These are the five (four if you know which extension you want) components needed:

- libevent (requred library for memcached)

- memcached daemon

- libmemcached (required library for the php client)

- php extension (standard)

- php extension (PECL)

Now open your terminal and off we go:

Note: if you don’t want to install wget, you can alternatively use “curl -O”)

Installing libevent:

$ cd /tmp
$ wget http://www.monkey.org/~provos/libevent-1.4.13-stable.tar.gz (if you’re brave, you can try the 2.0 beta)
$ tar zxvf libevent-1.4.13-stable.tar.gz
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install

Installing memcached:

$ wget http://memcached.googlecode.com/files/memcached-1.4.1.tar.gz
$ tar xzvf memcached-1.4.1.tar.gz
$ cd memcached-1.4.1
$ ./configure
$ make
$ make test
$ sudo make install
$ memcached -d -P pidfile -l 127.0.0.1 (this will start the memcached daemon)
$ ps aux | grep ‘memcached’ (this should confirm that memcached is running and how much memory is assigned to it)

Installing libmemcached:

$ wget http://launchpad.net/libmemcached/1.0/0.34/+download/libmemcached-0.34.tar.gz
$ tar -zxvf libmemcached-0.34.tar.gz
$ cd libmemcached-0.34
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install

Installing PECL memcache extension:

$ cd /tmp
$ pecl download memcached
$ tar xzvf memcached-1.0.0.tgz
$ cd memcached-1.0.0
$ phpize
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install

Installing PHP memcache extension:

$ cd /tmp
$ wget http://pecl.php.net/get/memcache-2.2.4.tgz
$ tar -zxvf memcache-2.2.4.tgz
$ cd memcache-2.2.4
$ phpize &&
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install

Once all the steps are completed successfully, ensure that the extension directory is specified as the same as the output of the terminal after the extensions installed. Otherwise correct in php.ini.

Also add the line(s) to load the extension(s) in the php.ini file, in the extension section:

extension=memcached.so
extension=memcache.so

And finally restart apache:
$ sudo apachectl restart

And verify in phpinfo that memcache(d) is loaded and working.

The new focus on real-time search results means that sites that consistently ranked high will take a hit. This will give smart webmasters who understand the dynamic of  real-time social media an excellent opportunity to markedly boost their Google rankings.

Here is a summary of what we know about Google Caffeine and it’s effect on SEO:

Page load speed will be important

The time it takes for a webpage to load is now important  to rank high on Google. Studies have shown that improving page load speed results in improved user retention and increased conversions.

Check out Google’s Site Performance diagnostic tool in their Google Webmaster Accounts. Basically, it boils down to:

1. Writing lean HTML and CSS code
2. More intelligent use of Javascript
3. Compressing html, css and Javascript
4. Improve browser page caching

Fresh Content Wins

Pages with static content will drop in the search rankings and more dynamic businesses with active blogs will take their place. This update declares war on “black hat” SEO spammers and rewards webmasters that provide up to date, meaningful and original content.

Ideas to keep your site dynamic:

1. Publish dynamic content like blog posts, comments, press releases and company news. You should try to add fresh content daily.
2. Encourage user interaction through profiles, comments, social bookmarking and social media links.

Backlinks Rule

The Google Caffeine update will not affect off-page factors much, so quality and relevant backlinks will continue to be an important ranking factor. However,  links and references from social media sites like Facebook and Twitter will be weighted higher.

There you have it. Try to take advantage of Google’s new Caffeine and update your blog regularly, improve page load speed by using Google’s Webmaster Tools to pinpoint sections that are slowing things down and employ a strong backlink strategy that targets the viral potential of social media networks.

This changed in January, when the first version of the Moonlight Project was released, providing Linux users with Open Source Silverlight support. Also included, provided that Moonlight has been obtained via Novell and meets certain other conditions, is a license to Microsoft’s free but closed-source Media Pack, containing codecs needed to decode audio and video streams.
With Silverlight 1.0 support out of the way, Moonlight developers began on Silverlight 2, and late last week, delivered the results of that effort with the release of Moonlight 2. The new release implements — as the version number suggests — support for Silverlight 2, complete with a new patent agreement from Microsoft that clarifies the applicability of the commitment to Moonlight implementations obtained from sources other than Novell. Users are now protected from patent litigation without regard to who supplied a user’s version of Moonlight — use of the Microsoft Media Pack, however, continues to be restricted to versions of Moonlight provided by Novell.

