GNU/Linux books... from O'Reilleys....

Great collection of international books, mostly reprinted in India.
Some from O'Reilleys. International quality at Indian prices. This is
available with Shroff Publishers spdorders@shroffpublishers.com at Navi
Mumbai, with offices in Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi and Kolkata.
www.shroffpublishers.com --FN

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BOOKS ON GNU/Linux
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o Linux Systems ... Rs 350.00
o Linux clusters ... Rs 350.00
o How Linux Worls ... Rs 300.00
o Linux Device Drivers ... Rs 450.00
o Linux Desktop ... Rs 150.00
o Linux For Non-Geeks ... Rs 300.00
o Linux In a Nutshell ... Rs 500.00
o Linux in a Windows World ... Rs 450.00
o Linux iptables ... Rs 100.00
o Linux Made Easy ... Rs 325.00
o Linux Network Admin's Guide . Rs 350.00
o Linux Network Security ... Rs 475.00
o Linux Pocket Guide ... Rs 150.00
o Linux Server Hacks ... Rs 400.00
o Linux Unwired ... Rs 300.00
o Linux Cookbook ... Rs 600.00
o Test Driving Linux ... Rs 350.00
o Linux TCP/IP Stack ... Rs 450.00
o Linux Network Internals ... Rs 600.00
o Understanding the Linux Kernel Rs 550.00

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BOOKS ON PHP
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o Oracle and PHP on Linux ... Rs 550.00
o Essential PHP Security ... Rs 125.00
o Learning PHP5 ... Rs 350.00
o PHP Cookbook ... Rs 550.00
o PHP Hacks ... Rs 400.00
o PHP in a Nutshell ... Rs 325.00
o PHPUnit Pocket Guide ... Rs 100.00
o PHP Pocket Reference ... Rs 25.00
o PHP ... Rs 350.00
o Upgrading to PHP5 ... Rs 350.00
o PHP5.1 For Beginners ... Rs 650.00
o PHP and MySQL ... Rs 600.00

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BOOKS ON APACHE/TOMCAT
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o Applied Software Engineering
with Apache Jakarta Commons Rs 400.00
o Apache Cookbook Rs 250.00
o Apache The Definitive Guide Rs 500.00
o Apache Security Rs 400.00
o How Tomcat Works Rs 375.00
o Tomcat Rs 300.00

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BOOKS ON MySQL
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o High Performance MySQL Rs 300.00
o Introduction to MySQL Rs 50.00
o MySQL Rs 325.00
o MySQL Cookbook Rs 750.00
o MySQL 5 Rs 550.00
o MySQL in a Nutshell Rs 325.00
o MySQL Pocket Reference Rs 100.00
--

Subject-specific news trackers

A NEW breed of news-tracking services for monitoring the latest hot ideas/products is evolving. NetSpeak profiles a few of them.

News from a multitude of sources flows through the length and breadth of cyberspace. Among the several news dissemination tools on the Net, blogs have a prominent place. Millions of bloggers post links of the latest information found by them on their blog and make the blogosphere always live.

As discussed in an earlier column (http://www.hindu.com/biz/2006/01/09/stories/20060 10900831600.htm), news trackers (like Memeorandum — http://memeorandum.com/) help us aggregate the important and popular ideas in the blog contents using automated tools.

Tailrank (tailrank.com/) is another news tracking service worth a try. For each of the threads listed on its home page, Tailrank displays several comments made on it by different bloggers. This helps the reader easily navigate/read diverse viewpoints on the item being viewed.

Chuquet (chuquet.com/) is yet another blog links aggregator worth a mention.

However, simply aggregating blog content entirely with a program may not be sufficient to fetch genuine or popular ideas/news/products being floated on the Net. To allow human interface into this news-tracking arena, the latest trend is to initiate services, where users can submit links to news articles and vote for/or against links being posted by others. Based on this voting data, the service ranks each of the postings and displays the most popular ones on its front page. Digg (http://www.digg.com/ ), the famous technology news aggregation/ranking site, is one such news aggregation service.

Of late, a plethora of such services is surfacing on the Net. The news tracking service Newsvine (http://www.newsvine.com) meant for displaying latest news stories on a range of subjects such as business, politics, science and technology is a popular product in this genre.

