Recent posts

Facebook apps: my application development history

My Facebook Application development journey began way back in 2007 when Facebook first opened up it’s API’s to application developers. It was a different landscape back then. The API was fresh and documentation spares and possibilities limitless. All my apps were “Free”. Nothing to pay. They were all solving a problem I had at the time.

All my Facebook app development was done on a LAMP stack, from scratch. No Frameworks. I created my own Framework called “Semerda” to handle common stuff like caching, logging, database access etc… Since Facebook’s API was PHP focused this made it easier to work on a LAMP stack.

This worked out well for my my 1st app called Rock Radio – a complimentary channel for music distribution from a business I was running at the time called Rockin The Shed. You can read more about the Rockin The Shed business here. Later as the landscape changes I moved across to using Patterns and MVC (model-view-controller) to achieve faster and cleaner development on a LAMP stack. My latest Facebook Application called “ReadingList” is using CodeIgniter MVC.

Below is a history (back in time) outlining my Facebook App development.

Rock Radio (aka Rockin The Shed) App

Status: Retired

The idea behind the app was that once all our radio stations finished broadcasting the weekly show of Rockin The Shed for the week, we would release it on Facebook for those that either missed the show on the radio or wanted more of the good Rock Music we broadcast.

Facebook at that time did not have as much traction as today but I saw an opportunity in what it could be one day, a place where people would always hang out. So why not feed them with some awesome music.

MoshCam App

Status: Hybernating

Then came another idea. Since we were in the rock scene and hardcore fans enjoy the mosh pit* at these rock concerts we thought what would be the best way to capture that experience and share it with friends. Naturally Facebook was the place where friends hanged out and so MoshCam was born – an application which allowed people to share videos from their mosh pit experience with their friends on Facbeook.

* Moshing is a dance in which participants push and/or slam into each other.

The app still lives on Facebook in an unsupported format here:
http://apps.facebook.com/moshcam

MosCam was a quick build using iStockphoto images to speed up design to test the waters whether we had something here. This idea didn’t get much traction so we moved on to focus on Musichouse. Musichouse was to be an extension of Rockin The Shed and provide a lot more value. Read about Musichouse here.

Friends App

Status: Hybernating

One day while noticing the volume of friends join Facebook I had another idea. An idea was to keep up with notification of friends birthdays so I can see in advance in how many days away are friend’s birthdays. While building this out I pushed the API a bit further and exposed other friend stats likes what zodiac sign they were, age and sex and visually presented it using Google’s Chart Tools.

According to a flutter developer, his app is pretty rough around the edges since it’s only been for my own peruse. Should you find value in it feel free to use it and send me feedback.

This App can be located here:
http://apps.facebook.com/f_r_i_e_n_d_s/

iStockphoto App

Status: Retired

Launched around 4 years ago to solve a problem I (and other stock photographers) had around exposing & sharing stock photos from istockphoto.com (world’s largest stock website) with friends and colleagues on Facebook.

iStockphoto was gaining a lot of traction and since I was playing a hobby-part-time stock photographer in my spare time & Facebook fan I wanted to share with the Facebook community all the cool photos I was taking and uploading to iStockphoto. So came the idea of tapping into my iStockphoto XML feed and exposing it as a Grid of photos on my Facebook profile. At the time Facebook profiles allowed “Boxes” in 2 Views so this provided excellent exposure for my photos. The app was built in FBML (Facebook Markup Language) and today is retired after Facebook changed their profile layout, rules & retired the FBML.

iStockphoto Facebook App – how it worked

ReadingList App

Status: Active

ReadingList was developed to solve my own problem. How to keep a single list of books I want to read, have read or are reading with ability to share that list with my friends… who are on… you guessed it, on Facebook.

After developing the application I started getting comments and feedback from friends who also read books that they wanted to use this app. So without any restrictions, I opened it up to the world so others can inspire their friends with books and keep a list of their books in the place they visit daily, Facebook.

Technical detail about this LAMP MVC CodeIgniter app are detailed in a previous post I did here: http://www.theroadtosiliconvalley.com/facebook-social/app-readinglist-share-books/

If you want to start using this free app today go here: http://apps.facebook.com/readinglist/

Facebook Readinglist – find your books!

There you have it folks…

My background with Facebook app development. Facebook app development is fun. Especially when you start seeing other people getting value out of using your application. That is both inspiring and motivational. Then listening to your users helps you improve the app and take it to the next level and you really get pumped in making a difference in other people’s lifes. To learn more about modern history, here is a great post on gen x.

If you haven’t started Facebook development then I highly recommend you do it today by going here: http://www.facebook.com/developers. The Facebook API today is light years ahead of the one that existed few years back and gives you the power to do a lot more and build awesome social products.

If you have a Facebook app you are proud of please post it in the comments below and share with the rest of the world.

Happy Facebook app development!

~ Ernest

Farmers Markets: bay area fresh organic produce suppliers

Farmers Markets in California is a must for every food buff. This is the best place to buy locally grown, fresh and organic produce. Everything is reasonably priced so it wont send your wallet home empty. In comparison to Sydney (AU) prices, expect to pay the same amount as you would at Woolworths or Coles but here you get fresh organic produce for the same price. Discover an abundance of discounted items on Shoppok. With their commitment to saving you money, you can always find great deals and stretch your shopping budget further.

Benefits of shopping at Farmers Markets

  • Obtain farm-fresh fruits and vegetables that travel a shorter farm-to-table trip.
  • Purchase directly from a family farm.
  • Obtain cultural/specialty fruits and vegetables not easily available in supermarkets.
  • Purchase of local products, which strengthen the local economy while decreasing the demand on transportation from outlying areas.

Being a Mountain View resident I like to take a walk down to the Markets most Sunday mornings and grab this healthy produce.. in between all the free sample of fruits and other goodies! Yum.

