live mesh tech preview

I finally got my invite for Microsoft’s Live Mesh today. Spent some time playing with it tonight. On the surface, it looks to be.. lacking. I really didn’t look into the ins and outs of Live Mesh before trying to get an invite. I knew it had something to do with their Sync Framework and I was making the assumption that it was a enhanced up version of FolderShare (which I’m a huge fan of). Well I was partly right. There definitely is the functionality to just sync up folders (although it wasn’t a clear as I thought it would be).

 

Once you get an invite and sign in you get into your Live Mesh Desktop. This should be thought of like the normal desktop we’ve come to know and love (with way less icons, misc word docs strewn about. oh and the wallpaper on my desktop is cooler).  Right now you can create a new Mesh Folder.  A mesh folder is basically just a folder that can by synced onto any other Mesh Device (gee, this sounds just like FolderShare). It does appear that the files are actually stored up on Microsoft’s servers “in the cloud”, which is more like SkyDrive. So now its looking like Mesh is a FolderShare/SkyDrive hybrid. I also use SkyDrive, so it looks like Mesh might be able to help consolidate some of the services I use. When you open up the folder you created on mesh, you get a Vista-like explorer view of the folder.

(hey look.. my first screenshot!)

 

My first time creating a new Mesh Folder I didn’t click on the horizontal chevron. If you do that you can set what devices sync and when. Since I didn’t do that I had to figure out how to get the folder to sync to my desktop. Here’s a screenshot of what you get if you click the chevron to expand out the Synchronization Options

Although this window looks like its a Vista window, its all running within IE as a modal window “on my Mesh Desktop”.

Since I didn’t do that the first time, I had to stumble around until I found out how to sync my mesh folder with my desktop (and I’ve already forgotten where I did that at).

I do see that after you install the Mesh client it creates a Live Mesh Folders in your profile space. In my case since I’m running vista this is C:\Users\Steve\Live Mesh Folders.

 

Ok. I figured out what you have to do to configure the client to sync… wait. you have to wait for it to show up in the active folders view on the Mesh client notification window.

Just click on the folder icon (that thing that looks like it was circled by a left-handed pre-school student…wait, I am left handed)

Once you click on the “New Folder” you can configure where you want it to sync to (on the local machine).

 

Well that sure was a lot about the whole sharing files part… in fact way more than is probably required. Outside of the suped up FolderShare/SkyDrive-esk feature, what do I like about Live Mesh

• Remote Desktop – Although I haven’t tried this yet, it looks like it will allow you to make a remote desktop connect from anywhere to a device running the mesh client. Kind of nice, not sure how much I’d use it…. well, outside of troubleshooting problems on someone’s computer.
• You can use the foldersharing as a collaboration mechanism. The alert/news feature tells you when something has been added/updated in a folder.
• Although I haven’t found any apps (or demo apps we can play with) that leverage Mesh, based on this quick demo you can see there’s a lot more to Mesh than what we’re seeing as end users. As I mentioned at the beginning, right now Live Mesh looks rather empty. But as you can see from the demo, that’s because Live Mesh is a platform, not a product.  You can see it has Google Gears type functionality, allowing you to take web apps offline.

In short, this thing has some potential. It’ll be interesting to see how it fits in with the cornucopia of “web 2.0″ services already out there. (not just in general, I also mean personally… I’m already at at least 15 different “web 2.0″ sites/services)

 

Technorati Tags: live mesh

xobni now public beta

I thought I hade blogged about Xobni before. A quick search tells me that I didn’t(i really thought I did, oh well), which is precular since I’m a pretty big fan (and shared it with a decent number of people). I’ve been using it since November/December timeframe and the earlier beta was quite stable (and enjoyable).  The analytics are quite fun. Its real nice to see when people get around to responding to email.

Productivity experts recommend you don’t respond back to email right away and schedule time to check email (email is not supposed to be instantaneous). Cut down on interupptions. With Xobni you can see who follows those rules and who is just emailing all the time.

The beta is now open to the public, so head out and snag it. Its free and runs with Outlook 2003 and 2007.

http://www.xobni.com/download

 

ISOs and Vista

Dealing with ISO images has also been kind of annoying. Ever since switching to Vista a year and a half ago (at least, when was Beta 2?) , finding something to burn ISO images to CD/DVD in Vista hasn’t really been easy. I had always kept an XP computer around just to mess with ISOs. With the following 2 utilities, I think I can finally get repurpose extra my XP computer.

