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About a half a year after adding stars, constellations, and all sorts of astronomical data to Google Earth, Google has launched a web based version of Google Sky. The interface is similar to Google Maps. You can drag and drop the sky to see different items, and you can search for locations by typing in terms like “Mars,” or “constellation.”

There are also a series of galleries highlighting some of the coolest views gathered from Hubble and other telescopes. You can toggle between naked eye, infrared, microwave, ultraviolet, and x-ray views. Google has also integrated an Earth & Sky podcast directly into the site.

[via Google Lat Long Blog]

Twing is a new search engine that indexes almost 5,000 online forums, on subjects ranging from the very general (arts and entertainment) to the extremely specific (Scottish Snooker). On top of its search features, it also has a 1990’s-Yahoo!-style directory organized by topic, and a collection of trends and toplists called the Community Buzz Directory. Does Twing actually have a finger on the pulse of online trends? We noticed that the video most linked from forums is Rick Astley’s infamous “Rickroll,” which is good enough for us.

If you follow any forum regularly, Twing could be useful to you. You can narrow your search down to one message board, which might make a good substitute if the built-in search is faulty in your community of choice. Another promising feature is the ability to sign up for an account to keep tabs on the threads you’re following.

Even if you’re not active on a forum, Twing has some interesting tools for tracking the hottest links and conversations. Most popular links, threads, and forums are all ranked, and RSS feeds are available for each. Twing says that the most popular thread on the Internet right now is called “longest ever thread.” While we don’t doubt this is accurate, we’ll leave it up to you to decide how practical you find it.

We’re taking a little departure this week from our sometimes successful attempt to be non-distro-specific, and looking at a neat little program that runs on Debian and Ubuntu flavors (including Ubuntu-derivatives, like Mint).

Have you ever had the joy of installing restricted or proprietary drivers on Debian or Ubuntu? Most of the time, it really does work like a charm. Sometimes though, something doesn’t go quite as planned. We had this happen quite recently with Mythbuntu and an onboard NVIDIA card. The restricted drivers wouldn’t work right, and the very latest from NVIDIA compounded our problem.

In our desperation, we tried Envy. Envy is the creation of Alberto Milone. It is an unofficial (so please note you are using it at your own risk) installer for both NVIDIA and ATI drivers. For those of you who are interested, it’s a Python/PyGTK application.

We’re guessing that most of you just want to get your freakin’ video drivers installed, though.Our house rule is this: This is an unofficial installer. There is the distinct possibility it could bork our graphical server more than it is already. However, because it is not acceptable to run our Ubuntu box in safe graphics mode, and because we’ve tried the traditional methods of installing the drivers with no success, we feel the benefits outweigh the risks.

Envy is nifty because it does several things. It can uninstall your old drivers, and not only install the new drivers, but actually preps your system, handling all the driver dependencies, before installing the actual driver.

So how exactly do you use it? It’s pretty easy (as far as installing video drivers go). Download the appropriate version of Envy for your Debian, Ubuntu, or Ubuntu derivative distribution. In this instance, we’re installing on a Gutsy box, so we’re using Envy New (Feisty users will also be using this version).

Once the application is downloaded, open Synaptic (or Adept) and make sure, under repositories, that both “universe” and “multiverse” are checked off. This will allow (hopefully) all the dependencies Envy needs to be installed with Envy. As you will see, sometimes this doesn’t happen (but it’s easy to fix).

Close Synaptic and right click the Envy package. The option to install will appear in the menu. Let’s get the party started, shall we?

An install window appears, with a description of the package. We’re sick to death of the ugly vesa graphics already, let’s just get this baby installed. Click Install Now.

Enter your root or sudo password, and things should start magically installing. Let Envy go through the motions, and when it’s successfully installed, go to Applications>System Tools>Envy in GNOME. (You can also simply run the command “Envy” on the Run Command line in KDE.)

Remember how we said sometimes all the dependencies don’t quite make it? Whoops. If that happens, you’ll see a little message like this pop up. Fear not. Just go ahead, tell it to try installing them now.

