Phil's Blog

Hi foxes!

Sometimes you are looking for a specific product which can only be found on a US website, like amazon US. Unfortunatelly, on many product you have to provide a US postale address. So, how can you order it anyway? You can go to shipito.com. It is a postale forwarding system from USA address to anywhere else in the world.

Let's shop!

Labels: address, amazon, buy, forward, forwarding, order, postale, shipito, us, usa, world

• sciencenet
• citeseer
• harvest

Labels: citation, citeseer, citeseerx, engine, science, sciencenet, search

Hi Foxes!

Have you ever wanted to use something like windows search or google desktop software, but lighter, with a small footprint memory, fast and open source? I'm tired about windows search, which I don't use very often, but when you need it it is pretty cool.

So today I was looking for 2 kind of tools :

• one open source indexer / search engine just on the filename, which will be the most used,
  
• one just to index the file contents, like pdf, html, doc, ppt, dejavu and so on

Comparison links about desktop search engine

• very interesting, based on a database from twitter contents.
• list of open source indexer, from 2001
• Baza 2007 paper
• list of 20 popular desktop search engine, december 2010
• a huge list of search engine tools
• desktop search engine (Wikipedia list)
• reference management software (wikipedia)
• relational database management system (Wikipedia)
• paper on information retrieval
• Trec website : The Text REtrieval Conference
• stack overflow : ligthweight html search indexing
• stack overflow list of tools for crawling the web

Indexer based only on the filename

I have found :

• everything is a freeware, light and fast. It works only with a NTFS filesystem and on windows.
• locate32 is working like the locate and updatedb linux commands. It is open source.

Search engine based on the file content

Hot, to have a look on it!

• indri
• lucene which is developped in pure JAVA. There are many other implemantation in other language too, like C++ with Clucene. Open source and widely used.
• swish-e
• zettair, only support html, text. No PDF basically. You should convert anything to PS, then use ps2acii tool before indexing. Pretty boring.
• doc fetcher which trig only the information that a file has been updated in background. It parses it again only when you run the application. It use a GUI. But if you don't have too much RAM, you would like to avoid to run the JVM.
• strigi (old homepage) must be used with a backend engine likce clucene. Can work on WinXP, but you have to compile everything with cygwin.
• datapark search is open source
• mind retrieve indexes the web you have visited only. It can be usefull.
• mendeley a collaborative pdf and any document indexer (wikipedia). Very usefull if you want to write some papers with many references. Mendeley is a free reference manager and academic social network
• sphinx written in C++, works on WinXP

Other result

• Basilic, server side
• hyper estraider
• refdb, in C
• refbase in PHP
• BM25 ranking (wikipedia)is present in lucene
• sino. It has no dependance. You can compile it like this, even under windows. Simple to use but when I try to index a folder, it uses around 500Mo of RAM! Too much to me.
• Wilma (new) and Wilbur (old version)
• regain, in java, based on lucene

My combo winner are...

• everything is impressive, amazing!
• swish-e. It is used a command tool, and you have to use it with additionnal software such pdftohtml, pdf2txt, catdoc, src2dest filter and so on. It is very fast, the database looks to be quite ok about the size and it don't use too much memory when indexing (around 60Mo on my PC running WinXP)

Labels: clucene, dataparksearch, engine, everything, grep, index, indexer, indri, information retrieval, lucene, mendeley, retrieval, search, sino, strigi, swish-e, zettair

Hi Foxes!

I was looking for some software like dmenu under linux, but for windows. Here is my google result :

reviews

• a quick presentation of 10 app launcher tools for windows
• a comparison from wikipedia
• comparison between keybreeze and FARR : usage memory

URLs

• Find And Run Robot (FARR)
• toolbox
• keybreeze seems to be light and efficient. Fully open source.
• MCL and a comment
• executor and a comment about it
• appetizer

Too heavy ones

• colibri
• slickrun
• blaze seems to be very heavy. Plis this link point out an interesting point of view about non using such tool on windows (look at the emerge desktop comment). Open source.
• Enso is free but using a lot of memory
• docs solutions

interesting alternative on Windows

You can use a specific pop up menu with the right clikc mouse, like on emerge desktope or bblean.

• popsel

To link macro with keystrokes

autohotkey is open source, works well with keybreeze according to comparison between keybreeze and FARR : usage memory (same link that earlier, I know).

