My Uninstalled Life

In my recent articles in 4 different ways to effective ways of starting your webapps – here are some additional plugins to Firefox that might help you! 

• Faviconize plugin for FF. It gets rid of the text on a tab and just leaves the icon so it takes up less space on the tab bar.
  
• Have you ever accidently closed the tab where you have your e-mail service? Get the PermaTabs add-on for FF and they will definitely stick around!

If you have any other plugins that might help you in effective ways of starting/running your webapps online – let me know!

There are new features for Google Apps for Your Domain which I reviewed some time back.

• The start page

Just as with the ordinary “personalized homepage” with content, links and RSS feeds – you now have one at Google Apps. You can also preview your Inbox, calendar and search the web. You can customize the layout, header area and overall color scheme. You do this from the control panel.

• Support for new languages

Now you can use the most common languages out there: Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish or UK English. You also configure this in the control panel.

• Custom URLs for your domain’s Google-powered apps

Now it’s possible for your users to use more simple domain names. For example, your users could access their email accounts at yourdomain.com.

• Support for multiple domains

If you have more than one domain in addition to yourdomain.com, then it’s possible to associate all your domains together. So no matter which domain name and e-mail or calendar event invitation is sent, it will be routed to yourdomain.com.

So we have done some basic stuff during the first parts of using the Bubba Mini Server. Maybe that is enough for you, but here we look into some more complicated uses of the Bubba Mini Server.

• You probably want to access your files wherever you are in the world. Just make sure to do some port forwarding of HTTP/FTP to your Bubba and you can access it by just browsing to you public IP-address
• The Bubba is a fully functional Linux computer! There are more than 15000+ Linux/Debian applications available – just install them!
• Let Bubba stream music to your Itunes compatible music player as long as it supports DAAP.

If you have any other ideas of using the Bubba, or maybe you even got one yourself, be sure to contact us – I’d love to hear your stories!

Conclusion

Everybody needs somewhere to store their files and if you want to be able to be more flexible to access them (from your computer, your webbrowser, FTP from home, office or Internet) and you want to do it with minimal fuzz – then the Bubba is definitly for you! It offers so much more than a simple NAS – and is extremely simple, quiet and flexible.

Of course you could setup your own server and add all this functionality but then it’s out of scope of this blog – “uninstalled”.

If you’re interested in buying one, be sure to visit Excito. Thanks again for letting me borrow one!

After going through the e-mail server, it’s time for the file/ftp/web/download server part of Bubba Mini Server.

You can either access the fileserver through your normal Windows explorer att \\BUBBA\ and there you will have the complete tree.

If you access it via FTP you have access to the home directory. If you want to access the directory tree over the web, this is possible throuh the web-admin interface.

If you want to create your own webpage to publish, just put your html files in the web-directory and when you browse to the root of the Bubba, you’ll get to that page!

What about Downloads then? Let’s say you have any FTP/HTTP/torrent download that will take hours to download and you don’t want your computer to be kept switched on? Just add it to the Download list in your Bubba and it will download it for you! Since it only consumes 10W and makes no noise at all – it’s perfect for that!

Just right-click any download link, add the link to Location and press Add. Simple as that! You can watch the progress in the interface and the files will be saved to your home\downloads folder.

Continue to part 5.

The competitor to Microsoft Visio and Gliffy called Cumulate Draw is out with a new version.

This new version includes:

• Network shapes
• Support for text bounds
• Ability to change shape properties from properties box

BTW: Did you know you can download Cumulate Draw and publish it on your own tomcat or jetty server?

Once you configured the basics, you can start looking into the E-mail server part of Bubba Mini Server.

Even though most of us who live the uninstalled life, you might want to have Bubba Mini Server to handle the e-mails for you?

Just add a user and go to http://bubba/webmail/ and you’ll be logging in to the Bubba’s webmail which is based on IlohaMail. IlohaMail’s interface is pretty basic – if you want to try it, there’s a demo available.

It’s fast! It got e-mail, Contacts and Bookmarks. You can search through your folders and you have many Options, for example, you can change the appearance to fit your needs when it comes to colors and fonts. There seems to be a Calendar too but I haven’t been successful adding anything to it – probably because it needs mySQL which the Bubba doesn’t have.

