How To Enable Facebook Timeline Today – And A Preview TOO

This morning Facebook announced Timeline, an awesome look at everything that has  happened in your Facebook lifespan. It’s like a story book of your online life.

Facebook is enabling Timeline early for open graph developers. As a reader of UrFix Blog you’ll learn how to get started today.

1. Log into Facebook

2. Enable developer mode, if you haven’t already. To do this, type “developer” into the Facebook search box, click the first result (it should be an app made by Facebook with a few hundred thousand users), and add the app.

3. Jump into the developer app (if Facebook doesn’t put you there automatically, it should be in your left-hand tool bar)

4. Create a new app (don’t worry — you wont actually be submitting this for anyone else to see/use). Give your shiny new app any display name and namespace you see fit. Read through and agree to the Platform Privacy agreement. This is the step you need to be verified for.

5. Ensure you’re in your new app’s main settings screen. You should see your app’s name near the top of the page

6. Look for the “Open Graph” header, and click the “Get Started using open graph” link.

Create a test action for your app, like “read” a “book”, or “eat” a “sandwich”
7. This should drop you into an action type configuration page. Change a few of the default settings (I changed the past tense of “read” to “redd” — again, only you can see this unless you try and submit your application to the public directory), and click through all three pages of settings

8. Wait 2-3 minutes

9. Go back to your Facebook homescreen. An invite to try Timeline should be waiting at the top of the page

Only developers and yourself will be able to see your new profile till September 29th.

 

here is what mine looks like

and even a map of places I’ve check in….

Have fun, and remember this is still in beta so you are bound to find a bug or two.

Firefox 6 Is Out With A Few Changes

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/new/
Firefox 6 is officially out, however the final build for all the platforms are now available for download from the official FTP channels. Much like the previous release, the changelog for Firefox 6 is quite flimsy, and the new build doesn’t feature any major new user facing feature. This is of course the side-effect of following a rapid release cycle. While it makes it easier for Mozilla to stick to the schedule, it also makes version numbers insignificant and immaterial. GHacks reported yesterday that Mozilla is planning on hiding the version number from normal users by removing it from the ‘About’ box. Of course, that would be an incredibly lame and stupid way to tackle the issue. The sensible thing for Mozilla would be to label these releases as minor version updates, and have one or two scheduled major updates per year that will actually deliver new features. Anyways, there is no point in blaming Mozilla alone. Google is the one who started this madness with their Chrome release cycle.


Coming back to Firefox 6, the biggest piece of new feature is that the address bar now highlights the domain of the website you are currently browsing. The site identity blocker has also received a minor facelift to make it sleeker than before. There are also a few behind the scenes improvements such as the support for WebSockets, improved Scratchpad, a new Web Developer menu item, an improved Web Console, and reduced browser startup time when using Panaroma.

There are as many as 1,300 changes in Firefox 6. However, almost all of them are bug fixes. When it comes to delivering new features, Firefox 6 disappoints, once again. If you have used Firefox 5, or even Firefox 4, you already know what to expect. If you liked either of those two releases, you will like Firefox 6. If you didn’t, then Firefox 6 will not change your opinion.

source http://techie-buzz.com/browsers/firefox-6-review.html

16 Cool Ass Random Linux Stuff

$ echo “Hello world”
Hello world

Urfix has compiled a sweet ass list of random stuff you can do from the command line. Hope you enjoy.

Fry: Make up some feelings and tell her you have them.

1 Multiple variable assignments from command output in BASH

read day month year <<< $(date +'%d %m %y')

This version uses read instead of eval.

2 Generate an XKCD #936 style 4 word password

shuf -n4 /usr/share/dict/words | tr -d '\n'

4 random words are better than one obfuscated word
http://xkcd.com/936/

3 All IP connected to my host

netstat -lantp | grep ESTABLISHED |awk '{print $5}' | awk -F: '{print $1}' | sort -u

find all computer connected to my host through TCP connection.