In addition to support for Silverlight 2, the release implements a select number of features from Silverlight 3 — complete support is expected in Moonlight 3, a preview of which is to be released in the coming months, and after a brief interim, version 4. New features include: “support for Bitmap APIs, file dialogs, easing functions, pluggable media pipeline and custom Codecs, better streaming of multimedia content based on the quality of the user’s connections and this release embeds Mono runtime functionality, which allows developers to target Linux with rich Internet applications using a wide variety of programming languages, including C#, Ruby, Python and Javascript.”

Moonlight — and Mono in general — has not been without its share of controversy, however. The conditions placed by Microsoft on Moonlight use produced considerable confusion regarding its status — prompting the revised commitment included with Moonlight 2 — as did the restrictions regarding eligibility to use the Microsoft Media Pack. As one might expect, those who oppose the use of closed-source software entirely object to the need for proprietary codecs. Some have objected to the patent agreement between Novell and Microsoft on principle, while others believe the project is part of a conspiracy to undermine the Open Source community.

Moonlight 2 — including a license for the Microsoft Multimedia Pack — can be downloaded from the Mono Project’s Moonlight site. Additional information about Moonlight and the Mono project is available from the Mono Project website, as is information for those interested in joining in the project’s development.

You will need an appropriately sized external drive or USB Flash Drive, as the Snow Leopard install DVD’s size is about 6.2 gigabytes. An 8GB USB stick like the SanDisk Cruzer 8GB is the perfect choice.

Now let’s plug in that USB stick and get started.

1. Start up Disk Utility and select your Flash Drive from the left side pane.

2. Select the Erase tab and set Format to Mac OS Extended (Journaled). It should be the first choice in the list. Set Name to Snow Leopard or OS X Install so you can easily keep track of it. Before you the Erase button, be sure that you copied any files or folders from the Flash Drive that you want to keep, as everything will get erased. You’ve been warned! Hit Erase.

3. After the Erase action has finished, we’re ready to move the installation files onto the stick. If you don’t already have the installation DVD inserted, do so. It should appear in the left side pane. Drag it’s image (Mac OS X Install DVD onto the source input field. Select your USB Flash Drive and drag it onto the Destination input field. Then hit Restore and wait for the process to finish. Be patient as it can take more than 20 minutes.

4. In case you try to install the OS now by clicking on the USB image, a warning may appear saying that you cannot install OS X from this volume. Ignore the message. Remove the installation DVD from the drive and restart your Mac with the USB plugged in. When your Mac boots up, press and hold the option/alt key until a menu with available drives appears. Select it and follow the prompts. At this point everything should proceed the same way as the regular DVD install.

1. If you don’t already have the mcrypt module (in /usr/lib), download the libmcrypt source code from sourceforge here. Then extract the downloaded file in a Terminal and move inside the created directory. (cd libmcrypt-2.5.8 in my case)

2. Execute the following lines in one command in your Terminal, if you have a 64bit version of Apache/PHP:

CFLAGS=”-arch x86_64″ \
CXXFLAGS=”-arch x86_64″ \
./configure –disable-posix-threads

(for 32 bit versions: ./configure –disable-posix-threads)

2. In your Terminal, run:

make

3. If no errors, in your Terminal run:

sudo make install

4. Download the PHP source code from PHP’s website here. Extract in a Terminal and move into the extracted directory.

5. In your Terminal, run the following lines in one command:

export MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.6 \
CFLAGS=”-arch x86_64″ \
CXXFLAGS=”-arch x86_64″

./configure –prefix=/usr/local/php5
–mandir=/usr/share/man
–infodir=/usr/share/info
–sysconfdir=/etc \
–with-config-file-path=/etc \
–with-zlib \
–with-zlib-dir=/usr \
–with-openssl \
–with-iconv=/usr \
–enable-exif \
–enable-ftp \
–enable-mbstring \
–enable-mbregex \
–with-mcrypt \
–enable-sockets \
–with-mysql=/usr/local/mysql \
–with-pdo-mysql=/usr/local/mysql \
–with-mysqli=/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config \
–with-apxs2=/usr/sbin/apxs

6. Correct a bug in Makefile.

As a result of a bug in PHP 5.2.9 and 5.3.0, we’ll need to correct the file Makefile generated by the configure phase. Let’s add ‘-lresolv‘ at the end of the line that begins with ‘EXTRA_LIBS‘. Leave a space and add it like ” …   -lz -licucore -lm -lresolv to whatever is there already. Do not alter the exiting text, simply add it.

7. In your Terminal, run:

make

8. If no errors, run:

sudo make install

At this point, restart apache and check your configuration with phpinfo(). Look for mcrypt as it should appear as an enabled module.

In case you didn’t know, there is a helpful MySQL utility called mysqlcheck, available as of version 3.23.38. It does exactly what we need.

