Opera Unite is making clouds around the web

This is the Web 3.'Oh' kind of stuff for me. Opera has launched their 'Unite' platform and changed the way web has worked for you all this time. Unite combines the good concepts of cloud and P2P computing.

With Unite, one can run a web site from a home computer. That means a lot if you really think about the possibilities. Unit already comes up with file sharing services that can utilized to share your files (including pics and songs) with the whole world.

Remember the days when you had to zip a bunch of pictures and videos from your last vacation and send it to your friend!? Or, the times when you had to pick snaps because of the size limitations of a website!!? All that is history with Unite. Send them your website address and let them see it on your website that is running right off your PC.

Start here and you'll have your website up in no time.



I've got mine running

Eventually, I want to have a JBoss running behind that page and run stock-suggests on it. See what i mean now!? I see possibilities...lots of them.

Thank you Opera for Unite.

Not so trivial: I wonder what the security threats are...!

Cisco VPN client setup on Sabayon linux 3.5

I have a Cisco VPN at work and CIsco provided VPN client won't install on my 64 bit windows Vista. Hence, i set it up on my Sabayon 3.5 mini linux box using 'vpnc' and 'rdesktop'. This is how you do it.

Install vpnc. 'vpnc' is the application that sets up a network connection with the VPN server by adding a rounter configuration.

Find the latest version of vpnc available to you by running


equo search vpnc



Install it



equo install net-misc/vpnc-0.5.2_pre20080509-r1



Next step is to create a vpnc configuration. If you have a 'pcf' file, you can do this by running the 'pcf2vpnc' utility. PCF is the CISCO client configuration file. Ask your network admin to procide you one. I am writing the configuration to vpnc's default configuration file so that i don't have to specify a configuration file when starting vpnc.


pcf2vpnc <pcf file> /etc/vpnc/default.config


Double check the configuration is intact. Also, if you are manually setting up configuration and not creating it from a pcf file, this is where you do it.


nano /etc/vpnc/default.config


## generated by pcf2vpnc
IPSec ID <connection_name>
IPSec gateway <vpn_ip>
IPSec secret <vpn_pwd>

Xauth username <domain name\username of the network you are connecting to> # domain\userId
Xauth password <domain password> #pwd
IKE Authmode <authmode> # Leave this to default


Start vpnc.


localhost pjames # vpnc
VPNC started in background (pid: 8138)...


If you get this message, we are good. vpnc deamon has started successfully.

Verify the connectivity. Check 'netstat -r' and make sure you see the new network connection to VPN server. Then, ping a machine in your VPN network.

So far, we have established a connection to the VPN. However, for a connection to the terminal desktop, you need a GUI tool - 'rdesktop'.

Install rdesktop.



equo install rdesktop



Now run rdesktop from console.


rdesktop -d <domain> -u <user> -p <pwd> <machine name>


You should get the target machine's desktop now. Disconnect from the machine and run rdesktop with '-f' flag for full screen.



rdesktop -f -d <domain> -u <user> -p <pwd> <machine name>


Now, let us add 'vpnc' as a start up service so that you don't have to do it manually every time.

rc-update add vpnc default


Last thing you may want to do is to create launcher for 'rdesktop' and place it as a short cut.

Thats it. I am one click away from my office machine now.



Update: The default conf file name for vpnc should be vpnc.conf (not default.conf) for the deamon to load it while start up.

Network your social networks

Ready for the next level of social networking?

FriendFeed is a way of announcing all your social activities to your friends from one place. It lets you create feeds for most of the popular social networks, blog sites and photo sharing sites and display your activities on all those sites in one page as your updates. Isn't that fun!?


Let's say you and your buddy are connected on facebook. You get an update on your page whenever connections in your network do an activity on facebook. With FriendFeed, you will get to know what your connection is doing on multiple websites and not just the social network that you are a member of. Chances that all your connections are on the same social network are very less considering the number of social networks and the different levels of social circles you may have. That's why it is important to network your social networks.

Some of the popular websites that friendfeed supports include

• picasaweb
  
• flickr
  
• blogger
  
• twitter
  
• facebook
  
• delicious
  
• google reader
  
• pandora radio
  
• amazon
  
• youtube
  
• netflix
  
• twitter
  
• facebook
  
• digg
  
• last.fm
  
• stumbleupon and
  
• linked in.
  

Imagine your friends getting to know about all that you do on any of these websites without you doing anything at all! That is FriendFeed. FriendFeed is also available as an app for Orkut.

"Rooms" on FriendFeed are nothing but groups that you see in other networking websites.

So, if you have not tried it yet, start at FriendFeed. Its going to be a great add on to your social networking activities. Though not very popular now, FriendFeed is the next level of networking.

Let's get connected.

Thunderbird for google

Thunderbird is probably the best open source mail client out there and gmail the best free mail service provider. Why not put them together for the best of both worlds!?

Thunderbird will let you configure mail, addressbook and calendar with its gmail add-on plug-ins.

• To begin with, download Thunderbird
  


• Add gmail account using File->New->Account wizard.
  


• Thats all you need to do to send and receive mails through gmail.
  


• For calendar, download Lightning to your hard disk
  


• Install lightning from Tools->Add-ons->Install menu on thunderbird.
  


• Restart thunderbird
  


• Goto calendar view, and in calendar properties, set the XML URL for your private google calendar. This is available on the calendar settings page of your online google calendar.
  


• Lightning should start showing your calendar events from google now.
  


• Do not forget to uncheck the default "Home" calendar from Thunderbird calendar view so that your events get added to google calendar always.
  


• Now, let us setup an add-on to get your google address book to Thunderbird.
  


• Download Zindus from here to your hard disk
  


• Install it to Thunderbird from Tools->Add-ons->Install
  


• Restart Thunderbird
  


• Use the Zindus configuration window from Tools->Zindus on your Thunderbird to add google account credentials.
  


• Click "Sync Now"
  

You are all set to use Thunderbird for google now.