Ubuntu: Sharing folders from NTFS partitions

The fastest way to share files and folders on an Ubuntu machine is probably samba. This works much like the Windows File sharing mechanism (Righ-click on the folder and hit 'share'). However this may not work correctly if your data is on an NTFS drive. To fix this, read on...

Economic costs of bad Powerpoint presentations

Excerpted and adapted from the "TEDx talk by John Bohannon & Black Label Movement"

Bad powerpoint presentations are a serious threat to the global economy.

MTP Devices on Linux

If you have a new MP3 player that needs to be used in MTP mode for advanced features like playlists and sync to work, then Windows Media Player does the job fine but there are problems with Linux. I found that the Sony MP3 players, the famous Walkman series never gets detected as an MTP device, and none of the common media players (Rhythmbox, Amarok, Banshee) can write playlists to the device in the required (*.pla) format. Luckily there is a solution to this problem...

Electric Car Expo at CEDT

Yesterday there was an exhibition of electric  cars participating in a zero emissions race - Wave 2011. The expo was organised by CEDT (Indian Institute of Science) and Swissnex.

A Disposable Planet?

One-Click translations with Google translate

Here's a quick way to create a bookmark 'button' on your toolbar that allows you a One-Click translation of pages into English.
Right Click on the bookmarks toolbar and select "New Bookmark", then in the 'Location' field enter the following string (you can copy it off and paste it...)

javascript:var%20t=((window.getSelection&&window.getSelection())||(document.getSelection&&document.getSelection())||(document.selection&&document.selection.createRange&&document.selection.createRange().text));var%20e=(document.charset||document.characterSet);if(t!=''){location.href='http://translate.google.com/?text='+t+'&hl=en&langpair=auto|en&tbb=1&ie='+e;}else{location.href='http://translate.google.com/translate?u='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+'&hl=en&langpair=auto|en&tbb=1&ie='+e;};

Done!

Fixing the Native Resolution problem - WindowsXP

I had a hard enough time getting my Intel on-board graphics card to display the right resolution with Ubuntu last month. The problem was that the native resolution of my monitor is 1440 x 900, and the graphics card supports higher and lower resolutions but not this particular mode. I figured it would be easier on Windows XP- especially given the fact that Intel provides drivers for Windows only. But after all on Windows...