To conclude, I will not install such software, because there are using to much memory. I would like to install Find And Run Robot (FARR), but it is not open source. So, you can pass your way about such tools if you want to save some memory usage, or wait for something like dmenu

Labels: app, application, bblean, blaze, colibri, dmenu, emerge desktop, farr, find and run robot, keybreeze, keystroke, launcher, launchy, popsel

Hi readers,

Tonight I was looking for a secure email service. Not a basic mail provider which offer SSL (IMAP/POP/SMTP) connexions, but also that every email and attached file is store in a secure way. I have found the following website :

• PKI is hiden through the website. So you can only send and read the email body using the website
• sendinc service. It seems that you can only send email through the website. It is free and ,restricted to send 20 emails a day
• thruinc
• zsentry and zmail The free version is restrict to send 5 email (no limit about receiving)
• opolis runs only on Windows and MacOS.You need to install a software. It is free to use today.
• s-mail service, no software to install.
• husmail is not so good according to the wikipedia article
• a short list of various secure email solutions
• These ones provide PGP / GPG/ PKI like facilities:
• safe-mail, a free account gives you 3MB of mailbox, with a sign certificate,
• comodo secure email free for personnal use, installs a software, runs only under Windows. It seems to be a PGP / GPG kind of solution, but easier to set up and to use for the mass.

And some reason about using such services:

• using secure mail service is easier for the mass than using GPG / PGP

You can also add a GPG proxy on your local windows PC:
GPG Relay for windows

Labels: comodo, email, GPG, hushmail, mail, opolis, PGP, pki, s-mail, secure email, sendinc, thruinc, zmail, zsentry

Hi foxes!

I'm using Mulberry 4.0.8 for a week now, and it is pretty good. I spent quite a long time before using the Agenda feature with google calendar feature and a horde calendar too.

So here are the configuration to apply.

Google Calendar is a CalDAV

Go to the Mulberry google calendar wiki page.

Horde Calendar is a WebDAV

Assumptions

A horde Account mul.berry@myhordeserver.com

HOWTO

In the Accounts preferences

• Create a new WebDAV account called Horde Calendar
• Server: www.myhordeserver.com

Accounts -> Authenticate

• Method: Plain Text
• User: mul.berry@myhordeserver.com
• Secure: SSLv3

Accounts -> Options

• Path: /horde/rpc.php/kronolith/mul.berry@myhordeserver.com

Additionnal inforamtions about configuration Horde with external tools

horde wiki is very good.

It exists some interesting plugins if you want to use your own calendar application with google calendar. Have look at gcaldaemon.

configure GPG

Mulberry 4.0.8 supports GPG. (older version)

configure LDAP

Go here

Labels: caldav, calendar, contact, gcaldaemon, google, GPG, horde, LDAP, mulberry, PGP, webdav

Hi foxes!

If you are using a netbook as I do, you should have a look at the alternative shell for windows, which are supposed to be :
1. lighter in memory usage,
2. fully customizable (nice for any geek).

Here are the most interesting ones, still in developement and open source :
Emerge Desktop (aka ED) Last update February 2011.
LiteStep and a french distribution. Last update April 2009.
BBLean which is a port from Blabckblox from unix. Last update december 2009.
The wikipedia page with a list of window shell replacement, and another page with kind of the same list.

Labels: bblean, ed, emergedesktop, explorer, litestep, shell, shell replacement, windows

Hi all!

Still looking for a light footprint, fast email client under windows, I have done some googling and here are what I have found:

• i.scribe / in.scribe. It seems to be efficient, light and still in development. The free version, i.scribe, can only support one account. I have not achieved to configure gmail using IMAP protocol. So wait for another update.
• Becky. It seems very efficient, light, powerful. But it is 40$. You can try it for free for 30 days.
• Mulberry. It doesn't seem to be still in development. Open source, light and efficient email client. It fails in fetching all my email from my gmail account. But it is very fast! There is a nice review about it there
• The Bat!. It seems as good as Becky.
• sylpheed. I'm using this one daily. It is light with many features, but to me it is slow on windows (v2.6.0). I will install the version 3.1 this week end. UPDATE: i have moved to the 3.1 version. It is as light as usual, works, and maybe a little bit faster.
• Alpine mail, a full CLI mail client.
• Mahogany mail, last realase august 2006. Not supported : PGP.
si.mail. Not supported : IMAP, PGP.
• an interesting service to secure and follow email use : opolis

Labels: alpine, becky, gmail, i.scribe, imap, in.scribe, inscribe, iscribe, mail, mulberry, opolis, pop, sylpheed, the bat, thunderbird, windows