يوميات معاذ - حيث تجد #حديث_الأربعاء وقصصًا أخرى

Author: Muaad Elsharif (Page 253 of 324)

Tech news digest June 2016 (Linkedin sale, OnePlus3, snaps for Linux and more)

2016-06-13 / / / 0 Comments

This week had many interesting news happening all over the tech world!
Let’s take a look at this digest and catchup really fast!
Microsoft is said to buy the enterprise social media site Linkedin for a record 26.02 Billion dollars in cash, the deal is trending worldwide with people shocked over the size of the acquisition, it’s a bold business choice to say the least!
The current S.E.O of Linkedin Jeff Weiner will report to Satya Nadella the C.E.O of Microsoft, as Microsoft is looking to reach to the 433 million users of Linkedin to expand it’s business and products such as Office 365 and cloud solutions.

 

Microsot’s logo

In other Microsoft news the Windows 10 “free upgrade” will expire on July the 29th, so if you are planning to update you better put that on your checklist and fast!

OnePlus is ready to launch the third smartphone of it’s famous “flagship killer” series: OnePlus3, the highly anticipated phone will come with a 64GB internal memory and 6GB of RAM! (specs according to GSMarena).
The countdown is almost done and the launch event will be presented in virtual reality via a The Loop. A special App available on the Google store.
More details will be available as soon the smartphone is released.
Here is the official unboxing video.

 

Apple’s logo

Apple annonced at WWDC 2016 the release of it’s latest update to iPhone and iPad: iOS 10. Which brings many improvements to iPhones such as a redesigned message app, lock screen and the ability to delete many pre-installed apps, the update will be shipped this fall. (for more details check the Apple site from here)

 

 

It’s not a Snap! Just a package icon!

Now we take a tour of the Linux world:  Sanps are the hottest thing in the Linux world today and for a good reason! Snaps were first announced as a feature of Ubuntu 16.04 that installs programs easily without needing to install dependencies (as it’s packed with the binary) or use command lines to install, these snaps can run virtually on ANY Linux distro! Meaning you can use Ubuntu apps anywhere you go on Linux: Desktop, server or cloud!

The main advantages of Snaps are security, speed and ease of use as they are easier to create, install and update! And many of the major open source projects like LibreOffice and Ubuntu will use them very soon as the standard way to deliver software.

This has been a dream for Linux users for many years because different distros use different package managers, meaning that Debian software won’t work on Fedora and vice-versa.
I’m glad to see that happening finally, learn more about this awesome new technology!

Fedora’s latest release: Fedora 24 was supposed to be released today, but due to some bugs not being fixed it was postponed, Fedora is ready when it’s ready! Checkout the bug list if you can’t wait!

Finally the Linux oriented blog it’sfoss is celebrating it’s fourth anniversary (does it ring a bell?) by throwing a giveway, the prise is the awesome Raspberrypie3.

It’s F.O.S.S’ logo

Here is my lucky link for you to enter and help me win, because if I did I’ll make a video review of it and many posts about it! 😉

Raspberry Pi 3
The Raspberry Pi 3 as shown on the giveaway site!

 

 

That was the tech news of the week segment, I hope you enjoyed this quick digest, let me know what you think in the comments section below!

Duolingo the best and easiest way to learn a new language!

2016-06-06 / / / 2 Comments
Many of us dream to learn a new language but never actually do anything to do that! We are to busy

to take a course after work or simply won’t pay the cost for a course. Well today’s app has got you covered!

Let’s take a look at: Duolingo

Duolingo's opening screen

Duolingo is an application that helps you learn another language for free, forever, in a fun and addictive way that’s similar to a video game!

Learning on your Smartphone Who doesn’t have a Smartphone now days? Everyone has at least one and they stare at them all the time! So why not stare at an application that will help you learn a new language in an easy fun way? It’s better than checking Facebook or Twitter every 20 seconds! All you need is a good Internet connection and you are good to go! (There are some lessons don’t require an Internet connection, it is needed to keep track of progress and score.)

