How to Create Your Own Customized Ubuntu Live CD

We love a good live CD, but what if your favorite one doesn't quite have every application or tweak you need? Here's how to roll your own Ubuntu Live CD, with all the packages you want, and some nice customizations, to boot.

The tool that we're going to use is called Reconstructor, which is a free webapp that lets you roll your own Ubuntu and Debian live CDs.

Getting Started:

The first step is to sign up for an account at Reconstructor. Click the Sign Up link and fill out the form that appears. Confirm your account by clicking on a link that will be emailed to you, and then log in.

You'll be greeted by Reconstructor's main interface. To create your customized Ubuntu CD, click on the Create Project button in the left column.

Fill out the basic information about your project. In our case, we're going to customize an Ubuntu 9.10 Live CD, to include some useful utilities.

Customize Your CD:

In the main project screen, you will be given a number of options to modify. We'll start off by adding in some packages that are not included in Ubuntu by default.

Click on the plus icon next to the Packages label.

Type in the name of the package you want to add and click Search. All Ubuntu repositories are enabled, so no need to worry about enabling universe or mulitverse. When you've found the package you want to add, add a check to the checkbox at the right and then click Add.

Reconstructor also offers a number of other customizations, like changing the default wallpaper or adding a splash image — you can even add a Gconf key if you want tomove the window buttons in Ubuntu 10.04.

These customizations are found in the Modules section. Click on the plus icon next to Modules to see all of the options.

One module that we're going to use allows you to install a deb package. For example, we want to include the avast! virus scanner to our live CD, but it's not in any repository. So we're going to tick the checkbox next to the Install deb Package 0.1 module and click Add.

In the main project page, click on the Install deb Package link under the Modules header. From there, you can select the deb package and upload it.

Collaborate on Your Live CD

If you would like to collaborate with another person, you can add them in the Members section, and the project will show up in the Shared Projects section. You can also tag your project, though at the moment the tags do not do much. There are also some advanced things you can do with the Post Script Editor, if you're so inclined.

Download Your CD:

Once you're finished customizing, it's time to create an .iso that you can burn to a disc and try out! In the main Reconstructor screen, click on the gear icon in the set of icons near the top of the screen.

This starts the build process. It will take some time for the CD to be built (around twenty minutes for us). In the meantime, it will be added to the Jobs section of the interface. You can click on the label to see how the build process is progressing.

However, there's no need to keep clicking and checking –- when the build process is done, you'll receive an email at the address that you used to sign up for the Reconstructor service.

The Project link starts an .iso downloading, which you can then burn and try out. Putting Your CD On a Flash Drive

However, if you don't want to burn a CD, or just prefer to use a USB flash drive, you can make a bootable flash drive easily using the Universal USB Installer (on Windows), it's a nice and easy way to make persistent and non-persistent bootable flash drives.

If you want to create a non-persistent bootable flash drive, then in the Universal USB Installer window, choose "Try Some Other Live Linux ISO" from the dropdown box, and browse to find the .iso you downloaded from Reconstructor.

If you want to make a persistent flash drive –- one that will remember the options you set and the additional packages you install in the Live CD environment –- you can do so with a little trick.

In the Universal USB Installer window, choose the version of Ubuntu that you used as a base for your project in Reconstructor. Rename the .iso that you downloaded from Reconstructor to match what Universal USB Installer asks for. Then choose how large you want the persistent partition to be.

Don't worry, your flash drive will still boot up like a normal Ubuntu Live CD, and when you get to the desktop environment, you can see that the additional customizations you made through Reconstructor are there.

Reconstructor is a great free webapp for making your own custom Linux CDs. If you're not comfortable using the Reconstructor webapp, you can also download the open-source Reconstructor Engine by itself. You can even export projects made on the webapp and use the engine locally so you don't have to download a big .iso file!

HTC WILDFIRE : The Mini Version of HTC DESIRE

A global designer of Smartphones, HTC Corporation introduced HTC Wildfire, a new HTC Sense-based Android phone that integrates the most popular social networks to help bring your friends closer to you. HTC Wildfire closely follows the success of the acclaimed HTC Desire and makes the company’s signature HTC Sense experience accessible to a younger audience. 

"Today’s social networks provide an essential forum for friendship with more than 400 million users - many of whom are young adults - actively sharing their lives with their friends through Facebook,” said Jack Tong, Vice President, HTC Asia Pacific. “HTC Wildfire makes the HTC Sense experience available to young mobile users for the first time. It brings all your communications into one place, whether it’s through Facebook, Twitter, text messages, images or email, ensuring that you are never far away from the conversation and always close to your friends.”

