WEBCAM Ricoh Co. ( ID 05ca:183b ) 1.3 Mega pixel VCC8 by Francesco Palmisano

THIS PROJECT IS CLOSED AND IS NOT PROVIDED AN ADDITIONAL SUPPORT OR UPGRADE

This is a driver's project about Ricoh's Webcam finding on a great number of notebook like the recent Sony Vaio FZ2x.
This type of webcam works on USB bus and needs, besides a correnct driver, a special firmware.

LAST RELEASE (23/06/2009):
First of all i give a personal thank you to Onur Küçük and Jaroslaw Zola for their contributions!
A new driver is ready:

1) driver for kernel 2.6.30: amd64 (64bit) and i386 (32bit)
2) driver for kernel 2.6.27: amd64/i386

Let's go:

Work on Kernel 2.6.23 and kernel 2.6.24 !!

ATTENTION: with the kernel 2.6.24 or above (2.6.25.x) the drive for the webcam need to be change with this (0.11.2 version).

Remeber that you need your kernel headers or sources installed!
Download the needed archive from here.
Untar it and go inside the new created folder:

tar xvfz r5u870-0.10.1.tar.gz
cd r5u870-0.10.1

With root privileges give this commands:

make
make install

and then the command:

modprobe r5u870

will be created a new device /dev/video0 about your webcam.
Now you can use any program that supports webcams like Skype 2.0, xawtv, kopete, camstrem (only version 0.27 or above), ecc....
If you want to make permanent the module loading on each boot, edit the file /etc/modules with your favourite text editor and add, if there aren't, these lines:

r5u870
videodev
video-buf
v4l1-compat
v4l2-common

save and close the file.

Now there are two Debian packages version of this driver downloadables here-kernel-2.6.23 and here-kernel-2.6.24.
You can install it with the command:

for kernel 2.6.23:

dpkg -i r5u870_0.10.1_i386.deb

for kernel 26.24:

dpkg -i r5u870_0.11..2_i386.deb

IMPORTANT: the module r5u870 goes in conflict with the uvcvideo module, therefore it is necessary to uninstall or to unload the uvcvideo module!!


ENJOY YOUR WEB !!

Finally for the duplicate contact in Gmail

In January, Gmail's Product Manager Todd Jackson said that Gmail will include a contact deduplicator. "Jackson says a de-duper is on the way and that contacts will have more of a presence both in your inbox and in conversations."

11 months later, Gmail added a feature that detects and merges duplicate contacts. "To clean up your contact list in one fell swoop, just click the Find duplicates button in the contact manager, review the merge suggestions (and uncheck any suggestions you don't want merged), and hit the Merge button." If you have many contacts, it's a good idea to consolidate them and to have a single contact for each person.


Other popular webmail services included this feature a long time ago: Yahoo Mail and Hotmail added tools for cleaning up duplicate contacts in 2007.

Fix Error Code 801xxxxx with Windows Live Messenger

Live Messenger

I have been using MSN Live Messenger for a while until I started to run into Error Code Messages.
getting Error Code: 80191002 message.
The reason for this is the conflict with VMware if you happened to install one

FIX Error Code 80191002: To get the error resolved follow the steps below. (I am running Windows 7 , but following same steps should get those errors resolved in Windows XP)

1. First go to Start>Control Panel >Programs and Features

2. In the search box type Live

Search Box

or look for Windows Live Essentials and double click to get the Uninstall or repair your Windows Live programs Wizard.

Windows Live Essentials

3. Select Repair

Uninstall or repair your Windows Live programs

(Before you click continue make sure to close msn messenger)

Close MSN Live Messenger

<4. Once the repair process is done You must restart your computer. If you will not restart your computer and will try to login you will get Error 81000306.

You must restart your computer

Once you will restart your computer you should not long have Error Code 80191002 when trying to sign in to MSN Live Messenger. By following the steps above you might be able to fix other Error Code 801xxxxx. Also you might be able to lunch the repair process by downloading free windows live messenger and lunching the install.

Eye Candy. -->StarDock

some of my friends have been asking me where i get this little expansive bar at top of my windows. the one i am using now is named Stardock. while you can download from

http://www.stardock.com/products/objectdock/downloads.asp#download

of course the free version you can get has less features but already more than enough for normal uses. the one i am using is a cracked version. not anybody knows where to get that and how to crack. so just go with the free one they have there.

google

Sent from my Windows® phone.

[WIKI] linux swap.