After a few more seconds, Envy should be ready to go.

Here is the main Envy screen. As you can see, it’s a standard point and click sort of GUI in this form. (Should you not have a graphical server, it is possible to run Envy via the command line.) Since we’re at least partially fortunate today, we’re able to run Envy with generic drivers We’ve an NVIDIA card, so we’re taking the default selection.

If we’ve ever had any ATI or NVIDIA drivers on the system, it’s good to run the “Uninstall” option before installing anything else. Envy does try to uninstall if it finds them, but we’d rather not hedge our bets. In general, we’ve found most major driver snafus come from having old drivers kicking around on the system.

Click “Apply” and Envy snaps into action. It starts downloading all the dependencies and files the selected driver type will need to install Be forewarned. This can take a while.

As the process starts to finish, you’ll notice that Envy is accessing the official proprietary drivers from your card manufacturer. It downloads the driver, and runs the proprietary driver’s installer script. Very nice for NVIDIA users, who typically have to kill the graphical server to do this.

Finally, Envy asks if you’d like your xorg.conf updated (sure, why not?) and if you’d like to restart your computer (the surest way of getting your new drivers to kick in to gear.)

Our experience with Envy has been largely very positive. It has gotten drivers successfully installed on systems that were being very temperamental. We have never experienced problems with it that go beyond the problems we were already having with our drivers.

That being said, please always try to use the drivers in your distro’s repositories first. If they fail for whatever reason, then try Envy. Generally, it’s always best to install from a repository if you are able. Also, we’ve discovered that, at least in Gutsy, it’s not terribly easy to enable advanced desktop effects like Compiz-Fusion when using Envy-installed drivers. If Envy is what it takes to get a good looking desktop, sans eye candy, though, it’s well worth the time investment!

Face it, if you’re even slightly more computer literate than the rest of your family you’ve been pegged “the computer guy”; Henceforth doomed to a life of unpaid tech support. There’s no time when it’s more readily apparent than the holidays. If you’re like most of the Download Squad, your family are already preparing their laundry list of “Hey, can you look at this?” items to bombard you with as soon as you step off the plane looking for your Thanksgiving turkey leg.

Maybe you’re not even the person they should be looking to for fixes and patches. It can take as little as being the first one in your family to have loaded up an Mp3 player or burned a home movie DVD; Regardless, you’re on the hook and we’re here to help you with some basic troubleshooting tips and tricks.

Bring the basics

As the Boy Scouts say, “Be Prepared!” For less than $20 you can buy yourself a key-chain sized USB drive to load with some basic spyware, adware, and malware cleaning tools. Add in a fresh copy of Firefox, a free anti-virus scanner plus any other utilities you find useful in keeping your own computer running well and you’ll come to the Thanksgiving table prepared to tackle some of the most common free tech support requests.

Must have software for your USB repair kit include the USB PC Repair System and Clam Anti-Virus. Another great looking kit — although we’ve not tested it — is the Computer Repair Utility Kit which includes Clam AV and leaves you with one less thing to download.

Also useful in your arsenal, blank media. There are few things worse than having to run around hunting for blank CD-Rs or DVD-Rs during the holidays. Stuff a few from your own stash into your carry-on bag and it’s likely you’ll be happy you did.

For the advanced family computer expert, and for the really tough problems, it’s also a great idea to pack a bootable rescue CD or “live” CD based on Linux. The recently released Ubuntu 7.10 even includes read/write support for NTFS so you’ll save time having to scramble for the rescue tools you need to get mom’s data back.

Start from square one

When you’re doing tech support duties, it’s easy to get wrapped up in details. The best advice is to start from the most basic issue which could be causing the problem and work up from there. Keep notes, and make changes one at a time. Paying careful attention to detail can easily mean the difference between catching the game on TV, or being stuck in your mother’s home office pulling out your hair while everyone else is lounging in the family room.