About Mountain View Farmers Markets

“The City of Mountain View is proud to have one of the best certified farmers’ markets in the Bay Area right here in our own backyard! The Market is operated by the California Farmers Market Association and is open every Sunday from 9:00 a.m.-to 1:00 p.m. The widely attended and acclaimed market features over 70 growers and food vendors with peak season produce, including organic produce, as well as many other offerings. You can enjoy a day of shopping for the freshest ingredients.” Source: http://www.mountainview.gov/…

“Consistently award-winning farmers’ market for over 15 years and within the top 5 largest farmers’ markets in California! Farm fresh fruits and vegetables in Downtown Mountain View every week, rain or shine. Mountain View farmers’ market was awarded # 1 Favorite Farmers’ Market in the Bay Area by the American Farmland Trust’s America’s Favorite Farmers’ Market Contest. The Mountain View Farmers’ Market was also awarded # 2 Favorite Farmers’ Market in the State of California, and # 5 Favorite Large Farmers’ Market in America! With over 80 farmers and food producers, you can do all of your shopping while getting to know the farm that grows your food.”
Source: http://cafarmersmkts.com/…

My top 3 yummy for my tummy must haves

  • The 2 fish stands are finger lickin good. Try the fresh smoked wild salmon at 2 for $22! Freaking awesome. Then the fresh wild caught sashimi grade salmon stand further up. The fish colors are bursting with brightness – that’s what you call organic and fresh.
  • ACME bread smells & tastes amazing. The texture & fresh crispiness of the bread is superb. They only deliver this fully organic bread to local resturants so this is an opportunity to grab restaurant quality bread. At few bucks it’s cheap as chips.
  • Morganic Hill Honey is an orchestra to your mouth. Grab the Dark Buckwheat – it’s unique texture and health benefits are a must to try at $9 per pound. Darker then most honey you see in store this is a fine delicacy, and different than that of a commercialstore purchased honey. Goes perfectly well on ACME bread and also an alternative tea sweetener.

Pictures from Mountain View Farmers Markets

Click on each picture to open it up in a larger view. Larger pictures open up in my Flickr account. Feel free to explore other photos there of Silicon Valley.

Finally check out this website which lists all the local farmers in the California area supplying fresh organic produce to Silicon Valley: http://www.localharvest.org/

Enjoy!

~ Ernest

EC2: how to launch Ubuntu into the cloud

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) delivers scalable, pay-as-you-go compute capacity in the cloud. It is a part of a collection of remote computing services (also called web services) from Amazon that together make up a multi-tenant cloud computing platform. The most central and well-known of these services are Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3. The goal in this post is to get you up and running on an EC2 instance super fast.

Get familiar

I’m going to assume you have an account with AWS and are familiar with:

If you do not know those 3, please spend some time learning about them by following the links in the bullet points above. Else, let’s get rollin.

Step by step guide

1. Setting up security

Before we launch an Instance you need to do some Pre-work since both “Security Group” and “Key Pair Name” cannot be changed once an Instance is mapped to one and started.

  1. Setup a “Security Group” for your new Linux Instance.
    1. From Navigation menu select “Security Groups”.
    2. Click on “Create Security Group” button and fill out the form giving your security group a very descriptive name.
    3. Click “Yes, Create” button, select the new group and in the lower half window/frame press the “Inbound” tab.
    4. Inbound allows you to open ports on this Instance. You can add or remove these after the Instance is created. By default allow these: SSH (22), HTTP (80) and MySQL (3306). For extra security limit (source) SSH & MySQL to only your IP address. If you plan to install Webmin add port 10000 here too.
    5. When done, click on “Apply Rule Changes”.
  2. Create a “Key Pair Name”.
    1. This is super important and will be used for accessing your Instance both via SSH & sFTP.
    2. From Navigation menu select “Key Pairs”.
    3. Click on “Create Key Pair” button.
    4. Give it a descriptive Key Pair Name and click on “Create” button. A private key with extension .pem will download. Save this in a secure location since this is your key to access your Instance.
    5. On your local machine (Linux X or Mac OS X), give this file more secure permissions like this: 
      chmod 0700 ./keys/mykey.pem

2. Launching an Instance

  1. From Navigation menu select “Instances”.
  2. Click on “Launch Instance” button.
  3. This launches the Request Instance Wizard where you can select an Amazon Machine Image (AMI). Note that Ubuntu is only available from “Community AMIs”. Click the Community AMIs tab.
    1. Here is a list of available Ubuntu images:
      http://uec-images.ubuntu.com/releases/10.10/release/
    2. Make sure you use an EBS root store – it’s better. For benefits see here:
      http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3630506/benefits-of-ebs-vs-instance-store-and-vice-versa
  4. Step through the 5 stages of the Wizard and click on “Launch” button. This will launch your new Instance. The Wizard is straight forward and you will most likely go with all the defaults.
  5. Your Linux Instance will launch pretty fast. You should now see your Instance listed under “My Instances”.
  6. Click on your Instance. Instance properties window/frame shows up in the bottom half of the console. Note down “Public DNS” and “Private DNS/IP Address”. You will need those to access the box – especially the Public DNS.

3. Building a Ubuntu LAMP Web Server on your new Instance

This step is optional.

But should you want to setup LAMP on this new Instance follow the steps outlined in my previous post here: http://www.theroadtosiliconvalley.com/technology/building-ubuntu-lamp-web-server-vm/

The only additions in light of Amazon EC2 host are:

  • When using SSH/sFTP use the private key with extension .pem you downloaded above.
  • Note that root user in EC2 is “ubuntu” not “root” like in a VM Ubuntu setup.
  • To SSH into your new EC2 Instance do this in terminal where the URL after @ is your Public DNS: 
    ssh -i ./keys/mykey.pem ubuntu@region.compute.amazonaws.com
  • Use the Public DNS or setup a static IP address to point to your Instance(s). Amazon calls this Elastic IP Address and this allows you to have multiple Instances all pointing to the 1 IP address for dynamic cloud computing.

Now go and build kick ass products!

There you have it folks. How simple is that. Amazon makes cloud computing look simple and launching new servers (Instances) is a breeze.. in a matter of minutes.

