Tomboy is a desktop note-taking application that helps you organize ideas and information. See an example in Figure 8.4, “Examples of Tomboy Notes”. Add Tomboy to a panel by right-clicking the panel then clicking ‘Add to Panel’. Scroll down the list of items, select ‘Tomboy Notes’, then click ‘Add’. The Tomboy icon appears in your panel.

To create a new note, left-click the Tomboy icon then select ‘Create New Note’. Type the text of your note. Link notes with each other by clicking ‘Link’. These links can even survive renaming and reorganizing. The ‘Search Notes’ function located in the panel menu of Tomboy lets you search your notes. Web links and e-mail addresses can also be dropped onto Tomboy. Click ‘Recent Changes’ to view a list of your notes in the order they were last modified.

Tomboy also supports advanced editing features, such as highlighted text, inline spell checking, autolinking Web and e-mail addresses, undo and redo, and font styling and sizing.

Figure 8.4. Examples of Tomboy Notes

GNOME Dictionary, shown in Figure 8.5, “GNOME Dictionary”, provides dictionary definitions of words using any server that supports the dict protocol (an Internet standard for client/server dictionary applications). An Internet connection is required because this applet accesses an online dictionary. To open Dictionary, click ‘Applications’+‘Office’+‘Dictionary’+‘Dictionary’ or enter gnome-dictionary in a terminal window.

Figure 8.5. GNOME Dictionary

Type a word in ‘Look Up’ then press Enter. By default, the query is sent to the dict.org server. To use a different server, click ‘Edit’+‘Preferences’. dict.org lets you choose between various databases for special vocabularies, such as jargon or computer terminology. Under ‘Strategy’, specify the search strategy to use, such as matching the exact word, parts of the word, or the prefix or suffix. Click ‘Help’ to access the application's help.

Gaim is a powerful instant messenger client. It is shown in Figure 8.6, “Gaim”. The application supports various protocols, such as AIM, ICQ, GroupWise®, IRC, Jabber, and MSN. Its most popular features include the ability to log in to multiple accounts on multiple instant messaging networks at the same time, automatic text replacement, and spell checking. Gaim has buddy pounces (known as “buddy alerts” in AOL Messenger), meaning that you can configure Gaim to notify you whenever one of your buddies enters or leaves a channel you are currently connected to. Gaim can send you a message announcing this, play a sound, or execute a command.

To access Gaim, click ‘Applications’+‘Internet’+‘Chat’+‘Gaim Internet Messenger’ or enter gaim in a terminal window. On first start-up, create a list of your accounts on different instant messaging networks by clicking ‘Accounts’+‘Add’. Select the protocol then specify your screen name, password, and alias. Select ‘Remember password’ and ‘Auto-login’ if you want Gaim to log in automatically on start-up. To keep track of your e-mail while using Gaim, select ‘New mail notifications’. To use a buddy icon with your account, open a file dialog and select one. Additional options, such as proxy settings and server addresses, can be configured after clicking ‘Show more options’. When you have completed your account settings, click ‘Save’ to exit this dialog.

Figure 8.6. Gaim

As soon as you are finished specifying the account data, it is shown in the login window. To sign on, select your account from the ‘Account’ menu, type your password, click ‘Sign on’, and start chatting.

RealPlayer* gives you access to multimedia files stored on the Internet or locally on your computer. See Figure 8.7, “RealPlayer”. It supports RealAudio*, RealVideo* 10, MP3, Ogg Vorbis, Theora, H263, AAC, and more. To launch RealPlayer, click ‘Applications’+‘Multimedia’+‘RealPlayer’ 10.

The first time you open RealPlayer, see the RealPlayer Setup Assistant. Click ‘Forward’ to start then follow the instructions in the assistant to set up RealPlayer on your computer.

Figure 8.7. RealPlayer

There are two ways to play media clips on your computer. The first is local playback, which is when you click ‘File’+‘Open File’ on the RealPlayer menu then select the media file to play. The other way clips are played is as streamed content. This is when any clip is played in real time over the Internet. You can connect to streamed content by clicking links on a Web page or selecting ‘File’+‘Open Location’.

Use the options on the ‘Play’ menu or the buttons in the lower-left of the program to navigate through a clip. You can play, pause, stop, fast forward, or rewind a clip; turn the volume up or down; or mute a clip. The ‘Position Slider’ (located in the lower-right of the program window) indicates where you are in the clip. Drag the slider to jump to a different position in the clip.