I came across this free utility/program that will burn ISO images.
It works on vista, so for those of us who don’t have Nero (and don’t want Roxio), it looks pretty good (although I haven’t done a burn yet)
http://www.imgburn.com/index.php?act=download

If you just want to get at the files in the ISO (and not waste the media to do it), I found MagicISO – Magic Disk. http://www.magiciso.com/tutorials/miso-magicdisc-overview.htm. MagicDisk is free from MagicISO. They also make a payfor version that allows you to make/edit/burn ISO images.

MagicDisk lets you mount ISOs to a virtual CD as if there was a physical CD in the drive (like Dameon Tools). MagicDisk also lets you explode the contents of an ISO right to a folder (saves you the time of mounting it and then doing a copy/paste).

FolderShare (beta)

FolderShare

I love this utility. I’ve been using it for about 6months now and its one of those things I just love having installed. Getting files moved from computer to computer is ridiculously easy. In fact, last month I used it as a makeshift way to copy some files from my future sister-in-law’s old mac to her new one. A little more typically I used it for the following things

• Keeping my media files in sync. It was always annoying to rip a cd or copy a bunch of pictures at home or work and then not have it on my other computers.
• Keep documents in sync. This was especially useful with my laptop. I would use FolderShare to keep My Documents in sync. This allow me to have
• Keep a backup of files on computers physically in a different location. Although I wouldn’t really lose any money if I lost my mp3s, pictures, or documents, i’d be pretty ticked. Having my laptop automatically backed up to a computer (or multiple computers) reduced fears of losing data because of theft, dropping or accidental liquids spillage.

Although Foldershare has been around for quite awhile, Microsoft bought them awhile back and this beta is their first attempt at integrating into the Live namespace. On the surface it looks like pretty much all the work has been on polishing up the UI (which was definitely needed, but hey, with rock solid tech the UI can suffer a little). So far, I like the new interface and I’m looking forward to seeing the feature improvements. I shouldn’t say there hasn’t been any additional features, as I think Microsoft expanded on the ability get at files on a computer that you’re not currently sharing (provided the computer is on). I never really used this feature much since I had already created shares for the stuff I cared about. But its is nice to know that you could get at any file on the hard drive from your remote location. (If my computer back in MI was still on and hooked to the Internet I could have snagged my Microsoft Money data file and saved myself a day worth of work recovering from a 6month old backup file.) If the ability to get any file wasn’t slick enough, FolderShare also hooks into the Windows Desktop Search engine so you could do a search for a file and then download it, all via the FolderShare web site. This functionality was in the old client, so its nothing really new.

An additional feature that I used very briefly was the ability to create shared folders with different people. You can grant them the abiltiy to just get a copy (read-only) or be a full sync partner. There wasn’t much i needed to share on an on-going basis, so i didn’t use it much. I see there being a lot of potential with students who want a better way to collaborate on group project stuff. Of course, anything is an improvement on the current practice of sending every minute updated file via email. Another way this could be used (that just occurred to me) is you could use it to create a little publisher/subscription service for family members. Instead of posting pictures up to a photo site like Flickr, you could just dump everything into a folder that is shared out. And then have family members (like my parents) subscribe to the share (read only of course) and have an up-to-date copy of my photos. The only constraint there is the limit on the free service is 10,000 items per share.

Technorati Tags: foldershare,utilities

In short, if you have more than one computer or want to share stuff, get this utility.

Nokia Concept Phone – The Morph

Nokia Concept Phone – The Morph

This looks quite fun!

Sure its all market and idealism wrapped up in a nice package, but this phone is the type of thing that according to Back to the Future I should totally have. If they can’t make me a flying car, then they should make these. I’ve seen similar things concepts with translucent paper that you can roll up, but this is way cooler.

Sure this looks neat, but checkout the full video to see what they really hope it to be able to do. Way more than just a semi-circle shaped phone. Not sure why but part of its morphing ability reminds me of those stupid slap bracelets from the 80s, but this would actually serve a purpose (other than obviously looking cool)

Even if they can’t make it all, the ability have it solar charge is pretty nice. Specially since they indicate the same skin could be placed on all sorts of things (like buildings). In the meantime I’m just hoping to see more devices come with built-in support for electromagnetic charging, like this one.

