Peter Vatistas

Owning a business can be difficult, especially when it comes to technology implementations and expenses. I always try to find the best possible solution for my specific needs at the lowest possible price available. I’ve had a lot of experience with VOIP devices and servers like Cisco and Altigen but I really didn’t like spending thousands or tens of thousands when I can spend nothing.

Trixbox CE is the most flexible PBX system available today and best of all its FREE. Trixbox CE is an open telephony platform that combines the best of the open source telephony tools into one easy-to-install package. Based on an enhanced LAAMP (an open source bundle of Linux^®, Apache™, Asterisk^®, mySQL^®, and PHP), the Trixbox^® dashboard provides easy to use, Web-based interfaces to setup, manage, maintain, and support a complete IP-PBX system.

Trixbox CE 2.4 comes stocked with hundreds of features including:

• Unlimited Extensions
• TDM/SIP/IAX Trunks
• Remote Extensions
• Voicemail
• Fax Support
• Voicemail to Email
• IVR Menu System
• Ring Groups
• Call Queues
• Conference Rooms
• Follow-Me
• Time-Based Routing
• Music On Hold
• Paging and Intercom
• Web Access to Voicemail
• Admin Status Screen
• Package Manager (for easy updates)
• Phone Provisioning Tool
• Network Settings Tool
• Enhanced CDR Reports
• Echo Cancellation - OSLEC (Open Source Line Echo Cancelation)

Trixbox CE 2.4 is based off of:

• CentOS 5.1 kernel
• Asterisk 1.4
• FreePBX 2.3
• Web MeetMe 3

Best part about Trixbox CE is many Aastra, Polycom and Cisco VOIP phones are compatible! Here are some screenshots of the Trixbox CE 2.4 administrative interface:

Trixbox Links:

Trixbox Certified IP Phones

Trixbox Certified Servers and Interface Cards

Click here to download Trixbox CE

This is an awesome application that allows you to plug your Mac formatted and partitioned hard drive (internal & external) into your PC running Windows XP or Windows Vista. I had several external hard drives that I formatted and partitioned on OS X Leopard. I brought one of the drives home to grab some data off of it on my Vista box when I realized there is no way to view the data. After searching for a few hours I found MacDrive, the exact solution I needed for this situation. MacDrive came recommended by some very reputable members on the Microsoft IT Advisory Council (thanks guys!).

MacDrive gives you access to all your Mac-formatted disks from Windows and even the Mac partition. You can access files on the Mac disk just like you would with a Windows formatted disk. Open files from the disk or from within a program. Mac files automatically get the right icons and file name extensions under both Windows and Mac OS.

Click here to read more and download

If you read the comments from “How to Install OS X Leopard on a PC - iATKOS v1.0i Tutorial” you’ll see the issues I had when I tried to install Microsoft Windows XP after removing Ox86 Leopard from my Compaq laptop. When I booted the Windows XP Pro installation CD I was getting the error message “Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed on your computer”. After trying several times to partition and format (with no luck) I decided to try a very neat tool out called nLite.

nLite allowed me to configure my Microsoft Windows install CD by adding drivers and applications. I downloaded my laptop’s sata controller driver from Compaq’s website and added it and to the driver configuration portion of nLite as well as selecting “Bootable ISO”. After a couple minutes I had a new bootable Windows XP installation CD and no more missing hard disk error.

From what I found this error is quite normal for people that have sata hard drives, who have installed Microsoft Windows Vista and decided to downgrade back to Microsoft Windows XP.

Click Here Download nLite

Dell Drivers | HP Drivers | Compaq Drivers | Gateway Drivers | Sony Drivers | Asus | Toshiba

I use a great application called WebCEO to track and manage various parts of my SEO/SEM efforts. As much as I would like to get into how awesome their software and support is I would rather talk about the people behind WebCEO.

A couple days before Christmas I received an envelope from Kherson, Ukraine. I wasn’t sure why I had received a letter from the Ukraine considering I don’t know anyone from there, I thought it was some sort of mistake or just a marketing piece. I opened the envelope and pulled out a very rich and shiny holiday card with a little WebCEO logo at the bottom. I figured it was just a holiday promotion printed in the masses - I was wrong.

