January 2010

So do you all do file sync’ing to the cloud or share files? I am a dropbox user because it runs on all the platforms so it makes it to “habilis” grade for me. On Ubuntu you get a default folder under home but you can do symlinking of other directories. Not sure if Windows 7 allows this kind of thing. Here is the primary use for me of dropbox currently. I maintain a personal wiki using the development snapshot of Tomboy Notes to keep track of personal stuff or capture likely ideas at a personal or work level. Sometimes I copy them to Evernote and then my phone gets them too because Evernote has a Android Client. I also use the web component of Evernote and also sync the notes to my Windows 7 netbook which is handy.

On Tomboy you can select a variety of sync options but by far the easiest one is local folders. I have had issues with webdav even though my webserver publishes a webdav share. The SSHfs is very handy all by itself and I don’t know if any of you do this or not; but you can basically mount a remote folder on a SSH server and use it locally. All by itself, SSHfs is very cool stuff and actually easy to get going. The remote system can be anywhere you can reach with SSH. I would say the tricks one can do with a working SSH client and server are simply amazing. Kudos to Wari for showing me bunches of cool things that SSH can do.

Anyways, to get back to the point since I so easily diverge from it; one can setup the local file sync option in Tomboy to sync to a folder that is under the dropbox home folder. Hit the sync command in Tomboy and then setup a different computer with the same magic gooey goodness. Now you get wiki sharing without a webserver whatsoever. Very handy if you use Wariany desktop wiki software on Windows or Linux or whatever.

Other ones I know of include the UbuntuOne service which I signed up for before but stopped using during the beta of Ubuntu Karmic because it did some weird things then. There are bunches of Windows and MAC only sync options as well like SugarSync which I won’t discuss here because they don’t honor the core principle of supporting all the OS’es.

Virtual Images and Appliances

I came across a few interesting resources for sharing virtual appliance image “guest” files for the various pieces of software I use. Probably the most famous is the Vmware MarketPlace which is a central clearing-house for all things virtual and appliance driven. But lets say instead you want something targeted toward a specific use case like wiki or GTD. How about downloading a bitnami virtual machine or the package itself? You get a entire environment for the specific tool you want. These are all free and they work on Linux, Windows, or a MAC. Finally, there is a community-driven site for VirtualBox guests as well here. The idea on all these is to extend and enhance the core OS by running a second OS that may provide a specific tool or be a generic environment. I know a few people that choose to run Ubuntu environments in VMware to deal with Android phones. I think its just easier to deal with the commands and syntax, mounting and unmounting, using Linux myself. I also use VirtualBox with Windows 7 so I can use Outlook and Office 2007. I don’t much care for Outlook but I’d real deal with that devil virtually and be able to backup and take snapshots of my Windows guest then make some idiot mistake on real iron. Windows should only be installed virtually by adults over the age of 18 and after signing a release statement . I carefully ignore any requirement to install iTunes on any of this because to me that’s the worst malefactor of them all. It lends no advantage to systems and only acts to aggressively try to manage all the media files and only let me borrow them.

Android Phones are coming up everywhere. Witness that Motorola has announced they will release a phone off of google.com/phone much like HTC did the Nexus One. There are rumors swirling of a Nexus Two even now. These could be one and the same. I truly enjoy the Nexus One. Its a great addition to a platform growing by leaps and bounds. There are enterprising developers adding new custom ROMs to the mix, rescue images, new themes. It creates a dynamic fabric of community, developer, hardware, software. Google must be truly enjoying all this.

Androidforums also lists the existing phones but it changes so often that the site should have a forever “under construction sign”. The HTC Hero, the Nexus One, Droid/Milestone, all these great choices out there. Different form factors, different processor, different memory. Truth is that any of these can be rooted and the Nexus One makes it so very painless. Add in Cyanogen’s add-in which switches on wireless tethering or just get his new ROM. Here is an article which links to all the parts. Kudos to Cyanogen, the community, the phones, everything.

Probably the great resource all in all are the XDA Forums for the devices. The Hero, Magic, and Nexus One forums really have saved me a few times, let me download new ROM cookery, try new kernels. Its all very exciting and empowering.

I’m enjoying the Nexus One and its beautiful screen real estate, its mod-ability, and the enterprising and innovating developer community which provides new and exciting things to try.

Perhaps this is a scenario you know. In a hotel room and they provide wifi or wired ethernet access but you gotta pay. They do it by MAC address so its difficult to have two systems online at the same time; yet you need to have two or want to have two. On Ubuntu Karmic this is trivially easy and no additional equipment is required and Windows has it the same. You can do an internet connection share using the wired ethernet port very easily and when you plug another computer into the wired port with a crossover cable, the second computer gets an IP address and gets all the routes and dns setup. You have to install the dnsmasq package which itself is easy. Then just go to the network mangler and create a new wired ethernet connection called “shared”. Edit the ipv4 properties for the connection and select “Shared to Other Computers”. Plug in the cable between the systems and off you go. The second computer will get a IP address, etc.

You can also do something even nicer with a cheap little travelers AP. Plug it into the hotel wired ethernet port where you register. These little travelers will do the work and give you wifi in the room however you want it. Art showed me this trick in Singapore and it works a treat. I bought an engenius AP for this which has 3g, usb, and a few ethernet ports on it. The only limitation with the hotel providing wifi is I use a crossover cable and so am tied to the “host” computer. That’s okay though. The primary thing is to not disconnect the first computer when I wish to use my Windows 7 netbook.

On Ubuntu, the “shared to other computers” sets up all the hard stuff dynamically for ya. Great stuff.

Some resources to throw at ya:

1. A blog detailing how to do this on Ubuntu is here.
2. A Microsoft KB on Windows ICS is here.

Easy peasy.