B & N Sell Off the Nook!?! No Way!

So, the rumors last week were wrong!

Barnes & Noble CEO: We’re committed to the Nook

“Although there have been doubts about the Nook (and e-book readers in general) lately, Barnes & Noble isn’t giving up on the brand anytime soon.

CEO William Lynch told CNBC today that Barnes & Noble will continue to reinforce the relationship between the digital Nook e-book brand and its brick-and-mortar stores.

Rebuffing the idea that B&N would be spinning off its Nook unit, instead, Lynch reaffirmed the company’s stance on the future of digital content:

The growth is going to be in digital, hence our investments in digital and how we’ve scaled that business. But the physical book business, by any measure and any projection, will continue to be the largest part of the business, and we’ve been growing share there, and in fact growing the business in absolute terms…That is a very profitable side of the business.

Earlier this week, Barnes & Noble said in a statement that it’s examining how to “unlock” the value of the Nook unit after disappointing sales results–especially for the Nook Simple Touch reader that debuted in May.

In December, Barnes & Noble reported fiscal second-quarter losses of $6.6 million, though there was a silver lining: the recently released Nook Tablet is said to be the fastest selling Nook product in history.”

Logins Verified via Twitter Account?

TwitterWhat do you think about having a login to a site, or application verified by your “@” Twitter ID? Will I eventually just be “@DrBillBailey” everywhere? Hummmm… interesting idea. Twitter is releasing the tools for developers to be able to add Twitter ID verification into apps.

Twitter’s new @handle distribution pilot program

“Today we introduce a new pilot program for distributing Verified Account @handles and public profile metadata to developers, media and content services, and consumer device manufacturers. The Echo Nest, Gracenote, and Rovi are the first partners in this program, which will scale the distribution of Twitter account data for integration in consumer-facing apps. Developers in the Twitter ecosystem can now work with these three partners to integrate Verified Account @handles and Tweets into their music and entertainment services.

The Echo Nest will connect Twitter Verified Accounts to its Rosetta Stone service to give developers a simple way to integrate Tweets from popular recording artists directly into their apps. The Echo Nest’s music intelligence platform powers leading music services and platforms, including Spotify, Nokia, Rdio, MOG, EMI and iHeartRadio.

Gracenote will integrate Twitter Verified Accounts for musicians, actors and other artists into its database of music and video information, which includes metadata for millions of artists, albums and movies. Gracenote’s database powers some of the world’s leading music and video products, including Apple iTunes, HTC smart phones, Ford SYNC and Sony BRAVIA TVs.

Rovi offers digital home entertainment companies an easy way to add Tweets directly from Verified Accounts into their services. Rovi’s database also includes reviews, artist bios and music clips, and is used by manufacturers and services providers.

Partnerships like these give music and entertainment fans the opportunity to interact with Tweets from their favorite artists, directly through the media services they use every day. We expect to add more partnerships to the pilot program, which will extend the Twitter experience to a new set of devices and applications.”

Dr. Bill.TV #221 – Video – “The Goodnight iPad, Hello Fedora Episode”

CES TPN coverage LIVE, the Roku Streaming Stick, Ultrabooks, hot at CES, B and N may sell Nook, Apple stores inside Target, Symantec code stolen, GSotW: Dr. Bill’s Perfect Fedora Build, Goodnight iPad; Review: Marware Leather Kindle Fire Case, Angry Birds — Sponsor: MozyPro Online Backup: Simple, Automatic & Secure Backup – Code word = PODCAST15 saves you 15% – https://bit.ly/mozypod1 — Sponsor: GoToMeeting Conferencing with HD Faces: Simple Online Collaboration – https://bit.ly/xp4FFv

Links that pertain to this Netcast:

TechPodcasts Network

Blubrry Network

Hand Held Hack


Start the Video Netcast in the Blubrry Video Player above by
clicking on the “Play” Button in the center of the screen.

(Click on the buttons below to Stream the Netcast in your “format of choice”)
Streaming M4V Audio





Streaming MP3 Audio

Streaming Ogg Audio

Download M4V Download WebM Download MP3 Download Ogg
(Right-Click on any link above, and select “Save As…” to save the Netcast on your PC.)

