Products « GotChance

Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex

November 8th, 2008 5 Comments »

Its been a little over a week since the latest version of Ubuntu, the “Intrepid Ibex” was released. As you’d have probably heard, Linux is a “Geek thing” (not really nowadays). So, i decided to try it out. I’ve previously tried out the previous release of Ubuntu, the “Hardy Heron“. So, installing was not strange for me.

I decided to install Ubuntu using the Wubi installer, on my laptop. Bad luck.. It didn’t work. My laptop only had 256 MB of memmory. So, instead i installed Xubuntu on it. There’s not much that i can say about it as i didn’t play with it much. What i really wanted was to try the original “Ubuntu”. So, my desktop was my only choice. Again, i resorted to Wubi to install because it was simple and safe. I’ll share my experience with you here.

Installing Ubuntu via Wubi is straight-forward, just like installing any other application in Windows. The Ubuntu desktop is something that i’m familiar with. Unlike Windows, it comes preloaded with a lot of Open Source applications. But, still there are other things that you should add after installing Ubuntu. In this post, I’ll tell what all i did after installing Ubuntu.

Flash Player

Nowadays, who doesn’t visit YouTube. What you need to play videos on YouTube is a Flash Player plugin for Firefox. To install Flash Player, simple visit a page that has a Flash video embedded using Firefox. Firefox will tell you “Additional Plugins Required”. Simply click that yellow bar and install Flash Player.

VLC Media Player

VLC Media Player is a must-have for everyone. It plays almost every format that is avaible out there. To install it, simple run this in the terminal :
sudo apt-get install vlc vlc-plugin-esd mozilla-plugin-vlc

MP3 and MPEG Support

Ubuntu doesn’t come with inbuilt MP3 and MPEG Support. You need to install it manually. You can do it by installing the ubuntu-restricted-extras package. But, that installs a huge 185MB. To simply get MP3 and MPEG support, run this in the terminal :
sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3

I am done with this. After these, i did not need anything more in Ubuntu yet, except some FireFox addons. Maybe, i’ll need Java Runtime sometime in future. Lets see…

Have you tried Ubuntu ? If not, do it first, if you are a geek…
If you have it installed, what other applications do you you have installed ?

Chrome Is Becoming My Primary Browser

November 3rd, 2008 15 Comments »

Google Chrome Logo by Tilak Bisht. It is exactly two months now after Google Chrome’s release. For those who don’t know, Chrome is an open source browser from Google. It is based on Webkit browser engine.

I installed it right after its release and I used to use it now and then. And, when I begun to develop my homepage, I used Chrome to test the design in Webkit engine, as I do not have Safari.

But now, after using it for two months, I just realized that it has almost become my primary browser. Thanks to its application shortcuts, I never open Gmail or Google Reader in my browser window nowadays. I am a Firefox fan. But, its just sleeping in my computer as of now. Though Chrome doesn’t have Addons support like Firefox has, I’m still in love with it. I have a bunch of Addons installed on my Firefox. But I don’t use them frequent enough to miss them.

Also, there is upcoming GreaseMonkey support for Chrome and I’m looking forward to it. With the next releases of Chrome, will i abandon Firefox ? Maybe… Or Maybe not… Will have to wait…

What is your experience with Chrome ? Have you tried ? Have you already made the switch ?

Rotatee.com Launches

February 1st, 2008 22 Comments »

Here it is today… After working on it for so long, i’m finally launching Rotatee.com today. As i said in my last post, Rotatee is a remotely-hosted banner rotation service. It can also be considered as a simpler and better alternative for my GotBanners plugin. Users can get going in three simple steps:

Create a campaign
Add the ad codes that you wish to rotate and assign them a weight
Just place the one-line code, that Rotatee gives, on your website

For more details, check out the site Rotatee.com. The site is in closed beta. But, as the readers of GotChance, you can get a taste of our service before others do. Just enter “gotchance” as the invite code to Sign up. (This is not like the testing mentioned in my previous post. All data will still be there even after the site opens to the public). Hurry, it is only available for first 100 sign ups.

Looking forward to hearing your comments and suggestions…

Youtube’s Customizable Player

July 20th, 2007 4 Comments »

YouTube have today, launched a new feature called “Custom Player”. With this, users will be able to create their own customized video player. They can choose the name, descriptions, content, color theme and layout of the player. There are two types of layouts available currently. One is the usual player and the other is a wider one with the related video being displayed on the right. The content feature allows users to include their own videos or other videos from a YouTube Favorites List or YouTube playlist. This new custom player feature can be accessed via www.youtube.com/custom_player.

Here is an example of my favorite video played in the player that i created to follow the color scheme of GotChance.

Ning vs. Stand Alones

July 19th, 2007 1 Comment »

Ning is a simple service that allows anyone to create their own Social Network easily without and coding Knowledge. I read about it on TechCrunch and tried it only a few days ago. ah, it was great. Actually, very good for being free. They are following the Freemium business model. They offer their basic service for free and have some other premium features.

How do i create a Social Network ?

Thats extremely simple. You just go to Ning.com and sign up for a free account. Then, you can create as many social networks as you want for free. A wizard walks you through the various steps to create your social network.

On the other hand, scripts like phpFoX, Handshakes offer a fully built social networking script that you can host on your own servers. They offer very much sophisticated features. But i would prefer to go with Ning rather than waste time with these scripts. Now, let me tell you my reasons.

Lets say that you want to create a social network for your school or something like that, then you wouldn’t want anything like the next MySpace or the next Facebook. Something simple would be more than enough. And thats what Ning offers. Scripts like phpFoX and Handshakes are for those people who plan to build the next big thing like MySpace. But, thats not practical with pre-built scripts like these. Also, considering the numerous bugs in them, only one out of 50-100 installations maybe successful. I have not used phpFoX. But a friend of mine had a Handshakes license and i had a chance to try it out. In my opinion, it has a very poorly coded Administration panel. Many of the features available in the admin panel fail to show up anywhere on the Handshakes site. Building a custom theme is tougher than the toughest thing in the world. Lol.

So, my advice is that, if you are planning to start a Social Network, go with Ning.