Reddit (http://reddit.com/) is another service of this kind worth exploring. New services enable aggregation of blog comments on specific subjects

The popularity of this kind of collaborative news tracking — combining readers' perception with software — is giving rise to subject-specific news trackers. New services for aggregating blog comments on specific subjects are being built.

The news aggregation service, Postgenomic (http://postgeno mic.com/), developed for aggregating posts "from life science blogs" is an example of this trend.

StockDiggers (http://stockdigg.com/), created for aggregating financial news, will be a useful place for anyone engaged in financial matters.

You may also note that all the services mentioned above provide webfeeds for helping you read the latest content on them with your newsreader. Also, if you want to read the contents of a few popular news tracking services together from a single web page, check out: http://popurls.com/

Open access journals

The concept of open source publishing (http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/biz/2002/07/15/stories/2002071500060200.htm) has gained considerable prominence and tens of hundreds of open-access, free journals on a variety of subjects are available. A tool for accessing these journals easily is very much essential. As mentioned earlier, Directory of Open Access Journals (http://www.doaj. org/) is an attempt in this direction. On this count, the recently launched open access journal portal Openj-gate (http://www.openj-gate.com/), a laudable Indian initiative, assumes significance. The service indexes more than 3,000 open access journals and helps you access millions of articles rather easily. The portal database can be searched with keyword, author, title, and institutions.

Graph creation tool

Many of us use different types of graphs for effectively conveying information. People from varied professions such as politicians, planners, scientists and businessmen make frequent use of this tool. The availability of simple graph creation tools facilitates this process. Now, if you are away from your machine and need to draw a graph, an on-line solution will be ideal. On such situations, take advantage of the on-line graph creation application available here: http://tinyurl.com/phub5

The `Create a Graph' service helps you draw five types of charts (XY, line, pie, bar and Area graph) with your browser. Besides generating a graph for your data, the service allows you to save or get it printed in your local printer. It also supports the feature for e-mailing the graph output to your clients.

Cheat sheet collection

A cheat sheet for a service or software is a web page with almost all important commands/tips available with the service/software embedded on it. A cheat sheet for a product serves as a handy reference for its users. Google cheat sheet mentioned in an earlier column (http://www.hindu.com/2004/11/15/stories/2004111500771 700.htm) is an example. Recently this author stumbled on a `Cheat Sheet Round-up' web page (http://www.petefreitag. com/item/455.cfm) with links to cheat sheets for about thirty services/programs. The list includes cheat sheets for HTML, JavaScript, MySQL, Java, PERL and so on.

Freeware list

The distinct feature of the Net as we all know is the availability of free programs for almost all conceivable problems. We have free anti-virus tools (like Antivir/Avast), free audio tools (like Audacity), free graphics tools (like Gimp), free office tools (like OpenOffice), free PDF programs (like PDFCreator) and free HTML editors (like NVU). For an exhaustive list of such free programs, check out: http://tinyurl.com/ayzan

E-mail encoder

An e-mail id listed on a web page has a fair chance of reaching a spammer's hand. However, if the e-mail address can be accommodated in an encrypted form, no spammer will be able to grab it. In this context, the simple on-line application `e-mail riddler' (http://www.dynamicdrive.com/emailriddler/) will come very handy. For an e-mail address, the service offers a short JavaScript program for encrypting it. Paste this code on to your web page, where you want your e-mail address to be displayed.

Open access publishing

Let us have a look at the various twists and turns of the `open access publishing' movement that aims to make research publications available for free on the Net and allow anybody to read, copy and print them without any restrictions.

Open-source is one of the fascinating movements that originated on the Net and regular readers of this column need no introduction to this method of software development (http://www.opensource.org). Another movement, which shares some of the ethos of open-source philosophy that is slowly gaining prominence and attention is open access publishing, which attempts to free the research reports from the grip of established professional journals.

Issue

Literature that originates in research labs gets disseminated through major scientific journals, which are read by individuals who subscribe to them or have access to libraries that subscribe to them. Though numerous original research articles are being published in established multiple journals regularly, only a selected few in prestigious institutions can afford to access all of them.