Available on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/lfQhaqB50qE

Available on Vimeo at: https://vimeo.com/34762850


Dr. Bill.TV #221 – Audio – “The Goodnight iPad, Hello Fedora Episode”

CES TPN coverage LIVE, the Roku Streaming Stick, Ultrabooks, hot at CES, B and N may sell Nook, Apple stores inside Target, Symantec code stolen, GSotW: Dr. Bill’s Perfect Fedora Build, Goodnight iPad; Review: Marware Leather Kindle Fire Case, Angry Birds — Sponsor: MozyPro Online Backup: Simple, Automatic & Secure Backup – Code word = PODCAST15 saves you 15% – https://bit.ly/mozypod1 — Sponsor: GoToMeeting Conferencing with HD Faces: Simple Online Collaboration – https://bit.ly/xp4FFv

Links that pertain to this Netcast:

TechPodcasts Network

Blubrry Network

Hand Held Hack


Start the Video Netcast in the Blubrry Video Player above by
clicking on the “Play” Button in the center of the screen.

(Click on the buttons below to Stream the Netcast in your “format of choice”)
Streaming M4V Audio





Streaming MP3 Audio

Streaming Ogg Audio

Download M4V Download WebM Download MP3 Download Ogg
(Right-Click on any link above, and select “Save As…” to save the Netcast on your PC.)

Available on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/lfQhaqB50qE

Available on Vimeo at: https://vimeo.com/34762850


6.5 Million Angry Birds Zinging Through the Air After Christmas!

Angry BirdsYes, you play it. Don’t lie to me! Now 6.5 million of you are after Christmas! Angry Birds is also nearly the first app downloaded on all phones, hand helds, etc! Go Birds!

Some 6.5 Million People Found Angry Birds in Their Stockings

“Buoyed by a flurry of smartphone activations, Rovio said it saw a record 6.5 million Christmas Day downloads for its Angry Birds franchise of games.

That’s nearly the number of total smartphone activations estimated to have happened over Christmas.

“We’re really excited to have such a massive number of new people get acquainted with Angry Birds over the holidays — we have exciting new releases lined up for 2012, and can’t wait to introduce them to the public,” Rovio’s Ville Heijari told AllThingsD.

That total combines downloads for three games — Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons and Angry Birds Rio — and includes a mix of paid and free downloads.
The number is up from Christmas 2010, when the company saw two million downloads across iOS and Android.

It was an appy Christmas overall, with Flurry suggesting more than a billion mobile programs were downloaded during the final week of 2011.”

Geek Software of the Week: Dr. Bill’s Perfect Fedora 16 Build!

This week we have a VERY unusual Geek Software of the Week, I am publishing my “crib notes” om how to build the perfect (for me anyway, your mileage may vary) Fedora Client using Fedora 16! I spent a good part of Christmas vacation searching for, and finding, methods to build my perfect client, and, now, all the info is gathered in one place… enjoy! (BTW… this is for the 32 bit version of the build.)

Download Fedora from:

https://fedoraproject.org/get-fedora

Burn the .iso file to a CD, boot from it, and choose the local hard drive install.

Install Remmina RDP Client, and plugins, from Add/Remove Applications within Fedora itself.

Install LibreOffice from Add/Remove Applications

Download and install the Adobe Flash Plugin via Firefox from Adobe:

https://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/otherversions/

Install Citrix Receiver from the downloaded file located at:

https://www.drbillbailey.net/files/fedora/openmotif-2.3.3-1.fc14.i686.rpm

Or, use these commands in a terminal session:

sudo yum install openmotif-2.3.3-1.fc14.i686
sudo yum remove cjkuni*

If you get a blank window named “PnaAuthDialog_popup” when running Citrix Receiver, the following solved this problem for me:

Adding an extra line in /etc/sysctl.conf at the end of the file, using your favorite editor with root privs:

net.ipv4.tcp_window_scaling=0

…and reboot.

