Google SketchUp

The first thing you must do is, of course, download SketchUp from: http://sketchup.google.com/intl/en/download/gsu.html. Next, you need to either install the latest version of Wine, or update your current installation of Wine to the most recent version. I recommend you use the Wine (Ubuntu) repo’s, how to add the repository is at: http://www.winehq.org/download/deb. To check your version of Wine, click Applications > Wine > Configure Wine,  and click the ‘About’ tab. To get SketchUp working properly, it’s best to have at least 1.1.11 of Wine.

While you have the configuration window open, click the ‘Applications’ tab, and set the default Windows to XP

The last thing you should do is to make sure you have nVidia drivers installed (if need be), the Wine homepage says: ‘you probably need nvidia’s proprietary graphics driver. The open-source nv driver isn’t good enough yet‘.

With all the necessary steps in place, it’s time to install SketchUp! Open the folder of where you saved the SketchUp .exe file, right click on the GoogleSketchUpWEN.exe and choose ‘Open with Wine Windows Program Loader’, don’t double click it as Ubuntu will think it’s an archive and just display its contents.

Simply follow the prompts, accepting all the default settings, and it should install no problem at all.

The installer will put two links on your desktop but, since those are for Windows, you can delete them.

But were not done yet. Google SketchUp needs some Windows files, and the easiest way to install them is using a script called winetricks. To install wintricks, load up a command line and issue the command:

wget http://www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks

then to install the actual Windows files:

sh winetricks corefonts vcrun6 vcrun2005

NOTE: Do not install any .dll’s or Windows system files manually as this will cause a ton of errors, I know… it did this the first time I tried installing SketchUp!

Once winetricks is done installing the Windows files, you click Applications > Wine > Programs > Google SketchUp 7 > Google SketchUp and SketchUp will load.

The first time I tried installing SketchUp I couldn’t get it to load, but deleting my .wine directory and reinstalling SketchUp made it work no problem at all, but beware: deleting the .wine directory will delete everything you have on your Wine C: drive! Similar Posts:

• Installing New Brushes in to GIMP
• A MAME Machine with Ubuntu, SDLmame and Wahcade
• uShare + Xbox 360 = media streaming goodness
• Installing Ubuntu 9.10 and XBMC on the Acer Aspire Revo
• EEE 701, Kubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) and Unetbootin

Motorola Milestone (Droid, if you're in the US)

In the beginning there was HTC, and lo, they created a phone and named it G1. And it did sell.

Now Motorola have created a sibling to the G1, the Motorola Milestone (Droid if you’re stateside) and not only is it more slimline than it’s G1 brethren, it also comes with Android 2.0!

First thing I noticed about the Milestone is the phone and slider feel rock solid. The arc slider on the G1 was spring loaded and felt like it would loosen after a while (which it never did) but the Milestone slider needs a good shove all the way to click in place, this I like.

On putting my 3 SIM in and powering up the Milestone I was greeted with the ‘android’ loading screen then the familiar Android desktop. Now it’s time to log in with my Gmail info. I’m interested to see if everything will still sync OK. Technically it should, of course, but I’m old sk00l and am used to having to manually enter all your contacts on getting a new phone/SIM. But, once signed in, the phone connected to Google and all my Gmail contacts are there, same with my Google calendar stuff. Fantastic!

One thing that took a bit of getting used to was having no buttons on the front of the phone. There are four icons below the screen. They are actually touch sensitive buttons which come in to play when the screen is active, I kept poking at them while the screen was off, expecting the screen to spring to life like I was used to with my G1, on the Milestone you use the on/off button at the top of the unit to activate/sleep the screen.

Having tinkered with several home screen replacements on the G1 (GDE being one of my favourites) I’ve grown to love SlideScreen so, after signing in, I headed to the Market to install SlideScreen, but would the Market still allow it? After all, I paid for SlideScreen from my G1. But, of course, everything is saved at Google’s end, so it does indeed mark it as paid and installs in a jiffy. The Market also remembers several other apps that I recently (un)installed under the Downloads tab, so that’s quick links to apps that I need.

SlideScreen - the home replacement app.

