Just keeping a note to self (and others who could find it useful). How to install Ejabberd on Ubuntu server 12.04:

• aptitude install ejabberd (for some reason apt-get didn’t work out that well);
• go to wherever you manage your DNS records and add a SVR record as mentioned here ;
• edit /etc/ejabberd/ejabberd.cfg and add admin user as mentioned here  .

All of these steps are to avoid placing hosts as localhost on your ejabberd.cfg file which could work but than you might have problems with clients trying to connect.

Not long ago I was working with some .po files and needed a nice and simple diff program to merge 2 files. First I tried the multi-purposed text editor vim.

Using vim as a diff and merge tool:

with Andrej’s article I found some nice tips & tricks and the Vim manual for diff tasks. Some useful commands,

• “vim -o one.txt two.txt three.txt” (for horizontal split), “vim -O one.txt two.txt three.txt ” (for vertical split)
• go to the next diff point   ” ]c “; go to previous diff point “ [c “
• merge to original “do“, merge from original “dp“.

The window you’ll be looking at will look something like this:

I’ve just read in HowToForge a nice article about Piwik, an open source web analytics tool.

You can download Piwik and install it on your own server to gather analytics data that could replace your usage of Google Analytics. In my personal opinion, it is always nice to have two services running to make sure you’re getting the right analytics data or still have data in case something happens and one service breaks.

I’m an follower of GTD. Probably not the best one, but at least I try to keep myself as organized as I can in the stream of neverending to-dos.

Which is why one of the first applications I searched for to install on my Android device was a good task manager to sync with RememberTheMilk. I was quite happy to find the open source app Astrid. The program does exactly what I need:

Last.fm’s decision to start charging for web streaming of their radio service outside the US, UK and Germany made reasonable financial sense for them didn’t make me too happy.

As a consequence of the news (it seems), a new open source project was started called libre.fm. Right now the project is in closed alpha and will allow you to collect the information of songs you’re listening to, similar to audioscrobbler.

Google Maps could very well be the most highly used online map service, why would anything else be better? GMaps’ data is proprietary, you can use it but with some restrictions and software developers can not use its full potential for their own benefit.

OpenStreetMap is a world map done entirely from user’s submitted data. Similar to a wiki, you construct the map details by adding street names, information of buildings, commercial and government establishments, everything including terrain information.

If you’re working on a localization project and would like to have the translation work done online, Pootle is currently the best option I found. Having an online translation platform is a great option for collaborative work since your team of translators can work from different parts of the world simultaneously.

Pootle has a nice user rights management feature allowing you to set the responsibilities of each team member in your project:

In the past, to run online surveys I used GoogleDocs and SurveyMonkey. One was a paid service and the other too minimalistic. LimeSurvey though is a very nice open source platform to run complex online surveys however you choose.

The list of features is quite incredible, the best ones I found were the export / import format options (including SPSS, CSV, PDF, and .xls); large possibly of question types; integration of pictures and movies in a survey; and plenty of graphics options for you to analyze results inside the platform.

The open source based microblogging platform identi.ca has recently added some cool new features:

• hip new design giving the platform a fresher look;
• cloud tags for individual micro-bloggers;
• and the best of all, groups! You can create groups, join existing ones and write posts inside groups writing “!” in front of the group name.

Adding groups functionality is a nice feature, inspired (maybe?) in FriendFeed’s rooms. People with similar interests can discuss topics together and you’ll always receive posts of the groups you’re connected to.

For those (like me) who are interested on using rsync but are command line inexperienced, finding a GUI is a lifesaver.

Grsync can make sure you use rsync without the terminal. The developers list several features such as:

• you can easily run the most common rsync tasks, more complex tasks can still be done but with command line tweaking;
• Saves multiple settings with customized names;
• performs simulations or normal executions;
• print rsync output to a log or a separate file;
• operation pause.

For those who have no clue about what is rsync, it is a tool used very often for backups and incremental file transfers. In other words, if you’re doing a backup with rsync, you will not have to copy every single file over and over again in different backups, only the files that have changed.