If you found this post useful let me know in comments section below. Super!!

~ Ernest

Building an Ubuntu LAMP Web Server

Recently I was setting up my Mac OS X with a kick ass development environment and jotted down all the cool steps I took to build an Ubuntu LAMP web server in a virtual machine environment. Here is this in-depth guide translated from paper to this digital copy. Hope you find this guide valuable and it saves you time when you need to do the same.

LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP)

Ubuntu Server

The flavor of Linux I like to use as a Web Server is Ubuntu.

What is Ubuntu

Ubuntu , is a secure, intuitive operating system that powers desktops, servers, netbooks and laptops. It is based on the Debian GNU/Linux distribution. Ubuntu is also named after the Southern African ethical ideology Ubuntu (“humanity towards others”) and is distributed as free and open source software with additional proprietary software available.

Why Ubuntu

  1. Reduce costs – free to use with no licensing fees.
  2. Visualization – it runs beautifully & fast in any VM environment (esp. Mac OS X)
  3. Build-in security – tight security, inbuilt firewall and encryption.
  4. It based on a Debian Distribution. A computer operating system composed of software packages released as free and open source software especially under the GNU General Public License and other free software licenses. Debian distributions are slower to release but this means they are extremely thorough.
  5. A lot of the big boys use Ubuntu. See case studies here: http://www.ubuntu.com/business/case-studies

Step by Step – your 1st web server

This guide assumes you have already installed Ubuntu Server. If not, go here and do it first. I recommend you install Ubuntu Server in a VM. I use VMware Fusion to run my instances when developing and Amazon EC2 for production. This guarantees that whatever I do locally in a VM will be compatible when pushed into production.

Ubuntu Server in a VMware Fusion

Goal:

  • Install LAMP – Linux (already done), Apache (web server), MySQL (mysql) and PHP (code compiler).
  • Install Webmin – a web-based interface for system administration for Unix.
  • Allow WWW for sFTP so you can remotely manage your website using a GUI.
  • Setup access to MySQL using MySQL Workbench.

1. Install LAMP

  • SSH into your box as root on Port 22 (default post install).
  • Update your OS software (just in case you are missing some dependencies): 
    sudo apt-get update
  • From the terminal window, install LAMP using this 1 line of code (the caret (^) must be included): 
    sudo apt-get install lamp-server^
  • The apt package manager will display what it is installing and ask you a bunch of standard questions. Just say yes to all. You will also be asked for a password for your new MySQL database. Type that in and note this down for future.
  • When this finishes you are done. Easy hey! Port 80 (default web server port) is now enabled and pointing to ‘/var/www’. ‘/var/www’ is where your site(s) should be placed.
  • Hit the Public DNS URL of your server (typically your IP) to verify that it’s up. It should show up a page with “It works!” If you are not sure what your box’s IP is, type this in and hit enter (similar to ipconfig on a Windows box). 
    ip route
  • Before moving to the next step, you may want to know information about PHP’s configuration inc. installed extensions. You can grab this by creating a PHP file from your terminal window like this: 
     sudo nano /var/www/phpinfo.php

    then adding this into it, save it, and quit nano (the editor your in):

    <?php phpinfo(); ?>

    restart Apache:

    sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

    Hit the IP in your browser again with this new file name appended to the end eg. http://170.10.105.110/phpinfo.php – it should show you what is running.

2. Install Webmin

  • Edit “/etc/apt/sources.list” to add 2 new source: 
    sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list
  • … add these 2 new lines to the end, save and exit: 
    deb http://download.webmin.com/download/repository sarge contrib
deb http://webmin.mirror.somersettechsolutions.co.uk/repository sarge contrib
  • Now you can run this in your terminal window to install Webmin. 
    sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install webmin
  • Webmin should now be accessible from your browser using the server’s ip address followed by port 10,000 eg. https://170.10.105.110:10000
    Note that you do not have HTTPS cert so your browser will throw a warning since https is (and has to be) the protocol. Ignore it and move forward.
  • If you cannot login with your sudo account you may need to enable root. Follow the steps outlined here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WebminWithoutARootAccount
  • Or you can change the password of the root user in your terminal window. Then restart webmin. 
    sudo /usr/share/webmin/changepass.pl /etc/webmin/ root foo
sudo /etc/init.d/webmin restart
  • If you need to restart webmin run this: 
    sudo /etc/init.d/webmin restart

3. Allow WWW for sFTP

  • You need to make sure the group www-data is added to “/var/www”. Run this in your terminal window: 
    sudo chgrp www-data /var/www
  • Make “/var/www” writable for the group. 
    sudo chmod 775 /var/www
  • Set the GID for www-data for all sub-folders. 
    sudo chmod g+s /var/www
  • Your directory should look like this on an ‘ls -l’ output. 
    drwxrwsr-x    root www-data
  • Last, add your user name to the www-data group (secondary group) where USERNAME is the “new” username you will use to sFTP. Note that we follow it by “passwd” to give new account a password. 
    sudo useradd -G www-data NEW_USERNAME
sudo passwd NEW_USER

    OR if the username is “existing” one use the command below. Also don’t forget to add “ubuntu” user if you have set this up on an EC2:

    sudo usermod -a -G www-data EXISTING_USERNAME
  • You should now be able to SFTP to your server using this USERNAME and upload data to “/var/www” with no problems.

4. Access to MySQL using MySQL Workbench

  • MySQL Workbench is a nice free GUI tool by the folks at mysql.com to manage your MySQL database. It can be downloaded from here: http://wb.mysql.com/
  • By default MySQL listens on localhost (127.0.0.1) so if you are going to manage your Ubuntu VM instance from say OS X, MySQL wont allow you entry. Here’s what to do to grant remote management of MySQL.
    1. Go to Webmin and login.
    2. In Webmin, navigate here: Servers > MySQL Database Server > MySQL Server Configuration
    3. Change “MySQL server listening address” to “Any”. By default it is 127.0.0.1. Save this.
    4. Now navigate here: Servers > MySQL Database Server > User Permissions
    5. Click on User “root” on the line where it says 127.0.0.1. And under Hosts change it to “Any”. This set the permissions on your db access.
    6. Save & Restart MySQL and you are done.
  • Remember that this is for “development” purposes only. You would not be allowing “Any” to your DB rather a specific static address and username.

