Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Difference between Facebook Page and Facebook Group

Facebook is one of the most popular social networking website. It not only provide individual networking but also a means of advertising products and brand names. Companies like Google, Puma even sitcoms are using facebook to increase their popularity.
The two most important tools for marketing any product on Facebook are Facebook Page and Facebook Group. While both provide facilities like logo integration, member invites, discussion boards, video and image display, there are some important differences too.

  • A Facebook group can be created by anyone. It is not necessary that the creator of the group is associated with the product officially while Facebook makes it mandatory that the Facebook Page is created by the official authority of the product.
  • Facebook Page provides tools to track visitors stats and traffic. Groups do not have any such facilities.
  • One of the most important feature of Facebook Page is that it is indexable by the search engines. The reason behind this is that no login is required to view a Facebook page while Facebook group requires user login. 
  • Facebook Page has feature to add Notes, also blog posts can be imported as notes. Page also supports RSS Feeds. These features are not supported by Facebook Group.
  • Facebook Group Members can send out invites to other people to join the group where facebook page does not have the concept of members, instead they have this thing which is known as fans. And Fans cannot invite other to join the "fanship"
  • Instead of activity notification by Facebook group, Facebook Page sends update notification which is hard to miss and does not mix up with other posts on the user's wall.
If you own the product you are promoting then I suggest creating both a page as well as a group. Otherwise legally you can only create a Facebook Group, not a Page.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Recover Your Grub Bootloader After Windows Installionation On Fedora Or Ubuntu

It usually happens that after installing Linux you need Windows again for some specific application which is not meant to used on Linux. So you need to install Windows again. And when you do so you will loose your bootloader and will not be able to login into your Linux account. Here is the method to recover the bootloader and use both Windows and Linux together.

  1. Boot into any Linux using Linux Live CD. Here we are using Ubuntu Live CD.
  2. Open the Terminal. It is present in Accessories sub-menu of Application menu.
  3. Type sudo grub.
  4. Next we find the stage1 file of the boot loader. To do so type find /boot/grub/stage1. The output will be something like (hdX,Y), here X and Y are digits depending upon the hard disk and partition.
  5. Now type root (hdX,Y)
  6. Next type setup (hdX). Be careful regarding spaces.
  7. finally write quit.
Your boot loader is recovered successfully. Now reboot and remove the live CD.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Host Your Website Using Drupal CMS on Ubuntu Server

Hosting a website is very crucial job which can change your entire career path or can help your business to grow beyond limits. Larger companies and organizations generally have professionals to setup the website but what about small industries and people who cannot afford professions. In this scenario CMS like Drupal and Joomla!comes to rescue.
First of all let us talk about CMS. CMS stands for Content Management System. Its a collection of tools which give you "Click Next" interface for website creation. You will most generally, get a php interface and mysql or postgre sql databse connectivity. Creation and inclusion of forum or wiki is as simple as selecting a check box. You can create user, decide their roles, ban them or give them permission to add pages to your website. And here is the best part, you don't need to know any programming language or some complicated sql queries to use a CMS like Drupal. So without wasting any time let us start creating our website.
  1.  First of all we need to install the required packages. For this use the following command :-
    sudo apt-get install apache2 php5-mysql php5-gd libapache2-mod-php5 mysql-server
  2. You will need to set the mysql user id and password. For this fire the following command :-
    mysql -u root
    mysql> SET PASSWORD FOR 'root'@'localhost' = PASSWORD('yourpassword');
    The output should be :-


    Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
    Quit the mysql prompt:
    mysql> \q

  3. If you don't know how to configure Apache manually then download webmin. It is a complete Server management utility.
  4. Using webmin configure apache. You can do so by clicking to servers tab and clicking apache. You have to provide server address and document root. Document root is a folder in which all the website files are kept.
  5. Download Drupal. It is recommended that you go through the ReadMe's first but if you are too lazy for that then continue reading.
  6. Extract drupal at your document root and rename default.settings.php file in the sites/default to settings.php
  7. Go to your document root and fire the follwing commands :-
    chmod o+w sites/default
    chmod o+w sites/default/settings.php
    This gives the webserver the permission to modify your files.
  8. Read  INSTALL.mysql.txt for instruction on setting up mysql server.
  9. Now preparations are finished. Lets start the real work. Open your website. You will get a page asking you to install in english. Click on it if you want an english install. 
  10. You will be presented with some "simple to fill" forms. Fill in with correct details and there you have!!
  11. Now login into drupal using the id you created while filling in the form and start creating pages.
This is how you can get your website up in no time. And yes, it is as easy as it sounds!!!

Monday, September 7, 2009

Windows Alternatives for Linux

A lot of Linux newbies complain that they can't run their favorite applications on Linux or that some files can't be opened or some codecs are missing, so on and so forth. Well its time that everyone should know that Linux has some pretty cool apps which can not only do your day to day work but can substitute ALL of your windows applications. Here is a list of some of the most common Windows applications and their Linux substitutes.

  • Office and Other Editors


    1. MS Office -> OpenOffice.org
    2. MS Office Word -> OpenOffice.org Writer
    3. MS Office Power Point -> OpenOffice.org Impress
    4. MS Office Excel -> OpenOffice.org Calc
    5. Notepad -> GEdit, KWrite



  • Internet and Networking


    1. Web Browsers (IE, Firefox, Opera) -> Web Browsers (Firefox, Opera, Epiphany)
    2. Chat Clients (Gtalk, Yahoo! Messenger) ->UNIVERSAL CHAT CLIENTS (Pidgin, Kopete)
    3. IRC (XChat) -> IRC (XChat)
    4. Outlook -> Evolution
    5. DC++, Apex DC++, Strong DC++ -> linuxdcpp



  • Media Players and Tools


    1. Video Players (Windows Media Player, VLC) -> Video Players (Movie Player, VLC)
    2. Audio Players (Winamp) -> Audio Players (Amarok, Rhythm Box)
    3. Audio Editing -> Audacity, Traverso
    4. Video Editing -> Avidemux
    5. CD/DVD burning (Nero) -> Nero For Linux, K3B, Brasero
     

  • Engineering and Design Tools


    1. IDE for programming (Eclipse, Netbeans) -> Eclipse, Netbeans, Geany
    2. Circuit Design and Simulation -> Eagle, TinyCAD
    3. Project Management (Microsoft Project) -> openProj, dotproject
    4. Designing and CAD -> freeCAD, Blender, sweethome3D


More will be added soon :)