For example; Don’t spend all day trying to fix the supposed software problem with that USB printer before you check the basics. Is it connected? Is it connected through an el cheapo USB hub? Get rid of it. Plug the printer directly into the PC see if anything changes. Basics like this may only solve your problem one time in ten but, that one time will save you endless frustration, and make you look like a pro. Ok, looking like a pro is only going to get you more phone calls for free support in this instance but, you would’ve gotten those anyway. At least you got to see the game.

Start with the simplest potential cause of the problem and work forward from there, keeping notes and eliminating possible causes.

Don’t bite off more than you can chew

The last thing you want to do is create more problems than you solve, especially if you’ve got a return plane ticket in the next few days. If the problem is too big, or if you think you’re headed into deep water with little chance of making a difference, don’t be afraid to say so. A little diplomacy goes a long way. Grab the phone book and find a good local computer shop you think has the skills. Your helpful and understandable problem description should make things easier for the tech who winds up with that family computer on his bench, and you’ll have saved your family from the big expense and poor service available from a big-box retail chain service desk. You’ll rest easy knowing that you not only saved your holiday time, but saved your family some cash.

The only thing worse than not owning a TiVo digital video recorder is owning a TiVo unit but not being able to use it the way you want. TiVo fans were disappointed to discover recently that the TiVo Desktop software which allows users to transfer recorded shows to a computer via a wireless network doesn’t work with Windows Vista. Although the company claims they are releasing a Vista-compatible version “very soon,” for hardcore TiVo users it’s not soon enough. Fortunately there are a couple of things you can try that might make the wait a little easier.

• If you’re willing to spend a few dollars, consider picking up a Slingbox television tuner. This slick device attaches to your tv so you can access it from any computer with a wireless connection. Slingbox is already Vista-compatible, connects easily to a TiVo DVR or cable/TiVo combo, and has a wonderful community of people willing to help you out with set-up if you need it. You can pick up a first generation Slingbox for around $60, or a refurbished one for even less. You’ll still find plenty of uses for the Slingbox even after the Vista-compatible version of Desktop is released so if you have the money to spare, this is your best bet.

• If you have an old Mac computer laying around, or can borrow one for a few weeks, TiVo Decode Manager for the Mac is a free tool that functions just like TiVo Desktop but is, of course, for the Mac. It’s easy to set up, intuitive, and very user friendly.

• Some Vista users have reported good luck getting TiVo Desktop to run on their machines by simply installing an older version of the software. Although the earlier releases of Desktop are not available on TiVo’s Web site, they are still available at other sites. If you decide to try this, be sure to back up any important files and create a system restore point on your PC before installing the software.

• Galleon is an open source software tool that organizes the media files on your computer so you can view, access, or use them on your TiVo. It has a lot of really neat features, including one that lets you move recorded shows from your DVR to you computer.

• If you don’t mind tweaking things at the command line, The Spider’s Parlor offers detailed instructions on another option you can try. Check the comments of a similar article at PVRBlog to find additional sources for downloading the recommended Windows utility.

If you prefer to wait until TiVo releases a Vista-supported version of its Desktop software, you can still commiserate with other people in the same boat by visiting the TiVo Community forums.

~ Thanks Erik!

If you’re running the latest version of Parallels on your Mac (version 3.0, build 4560), you might have noticed that when your Windows virtual machine is running, your Mac’s CPU is almost exactly 50% utilized even when Windows is idle. If you’re on a MacBook or MacBook Pro, you’ll notice this pretty quickly since your fan will be running basically non-stop.

So, what’s the culprit? Strangely, based on this forum thread it appears to be iTuneshelper.exe, a background process that is installed with the latest version of iTunes (7.3.1.3). You probably only have iTunes because you wanted Quicktime on your Windows instance. Most people running Windows as a virtual machine on a Mac have no need for iTunes’ ability to connect to an iPod, since iTunes will be available on the host OS X operating system for this purpose.

