Lifehacker Australia will be spending the rest of the week at Linux.conf.au in Hobart, soaking up the open-source goodness and remembering that there’s almost nothing you can’t do from a command line if you try hard enough. If the mere thought of Tux makes you nervous, don’t panic; there’ll still be plenty of non-Linux content as well.
Linux only: Secure Shell client Ssherminator is a sophisticated split-pane, tabbed GUI interface sent through time to change the future for lucky geeks. Ssherminator is a fork of the window-splitting Terminator utility with additional features geared at SSH users like session saving and tabs, derived from the HotSSH Secure Shell client for Gnome. Installation on Ubuntu requires editing your /etc/apt/sources.list file and adding two lines at the end:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/ssherminator-team/ubuntu intrepid main deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/ssherminator-team/ubuntu intrepid main
Once added, run the following commands to install the application using the built-in apt-get tool:
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install ssherminator
Hit the link for more instructions and a screenshot tour.
SSHerminator – Nice split screen terminal emulator and SSH client [Ubuntu Geek]De-Bee is a simple and free web-based expense tracker. Sign up, invite friends, and share expenses more easily. You don’t even need to go through the hassle of having your friends sign up if they’ve already got Google Accounts. Once you and your friends are set up in a group, you can monitor transactions and money owed between friends/roommates/partners. While De-Bee is by no means a legally binding contract, and not a place to actually transfer money, it does provide an extremely simple interface for keeping tabs on group financial obligations. Thanks Jaron!
De-BeeUS President Barack Obama’s campaign embraced technology like none before, so it’s no surprise that the new face of the White House on the web comes complete with a brand new White House blog. If you want to keep up with the latest from the Oval Office blog, just drop the WhiteHouse.gov blog feed into your newsreader. [via Twitter]
Previously mentioned LastPass—which adds web-based autocomplete for logins and forms with Firefox and Internet Explorer add-ons—has created several new bookmarklets to support auto-fill from any browser, including Google Chrome, Opera, and even Safari on your iPhone.As you can see from the video, all you need to do is login to your LastPass account (registration is free) and drag the bookmarklets to your bookmark toolbar. (If you want to use LastPass on your iPhone, you’ll have to create the bookmark on your desktop and then sync it to your iPhone.) LastPass received an honorable mention in our Hive Five Best Password Managers very shortly after its release, and its quick development and impressive features have won over many more users since its initial release. The official Firefox extension and IE plug-in are both still better options when you’re using those browsers, but for browsers that don’t support add-ons, the bookmarklet support is a godsend. LastPassOpera, Google Chrome, Safari, iPhone, Opera Mini and more with Bookmarklets [LastPass Blog via Download Squad]
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The Buddha Machine Wall webapp streams ambient patterns—the kind just distracting enough to take the edge off the noise in your office.The original Buddha Machine is a small device resembling a transistor radio, created by a pair of Chinese musicians known as FM. With permission from FM, the tech-support company ZenDesk hosts a version that, just like the original, creates randomised patterns from 9 FM-crafted ambient loops. This post was powered by loop B2—post your own favourite in the comments if you try out the free Buddha Machine Wall. For more ambient, work-friendly sounds, check out previously mentioned iSerenity, another web-based source. FM3 Buddha Machine Wall [ZenDesk]
Windows only: Portable note-taking and outlining application The Guide organises your notes and projects complete with rich text in a hierarchical view. The Guide has a similar feature set to previously mentioned ActionOutline Lite, lacking the ability to use tabs but making up for it with lighter resource usage, no restrictions on sub-items and the great price tag of free. Once installed, the preferences panel has a setting for switching the application into portable mode, which stores all settings in an INI file instead of the registry so you can copy the entire folder to a USB drive. Enabling icons and checkboxes can be done in the preferences pane, and icons for nodes can be changed through the context menu. The Guide is a free download for Windows systems only. Thanks MarsalaAnteater!
The GuideWindows only: DriveLook, a free utility from the makers of the ultra-handy DriveImage XML, scans your hard drive and searches for strings of text to save your lost data.
The app initially starts as unlicensed, somewhat disabled software, but you can grab registration information from the DriveLook page. It’s not super-intuitive where you enter your search terms, but it’s in the box at the bottom, one per line. You can get more specific with the variables up top, but if you know the words from a Word file are hanging around somewhere on your drive, just type in a few words you remember from it, and hit “Start.” That’s when you’ll be asked to choose where DriveLook, er, looks:
As Gizmodo points out, the ribbon-style WordPad in Windows 2007 opens Word 2007 files, the .docx kind, pretty handily, albeit with some formatting loss. Nice to know a full-fledged Office purchase isn’t a necessity.