I opened the card and found a long, had written letter addressed to me - wishing me a safe and happy holiday season. The letter was well written and by the looks of it not rushed at all. In addition the letter never once mentioned anything about business, their products, money, or a holiday deal - just a letter hoping and wishing I have a wonderful holiday.  WOW.

Now this is what I call great marketing, you see they didn’t have to mention what they are about or what they are selling - not even a holiday coupon or discount - just a hand written personal letter directed to me. It made me feel great! I was very impressed with what I saw and very happy to be a customer of theirs. More importantly (for them) it made me think about WebCEO and their products.

In my opinion this is the kind of thing that separates companies apart; even though there aren’t many comparable applications to WebCEO available today I would stick with WebCEO regardless. Something like this shows me (the customer) that I am important to them and they care about me and my business (which they do).
Take note of this guys, a great marketing campaign with little cost and a bigger impact than you could imagine. Thank you WebCEO - Happy Holidays!

Although its nice not having to rely on anything Microsoft anymore there are some things I need to properly do my job, one of which is testing our websites on all web browsers through dev. I recently came across this neat application that allows me to run Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 (IE4, IE5, & IE6) on Ubuntu (as well as most distro’s of Linux).

IEs4Linux also is working hard on their next release which allows “us” Linux users to run Microsoft IE7!! I’ve been playing with the beta release of Internet Explorer 7 on Ubuntu and you can download the beta here.

IEs4Linux is probably the easiest app I have installed and works wonderfully in Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon). It’s there when I need it and it’s fast, all three versions.

To install IEs4Linux you have to enable universe packages first. It is also recommended that you use the official winehq ubuntu package:

1) Open a terminal

2) Open /etc/apt/sources.list

sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

3) Uncomment (or add) following lines:

deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu edgy universe

4) Add this line:

deb http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt edgy main

5) Close gedit. Update and install wine and cabextract:

wget -q http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt/387EE263.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install wine cabextract

6) Download IEs 4 Linux and install

wget http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/downloads/ies4linux-latest.tar.gz
tar zxvf ies4linux-latest.tar.gz
cd ies4linux-*
./ies4linux

Note for Dapper users: if you use ubuntu dapper, replace edgy with dapper on lines above. Note for Feisty users (7.04): if you use ubuntu Feisty, replace edgy with feisty in the lines above. Also replace gedit with kedit if running Kubuntu instead of Ubuntu.

For more information or steps to install on other distro’s please visit IEs4Linux.

If you find this application useful please donate here - this open source app was developed by Sérgio Luís Lopes Júnior, a 21 year old college student in Brazil. I always donate - it is really important to keep these guys (and kids) going.

I’ve been playing around with Mozilla’s Firefox 3 Beta 1 and so far I like what I see (keyword “see”). The GUI is much more smooth and fluid but after several seconds it crashes - even in safe mode (with everything disabled). I am testing Firefox 3.0 Beta 1 on a Windows Vista machine so not much of a surprise that it crashed so I will download and install it on Leopard OS X and I’ll let you guys know how it goes.

So whats new in Firefox 3 you ask? Firefox 3 Beta 1 is based on the new Gecko 1.9 Web rendering platform, which has been under development for the past 27 months and includes nearly 2 million lines of code changes, fixing more than 11,000 issues. Gecko 1.9 includes some major re-architecting for performance, stability, correctness, and code simplification and sustainability. Firefox 3 has been built on top of this new platform resulting in a more secure, easier to use, more personal product with a lot under the hood to offer website and Firefox add-on developers.

More Security

* One click site info: Click the site favicon in the location bar to see who owns the site. Identity verification is prominently displayed and easier to understand. In later versions, Extended Validation SSL certificate information will be displayed.
* Malware Protection: malware protection warns users when they arrive at sites which are known to install viruses, spyware, trojans or other malware. You can test it here (note: our blacklist of malware sites is not yet activated).
* New Web Forgery Protection page: the content of pages suspected as web forgeries is no longer shown. You can test it here.
* New SSL error pages: clearer and stricter error pages are used when Firefox encounters an invalid SSL certificate.
* Add-ons and Plugin version check: Firefox now automatically checks add-on and plugin versions and will disable older, insecure versions.
* Secure add-on updates: to improve add-on update security, add-ons that provide updates in an insecure manner will be disabled.
* Anti-virus integration: Firefox will inform anti-virus software when downloading executables.
* Vista Parental Controls: Firefox now respects the Vista system-wide parental control setting for disabling file downloads.