One thing I did notice more on the Milestone is that up top where it normally shows the 3G logo, I was seeing an ‘H’. Odd. Turns out this is some super-fast 3G connection which I never got on the G1. Another bonus!

My next port of call was to install K9 for my non-Gmail, but I noticed an icon for Gmail and Email in the system settings. Prodding email lets me set up a non-Gmail account without the need for another app. Cool! There are also icons for Corporate Calendars and what-not, allowing you to sync with Microsoft Exchange. Which is no doubt very welcome for business users.

I installed several of my other apps (Camera ZOOM FX, Droid Analytics and Doodledroid to name but a few) and they certainly seem faster on the Milestone, especially Doodledroid. Normally in Doodledroid on the G1 it would take a second/two to update the screen if you were using the smudge tool, on the Milestone it’s virtually instantaneous. I installed Camera ZOOM FX as I could never seem to get a decent picture with the standard camera app, Camera ZOOM FX uses the sensors within the phone to detect stability before taking a photo. And the resulting photo’s are good, it’s now a 5mp camera.

I also kept wondering why the screen was fading in and out. Turns out the Milestone has a sensor at the top left to detect the light level where you are and adjusts the brightness of the screen accordingly, so when I pick up my phone in the dead of night and turn it on, I will no longer blind myself. Nice!

MixZing - for all your MP3 needs

Since my iPod is on it’s last legs, see my previous post about changing its battery, I installed MixZing and copied across several MP3 files. MixZing did a great job of playing the files and sending info to LastFM. It’s minimal display shows just the album cover with play/pause, love/hate and so on but also uses your played songs to offer suggestions for new stuff! The good thing with the Milestone, compared to the G1, is the standard ear/headphone jack at the top of the unit, so this now becomes a phone/camera/mp3 player.

Next, Twidroid. I install it because it works well with SlideScreen and Twidroid will also let me try out the keyboard. Like I said, the keyboard is revealed with a resounding click. Typing is easy enough although it would probably have been better if each key was raised slightly, on the Milestone all the keys are little flat squares, unlike the G1 where each key has a gap between it and a bevel to each button. Although why they bothered with the black rectangle to the right of the keys is anyone’s guess, it’s basically a D-pad like you’d get on a SNES controller. Only downside with the keyboard is that you need to press ALT to get numbers, I reckon Motorola should have let the screen slide up another 10mm and gave the number keys their own row at the top of the keyboard.

Google have also incorporated a lot of voice activated stuff in Android 2.0. Having just joined Buzz (the Google/Twitter mashup) I poked the microphone icon beside the Google search widget and, quite clearly, said: ‘post buzz’, which should have taken me to a Gmail/Buzz page. Instead, Google searched for ‘horse barns’. Not quite sure how Google worked that out, but I’m sure my Glaswegian accent wasn’t taken in to account when Google did voice trials. Shame that. But after several tries, it got it. So it might be an idea to incorporate some sort of ‘voice training’ thing in Android so that the OS can get used to accents.

The Motorola Milestone doesn’t come cheap. Mine cost me ~£340 on eBay which is pretty cheap, but it’s definitely a great phone, I can see now why everyone was going droid-crazy over the pond. It has more internal power and storage than the G1 so it doesn’t feel like a new phone, it feels like a step up, the next-gen if you like. It’s expensive, but I love it, it’s definitely my new all-in-one phone/camera/mp3 player gadget.  Similar Posts:

• T-mobile and Google (Android powered) G1 phone unlocked and on PAYG
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• CECT 599 – Apple iPhone clone

Well, that’s fighting talk where I come from, and if Apple said not to do it, I’m doing it!

Here we have the freshly plucked (well, torn) battery:

The pristine, non-violated, battery.

First I peeled off the yellow tape stuff, this revealed a rather funky little circuit board!

Funky little circuit board thingy

Next, I peeled back it’s silver foil:

Cover your eyes, it's a naked battery!

It’s at this point there was a funny smell, some sort of chemical thing. Meh, doesn’t scare me. You’ll notice some dark marks on the white paper in the photo above. This is some sort of liquid that’s leaking from the injured battery. That does scare me, but luckily I’m too daft to care.