5. Bonus – running multiple web applications on the LAMP instance

To save on time, money and managing multiple boxes, you may want to run multiple websites from this same box. I like to do this using ports as the separator. The following can be done in Webmin:

  1. Upload code to /var/www/mynewsite/
  2. Create a Virtual host for your new web application by navigating to:
    Servers > Apache Webserver > Create virtual host
  3. Fill out the form pointing ‘Document Root’ to the location of your code and assign a ‘Port’ number eg. 81, to this new host. Remember port 80 is your default.
  4. Save and click on ‘Apply Settings’ (link top right of the Webmin interface).
  5. Finally you need to tell Apache to listen to this new port. Navigate here:
    Servers > Apache Webserver > Global configuration > Networking and Addresses
  6. Add port 81 (where your new host is configured on) to ‘Listen on addresses and ports’.
  7. Save, apply changes and restart Apache.
  8. Done. You can now access your website via http://IP_DNS:81

Now go and build kick ass products!

There you have it folks. How simple is that. That’s why I love Ubuntu so much. It’s simple and powerful all under the 1 umbrella. That’s how software should be. All the complexities removed so us engineers can get to work and build kick ass products!

If you found this post useful let me know in comments section below. Super!!

~ Ernest

Aussie Occupational Therapy Accreditation in the USA

Urszula Semerda (Bakonska)

 The following is a guest post by Urszula Semerda (Bakonska).
About Urszula: By profession I am an Occupational Therapist (OT) currently working in the beautiful California (Silicon Valley) as a Occupational Therapist. Prior to this I spent 8 years working as a Occupational Therapy in Sydney, Australia.My skills & experience are primarily around working with children. I have achieved wonderful and rewarding results by working & helping children with physical disabilities, pervasive developmental disorders (Autism, Asperger’s Disorder, Rett’s Syndrome), ADHD, learning disabilities and sensory processing disorder.

Connect with me on LinkedIn here.

By the American Occupational Therapy Association executive board (1976) as: “The therapeutic use of work, self-care, and play activities to increase development and prevent disability. It may include adaptation of task or environment to achieve maximum independence and to enhance the quality of life.”

As an occupational therapist organizing a move to the US (California) from Australia (Sydney) I was confronted by a number of challenges. My Australian degree did not allow me to automatically work in the US and thus I was required to 1st become certified by the NBCOT (National Board for Certification in Occupational Therapy) and then obtain a state licence to work in California. This was a time-consuming and rather pricey process which should be started immediately to speed up the accreditation.

So to all of the readers who are or have partners in similar situation here is my road to the silicon valley 🙂

7 steps to Occupational Therapy accreditation

Note: The costs mentioned in this post are what I paid in 2009. They may have changed today so please check with the appropriate institutes mentioned here.

1. Check if your Occupational Therapy (OT) school is WFOT (World Federation of Occupational Therapists) accredited.

Only graduates in OT with a Baccalaureate Degree or a Post-Baccalaureate Degree from a WFOT accredited program are eligible to apply to the Occupational Therapist Eligibility Determination (OTED) program. To check if your school is WFOT accredited visit their website at http://www.wfot.org

2. Complete the Occupational Therapist Eligibility Determination (OTED) Application.

The application process includes 8 steps. These are as follows:

  1. Determine if you are CATEGORY A or CATEGORY B applicant
  2. Category B applicants ONLY – Complete and submit a Determination of Masters Equivalence Content Evaluation Form
  3. Complete the OTED Application
  4. Take and pass English Language Proficiency Exams (Exemptions: Graduates of occupational therapy programs in Australia, Canada (except Quebec), Ireland,
    New Zealand, United Kingdom, and United States.)
  5. Request transcript(s) from your OT school
  6. Request completion of the Program Director Form.
  7. Request completion of the Verification of Academic Credential Form.
  8. Request completion of the Verification of OT License, Registration, Certification, or Other form of Official Government Recognition Form, and temporary permit history

The application and detailed process can be found on the NBCOT website: http://www.nbcot.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=82&Itemid=98

What you need to know:

  • Application processing time: 2-5 months
  • Investment:
    • OTED Application: $500.00 USD
    • OT Transcript: $150.00 AUD (This fee may vary depending on your University)

3. Complete Application for the OTR Certification Exam and the Authorization To Test Letter (ATT).

What you need to know:

 

4. Schedule and complete the NBCOT Certification Exam at your nearest Prometric Centre.

Note: You cannot schedule your exam untill you receive your ATT letter from NBCOT.

What you need to know:

My study notes

My study notes

My study notes

5. Apply for a Visa Credential Verification Certificate.

What you need to know:

  • Purpose: This application is required for immigration purposes.
  • Investment: $300.00 USD
  • Time: Approximately 1 month
  • Website: http://www.nbcot.org/

6. Get your State Registration. I was applying for California.

What you need to know:

  • Each Application includes a Live Scan (obtaining your finger prints). It is the equivalent of the criminal record check in Australia.
  • Investment: Approximately $150.oo USD
  • Time: Approximately 2 weeks

7. Additional Investment (costs):

  • Score Transfer – $35 USD
  • Examination Registration & Eligibility Notice – $40 USD
  • Exam Check Fee – $35 USD

That’s it! there you have it. If you have any further questions please post them below or contact me via LinkedIn here – http://www.linkedin.com/in/urszulasemerda

In Summary, the total figures to obtaining Occupational Therapy Accreditation

  • Investment: Approximately $1,710 USD
  • Time: Approximately 7 months
  • Learnings: Start early! study hard, and don’t think / believe anyone that this is a fast process.

Oh, there is an additional 8th step.