In that case, you can use the System Configuration Utility in Windows XP (click Start, Run, then type “msconfig” and press enter) to turn off the Apple Mobile Device and iPod Service under the Services tab by unchecking them. Apply and close out of MSConfig.

The next time you boot up, you will get a warning message that you are running in Diagnostic mode. Check off the box on this dialog to make your change permanent (you can always go back in to MSConfig and recheck the boxes if you need to).
Interestingly, this tweak may only bring Parallels’ CPU utilization down to around 20%. That’s much better, but a far cry from the 4 to 6% used by the previous version. Clearly the celebrated utility has taken a step backwards performance-wise, but nobody can argue with the convenience of being able to run Windows on your Mac at the same time.

AVG is ready to pull the trigger on their new Anti-Virus suite, AVG Anti-Virus 8.0. From first looks, it’s going to be a pretty major update.
For starters, AVG Anti-Virus 8.0 will offer more than its standard Anti-Virus protection. Popular tools AVG Anti-Spyware, AVG Anti-Rootkit, and LinkScanner, previously stand-alone applications, are now integrated into AVG Anti-Virus 8.0. The code base has seen a significant overhaul as well, in the hopes that inevitable system slowdowns caused by AVG’s real-time protection will be lessened.

AVG Anti-Virus remains one of the most popular free Anti-Virus solutions on the market, and this update will no doubt solidify their dominance. At the time of this writing, however, it’s not exactly clear if the free edition will be updated at the same time as the paid edition, so if you aren’t one for waiting, you might have to pay to see 8.0.

The full version of AVG will continue to offer an enhanced feature set, including tech support, greater scheduling capabilities, and support for newer multi-processor core chips.

Look for the update Thursday.

[via CNETnews]

The command line. It strikes fear in the hearts of many a new Linux user. They open their terminals reluctantly, and there the prompt sits, with the cursor blinking in rhythm with their racing hearts. What does that blinking cursor want? It’s expecting something… It wants something…

All right, so maybe it’s not horror movie material.

But it is intimidating for many new users. Navigating the command line might be a mystery to you, or maybe you’ve read a little about it and wonder: out of all those commands, which ones am I really going to use? Which ones are the most help in a given situation?

Either way, we’ve got you covered. These are the commands we’ve found are most useful to new users. They range from basic navigation to commands that are great for troubleshooting.There are two major navigation commands. There are more, of course, but these two will have you tooling around your computer in no time.

cd

cd is the change directory command. When you open a terminal, you’re in your home directory. Typing cd Desktop at the prompt will move you into your Desktop directory. To move back to the home directory, you can type cd ../ at the prompt.

ls

ls will list the files and folders in a given directory. You can list the contents of your home directory by simply typing ls at the prompt. Or, while still in your home directory, you can view the contents of another folder by typing ls /etc/X11/ at the prompt.

Not so scary, huh?

But wait, there’s one more. While not exactly a navigation command, this does come in handy when looking for certain files:

grep

grep is a great tool for searching text on your system. You can search individual files, using wildcards, or search directories recursively (all sub-directories under a given directory are searched). We don’t use grep as much alone, we’ve found, as we do in conjunction with other commands.

grep -r Monster *

This command returns all of the files with the word Monster occurring in the present directory and all its subfolders.

grep -i “penguins rule” filename1 filename2

This searches for the text string “penguins rule” (case-insensitive) within the two supplied files.

These are some of our most loved troubleshooting commands. We don’t use them every day, but they’re a quick and easy way to get the diagnostic process rolling on something that’s acting a little flaky. If you should need to ask for help on a forum or mailing list, it’s often good to have the output of these commands ready to cut and paste into your post.

dmesg

dmesg is the command that lists kernel messages. The kernel is the core of the operating system, and interacts closely with your hardware. When a piece of hardware is detected by the kernel, it logs a little bit about the hardware.

As you’ve probably guessed, this comes in really handy when troubleshooting devices. dmesg needs to be run with additional commands to tell it what you really want to see. Just running dmesg alone will get you every single kernel message. Great if you’re totally obsessed with your kernel, but pretty frustrating when you’re looking to see if your TV tuner or USB device has been recognized.

