OpenCarolina

My calendar synchronization developed a problem when Outlook went crazy on my computer. Basically Outlook would refuse to synchronize with my V3. I was able to solve it by using Motorola’s mobile PhoneTools software.

From the main screen
Menu > Organizer > Mobile Phone > Backup/Restore
OR
Open the Calendar
Tools > Synchronize > Backup/Restore

Just go through the menus and select the options to delete the calendar data from your phone. After a minute or two of processing your phone’s calendar should be empty. Now you should be able to re-open Outlook and sync the data.

Ever needed to find a web application for a specific purpose? Just the other day I was searching for a content management system (CMS) for AITP @ SDSU. I narrowed down the field to a couple options through freshmeat.net, and I began to download and install them on my local machine. After hours of installation and configuration I decided Joomla! was the best fit for us.

It is a lot of work to go through each time you need to select a software and OpenSourceCMS has a better way of handling this process. They host a huge number of web applications and allow you to demo them:
- Portals (CMS)
- Blogs
- e-Commerce
- Groupware
- Forums
- e-Learning
- Image Galleries
- Wikis
At OpenSourceCMS you can try software without going through all the hassles of installation and configuration. I wish I knew about this site BEFORE I spent all that time playing with CMS softwares, but next time I know what to do.

In going over the logs to a website I managed, I noticed that there were error hits on pages I had removed almost a year ago. I decided to investigate and found that Google was returning links to the pages from my old website.

Since Google was obviously not getting the message that the pages did not exist I decided to take matters into my own hands. Using the manual web page removal tool from Google I was able to get those old links out of the search results.

One thing to keep in mind, unless you page returns a plain old 404 error, Google will not exclude it. This is to prevent people from removing someone else’s real content.

Everyone should check from time to time and see if the search results for your site are valid. Do your part to eliminate 404 errors.

So you want to edit an audio file and need a piece of software. An excellent choice would be Audacity. According to the Audacity website:

Audacity is a free, easy-to-use audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems. You can use Audacity to:

* Record live audio.
* Convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs.
* Edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, and WAV sound files.
* Cut, copy, splice, and mix sounds together.
* Change the speed or pitch of a recording.
* And more!

I used Audacity to create the audio for my “Linux: a million to one shot” animation and to craft a “Zelda” mp3 ringtone for my cellphone. If you want to create mp3 format files you will also have to install lame because Audacity needs an mp3 encoder.

For more information about using Audacity on Linux check out this article: Professional Sound Editing with Audacity by Howard Wen — Think Linux lacks for good multimedia creation and editing applications? Think again. In the world of sound editing, Audacity is powerful and easy to use, and it’s free software. Howard Wen explores the design, features, and future of Audacity.

According to an email from sent out on September 9th Debian will offer security updates for its “Testing” version:

The Debian testing security team is pleased to announce the beginning of full security support for Debian’s testing distribution. We have spent the past year building the team, tracking and fixing security holes, and creating our infrastructure, and now the final pieces are in place, and we are able to offer security updates and advisories for testing.

This is welcome news for those of us who like to run a more cutting edge softwares and versions on our desktop PCs . Now I can have eye-candy and security too. What will they think of next?