8. Connect with me on LinkedIn. The world is truly a small place and we are here to help each other get further in life.

/ Urszula


Making the switch from Windows to Kubuntu

I finally made the switch from Windows Vista to Linux Free Operating System. I moved to the Kubuntu version of Ubuntu 10.10 (a Linux flavour) as my development box and haven’t looked back. Well I lied, since I did look back a bit at the beginning lol. It has been a an interesting challenge mentally adjusting to new way of doing things, new tools (applications) and driver support. In the end it was definitely worth it.

And why Kubuntu? since it’s basically Ubuntu a Debian-derived Linux distribution with KDE (a prettier desktop) on-top. Ubuntu brings your slower machines to life. While Windows keeps on slowing them down. Ubuntu is a secure, intuitive operating system that powers desktops, servers, netbooks and laptops. Ubuntu is, and always will be, absolutely free. More about it here.

Why I switched

Today all my development is open source. This means I run what I create on a LAMP stack – L stands for Linux Server. Doing development on a Windows box and pushing to a LAMP stack is like clawing your way through quick sand instead of using a ninja sword to slice through your tasks.

One day, I asked myself. Wouldn’t it be kick ass if my dev box would be close to identical to my production boxes. Knowing that whatever I do on my dev box will work in production with high certainty. Yes yes, Ubuntu popped into my mind. Which later after speaking with a fellow Linux hacker changed to Kubuntu.

As you may already know, Kubuntu is highly configurable. You even have access to the source code if you wish to venture that deep. It also has a great X window called KDE. Check out these top the winners from a 5-day competition on Facebook where fans were invited to submit a screenshot of their pimped Ubuntu desktop. No excuses about Ubuntu’s poor UI.

My customized Ubuntu desktop
My customized Kubuntu desktop

Linux apps to replace your Windows apps

Here is a comprehensive list of apps to replace your Windows versions.

Note: Most applications & games on Linux are open source. This mostly means free. Thus, the ones I listed below as alternatives in the Linux world are all free and can be downloaded from your package manager. I use Synaptic Package Manager (SPM). All the software here is verified and malicious free – it’s safe to get all your apps from here. To install SPM, in your terminal window type this in and your done. Simple eh.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install synaptic

Security – this one just kills windows. Ubuntu comes with a firewall built in and windows viruses – what are they on Ubuntu – non existent. All you need is software like Gufw to help you “manage” your firewall else you can do it via the terminal / konsole window.
In your terminal window type this in and your done. This cannot get any harder 😉

sudo apt-get install gufw

And if you want hard-core detail on securing Ubuntu, read this post covers the process of securing and hardening the default Debian GNU/Linux distribution installation.

Applications… the following let’s use “Synaptic Package Manager”.

Purpose Windows Linux
Development
Code editor Notepad++ gedit
SFTP, FTP and SCP client WinSCP FileZilla
Telnet/SSH Putty OS Konsole /
terminal window
Code compare Beyond Compare Kompare
MySQL manager and admin tool SQLyog MySQL Workbench
Virtualization VMWare VirtualBox
Multimedia
Video player Windows Media Player VLC
Video editor Sony Vegas Kdenlive
Organize, share & edit your photos Picasa Picasa /
Gwenview
Photo editor Photoshop GIMP
Audio player Windows Media Player Amarok
CD/DVD burner Nero K3b
Other
Office (word, excel, powerpoint etc) Windows Office OpenOffice /
Google Docs
File browser Windows Explorer Dolphin
Internet browsers Chrome Chromium
Antivirus & Firewall Take a pick lol Gufw to manage your Firewall
Silverlight MS Silverlight Moonlight

Additional stuff you can install to make your Kubuntu experience pleasing:

Don’t forget to use your Synaptic Package Manager to look for these apps first. Only when you cannot find them there click on the title of each app below to take you to the website hosting the app and instructions.

  • Docky – shortcut bar that sits at the bottom, top, and/or sides of your screen. You can make it look and behave like mac’s bar.
  • KSnapshot – simple & powerful easy to use screen capture program.
  • Ubuntu Tweak – tweak Ubuntu’s desktop and system options that the default desktop environment doesn’t provide.
  • Beagle – advanced desktop search.
  • FreeMind – premier free mind mapping software written in Java.
  • Etherape – graphical network monitor.
  • Other code editors:
    • JetBrain. Their professional developer tools are kickass! I have trialled their PHPStorm & ReSharper with positive results. They also have editors for Ruby & Python (shakes of excitement). It’s not free but they do have trial versions available for download.
    • Eclipse. Open source IDE editors written in Java.
  • Dropbox – Online backup, file sync, and sharing made easy. Get it here: http://db.tt/QDC0nvU
  • ubuntu-restricted-extras – Essential software which is not already included due to legal or copyright reasons. Gives support for MP3 playback and decoding, Java runtime environment, Microsoft fonts, Flash plugin, DVD playback, and LAME (to create compressed audio files).
  • Adobe Flash & Adobe Air so you can run web applications like TweetDeck.

Missing Windows app/s?

If you still miss or cannot find your favorite Windows applications on Kubuntu, you install Wine to run them on Kubuntu. Wine is a program that offers a compatibility layer allowing Linux users to run some Windows-native applications inside of Linux. You can get Wine from Synaptic Package Manager / package manager or by following the instructions here.

Stuff I still need my Windows box for

  • Photo editing – Photoshop and Lightroom and
  • Video editing – Sony Vegas (goes with my Sony HD cam). The Linux alternative Kdenlive just dosent cut it.

With time I’m sure a super duper speced up Mac (with Dual boot for Kubuntu) will replace both my laptops. Now I need to sell myself why I should move to a Mac and pay double the price for hardware.

PS. If you have suggestions or additions to this post please comment below or contact me.

Happy hacking!

~ Ernest

Hawaii: Big Island with 3 Volcanoes

Our 1st trip to Hawaii after visiting the Cayman Islands and it was to the Big Island. Why Big Island? cause it’s damn big, has 3 volcanoes and there’s plenty to do outdoor both under water, on land and in air.

