If you ever needed to know which universal remote control suits you best, you would have asked your best friend, your spouse, even your kids. But what if none of the people you know can give advice?

Here comes Gadget Advisor. This new website, which I found while lurking the net for good websites that are worth my time, sports a great layout and focuses on product releases and gadget reviews. Let us say that you are wondering which network media player is best value for your money, Gadget Advisor has a nifty search bar to help you find your review in a snap. Not only gadgets are being featured, even business IT solutions like online backup services are reviewed and recommended. But only the notable stuff are honored so you are sure that you are reading pages and pages of reviews of a junk device. No one wants to flip pages and pages only to find out that they are reading a review of a gadget not even worth reviewing!

The site is full of fresh news so it is worthy of your time. Just read one review and you will know that you are reading quality review.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Hey guys!

Finally, I found time to update this lovely blog of mine. And luckily, I have one super cool simple script to share. This script will help a lot of system administrators in adding user accounts, very useful if you have about a hundred servers to login to and execute useradd and passwd again and again. This is a bash script, so no need to install packages and easy to understand.

Here goes the code.


#!/bin/bash

for USER in $(cat /tmp/users.txt) do
$(useradd $USER)
###Remove the space between 8 and )
PASSWORD=$(openssl rand -base64 8 )
###passwd [double dash] stdin
echo $PASSWORD | $(passwd –stdin $USER)
echo “$USER $PASSWORD” | mail -s “Your Account Info” $USER@company.com
sleep 3
done

Here is a quick summary of the code per line:

for USER in $(cat /tmp/users.txt) do
This line begins the for loop and /tmp/users.txt should be a text file containing the list of usernames to be added one username per line. The value of $USER

$(useradd $USER)
This line will begin by executing the command useradd. If the script fails at this point because the username already exists, it will proceed with changing the password of the username.

###Remove the space between 8 and )
###passwd [double dash] stdin
PASSWORD=$(openssl rand -base64 8 )
echo $PASSWORD | $(passwd --stdin $USER)
This line generates an 8-byte random password using openssl and pipes it to command passwd using –stdin option so the generated password can be passed.

echo “$USER $PASSWORD” | mail -s “Your Account Info” $USER@company.com
This line sends an email to the user containing the username and password, assuming that the email address is the same as the username.

This script can be further enhanced (imagination is limitless!) and feel free to share your script here.

Popularity: 5% [?]

It’s been a very busy month for me. I have two projects at work involving two top 10 sites of our company and it was very hectic. But, I am so glad that the projects are now over, both successful.

It may seem that I will have more time to blog but unfortunately, I will be taking a three-week course of trainings in preparation for the Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) Certification Exam. I may post tips here from time to time to help aspiring Linux users but I cannot promise that it will be as it is written in the training manuals. Contents of training manuals are copyrighted and being a Linux user, we all know better what copyrighted means

Anyway, wish me luck in my training and exams. I need all the luck I can get

Popularity: 5% [?]

E-commerce is the pillar of information technology. People thought that buying groceries using your computer while being safe at home is not possible. And those who thought that managing your finances like updating bank accounts and paying your utilities and credits cards are nothing but wishful thinking. And how wrong they were for being so narrow-minded and pessimistic.

I feel that if Internet has not evolved into something that we know of it today, people will still be doing tons of paperwork everyday, wasting so much natural resources to produce paper and ink. Not to mention tons of paper waste and pollution that will result in using too much paper and not reusing and recycling.

That is why E-commerce sites make the Internet of what it is today. But of course, securing millions of information being transmitted everyday is a big deal. This is most true when you are the owner of an online ordering system and protecting your customers’ information is second to none. Secure Sockets Layer, or SSL, makes it possible to secure Internet communications by encrypting data while it travels back and forth from one computer to another. And Sarvasecure boosts online sales by giving your customers peace of mind while doing transactions like buying goods and using their credit cards by providing site certification to prove that the server is secure.

Websites that do not practice strict implementation of secure server practices pay a high price of losing customers, low conversion rates, and sometimes, even face legal consequences. Remember that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Google Android is the world’s first complete, free and open source mobile platform developed by no other than Google. It consists of the main operating system, middleware and key applications - all free and open. Applications use Java programming language which runs on Dalvik, a custom virtual machine designed for embedded use. The applications run on top of Linux kernel.

To see the Google Android in actual usage, watch this video:

Google Android is partnered with T-Mobile as its carrier and HTC as the hardware maker. The phone has an intuitive touch screen and QWERTY keyboard all packed in a portable phone. But as always, first generation devices are as buggy as they always are. To add to the excitement that I might have flooded on you, here is another image:

Popularity: 9% [?]

You have no idea how proud I am to have reached this milestone in my PinoyTux Weblog. Just yesterday, PinoyTux reached 30,000 visitors since March 30, 2008.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Windows Registry is a location in a operating system that stores settings and options of hardware and software components. In layman’s term, the registry is like a library of computer data. Mess with your registry and you mess with the operating system and might be doing a disk format eventually.

Registry errors might result from virus or malware infection or just plain curiosity. I have once done a wrong move of editing my computer’s registry and eventually came up with a freshly installed Windows XP.

Instead of doing the messing around yourself that might trash your system, it is always advisable to use software to assist in keeping your registry in place. Software like windows registry cleaner are easy to find when you search the Internet. Registry cleaners do the hard work and makes it safe to remove virus and trojans that are infecting the system. They also keep the registry in top shape and prevent unauthorized editing of the registry keys.

Uniblue is one of Microsoft Gold certified partners that provides safe registry cleaner that scans and analyzes your system for errors. Uniblue also offers free system scan for site visitors.

Always remember to keep your registry in top shape to help optimize your system’s performance.

Popularity: 11% [?]

This may mean nothing to you but my blog earned me $200 for the month of August

Popularity: 14% [?]

I am not going to talk about Math here, I barely passed my Math subject back in school. But being a system administrator, I have encounters with port numbers every day. And I admit, there are thousands of port numbers today, and how do you know which one is which?

In comes pc-library.com where every port like TCP Port 445 is defined and explained. With its extensive information about ports, system and network administrators like me can get information about port numbers. Knowledge of how a port is used can help provide a secure computing environment for everyone. A little security implemented a user can use a port safely without fear of being compromised.

Popularity: 14% [?]

There are a lot of times that I have been asked, and still being asked: Which Linux is the best? Or which Linux distribution is best for me?

I find it hard to answer the question since there are a lot of things that should be considered before getting your hands on a Linux installer. If I suggest a wrong distro, the user might get turned off, and shy away from using Linux. Among the things that should be considered is how ‘technically’ knowledgeable a user is. Some users tend to expect that Linux IS Windows and when they find out that it isn’t, they curse Linux.

Fortunately, there is a site that I find helpful to a situation like this. If you want to test yourself and see which Linux is best for you, visit www.zegeniestudios.net and take the Linux chooser test. After you answer the series of questions, you will be given suggestions of which Linux is best for you.

Popularity: 15% [?]