If you’re running Fedora or RedHat and you download the plugin required from Google to make voice calls from inside gmail, you’ll need to convert it to an RPM before you can use it. Alien will convert RPMs to Debian .deb packages and vice versa. Download and unpack. You don’t even need to compile or install to use it.

ImageMagick falls short here. You can convert between the different pixel formats, and you can convert a vector file to a bitmap type, but it doesn’t convert pixels to vectors. Inkscape can convert pixmap to vectors. There’s also an online tool called Vector Magic.

With the power of rsync, it’s quite easy to accidentally erase, overwrite, or otherwise destroy your data with one slip of the keys. Even if you supply the right switches, you might leave off a slash or put one where it doesn’t belong.

To turn them back on, try holding your ALT key and click somewhere on the screen. This should restore access to them again. Or try closing Firefox and try restarting it in safe mode. This will work if you’ve also added plugins or extensions that are giving you grief.

Facebook does not provide this functionality and it does not allow any kind of app to covertly do this kind of monitoring either. If an Application claims to provide this functionality, you can report that application for abuse.

The main highlights are the support for 64-bit applications, and the new graphics based on the Tango standard. But it’s hard to say what the best change is. There’s just so many!

It’s in beta right now, and you’ll need to apply with your gmail account before you can use it, but it looks like a great learning tool that may lure many young minds into the world of software development. As the tools get more powerful in the future, the quality of apps created using Google App Inventor should grow.

Ever want to see the structure of some directories from the command line just like you can in a nautilus or windows explorer interface? Try the UNIX port of the DOS tree utility. Chances are you probably already have it installed on your desktop system.

This will work for Windows and Mac. Linux has many options to do this and it’s even easier to do so I won’t even bother covering Linux for once.

The idea that you can take a picture in an emergency situation and have it instantly uploaded is handy. If you were attacked by a mugger or witness some type of assault or accident, the pictures are instantly backed up online. But what about privacy issues? Putting your media online creates the potential for problems that are outside of your control.