Yap, if you want to let yourself loose and get back in touch with nature then this is the island you should be visiting. If you want to party and have a night life then this isn’t your island. Matter of fact, just head out to Ibiza if you want to do that.

Note: You can click on each of the pictures below to open up a larger version on my flickr account. Enjoy!

Big Island, Hawaii – notice the red A, that’s the island.

We stayed on the Big Island

Just the Big Island. As you will see below there is plenty to do there. We stayed at Keauhou Beach Resort, hired a car from Alamo (read my car rental traps before you get one) and off we went on our adventure. Here’s what happened.

Keauhou Beach Resort – where we stayed
View from our balcony

Stuff to watch out for

Like any place you visit in this world you will no doubt come across few areas that get you under your skin.

  • Roads are very narrow. Both for driving and for parking. Kind of reminds me of the roads in Australia and very unlike American wide roads.
  • Most roads do not have street lights. Night driving gets frilly especially when you see those signs to watch out for Donkey’s crossing or Mongoose sliding across the road like snakes. Use high beams. I’m sure this is done on purpose since the Big Island is the home of Mauna Kea Observatory.
  • Average speed limit is… wait for it.. 35 mph. wtf! yes, driving around this island is slow and nerve wrecking when time is precious. Stay away from driving on major roads during the traffic window 3.30-5pm – it crawls. At the resorts, tourists are taught to pull over and let the faster locals pass by since they need to get their kids to school – so are there 2 speed limits.. locals and tourists.
  • Expedia affiliations with Wyndham Vacation Resorts. They will try to lure you (not a pleasant experience) for a 2 hour of your time to listen to their sales staff try to sell you “Timeshare Accommodations”. For your time, you will get $100 off any Expedia booking you do on the island. You work out whether it’s worth it for you. I gave it a shot since I wanted to learn more about this Timeshare I hear people talking about and quiet frankly it reminds me of Bartercard in Australia (thumbs down). Also in light of AirBnB disrupting the rental market, timeshare accommodation is just a waste of money for me. However I got my $100 off Expedia booking – yay!

Cool stuff to do

Since we only had 1 week to do this we needed to make sure that we covered as much in/on water, land and air as much as we could in that week.

  1. Lava everywhere!! don’t get scared. First  thing you will notice when you fly in is plenty of black rock that looks like unfinished land renovations. That is the laval from over 100 years ago. It’s all over the island. A’a (as in a a it hurts when you step on it) is the most common and looks like sharp small rocks stacked on top of each other. 2nd most common is Pahoehoe, like frozen liquid water.

    Big Island Landscape

  2. Kapoho Tide Pools. Spectacular location. A place I could live. The pools are great for snorkeling and only a meter or so deep.

    Kapoho Tide Pools

  3. Helicopter ride over the Island. This is the BEST way to see the whole island inc. Hilo falls (if not in dry season). The ride is around 3 hours and it is spectacular. We went with Paradise Helicopters and flew in a 6 passenger Bell 407 helicopter. The seating of this chopper basically allows for 5 people to have window seats. The only downside was seeing other choppers get really close to the lava while we always stayed up really high.
  4. Punallu Beach. Know for the black sand and often called the black beach. You get to see many turtles beaching and feel the unique black grains that make this the black beach.

    Punallu beach (black beach)

  5. Kealakekua Bay. Also know for the memorial resting place of Captain Cook. The bay here is the BEST location for snorkelling. PLenty to see underwater and beautiful crystal clear visibility.

    Captain Cook, Kealakekua Bay

  6. Waipio Valley. “Waipiʻo” means “curved water” in the Hawaiian language. It was the location of the ancient grass palace of the ancient kings of Hawaii with the nioi stands. You can go horse riding down into the valley if you have the time else just admire the views, take some photos and go to Pololū Valley.

    Waipio Valley

  7. Pololū Valley. The word Pololū means long spear in the Hawaiian language. It is the Northernmost of a series of erosional valleys forming the east coast of Kohala Mountain on the Island of Hawaiʻi. Go for a hike down the mountain and onto the beach where you will find many Zen like rock structures and a peaceful atmosphere that you can fall asleep to. Lovely place! The hike down is around 15 mins.

    Pololu Valley

  8. Beaches to see– A Beach, Makalawena Beach, Hapuna Beach, Kaunao Beach and Kua Bay. If you are from Australia or Asia then these beaches are the norm but still a great place to catch a wave.

    Kua Bay

  9. Night swimming with Manta Rays.There is a 90% chance you will see them. The adventure starts in the evening as a bunch of boats (with you on one of them) go out onto the ocean. All the boats park in a large circle and wait for the sun to set.
    We park and wait for the sun to set

    A bunch of divers jump into the water with flood lights and light the ocean from the bottom up. This attracts plankton which in turn attracts massive Manta Rays. You enjoy the 40 minute feeding fest from above as they Manta’s swoop in loops consuming the plankton.

    Swimming with Manta Rays at night. VIDEO:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xF038bozWzs

  10. Dolphin & Whale experience. Get to see spinner dolphins famous for their acrobatic displays in which they spin longitudinally along their axis as they leap through the air. These dolphins return from the deep ocean in the morning after a long night of hunting and cruise along the shore line to bay to sleep. So choose a crew that will leave as early as 7am so you don’t have to swim with the dolphins when they sleep rather when they are cruising along the shore line. We went with Dolphin Discoveries, threw ourself in-front of a pod of 80 dolphins 4 times, got to see whales breaching and we also snorkeled. Heaps of fun!Swimming with the Dolphins VIDEO:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yq6Y1RGqJ2Y
    Humpback Whale watching with breaches VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yq6Y1RGqJ2Y

Stuff you can skip the tour and do yourself

  • Volcanic National Park including lava cave– this costs around $180 per person and is an all day driving adventure around the island. Stuff you can do if you hire a car. If you don’t have a car, then do this one.