The way it works is that in the Administration interface you configure your POP3/IMAP account on some server on the Internet. Then you configure this POP3/IMAP-account to an local account on the Bubba. When you login it will simply access that POP3/IMAP-account.

Continue to part 4.

In part 1 I gave you an overview of the Bubba Mini Server. Now let’s get into details regarding the administration.

All administration is performed from the webinterface.

• Users offers you to add users
• Services is where you enable the different services (FTP, DAAP streaming, Mail, Printing and Torrent downloading)
• Mail is where you configure details regarding the mailserver
• Printing is where you add the printer (most brands are supported)
• Settings are network/time/backup-restore/update
• Filemanager is the web interface to get/delete/upload your files

The administration interface is really simple and does the job fine! Continue to part 3.

As you all know I want to uninstall everything to simplify my life. And as you saw in my article where I tried to store hundreds of gigabytes of data at an online service provider such as MediaMax – it simply didn’t work!

So why not get your own server at home where you store all those files? Of course, you could simply build your own server, install what-ever Windows/Linux operating system and you have yourself a server. But then we’re there again – installed and not simplified. I want it uninstalled and simple! Introducing Bubba Mini Server:

The guys over at Excito were kind enough to borrow one for me! I like that!

What is it? It’s a miniature server that offers a file server, streaming media server, web, e-mail and FTP server, print server and torrent downloader! All this in a almost-totally-silent 18x12x4cm case! And it’s good for the environment (and your electricity bill) – it only consumes 10W.

Installation is extremely simple. Just plug in the power and network cable and it will switch on. The LED will flash during bootup and it takes a minute or so. Point your browser to http://bubba/ and you’re finished!

Let’s get technical! I don’t want to focus too much no the technical side but since I know most of my users want just that – here goes! It’s available in 80/320/500 GB sizes (330/385/540 EUR). It’s a 3.5″ 7200 RPM drive, a 200 MHz ARM9 CPU, 64 MB EAM, 10/100Base-TX and USB-port.

Software-wise it’s running Linux 2.6 Debian, Apache web server, Dovecot IMAP server, Postfix SMTP server, Fetchmail and Samba.

This was the first part! Continue to part 2.

MyMemorizer is a reminding service. You add events and it will remind you via e-mail, SMS/textmessage to your mobilephone.

I would say it’s more of a calendar service. You can share events with other users, import from iCalendar, vCalendar and Outlook. I wouldn’t say the interface break any new ground – it’s pretty basic!

What makes this service stand out is the possible to send reminders via SMS. Only 2 free/day though, but it’s possible to buy more (from 50 SMS for $8 to 500 SMS for $35). So if you’re looking for this – MyMemorizer might be something for you!

So you sit down at your computer and you open up your favorite browser. Either you open several windows or tabs and manually enter the address for Hotmail, Google Docs, EditGrid and some other online apps. This is not a very efficient way of doing things!

Here at My Uninstalled Life we want to be effective in our way to start our applications – even though they are online! How do we do it?

Our poll shows that around 60%w still do it manually (half write address manually and half using bookmarks). Some 10% have shortcuts on their desktop and the rest use some kind of technique/tool to start more efficient.

So here are some ways you can do it in a more efficient way:

• Use the built-in function in IE7 and Firefox that lets you open up several pages, one on each tab, once you start the app? Just enter the addresses separated by a “|”. You can also choose “Show my windows and tabs from last time”
  

• Use del.icio.us Bookmarks add-on for Firefox. Tag your webapps you want to start with for example “go”. Choose “open in tabs” in the “go” tabs view of the delicious extension
  
• Use the SessionSaver add-on which restores your browser -exactly- as you left it. PS. Here’s a patched version for FF 2.0
• In Firefox, bookmark pages in a certain bookmark folder, and then open the pages by right-clicking the bookmark folder and choose “Open All in tabs”

Thanks to John Wilson, Chris, Jay, Sean Feeney, mel my finger, Cyril, ZivP, George, Daniel, iiis and everybody else who sent me tips for this post.