Then, install the Chromium Web Browser by making Chromium available (add a new repository)

Place this file in your /etc/yum.repos.d/ directory (files content between the lines below)

——————————
# fedora-chromium.repo
# Place this file in your /etc/yum.repos.d/ directory

[fedora-chromium-stable]
name=Builds of the “stable” tag of the Chromium Web Browser
baseurl=https://repos.fedorapeople.org/repos/spot/chromium-stable/fedora-$releasever/$basearch/
enabled=1
skip_if_unavailable=1
gpgcheck=0

[fedora-chromium-stable-source]
name=Builds of the “stable” tag of the Chromium Web Browser – Source
baseurl=https://repos.fedorapeople.org/repos/spot/chromium-stable/fedora-$releasever/SRPMS
enabled=0
skip_if_unavailable=1
gpgcheck=0
—————————–
(The next command is all one line, be sure to enter it as such)

sudo rpm -Uvh https://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm https://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm

Then install Chromium from Add/Remove Applications

—-

Install Adobe Flash in the Chromium Browser (download from the Adobe web Site)

flash-plugin-11.1.102.55-release.i386.rpm

sudo rpm -ivh flash-plugin-11.1.102.55-release.i386.rpm

—-

Download and Install the VMware View Open Client:

https://code.google.com/p/vmware-view-open-client/downloads/list?q=RPM

Download and install:

sudo rpm -ivh VMware-view-open-client-4.5.0-297975.i386.rpm

—-

Download and install Dropbox from the Dropbox web site:

https://www.dropbox.com

—-

Set up vpnc (a Cisco compatible VPN client)

This info will help you convert your .pcf file to a .conf file for vpnc:
https://www.debuntu.org/how-to-connect-to-a-cisco-vpn-using-vpnc
https://wiki.eeeuser.com/howto:vpn

cp the vpnc.conf file that you create to /etc/vpnc/

Install vlc player from Add/Remove Applications

Set up Java:

Enter this command:

sudo yum -y install java-1.6.0-openjdk-plugin

Install Codeweavers (Purchased) Standard Edition
https://www.codeweavers.com/account/downloads/
crossover-standard-10.2.0-1.i386.rpm
Install after downloading

e-Sword Install:

Download e-Sword
Download the e-Sword Crosstie from Codeweavers:
https://www.codeweavers.com/via/e-sword
Install using Crosstie

Install audacity-freeworld from Add/Remove Applications

Install EasyTAG from Add/Remove Applications

Install GIMP from Add/Remove Applications

Install Inkscape from Add/Remove Applications

Install Filezilla from Add/Remove Applications

Install KompoZer from Add/Remove Applications

Install clamz from Add/Remove Applications
(Allows downloading MP3s from Amazon Cloud Reader as .amz files)

Install Bluefish HTML Editor from Add/Remove Applications

Then install ClamAV (Yes, an Anti-Virus for Linux!)

sudo yum install clamav clamav-update

Edit the configuration file with your favorite editor

vi /etc/freshclam.conf

and perform the following change:

1-add a # in front of “Example” (to comment/disable it)
# Comment or remove the line below.
#Example
2-uncomment (remove the # in front of) the line “DNSDatabaseInfo current.cvd.clamav.net”
# Use DNS to verify virus database version. Freshclam uses DNS TXT records
# to verify database and software versions. With this directive you can change
# the database verification domain.
# WARNING: Do not touch it unless you’re configuring freshclam to use your
# own database verification domain.
# Default: current.cvd.clamav.net
DNSDatabaseInfo current.cvd.clamav.net
3-Localized the virus database source to the nearest one by adding a new line “DatabaseMirror db.XY.clamav.net”, and changing XY by your 2 characters country code, here for Vietnam it will be:
# Uncomment the following line and replace XY with your country
# code. See https://www.iana.org/cctld/cctld-whois.htm for the full list.
# You can use db.XY.ipv6.clamav.net for IPv6 connections.
#DatabaseMirror db.XY.clamav.net
DatabaseMirror db.vn.clamav.net
4-be sure that the following line is uncomment
DatabaseMirror database.clamav.net

Install clamtk (a graphical interface for ClamAV) from Add/Remove Applications

Webmin is a great web-based tool for system administration.

Install webmin from webmin-1.570-1.rpm (Download from https://webmin.com site)

To display desktop icons, run this command as a normal user, in your account:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background show-desktop-icons true

To allow Brasero to work to allow CD Burning of Audio (MP3) Files:

yum install gstreamer-plugins-bad gstreamer-plugins-ugly gstreamer-ffmpeg

Speed up Firefox under Fedora with these steps:

Open Firefox
In the location bar enter the following:
about:config
In the filter bar enter the following:
network.http.p
Select the line that reads “network.http.pipelining”.
Double-click “false” so it changes to “true” for this value.
Next select “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests”.
Double click on the line and a text box will appear, enter “8”. The default is 4.
Next select the value”network.http.proxy.pipelining”.
Double-click “false” so it changes to “true” for this value.
Close and restart Firefox.