Easier to Use

* Easier password management: an information bar replaces the old password dialog so you can now save passwords after a successful login.
* Simplified add-on installation: the add-ons whitelist has been removed making it possible to install extensions from third-party sites in fewer clicks.
* New Download Manager: the revised download manager makes it much easier to locate downloaded files.
* Resumable downloading: users can now resume downloads after restarting the browser or resetting your network connection.
* Full page zoom: from the View menu and via keyboard shortcuts, the new zooming feature lets you zoom in and out of entire pages, scaling the layout, text and images.
* Tab scrolling and quickmenu: tabs are easier to locate with the new tab scrolling and tab quickmenu.
* Save what you were doing: Firefox will prompt users to save tabs on exit.
* Optimized Open in Tabs behavior: opening a folder of bookmarks in tabs now appends the new tabs rather than overwriting.
* Location and Search bar size can now be customized with a simple resizer item.
* Text selection improvements: Multiple text selections can be made with Ctrl/Cmd; Double-click drag selects in “word-by-word” mode; Triple-clicking selects a paragraph.
* Find toolbar: the Find toolbar now opens with the current selection.
* Plugin management: users can disable individual plugins in the Add-on Manager.
* Integration with Vista: Firefox’s menus now display using Vista’s native theme.
* Integration with the Mac: Firefox now uses the OS X spellchecker and supports Growl for notifications of completed downloads and available updates.

More Personal

* Star button: quickly add bookmarks from the location bar with a single click; a second click lets you file and tag them.
* Tags: associate keywords with your bookmarks to sort them by topic.
* Location bar & auto-complete: type the title or tag of a page in the location bar to quickly find the site you were looking for in your history; favicons, bookmark, and tag indicators help you see where results are coming from.
* Smart Places Folder: quickly access your recently bookmarked and tagged pages, as well as you more frequently visited pages with the new smart places folder on your bookmark toolbar.
* Bookmarks and History Organizer: advanced search of your history and bookmarks with multiple views and smart folders to store your frequent searches.
* Web-based protocol handlers: web applications, such as your favorite webmail provider, can now be used instead of desktop applications for handling mailto: links from other sites. Similar support is available for other protocols (Web applications will have to first enable this by registering as handlers with Firefox).
* Easy to use Download Actions: a new Applications preferences pane provides a better UI for configuring handlers for various file types and protocol schemes.

Improved Platform for Developers

* New graphics and font handling: new graphics and text rendering architectures in Gecko 1.9 provides rendering improvements in CSS, SVG as well as improved display of fonts with ligatures and complex scripts.
* Native Web page forms: HTML forms on Web pages now have a native look and feel on Mac OS X and Linux (Gnome) desktops.
* Color management: (set gfx.color_management.enabled on in about:config and restart the browser to enable.) Firefox can now adjust images with embedded color profiles.
* Offline support: enables web applications to provide offline functionality (website authors must add support for offline browsing to their site for this feature to be available to users).
* A more complete overview of Firefox 3 for developers is available for website and add-on developers.

Improved Performance

* Reliability: A user’s bookmarks, history, cookies, and preferences are now stored in a transactionally secure database format which will prevent data loss even if their system crashes.
* Speed: Major architectural changes (such as the move to Cairo and a rewrite to how reflowing a page layout works) put foundations in place for major performance tuning which have resulted in speed increases in Beta 1, and will show further gains in future Beta releases.
* Memory usage: Over 300 individual memory leaks have been plugged, and a new XPCOM cycle collector completely eliminates many more. Developers are continuing to work on optimizing memory use (by releasing cached objects more quickly) and reducing fragmentation.

A more complete, yet “unofficial” list of Firefox 3 changes with their bug numbers is available at the Burning Edge website.

Click here to download the latest beta of Firefox 3.0 now!