By Gary Sims

Linux divides its physical RAM (radom access memory) into chucks of memory called pages. Swapping is the process whereby a page of memory is copied to the preconfigured space on the hard disk, called swap space, to free up that page of memory. The combined sizes of the physical memory and the swap space is the amount of virtual memory available.
Swapping is necessary for two important reasons. First, when the system requires more memory than is physically available, the kernel swaps out less used pages and gives memory to the current application (process) that needs the memory immediately. Second, a significant number of the pages used by an application during its startup phase may only be used for initialization and then never used again. The system can swap out those pages and free the memory for other applications or even for the disk cache.
However, swapping does have a downside. Compared to memory, disks are very slow. Memory speeds can be measured in nanoseconds, while disks are measured in milliseconds, so accessing the disk can be tens of thousands times slower than accessing physical memory. The more swapping that occurs, the slower your system will be. Sometimes excessive swapping or thrashing occurs where a page is swapped out and then very soon swapped in and then swapped out again and so on. In such situations the system is struggling to find free memory and keep applications running at the same time. In this case only adding more RAM will help.
Linux has two forms of swap space: the swap partition and the swap file. The swap partition is an independent section of the hard disk used solely for swapping; no other files can reside there. The swap file is a special file in the filesystem that resides amongst your system and data files.
To see what swap space you have, use the command swapon -s. The output will look something like this:

Filename  Type       Size       Used Priority

/dev/sda5 partition  859436  0       -1

Each line lists a separate swap space being used by the system. Here, the 'Type' field indicates that this swap space is a partition rather than a file, and from 'Filename' we see that it is on the disk sda5. The 'Size' is listed in kilobytes, and the 'Used' field tells us how many kilobytes of swap space has been used (in this case none). 'Priority' tells Linux which swap space to use first. One great thing about the Linux swapping subsystem is that if you mount two (or more) swap spaces (preferably on two different devices) with the same priority, Linux will interleave its swapping activity between them, which can greatly increase swapping performance.
To add an extra swap partition to your system, you first need to prepare it. Step one is to ensure that the partition is marked as a swap partition and step two is to make the swap filesystem. To check that the partition is marked for swap, run as root:

fdisk -l /dev/hdb

Replace /dev/hdb with the device of the hard disk on your system with the swap partition on it. You should see output that looks like this:

Device Boot    Start      End           Blocks  Id      System

/dev/hdb1       2328    2434    859446  82      Linux swap / Solaris

If the partition isn't marked as swap you will need to alter it by running fdisk and using the 't' menu option. Be careful when working with partitions -- you don't want to delete important partitions by mistake or change the id of your system partition to swap by mistake. All data on a swap partition will be lost, so double-check every change you make. Also note that Solaris uses the same ID as Linux swap space for its partitions, so be careful not to kill your Solaris partitions by mistake.
Once a partition is marked as swap, you need to prepare it using the mkswap (make swap) command as root:

mkswap /dev/hdb1

If you see no errors, your swap space is ready to use. To activate it immediately, type:

swapon /dev/hdb1

You can verify that it is being used by running swapon -s. To mount the swap space automatically at boot time, you must add an entry to the /etc/fstab file, which contains a list of filesystems and swap spaces that need to be mounted at boot up. The format of each line is:
Since swap space is a special type of filesystem, many of these parameters aren't applicable. For swap space, add:

/dev/hdb1       none    swap    sw      0       0

where /dev/hdb1 is the swap partition. It doesn't have a specific mount point, hence none. It is of type swap with options of sw, and the last two parameters aren't used so they are entered as 0.
To check that your swap space is being automatically mounted without having to reboot, you can run the swapoff -a command (which turns off all swap spaces) and then swapon -a (which mounts all swap spaces listed in the /etc/fstab file) and then check it with swapon -s.

Swap file

As well as the swap partition, Linux also supports a swap file that you can create, prepare, and mount in a fashion similar to that of a swap partition. The advantage of swap files is that you don't need to find an empty partition or repartition a disk to add additional swap space.
To create a swap file, use the dd command to create an empty file. To create a 1GB file, type:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1024 count=1048576

/swapfile is the name of the swap file, and the count of 1048576 is the size in kilobytes (i.e. 1GB).
Prepare the swap file using mkswap just as you would a partition, but this time use the name of the swap file:

mkswap /swapfile

And similarly, mount it using the swapon command: swapon /swapfile.
The /etc/fstab entry for a swap file would look like this:

/swapfile       none    swap    sw      0       0

How big should my swap space be?

