The situation:
- one (allmost) dead phone (Sony Ericsson w880i) with all my contacts
- one working phone (Nokia 6300) with none of mine contacts
- not willing to install Nokia en Sony Ericsson bloatware PC Suite
- no Windows
How do I get all my contacts from the dead phone to my working phone? Well I can install some bloatware form Nokia and Sony Ericsson on my Windows partition. Then I must backup my W880i, save the contacts in some obscure format. Change that format so that Nokia’s bloatware can read it, correct all the things that go unrecognized by that brilliant crapware and load it in the working phone. But I just don’t do that because:
- I must leave Ubuntu and restart in Windows;
- I’m not able to work for some hours in the software I like;
- I don’t like to install some crappy software that I wil never use again and will begging every startup for auto-updates and uses some 30 megabytes each on my precious ram;
- I don’t like to restart for every software install Windows does…
- I don’t want to backup my data in some obscure format
There is a solution for this problem. Wammu is a multi platform (win, mac, linux) opensource phonemanger that will work on most phones. Installation can be done with windows binaries, Debian packages, ubuntu apt repositories and RPM packages. Just make your choice here. After installation you can run the phone wizard that will search automatically for a phone on a (choosen) connection (USB, Irda, Bluetooth or serial). After recognition save that connection and start working, simple as that. Wammu will retrieve calendars, messages, call data, contacts and todos. You can save the data in various formats and even export messages to an email account. The interface is straight forward, but works and nothing more. You can edit contacts, calendars, todos, reply to messages, initiate a call to a contact.
If you want to sync to your email client, look at MultSync, Wammu doesn’t do that. But there’s more where Wammu came from:
- Gammu, a command line tool for controlling you phone
- libGammu, an API for accessing the Gammu library
- Gammu SMSD, a deamon that watch for incoming SMS and stores the in a database and for automating sending of SMS, use ith with Kalkun to control it with a browser
- Python Gammu, for use with Python
Nowadays every PC is connected to the web, we even work in the cloud with gmail, google docs and all kinds of social networks. Online file storage is some years old, but always held back by speed and internet connections. Sure, there were some nice services where you could upload large an many files and you could even email a (large) file as attachment with gmail. But some nice, simple and multi-platform file system integration was lacking. The cloud is the way to keep online file storage cheap and even free under the 2 gb. Ubuntu One, Dropbox and SpiderOak offers free file storage for Ubuntu.
Installation
This installtion has be done on Ubuntu Karmic (9.10) 64 bit.
Spideroak
- download deb and save the file
- open deb and install application
- open application (Applications -> Internet -> SpiderOak Backup) and follow the registration process
Ubuntu One
- sign up an subscribe to Ubuntu one
- Install the application by adding the PPA (Ubuntu) and the apt-url
- Start the client (Applications -> Internet -> Ubuntu One)
- Add your computer tot your account in the opened website
- A folder Ubuntu One is created in your home directory where you can put your files that will be saved in the cloud
Dropbox
- Download the deb file or add the PPA in your apt sources
- Open the deb file and install or use synaptic
- Log out and log back in, there should be a window asking you to download the proprietary deamon (if not: open Dropbox via Applications -> Internet -> Dropbox)
- After installation follow the registration process and choose your (free) storage plan
- Open the Dropbox application (Applications -> Internet -> Dropbox) and follow the registration process
- There should be a new folder in your home folder called Dropbox where you can put your files for online storage
Comparison
Pricing
Client software
| Name | Linux | Windows | Mac | Mobile | File-system Integration | Proxy support | Bandwidth limit | Auto update |
| SpiderOak | yes | yes | yes | | no | yes | only upload | yes |
| Ubuntu One | yes | no | no | | yes (nautilus) | no | yes | via repository |
| Dropbox | yes | yes | yes | Iphone | yes (nautilus) | yes | yes | via repository |
Storage options
| name | sync | share | backup | undelete | previous versions |
| Dropbox | yes | yes | no | yes | yes |
| Ubuntu One | yes | yes | no | no | no |
| SpiderOak | yes | yes | yes | no | no |
Website options
| name | sharing | image-gallery | overview |
| Ubuntu One | not very good | no | bad |
| Dropbox | good | yes | good |
| SpiderOak | complicated | no | mediocre |
Conclusion
| Pros | Cons |
| Dropbox | + undelete and previous versions
+ good website: easy sharing | - static drop folder for syncing
- does not preserve file-permissions
|
| Ubuntu One | + open-source | - buggy
- slow response website
- static drop folder for syncing
- not multi-platform |
| SpiderOak | + can select more directories, no need for symbolic links
+ backup function | - no integration
- share option is complicated |
Overall Dropbox left the best impression. SpiderOak has the most extended function for selecting folders and files. That is one of the things you would expect for a backup tool, but you can’t undelete and go back to previous versions. Also I think most people would use online storage as a tool for syncing and sharing files through the internet, not as backup. In that case Dropbox would fit most to your needs so get it here.
Did you ever needed a simple connection to your home-server or a remote desktop to that Windows server at work? Most people would suggest to set up some expensive VPN hardware or other third party solution like LogMeIn but if you can reach that port 22 on the other side there’s some simple solution: ssh, the secure shell protocol
What do you need?
- a SSH-server listing on the other side
- a SSH client like PuTTY or just ssh in Ubuntu on your local machine
How does it work?
The basic idea is that you setup a local port on your local machine to forward a connection to a remote host port through the SSH connection.
1st example: connect to that Windows machine with remote-desktop
Just imagine that you want to connect to a Windows machine with remote-desktop (RDP) on your work or home. You could forward a port in your firewall rules at home, but most companies wouldn’t allow that and portforwarding wouldn’t work if you have dynamic IP adresses. Open up a console and type:
sudo ssh -L 3389:remote-windows-pc:3389 username@ssh-server
You will be prompted twice for a password, first your local sudo password and second the ssh password for the ssh-server. After the connection is established you can use your favorite remote-desktop client to connect to your localhost and you will see a Windows login screen from your remote machine.
2nd example: using PuTTY and Windows
If you’re restricted to Windows instead of Linux you can use PuTTY.
- Install putty. Download it here if you are using Windows. Debian or Ubuntu users can do an apt-get install putty
- Configure a basic connection (host and port).
- Go to Connections→SSH→Tunnels
- Add the configuration of the remote-desktop
- In source port, put 3389
- On destination, use the remote IP or hostname and the remote port (remote-ip:portnumber)
- Push the Add button
- Save your changes
- Connect to the server using PuTTY. You don’t need to be the root user on the remote server in this case
- Now use your remote-desktop client and connect to localhost
- You will see a Windows login screen from your remote machine
