How to use Google Speech API

I few years ago, Google embedded speech recognition into the Google Chrome and the Chromium browser. Both implementation uses a hidden API, but anyone is able to access and utilize the API as a Speech To Text service. The following is a short outline on how to use the Google Speech API. Requirements A FLAC file that stores the recorded speech or a mp3 file Curl installed (installed using e....

September 16, 2013

Bank Identification Number (BIN) List

The first 6 digits of a credit card number are known as the Issuer Identification Number (IIN), previously known as Bank Identification Number (BIN). Merchants use the BIN or IIN information to identify the issuing institution, country of origin, card type and other details. For many year I’ve been wondering where to get the best Binlists, but they are hard to get outside of the card scheme organizations, such as Visa or MasterCard....

September 10, 2013

Howto: Install MariaDB on Debian 7/Wheezy

MariaDB is a fork of MySQL, which is true open source and community maintained. MariaDB is a binary drop in replacement for MySQL. It includes the XtraDB storage engine as a replacement for InnoDB. Its lead developer is Michael Widenius (also known as “Monty”), the founder of MySQL. Recently, many popular Linux distributions replaced MySQL with MariaDB as default database server. Fedora version => 19, Archlinux and OpenSuse. Moreover Wikipedia moved to MariaDB and Mozilla also uses MariaDB....

May 5, 2013

OS X Performance Tweaks

Update to Latest OS X Upgrade to the latest version of OS X. If you are upgrading from Lion to Mountain Lion, then tere’s no need to visit a store and fetch a box, and install a bunch of discs. Just click the Mac App Store icon on your Mac. Buy OS X Mountain Lion. And your Mac does the rest. Follow this Apple guide for more info Clean System and User Caches etc....

April 30, 2013

Ubuntu: Optimize for speed

This easy little guide will help you with simple optimization tips for speeding up Ubuntu (12.04, 12.10, and 13.04) and other Ubuntu-based systems such as Linux Mint. The tips come in very handy for those using older computers with low RAM who need to boost their computer for better speed and performance and if you are just want a really fast and snappy computer on some regular hardware. Removing Ubuntu One client Saves >100 MB ram....

April 21, 2013

Howto install memcached gem on Ubuntu/Debian

Memcached is a general-purpose distributed memory caching system used by many sites around. It is often used to speed up dynamic database-driven websites by caching data and objects in RAM to reduce the number of times an external data source (such as a database or API) must be read. Memcached runs on Unix, Linux, Windows and Mac OS X. The memcached gem requires the following development libraries to be installed...

April 16, 2013

Chrome Built-in User-Agent Switcher

You may need to quickly switch between user-agent strings on the fly - when developing websites that need to work on both mobile browsers and desktop browsers user-agent switcing is a must-have. And some times you’ll expirence some archaic site blocking you because you’re not using Netscape or Internet Explorer (in an ancient version e.g. version 6). Chrome got a built-in user-agent switcher. All you need to do is to open the developer tools panel (use Ctrl+Shift+I shortcut) and click the wrench button (lower right corner) and click Overrides, and enable override user agent and elect the browser or device you want to emulate and reload the page....

April 10, 2013

Howto Install Office 2010 using Wine

Microsoft Office 2010 is the most recent version of the Microsoft Office productivity suite. Formerly known as Office 14 in the initial stages of its beta cycle, it was released to customers in 2010. This howto assume that you got an ISO image of the installation media. If you are on Debian/Ubuntu you can install wine, winetricks, and winbind using sudo apt-get install wine1.5 winetricks winbind In order to install you’ll need the following native Microsoft Windows libraries (dll files)...

April 10, 2013

Howto Backup WD MyBook Live to Amazon S3 and Glacier

Recently I helped a photographer to backup a large photo collection (several terabytes) from a Western Digital (WD) personal NAS MyBook Live. The My Book Live Edition NAS was released by Western Digital in 2011. They range in storage capacity from 1 to 4 TB. My Book Live features a 1 GHz ARM processor, 256 MB of RAM, and 1000 Mbit/s ethernet connectivity. Contrary to previous My Book Live versions it now features a fully fledged Debian linux distribution, whichs makes the My Book Live easy to customize and adapt to different needs....

February 24, 2013

Howto run Netflix on Ubuntu Linux

Netflix is finally working on Linux - not native, but with a patched Wine build, you can now use Netflix under Linux. For those who are not familiar with Netflix, it is an American provider of on-demand Internet streaming media available to both North and South America, the Caribbean, United Kingdom, Ireland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland. How to install $ sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ehoover/compholio $ sudo apt-get update $ sudo apt-get install netflix-desktop The Netflix Desktop package installs all of the components necessary to run Netflix Watch Instantly under Wine, including the Windows version of Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Silverlight v4....

February 23, 2013