user to edit CSS and design the layout as they wish without paying a penny.
To avoid SPAM comments you may enable Random Letters protection, but most of the users around blogosphere found it more irritating and annoying. WordPress.com is helping you to hunt down SPAMS using a technology ASKIMET. It’s very effective and it’s almost catching SPAMS.
Earlier WordPress.com didn’t support that Visitors’ stat. It means you don’t know how many people visited your blog, where in Blogger you can use almost any third party stat counter in your blog. Now WordPress.com also offering a wonderful stat tool which you can use also in yourself hosted blog.
You can use your customized header both in Blogger and WordPress.com, but when you’re using WordPress.com make sure the theme you use can supports the customizable header. Some themes don’t support this feature.
You can’t embed any JavaScript in your WordPress.com blog that means you can’t use third party blogging tools such as stats, feedburner’s email delivery, Pay Per Post, Adsene etc. As I said earlier you can embed almost anything in Blogger by editing the theme.
Incase if you want to move your blog from Blogger to WordPress, then WordPress.com got wonderful tool that can help you to migrate your posts, author even categories, but Blogger doesn’t have such feature where you can migrate your posts from another Blogging platform.
It is said that Blogger offering unlimited storage for image storing where WordPress.com offering 3GB (not a bad size) space for your blog. I’m using blog for 2 years and my blog still has not reached even 100MB so I don’t think 3GB will be a problem. It’s more than enough.
An optional excerpt is another advantage in WordPress.com. You can show the real punching line in your home page and make user to read the full post. This feature is not available in Blogger.
Now both Blogger and WordPress.com offers widget, so it doesn’t make much difference among both of them.
If you’re an advanced programmer or a person who’d like to play around with codes then please go for Blogger.com. WordPress.com restricts you from editing theme, CSS codes. In the other hand if you really wanna play around with WordPress themes, code, CSS then go for a self hosted WordPress account or become a premium member by paying to WordPress.com.
In my personal opinion I think, if WordPress.com can allow embedding external scripts and allows editing the CSS and themes then it’ll be a much better choice than the Blogger. We can’t predict anything. May be in future WordPress.com will remove these restrictions.
Dialog Sucks My Life
Dialog customer care used to be the best customer care in whole Sri Lanka, but today I don’t think they’re no longer entitled to receive any Best Customer Care Support award.
As I have reached 5GB limit in my mobile broad band speed of the dongle has gone down. I went to Dialog Arcade in Bamba near British Council. Today there is a huge crowd and people are rushing in like nothing, may be because of Holiday offers and all.
Dialog Logo
I’ve been sitting in the bench and wasted more than 30 minutes, and then a guy called me to his counter. I told him my problem and I asked him to restore the speed back for my data connection. That guy went inside and returned after a while and told me “Sir, I can’t get your request as the relevant manager who should approve this request is on annual leave. If you insist I can get the request but it may take around 1 week to process the request”
I was asking “You’re a telecommunication company even though you can’t get the request and transfer to another arcade or something, huh?”
“Sorry sir, I can’t do that”.
WHAT THE FUCK!!!!
Felt like scolding that guy but realized no point of scolding him. The problem is with the top management who has arranged this kind of rigid procedures. They must be having a back-up plan. The manager who went on a annual leave didn’t arranged any back up plan to run the operation while going on a leave.
For god sake, I’m tired of Dialog! If I have a better option around me, then nothing will stop me from switching away from Dialog products.
Spam Free Gmail – Take advantage of Googlemail.com
- Image via CrunchBase
How many of you know that when you sign up for a Gmail account actually you sign up for 2 emails addresses.
Your first email address will be as we know someone@gmail.com, but you’ll be entitled to another address, that is someone@googlemail.com.
You may ask what different does it makes???
Yes, it does make difference
You can leave your gmail.com domain in public virtual world and give your friends and family only the googlemail address. Make sure you print your googlemail address on visiting card.
Now its time to create a Filter in Gmail and filter all the mails that come to googlemail domain, so you’ll never miss a single mail that you received from your friends and family.
Let the spammers mess up with gmail.com address while you enjoy Googlemail address.
This stuff will work as long as spammers don’t start to spam Googlemail domain.
Wish you for a spam free Christmas and New Year .
How to Solve Restore Active Desktop Issue????
If you happen to switch off your machine unexpectedly (due to power failure or forced shut down) then you’ll get a white screen with a button to restore. Most of the time using this button you can restore your active desktop, but sometimes it’ll never work and you’ll have to have that white ugly screen all the time.