HTC Wildfire helps you stay connected with those who are most important to you through HTC Sense, a user experience focused on putting people at the centre by making phones work in a more simple and natural way. You won’t miss out on the fun as HTC’s Friend Stream application seamlessly gathers and displays content from social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr into one organised stream of updates. HTC Wildfire enables you to stay up to date with your friends’ posts, comments, alerts and photos, wherever you are.

In addition, each contact viewed in HTC Wildfire’s address book includes a thread of recent communications with that person, including when you last spoke, recent text messages and emails, and social network updates. When your friend calls, HTC Caller ID displays their Facebook profile photo and latest social network update, as well as a reminder if their birthday is fast approaching.

Thanks to a new app sharing widget, HTC Wildfire enables you to recommend an application by email, text message or over social networks. Your friends will receive a link allowing them to find the application on the Android Market with a single click and download it to their phone.

Jack Tong continued, “We understand that people need a better way to navigate their way through the tens of thousands of applications that are currently available on the Android Market. In fact, our own independent research found that consumers are not only hungry for the latest and most popular applications that their friends are using, they want an easier way to find and download them. For the first time ever, you can recommend the newest and coolest apps to a friend or group of friends with HTC Wildfire. With so many applications to choose from, there’s a world of content to discover and pass along to your friends.”

HTC’s latest advanced smartphone is great for viewing and sharing photos on Flickr and for surfing the internet thanks to its 3.2-inch capacitive touch screen. A five-megapixel camera with auto focus and LED flash allows you to capture special moments, while a 3.5mm audio jack and micro SD card slot mean you are never without your favourite songs.

Pricing & Availability: The new HTC Wildfire will be available this weekend at all authorized resellers in three colours, Phantom Black, Flamenco Red and Pure White at a suggested retail price of $498+

Full Specification:

NETWORK:

-2G Network GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900

-3G Network HSDPA 900 / 2100

ANNOUNCED:  2010, May
AVAILABILITY in INDIA : From 10th July, 2010

SIZE: 

-Dimensions 106.8 x 60.4 x 12 mm

-Weight 118 g

DISPLAY :

Type:  TFT capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors

Size:    240 x 320 pixels, 3.2 inches

- Multi-touch input method

- Accelerometer sensor for UI auto-rotate

- Touch-sensitive controls

- Proximity sensor for auto turn-off

- Optical trackpad

- HTC Sense UI

- Turn-to-mute and lift-to-dim-out a call

SOUND: 

Alert types Vibration, MP3

Speakerphone Yes

- 3.5 mm audio jack

MEMORY: 

-Phonebook Practically unlimited entries and fields, 

-Photocall

-Call records Practically unlimited

-Internal 384 MB RAM; 512 MB ROM

-Card slot microSD, up to 32GB, buy memory

DATA 

-GPRS Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps

-EDGE Class 10, 236.8 kbps

-3G HSDPA, 7.2 Mbps

-WLAN Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g

-Bluetooth Yes v2.1 with A2DP

-Infrared port No

-USB Yes, microUSB v2.0

CAMERA: 

-Primary 5 MP, 2592 x 1944 pixels, 

-Autofocus, 

-LED flash

-Smile detection, 

-Geo-tagging

-Video Yes

-Secondary No

FEATURES:

-OS Android OS, v2.1 (Eclair)
-CPU Qualcomm MSM 7225 528 MHz processor

-Messaging SMS(threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Email, IM

-Browser HTML

-Radio Stereo FM radio with RDS

-Games Yes

-Colors Black, Brown, White, Red

-GPS Yes, with A-GPS support

-Java Via third party application

- Digital compass

- Dedicated search key

- Facebook, Flickr, Twitter integration

- Google Search, Maps, Gmail

- YouTube, Google Talk, Picasa integration

- MP3/AAC+/WAV/WMA9 player

- MP4/H.263/H.264/WMV9 player

- Voice memo

- T9

BATTERY 

-Standard battery, Li-Ion 1300 mAh

-Stand-by Up to 480 h (2G) / Up to 690 h (3G)

-Talk time Up to 7 h 20 min (2G) / Up to 8 h 10 min (3G)

Google Latitude : Share your location with friends

Google has added tracking software to its Google Maps service, allowing mobile phone users to share their location with friends and family, and find other contacts who might be nearby. The new feature, dubbed Latitude, is part of the Google Maps 3.0 software update, and will initially only be available on BlackBerry mobile phones and those devices running the Windows Mobile and Symbian S60 operating systems. It will be rolled out to iPhone and Google Android users in the coming weeks.

