kw905 : Life on a Chromebook.
Jan 01We deep dive into the world of Chromebooks and find an answer to the question : Can you survive on a Chromebook. We walk you through the possibilities and limitations of the Chromebook. We enlighten you on how to use it for work, connect back to your home network and how to use your Chromebook to entertain you. If thats not enough we go beyond the design specifications and sideload Linux on your Chromebook turning into a low budget sliders dream machine. All of that and more .. in Kw905 : Life on a Chromebook. Catch the live recording of this podcast in the Youtube video below and see if you can catch Sulu the dog as our Podcast assistant.
Shownotes.
- The Acer C730
- First impressions
- Hardware – Software
- Taking the Chromebook to work (Article)
- Using the Chromebook to entertain you (Article)
- Connecting back to your home network via a Socks5 proxy over SSH (Article)
- Dual Booting your Chromebook with Linux (Distroshare.com)
- Sideloading your Chromebook with Crouton (Youtube instruction video)
- Epilogue
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“Whats in your bag week” Day 1 : Regravity.
Oct 27This week we offer you a treat ! Some of the best guestbloggers from the Knightwise.com community (each allstar bloggers, podcasters and content producters) have joined forces to write up a series of articles about “what’s in their bag”. What do they carry around on their geeky roadwarrior adventures. How do they use it and why . We kick off with Tim King. A voice many of you know since he closes up every single Knightwise.com podcast. You have the floor Tim.
I’m Tim (Regravity), I’m a media developer for a large organisation in Australia. My work usually includes video / audio development, interactive media creation and UX/UI design.
Most mornings I start off by putting on my flat cap (1.) as I walk out the door of my house and drive to work. Pretty soon after I arrive I plug in my portable hdd (4.) strap on my headphones (6.) and crack open iTunes for some music. My Bendigo Bank (2.) security token is important if I need to pay any bills or transfer money no matter where I go so I usually have it with me.
Data transport can be a difficult issue sometimes so I carry three flash drives (10., 11., 12.) with me just in case I need to grab a file or give something to a co-worker. I also use the microSD card reader (13.) if someone hands me a card from a camera, tablet or phone.
Because I have a Samsung Galaxy S3 (8.) which is getting a little long in the tooth I often have to top up the battery with my phone charger (5.), can’t wait to get an iPhone 6 shortly! I also take with me a small notebook (7.) so I can jot down the crazy ideas I have for technology solutions, short stories (I’m an avid writer) and generally how to solve the problems of the world.
The male-to-male audio cable (3.) isn’t really a critical piece of gear, but I have it just incase I need to record audio off a weird device like a digital note taker or someones phone.
As I mentioned before I’m a hobby writer, so I like to keep myself well read, hence I bring my Kindle Paperwhite (9.) to work for a quick read during my lunch break. Currently I’m reading the classic cyberpunk novel Neuromancer by William Gibson.
Finally I cram all that into my bag (14.) fairly neatly and I’m good to go!
The list :
1. Roger David – Teddy Flat Cap
http://www.rogerdavid.com.au/teddy-flat-cap-12747.html
2. Bendigo Bank Security Token
http://www.bendigobank.com.au/public/
3. Belkin MIXIT Coiled 3.5mm Male-to-Male Audio Cable
http://www.belkin.com/au/p/P-AV10126/
4. Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 500 GB Portable HDD
http://www.cnet.com/au/products/seagate-freeagent-goflex-ultra-portable-usb-3-0-1-5tb/
5. Samsung Portable Charger
http://www.shopandroid.com/samsung-micro-usb-1a-travel-charger/5AA11813.htm
6. Sennheiser HD 408 Headphones
http://www.kosmic.com.au/sennheiser-hd408-open-headphones/
7. J.Burrows Pocket Coloured Journal – Black
8. Samsung Galaxy S3
http://www.samsung.com/global/galaxys3/
9. Amazon Kindle Paperwhite (Second Gen)
10. Dyna Store 8GB Hook USB 2.0 Flash Drive
http://www.officeworks.com.au/shop/officeworks/dyna-store-8gb-hook-usb2-0-flash-drive-dy8gbusb
11. Lexar JumpDrive 16GB TwistTurn USB Flash Drive
http://au.lexar.com/products/lexar-jumpdrive-twistturn-usb-flash-drive?category=1718
12. Sandisk Cruzer 8GB USB Flash Drive
http://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2446/~/sandisk-cruzer-usb-flash-drive
13. SanDisk MobileMate Duo Card Reader
http://www.officeworks.com.au/shop/officeworks/sandisk-mobilemate-duo-card-reader-br190777
14. Bells Beach Crossbody Shoulder Bag
Could not find a link.
You can find Tim online over at regravity.com
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Server week : Trust no-one with Owncloud.
Apr 03Dropbox changed its terms of service so they can give you data to the Feds if they just ask for it, Ubuntu shuts down the online fileservice “Ubuntu One” : Who can you trust these days ? The great thing with cloud solutions is that they are on a server far far away, most of them are free and you never have to maintain them. The downside is that they are on a server far far away, they are free and you cannot maintain them. We give up a certain level of control for the convenience of the cloud. It would be of course far nicer if you had a service that offered you all the luxury of the products mentioned above .. but gave you full control, absolute privacy and a completely controlled solution. (and free ! It has to be free).