Duoligo's logo

Who uses Duolingo?

The app is cross platform and is available to Android, Apple iOS and Windows phone. There is also a web version so you can learn on the go and from anywhere! You can even use it in the class room for your students if you are a teacher, free of charge!
It is used by 120 million people around the world to use all sorts of languages, why don’t you join the ranks too?

Available languages

all you have to do is to download a version for your device, sign-up

with your e-mail and you are set.

Choose your native language

and see what languages are available for you!

Duolingo course list for English speakers

This list is for the English speakers, it scrolls down as it offers

many options, other languages don’t have as much options as Duolingo uses statistics to provide each region with the courses on demand, and I haven’t found any course for the native Arabic speaker on Duolingo’s version for Windows phone, but I found a course on the website aimed at native Arabic speakers who migrated to Sweden. 

Tracking progress

Set the number of experience

points you need to earn daily so Duolingo helps you keep track of your daily goal, you can set those from the settings, anywhere from 10 (casual) to 50 (insane).

Duolingo's settings
 You can also control getting daily reminders (I highly recommend yo keep those ON).

How does it work?

  • Duolingo

uses colors and sounds to make learning easy and fun and more game-like, by using a scoring system, ranking and rewards, similar to elements found in video games, and that’s where the name Gamification comes from.

  • The language

    • learning itself is based of quizzes and games that aims to teach you the language you plan on learning.

    One of Duolingo's exercises

    • This exercise i

    s very simple, you listen the word by touching the speaker icon, then choose the correct words from the choices below, each correct answer fills up the bar to the right, and a wrong answer takes a try (a heart) and when you run out of hearts, you repeat the lesson all over again! There are many other exercises and I’ll leave those for you to discover!

    Finally..

    Duolingo is a fun app that helps you jump start your language learning and have fun doing it, I don’t think it can replace the full learning experience or taking courses, but it’s a start!

    Will you download Duolingo? What is the language you always wanted to learn? Let me know what you think in the comments section below.
     

    في رثاء حمزة

    2016-06-05 / / / 6 Comments
    سبع سنين مرت منذ توفى صديقي حمزة في حادث أليم، اليوم لا يوافق الذكرى السنوية لوفاته ولا ذكرى أي شيئ أخر، تصادف أنه قد عثرت على مدونتي القديمة التي أنشأتها فور انتقاله للرفيق اﻷعلى والتي كانت طريقتي في تخليد ذكرى صديقي الذي بدا أن الكل نساه، لا زلت أذكر ابتساماتهم في المقبرة وضحكهم وحديثهم في أمور الدنيا الفانية وحمزة لم يجف ترابه بعد، وهنا رجعت بالذاكرة إلى تلك النقطة من الزمن.


    لم يتوفى حمزة في اشتباك أو “دعكة” خاوية من المعنى والمضمون، بل مات في حادث مروري قبل أن يقع السلاح في أيدي المدنيين ونصبح (الشعب المسلح) بالفعل، وبدلًا أن نحارب الصهاينة وأعداء الوطن كما ينبغي “للشعب المسلح الغير قابل للهزيمة” تفننا في نبش الخصومات والعداوات القديمة وإذكاء نار الفتن وإفناء بعضنا بعضًا.

    اضطررت لاستعادة كلمة السر عبر عملية طويلة ومعقدة، فقد ألغيت بريدي الإلكتروني الذي سجلت به تلك المدونة لذا انعدمت فرص استردادها بتلك الوسيلة، وبعد العديد من المحاولات المضنية استعدت مدونتي القديمة ومعها ذكريات مشوشة عن واقع لم يعد موجودًا، ولدهشتي كانت المدونة خالية! لا أذكر لماذا لم أكتب أي شيئ فيها أو أعبر عن طوفان المرارة الذي كان يموج بداخلي؟!