    Kilauea Volcano – most active volcano in the world

  • Sunset Lava cruise.Dont expect to see lava pouring into the ocean. We didn’t. However we did see an amazing coast line created by the lava, lava tubes and steam where the earth was still cooling from a previous flow.If you want to see an amazing sunset stop anywhere on a hill as the sun sets over Hawaii and enjoy – like we did below.

    Sunset in Hawaii – Everywhere!

Stuff I wish we got to see

Here is stuff I didn’t get to see since 1 week isn’t enough to see everything. This is for my next visit.

Enjoy your Big Island adventure, I’m sure you will enjoy every minute of it!

PS. If you want to go here shoot me an email. Supposedly this is a private beach!

Private beach

PPS. I have more photos of the Hawaii trip on my Flickr account here.

~ Ernest


8 books to read to fuel your entrepreneurial itch

So you have the itch.. the entrepreneur’s itch. Being in Silicon Valley it’s hard not to have it when you get to rub shoulders with many founders and investors on a weekly basis at the many meetup events organized by like minded individuals. There you hear many inspiring stories and adventures in entrepreneurship and how you too can walk that path when you set your mind to it. Read Cortney Fletcher’s eCom babes course reviews to get you rolling on this journey. I also have my top 8 books listed below which are sure to fuel your entrepreneurial itch!

Keys to the Vault: Lessons From the Pros on Raising Money and Igniting Your Business

by Keith J. Cunningham, the Real Rich Dad from Robert Kiyosaki’s popular series Rich Dad Poor Dad. Keith is also a speaker at Anthony Robbins Mastery University.

I purchased this book after being inspired by Keith during a presentation on business entrepreneurs. Keys to the Vault is The Formula, the recipe, for raising money and creating a successful business. No fat in this book, just pure step by step here’s how the industry works and here’s how you can do it yourself – step by step! My favorite of the lot.

Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days

by Jessica Livingston, founding partner of the valley’s famous seed stage venture firm Y Combinator.

I purchased this book after being inspired at Startup School, by YCombinator. Founders at Work is a collection of interviews with founders of famous technology companies about what happened in the very earliest days. Some of the companies in question include Apple, Flickr, PayPal, Gmail, Twitter etc. You will learn that these founders had no special human powers but persevered during hard times and worked hard towards their vision.

Never Get a “Real” Job: How to Dump Your Boss, Build a Business and Not Go Broke

by Scott Gerber, serial entrepreneur, angel investor, media personality, public speaker and the most-syndicated young entrepreneurship columnist in the world.

I purchased this book after being inspired by a very successful Silicon Valley CEO – his company is mentioned inside this book. Never Get a “Real” Job is straight to the point, no bullshit, that having a JOB (Just Over Broke) suxs! Being an employee is not rewarding enough as being an entrepreneur. This book is a wake up call and tells you how to make dramatic changes from an employee to an entrepreneur without going broke.

Innovation and Entrepreneurship

by Peter F Drucker, who was a writer, management consultant, and self-described “social ecologist.”.

Peter shares with us an excellent framework for innovation providing some general guidelines for identifying innovative opportunities. The key take away is that successful entrepreneurs do not wait until having a “bright idea”; they go to work. He was ahead of his time, a man of pure genius!

Rework

by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, founders of the very profitable and successful 37signals.

37signals business model of profits from the word go inspires me hence why I purchased this book. Rework is a collection of the best posts from Signal vs. Noise, a weblog by 37signals about design, business, experience, simplicity, the web, culture, and more. The book can be read in 2 hours and it damn straight to the point. It will make you extremely uncomfortable. But that’s why it’s so good because it breaks through all the bullshit and tells you how it really is.

The Monk and the Riddle : The Education of a Silicon Valley Entrepreneur

by Randy Komisar, a new breed of executives who have been called “virtual CEO’s with a wealth of experience under his belt.

Randy takes the reader through a hypothetical Silicon Valley start-up and what it takes to get a business running, funded and profitable. This books reminds me of The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari: A Fable About Fulfilling Your Dreams & Reaching Your Destiny with a focus on Silicon Valley startup.

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

by Daniel H. Pink, an American writer, speechwriter, and motivational speaker.

The holy grail of people management. Daniel shares with us the surprising truth. People want Autonomy (control over their work), Mastery (get better at what they do) and Purpose (to be part of something that is bigger than they are). It’s that simple. Yet many employers fail to see this and use old aged approaches. Here’s a fantastic 10 minute animated cap by RSA of what the book is about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School

by John Medina, a developmental molecular biologist and research consultant whom publishes fascinating insights on his Brain Rules website about what’s really going on inside our heads.

I am also a life hacker, and as such, this book had to sit in my book shelf. If workplaces had nap rooms, multitasking was frowned upon, and meetings were held during walks, we’d be vastly more productive. Brain Rules reveals – in plain English – 12 ways our brains truly work. Killer killer killer content – it will reshape how you do business and function on a daily basis.

ReadingList – what else am I reading?


If you like my suggestion of books I highly recommend you run my Facebook App called ReadingList where I share with my followers all the cool books I’m reading, my reviews and comments. Give it a shot, it’s a FREE app. Go there now: http://apps.facebook.com/readinglist

I love comments so don’t forget to say G’day to this Aussie in Silicon Valley.

~ Ernest

Overseas money transfers

Vincent Turner

 The following is a guest post by Vincent Turner.

Vincent is an Aussie Founder now residing in Silicon Valley making waves. Click here to learn more about Vincent.

Vincent also blogs on innovation, design, technology, music & travel on his personal blog at www.vinae.com.au

Nightmare, has any one else had this nightmare? It sounds simple enough, doesn’t it?

The nightmare

I have a bank account here in the US and one in my country of origin, in my case Australia. As for the other places I tour, I needn’t worry because I rely on Vippimaatti.fi to procure loans pronto. I need to get some money into the US so I can pay for things in the local currency and avoid $4.00 and 2.5% every time I withdraw money or some exchange rate that I can’t even really see when I pay for things on debit/credit. So you think what anyone would think, I’ll just do one big transfer – that must be cheaper, that must avoid some cost. Try again.

