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The price for 190×125 pixels is 200 DKK per month, 25 EUR per month or 35 USD per month. The price for 190×250 pixels is 400 DKK per month, 50 EUR per month or 70 USD per month.

Order by mail at opentech@opentech.dk or by telephone at +45 43 62 22 88.

Facebook is one of many social communities, that focus on building friendships and sharing information with these friends. Facebook has a number of mechanisms, that can delete accounts with no warning. In such an event, the need for a backup of the account and friendships can be important. Facebook does not offer any way to backup accounts. However, there are a number of applications, that do.

In this example, we test SocialSafe, that is an application, that is based on Adobe AIR. Adobe AIR enables developers to use HTML, JavaScript, Adobe Flash and ActionScript to build web applications, that run as standalone client applications without the constraints of a browser nor a specific operating system. SocialSafe uses the Facebook application program interface (API) to perform the backup, which is fast and efficient – in contrast to conflicting with Facebook filters, that triggers on abuse – and leads to problems with Facebook.

We boot up an Ubuntu Linux 9 operating system, open a Firefox browser, visit the homepage of SocialSafe, download and install the necessary software. SocialSafe is now installed and visible from the main menu under Accessories. SocialSafe asks for a license key, which we obtain from the homepage of SocialSafe and enter. SocialSafe are now ready to perform a backup of an Facebook account – and asks for username and password. SocialSafe asks, what to backup. We select friends. SocialSafe performs the backup – and shows a nice report. We can now choose to view the content of our backup – and SocialSafe offers to list changes, such as added and deleted friends, since earlier backups.

From time to time it can be necessary to free up space on a file system. A quick way to do this is to create a list of large files in a directory hierarchy.

The following example will look for files in a directory hierarchy on a FreeBSD operating system and list files, that has a file size of more than 50 MB. It uses “find” and “du”. The list will be sorted.

su -
find -s /usr/home -size +50M -exec du -h {} \;

The following example will perform the same search on an Ubuntu operating system. This list will not be sorted.

sudo find /home -size +50M -exec du -h {} \;

The implementation of “find” can be different in other operating systems. However, this command will work on other Linux and Unix-like operating systems.

Black borders around movies and movie clips is a huge problem on the internet. Black borders is a result of video editing and bad handling of resolutions and aspect ratios, such as 16:9 and 4:3.

Removing black borders can be done with a video editor, such as FFmpeg, which is a complete, cross-platform solution to record, convert and stream audio and video.

In our example, the size of each black border is guessed and the borders are removed from our input example of 720×576 pixels and resized to 320×288 pixels by FFmpeg.

ffmpeg -i example-input.mpg -croptop 76 -cropright 96 -cropbottom 76 -cropleft 96 -s 360x288 example-output.mpg

Do you need help with video editing? Contact Open Tech SmbA by mail at opentech@opentech.dk or call Open Tech SmbA at +45 43 62 22 88.

Friday 30 of July is the 11th System Administrator Appreciation Day.

A system administrator is a person, that is employed to maintain and operate a computer network system. The duties include installing, supporting and maintaining computer, client and server systems. The duties include planning for, and responding to, service outages and other problems. The duties include scripting and light programming, project management, supervising and training of computer operators. In order to do well, a system administrator must show a blend of technical skills and responsibility.

A system administrator may be a member of an information technology (IT) department, Unix user group (UUG) and Linux user group (LUG).

This means, that if you are able to read this, then thank your system administrator, who made sure, that your computer is working, that your computer can connect safely to the internet, that you can communicate across the world in seconds, that your files are backed up in case of human or technical disaster, that your printer work, that your server and services respond 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

However, often we do not know our system administrator as well as our system administrator knows us. Therefore, the annual System Administrator Appreciation Day is the day, that we can show our appreciation in words, cakes, mugs or other token gifts.

The annual System Administrator Appreciation Day is last Friday of July.