Technorati Tags: Technorati Tags: mobile,concept,gadget

Last.fm

http://www.last.fm/

Hardly new or anything, but I figured I’d do a little write up on it. Need to get some more techno-nerdy posts up here. So hey, why not.

I’ve been using last.fm for awhile now (although, I just installed it on my computer out here in DC).

last.fm is a music social network blended with a radio station. I originally found last.fm when I was looking for a way to automatically keep a list of songs I’m listening to on my facebook profile. After looking a little bit on what it would take to write a Windows Media Player (my player of choice, albeit I really didn’t evaluate many alternatives).   You create an account with last.fm and then install their software. When you install the software it scans to see what players you have installed and then will install “Scrobbler” plugin for those players. The Scrobbler posts the songs you are listening to up to the last.fm site. You can then see the listing of songs you’re listening to. Here’s my profile: http://www.last.fm/user/geeksteve.  If you were really obsessive you can even subscribe to an RSS feed with of what i’m currently listening too. A little less on the stalker side of things you can add a widget to you site or blog. For my blog, I decided to go with publishing the list of Recently Listen Tracks.
(I’m not sure on how to get that info the widgets sidebar on wordpress yet though…)
EDIT: Seems wordpress.com for security won’t allow javascript, embed, or flash in posts. Although that means I can’t host the fun last.fm widget, I do like knowing that I won’t be causing any cross-site-scripting vunerabilities. Usibility comes at the price of security after all . Instead I’ve just hooked into the RSS feed using the wordpress supplied widget. Not as pretty, but it works.

On my facebook page (mainly because it never auto-refreshes), I chose to go with the Weekly Top Tracks. The facebook app is called What I’m Listening To and published out pretty much the same information that you get with the site/blog widget. The only downside (and I think this is a facebook performance imposed constraint) is that the copy on the profile isn’t updated. Every so often I go into the settings for the app and just click save to force a refresh on the profile.

Anyway, back to the last.fm app. Besides the ability to just keep a tally on what you’re listening to, it takes that information and allows you to

1. create a radio station with just the music you like.
2. find people who are into the same type of music you are into
3. notify you when artist you like are having a show/event/gig near you

the last big feature (probably the biggest) is that you can stream music from their player/app. Back in MI (because I didn’t have a lot of ripped music on my computer) I was using it pretty extensively. I would just enter in “emo” or “alternative” and bingo-bango I was set with hours and hours of music I like.

If you have a Windows Mobile device and a Last.fm profile, you can grab the software from the Last.fm Mobile Forum or download a version direct from here:

Last.fm Mobile for Pocket PC (v1.4)
Last.fm Mobile for Smartphone (v1.1)

(Sadly, I have a crackberry now, so I can’t enjoy said app)

Sidenote:

I think that’ll do for a post. I’m trying to stick with my 1 post minium a week. Its been tough. But then again, would I have really needed to make a goal if it wasn’t going to be a challenge?

GrandCentral.com

www.grandcentral.com

I came across this site while catching up on my blog reading over the holiday break. Basically they are unified-messaging provider. Their premise is one number for life (of course I’m not sure if “life” means, while you stay with them or if you can port your number over to another unified system at some other point in time). They were purchased in September by Google. Which hopefully means continued free usage and functionality. Currently they are in private invite only, but I got an email from them a couple days ago. I just found the email now, as it went to the old “junk email” spam folder (good thing I checked in there before cleaning it out). Anyway, I just signed up for the service. I elected to get a 202 (Washington DC) area code on account of the move and I. I figure if it works out, I can use that number to “get a local number” without having to go through the mess of actually getting one. That being said, I’m not sure how one can make an out going call using that number. “Hiding” you current number isn’t so much the point of the service, but everyone loves to just hit redial on their phones, which wouldn’t be my GrandCentral number.