By doing a edit in registry you can recover your Desk-top. Steps are as follows
Active Desktop Issue
- start -> run -> regedit
- Now Registry window will open
- Choose folders as in this order HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Desktop\SafeMode\Components
- Open HTML Version
- edit the html version to 0 (Value Data)
- Now refresh your desk-top
Here we go! You’ll no longer have that annoying ugly button “Restore my Active Desktop”
Your System Restore icon is missing from Start Menu?? We’ve got solution
Withdraw money from PayPal to Sri Lankan Bank
Image via Wikipedia
Please refrain from using this method as GAF is no longer supporting this method. This method is no longer valid.
Though I write this article for Sri Lankans, anyone who has problem withdrawing paypal money can try this out.
As I wrote earlier Sri Lankans can’t receive payment in Paypal, so most of the users register as Indian users and receive payments. But there is an issue that you can’t cash out your money that you have in your paypal account. I was trying several ways and found out a way to cash my money. It’s a work around and you will loose small amount of money in transactions but still you can receive most of your money.
To do this you need to have three accounts
1. PayPal Account
2. Get A Freelancer Account
3. Moneybookers Account
Have you created the accounts??? I presume you have created the accounts
First login to your Get A Freelancer account ->
Go to Manage Accounts ->
Payment Transactions ->
Deposit Money ->
Choose PayPal
Now enter the amount
Click Next
Complete the transaction
Once you have withdraw the money from PayPal to Get A Freelancer, again Click on Payment transactions
Click Withdraw Money
Choose Moneybookers
Choose the amount you wanna transfer to Moneybookers
Complete the transaction
GAF will take about a week to transfer your money to Moneybookers account. From Moneybookers you can wire the money to your local bank accounts.
When you wire all you need is Bank Account Number and the SWIFT code of your bank. Search your bank’s site for SWIFT code or call their customer care and check out the SWIFT code. (Check Commercial bank Swift code)
If you still have any doubts please feel free to ask here.
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Airtel Launch Further Delayed
Breaking News: January 12th Airtel Launch
In one of my posts I’ve mentioned that, “Airtel will be launched on 18th of December”. Once again Airtel further delayed their launch.
It’s really a funny joke that Airtel keeping the people expectations. One of my friends working inside saying that, still they have not decided about the pricing. I don’t know how but there are enough emails roaming around in internet with Airtel tariff details.
Airtel Logo
Airtel is not going to have a rapid stake growth in Sri Lanka. It’ll take some time for them to catch up with the market. They need to do something outstanding to break and penetrate the brand image of Dialog. Most of the Dialog users like me will not easily switch to Airtel.
We’ll wait and see the out come…. (though I hate it)
BLOGPECTATIONS 2009
Two years back when I was starting a blog I had no expectations set. I started to write (mainly in my Tamil Blog) just because everyone else is doing so. With time, I learned that I need to put more effort and time to become a successful Blogger.
As of now
- Feed Count: 110
- Daily Unique Hit: 800
- Daily Hit: 1000
- Ad sense Revenue/Day: $2
- Alexa Rank: 236,188
Mistakes that I did (Still do) in my blog is, I don’t allocate much time for blog as I’m working full time in another company.
SMART Goals
Blog readers expect you to write quality articles, at least 4 – 5 per week, but in my case sometimes I won’t get to write even a single article in a week.
Another mistake I’ve done is, keeping the blog in sub-domain. For about one and half year I had my blog in a sub domain. Once I moved the blog to root, traffic started to crash
I think Search Engines also taking root more seriously than the sub-domains.
New Year will start in 15 days. I don’t want to make the same mistake that I did in my blog in 2008 and here in this blog I’m setting expectations for 2009.
In the end of 2009, my blog will
- Feed Count: 1000
- Daily Unique Hit: 4000
- Daily Hit: 6000
- Ad sense Revenue/Day: $10
- Create a Good Community around the Blog
- Alexa Rank should be Below 80,000
We’ll again meet with another post in 2009 for review.
PS: This post is part of a Group Project Initiated by Daily Blog Tips
BBC with Adult advertisements
What’s wrong with this BBC folks? Can they offer their advertisement space to anyone just because they are giving money???
Check out the image, I don’t think images are suitable for minors 
BBC with Adult Advertisements - Click to enlarge
Lets Make Money Online