The body of the battery is several layers of ’stuff’ (stop me if I’m getting to technical) which I began to unroll…

Ooh, that's all this then...

Unrolling it was proving to be tricky since it kept wanting to spring back to it’s rolled shape, but also due to the fact that I didn’t want to touch the damn thing as more liquid was leaking from it, the smell was getting worse and now small fragments of black stuff were falling out of it.

BANG! *poof*

It all came to an end when I unrolled it to about half way, it sprang back, crackled, sparked and smoke came out of it. What made me stop was after doing it three times it wouldn’t spark and smoke any more, so I got bored of it.

Several times I’ve looked over my shoulder to see if my bin is in flames, thus far it is not.

And this experiment explains why I’m not allowed to be bored…Similar Posts:

• Acer C301XMi Tablet PC
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I raise my hands and own up to using the instructions from: http://xbmc.org/forum/showpost.php?p=433877&postcount=1 – with a few slight changes to make it Boxee specific. Here’s how I did it…

Follow the original post to install Lirc, get the event ID and edit the config file, but (in the third post) when you are meant to enter:

sudo gedit ~/.xbmc/userdata/Lircmap.xml

… you should, for Boxee, enter:

sudo gedit ~/.boxee/UserData/Lircmap.xml

(NOTE: yes, it really should be UserData with the capitals)

Now load up Boxee and the vast majority of the Cyberlink remote buttons work properly!

Ahh, time to play with some Boxee Beta apps and explore the new features. Although, I can’t find how I make Boxee recognise a film/TV show, but that’s OK, I’ll mess around with it even more now that my remote works properly!  Similar Posts:

• Installing Ubuntu 9.10 and XBMC on the Acer Aspire Revo
• Boxee and the Acer Aspire Revo
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The first thing to do is head over to the Boxee site and sign up with them: Boxee.tv. The reason for this is that Boxee is part XBMC, part social media. Boxee is based on XBMC but it has several useful addons that allow you to rate/favourite your media and recommend media to friends. All this is done via the Boxee website, hence the signup. Once you’ve signed up, you can go to the downloads page and see instructions on how to install Boxee by adding the Jaunty repo. And this is where you hit a snag. Boxee won’t install as it requires packages that aren’t in the Karmic, or Boxee, repo. So, to botch it, we grab some .deb files that are from Jaunty/other repos.

The files I needed to install before Boxee were:

liblzo1 – http://ubuntu.cs.utah.edu/ubuntu/pool/universe/l/lzo/liblzo1_1.08-3_i386.deb

libdirectfb – http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/main/d/directfb/libdirectfb-1.0-0_1.0.1-11ubuntu1_i386.deb

and libkrb53 – http://packages.ubuntu.com/jaunty/i386/libkrb53/download

(source: http://forum.boxee.tv/showthread.php?p=60489)

Once I’d installed those, I could install Boxee and it’s dependencies without a hitch.

Once it’s installed, Boxee is found in Applications > Sound & Video.

Boxee's main screen

With Boxee running I added my local media folders and my wireless shared directories. From there, Boxee rips through your files guessing at their classification, but you can assign a media type to a particular directory if you wish. I was a bit unnerved when many of my video files weren’t showing up under movies, but I quickly realised that Boxee needed me to tell it what these files actually were. I’m sure it knew they were video, and probably movies, but it wanted to know exactly WHAT movie it was so that it could go and fetch me information and a cover of the movie, which is a nice touch. Same with audio files, it will automatically grab you album covers and band photographs.

Editing audio/video information is quite easy too, even without a keyboard, as it has an on-screen keyboard which is easy to use.

Boxee applications - basically Internet TV channels

As well as using your own media, in Boxee, you have access to dozens of ‘applications’ which are basically channels (above). Channels which are video podcasts and internet episodes. The list is quite varied and has everything from CNN, to Open lectures, to anime.

The only quibble I have with Boxee is that my (cheapo) remote control doesn’t work as well with Boxee as it did with XBMC. But obviously, that’s my fault for having a cheapo remote. It’s still usable, but it’s annoying that I don’t have a remote button for going back, I have to keep returning to the main menu and going forward from there, but at least the main play/ffwd/pause/stop work.