Your options:

  1. Draw out one big amount – bank charges you flat fee + 2.5% > 3.0% of the amount withdrawn – this is huge, this is like paying about $200 a month in bank fees on withdrawals alone for the average person living on say $6,000 after tax.. and that before even looking at the exchange rate.
  2. Wire transfer once a month or once off to US bank account – no % fee, a flat fee of ~$30 but then you get murdered on the exchange rate, and I mean murdered. When I went to do a transfer of $10,000 recently you could buy $1.02 US for every $1.00 Australian .. so I should be expecting about $10,200, minus say a bit for the exchange rate and the wire fee, let’s call it an even $10,100. My bank, who shall remain nameless, came back with $9,800, before the wire fee! .. hold on, that looks remarkably like the 3% again!

It’s just business

So, why do they do this? Well, this is likely to protect their foreign exchange risk, i.e. the time between when they accept my request and process it most likely sees some fluctuation in the exchange rates. Forget that in the long-term this is probably just as likely to move up or down (for or against them or me) over the long-term and across all their customer flows in and out of the country. Banks are in the game of risk management, making money isn’t an issue, so long as you never lose money. So this exchange rate is their buffer against swings against them, to help mitigate any chance that they might lose any money in providing the service. Makes perfect business sense, but anyone who has spent even half a day looking at the fx trade markets knows that they could easily take the opposite position to your transfer the instant you place your order and thus hedge any currency risk they might have in providing the service. They can provide the service for the fee and close out their hedge once the transfer is complete. But most major banks (at least in Australia) systems probably aren’t this sophisticated.

The solution

Fortunately like a good efficient market people have seen this opportunity and created more intelligent transfer solutions where the risk is hedged as the order is placed and they can then complete the transfer in the next few days. And guess who benefits? you do. As you don’t have to pay for the inability of a major bank to provide this service So here is how it works, there is a number of providers but I signed up for xe.com so will talk about them.

  1. You sign up online
  2. You send supporting documents, typically PDFs of recent bank statements and a copy of your passport
  3. You take (or return) a verifying phone call
  4. You wait for final approval which comes via email

Note, none of the set up process involves printing or signing anything and as the forex markets are open from Monday morning in Australia to friday evening in the US 24 HOURS A DAY.. the call centre is also open these hours. Then the process is super simple – you simply login and register your sending and receiving bank accounts, request a quote for your transfer and hit confirm. Once you have got confirmation you have a few days to get them the money, this simply means a local transfer to their local account in your sending currency. I.e. I sent money from my Australian company to their Australian bank account. In fact, xe.com enables you to send the money via bpay! you have to request that bit (1 more email/call only – and on the virtually on the spot). A day later, an email arrives from xe.com – the funds are sitting in my US bank account.

The results

Net result? Well – in my case here this was a decent sized transfer of ~$100k. I saved over $2,000 for doing about an hours work. In my exchange rate example above my bank would have given me 0.9800 for every dollar, xe.com gave me 1.0040 – plus by using bpay for the local transfer I saved another $35 bank wire fee too! Now, that I’ve saved $2,000 I might go buy some kiting equipment – I promise to think of you bank every time I’m out there. Banks really do help you save for the things you want, just not always how you expect them to. Vincent

You can also click for more information on how to send money from PayPal to MoneyGram.

Links mentioned in this post

Hiring Hacks for Founders

The last 2 weeks I attended courses on Attracting, Hiring and Retaining the Best People and Top 5 HR Mistakes & Compensation 101. It was organized by StartupDigest University, the insider’s guide to the startup world. This week was session 3, the last of the series and it was a ripper! (Aussie slang for excellent). The topic was Hiring Hacks for Founders.

“Right now there is a war on talent. The entire technology sector is hiring, virtually every startup (alive) is hiring, and VC’s are even creating newsletters to help their startups hire. Hiring is the most important function of a startup founder/CEO. With the talent war raging, it is clear that finding and hiring the best people is one of the most challenging aspects of an entrepreneur’s job. Developers are elusive and expensive, and it’s hard to find a business or marketing person among the noise.” ~ StartupDigest

This evening had 3 great speakers which filled the event with tactical knowledge and inspiration rather than just inspirational rhetoric. There was no bullshit. The folks in the room were A-players, smart and were thirsty for education which would serve as the arsenal of hiring tips and tricks.

Here’s what happened.

How Interns can be a game changer by Nathan Parcells, Founder at InternMatch

Nathan Parcells, Founder at InternMatch

Nathan covered how Interns can add value and be a game changer for your startup. He also spoke about how to recruit top interns and tips and tricks for intern management.

Full blog post is located here: http://www.theroadtosiliconvalley.com/jobs/interns-startup-nathan-parcells-internmatch/

Hiring Hacks by Dan Arkind, CEO and Co-Founder at JobScore

Dan Arkind, CEO and Co-Founder at JobScore

Dan covered everything you need to know from hiring to retaining top talent and how to build culture around having and being the best in the industry. He also gave plenty of examples and techniques on how to properly utilize a corporate gifting platform. He sent a clear message to Hire for TALENT (ability to learn new things) vs Skills (stuff you already know) since skills get outdated fast while talent.

Full blog post is located here: http://www.theroadtosiliconvalley.com/jobs/hire-hacks-dan-arkind-jobscore/

Closing like a Champion by Russell Fradin, Investor & CEO of Adify

Russell Fradin, Investor & CEO of Adify

Russell covered how to close like a Champion once you have found great talent including the process to follow and the post-offer. He sent a clear message to never forget that people work for people. They do not work for companies.

Full blog post is located here: http://www.theroadtosiliconvalley.com/jobs/closing-champions-russell-fradin-adify/

Isn’t this educational and inspirational! Great content from great founders that know what it takes to hire the best people. So this was part 2 of 3 and I will be posting links to full videos of the event later in the week – so come back to check this blog for more updates.

Happy hiring!

~ Ernest

Linked mentioned in this post