Open-Mesh.com is slowly but surely improving. Just recently I noticed their homepage changed slogans. It went from something like “WiFi for the developing world” to “WiFi Where You Need It”. I like the latter, myself.
New firmware updates have also happened and beta 1.21 has been released. There was a glitch upgrading to the c953 firmware because of the technique used to upgrade. This required a lot of people to manually reset their routers if they were using the test firmware. They fixed the problem by using the “normal” way to upgrade and version c955 went off without a hitch.
According to Antonio Anselmi, author of the ROBIN mesh network software which powers Open-Mesh, says that the latest kernel is about a week away. Yay!
BarCampEdmonton was a great success this weekend. There were over 100 people in attendance and it was great to meet new people and learn about new projects and interests.
A picture of the schedule is here:
I went to
Financing an Idea
What Problem Does The Semantic Web Solve?
Angel Fund, U of A, Robert
Evolution of Nexopia
Why Twitter Will Rule The World
Emerging Mobile Platforms
I also led a session on Edmonton Wireless & WiFi Mesh Networks with Mack Male.
One of the most interesting conversations I had was with a fellow named Clark Murray. Clark and three other guys have created a great product called dub5 which stands for the 5 W’s in everyone’s life, the Who What Where When and Why. Essentially dub5 is a new take on scheduling and calendar management. Their major advantage over competitors like Outlook and Google Calendar is their text message integration. Personally I love this and I hope to be using it as soon as it’s ready.
Since all the video I took of my sessions ended up being like 300mb a piece and 20 minutes long I haven’t finished uploading them to Google Video yet. However, check out the quick demo I had the dub5 guys give me.
I’m reading up on Joomla! It’s a seriously kick-ass open-source application. I’m a bit miffed that I haven’t taken a closer look at it until now.
The reason I’m reading up on Joomla is because I accepted the IT Director’s position for the Alberta School of Business Students Association (BSA). It’s not a “real” IT Director’s position where I implement new grandiose technologies and run a huge department or anything. This is basically a service position for the students where I help maintain their website, publish updates, work with the Students Union to do our BSA elections, and help students get personalized business cards if they want. The great thing is I can do this while I’m in Germany.
Rob, one of my best friends and my employer for the summer, and I are going to try and rework his old site Equine Edmonton, I’m going to suggest we use Joomla! to streamline any problems we’ll run into.
Does anyone see a problem with doing contract web design and then implementing prefabbed infrastructure like WordPress of Joomla!?
I’ve been pondering a post like this for a while. Being tied to a computer isn’t something that appeals to me. My laptop is heavy and my desktop can’t move. Normally to do work I needed to go home and jump on the one computer with all of my stuff. This is starting to change.
Travelling Forever has an old post about keeping everything on a USB key instead of a computer. I think this is interesting, but outdated. I wouldn’t want to rely solely on my USB key when I know I’m screwed if I lose it. I prefer to rest easy on the fact that I can do the majority of my work with simply an internet connection.
For the last few months I’ve basically not needed a personal computer. This began when I moved all my email accounts to the IMAP format. More specifically my personal email at my own domain is hosted by GMail so I just have to log in from wherever. The best part about this is I can use my main computer if I wish and still use Thunderbird, but if I want I can jump on a computer at school or even use my cell phone to check my email. I was originally going to set up my own IMAP server and try to fiddle around with everything myself but I figure it’s simpler to just let Google do it for me. It’s free and reliable and I don’t have to play tech support for myself. Read Google’s Email Switch Guide.
Along with Google I use their calendar system. It’s a great program that I can access anywhere there is an internet connection. I use it to schedule almost anything I do, and using a service called GooSync I can sync all my calendars with my phone. I haven’t found a better calendar system that lets me easily share my events with other people. I’ll admit the GooSync site looks a little unprofessional but it’s straight forward and any reviews I read called it legit. It hasn’t failed me yet
A major problem I had in the past was having my bookmarks around when I wanted them. I tried out Foxmarks for a little while but I didn’t like the whole syncing idea. Now I use del.icio.us and it works amazingly. If I’m going to be on one computer for an extensive period of time I’ll install the add-on in Firefox, but otherwise I can just log in and search my own bookmarks. del.icio.us is also a great alternative to your regular search engine. See my del.icio.us bookmarks here.
As far as homepages go I used to make my own little link filled page that I’d write in HTML. Now I use Netvibes exclusively. It aggregates all the RSS feeds that I want and keeps track of what I’ve read and it doesn’t force me to leave the page. Netvibes has got literally hundreds of custom written widgets that you can plug into your homepage and all you have to do is log in. Comparable to Netvibes you have iGoogle, Pageflakes, and MyYahoo. I’ve introduced several friends to Netvibes and they have mostly converted away from iGoogle. Netvibes also lets me keep a little list of handy links that I use often, such as banking and school websites. It also has nifty plugins for Facebook and GMail which will update themselves automatically.
Another huge obstacle you’ll face with leaving your laptop behind is how to access your files! You could leave it running at all times and set up some sort of server or VNC to your machine whenever you need something. This is pretty technical and it doesn’t leave much redundancy of your data. What I’ve been doing for the last several months is keeping a copy of any relevant documents on a USB key. I used to have a nifty Swiss Army knife that my dad gave me for high school graduation several years ago. This had a small 128mb dongle inside, but unfortunately I left it in a school computer one day Now I have an awesome SanDisk Cruzer micro 4GB stick on my key chain. Unfortunately it comes with this pesky U3 Launchpad software, you can get a removal tool though.
For the record I’m not a big fan of syncing anything. I’d much rather have a static copy available remotely at any time, but for the sake of redundancy I have been syncing my personal files.