All in all, I’m really impressed with Boxee, I’ll definitely be keeping it and quite probably using it more than XBMC as XBMC has a few rough edges to it, but Boxee (even though it’s an alpha) is smooth as a smooth thing!

Look me up on Boxee and give me a shout, my username is ronnietucker. I look forward to your recommendations!*

* as long as they’re good Similar Posts:

• Using a Cyberlink remote with the new Boxee Beta
• Installing Ubuntu 9.10 and XBMC on the Acer Aspire Revo
• uShare + Xbox 360 = media streaming goodness
• Broadcasting Video, from Ubuntu to Ustream, With WebcamStudio
• How To Install Google SketchUp 7 with Wine in Ubuntu

Acer Aspire Revo

I recently bought an Acer Aspire Revo with the idea of turning it in to a media center. I decided to install Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) and use XBMC (Xbox Media Center) as a front end. Here’s how I did it:

First I installed Ubuntu 9.10 to a USB stick. I did this using the USB Startup Disc Creator app which is installed, by default, with Ubuntu. It’s under System > Administration. I just pointed it to the ISO of 9.10, it detected my USB stick and off it went. So, with Ubuntu on my USB I popped the USB in to the Revo and booted it up.

When the Revo is turned on, it will make a beep (the POST – Power On Self Test), as soon as you hear that, hold down F12, that’ll give you a BIOS-like boot menu where I could choose from either the Revo drive, or my USB. Obviously, I chose my USB stick.

After a short time, Ubuntu loads, first thing I did was to make sure that my wireless would work, and it did, no problems there. So, I started Ubuntu installing…

On first boot of Ubuntu it asks you if you want to install the NVIDIA proprietary drivers, without these, you can’t reach resolutions higher than 800 x 600, so you want to install them.

NOTE: The Revo can connect to an ordinary PC monitor, but I wanted to connect it to my TV. My TV didn’t have an HDMI port, but it did have a DVI port so, having bought an HDMI > DVI cable I booted Ubuntu to get a black screen. Only after much research did I find out that my TV couldn’t display anything above VGA (800 x 600). So, if you get display problems with the HDMI output of the Revo, it may well be your TV.

One other thing you may notice is the lack of sound. This is easily fixed by right clicking on the speaker icon in the top bar, in Ubuntu, and choosing ‘Sound Preferences‘. In that window choose the Hardware tab and in the drop down menu (beside ‘Profile:’, choose ‘Output Digital Stereo (HDMI)‘ and click OK. You should now have sound!

Anyway, with a new TV with HDMI, I booted Ubuntu and proceeded to install XBMC. To install XBMC, you need to add the XBMC PPA and install the xbmc package, in Karmic, this is done using:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:team-xbmc

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install xbmc

For Intredpid and such-like, see the information on the XBMC wiki:

http://xbmc.org/wiki/?title=HOW-TO_install_XBMC_for_Linux_on_Ubuntu_with_a_minimal_installation_step-by-step

So, with XBMC installed, I loaded it up and there it was:

XBMC main screen with the new Confluence theme.

Next I used another USB stick to copy some media files to the Revo HD to see if XBMC would play xvid, mp3  etc. Or would I need to install the Ubuntu extra. Yep worked fine, no need for me to install the Ubuntu extras myself.

Next, for me, the hard bit. Would it be possible to get wireless file transfers going between my desktop PC (also with Karmic) and the Revo. I eventually managed it (with little to no SAMBA experience), here’s how:

I did this on both my desktop machine AND the Revo:

Right click on Videos folder, which is the folder I want to share on my desktop and on the Revo, this could easily be the Music folder or whatever folder you’ve created. Select Properties from the menu, then the Share tab. Tick to ‘Share This Folder‘. If SAMBA is not installed, it’ll ask if you want to install it now, which you should. You’ll need to restart your session, but don’t worry – this won’t reboot the machine.

To share a folder (with SAMBA installed):
* right click on a folder and choose ‘Sharing Options‘
* tick the box to share the folder and also, if needed, tick the box to allow creation/deletion of files
* click ‘Create Share’ button.

Do the above for each folder on your desktop/Revo that you want to share.

