OnLive Desktop

I was one of the first to check out the OnLive Desktop app for the iPad that techies all over USA are just discovering.

I am not truly impressed. I’ve been using TeamViewer’s excellent free apps to remote desktop into my home computer since a long time and it provides a host of services to the free user. OnLive, on the other hand, has a good amount of expertise in the remote desktop/Virtual Machine sector, but not in the features section. Continue reading

Sharing Apps bring no joy!

I have joined Pinterest. I have also joined Cheers, Instagram, Bufferapp and a whole bunch of other ways to share ‘stuff’. I’m so bogged down with all this sharing that it brought me to think, why all this sharing?

The Internet is a vast resource and it’s been there so long that it has become the lifeline for a lot of people around the world. Thus, it becomes a bit strange that there are so few content creators online and so many content-sharers. Sharing apps such as Pinterest only increase this trend, urging people to simply re-share things they see on the Internet to others, almost as though they were the first to create or discover that nugget of information.

But that in itself doesn’t serve any purpose. Surfing the Internet is easy enough that someone looking for a specific information will find it with a little bit of searching themselves. Thus, the concept of others sharing things your way doesn’t do much for those looking for original content.

Let me give you an example. I read a lot of RSS. I follow blogs all over the spectrum and they all aggregate into my Google Reader. Anyone interested in the list can go here. But since I follow all these blogs, I don’t really need to follow sites like Lifehacker and NetworkWorld on Facebook and Twitter and I don’t need people sharing things from these sites to me. It just beats the purpose of having a social network where I interact with real people instead of bots.

Coming back to Pinterest, I like their iOS app for it’s looks and usability. But I don’t like their idea of a browser bookmarklet or the miriad of ‘Pin it’ apps in the Google Chrome Store. Why would I share something already on the Internet? People looking for those things will definitely find them.

Bufferapp is great if I want to share things from the blogs I read to my friends, but why would I want to buffer a retweet? (Bufferapp is still evolving, they’re trying to focus more on corporate than individuals, or so I think!)

Instagram seems to be the most ‘original post’ friendly app where people post what they see around them, but it all then comes down to sharing those pics around to your social networks. Similar behavior by Chee.rs

I’m not sure what this trend is leading to. There should be a lot many more apps to quickly publish videos to Youtube or post tips to Lifehacker instead of just sharing things already existing on the Internet or elsewhere.

What do you say?

Consoling a network device from a Mac’s Terminal app

Hello All,

Ever since my blog went down, one of my best posts, this one to be precise, is unavailable. This is an upgraded and a more complete version of the same.

The method of consoling into a network device (router/switch/firewall/Load Balancer) from Windows is pretty well explained. Download PuTTY, connect a serial cable and you’re good to go. But how to do the same in Mac? Well, Mac’s Terminal.app has inbuilt ssh and serial abilities. You just need to extend it with a small plugin. The plugin for your device can be downloaded from this website or, for the lazy and impatient, from here.

Please note that this tutorial works for Mac, Linux as well as the Windows command line, you just need the right drivers from the website. You will also need this –

This is an RS232 to USB adapter that you can find on Amazon or at the Telecom Lab at CU Boulder.

After you’re done installing the drivers, connect the cable and fire up the Terminal app.

Then, run the following command –

ls /dev/tty.*

This will give you a list of all the ports that you can console with. (Observe the keyword tty, it’s the basis for the name PuTTY).

The port you’re looking for will look like – tty.usbserial-A4008Ywd (the name could vary)

After you know this port, run the following command –

screen /dev/tty.usbserial-A4008Ywd 9600

(replace the tty… with your port name)

Screen is the inbuilt program used to console into devices from terminal. 9600 is the baud rate of the device and is also often configured differently for each device in PuTTY.

Once you see Screen running, you’re in! You can now see the exact same result you see using PuTTY.

Update

Screen has it’s own quirks that you must remember –

1. To exit the program, press Ctrl+a and then Ctrl+d to get back to terminal

2. Often, you need to use a break sequence when booting up a device in order to get into password recovery mode. The sequence for Screen is – Ctrl+a and then Ctrl+b Ctrl+b Ctrl+b (note that after pressing Ctrl+a, you will need to press Ctrl+b about 3 times to go into recovery mode.) Thanks to EtherealMind for this tip.

That’s all folks! You now have the freedom to console into network devices using your Mac!

Thoughts on OS X Mountain Lion

So, a preview to OS X Mountain Lion is out. Most people will not find out before evening because Apple decided to do a quiet launch on their website about it. But anyways, now that we know about it, what’s so great?

Let’s see. Apple decided to take the best features of the iOS ecosystem and push them towards OS X. Notice also, that the name is no longer Mac OS X, but simply OS X.

We will have, Game Center, Notifications Center, more iCloud integration, a ‘Messages’ app corresponding to the iMessages in iOS (also, a replacement for iChat) and many apps like Notes and Reminders that will sync with your iDevices to keep you seamlessly synced where ever you go. All of this will be possible because of iCloud.

Users will also have better Twitter integration and sharing options for websites like Vimeo and Flickr. That cute tweet poster in iOS 5 is also there. Apple is trying to woo people to Safari with the Sharing options, though how useful it turns out to be is yet to be seen. The notification center looks neat, although long time users of Growl will, well, growl.

Interesting new features are GateKeeper and Airplay mirroring. GateKeeper is like the User Account Control (UAC) of Windows, for the Mac. It’s going to be intrusive, troublesome and restrictive. What it does is, allows a person to make settings to block apps that are not from the Mac App Store or from the App Store but not from famous developers to not be installed on your system at all. If the default setting in the Mountain Lion is going to be ‘Mac App Store only’, it’ll not only cause problems to people who are new to the Mac but also shows Apple’s huge push towards the App Store instead of independent developers. The little guys with direct downloads from their websites will bear the brunt.

Airplay mirroring, on the other hand, is an awesome feature that allows you to wirelessly display your Mac’s screen on your appleTV connected TV.

Finally, the Game Center is going to be useful for playing games with your friends who own other Apple devices like iOS or another Mac. Like Apple says on their website, it’s now going to be the Mac vs the iPad vs the iPhone vs the iPod Touch. Fun indeed, if only we could buy a single app for all devices instead of having to pay for the Mac games separately.

On a more developer related note, Apple has been moving farther away from open source apps every upgrade. That means more proprietary software in Mac and less room for hacking. It remains to be seen how far they’ve gone this time and how the developers and lovers of Unix will be affected.

Lastly, those who want to, can download the Messages app for OS X right now from their website – http://www.apple.com/macosx/mountain-lion/messages-beta/

This offer is similar to when Apple released FaceTime for free initally and then started charging for it once it became popular. So grab your copy now!