Many thinkers feel that the exorbitant cost of professional journals prevents many gifted researchers from gaining the latest scientific knowledge and thereby hinders the smooth development of knowledge. The spectacular growth of web technology and transformation of the Net into a major publishing medium has persuaded some members of the scientific community to think of developing a different model for research publications.

Public Library of Science

This has led to the formation of a non-profit organisation, the Public Library of Science, PloS, (http://www.publiclibraryofscience.org/). One of the objectives of PLoS is to make `the world's scientific and medical literature freely accessible to scientists and to the public around the world'. PLoS took the initiative to circulate an open letter asking publishers to allow research reports published in their journals to be published on-line free by interested service providers. According to the PLoS' web site, this open letter has now been signed by more than 30,000 scientists in 179 countries.

Though the PLoS initiative has not fully succeeded in its endeavour to free research output from traditional publishers, the concept of open publishing — publishing content that can be accessed on-line for free — has gained enough popularity and attention.

Many on-line scientific-report repository creation projects that intend to bring together scientific literature available in various journals and store them in a common format, with the necessary interface that lets people easily access the content, are under way. The free digital archive, PubMed Central, http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/, is a prominent example of a repository that contains archives of many established life science journals.

Another movement that has to be mentioned in this regard is the Budapest Open Access Initiative, BOAI, (http://www.soros.org/openaccess/)

created by the Open Society Institute. Though BOAI and PLoS have similar objectives and are formed to facilitate open access to research papers, they differ in one aspect. PLoS mainly aims to bring scientific literature into the open access format, whereas BOAI aims to bring all research publications into the open access sphere.

Apart from the non-profit open access publishing initiatives, a commercial venture is also in place. BioMedical Central, http://www. biomedcentral.com/, is a publishing house created for "providing immediate free access to peer-reviewed biomedical research".

The publishers believe that free on-line access to research reports is a must for the advancement of knowledge and to sustain the open access method of publishing they are trying out innovative business models. Apart from using the usual revenue models like advertising, the publishing company charges the author or his/her sponsor. The company believes that free open access will result in the author benefiting more than anybody else, as more people will read his/her research work. So, instead of the readers of the article, the author of the article has to bear the cost of publishing.

It would be appropriate to mention another important development in this movement — the publication of a free journal by the publishing company BioMedical Central. It has started the publication of `Journal Biology' that publishes high-quality biological research articles. Papers accepted for publication will be published on the web within two weeks. The journal is available on the web at: http://jbiol.com/ and to access the content you just need to go through a simple one-time free registration process.

Web form filler

Generally, to access any web-based service you need to go through a registration process that involves filling up lengthy on-line forms. Though we hate this monotonous task, we have no alternative to accept this necessary evil. To prevent netizens from regularly going through the form filling drudgery, many programs capable of filling up forms automatically have been developed. In all these programs, one needs to create a master form with all the common fields that generally appear in a typical form. Once the form filler program is installed and set-up with the necessary data, it automatically gets fired whenever a form is accessed on the web. To get all the form fields filled up with appropriate data, you just need to click at the `Fill' button. Anyone interested in a form filler software can try out `Roboform', which is available for free at: http://www.roboform.com. After installing the software, you can create a master form, or an identity, with numerous fields that include your name, address, e-mail, phone number, bank account and username.

PDF file creation via e-mail

PDF (Portable Document Format) is a file format that is quite popular among net content providers. This week NetSpeak presents a few tools and services that facilitate easy conversion of documents to PDF files.

Portable Document Format

The need of people who work on different kinds of computers that run on different operating systems — Windows, Linux, DOS and the like — to communicate and exchange documents led to the creation of platform independent file formats. The portable document format (PDF) is one such standard and a file created in this format can be read in any machine running any OS — you just need the Acrobat reader, which is available for free.

What prevents people from creating their files in this format? To create a PDF file, you need the Acrobat PDF writer, which is not free and is a bit of a costly proposition for an ordinary Net user. There is an interesting free software — Ghostscript — that helps us create PDF files from files of different formats,Before that a discussion of the `PostScript' file.