If you try and connect to the Revo from the desktop (or vice versa) you’ll be asked for a password. What you need to do is ON BOTH THE REVO AND DESKTOP is, in a terminal, run:

sudo smbpasswd -a USERNAME

(USERNAME being the name of a user on the computer/Rev), supply a password for SAMBA to use with that user, then:

sudo /etc/init.d/samba restart

NOW you can connect to the Revo from the desktop and vice versa, drag and drop files between them and, much my surprise (And delight) even stream from the desktop to the Revo!

NOTE: If you drag files to the Revo/desktop and get a permissions error, you probably haven’t ticked the box (mentioned above) to allow creating files. Once you’ve ticked the box, you’ll need to run the samba restart command, above. Failing that, you need to update your SAMBA install, check your package manager for newer files.

To finish off your media center, you’ll need a remote control. I bought a cheap CyberLink remote from eBuyer.com, plugged it in, Ubuntu recognised it and I could immediately use it in XBMC! The only problem is that I don’t have a button on the remote to return to the home screen in XBMC, but everything else works – I can play, pause, ffwd, raise/lower volume and so on.

—-

One alternative to XBMC, that I’ve been hearing good things about, is Boxee. It’s available at: boxee.tv, but it doesn’t work so easily on 9.10, only 9.04, but – according to what I’ve read – you can install the file liblzo1 from 9.04 on 9.10 and Boxee should then work fine in Karmic (source: Popey.com). If I get bored of playing with XBMC (doubtful) and need another project, I may try installing Boxee… watch this space!Similar Posts:

• Boxee and the Acer Aspire Revo
• uShare + Xbox 360 = media streaming goodness
• Using a Cyberlink remote with the new Boxee Beta
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• How To Install Google SketchUp 7 with Wine in Ubuntu

The simplest way I can think of to describe Google Wave is this: think of a collaborative MSN, that’s basically it. Currently, Google Wave is in a preview state. You can sign up for it, but you are in a (very long) queue for invites. I signed up several weeks ago and have had nothing from Google, as yet, I managed to scrounge an invite from a Twitter user that I follow (thanks Susan!).

A word of warning: do NOT buy Google Wave invites through eBay (and other such places) as inevitably you either won’t get the invite or it will only be a partial invite where you don’t actually have a full account. Culpa mea.

Anyway, Here’s a look at the Google Wave screen:

the main Google Wave screen

It has a layout similar to most email applications. Top left is the inbox and what-not, below that is a list of contacts, in the middle is a list of waves (ie: discussions) and on the right is the actual discussion its self. You can see in the above screen that you can embed YouTube videos in to a discussion. You can also embed images but, for reasons unknown to me, you need to have Google Gadgets installed on your PC to be able to drag and drop images to discussions, this is quite limiting I think, but… this is a preview, hopefully Google make inserting images easier. You can, like emails add attachments, but they are always at the end of a wave, can’t be in the middle.

To get going you can best think of it as being like email, you start a new wave, add a contact (or several), write the message and click ‘done’. The person receiving the email can then click to reply. If I’m online and looking at the original wave, I can see the person actually typing in their reply, in real time, which is a nice touch. Only problem, at the moment, is that you can only ‘wave’ to other Google Wave users. You can’t send a wave to just any old email address.

This is me replying to a wave...

Creating and editing a wave is done using rich text, so you can bold, highlight, indent and so on. Clicking the green jigsaw piece (top right) lets you enter a url for a Google Gadget which you can insert in to your email. It would be nice to have a list to choose from, but there’s not, so you need to hunt the internet for a list of gadgets. Same with contacts, you can add contacts which are actually ‘bots which give added features. In this screen (below) I’ve added the easypublic user which means when I add him to a discussion, that discussion goes public and anyone can see it.

This is a public wave which anyone can see and participate in...

There are a ton of public waves, you get these by entering:

with:public

into the search box. Think of these public waves as being like an open forum, you can pop in and read posts and easily reply to them too. Speaking of replying, you can also send pings (a quick Q&A for want of a better description) and private replies. Private replies are like a private message (PM) on a forum that only you and the receiver can see, these are sometimes shown as a wave within a wave:

A standard wave. The blue bar signifies that wave as being private...

