Shashi Tharoor on India's 'soft power'

Shashi Tharoor on India's 'soft power' - wow what a take from Shashi Tharoor about India's soft power. 3 cheers to Shashi Tharoor.

CNTLM@work

It had been a pain in the wrong place for a while at work where my desktop is behind a ISA proxy with authentication and I could not figure a way to get the proxy settings to work on a Ubuntu (Hardy Heron).

Then I googled and came across CNTLM which is a beauty; follow the instructions to install and configure it, set proxy to localhost:3128 and thats it.

I am doing a Synaptic update as I type this .. from now on I will be on top of the latest ubuntu and like software updates.

3 cheers to CNTLM.

My VOIP just got better ..

I recently switched by ISP (TPG to Beagle Internet) mainly for ADSL 2+ service. Beagle did not provide VOIP and therefore and also for service decoupling reasons I subscribed to MyNetFone service. I am pretty happy with the service for the call costs primarily to India & USA.

I often do conference calls from home and been looking for ways to use the laptop's mic and speakers as the handsfree. Finally I found the solution. The solution is to ..

1. Use a Soft phone, configured for the VOIP provider, on my laptop. I found X-Ten X-Lite working just fine on my MacBook Pro and would imagine same on Dell XPS Studio / Vista / Win7 as well. See instructions here.
2. I found this post with a working Apple Script to integrate Mac's Address Book to X Lite. This way I can right-click and dial a number from the Address Book. Cool ha .. Same script copied below here for convenience and as backup in the this post vanish in future.
   

   
   using terms from application "Address Book"
    on action property
     return "phone"
    end action property
    
    on should enable action for thePerson with theEntry
     if theEntry is not missing value then
      return true
     else
      return false
     end if
    end should enable action
    
    on action title for thePerson with theEntry
     return "Mit X-Lite wahlen"
    end action title
    
    on perform action for thePerson with theEntry
     set thePhoneNumber to value of theEntry
     set theolddelimiter to AppleScript's text item delimiters
     
     set AppleScript's text item delimiters to "(0)"
     set thePhoneNumber to every text item of thePhoneNumber
     set AppleScript's text item delimiters to theolddelimiter
     set thePhoneNumber to thePhoneNumber as text
     
     set theNewPhoneNumber to ""
     
     repeat with a from 1 to length of thePhoneNumber
      set theCharacter to character a of thePhoneNumber
      if a is 1 and character a of thePhoneNumber is "+" then
       set theNewPhoneNumber to theNewPhoneNumber & "0011"
      end if
      if "0123456789" contains theCharacter then
       set theNewPhoneNumber to theNewPhoneNumber & theCharacter
      end if
     end repeat
     
     tell application "X-Lite"
      activate
      tell application "System Events"
       tell process "X-Lite"
        -- delete eventually existing number
        keystroke ""
        keystroke return
        -- dail
        keystroke theNewPhoneNumber
        keystroke return
       end tell
      end tell
     end tell
     return true
    end perform action
   end using terms from
   
   
   

   
   
3. Moreover I could use Soundflower / Audacity like tools to record the call in case if required or when times I am meant to take notes. This I see as a big bonus. Yet to try this on Windows platform.