It is possible to run a Linux system without a swap space, and the system will run well if you have a large amount of memory -- but if you run out of physical memory then the system will crash, as it has nothing else it can do, so it is advisable to have a swap space, especially since disk space is relatively cheap.
The key question is how much? Older versions of Unix-type operating systems (such as Sun OS and Ultrix) demanded a swap space of two to three times that of physical memory. Modern implementations (such as Linux) don't require that much, but they can use it if you configure it. A rule of thumb is as follows: 1) for a desktop system, use a swap space of double system memory, as it will allow you to run a large number of applications (many of which may will be idle and easily swapped), making more RAM available for the active applications; 2) for a server, have a smaller amount of swap available (say half of physical memory) so that you have some flexibility for swapping when needed, but monitor the amount of swap space used and upgrade your RAM if necessary; 3) for older desktop machines (with say only 128MB), use as much swap space as you can spare, even up to 1GB.
The Linux 2.6 kernel added a new kernel parameter called swappiness to let administrators tweak the way Linux swaps. It is a number from 0 to 100. In essence, higher values lead to more pages being swapped, and lower values lead to more applications being kept in memory, even if they are idle. Kernel maintainer Andrew Morton has said that he runs his desktop machines with a swappiness of 100, stating that "My point is that decreasing the tendency of the kernel to swap stuff out is wrong. You really don't want hundreds of megabytes of BloatyApp's untouched memory floating about in the machine. Get it out on the disk, use the memory for something useful."
One downside to Morton's idea is that if memory is swapped out too quickly then application response time drops, because when the application's window is clicked the system has to swap the application back into memory, which will make it feel slow.
The default value for swappiness is 60. You can alter it temporarily (until you next reboot) by typing as root:

echo 50 > /proc/sys/vm/swappiness

If you want to alter it permanently then you need to change the vm.swappiness parameter in the /etc/sysctl.conf file.

Conclusion

Managing swap space is an essential aspect of system administration. With good planning and proper use swapping can provide many benefits. Don't be afraid to experiment, and always monitor your system to ensure you are getting the results you need.

[Virtualbox Guest Additions] "Please install the build and header files headers? - Debian

Install the following on your Ubuntu Guest :

sudo aptitude install build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r`

The re-try the Additions, you should be fine :)

Install Guest Additions on Linux guest

Again, a fairly simple procedure. Repeat the first step. This will mount the VirtualBox Guest Additions ISO (included with the program) as a CD-ROM drive inside the virtual machine.
A file manager windows might popup, depending on your guest configuration, showing all the available options, including Guest Additions for both 32-bit and 64-bit systems, Windows and Linux alike - and even Solaris, not surprising, considering VirtualBox owned by Sun. On most modern Linux distros, the system will auto-mount CD-ROMs and launch file browsers / managers.

Choose the right package for your hardware architecture. In our case, this is x86. Open a terminal window and run the script with root privileges:

sudo sh ./

See image:

Wait a few moments until the installation is complete. Reboot.

And that's it!

Google Wave is coming, Try it out

HOW TO EMBED RSS TO ANY HTML WEB PAGE

There is a free RSS to HTML script available from the website at:

http://www.rssdog.com/

It will use a PHP script to convert the RSS to html,  there are more customizations features. you can generate a php and html code. 
make sure you have the RSS feed URL with you. 
Good Luck.

should a teenager go for a MacBook over a windows ?

hi, Linda,
it is my pleasure to provide you some information on that.

this Mas Book is a different kind of operating system from our normally daily used Windows system. users will have a whole different experience.

Why do so many people like to buy a MacBook? one of the many reasons, also most importantly, is that it is a sign of fashion. its appearance is certainly eye candies and not only teenagers like it, even me personally would love to have one as well. you can drop by at the Apple store at the Eaton Center (http://www.apple.com/ca/retail/eatoncentre/) to get a sense of their products.

speaking of the compatibility, it should not be a concern. there are tons of applications similar to Microsoft Office and other programs designed for Mac Book. they actually perform much better than the Microsoft ones. its Music and Graphic software are the top in the industry and all the professionals are using them.

one last thing i want to put stress on is that Jannie will not feel very comfortable while first using it since its design and concept are very different from Windows. but as an implicit trend, MacBook will be in the future as popular as Windows in normal families. so as to get start ahead, it is more beneficial for Jannie to get used to it.

my opinion is to go with a windows product at the moment. Windows 7 has just com out. it is with beautiful interface as well to satisfy Jannie's desire. it is easier to use and Michael and you are more familiar with it. when Jannie gets into university, it will be the perfect time to get her a MacBook (maybe some XXXBook much better than this MacBook). she will have the ability to get all the software she needs by herself or from her friends(free of charges). and at that time, it will take her 2 or 3 weeks to get used to it since she's already a fast learner by then.

hope the information could help.
Regards.
Peter.