Surely a wave is between you and the receiver? Well, yes. And no. At any time you, or the receiver can drag in a contact who can read through the discussion and then toss in their tuppence worth, hence the collaborative link.

Now, this is where things can get controversial… readers of the wave can also edit the entire wave. So someone who has come in at the end of a long discussion could, in theory, go back and edit the original wave that, let’s say, I wrote! This is good for collaboration, but it’s no good if you want to use Google Wave as an email application, which some people seem to think it is, it’s not. Google Wave is for collaboration, brain storming, presentations, and so on.

I can see the uses for Google Wave, but at the moment it’s a bit of a misunderstood child. Will it take off? Probably, as no doubt Google will, eventually, let anyone join, and for free. Like I said at the start, it’s really just MSN on steroids.

I like Google Wave and will probably play around with it more, but I really can’t pass judgment on it until it is out of preview and has more features. Feel free to give me a wave at: ronnietucker@googlewave.comSimilar Posts:

• Google Calendar, why do you hate me so?!
• T-mobile and Google (Android powered) G1 phone unlocked and on PAYG
• Creating an iPod playlist in Amarok
• From G1 to Motorola Milestone with Android 2.0
• Sony Reader PRS-505 in Linux – REVIEW

PRS-505

First things first, the 505 is teeny! The 505 comes with a nice suede-feeling cover, the 505 in the cover is a touch smaller (in height) than a DVD/video-game case and a hairs breadth thinner.

TIP: you can click any of the photos in this review to get larger photos.

The sliver of white and green is the edge of an Xbox 360 video-game case.

In the box, you get the 505, the snazzy brown cover (which uses magnetism to stay closed), a USB cable (to also charge it with) and a couple of CD’s, both geared towards Windows users although one CD has some old public domain classics on there for you to read. The CD’s aren’t necessary anyway, one is a cataloging app (which I’ll come to the Linux equivalent in a moment) and the device mounts as a USB storage device. The 505 has have internal memory for storing books on, but it also accepts Sony, and SD, cards.

It has ten selection, and two page turning. buttons down the right side. With the two iPod-ish looking buttons for turning/scrolling pages.

The device certainly looks pretty enough with its brushed aluminium case and matching controls. Down the right side of the screen (and I’ll come to the screen in a moment) are ten selection buttons (more on them in a second) and two buttons to flip pages with. Below (and to the left) of the screen is a circular button which also flips pages, handy for when the device is in landscape mode. Left of this round button is a small button for zooming text, right of the round button is the bookmark button. Below and to the right of the screen is am up, down, left and right circle with a button in the center, this is for moving up/down menus with the button to select, also used in scrolling zoomed images. Beside this round button is the menu button. The top edge of the 505 has the on/off slider and two slots for the Sony/SD cards. The bottom edge has the USB socket, a wall socket charger (which is not supplied), a jack for ear/head phones and a volume control, since the 505 can also play MP3 files.

MAIN MENU

The PRS-505 main menu.

When you first turn on the 505 you’ll get the main menu screen (above).  There’s really not a lot to tinker with in the menus. You can enter the Settings menu and alter the view from portrait to landscape, but it would have been nice to be able to do this at the click of a button (while in a book) rather than having to come out of the book to change it, but it’s a small niggle, I’ll probably never use landscape mode anyway. If you’ve read a book on the 505 then your first option will be to continue whatever you were reading last, which is effectively a shortcut. Next you can list books by Title, Author or Date. Or you can view your collections and bookmarks. Buttons 7 to 0 are for audio, pictures and settings.

Here, I'm on page two of my book list.

Books by Title does just that, lists your books, by their title from A-Z. In the photo above, I’m on page two of my book list. I could either click buttons 1 to 3 to select one of the three books on this page or I could use the up/down/select button (round button, bottom right).

PDF

The Ubuntu Pocket Guide (PDF) displaying on the PRS-505

I chose number three, the excellent (and FREE) Ubuntu Pocket Guide which is a PDF. Bear in mind when you think about getting a 505 (or any ebook reader), although reading a PDF is one of it’s features, it is mainly geared towards ePub files which are mainly text, so if you want to view PDF’s which are mainly all images you may need to convert it. PDF’s with text only will, in most cases, display fine. The photo above shows the PDF which is displayed, by default, as fit-to-screen. You can of course zoom the text if you wish but this can cause delays as it reformats the page, text only files such as ePub have a very short delay as it reformats the pages.

