My anime addiction has made me download tons of anime this week, so I was sometimes forced to use the proprietary Realmedia .rm and .rmvb files. While the compression quality is outstanding, I tried to find a good replacement for Real Player on Linux.
On Windows I use Real Alternative and on my Mac the free Real Player (it doesn’t seem as bloated as the Windows version).
And then i stumbled upon a player called Helix. The Helix DNA is the base of Real Player, but the Helix player works only on Unix systems. I’m still testing it, but according to a few Google searches I did it should play well with Real media formats.
Off to Kanon!
Why is the Dock becoming more and more popular? It’s probably got something to do with clever window management, doesn’t it? Well, in my opinion it’s just the eye candy, though I’m sure that people appreciate the psychological trick; every tried to open 2 instances of a program with a Dock? 
Now here’s a list of 5 different Docks you can use on Linux. They have different system requirements. Rock out!
5. SimDock
I’ll start off with a little low.end dock. Just enough to get you started. While SimDock isn’t extremely advanced, it offers a full-fledged dock, all in one little .deb package and no window compositing effects required, which means you’ll be able t run it on low-end machines without any problems.
4. Ksmoothdock
Smooth zooming, low requirements. I like SimDock, but many users tell me Ksmoothdock looks and works better with their KDE DE.
3. Kiba Dock
Small, nice, free. What more could you ask for? Kiba-dock was originally a project meant to demo the Akamaru physics engine, but it ended up being a separate project.
2. Engage Dock (for Enlightenment)
Ever wondered how the gOS dudes made a smooth little dock for the gPC? Well, here’s your answer. It’s cool even without the Green theme I heard it can run without Enlightenment, too. Dreamlinux uses it with XFCE, for instance.
The big guy. This is the Dock with the bad-ass themes, icons and plugins. Everyone who has compositing turned on uses AWN these days. Why? It’s powerful, customizable and pretty. I use it sometimes, although it affects Ubuntu’s loading time. (it’s Compiz’ fault, really). If you got the power, go for it! Also, check out the AWN wiki.
Update:
0.5 Cairo Dock
Another cool dock, which also requires compositing effects.
It’s been said that FireFox Mobile is due in late 2008. A great surprise, because the Minimo browser really got whooped by Opera Mini and its innovations, even on smaller mobile devices, such as older mobile phones. Besides, I hate Minimo.
The UI design mock-up already exists, for touch-screens. Now this looks like old news, but you have probably noticed that since October 2007 not much has happened: there is a chance for FireFox to win Opera Mini users over to its side. The community will enable you to customize the browser, and we’ll be seeing some speed tweaks, hopefully.
I’m just saying: if Deepfish goes cellular, we’re in for a war. Did you know that Nokia’s S60 browser, which is described by users as whoop-ass, is also open source?
Last but not least, I would like to thank God for not having a war between a crappy browser with 90% percent of market share, but rather between very good browsers, all with their own pros and cons.
Don’t you just hate it when you have to fire up your browser, navigate to your page and finally log-in every time you want to blog? When I see that TinyMCE editor window I always remember how it remains one of the most serious web productivity punches in the faces of bloggers.
I set off to find a tool which could make my one-click blogging dream come true. Some of these tools are not perfect, it also depends on the platform you use. But let’s face it, serious people mostly use Wordpress, MovableType, or Blogger (still wondering why about this one), so that is going to be the support I’ll be looking for.
Flock
If it ran as well on my MacBook as on my PC, it would most certainly be my browser of choice (I’m waiting for the upcoming release) . The niftiest feature it’s got is of course the blogging tool. Flock integrates with many Web 2.0 services, such as Youtube, Flickr etc. and last but not least, blogs. By pressing the blog button, you get a great text field where you can blog and publish your post from. It supports Wordpress and Blogger, although it sadly lacks MovableType support. There’s still support for TypePad, though note that TypePad is a service, like Blogger, using MovableType as a platform. COnsequently, I cannot guarantee It’ll work with your self-hosted MovableType blog. If you’re a Flock and MovableType user, a comment would be welcome indeed 
ScribeFire (former Performancing) for Firefox
This plugin has been recommended to me numerous times. So why not try it out? It’s boasts a great deal of cool features, like multi-blogging. The main site doesn’t show what blogs are suported. WordPress, Blogger, and LiveJournal should work. After you install the plugin you can always open it by simply clicking the small ‘notepad’ button in the lower-right corner toolbar.
During my search for the best blog tool, I discovered there are many paid tools. Ecto is one of them. It doesn’t work in the browser, it’s a standalone piece of software, for both Mac OSX and Windows (pro’lly works on other OSes with Wine, though). I don’t think paying for a blogging tool is really necessary, but hey, Darren likes it and maybe you will too. It is packed with features, like multiple blog posting, offline blogging, and supports all of the blogging platforms you’ll ever need.
Where do you blog from?
After wasting an hour optimizing Firefox to no avail - for some reason it is reluctant to show Central European characters, I surrendered and downloaded the new Opera browser 9.50 beta, codenamed ‘Kestrel’. Being a productivity freak, I need my browser to be completely synchronized at all times. I’ve heard of the new bookmark syncing feature in Opera, which is coming with the new release, although it’s still in beta. What the heck, I tested it - and it looks very good. I encountered a few problems with site rendering (especially phpBB2 forums), and the browser crashed a few times in Leopard, but otherwise it works great, it is still the same, good ol’ Opera.
The bookmark sync option is a huge web productivity booster. Since I use 4 different operating systems (I dual-boot a PC and a MacBook), reconfiguring browsers is a real pain-in-the-[insert body part here]. I used to install Foxmarks on each Firefox browser, but I always had problems with at least one installation, if of course the Foxmarks server was up at the time.
Bookmark Synchronizing with Opera 9.50b works through the my.Opera account server storage space, which you can get for free when you sign up . The syncing feature is very cool: it syncs with all of your installed and linked browsers, even on your freaking mobile phone. It is called Opera Link.
Staying with Opera for now. We will see if the stable Firefox 3 with Weave will have a chance at converting me back.
Still looking for a good Pagerank checking tool though…