Google said that the Latitude service was designed to answer the question most asked by mobile phone users – namely, “Where are you?”. It uses a combination of local phone masts and Wi-Fi internet hotspots to triangulate a users’ approximate position.

Hugo Barra, group product manager for Google Mobile, said that the service would be particularly useful for groups of friends meeting at a party, rock concert, or outdoor event, or even to see how far from home a spouse is so you know when to start cooking dinner. “We believe this is the kind of technology that will allow people to meet up more spontaneously with people they happen to be around,” said Barra. “It’s a very intuitive service.”

Once users sign up to Latitude, an icon representing their position, and the position of friends and contacts, will appear on the Google Maps software on their mobile phone. It can even provide directions to help users navigate their way to their friend’s location, and users can click on a friend’s icon to call, text, and email them, or send an instant message. There is also the option to add a “status update”, so that users can see what their friends are doing.

Google Latitude is an opt-in service, which means that mobile phone users will have to give their explicit permission as to whether they want to share their location with friends and contacts. Users will be able to go “off grid” whenever they choose, and can either share specific details about their location, or just the name of the city they are in. “We thought long and hard about making sure users have complete control over how and when they want to be found,” said Barra. “You have the option of hiding completely from all your friends, or setting your location manually.”

Users who sign up to Google Latitude using their Google login will be presented with a screen explaining the service, and will then be able to invite friends to share their location in return.

Once a Google Maps user receives a Latitude invitation, they can decide whether to accept the invitation and share their location in return, accept the invitation so they can see where their friend is but not share their own location, or reject the invitation completely. And even once a user accepts a Latitude invitation and agrees to share their location, they are able to adjust how much information about their location they divulge on a contact-by-contact basis.

“This asymmetrical sharing model is very important,” said Barra. “Having individual level controls is also very helpful and allows users to very specifically control the application the way they want. Privacy is one of the areas we spent the most time perfecting. The privacy settings are very intuitive, and the controls can be found all over the service.”

The Latitude service will eventually be available on other Google services, such as its iGoogle personalised homepage tool and Google Gears offline synchronisation service.

Hugo Barra said Latitude hade undergone one of the most extensive field tests of any product in Google history. “This product has been in development for a very long time,” he said.

He added that Google currently has no plans to make its latitude service work with third-party websites, such as Facebook and Twitter, because of the need to stringently manage the privacy needs of users.

  

Facebook Trips and Tricks

With Facebook’s ever-changing layout, and the fact that other social sites are encroaching on its real-time update strangle-hold, it’s easy to forget that there are some pretty nifty tricks you can pull using your humble Facebook status.

We’ve pulled together 10 great how-to tips that will help you get the most out of your status update, from official features to apps, Easter eggs, jokes and more. Perfect for newer Facebook users, or anyone who is looking for a refresher, read on and let us know the ones you like in the comments below.

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1. HOW TO: Add a Dislike Option to Your Status Update

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“Like” buttons are everywhere on Facebook, and they’re everywhere on the web. But what if you want to update your status or share something that your friends can “dislike?” We know, your friends can choose to “comment” on your post, but where’s the fun in that?

The clever Status Magic Facebook app can add a dislike button to any status updates posted via the app. And if you wanted to really mix it up you can actually customize the second emotion to anything, such as “love,” “hate,” “disagree” or even “LOLs.”

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2. HOW TO: Hide Status Updates From Certain People

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Using Facebook’s general privacy settings (find these by hitting “account” on the top right of a Facebook page) you can select whether everyone, just friends or friends of friends can see your status updates. However, there is a way to narrow those options down even further.

You can select specific friend lists to see your status (relevant for work, special interest groups, etc.) or even individual people by name, which is useful for anyone organizing a surprise party.

To take advantage of these options, click the padlock icon just below your “what’s on your mind” box on your wall and a drop down menu should appear. Selecting “customize” will bring up more options such as “make this visible to” and “hide from” with the option to make your selection a default.

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3. HOW TO: Pre-Schedule Status Updates

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While SocialOomph, Sendible and HootSuite offer the same kind of service, the simplest way to schedule Facebook status updates is by using the easy, free Later Bro service.

Just sign in with Facebook Connect, select your time zone, type in what it is you’d like to say, set the calendar and clock to when you’d like to say it, and presto!

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4. HOW TO: Tag People in Your Status Updates

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This was quite a big deal when it was announced this past September, but from the amount of searches on the topic “how can I make someone’s name go blue in a Facebook status?” it seems it’s not universally known.