    موت حمزة المفاجئ أثر علي بشكل مباشر وشخصي (بالإضافة لظروف أخرى كنت أمر بها)، حمزة كان زميلي في المعهد وصديقي وكنا نسكن نفس المدينة قبل أن أنتقل منها إلى مدينة أخرى،  كنت أقدر روحه المرحة وخفة دمه كثيرًا (رحمه الله) وحقيقة أنه يأتي من مكان بعيد ليحضر المحاضرات ويركب وسائل مواصلات عديدة ليصل في الثامنة صباحًا للمعهد، ثم يغادر معنًا في السادسة مساء ليصل منزله بعد حلول الظلام دون أن يشتكي أو يتذمر.

    خبر وفاته نزل على رؤوسنا كالصاعقة، لم يتوقع أحد أن تتعرض السيارة التي كان يركبها لحادث مروري ينجو منه السائق بأعجوبة ويتوفى الراكب حمزة الذي كان في طريقه إلى المعهد لحضور محاضرة.

    كان الفصل الذي قبله فصلًا مغلقًا (أي أنك يجب أن تنجح في جميع المواد قبل أن تنتقل للفصل التالي) وقد رسبت أنا  في مادة واحدة فقط من أصل سبع مواد ( لا يسعني المجال لذكر اﻷسباب الآن) وكان علي أن أعيد فصلًا كاملًا وأنا أدرس مادة واحدة فقط ما يخالف كل لوائح التعليم العالي، بينما رسب رحمه الله في مادتين، أذكر امتحان أحدهما المعملي حيث دخل هو ورسب بينما نجحت أنا في ذلك الامتحان النهائي بالكاد، كان قدره أن يتوفى وهو أت ليعيد تلك المادة بالذات التي دخل امتحانها المقسم لطاولتين، طاولة تعنت المعيد الذي يشرف عليها ورفض مساعدة الطلبة في حل الامتحان التعجيزي الذي وضعه، وطاولة سهلت المعيدة امتحانها، ولك أن تحزر أي الطاولتين كانت طاولته وأيها كانت طاولتي.

    ولا زلت حتى يومنا هذا أمقت ذلك المعيد المتكبر الفظ غليظ القلب وأحمله ولو جزءًا من مسؤولية وفاة حمزة (أنا مؤمن بالقضاء والقدر تمام الإيمان) و لا زلت متحاملًا على تلك اللائحة التي أراها جائرة ولم ينفع مرور السنين الطوال في تغيير وجهة نظري فيها.

    يوم سماعنا الخبر بكت زميلاتنا بكاءً مرًا على وفاة حمزة، وإحداهن بالذات أثر في بكائها لأنني كنت معجبًا بها من بعيد، لدرجة أنني غبطته على ذلك الموقف!!

    مرت سنوات عديدة وأحداث مهولة على هذه البلاد، ولكنني لم أتمكن من نسيان حمزة، للأسباب التي خلت كلها وأسباب لا أفقه كنهها، أسأل الله له الرحمة والمغفرة وأسألك عزيزي القارئ أن تدعو له بالرحمة والمغفرة.

    سورة الفاتحة صدقة على روح صديقي
    سورة الفاتحة

    بقي أن أذكر أن مشروع تخرجي من المعهد كان لعبة تفاعلية تعليمية للأطفال، اخترت للشخصية الرئيسية فيها اسم حمزة (رحمه الله)، كانت هذه طريقتي في تذكر حمزة وأن أتأكد أنه لم ينسى، مع علمي أن أصدقائه نسوه لحظة مواراته الثرى.

    لماذا أنشر هذه التدوينة اليوم؟ لا أعلم! رغم أن غدًا هو غرة شهر رمضان المبارك ومن المفترض أن تكون هذه تهنئة بالشهر، لكنها ليست كذلك!

