Today was one of those times that I needed to merge two PDF documents so I’ve looked around and found PDF-Shuffler which is a small python-gtk application, which helps you to merge or split PDF documents and rotate, crop and rearrange their pages using an interactive and intuitive GUI. It is a frontend for python-pyPdf.

You only need to import your PDF documents, the documents pages will appear on the main screen, then you are able to rearrange it’s order by dragging them with your mouse, or delete the ones you don’t need.

You can also watch the video below which is self-explanatory.

Although it is still an alpha version it already allows you to perform the regular navigation activities that you are used to with an incredible speed.

It’s layout is also a bit different of what we are used to, in my opinion it is great, KISS principle all the way.  I also like the new functionalities like the task manager which allows you to take control over the used memory with each tab/window and the browser itself.

With all this in mind I expect a great browser to arise from Google in the next months. Below are the steps that I needed to perform to install Chromium on Xubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid).

First of all you need to edit the /etc/apt/sources.list file:

$ sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Add the following two lines at the bottom of the file:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-daily/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-daily/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main

Now save/close the file and add the GPG key using the following command:

--rev-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 0xfbef0d696de1c72ba5a835fe5a9bf3bb4e5e17b5

Next we will update the source list and install the browser:

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install chromium-browser

If you want you can also enable flash support by copying (or linking) your previously installed flash library into browser plugins directory:

$ sudo cp /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer/libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/chromium-browser/plugins

And you are done, next time you run it you will only need to specify the plugins usage with following command:

$ chromium-browser --enable-plugins

You can download GNotify plugin here, and if you don’t know how to install an aMSN plugin, you can read the installation instructions here.

This new version includes a number of nifty new features, lots of bug fixes, and an easy upgrade path from Django 1.0. You can also read the list of security updates here.

It allows you to switch through opened tabs with a combination of keys (like you usually do in your operating system to switch through opened programs).

I’ve been using for a couple of days now and it’s been working great. It is really useful when you have 20 tabs opened inside a window and you want so select a specific one. It also has a lot of options and customizable environments which is a plus.

Because a picture is worth more than a thousand words here is a link to FoxTab homepage, image gallery included, and a video on YouTube which illustrates it’s usage.

For a couple of weeks I’ve been reading some articles about Google Android, the new operating system for mobile devices from Google.

And I must say that I’m very curious about it. Android seems a nice alternative to iPhone which seems to be having a couple of problems with App Store and their rejection politics.

Currently there are already some devices powered by Android for sale in Portugal and as expected the prices charged by operators are quite high, which does not always allows you to purchase them easily.

If you are very curious about it but you are unable to acquire such a device in the near future or you just want to take a peek before buying it, there is an alternative that allows you to do that with no cost.

I am talking about the Live Android, a version for x86 architectures. You can download a LiveCD disc image of the Google Android operating system and burn the image to a disc, stick it in a CD-ROM drive, reboot your computer and you can check out Android without installing it or affecting any files on your PC.

You can also use the disc image in a virtualization application like VirtualBox, VMWare or Microsoft Virtual PC if you want to try the operating system without even rebooting your computer.

If you want to keep in touch with Android latest news or you just need some help while developing an application for it, you may want to take a look at the Portuguese community of Android.

For a long time now I have been looking for something like this to help me to keep track on the blogs that I like to read often. Since I’ve got back on blogging I’ve found it to be the right moment to search for a similar tool.

Although I’m only using it for a couple of days, Liferea seems a nice piece of software, it’s incredibly simple, fast and it also has some nice features.

You should definitely give it a try.

After a few Windows updates her LAN card decided not to work, after trying new drivers with no success, and because her laptop it’s quite new and it was getting a bit slow due to Vista fancy stuff.

I’ve decided to uninstall Windows Vista and install Windows XP, at the moment it’s running very smooth and no LAN card problems detected yet.

From what I’ve read some people had a really hard time trying to find drivers to support all the hardware, most of them I’ve found on Toshiba website.

At the moment her laptop is running with Firefox, aMSN and a nice and clean wallpaper.

Next step will be the installation of  Xubuntu!

After reading a lot of tutorials about related issues that were fixed using the any-any patches, I’ve found the specific-specific patch (the ones who should be used for specific kernel versions).

After you install this patch the installation will proceed and your problems will go away.

This happened because I was trying to install VMware Player 2.0.5, an old version.

At the moment the latest version is 2.5 and it already has a nice GUI and runs with no problems, try it.. it will save you some precious time.

Although I’m a big fan of Fedora I wasn’t very happy with the lack of speed while running a few applications, then I’ve decided to try a different Linux distribution.

The first one that I thought it would be a good alternative was Ubuntu, but after reading a couple of threads, I’ve finally decided to get Xubuntu.

Xubuntu is an official derivative of the Ubuntu operating system and it uses the Xfce desktop environment.

My laptop is running Xubuntu since last Friday and it’s very stable, one of the things that made me very happy, considering that I have an ATI Graphics Card (9200 series), was 3D support being enabled out of the box.

I’m also loving Xfce, I thought it would be minimalistic but it has great potential.

Another thing that I really appreciate is the speed of Synaptic while listing/installing new packages.

When I was using Fedora that was one of the turn offs because Pirut was slow and most of the times it didn’t allowed me to see the package installation process because it used to freeze all the time.

If you can’t waste much time in instalation processes and your system is getting old.. this is the right distribution for you!