Core of my setup is IRC. All my instant communication is mapped via IRC. Pretty old, but really well-working technology. Main reason here is that many of my friends and colleagues also communicate via IRC. I use irssi, which is a console client that can run within a screen session so it continues to run even when I am not in front of a terminal. The screen_away plugin takes care of setting the away status when screen is detached.

To connect my non-IRC services, I use BitlBee, which is an IRC proxy to connect to non-IRC protocols. BitlBee supports all my external protocols (ICQ & XMPP, that is). It also supports Skype via the fabulous bitlbee-skype plugin by Miklos Vajna. It requires a running Skype instance within a VNC server, though, but this is fine for me.

irssi is considered core of the setup, as it also provides the the irssi_proxy module, which enables other IRC clients to connect to this irssi instance, and when writing via this connection this is treated as if it has been entered directly into the irssi terminal. This mode is essential for my “centralized history / log file” requirement.

As connecting to the irssi_proxy module will only provide you with messages sent to you after you have connected, another layer is added: ZNC. I launch this IRC bouncer at the same machine as my irssi screen session. It connects to the irssi_proxy module and provides me with history if one of my external IRC clients connects, i.e. I am sent the history since the last time I connected to the ZNC.

My mobile devices connect to the ZNC bouncer via SSL whenever I decide to launch one of the clients. Due to my settings, I only get new messages. ZNC can be configured to send you the last n messages though, regardless where you last picked off, if you prefer that. But for me, it is primarily the “new” stuff that matters in communication (but this is of course personal taste).

On my iOS devices (iPhone, iPad) I use the Colloquy Mobile client. This is a clone of the GPL-ed Colloquy IRC client for OSX. In the App Store, it costs a few bucks, but I payed happily as this helps them in the development. There is a very nice plugin for ZNC, colloquypush, that enables push messages to Colloquy via Colloquy’s and Apple’s push servers. I have added a few patches to this open-source module, dealing with privacy (you can configure it to skip content of the messages when pushing) for sensitive communication channels (e.g. my work channel). Also I added an option that push messages are only sent while in away mode. This is where screen_away gets handy, as I only receive push messages when I am not attached to the screen session (or deliberately set myself to “away” mode in irssi). You can get colloquypush from the “official” maintainer’s github repository or mine (my “wip” branch is a few commits behind, as I am working on the Android improvements at the moment, see below).

On Android I use AndChat, which is a free (as in beer) client, but not open-source. Unfortunately there is no push functionality available at the moment, but I am working on an extension of the ZNC colloquypush module to work with a notification app I am currently developing (no estimated time of arrival, if ever).

For me, the setup provides the following benefits:

• Centralized approach with a single client which is “always on”.
• Single location for all logfiles, so I can search them using standard Linux tools.
• irssi is ncurses and I love ncurses interfaces. I get nostalgic about the old terminals.
• I can easily connect from any computer via SSH and attach to the screen session.
• I can catch up while on the go via my mobile devices.
• I receive notifications if anyone of my friends demands my attention (at least on iOS).
• Native clients on the mobile devices, they simply feel smoother than connecting to an SSH session from your slow GPRS connection.

This is the first time I am aware of actual knowledge/data-loss which will occur due to the shutdown of such a service.

Update: tr.im announced that they will stay in business, due to an overwhelming response. But still, the final shutdown of such a service sooner or latter can and will happen. And even worse would be the continuation of such a service where all the URLs would be redirected somewhere else…

Given the huge amount of information hidden behind such shortened URLs, and given the popularity and number of these links, especially nowadays on Twitter, these services could see themselves being under permanent siege of hackers/crackers. Being able to manipulate hundred of thousands if not even more vastly distributed and popular URLs to point to a given site could be used for both, generating (lots of?) ad-revenue, or as a new form of DDoS-attack.

At the moment there seems to be no way around using these services (especially with services like Twitter), but in the medium/long run a solution has to be found if we don’t want to lose lots of valuable information.

It feels lightweight, fast for JavaScript applications, and offers some nice features (I especially like the possibility to open an “anonymous window” which will forget all cookies etc. when being closed without being forced to delete all other cookies as well.) Tabs can be dragged out and dropped back into the browser, something I’d always wanted Firefox to be able as well.