They guys over at EditGrid are busy updating their application – which we here at My Uninstalled think is the best spreadsheet application.

Now beta 16 has been released with what they say is “EditGrid’s biggest major release so far, in terms of both time and effort spent, because we are making big changes!“.

The biggest differences are a new portal home page and a tag cloud. You have the possibilty to add a searchbar to Firefox and IE7. If you want to know details, check out their change log.

Thanks to Thomas for the tip.

Ian sent me a suggestion to check out this little device called Linutop. It’s a Linux-based diskless computer. It offers a completely silent, low-power operation in an extremely small package.

It’s based on the AMD Geode CPU, 512 MB ROM, 256 MB RAM, some USB ports, network card, audio in/out and VGA.

It has some apps by default and of course Firefox. I think this would be perfect for what I’m trying to do. They don’t mention any price yet, but Reghardware mention $368. I’ll see if I can get my hands on one to borrow so I can test it…

30 Boxes consists of a calendar, to-do list and a webtop.

The Calendar is pretty basic – you can add Events and the usual information such as reminder, repeats, notes, tags and invites. The To-do list is very simple. You can more or less only tag your entries. The interface is fast and quite “web 2.0″-ish.

30 Boxes also offers a “webtop” – which is a web-based desktop. First it will give you an overview of your calendar, to-do list and search. You can change your desktop’s background and then the important things, add docks. Docks are small “applications” that plugin to your webtop at 30 Boxes. At the moment, the following docks exist:

Those services will open up as a “window” on your webtop. Netvibes, My Yahoo, Personal Google offer you to add feeds and other components to a “personal startpage”. So if you’re a fan of any of these, or use several of them for different purposes – be sure to check out 30 Boxes.

Google Calendar, MySpace and Flickr - I think most of you know of those services.

Meebo lets you run ICQ, Yahoo! Messenger, Jabber, JTalk and MSN Messenger over the web! Facebook is a social utility that enables you to share information with your friends. Webshots is a service where you can upload and share photos.

I’m amazed how fast everything is. With a few new docks – this thing will be very useful. I often struggle with the fact I have several different “portals” I have to visit for specific tasks. Keeping them all together – and still use the unique features of each service is a good thought.

Here are some more screenshots of the Webtop when opening upp different services:

I’m not only trying to uninstall software from my desktop and replacing my desktop with a uninstalled client, but also looking into uninstalling as much as possible. Why?

• My vision is to make my life easier and more effective and spend less time on day-to-day problems and boring activities.

I enjoy life too much to spend it on those things. So it was then I got one of these ones. Not very “web 2.0″-ish – but I’m just waiting until I can schedule cleaning over a web interface ;)

PS. No, I’m not single and live in a bachelorpad. I actually live with my fiancé and she actually LOVES this thing! “Truly effective! I think it produce the dust itself…” DS.

I’m trying to uninstall ALL applications from my PC and only run tools on the web. For me, it’s more important that the machine look good, small and silent.

I could buy myself a Mac mini – but I want to be more flexible than that. So the first thing I went out and bought was a miniature motherboard – the mini-ITX EN12000EG. Only 17 x 17 cm big – it’s small and since it’s fanless – it’s silent.

It’s like any other motherboard but it also has an CPU soldered to the board. You can run what-ever you want on it – Windows or Linux. I added some memory and a harddrive and I had a complete computer. I also added a Compact Flash reader so I could try booting from that one instead of the HD or USB-drive.

But then I needed a case. And it had to look good – my last requirement. So I spent a few hours looking at different boxes and decided for this beauty:

You have them in different colors to fit your interior design:

I would really recommend Qform in Germany if you’re planning to purchase design hardware or mini-ITX cases – they were VERY helpful!

Installing took a little bit of time but once everything was in place I was very happy with the result:

After this it was time to start installing (ok, I prefer uninstalled but I had to install at least ONE thing – some kind of “base”). But I’ll get back to that in later posts.

Are you interested in mini-ITX projects, make sure to visit mini-itx.com Projects Page.