I’ve just started playing with it, but there’s a whole lot of featurific things

• Call list is stored online. You can view the list of people who have called.
• Online voice mail. If they left you a voice mail you can listen to it online.
• When someone calls you for the first time, it asks them to state thier name. Later when you check the call log and you want to enter in who it is you can playback what they said. Once they’ve called (or you’ve added them already as a contact) it doesn’t bother them anymore and puts them right through
• If you have a contact stored for that person, when GrandCentral connects you, it tells you who it is and then prompts you to accept it or not. This feature is best used if you set GrandCentral to have your phone’s caller ID display your GrandCentral number instead of the number of the person calling. I’m thinking about this option, then I can know if someone is calling my number directly or if they are calling via GrandCentral. Of course you also know after you pick up since you have the prompting when its going through GrandCentral.
• Call blocking. This is a pretty sweet feature. You can set it up so particular numbers get the generic “This number has been disconnected” message. I think that’s an interesting way to deal with the whole, “stop calling my crazy ex-girlfriend, I’d change my phone number but I’m supposed to have this one for life”. Additionally you can choose to always screen calls from that particular number
• Customized Ringers. Ringers, not Ringtones. So instead of that boring all “ring” people hearing (or clicking if you’re still using a rotary phone) you can let people enjoy a short ballad from Kanye West while you’re trying to figure out why the couch cushion is ringing.
• Ring different phones depending who’s calling. I can send “Friends” to my cell phone by default and “work people” to my office phone. I assume you can set this up to ring all the phones at once, but I only have one phone setup right now.
• CallSwitch. Lets you switch phones right in the middle of a call. Again I only have one phone configured so I haven’t tested this, but its certainly sounds like a great idea. There’s been plenty of times when I’ve been stuck on my desk phone at the office and would have loved to just switch it over to my cell so could work on getting home (or lunch). A great feature for having to sit on hold with tech-support.
• WebCall button. Lets you put a button on your blog/webpage that allows people to call you. It supposed to allow them to call without them knowing your phone number. I assume this involves the person calling a general GrandCentral number and entering some onetime use pin in order for GrandCentral to figure out who they are trying to call and then connecting them. At least, that’s probably how I would write it if I was making one of these.

Its been pretty cool so far. I did have a bit of a glitch when I tried my first call. My cell phone rang, I answered but it never connected. The other cell phone I was calling from ended up going to GrandCentral’s voicemail.

Since they’re in beta its free. From the registration email:

• Unlimited inbound minutes
• Unlimited voicemail
• Unlimited Credit for click-to-call
• All premium features, including call record

I wonder what the cost will be once it leaves beta. With Google buying them there’s a chance it might (at least some of the features) would remain free. I’m hoping at the very least there’s a nice discount for beta testers. Not sure what I’d pay for this service. At this point, I’d say between $5 and $10 a month, provided it will include unlimited inbound minutes. I really don’t want to go back to the time where I have to care about how many minutes I’m using with my phone.

I’m allow to invite friends to use the service (and they would circumvent the wait queue) if anyone’s interested.

Technorati Tags: Unified Communications,GrandCentral

Office 2.0

The Office 2.0 Database 

To be “Web 2.0″ compliant I guess we all need to make our office out of Web 2.0 tools and sites. I’m not about to fully dive in, but the listing above does give a bunch of great free tools for picking and choosing. Of course it sure would be nice if all these tools/sites consumed OpenIDs

The things that make up my Office 2.0 are:

• Email: Outlook 2007
  I like my Exchange mail so I can get mail on my Mobile. I have email accounts on gmail, yahoo and hotmail.com/live.com. I mainly use the yahoo one as a place to signup for stuff/send spam. The UI is nice, but clunky. Actually I think all the web based mail clients are clunky (Exchanges OWA included). As I transition off using the corporate exchange server I’m planning on using hotmail.com. Primary reason is I can use the Outlook Connector and read/write my hotmail email all from outlook.
  On a related note, instead of using a junk email address that I lot of people use, came across this neat site. Mint Email (A play on minute mail i tihnk). MintEmail.com gives you a four hour temporary email address. Nice and disposable. The way I like my junk accounts. Certainly has some potential.
• Data Storage: SkyDrive
  Once you install the ActiveX control you can drag and drop all your files making uploading quite nice. It’d be nice to download multiple files that easily. Or better yet, allow WebDAV access. I’m looking into box.net to see if I like it better. (The openbox feature is pretty promising, A look inside storage service Box.net)
• Photos: Flickr
  I like it. Quick and easy and the social part is fun. Its probably the Web 2.0 thing I’m smitten the most with.
• Social Networking: Facebook
  More grownup then myspace (less of a stalker jungle it seems at least)
  I haven’t jumped in it yet, but LinkedIn and Twitter seems to be the next things I plan on checking out.
• Blogging: WordPress (this place!).
  Better than crappy spaces.live.com. The shame is that the Windows Live tools (Windows Live Writer, Windows Live Photogallery & Windows Live Messenger) are all pretty good. It’d be nice to use all the tools in an integrated way that Microsoft intends, but space is awkward. Its all about UI. WordPess has pettier templates. I’m sold.
• RSS Reader: Outlook 2007
  I still use a thick client. With data being pulled in via outlook and stored in my exchange account I can read it in on multiple machines. Searching and being able to tag posts. I’d like to try Google Reader or Fav.or.it. The advantage of one of these is I don’t have to worry about keeping a computer on with Outlook running to keep my feeds up to sync.
• Tasks and Calendars: Outlook/Exchange.
  I still with the traditional enterprise tools here. These are the things I need in front of me everyday and I really don’t want to go through a browser for that.

After writing all this up the one thing that presists is that there really is no one good “free” Web 2.0 app that allows you to do everything you need/want. Which is fine there’s enough pieces around that one can put together something that works for them. The only problem short of  the microsoft solution, each one requires a different account for each one. That’s pretty annoying. Reflecting a bit i think the main reason i started using most of the Microsoft pieces is that it didn’t require yet another account (and subseqently another password). It’d be really nice if all these solutions really got onboard with an OpenID solution.

I think another aspect that needs addressing is user interfaces. Not from the design aspect, as most Web 2.0 apps are really quite pretty. Its more that having to go to many different places each with their own interface and style. I have enough browser windows open with the other junk I waste my time with. I’m somewhat inspired to try to write some add-in type things for Outlook that can use some of these Web 2.0 as a datastore.

until the next..

Technorati Tags: Web 2.0,Freeware

Wallpaper Generator

Wallpaper Generator by Joris Kalz

Came across this fun little program. You point it at a folder with pictures in it and it will throw all the pictures on the screen so that it looks like a bunch of photos scattered on a table. You can then move, rotate, enlarge the photos. When everything its how you like it you can save the whole layout as a picture and then set it as your desktop wallpaper. I suppose big fans of recursion could make a bunch of wallpaper photos and then load those photos in the tool.

It uses the new Microsoft presentation framework (WPF) which is how I originally came across it. It’d be kinda cool to make something like this using silverlight.

Comments after using the program:

1. You can only have it load entire directories of photo’s. It’d be nice to be able to select the photos individually to load. This can sort of be worked around if your using Vista by just setting up a saved search folder, but even that has its limitations.
2. It’d be nice to be able to remove a photo after it’s loaded.
3. Rotating and resizing is not that fluid. It might just be awkward because I’m on my laptop with a touchpad, but that’s a big maybe.
4. The photos seem to load pretty small. I’m not sure if that because of the number of photo’s I’m trying to load on a single screen.
5. If the number of photos to load is higher than the number of photos in the directory then it will load duplicates. This is kind of annoying as I don’t really want to see duplicates.

Technorati Tags: WPF,Photos,Utilities,Freeware

More photo fun.

I’ve been on a little bit of a photography/images kick since I started posting my photos on Flickr and seeing all the great things you can do with Silverlight and WPF.

Another fun program like the Wallpaper generator is this Slide.Show. Its part two other applications by Vertigo. Not only is it cool, but its written in Silverlight 1.0 and the code is posted on Codeplex for all to enjoy. You can consume Flickr streams (and xml and javascript too, but Flickr is my choice).

Speaking of Flickr there’s a cool Silverlight Multi-File Upload Tool for Flickr (with source code!). Its written in Silverlight 2.0 (previously named Silverlight 1.1). I tossing around an idea of writing something that combines the Wallpaper Generators photo-collage concept with a Flickr streams. We’ll see, lot of other things going on right now. Stupid real world getting in the way of coding.

Technorati Tags: Flickr,Photos,Silverlight,Freeware