     

    هذه التدوينة كانت تخيم على أفكاري منذ أن استعدت مدونتي القديمة، ولكنني قررت نشرها هنا بدلًا عن ذلك، ولا أظن أنني سأنشر أي شيئ على تلك المدونة أصلًا (هذه التدوينة كانت معدة للنشر على مدونتي على الووردبريس لكن ذلك لن يحصل)..

    رحمك الله يا حمزة.

    BlueGriffon 2.0 is out, And 2.1 is just around the corner!! 2.1.2 Has .DEB!!

    2016-06-02 / / / 0 Comments

    Four months of hard work and fixing bugs have brought us to this highly anticipated release of BlueGriffon 2.0

    I have posted about the Alpha and gave it a review and been following the development closely on Twitter, the beta release was just two days before the official release, so it was nearly impossible for me to download, test and finally post about it. Let’s take a look at BlueGriffon 2.0

    An introduction

    BluegGriffon is  a product of Disruptive Innovations SAS, a French software company founded in October 2003. Based in Saint-Germain en Laye, France, Disruptive Innovations SAS delivered in the past premium products like the popular editor Nvu (the indirect predecessor of BlueGriffon).

    A total overhaul

    • This version is a total overhaul for the program, as it changes the addins system and even the licensing platform!

     

    • All the add-ons from the previous versions won’t be compatible with this one so you need to download the new ones.
    • There are features that are only available for those who purchase a license, BlueGriffon is still open source and the basic features

    can be used freely.

    • The manual is also up for purchase, this is in order to support the development of BlueGriffon as it says on the website (the manual isn’t open source and can’t be distributed freely).
    • It will only support Windows 7 and higher, Mac OSX 10.8 and up, and the only Linux distribution supported is Ubuntu.
    • The overhaul included the BlueGriffon site, and yes! It was designed using
    • BlueGriffon! It matches the interface and looks fantastic!

     

    Interface

    It brings the darker theme that was first shown in the alpha version, complete with all functions and menus.

    BlueGriffon Version 2.0 interface with help menu

     

    • It feels smoother and lighter,

    image management is much better than version 1.8 and same goes for tables.

    • I do miss the function buttons

    as now I have to do everything by menus!

    • I didn’t experience

    any random shutdowns of BlueGriffon so far.

    Download 

    BlueGriffon is cross platform and is available to download for:

    Windows (Windows 7 and above). And a ZIP file is available too.

    Mac (OSX 10.8 and above).

    Linux Ubuntu 64 BIT.   

    Click on any of the links to start downloading from the official server.

    Languages supported

    English (USA), Čeština, Deutsch, Español (Castellano), Suomi, Français (France), Galego,
    , 日本語 한국어 中文 ), 繁體字 ), Magyar, српски.

    Here you can download the available dictionaries for these languages.

     

    Final words

    A version 2.1 is in the works and the developer is taking note of some fan suggestions like: a hide-able dock and a clear theme, I’m really impressed with the comeback BlueGriffon has made, as I said before it was marked as discontinued by alternativeto.net, it’s really good to have a frequently developed open source HTML editor available! I as a blogger can’t keep up with how fast this application is being developed! And that doesn’t happen often!

     

    Update on 06/08/2016

    Version 2.1 is out and you can check the change list from here!

    P.S: The site is inaccessible at times, I couldn’t download it so far, and it wasn’t packed as .deb (  I suggested that several times without hearing back from them).

    They aren’t very responsive to e-mails, I’ve been writing to them since the BlueGriffon was frozen at 1.7.2 back in 2013 and they haven’t replied to me once! Even on Twitter I never got to hear back from them, seriously? How hard is it to send a tweet?

    Update on 06/12/2016
    Version 2.1.2 is out and FINALLY it’s packed as a .DEB
    You can thank me later! 😉
    Download

    I hope you like this post, please give me your thoughts in the comments section below, will you download BlueGriffon? And if you did, what do you think?

    Have a nice day!

    « Older posts Newer posts »

    © 2026 يوميات معاذ – حيث تجد #حديث_الأربعاء وقصصًا أخرى