PostScript file

Net users who frequently download document files might have come across postscript files that generally come with the extension `. PS'. These files are created in the PostScript languageand can be printed on a PostScript printer the HP LaserJet 2100 that can interpret PostScript commands. If you have a PostScript file named `jm.ps' and want to print it out through a PS printer connected to your machine's printer port, go to the DOS prompt, then type in the command: `copy jm.ps lpt1:'.

If your printer does not have the PostScript feature, the file would print with some junk pages.To avoid this, you need to use a software that can read and interpret PostScript files. The program Ghostscript — mentioned earlier — is capable of doing this. This means you can print or view a PostScript file even if you don't have a PS printer. PS file creation

It is quite easy to convert a document into a PostScript file. You need to install a PS printer — though for this you do not need any printer connected to your machine. The installation process is just like installing a printer.

If you are a Windows user, click at the Start/ Settings/Printers, then double-click at the `Add Printer' option. Now, select a postscript printer from the list of printers displayed — for example you may select the printer named `HP LaserJet 4/4M PostScript'. After making the selection, the installer will ask you to specify the port to be used with this printer. At this point select the `FILE' option (to create the file on your disk) and finish the installation process.

Once, a postscript printer is installed, you will have one more printer option whenever you try to print a document from any application.

To create a PS version of a file, (a Word file) give the necessary instructions to print it and before pressing the OK button, change the printer name to the postscript printer that has been installed At this point you will have to provide a name to the postscript file to be created and you will than have a postscript version of your file.

Ghostscript

Ghostscript (GS) is a free open source software that can read a postscript file and convert it into any file format that include PDF and JPG. Download Ghostscript and install the program with the link: http://www.cs.wisc.edu/ghost/doc/AFPL/new 704.htm. Now, let us convert a Word file named, say, NetSpeak.doc, into a PDF file using this program.

First create a PostScript version of the file using the procedure already described. Then invoke the GS program with a few options. Since the Ghostscript is a command line program — it does not have any graphic interface, go to the DOS prompt, move to the directory where GS is stored and type in the following command:

Gswin32c — sDEVICE= pdfwrite — sutputFile=netspeak.pdf — dnopause netspeak.prn

Here `netspeak.prn' is the PS file created from your application and the `netspeak.pdf' is the name given to the PDF file to be created through GS.

An ordinary user may find it difficult to use the GS software. And to simplify the use of the program, some front-ends with good user interfaces have been developed.

One such front-end is Gsview, which is available for free at: http://www.cs.wisc.edu/

ghost/gsview/index.htm After installing this program, you will not have to worry about the GS command and its numerous options. Simply load the GSview and use its friendly user interface.

PDF conversion through e-mail

Some brilliant people have automated the entire process for conversion of a document file into a PDF file. and have introduced some ingenious value-added services. One such service is PDF conversion through e-mail. Here, if you want the PDF version of a Word file and don't want to go through any of the steps mentioned above, just send an e-mail attaching this file to the address: doc2pdf@hotpop.com.

After a few minutes, look at your mailbox again; you will find a reply mail with the PDF version of the file attached. This innovative service has been made available for free.

To implement this service in your Intranet, you can download the program doc2pdf, available at the link: http://doc2pdf.sourceforge.net/. More details of the program are available at the site.

Google Suggest: a keyword refinement tool

This week NetSpeak features a couple of services created for helping us refine our search queries to get more focused results from search services.

A major deficiency of current search engines is that many irrelevant sites creep into their output list. Of course, the real problem lies more with the user than with the search engine. Savvy netizens know well that for obtaining web pages with relevant content a searcher should be able to provide appropriate search string. The ability to arrive at keywords that neatly fit into one's requirements is an invaluable skill, which can be achieved by constant practice and intelligent use of the search refinement features available with a search engine.

Refining the search query through trial and error process is obviously a laborious exercise. That is, availability of a service, which can throw some light on the possible search terms specific to one's subject will certainly be useful. Let us have a look at some services that can be used for this purpose.

As Google churns out one service after another with amazing regularity, of late, NetSpeak finds it "difficult" to pass even one week without a reference to it. Recently, Google has rolled out another service for helping its users utilise its search service a little more efficiently.

Google Suggest (http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en), the latest issue from Google labs, displays several string options as you start entering the search string into the search box.