Each tab runs within its own process and Chrome offers a “Task Manager” (Shift-Esc), which will display memory usage, CPU usage and bandwidth consumption for each tab, which I consider very handy.

Chrome is available for Windows only at the moment, but is expected to be released for MacOS X and Linux as well. I am really curious how this is going to develop and if this is going to really affect “the Internet as a whole” (I really believe Google has gained enough market power to push their products).

Update 2007-12-16: as of today, the video has been taken down due to a copyright sue. What a pity! Read more on TechCrunch.

Update 2007-12-20: a new version without the pictures in question has been published. I changed the video link below to point to the new version, called “Here Comes Another Bubble 1.1″. (via TechCrunch)

[youtube I6IQ_FOCE6I]

(via Scobleizer and TechCrunch)

This for sure will provide a great boost in speed for my JungleDisk backup. I am now checking out what I have to do to get my data moved to the European data centers. I suppose I have to re-upload everything because you have to specify for each bucket if it is located in the USA or in Europe. JungleDisk at the moment does not provide support for this. I opened a topic regarding asking if they’ll support this in the near future (article1, article2).

It’s also interesting to notice that storing data in Europe is more expensive. It costs $0.18/GB/month as compared to $0.15 in the US. Bandwidth at the moment do not differ based on location. So I’d only switch if the upload/download speed is significantly higher than to/from the USA.

I am currently evaluating BlogDesk, a Windows-only software for offline blog editing, supporting a wide range of different blogging systems, including WordPress (the system this blog is running on).

The main reason, why I am trying to switch from using the integrated online-editor of WordPress to a dedicated software, is speed and offline availablity. Lately I tend to work offline again, because I got a nice little notebook which is able to run on battery for quite some time. I now tend to use the time I’ve got for instance when riding a train. And I want to be able to use this time and publish some posts. BlogDesk online editor is very speedy, it is more responsive than using the online editor. One also tends to concentrate more on the content and less on the layout, because there is no preview possibility.

Additionally, BlogDesk encourages using images in your blog posts, because it makes it easy to incorparte them. It warns you if your images are going to be too big and it provides some ncie effects like the drop shadow used in the screenshot above. Images can be inserted from an URL, a file or the clipboard. They will be uploaded when publishing your article.

Unfortunately, BlogDesk does not support tags in WordPress 2.3+ yet. But I am sure they will come.

BlogDesk is free, but the source code is not available. As mentioned, it is Windows only, but it works very well. I’d recommend you to give it a try it if you are using Windows and are contributing to a blog.

What I really like about the software and the company is that they don’t claim that their data will be safe forever at their location. They confess it is possible for a company to vanish. In order to prevent you from being locked out they have outsourced the storage to Amazon, which provides cheap storage on a “pay what you need” basis.

JungleDisk provides encryption of the documents using AES and only you can decrypt them. To be on the safe side you’ll always be able to retrieve your data, they have released parts of the code covering filename-mangling and encryption under GPL.

JungleDisk is available for Windows, Linux and Mac. As said, they provide a WebDAV frontend so any WebDAV client can interact with it. It also features a local cache to prevent needing to download a file on every access. There is also an automated backup routine.

Costs are reasonably. At the time of writing, JungleDisk costs 20 US-$ once, with promised life-long updates and patches. All you need to pay for is Amazon fees for your usage, which are at 0.15$/GB/month, 0.10$/GB inbound traffic, and 0.18$/GB outbound traffic. You see, you can store lots of data for around 10$ per month.

One big minus-side of this is that Amazon’s data-centers are very slow from Europe, I was able to achieve around 700-800kbit/s (90-100kB/s) from our office connection. On the pro-side, due to the caching and background transfer, you don’t notice that the transfers are so slow, unless you need to download something. As I am using it for automated backup, I hope to never have to download anything.

So if you are searching for an offsite backup solution, you should definitely consider JungleDisk.

I’m currently trying it out and up to now I am very pleased with it. One more reason to stick with Firefox

Maybe anyone in the area of Linz, Austria would be interested in a little mapping party one day? The data in this area seems to be rather sparse Anyways, I think the project or any similar project is definitely important and should be supported with all means. Anybody knows someone at a Austrian government body which could contribute data to such a project?