GnomeMeeting lets you see and speak to other people via Internet telephony (VoIP) and video conferencing. The GnomeMeeting address book is shared with the Evolution e-mail client, so you do not need to specify contact information in more than one place.

You can browse for other GnomeMeeting users on your local network without knowing their contact details first, and you can view your own video output side by side with the video from your conversation partners so you see what they see.

To open GnomeMeeting, click ‘Applications’+‘Internet’+‘Telephone’+‘GnomeMeeting’. The first time you access GnomeMeeting, you need to complete the steps in the First Time Configuration Druid that automatically opens.

In GNOME, you can manage file archives with File Roller. As an archive manager, it can create and modify archives, view the content of an archive, view a file contained in the archive, and extract files from the archive. File Roller supports the following formats: tar archives uncompressed (.tar) or compressed with gzip (.tar.gz, .tgz), bzip (.tar.bz, .tbz), bzip2 (.tar.bz2, .tbz2), compress (.tar.Z, .taz), or lzop (.tar.lzo, .tzo); Zip archives (.zip); Jar archives (.jar, .ear, .war); Lha archives (.lzh); Rar archives (.rar); and single files compressed with gzip, bzip, bzip2, compress, and lzop.

You can easily view archive contents from File Roller with other applications without needing to decompress the archives. File Roller supports drag-and-drop, allowing you to drag file icons from the desktop or from the file manager (Nautilus) to the File Roller window and drop them there.

To open File Roller, click ‘Applications’+‘Utilities’+‘Archiving’+‘Archive Manager’. To create a new archive, click ‘Archive’+‘New’. Specify a name for the new archive (without a file extension) and the directory where you want to create the archive. Then select an archive type from the drop-down menu. Click ‘New’ to exit the dialog. Add files to the archive by dragging-and-dropping files from the desktop or the file manager or by clicking ‘Edit’+‘Add Files’.

After completing the selection and configuration, exit the dialog. The archive you created is available for further processing at the specified location. To decompress an archive, load it to File Roller, click ‘Edit’+‘Extract’, then specify the target directory.

Blam, shown in Figure 8.8, “Blam Feed Reader”, is a tool that helps you keep track of the growing number of news feeds distributed as RSS. RSS provides news updates from a Web site in a simple form for your computer. You can read these files in a program called an aggregator, which collects news from various Web sites and provides it to you in a simple form. Blam is a GNOME aggregator that lets you subscribe to any number of feeds and provides an easy-to-use interface to stay up to date. Blam lets you print the news entries you like and automatically updates feeds at regular intervals.

To open Blam, click ‘Applications’+‘Internet’+‘RSS Reader’+‘Blam Feed Reader’. Channels appear in a list on the left of the Blam window. Click any channel then view the headlines in the top-right panel. Clicking a headline displays the article in the lower-right panel. To see the full article, scroll to the bottom of the lower-right panel and click ‘Show in browser’.

Figure 8.8. Blam Feed Reader

To add a new channel, click ‘Channel’+‘Add’, enter the URL, then click ‘OK’. For example, entering http://www.novell.com/newsfeeds/rss/slp.xml adds the SUSE Linux Professional Cool Solutions channel to your list and downloads the latest articles.

Usenet is a collection of computers that let users exchange public messages on various topics. These messages are similar to e-mail, but are transmitted by special software that is separate from your e-mail system. They are intended for public discussions rather than personal communication. A Usenet message is called an article. Articles are grouped by topic into newsgroups. The entire collection of articles and newsgroups is called news.

Pan is an open source newsgroup client that supports basic newsreader features, such as reading and writing news, threading articles, and replying via e-mail. Articles can be sorted by author, date, subject, or the number of unread children in the thread. Pan also supports yEnc (see http://www.yenc.org), offline newsreading, article filtering, multiple connections, and more features for power users and alt.binaries fans.

To open Pan, click ‘Applications’+‘Internet’+‘Usenet News Reader’+‘Pan Newsreader’. When you start Pan for the first time, it prompts you for configuration information. Click ‘Forward’ then follow the online instructions to configure Pan.

To read the messages in a group, click the group in the left pane. You are then prompted for how many headers to download. If this is the first time you have viewed a group, select ‘Download All Headers’. Otherwise, select ‘Download New Headers’. Then click ‘Execute’.

To subscribe to a newsgroup, right-click the group in the left pane then click ‘Subscribe’.