To mention someone in a status update just type “@” in the status bar and start typing their name as it appears on Facebook. An auto-generated list will then come up with people in your social circle whose name starts with the letters you’ve typed. The feature also works with pages, brands, events and companies. Hit the name you want, complete the update, click share and the name will become a hyperlink (you won’t see the @ symbol) and will appear in blue text.

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5. HOW TO: Add Symbols to Your Facebook Status

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Although there are plenty of emoticons that work with Facebook Chat, typing “:)” into Facebook’s status bar will not magically transform into a smiley yellow face. In fact, the only symbol you can create in a Facebook status update through the shortcut keys is a ♥, by typing “<3." 

While this won't bother many Facebook users, others more used to punctuating their missives can copy and paste web-happy, universal symbols into the box, as you can see in the screengrab above. PC users can also access some symbols by hitting “alt” + various number combinations (on a numerical keypad). So, while smileys are yet to hit Facebook statuses, you can annoy or amuse your buddies with symbols right now.

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6. HOW TO: Turn Your Status Updates Into a Word Cloud

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There’s a really fun way to visualize anyone’s status updates (even an entire country’s) as a word cloud. The Status Analyzer 3D app will look at what it is you’ve been chatting about lately and generate a list, and then a pretty, colorful, animated cloud as pictured above. You can share the results with others on the social networking site by posting it to your friends’ walls or by adding it to your profile.

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7. HOW TO: Have Fun With Facebook’s Humorous Language Options

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While you can always change your setting into more sensible alternative languages, the site offers a couple of fun linguistic Easter eggs.

You can chose to have Facebook display upside down English, or, for anyone feeling a little salty, in “pirate.” Pirate essentially turns your status into your “plank,” your attachments into “loot” and instead of “share” it offers the option to “blabber t’ yer mates.” Sadly, anything you type in the status bar won’t be upside down, or pirate-y. But with the use of some external sites you can achieve the same effect. TypeUpsideDown.com and UpsideDownText.com are just two examples of sites that can flip your text, while the Talk Like a Pirate Day site can help you with your pirate translations.

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8. HOW TO: See Status Updates From Around the World

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If you want to get a glimpse of the thoughts of Facebook users from around the world’s, head over to OpenBook. Created by three San Fran web developers with a serious privacy message in mind, the site aggregates the status updates of everyone whose privacy levels are set to “everyone.”

You can narrow your searchable results down by gender and keywords to find out what people are saying about a certain topic. Or you can just browse the recent searches.

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9. HOW TO: See Your Status Update Stats

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Have you ever wondered how many times you have updated your status on Facebook? The Facebook app Status Statistics, can tell you this and more.

The app analyzes your updates and gives you a tidy list of how many you’ve written, the average word count and how many times a day you post. In addition, it generates a graph that shows you what time of day or what days of the week you normally update. Old statuses are also searchable via the app, so you can find that witty retort you made back in November 2009 without having to scroll back through your history.

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10. HOW TO: Play a Trick On Your Friends in Your Status Update

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We have a funny one to end on — a way to play an amusing trick on your Facebook buddies. This clever link “http://facebook.com/profile.php?=73322363″ looks like it could be a URL for anyone’s Facebook profile, actually takes anyone logged into Facebook to their own profile page.

If you try it out, be sure to remove the link preview that Facebook auto-ads. Have fun, and don’t be too mean…

Google to launch Google Games (Rumor)

Google is reportedly partnering with FarmVille and Mafia Wars game-maker Zynga to launch a hub where you’ll be able to play social online games.

The source of the rumor is the tech blog TechCrunch, which claims to have confirmed the story with multiple sources. The search giant has allegedly invested between 100 and 200 million dollars in the massive game company, which already sits with Google in the small club of web companies that are valued at much more than $1 billion. Details on the new portal (which TechCrunch calls “Google Games”) are few and far between. The best hints you’ll find are in a job posting for position at the top of Google’s Games division. The “Project Management Leader, Games” would develop a “games commerce product strategy” through both partnerships and in-house projects of one kind or another. The job posting also specifies that both web-based and mobile games are part of the plan.

  

World First Projector Business Phone by Samsung

Samsung Electronics, the no. 2 producer of mobile phones, will release its Galaxy Beam to StarHub customers on July 17. Samsung Electronics' AMOLED phone is displayed for visitors at the company's headquarters. The displays' high price is slowing adoption by other handset makers.

Galaxy Beam, which is the first Android-based smartphone that comes with a pico projector,  can show movies and images at 640 x 480 pixel resolution, according to Samsung. The addition of a projector is an interesting feature for professional and entertainment use, because users don't have to use a separate unit, according to Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner. She says smartphones with built-in projectors will remain a niche product, however. 