This is the menu for the book you are currently reading.

Pressing the menu button, while reading, takes you to the menu shown above. This lets you continue reading the book, start from the beginning, jump to the end, show any bookmarks for the current book, and several other functions (which I’ve not really used much to be honest).

Oh no, my ebook will end up all tatty!

Bookmarking a page has a nice touch, it folds over the top right corner of the (electronic) page. Nice.

OK, so we know it displays various text formats with ease, but how do we (as Linux users) put books on the contraption? Well, like I said, in my Ubuntu 9.04 it mounts (automatically) as a USB storage device so you can drag and drop ebooks to, and from, it. But just be aware that it scans its internal memory, and the removable storage, and creates a list. So it doesn’t matter if your ebook is in twenty separate chapters within a nice folder, the 505 will just list those twenty files among everything else, same with photos, so it’s best to tidy up your collection.

But using what? It came with Windows discs!

Ah young grasshopper, Linux has an equivalent for everything!

CALIBRE

Linux has a wonderful, and magical, application known as Calibre. It can automatically detect the 505 (as an ebook reader), send files to it and many other great things.

Installing Calibre is the (slightly) tricky part as it’s the old 0.4 version that’s in the Ubuntu repo’s. But fear not, as some kind soul has created a PPA to let us easily install 0.5:

https://launchpad.net/~fabricesp/+archive/ppa

Add the PPA by fabrice_sp, follow the instructions to add the PPA key and Calibre 0.5 will show up in your package manager.

Calibre 0.5 (note: my PRS-505 is not plugged in yet)

The GUI for Calibre is pretty self explanatory, in the settings you pick/create a folder to put all your ebooks in, tell Calibre where your ebooks (or folders of ebooks) are and it will add them to its database and copy them to the folder you specify in the settings, this keeps everything nice and neat. As soon as you plug in the 505, Calibre detects it and displays it in the top bar in the window (beside the rather large heart icon). Now you can right click on a book and select to send it to the 505’s internal memory or removable storage (if you have it).

Calibre certainly isn't short of conversion options!

Not only does Calibre send and organise books, it converts too! And this is where it won me over. You see, I’m an old sk00l comic fan and to read comics on the 505 would be a dream come true, and Calibre makes it so!

Brassneck - If you know what this is, then your old, like me...

You can add CBR/CBZ files to your library then convert them to LRF format for viewing on the 505! OK, they’ll be in black and white, but very readable! Even when the pages are displayed as fit-to-screen (above).

News feeds, dozens of 'em! And in several different languages.

But wait, it does more! Calibre also has an extensive list of news feeds which it can grab, convert to epub and send to your 505! What I’ve been doing is leaving my 505 plugged in overnight, setting Calibre to retrieve the news feeds at 6am (from various news sources) and upload them to the 505 automatically. So when I wake up at 8am I can grab by PRS-505, sit on the bus, and read the days news. Very handy.

This is the Glasgow Herald news feed...

It will display that feed as a list of titles and (text) previews (above) which lets you select the story you want to read:

And here's the news story in all it's (probably shameful) glory.

And, like any other ebook, you can zoom the text, this is the text at the largest setting:

Now that's BIG!...

So this could also be a good present for an older relative who likes their news and books but finds books/newspaper print too small.

I got my PRS-505 for a mere £150, which is a bargain, and I’m delighted with it. It will fit in the inside pocket of my jacket and will, no doubt, entertain me on the journeys to, and from, work. It can grab me the days news, let me read books and even let me revisit my childhood by letting me read old comics! An amazing piece of electrical wizardry!