For example, if you enter the string `Cancer', Google Suggest senses it and immediately suggests various related strings from its database such as `Cancer research", `Cancer bracelets' `Cancer statistics', `Cancer treatment', `Cancer council' and the like.

Likewise, for the string NetSpeak, it offered refinements that include `NetSpeak Dictionary', `NetSpeak translator', `NetSpeak hindu', `NetSpeak thehindu' and so on. These strings are not just some words mechanically produced by Google, they are popular queries already used by many Google users.

That is, as mentioned in this blog entry (http://www.google.com/googleblog/2004/12/ive-got-suggestion.html) by the author of this tool, Google Suggest "gives you a playground to explore what others are searching about, and learn about things you haven't dreamt of." Alongside each of the suggested strings, the service also displays the number of results available for it.

As this tool enables us to easily identify a popular search term, it may turn out to be a handy tool for a web master who would like to optimise his web page. For more details: http://labs.google.com/suggest/faq. html.

If you are a Firefox user and want to add `Google Suggest' to the Firefox's search bar, so that it can be invoked directly from the browser, install the extension available at: http://www. loconet.ca/.

Based on Google Suggest, an enthusiast has created an on-line service that lists out the most popular keywords for each letter of the alphabet.

Each time you access the service, it queries Google Suggest, collects the data on the fly and builds the current popular `search words' for all the letters in the English alphabet.

Check out: http://labs.patrickgaskill.com/googlealphabet/.

When this author checked, surprisingly, the most popular query word for the alphabet `F' was `Firefox'.

KwMap (http://kwmap.com/) is another on-line tool that can be used to find new keyword alternatives. To get the output, enter the keyword to be refined into the input box and click on the `View' button. Immediately the service will display a keyword chart with two axes. On one axis you will find keywords that are different (but related to the input string) while on the other axis it displays keywords that also contain the entered string.

For example, if you type the word `innovation', you will find query alternatives such as `technological innovation', `innovation management', `business innovation', `creativity' and so on.

We have seen the emergence of several new search engines with different product positioning strategies. The search tool, Acoona, which has got a Chinese partnership (http://www. accoona.com/partners.html), is the latest product that has hit the search engine market. As per its site, Acoona has a query refinement feature, based on its artificial intelligence technology that can comprehend `the meaning of search terms'. Using its `Super target' feature a user "can highlight specific terms in a query". Check out: http://www.accoona.com/super target. html.

A `phishing' site detector

It is likely that many of you have received junk e-mails from people claiming to be authorities of organisations such as CitiBank, E-bay and so on. The objective of such fraud e-mails is to trick the user to disclose her personal details.

Such e-mails direct the naïve user to a bogus web site, which collects the user' personal information while he logs on to the service. This act of sending e-mails for collecting private information from netizens is known as phishing (http://www. webopedia.com/TERM/p/phishing. html).

One possible solution to prevent a netizen from falling prey to such frauds is to introduce a feature into the browser that can warn the visitor while he attempts to access a fraud site of this kind.

The latest edition of the free IE-compatible browser, Deepnet Explorer (featured in an earlier edition of NetSpeak), has been released with a `phishing' prevention feature.

Once the `Deepnet Explorer's `Phishing Alarm' feature is enabled, , whenever you visit a phishing site (whose details are stored in the browser's database) with this browser, it pops up a message window that alerts you of the impending danger. For more details: http://deepnetexplorer.com/support.asp. You may also check out this link at Secunia ( http://secunia.com/multiple_browsers_window_injection_vulnerability_test/) that hosts a `browser vulnerability' test, which can be used to check whether your browser is vulnerable to certain on-line attacks.

WordWeb

To get the meaning of a word or phrase, nowadays many netizens use one of the many on-line dictionary services. Obviously, to use such a service you need to be on-line.

However, if you are travelling or the Net link is down, you will naturally find it difficult to access your favourite on-line dictionary service. The best solution to get around such difficulties is to install a dictionary software on your desktop so that you can get the meaning of any word off-line with a couple of mouse clicks.

The free software WordWeb (http://wordweb.info/free/), which has features such as English thesaurus and dictionary, is worth a test.

A9: A versatile search tool

A FEATURE packed search portal developed using different search services such as Google, IMDB and Amazon is featured in this week's column.