Do not fear : Owncloud is here.
Owncloud is a self hosted cloud solution that gives you the luxury of the cloud in the privacy of your own home (or on your own hosted environment). Its a cross platform webservice that gives you the ability to store files in the “cloud” and access them from anywhere, Sync those files with your desktop (like Dropbox) You can share your files with friends and access them using mobile clients on Android and IOS devices or a simple browser window.
Don’t trust the cloud with your Calendar and contacts ? Owncloud takes care of that too. Manage your contacts and calendars straight from Owncloud or sync them up with your mobile devices using open standards like .vcard and caldav.
Tired of the tracks on Groovebox or spotify ? Would you like to stream your music (and movies) from your own hard drive at home ? Owncloud even has an answer for that. The built in media player lets you access your library from anywhere as long as you sport at least a browser (AND some underwear .. Owncloud is classy like that).
Want to tie all of your different cloud services together ? Owncloud supports connecting external storage to the service (like network and usb drives) but can also connect to Dropbox and Google Docs, offering ALL those files up in one simple interface.
So what does it take ?
Installing Owncloud is pretty simple. All you need is a linux server and you can choose to install Owncloud either from the repositories (if you are using Ubuntu or Debian) or you can go and download version 6 straight from their website.
Owncloud is based on a web based server so you can access everything from port 80 and add some security by choosing to go for https to do your authentication (highly recommended). You can run it on your server at home OR on a webspace you rented somewhere (or if you are really lucking on your own hosted server in some datacenter). You don’t need a lot of power, but Owncloud does need some ram and some cpu power if it is going to manage and index thousands of files for you.
So how do I do it.
- You can install owncloud directly from the repositories in Ubuntu.
- You can download a ready-to-go Virtual machine (or preinstalled ISO image) of Owncloud on Turnkey Linux.
- You can go to the Owncloud website to download and install the package yourself (and its THE place to get the Desktop client
Find out more.
In all , Owncloud is a very powerful solution when it comes to hosting stuff yourself. It has come a long way since version 6 and I have been a big fan of the convenience, the cross platform compatible-ness (is that a word ?) and the sheer power of integrating multiple storage locations (usb drives, network drives, cloud storage) to ONE single web interface. Try it .. you’ll be on cloud 9.
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Access all of your cloud services from one page with CloudKafé.
Jan 20Every day there is a new cloud service popping up on the internet. And for us sliders, thats a good thing. One of the ways to assure your data is accessible on most of your devices (and operating systems) is by generally ‘parking’ it in the cloud. The downside to this operation is that you end up with 20 open tabs on your browser, each logged into so some service and you realise you just spent more time logging in … then doing stuff.
One of the answers to this might be CloudKafe, A centralised “webhub” from where you can access all of your different cloud services. CloudKafe supports the majority of popular cloud services (and some more) by letting you access them from one single page. A cool feature they offer is the ability to search through your different cloud services all at once (so you can finally find that one annoying baby foto from your brother you uploaded a long time ago). The centralised “hub” is a great way to work with the cloud, but although CloudKafé is ‘certified and secure’ you have to remember that there is now ONE master key to log into all of your cloud services : Your CloudKafé account.
So give it a whirl (its free) and if you don’t like it : Delete your account and delete the access rights CloudKafé has on all of those different services. That way you know you are safe when you ever leave CloudKafé.
Cloudcafe is free and available in most browsers via www.cloudkafe.com
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Use your smartphone as a portable scanner with Google Drive.
May 22Remember those old spy movies ? Where the secret agent / spy would walk around with a small camera to quickly snap shots of some ultra secret documents in a momentarily abandoned office ? Remember the suspense as you sat on the edge of your seat yelling “Hurry up” in front of your television ? Lets face it : Those spies were geekin out hard : In essence they were the first to master the tedious art of scanning documents.
Somewhere along the way we lost our minds because in the late 90″s we had massive flatbed scanners to do the exact same thing. For those of you who still have a scanner : You know its the most idiotic waste of office / desk space that you have ever owned. Scanners are a kind of high tech coaster for whatever crap you stack on top of them. Why ? because you seldom need them and when you do .. Well after an excavation operation to actually find the scanner under that pile of comics, you then have to make sure the document is the right side up, find a free usb port on your pc and you end up cursing and wasting time.
So why not be Mr Spy all over again ? With the 24 megapixel camera on your smartphone its quite easy to snap up a good picture of a document. Now all you need to do is get those secret plans into your administration system. Enter the new Google Drive app on android that comes with a bunch of new features making it easier to digitize that document. It not only saves the snapshot into your Google Drive, but also preforms OCR right in the cloud. Letting you edit copy and paste the text. Compared to scsi cables, flatbed scanners, OCR applications under Windows .. this is quite a nifty tool.
So start using your smartphone (with the new Google Drive app )as your digital wireless scanner and snap up those documents straight away. Feel the urge to print them too ? Take a look at the long forgotten Google Cloud Print and turn those documents in your Google Drive back to ground up pieces of tree.
Links : Google Drive. – Google Cloud print.