So how do we tell if our USB device has been recognized, and avoid a million lines of stuff we don’t need? We use the pipe command (|) and the grep command with it.

dmesg | grep usb

If you want a case-insensitive search, add the -i argument to grep (not dmesg).

dmesg | grep -i usb

What if you don’t really know what’s going wrong, but want to see the whole of the dmesg file? You can access the file at /var/log/dmesg with a text editor. Or you can pipe the less command to dmesg.

dmesg | less

This will display dmesg in easy to read sections. Okay, it’ll display dmesg in sections. Whether they’re easy to read or not is up for debate.

lsmod

lsmod lists kernel modules (sort of like drivers, in a loose sense) that are active on the system. If you have installed a new graphics card, for instance, and you’re unsure of whether your new drivers loaded you can use the lsmod command to find out. lsmod can also be piped through less, but sometimes it does fit in a single terminal screen. Know the name of the module you’re looking for? Pipe lsmod through grep: lsmod | grep -i nvidia

uname

uname gives details about the operating system. There are a number of command arguments (additional commands) that can be added to uname, which return data about different aspects of the system. Using the -a argument will return all the data uname has about a system.

For instance, uname -a on our 64-bit Xubuntu computer returns this:

Linux shoe-desktop 2.6.22-14-generic #1 SMP Tue Dec 18 05:28:27 UTC 2007 x86_64 GNU/Linux

This is (in order) the name of the kernel, the name of the computer, the version of the running kernel, the processor type, and the name of the operating system.

This is useful when compiling applications from source. Sometimes, though, you’ll need to know the kernel you’re running for troubleshooting other issues.

man

The man pages are the first place to go when you’re looking for help. The man command gives access to your computer’s online documentation (manuals… get it?). If you need to see additional arguments for uname, for instance, open a terminal and type man uname. The man page will give you a basic run down on how to use the command, what package it is bundled with, and sometimes cross-references similar commands that may be useful.

The command line doesn’t have to be a source of intimidation for the new user. It doesn’t require memorizing a whole book’s worth of commands to use effectively. Because it’s fast, and gives a lot of valuable feedback, you’ll even find (eventually) that you’ll use it for certain tasks rather than using a GUI counterpart.

Command line anxiety could soon go the way of your other unfounded fears. The monster under the bed. The bogeyman in the closet. Clowns. (No, there are still lots of reasons to fear clowns.)

When Microsoft first announced its Windows Home Server product, it sounded rather appealing to many users. Rather than having to go through the trouble of setting up, say, a Debian server, it became possible to run a powerful server using a familiar environment.

At least that was the concept. However, a distressing bug has surfaced on the Microsoft Knowledge Base. According to the article, Windows Home Server can corrupt or eat files created by several popular Microsoft applications, Quicken, Quickbooks and even Bittorrent downloads, yikes!

We’d think people might want to be able to reliably save such obscure things as pictures, presentations, and torrents on a home server, but maybe we’re just weird like that.

[Via Computer World]

In an amusing move that is sure to have caused a few flushed faces, Kaspersky Antivirus recently declared Windows Explorer malicious code. While we’ve known Explorer to crash from time to time, this treatment seems a bit excessive.

The gaffe came in the form of a routine virus update this past Wednesday night. Kaspersky mistakenly identified Explorer as an infected file. For those not familiar with Windows’ internals, Explorer serves as the core of the Windows interface, handling the Desktop, Start bar, and file management. Without this core component, Windows becomes inoperable.

Realizing their mistake, the company pulled the flawed definition about two hours later. However, untold numbers of customers were already experiencing the quarantine, and in some cases deletion of explorer.exe. While this isn’t the first time a virus company has make a false positive, it is none the less a serious mistake that will certainly mean serious downtime for some organizations. Or at least, the organizations that haven’t switched to Linux or Mac by now.