Bend in the Weather

In Australia Internet users are limited to the amount they may download. Each Internet Service plan normally involves a speed and download limit. Failing to keep an eye on this and exceed your limit normally effects the user in question either by: Paying exorbitant excess fees that can be as much as $150/GB! Being 'throttled' by your ISP, in effect turning your lovely xDSL/Cable connection into something slower than dial-up. As you can image, most people wish to avoid these. As a result ISPs provide a usage meter normally on their site, however you have to remember to view it, which unless you're diligent in doing so, you can still run over your quota. Previously I've relied on the fabulous Firefox extension NetUsage, however this meant you had to have a browser open. This isn't always the case, and I found it frustrating to have to load a browser just to check my usage. (I could just login to the ISP's usage meter if I had a browser open). I've seen others produce mrtg graphs and even Cacti graphs to display their usage; however they too also rely on having a browser open. Ideally, I want to have my usage available, when I wanted, and without loading a browser. I use conky on my desktop to display a range of information. It seemed a logical step would be to integrate a meter into my conky setup. As you can see from the graph in the picture to the left, it displays a raw percentage of what has been used, as well as a visual bar graph. Below that is the raw data, showing exactly how much I've downloaded (~11.5GB), what my ISP believes my quota to be (55GB in this case), and when this billing period ends (the 13th of every month). I can now view my current Internet usage at a glance, without the need to load any additional program. So how did I achieve it? Like many ISPs, my ISP provides an interface to the raw data. This is used by 3rd party utilities like NetUsage and others to parse and generate the information. Internode (my ISP) has such an interface. A quick and dirty script and I was able to spit out the graph in a format conky liked. Whilst this works directly with Internode, similiar ISPs have such interfaces and you will be able to hack the script to suit your own environment.

Below is the simple bash shell script used to generate the data:
#!/bin/bash

# Get usage information from Internode's web page.
# Setup to run once every half hour.
#

# Set the username and password
Username=INTERNODE_USERNAME
Password=INTERNODE_PASSWORD

# Grab the details
Temp=`wget -q -O - --post-data "username=${Username}&password=${Password}" --user-agent="Conky ISP Quota Grabber 0.1" https://customer-webtools-api.internode.on.net/cgi-bin/padsl-usage`

# Generate the percent used.
echo $Temp|gawk '{print $1/$2*100}'> /tmp/node-graph.txt
Percent=`cat /tmp/node-graph.txt`
echo $(printf %.0f $Percent) > /tmp/node-percent.txt

# Break up the values into their respective parts
Values=($Temp)
echo "Used: $(printf %.0f ${Values[0]})MB Quota: ${Values[1]}MB Period Ends: ${Values[2]}" > /tmp/node-text.txt

# Time to leave.
exit

Sure it's not the most secure script (It stores your username/password in plain text). For me, the script sits on my desktop machine... and is protected by file permissions. The password I use for my ISP I also don't consider highly sensative. (It's important to note that most people throw around their password in clear-text across the Internet when picking up their mail with POP3! ). It does however do the job.

The above shell script I run every 30 minutes from cron.

It is then up to your ~/.conkyrc file to display the results. Here is the snippet of the appropriate code for the ~/.conkyrc file that will do that for you:

${color orange}INTERNET USAGE ${hr 2}$color
${execi 900 cat /tmp/node-percent.txt}% ${execibar 900 cat /tmp/node-graph.txt}
${execi 900 cat /tmp/node-text.txt}

There you have it, a simple ISP usage meter sitting right on your desktop.
It's not the most elegant or complicated program, however it serves it's purpose extremely well. YMMV.

Most people are aware the Google's Chrome Browser is based on the great work of the Chromium Browser Project.

CodeWeavers have even created a free 'port' of Google Chrome for Linux users, aptly named CrossOver Chromium. This means Linux people don't need to feel left out of all the Google lovin'.

There have been a few people concerned with privacy issues (also here and here) when using the Google Chrome browser. Even the EFF has raised concerns. Google has reacted and posted some information regarding privacy in Chrome.

There has been some applications produced that remove one of the largest concerns people have (a unique ID assigned to every installation of Chrome). In particular Chrome Privacy Guard will strip this unique ID out for you. Turning off some of the features (like Google Suggest) via the Browser preferences will also limit the amount of information sent back to the mothership (Google).

Buoyed by all these privacy concerns, SRWare a German software company have released 'Iron', a browser also based on Chromium source but without all the 'Googleness' privacy issues.

If you like Chrome, but are concerned about the privacy aspect, Iron might be your solution.

For those on Linux and really just wanting to use a WebKit based browser, take a peek at Midori.