First unveiled at the Mobile World Congress 2010 in February this year, the Galaxy Beam is based on version 2.1 of Android, has a 3.7-inch Super-AMOLED (Active-Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode), an 8-megapixel camera and can be used as a wireless access point.

"The Android platform has been gaining ground in many smartphone markets worldwide and the Galaxy Beam marries exciting features such as StarHub's mobile TV app, offering projection of a mobile TV programme on the wall," said Mr Ng Long Shyang, Head of Sales, StarHub. "This unique smartphone also allows business customers to display presentations on the wall during business discussions."

The device will be available at all StarHub Shops and selected Exclusive Partners' outlets. Customers can visit selected StarHub Shops to check out the phoneFrom July 10, 2010.

  

Cisco Cius Tablet Powered by Android

With one product announcement, Android goes from Enterprise outcast to forerunner.

If your enterprise doesn't use a VoIP call center from Cisco or Cisco networking equipment in your server room, it still likely uses Cisco's Webex for video calling. Pretty soon those Cisco salespeople are going to be calling up your Director of IT and pitching them on what appears to be a very cool little Android tablet called Cius.

It may one day soon replace your office phone. And your mobile phone. And maybe even your laptop.

Cius is a 7-inch Android tablet that does a few things that will get business users excited. First, as an Android device, it has a solid browser that operates over Wifi or 3G/4G (and they even say via Ethernet - this is Cisco after all). Business-based web apps can be accessed locally or through a VPN client. It also appears to offer a virtual desktop through a Citrix-type client for legacy applications.

The main focus appears to be video conferencing and taps into all of Cisco's VoIP and Telepresense software. They even mention 720P video conferencing, which would seem to indicate a very densely pixeled screen and HD camera.

Cisco also mentions a collaborative Android Marketplace relationship where they offer developers a chance to work with Cisco's technology and at the same time Cius users can dive into the Android Marketplace (assuming with the IT Director's blessing) for apps.

  

GMAIL is now in HTML5

In keeping with Google's enthusiasm for the emerging HTML5 standard, many upcoming features of the company's Gmail Web-based e-mail service will be rendered in HTML5, said Adam de Boor, a staff software engineer working on the service.

"We have things that we can do much more efficiently in HTML5," said De Boor, speaking Thursday at the Usenix WebApps '10 in Boston.

"HTML5 is exciting to me insofar as to how many browser makers are adopting it," he said, adding, "I have high hopes for IE9."

One of the chief benefits he pointed to is how the standard could speed the loading and execution time of Gmail.

Google's current goal is to get Gmail to load in under a second. "Speed is a feature," he said.

Early tests have proved promising. For instance, Gmail looks for those browsers that can work with version 3 of the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), a standard closely related to HTML5. If the browser supports CSS3, Gmail will render the pages using these specifications, rather than its traditional approach of using the Document Object Model (DOM). The company has found that using CSS3 can speed the rendering time by 12 percent.

HTML5 will also help in building new features. One feature that the Gmail design team is now working on is the ability to drag files from the desktop into the browser.

This feature will be important in that it will bring Web applications even closer in feature functionality to desktop applications, de Boor said.

Gmail will also make use of HTML5's database standards. Now, the e-mail service uses Google Gears to store mail for offline reading, but over time that will migrate to the HTML5 standards.

De Boor also talked about adding new features that couldn't be rendered using HTML5.

One will be the ability to drag files from the browser window onto the desktop. To do this, his team is working on a new data transfer protocol, called "downloadurl."

"We tried to get this in HTML5," but were unable to do so. He jokingly said that Google will have to lobby to have some of the functionality needed to make that happen added into HTML6, which, as of today, does not exist in any form.

Instead of rendering it into a standard, the company will "encourage other browsers to use it," he said.

He noted that the company doesn't wasn't to revisit the "browser wars" of the last decade. "We tried to learn from history and be much more cooperative to the other browser makers," he said.

Another new feature he talked about was something called "Magic iFrame," which would allow a user to take part of a Web page, rendered in a frame, and pull it out and make it its own full Web page in a new browser window.

Currently, the Gmail program is comprised of 443,000 lines of JavaScript, with 978,000 lines if comments are included. All of it was written by hand, he said.

During the question-and-answer session, De Boor was asked if he was comfortable using JavaScript for such a large project.

He admitted that another language, such as Java itself, might be more optimized, but he also noted that Java is a lot more verbose as well. "At this point to me it's a matter of choice which language you use," he said. He defended JavaScript's performance, though.

"Most of the irritation around JavaScript comes from how it is implemented in browsers," he said.