- Hide quoted text -

On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 8:02 PM, Linda Wang wrote:

Hi Peter,   I'd like to consult you a question on computer, since you're now studying to be an expert in this area.  Janine wants me to buy her an Apple laptop called "Mac Book".  What do you think of this brand? I'm not sure if it will have any compatibility issue with Microsoft Office software, or any other issues I should be aware of.  So I'd like to ask around before making a final decision.  Thanks in advance for your info!   Hope you're doing well with your study and internship.  Talk to you later.   Linda

Merge Multiple Emails to One Contact in Gmail

If today's Google Sync announcement has convinced you that it's time to move your contact management to Google servers, you probably need to do a little housekeeping with your Gmail contacts first.

For example, if you're staring in the face of numerous duplicate contacts that should represent the same person, the built-in contact merge feature in Google Contacts is a must. Just find the duplicate contacts, tick their checkboxes, and click "Merge these contacts...." Easy peasy. To manage your contacts, either head to the Contacts page in Gmail or to the unadvertised standalone site..

Thanks Michael!

Add Google Calendar to your Thunderbird

Google Calendar is a great, if not the best available tool to share calendars. However, it’s tedious to edit and keep track of it via the web interface. In saving time, integration is your best friend. Naturally, there is a vast amount of addons and tools to sync, integrate and simply work more efficiently with Google Calendar. For example you can sync it with mobile devices like the Blackberry or iPhone using GoogleSync. Then you can add Google Calendar to Gmail with several different Greasemonkey scripts. Now I will explain how to add it to Thunderbird.
For this you will need two Thunderbird addons:
1. Lightning adds a Sunbird type calendar to Thunderbird.
2. Provider for Google Calendar connects Lightning with Google Calendar.

After installing both of these plugins, you will notice several changes in Thunderbird. First of all there is a new sidebar holding the calendar. At the bottom of the old sidebar that is hosting the folders and address book, you should see three new buttons: Mail, Calendar and Tasks.

To integrate an existing Google Calendar, you first need to fetch your calendar’s address. Head over to the web interface, click the little arrow next to one of your calendars, and select >Calendar settings from the menu.
In the Details window you’re looking for the Calendar / Private Address section at the bottom. I found that both XML and ICAL URLs work, but XML is recommended. Whether you pick the calendar or the private address depends on whether your calendar is set to public or private.
Back in Thunderbird the first thing you have to do is click the Calendar symbol to switch from Mail to Calendar view.
Then click >File >New >Calendar… If the Calendar option is not available, you probably forgot to switch to the Calendar view.
From the Create New Calendar window select >On the Network, click >Next, select >Google Calendar as the format and insert the URL into the >Location field, click >Next, eventually enter your Google >User Name and >Password and click >OK, >Name your calendar, give it a >Color, click >Next and finally >Finish to complete the procedure.

And there you go, you have integrated your Google Calendar into Thunderbird. Editing the calendar works bidirectional, meaning you can add and edit events via the website or in Thunderbird and they will be synced automatically.
The Mozilla Wiki has a thorough page covering Provider of Google Calendar, including a section about bugs and limitations. There also is a Google Group discussing further questions.


From http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-integrate-google-calendar-into-thunderbird/, Thanks!

how HD can this youtube get to????!!!

i think most of people have been living along google youtube for a while. having doubted that how hight definition Youtube can get to, i went to google's offical site on youtube where i can find many LONG and HD videos. the computer i am using is a out of date one. but has a video card on it.

then i started watching the video. here is the hyperlink in case you dont have it on hand , http://www.youtube.com/google#p/a/u/0/5JyFbF7QFlY.

here is the sample snapshot i got from the fullscreen mode.

 as we can see, even this 128Mb video card is not able to display this video clearly and smooth enough. and how fast is the loading speed? this video is more than one hour. and it only took me less than 3 minutes to finish loading all of it.

Rumors::?? the GPhone is Coming Next Year

Well, place this one on the maybe, maybe not section, or rumors section, if you will. But according to “well-sourced rumors”, the good folks over at TechCrunch reported yesterday that the famous Google Phone was in fact coming in 2010. Today, they have an updated post on the same topic, but saying that the GPhone might end up being just a data-only device with VoIP.

We thought all this rumors were over last time when Google’s Andy Rubin, head of the company’s Android development, said that Google was not in the phone-making business. But yesterday’s post at TC ended with: “That’s all we have for now. We don’t yet know what the device will look like, how big it will be, or even if it has a physical keyboard. But we do know that Google is getting into the phone building business directly, and doesn’t seem too concerned about competing with all the other device manufacturers building Android phones.”
Today, the possibility of Google not “competing with customers” by launching their own device, seems a little more logical, since, “technically, it may not be a phone.” According to TC, “The GPhone may be a data only, VoIP driven device.” They’re also claiming talking with a person who hinted towards AT&T to be the provider of data services for the Google Phone.
The truth is, no body knows exactly what the future is bringing, or if Google will ever enter the phone market with actual hardware. But it is exciting to read about the rumors that show us the endless possibilities. Head on to the comments section and let us know what is your take on this matter.