To check all tables in all databases for corruption and errors and also fix them in one go, this is your command:

mysqlcheck -u username -p password  –check –optimize –auto-repair –all-databases

mysqlcheck executes statements like CHECK TABLE, REPAIR TABLE, ANALYZE TABLE, and OPTIMIZE TABLE and chooses the best statements for any given operation and storage engine.

Note that the operations complete a lot faster if you can afford to to disable any external services, especially if your database is large.

1 – Download the installation image from MySQL website here. Then double-click to mount and open the disk image.

2 – Install MySQL Server by double clicking the package “mysql-5.1.*****.pkg” and follow the menu, accepting the default values, unless you want to change something and know exactly what you’re doing.

3 – Install MySQL Startup Item by double-clicking the package “MySQLStartupitem.pkg” and follow the menu.

4 – Install MySQL Preference Pane by double-clicking the file “MySQL.prefPane” and follow the menu. This item will simplify the management of your SQL Server. You can now use the “System Preferences” panel to start and stop the database server.

5 – Enable the php module in your apache config file. You might know that Snow Leopard already ships with Apache 2.2 and PHP 5.3, but it needs a couple of tweaks to make it work smoothly. So, open /etc/apache2/httpd.conf and search for “php5_module”. Remove the comment (#) in front of the line, save and close the file, then restart apache (sudo apachectl restart)

6 – Testing Apache/PHP. Let’s create an info file so we know what we got. Navigate to /Library/WebServer/Documents and create a file called phpinfo.php. Put the following line into the file, save and close. “<?php phpinfo(); ?>”. Now open your favorite browser and hit it (http://localhost/phpinfo.php). You should see a page like the one below, which shows you configuration details, modules enabled and other useful information.

7 – There is no php.ini out of the box (as you may have discovered by looking at the phpinfo page), but there is a sample file called “php.ini.default” which we’re going to use. Copy this file and save it as php.ini.

8 – Set the default time zone. As PHP 5.3 requires the timezone to be set, let’s do this inside php.ini, so we don’t have to worry about it anymore. You can always override it in your application’s bootstrap, if needed. Open /etc/php.ini and search for “[Date]“. Uncomment the line “date.timezone = ” and add your timezone. Check the php manual for acceptable values. (example: date.timezone = ‘America/Los Angeles’)

And that’s it. You should now have a fully functional LAMP stack with Apache, PHP and MySQL server.

Ready? Here we go!

First, find and download your desired fonts into ~/Downloads/fonts. You may have to create that directory first. Then extract them and copy to the system fonts directory as follows:

cd /usr/share/fonts/truetype
sudo mkdir customFonts
cd customFonts
sudo cp ~/Downloads/fonts/*.ttf .
sudo chown root.root *.ttf
sudo mkfontdir
cd ..
fc-cache

And that’s it. If you had your favourite graphics program open during this process, you’ll likely need to restart it to see the added fonts.
Have fun!

Start off by rebooting your system. At the GRUB boot loader screen, move the highlighted entry with the arrow keys to interrupt the boot process. While the current boot entry is highlighted, press E and you can edit the kernel line.

Grub boot loader screen

Use the arrow key to highlight the line that starts with kernel, and press E to edit the kernel parameters. When you get to the screen below, append the number 1 at the end of the line. This will enable you to boot into single-user mode.

Edit GRUB boot loader entry

Next press Enter, then B, and the kernel will boot up into single-user mode. Once there you can run the passwd command, changing the password for user root:

prod-093# passwd
New UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:
passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully

Next time you boot up, use your newly created password to login.

Earlier this year, Canonical announced plans to improve the boot experience, the goal being to get the system up and running smoother and much faster. And Karmic Koala doesn’t disappoint, but the eventual goal of a 10-second startup time will have to wait until Ubuntu 10.04 is released in 2010.

The Ubuntu One client software, part of  the Ubuntu One cloud storage tools, is designed to give you a simple way to backup, synchronize and share files over the web. Ubuntu One offers 2GB of free storage, and a 10GB option sets you back $10/month. Ubuntu One also offers public shared folders that other Ubuntu users can access natively from their PC, while non-Ubuntu users can access them via web browser.

Pidgin messaging client has been replaced with Empathy, something other GNOME distros have done as well. But Empathy isn’t just a new Instant Messaging client. It sports a much-improved framework known as Telepathy. More than just a Pidgin replacement, Telepathy offers video-chat and VOIP support, two things that aren’t even on Pidgin’s roadmap.

If you want to give this new beta release a spin yourself, download is available here. To upgrade from your existing 9.04 version, press “CTL+F2″, then type “update-manager -d”, hit enter and follow the instructions.