Netbook Experience

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There are some programs that you might like to run on your Acer Aspire One automatically when it first loads. Eg DropBox

There is an application included on the Acer Aspire One where you can set which programs start on startup.

To launch the Application.

1) Press Alt F2 to open the Run Program Window

2) Type xfce4-autostart-editor into the text box and click on Run

A box showing all the programs that run on startup is now loaded.

3) Click on add to add an extra program.

4) Enter a Name, description and command (eg /home/user/.dropbox-dist/dropboxd for DropBox) into the appropriate boxs and click on OK

Your program will start on startup.

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As Broadband Internet speeds get faster, cloud computing is becoming more popular, and hosted off site storage is becoming cheaper and more accessible.

Internet off site storage systems provide a simple and quick method of backing up your files to a web based drive or sharing your data across the Internet.

One popular service is DropBox. Dropbox provides  an automated method of replicating a locally hosted folder with an online storage facility, and the they give 2GB storage space free of charge.

To join DropBox click here

Although the web interface for DropBox works well on FireFox, The Linux versions of the Dropbox Desktop application provided by DropBox don’t install as standard on the Linux version of the Acer Aspire One but I found a solution to make it work on Linpus on the Acer Aspire One User Forum.

Here’s the procedure I followed to get DropBox working on the Acer Aspire One.

1) Download the tar.gz file from here: http://www.getdropbox.com/download?plat=lnx.x86 .This will download it to the Downloads folder.

2) Navigate to your Downloads folder using the File manager Open a terminal through the file menu.

3) In the terminal window enter the following command tar xvfz dropbox-lnx.x86-0.6.97.tar.gz   (if the file name of the downloaded gz file is different then alter this command to match)
This will extract to a hidden folder in Downloads called .dropbox-dist

4) View hidden files in the file manager via the View menu.

5) Copy Cut the hidden .dropbox-dist folder and paste it into the  /home/user/ directory.

To run DropBox press Alt and F2 to open the Run Program and enter ?/home/user/.dropbox-dist/dropboxd  and click on run and the log in/ new user screen should appear

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This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Eye-Fi. All opinions are 100% mine.

Digital Cameras have revolutionised the way that we take, print and publish our photographs.

Previously each film could only take a fixed number of pictures which then had to be developed by a professional developer and then kept in a physical album. This flexibility has introduced a number of additional problems.

How often have you missed place your card reader or USB cable to connect your camera to your netbook, resulting in a frustrating search before you can view your photos. Or how often have you put off transferring pictures to your computer resulting in a delay in sharing your pictures or filling up or the memory card on the camera.

From  my own experience there have been times in the past where I have forgotten  my card reader and I’ve had to use my SonyPSP and a USB cable to act as a complicated card reader.

Well now there is a neat solution which makes the job easier Eye-Fi. Eye-fi looks and acts like a standard SD memory card but adds WiFi connectivity to your camera. Just by turning your camera on you can effortlessly transfer photos and videos from your camera to your computer and favorite web sharing site.

In addition the provided software automatically backs up and organizes your photos and videos on your Windows Netbook  in date-based folders, and incredibly you can also share your photos and videos on your social networking site without even having your computer on. All you need is a SDHC capable camera and a wireless router. This could revolutionise the way you manage your photo’s.

Photo management has never been this easy. 

This video explains how Eye-fi works.

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One of the strong advantages of the Acer Aspire One over a traditional laptop computer is it’s portability.
Despite it’s reasonable specs and good functionality it’s tiny.

To emphasise this the below picture shows the AA1 sitting on top of a Panasonic F8 Toughbook (which itself is not a large laptop, and considered to be very portable).
As you can see the Acer is significantly smaller. Small is beautiful.

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In this post I described how to install Chromium on the Linpus version of the Acer Aspire One.

However a number of you had let me know that the process had stopped working, and nothing happened after you clicked on the Chromium Icon.

So I downloaded and installed the latest version and found that I go the same problem.

When I ran Chromium from the command line I got the following error:

/opt/chrome-linux/chrome: error while loading shared libraries: libbz2.so.1.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Fortunately the excellent Macles site had the sollution:

After you have completed the steps described in the previous post:

• Open a terminal window and type the following 2 lines
• rm -rf /opt/chrome-linux/libs/libbz2.so.1.0
• ln -s /lib/libbz2.so.1 /opt/chrome-linux/libs/libbz2.so.1.0

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This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of LG Chocolate Touch. All opinions are 100% mine.

People enjoy using Netbooks because they give the user the full computing experience that they are used to on their normal home computers, but in a small, portable and inexpensive package, which makes them great for travelling or as a 2nd computer, and as global mobile Internet availability improves Netbooks are coming into their own.

But what’s the next stage of portability after a Netbook, traditionally mobile phones have offered limited web and connectivity options but times are changing, and a good example of this is the LG Chocolate Touch.

In one handy small device you can access to your contact list, make phone calls, browse the Internet and communicate with all your friends using text, emails or social networking sites. The Touch also has an integrated 3.2 megapixel camera which can take good quality pictures and videos to forward to all your friends, so there’s no more need to always carry your digital camera.

To help you communicate with the world the phone includes a One-touch Social Network button for easy Mobile Blogging to site like Facebook, MySpace & Twitter.

Rather then having to carry your MP3 player around with you the touch can act as your media player, and because it comes with Dolby Mobile technology sound quality the music sounds great. The phone even comes with a Rhythmical Beat utility which makes the phone vibrate in time to the music.

There are times when whipping your netbook out isn’t appropriate, for example on the bus, or you just want to make a quick Twitter post. For those times then the Touch is  a great substitute.

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Last.FM is a free (in some countries) Internet Music Radio Service that plays music through your computer. The music is tailored to your taste based on your searches for artists, songs & Keywords. Last.FM claims to have over 30 million active users based in more than 200 countries.
Users  of Last.FM can create custom radio stations and playlists from any of the audio tracks in the services music library, and are able to listen to some individual tracks on demand.

Users need a user account from last.fm

There is a Linux.FM client which is easy to install and works well on the Acer Aspire One.

To Install Last.FM:

• Right click on the desktop to display the advanced menu.
• Choose system
• Choose Add/remove Software
• Enter your Admin Password
• Click on the search tab
• Search for Last.FM
• When the search finishes put a tick next to LastFM and then click on apply.

• When the install has finished, you will be able to launch Last.FM from the Multimedia section in the advanced menu.

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Elite is one of the most famous and legendary computer games of all time, and it’s possible to the play the space trading game on the Linux Version of the Acer Aspire One using DosBox.

To install DosBox:

• Right click on the desktop to display the advanced menu.
• Choose system
• Choose Add/remove Software
• Enter your Admin Password
• Click on the search tab
• Search for DosBox
• Select and install DosBox

DosBox is now available in the system area in the advanced menu.

Elite (and Elite Plus) is freely and legally available from Ian Bell’s Website who co-wrote Elite.

• Download the version of Elite you want to play from http://www.iancgbell.clara.net/elite/pc/index.htm
• using XAchiver extract the files to your DosBox folder (eg /home/user/dosprog)
• Launch DosBox from the Advanced Menu and map the c: drive to your DosBox folder (eg mount c ~/dosprog).
• Switch to your mounted drive.

You can now launch Elite from the Dos prompt in DosBox

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