How to switch to ROOT users in Ubuntu

if you have used debian before, you should know that there is a "su" command allowing you to get ROOT permission.
unfortunately, in ubuntu, it seems that they have banned the root login. so knowing you didn't set a password for root user, you still have no way to get in as a root user.

there are nifty ways to accomplish that.

1) there is a root terminal, go to the manu bar =>applications=>system tools=>root terminal.  use your password to get into it.

2) use the normal terminal, type in "sudo su" to switch to ROOT user.

ubuntu 9.10 problems so far

ubuntu has been out there for a while and i upgraded it one week ago. it seems not that stable so far. system has crashed couple times and it always freezes. i have to run the tty1 and  manually kill -9 the application seem to cause the problem. still unclear what the reasons are. the freeze is seen as the screen or the application specifically dimmed in lightness went to Ubuntu forum, got something like this below. Ubuntu 9.10  freezes Quote: Originally Posted by MG37221 I'm having it. About once a day. Firefox is always in use when this happens. I've no clue but only my reset button can unfreeze it (cold boot). Been on Ubuntu since 7.04 and used SuSE prior. Am actively looking for patches to make 9.10 as stable as all previous versions. This one has not been trouble free as I've gotten used to although I am aware of the vast complexities involved with an update to an entire operating system! Mine has been a clean install. +1 Although my system crashes (reboots) as well as freezes, and it does so far more often than once a day and not always when Firefox is running. It's the worst issue I've ever had to deal with in Linux.

Debian live, one of many kinds

so what is a linux live CD???

A Debian Live system is a Debian operating system that does not require a classical installer to use it. It comes on various media, including CD-ROM, USB sticks, or via netboot. Why Debian Live?
Although the Debian Live project is about the framework to create your own customized Live system, we offer some prebuilt images. Currently, builds for three desktop environments (GNOME, KDE and Xfce) as well as the standard system are available.

How to Dual-boot windows 7 with Linux (with Linux installed first) -- the step-by-step guide

Scenario: You have Linux already installed but want to dual boot it with windows 7 on the same hard drive.
Summary of tutorial: We'll dual-boot Ubuntu 9.10 with windows 7. With Ubuntu already installed and owning the entire drive, we'll use the Ubuntu Live CD to shrink the Linux partition to create space for the windows install.
windows 7's MBR will overwrite GRUB during installation.

Instructions: 
1. Obtain a copy of Windows7.
2. Partition your disk with fdisk
3. Install Windows7.
4. Re-install Grub.
5. Edit Grub to List Windows 7.



Details:


4. Re-install GRUB

Now you have windows 7 but it has completely eaten your boot loader so you need to re-install grub.
Boot from the ubuntu live cd and go to terminal.
Type in terminal:

"sudo grub"
"grub> find /boot/grub/stage1"

That should return your Ubuntu partition in the form of (hdX,Y), use that:

grub> root (hdX,Y)
grub> setup (hd0)
grub> quit

(you don’t need to type the grub> bit)

That has re-installed grub but you can no longer see windows7

5. Edit grub.
Go to terminal from normal ubuntu and type :

“sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst”

A large text file will open and at the bottom leave a line and add this:

title windows 7 beta (Loader)
root (hd0,1)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader +1

(Do not type this line but if that does not work on re-boot try “hdo,0 or hd0,2” and so on until it works.)

thanks to hyperdude111 and James Bannan

Sony VAIO running Windows 7

it has been couples of weeks since window7 released. didn't want to install or "upgrade" it till yesterday. VISTA had always been taking a big chunk of my memories.finally i got pissed of then installed this windows 7. got the CD-key from University of waterloo e-academic for free. and it is a business version.


not as good as on youtube showed. so for i have found some bugs flowing around.

1) the VAIO integrated microphone doesn't work. but once i put my now earphone with the little mic, it sounds. thinking the microphone is not yet configured completely when installing all the driver. i have kept eyes on the VAIO official site waiting for the update.

2)display crashed. at some point yesterday, when i tried to use the windows updater while it's updating, the screen died 3 times. and showing chaos and blended colors on the screen. that scared the shit out of me and i thought the system was gonna crash. things are getting better now. haven't seen any display crash since then.