Remote Desktop Access

In computing, Virtual Network Computing (VNC) is a graphical desktop sharing system which uses a technique to remotely control another computer. It transmits the keyboard and mouse events from one computer to another, relaying the graphical screen updates back in the other direction, over a network.

TightVNC is a free remote control software package derived from the popular VNC software. With TightVNC, you can see the desktop of a remote machine and control it with your local mouse and keyboard, just like you would do it sitting in the front of that computer. TightVNC is:

• free, GPL-licensed, with full source code available;
• useful in remote administration, remote customer support, education, and for many other purposes;
• cross-platform, available for Windows and Unix, compatible with other VNC software. 

Applications that run from a USB stick/device

PortableApps.com offers a free open solution that enables you to run a selection of open source Windows applications from your USB stick. This concept quite innovative.

At the time of writing, the list of currently enabled applications is short, but never the less impressive. I trust that more will be added in time.

Consider this: without leaving any personal data behind on the computer you happen to be using, you can plug in your USB stick/device and:-

• run Open Office
  • have your presentation AND the required software ready to go for that big meeting, so that it can be run from any PC
• have access to the Firefox web browser with all your bookmarks on any computer
• ability to check your email, address book and calendar (via Mozilla Thunderbird)
• run the GIMP graphics/photo/image manipulation application
• securely delete files using the Eraser application
• access the 7-zip file archive application (which is .zip compatable)
• demo the website you’ve been working on to your client using XAMPP which makes Apache, MySQL, PHP and phpMyAdmin available.
• programmers:
  • edit files using Notepad++
  • edit a website using Nvu
  • run FileZilla, or FireFTP
  • run PuTTY or winSCP
• granny gamers: Sudoku is now always at hand
• listen to your favourite mp3’s without storing them on the actual computer using MPlayer or VLC Media Player.

It works with a range of devices such as USB stick/flash drive, iPod, portable hard drives.

The current ‘Standard Edition’ suite of apps fits comfortably on a 512MB USB device. Note that you can purchase 2gig USB sticks these days.

free open source encryption software for Linux & Windows

Say you have a laptop and that if you lost it you wouldn’t like anybody to have access certain files… or say you have a home PC and likewise want the peace of mind associated with knowing certain files are encrypted… how would you go about creating a secure area on your computer that is convenient to use on a daily basis?

We know that built-in password protection on individual files such as spreadsheet documents isn’t strong, and it may well be the case that it’s not convenient to password protect individual files anyway.

truecrypt is a free open source software which, among other things, can create a virtual encrypted disk within a file and mount it so that it looks like a real disk drive/volume. It features on-the-fly encryption which means that data/files are automatically encrypted or decrypted right before they are loaded and saved, without any user intervention. You can copy files to/from the secure drive. You only need to enter the correct password initially when you mount the drive. Its then accessible until you switch off your PC (or unmount the drive).

I have just installed it on both Ubuntu Linux and Windows XP. Installing it on Windows XP is quite straight forward since it has a graphical interface. The Linux version did not come with a graphical interface but I was able to get it working using the command line. UPDATE: I found forcefield which provides a graphical interface to truecrypt on Ubuntu Linux.

Note: when installing it on Linux, select the option to create the volume using ‘FAT’ format instead of ‘None’ (or ‘ext3′). This isn’t intuitive but it works. I found that out by searching google for install assistance when I could not mount the volume/device I had initially created.

issue tracking / ticketing system

RT is an enterprise-grade open source ticketing system which enables a group of people to intelligently and efficiently manage tasks, issues, and requests submitted by a community of users.

BBC’s series on free and open source software

I just came across Marcel Gagné’s impressive website. I think I’m trying to get across the same sort of message. Specifically, one post refers to the second episode of a BBC two-part series called, “The Codebreakers”, whose focus is FOSS, or Free and Open Source Software. You can view it below.

batch image convert, scale, thumbnail, JPEG(s) –> PDF

update: this article has been superseded by batch image convert, scale, thumbnail, JPEG(s), retain high resolution using antialias.

ImageMagick (Linux/Windows) includes mogrify which allows us to scale and convert image files in batch mode from the command line. It provides a huge number of options but you only need a few examples to start making use of it…

Creates thumbnail images using all the jpg files in the current directory:

mogrify -compress JPEG -quality 80 +profile *.jpg

Re-size all the jpg files in the current directory:

mogrify -sample 800x1200 *.jpg

Create a PDF document using all the jpg files in the current directory:

convert *jpg allinone.pdf

Convert all tif images to jpgs:

mogrify -format jpg -quality 50 *.tif

Scale all jpgs in the current directory by 50%:

mogrify -scale 50% *.jpg

If you need further examples, just search Google!