There are many general search engines like Google to spot resources on the web. There are besides services that host specialised databases and provide the necessary tools for accessing them with ease. The Internet Movie Database (http://www.imdb.com/) is an example of a popular specialised search service.

To make use of such services, you need to access each of them separately. That is, you need a search tool that automatically looks into various search services and lists out the results on a single web interface. The search service, A9 (http://a9.com), recently floated by the famous on-line book dealer Amazon, is an innovative endeavour in this direction. Rather than building a new search service from scratch, it tries to assemble a product that leverages on the services already in place. In this regard, it is almost like the search comparison tool jux2 (http://jux2.com/) (discussed in this column a couple of weeks ago), which also builds its service using search results from other search engines. Creating new services using output from popular search services seems to be an emerging trend on the Net.

A9.com

Once you invoke a search on A9, it passes the query on to such services as Google, Amazon, Internet Movie Database and the reference tool GuruNet (http://a9.com/-/company/whatsCool.jsp). A9 collects the output from these services and places them on a single web page with a "customized multi-column interface.'' The service provides the required tools for viewing the results in multiple ways. For example, if you want to see only the results from Google, you can expand the column that holds the Google's search output (click on the `Full' option). Another feature of A9 is that it provides a `Site Info' button along with each output entry. If you move the mouse over this button, you will find a window that pops up with a brief explanation about the listed site.

A notable highlight of this service is its ability to remember the searches made by you in the past. All the searches invoked by you are "stored and organised by time.'' That is, A9's `search history' feature allows you to view the old searches made by you from anywhere on the Net any time. To get this personalised experience, you need to register with the system.

Of course, this `personalisation' feature enables the service to track the web pages you visit and in this context the service may draw some criticism from privacy conscious people.

A9 provides a tool bar that lets you invoke many of its features directly from your browser. It also features a diary tool that can be used to keep notes/annotation about sites. Unfortunately the toolbar feature is available only to IE users

IceRocket

IceRocket (http://icerocket.com/) is another search tool that culls information from popular search engines that include Wisenut, Yahoo, MSN and Alltheweb. A notable aspect of the tool is that it displays thumbnail photos of the `results' homepages. This enables you to get a glimpse of a site's home page without having to visit it. There is also the `Quick View' feature that lets you view the top 40 per cent of a page without leaving the results page.

Creative Commons

Creative Commons (http://creativecommons.org/) that helps authors publish their works in the "public domain or license them to the public on generous terms'' is one of the revolutionary movements fostered by the Net.

Products published under Creative Commons licence generally come with less restrictive copyright terms. On the Net, hundreds of such products/services are already in place and several of them are being rolled out. To help you easily locate products under Creative Commons, the service has floated a search tool called Creative Commons Search. The service, powered by the open source search engine, Nutch (http://www.nutch.org/docs/en/about. html), can be accessed at: http://search.creativecommons. org/index.jsp.

Firefox saga continues

Regular readers of this column need no introduction to the brilliance of the free open source browser, Firefox (http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/), which is being fast adopted by netizens worldwide. The latest version of this browser (Firefox 1.0 Preview Release) has some notable features. The `RSS integration' or `Live Bookmark' feature that automatically displays an `RSS' icon whenever you visit a site with RSS feed is going to be much appreciated by regular readers of news feeds. It helps you subscribe to news feeds and read them directly from the browser. Another feature worth a remark is the enhanced `Find' tool that finds as you type. When you type in a string in the Find toolbar (press `Ctrl- F' to invoke the `Find' toolbar), the first result gets automatically highlighted in green.

Deepnet Explorer

If you are an IE user, take a look at the IE based browser, Deepnet Explorer, that has many useful features that IE lacks. One such feature is the tabbed browsing capability that lets you open multiple pages in separate tabs inside a single window. Tabbed browsing means no need to open new windows that clutter your display and consume more resources. Apart from being a feature packed IE compatible browser, Deepnet can be used as a news feed aggregator and as a P2P client for downloading/sharing files on P2P networks.

For more details: http://www. deepnetexplorer. com/.

SE on-line

If you are a software engineering student or practitioner, check out the software engineering on-line site hosted at: http://billing.computer.org/ portal/site/seportal/.