Install Skype
https://www.skype.com/intl/en-us/get-skype/on-your-computer/linux/downloading.fedora


Install beesu (allows you to run nautilus (file manager)) quickly and easily, however, you have to install it from yum, not Add/Remove Applications; use this command:

yum install beesu

Then, you can use it by typing:

beesu nautilus

Install gedit-beesu-plugin from Add/Remove Applications

Install nautilus-beesu-manager from Add/Remove Applications

A Note on File Associations in Fedora:

You may associate file extensions (like .mp3 or .m3u) with specific applications graphically. Go into nautilus (file manager) and right-click on a file with the extension you want to set. Click on “Properties” and then click on the tab marked “Open With” and select the application you want to use to open it, and set it as Default in the interface.

Also, an EXCELLENT resource to find answers to Fedora problems and issues is:

https://fedorasolved.org/

Tonight’s Barrage of Blogging!

A lot of posts tonight, I know! BUT, I have been totally absorbed this week at work with late night (early morning) Red Hat Enterprise Linux server upgrades. When I got home all week, I just crashed. Today was my first semi-normal day all week (and I still had a server upgrade today… but it was at least during the day!) So… long story short… no time for blogging! So, I “saved it all up” for tonight’s blogging burst! The downside of being a busy systems guy, I guess! But, hopefully, I still uncovered some interesting info for you from the tech news!

Now, on to do the video Netcasts tomorrow morning! For now, to bed!

Symantec Code Stolen!

The notorious group, Anonymous, stole some code from anti-virus and security company Symantec in India… wow!

Symantec says some source code stolen, no customer information exposed

“Symantec confirmed today that a group of Anonymous members based in India obtained source code based on a small amount of code released by the group this morning.

This is the second attack focused on Internet security companies performed by the hacker collective, Anonymous. The group recently infiltrated the servers of security analyst firm Stratfor stealing over 9,000 credit card numbers and other personally identifiable information. At the time Anonymous threatened to use the credit cards to make donations to charities as part of its vigilante appearance. In general, Anonymous doesn’t have a unified agenda, but it seems embarrassing security companies by infiltrating them and stealing credit cards and code is the flavor of the week.

Symantec, which creates anti-virus software for both businesses and consumers, discovered the potential hack on Wednesday when the group posted about its newest trophy on an Internet forum. At the time, Symantec believed only some documentation on source code built in 1999 was compromised. According to Symantec spokesperson Cris Paden, who spoke with VentureBeat over e-mail, the cyber criminals posted a segment of code on the same forum, which led Symantec researchers to confirm the code’s theft. The source code is of two outdated enterprise-grade anti-virus products built five or six years ago. No consumer products have been compromised.”

Apple Stores Inside Target Stores?

So, what if Apple hardware was even easier to buy? Closer to the public, broader appeal, more sales, hummmm… might work!

Mini Apple Stores to open inside Target locations?

“In an effort to expand its retail reach, Apple is reportedly planning to open mini Apple Store displays inside select Target locations later this year.

As many as 25 locations in smaller metro areas not large enough for Apple Stores of their own could end up with the in-Target Apple Store set-ups, “according to a source familiar with Apple’s plans,” the website AppleInsider reported Friday.

Officials at Apple weren’t available for comment on the report — the company’s usual practice is to decline to comment on rumors — but the tech giant has taken this type of approach before.

Hundreds of Best Buy locations feature Apple Store displays, with Apple signage and tables that match the look of what is seen in Apple’s retail locations.

At some Best Buy stores, there are even Apple staffers on hand from time to time to explain products to customers and show off iPads, iPhones, iPods, iMacs and MacBook laptops as well as accessories.

Target sells iPods, iPhones and iPads but no Mac computers. That is likely to change with the Apple-Store-within-a-store plan, AppleInsider said.

The site also noted that although there are 1,752 Target locations and 245 Apple Stores in the U.S., there are also more than 600 BestBuy locations with mini Apple Store displays inside.”

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