The best way I’ve found so far to sync important folders is to use Microsoft’s own SyncToy v2.0 Beta. I use this in for two reasons, 1. to keep a copy of my important data with me at all times and 2. to keep a backup of my important data. Every time I use my laptop and I’ve made changes to either work or school documents I plug in my USB key and run the SyncToy shortcut I pasted in there. I simply hit Run All and in a few seconds SyncToy has made a carbon copy of any files that have changed. I try my best not to change both locations are the same time but if that happens SyncToy politely asks you what you want to do. You can create as many folder pairs as you want. Tom’s Guide has a rough introduction to different syncing programs.
I’m finding it’s really nice to not worry about lugging around a laptop or when I’m next going to be able to come home to check my email. It’s really freeing to know I can go to almost any computer out there and work just as I would normally at home. I even did my cafe’s payroll on a computer I’d never used before simply because it was convenient for me to do so. The only limitation you’ll face is whether the computers you’re using have the software you need, like the Office or Adobe suites.
My friend Mack suggested that this I’m some sort of “internet nomad” because of this. Does anyone else have similar experience distancing themselves from their computers?
For as long as I’ve had my cafe I’ve offered free wireless access to anyone who comes in. The idea is simple, if you’re here you’re probably going to eat or drink something while using the wifi. If you aren’t, then at least you’re putting a body in my window for other people to see.
Until recently my router only went a few feet past my building. It doesn’t help that I’m in an old cinder block building and the router was at the back. When I was still working for Nexopia I had schemed with a few of the engineers there about bouncing free wifi down Whyte Avenue using different repeaters. We came up with some grand schemes but nothing materialized mostly due to the time and cost restraints we all had.
Traditional wifi networks require the customization of each router, known as a node or repeater. I bought a Linksys WRT54GS router with plans for re-flashing the device with my own firmware. However after a lot of research I realized I didn’t have the technical expertise to do that. I could teach myself but it would take me a long time to become familiar enough with Linux to properly implement the router.
A while went by and I just kept offering free wifi to my customers in the cafe. Then along came Edmonton’s NextGen focus group on municipal wifi. Before I attended I once again opened up my research for free wireless networks and I stumbled across a company named Meraki and the idea of an open-mesh wifi network. I decided to order one of the Meraki Outdoor Pro repeaters.
I went to the municipal wifi focus group and we talked mostly about where to recommend the city implements free wifi. I was a bit turned off by the idea of leaving it up to the city’s IT department to make recommendations on how to implement this sort of system. If it’s anything like the U of A, it will be ancient, expensive, and unreasonably secure. I let everyone know I had already been considering this and I would be going ahead with my own experiment. This was met with a lot of encouragement because it’s exactly what the city needs to see in order to get something done. Perfect.
The idea behind a mesh network is that one plugs in a gateway node to a hard line to the internet. This node starts broadcasting a wifi signal. Any additional nodes that are given power within range pick up this signal and start repeating it. This is all automatic without any setup. You can only repeat a signal so far before the quality degrades, so every once in a while you’ll need to add another hard line. With enough nodes you can blanket whatever size area you want.
Meraki is a great concept… but with faults. They create neat looking wireless repeaters that have all the firmware pre-installed out of the box. Unpacking and plugging in my router was as simple as that, unpacking it and plugging it in. Then I logged on to their management page and put in my order number and it automatically connected to my device.
Meraki has one of the slickest dashboards I’ve seen for anything hardware related. It lets you map where your nodes and are track who is using it. As well you can introduce payment structures for people accessing your wifi if you’re greedy enough to do it.
Where Meraki fails is in letting their customers customize the product. Initially you were able to hack the devices however you want until Meraki decided to remotely update each device’s firmware and change their EULA. Read more here: http://www.virishi.net/from-happy-hacking-screw-you-story-meraki
Unfortunately I don’t have a lot of creative control with the splash page for my router. The splash page is going to be how I justify deploying these nodes. If a few ads on a welcome screen can cover the cost of the hardware I’ll keep adding them. So far I’m going to sit on this one for a month and see what the usage is like.
Meraki pros:
Simple to use
Great tracking and management software
Payment options
Super easy to expand
Meraki cons:
Expensive!
Very little plash page customization
Extremely vague on payment terms and what sort of cut they get
Evil ad bar for regular versions
Evil EULA that doesn’t let you modify their hardware
Since Tuesday afternoon there have been 42 unique users of the network, and only about 5 have been inside my cafe. The Meraki repeater is supposedly good for around 700ft., and I can get a connection well down the street in several coffee shops. Right now it’s suction cupped to one of my windows.
In the future I’ll be looking more into Open-Mesh.com, the open source wifi mesh project that is much cheaper and fully customizable.
For the last few months I’ve basically not needed a personal computer. This began when I moved all my email accounts to the IMAP format. More specifically my personal email at my own domain is hosted by GMail so I just have to log in from wherever. The best part about this is I can use my main computer if I wish and still use Thunderbird, but if I want I can jump on a computer at school or even use my cell phone to check my email. I was originally going to set up my own IMAP server and try to fiddle around with everything myself but I figure it’s simpler to just let Google do it for me. It’s free and reliable and I don’t have to play tech support for myself. Read Google’s 
Along with Google I use their calendar system. It’s a great program that I can access anywhere there is an internet connection. I use it to schedule almost anything I do, and using a service called 
A major problem I had in the past was having my bookmarks around when I wanted them. I tried out 
As far as homepages go I used to make my own little link filled page that I’d write in HTML. Now I use 
Now I have an awesome 
The best way I’ve found so far to sync important folders is to use Microsoft’s own 