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CALIBRE NOTE:

When trying to convert CBR files to LRF I kept getting a libunrar.so error. Unfortunately this file is not in the repo’s or anywhere else for that matter. After getting help from the MobileRead forum the solution is this: download the Calibre BINARY from the Calibre site, and extract the libunrar.so file from the download. Place the libunrar.so in the /usr/lib folder, you’ll no doubt need to use the command line with sudo to copy the file across. But it does work, honest!Similar Posts:

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Well, that’s when you need a playlist. Amarok does it’s own playlists, but that’s to create a playlist of songs that are on your hard drive. This tutorial is on how to create a playlist for your iPod using the songs that are on your iPod.

First things first (I’m assuming you already have songs on your iPod and you’ve used Amarok to do this) connect your iPod to the PC (it should auto-mount, most new distros recognise iPods) and load up Amarok. Click the DEVICES tab (down the left side of the screen) then click the CONNECT button at the top left of the window:

You should now see a list of all the songs, and albums, that are on your iPod. At the top of that list are two red folders, Podcasts and Playlists.

I’ve read tutorials that say you should right click on songs/albums and add them to a playlist, while the options are there to do that, it showed nothing on my iPod. After much searching, and trial and error, I found that dragging and dropping is what worked for me. So, first of all, lets create a new playlist.

Right clck on Playlists and choose ‘Create Playlist’:

And give your playlist a name, I’ll make one for AC/DC.

There it is, but it’s empty. If the playlist had songs in it, it would have that little + symbol beside it, like my Metallica playlist has. Let’s put some songs in there.

To add songs, simply open out your artists and albums (by clicking the + symbols beside them) and drag the song titles up to the playlist.

All I did was drag ‘Rock N’ Roll Train’ up, on to ACDC, and let go. Keep doing that to add songs. If I click the + symbol beside ACDC, I can see what’s in that playlist so far.

TIP: Holding down the Ctrl key lets you pick several songs to drag up in one go.

But what if I want them to play in a different order? Simply drag them arounf within the ACDC playlist.

To keep your playlist on your iPod, click the DISCONNECT button (top left)

And to be extra safe, right click on the iPod (on your desktop, I’m using Ubuntu 9.04) and EJECT it.

Done!

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First, install uShare. You can get it from the Ubuntu repos. As of writing, it’s at version 1.1a

Ok, now to configure uShare using sudo, so:

sudo gedit /etc/ushare.conf

You need to find the following entries, and make sure they look like this:

USHARE_PORT=49200
USHARE_DIR=/path/to/your/media
ENABLE_XBOX=yes

DANGER! DANGER! You must make sure there are no spaces in those entries (before, or after, the equals) and the ‘yes’ MUST be in lower case. No, I’m not kidding. I had ENABLE_XBOX as ‘YES’ and it just would not work until I changed it to ‘yes’. Also, complex names in the USHARE_DIR seems to make it show ‘No videos found’. Rename the directory, or copy your files to another directory. It might be the use of a space that causes this, not sure.

Not sure if this is 100% necessary, but several posts in other blogs have said that the ENABLE_XBOX option is a bit sporadic, so it’s best to hardwire uShare to force an Xbox compatible startup. So we need to edit another uShare file:

sudo gedit /etc/init.d/ushare

…and add this line at the beginning of the script (I put it after the comments):

USHARE_OPTIONS=-x

My PC has several eth options, I use eth1 for my original Xbox, so didn’t want to tinker with it, eth4 is for my router, so that left eth3. So to bring up eth3 (in my case):

sudo ifconfig eth3 192.168.3.1

Now we need to restart uShare using the init script:

sudo invoke-rc.d ushare restart

NOTE: do above command twice, I know it seems crazy, but the second time I run that command it gives  me a warning, but it works fine. If I run the command only once, the 360 can’t connect to my PC. Might just be a quirk on my PC.

Also do the above init to refresh your file listing. You can enable the web interface if you want to refresh files, but the init command works just as good. Remember to run it twice though!

OK you’re done.

Turn on your Xbox 360, go to My Xbox, across to the Video Library, and click. You should, in the next screen, see ‘ushare’ at the bottom of the list. Click it, and it should connect to your share directory. Voila! If you have mp3’s in your share dir, then come out of the video library and go in to the music library, they are all using the one share directory.

Playing AVI/DivX/XviD seems to be a bit of a problem. But one poster on the internet came with the simplistic solution of just renaming .AVI files to .WMV. Works like a charm!

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