4 Ask for a password, the passwd-style

read -s -p"Password: " USER_PASSWORD_VARIABLE; echo

You can ask repeatedly for a non-blank password using this function:
function read_password() {
while [ ! -n “$USER_PASSWORD” ]; do
read -s -p”Password: ” USER_PASSWORD
if [ ! -n “$USER_PASSWORD” ]; then
echo “ERROR: You must specify a valid password, please try again”
fi
echo
done
}
Also you can set a time out (in seconds) to write the password
read -t 10 -s -p”Password: ” USER_PASSWORD_VARIABLE
if [ ! $? -eq 0 ]; then
echo “Time out!”
fi

5 Check syntax for all PHP files in the current directory and all subdirectories

find . -name \*.php -exec php -l "{}" \;

6mkdir & cd into it as single command

mkdir /home/foo/doc/bar && cd $_

The biggest advantage of this over the functions is that it is portable.

7 Merge PDFs into single file

gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=output.pdf input1.pdf input2.pdf ...

8 Create a QR code image in MECARD format

qrencode -o myqr.png 'MECARD:N:Daprophet,Isaiah;TEL:8881234567;EMAIL:isaiah.daprophet@urfix.com;;'

Add the QR code image on your webpage, business card ., etc, so people can scan it and quick add to their Contact Address Book. Tested on iPhone with QRreader.

9 Chmod all directories (excluding files)

find public_html/ -type d -exec chmod 755 {} +

+ at the end means that many filenames will be passed to every chmod call, thus making it faster. And find own {} makes sure that it will work with spaces and other characters in filenames.

10 List only the directories

find . -maxdepth 1 -type d | sort

11 copy with progress bar – rsync

rsync -rv   --progress

-r for recursive (if you want to copy entire directories)
src for the source file (or wildcards)
dst for the destination
–progress to show a progress bar

12 Find all files of a type and copy them elsewhere while keeping intact their full directory structure using find and cpio

find . -iname "*.flac" | cpio -pdm /Volumes/Music/FLAC

.flac is the filetype.
/Volumes/Music/FLAC is the destination.

13 Share a screen session

screen -x

14 Backup entire system through SSH

ssh -C USER@HOST tar -c --exclude /proc --exclude /sys / | tar -x

15 Find the package a command belongs to on debian-based distros

apt-file search iostat

16 View files opened by a program on startup and shutdown

sudo lsof -rc command >> /tmp/command.txt

Run this before you run a command in order to see what the command does as it starts.
The -c flag is useful here as the PID is unknown before startup.
All config files, libraries, logs, ports, etc used by the command as it starts up, (and shuts down) will be captured at 1s intervals and written to a file.
Useful for debugging etc.

Install Mozilla Firefox 5 Or You Will Be Murdered!

Mozilla Firefox 5 has been released earlier this week, only three months after rolling out Firefox 4 and a month after it released version 5 in beta.
Version 5 has “more than 1,000 enhancements,” which include the “Do Not Track” privacy feature and support for the CSS Animations standard, among other things.
In its rush to make the Web better, however, Mozilla is taking criticism for not making it especially clear to users that it would stop issuing vulnerability patches for Firefox 4.
That has given rise to concerns that users who delay updating for various reasons may not realize they’ll lack protection against the latest malware.
“Firefox 5 is the security update for Firefox 4, and we do not plan to release a Firefox 4.0.2,” Johnathan Nightingale, the Mozilla Foundation’s director of Firefox engineering, told TechNewsWorld.
Should Mozilla have more forcefully notified Firefox 4 users that they have to upgrade to version 5? Should it include automatic updates instead of just sending users a pop-up window reminding them to update their browsers?

The Paradox of Speed and Security
The release cycle for new versions of browsers has been drastically shortened as the players seek to trump each other’s products with newer and better ones.
That bumped-up product cycle has both advantages and disadvantages.
“Security is typically the first area to be sacrificed when developers are under increased pressure to get out new software releases,” Stach & Liu’s Brown pointed out.
“The industry will need to be vigilant in scrutinizing the security of new browser releases,” Brown warned.
On the other hand, hackers are ramping up their assaults and coming up with inventive new attacks, so browsers whose vendors lag in issuing an update pose a security risk.
“Hopefully, this rapid release approach will also result in the faster patching of security vulnerabilities,” Brown remarked.
That’s exactly what Mozilla thinks.
“By releasing small, focused updates more often, we are able to deliver improved security and stability even as we introduce new features, which is better for our users, and for the Web,” Mozilla’s Nightingale said.
“If a serious security issue is found between regularly scheduled Firefox updates, we will release an interim update quickly, as we always have,” Nightingale stated.

Complete story here