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Jabber and Data Portability
Feb 11th
Today I discovered a very interesting initiative. It is about Data Portability.
This might be the future for all websites and internet related applications. As a user, your profile, contacts, photos, videos and any other form of data is stored on the service providers servers. This means, for every website, you need to create a new login, invite all your friends manually to the service, upload your avatar and so on.
The next issue is, that you need to have some trust in the operator of the service, because he stores your password and other personal information.
Why shouldn’t it be possible to use a single login for everything? All your account data is stored and managed by yourself, so that the service providers don’t get hold of your personal information.
There have been some attempts in that direction, such as OpenID, but the Web needs alot more.
As mentioned above, your login, contacts, files should be portable from any service to another.
And this is where Jabber comes in. I would like to be able to migrate my contacts from any Jabber Server to another. Instead of issuing re-invites to everyone, starting with a new roster, you should be able to transport all your data from any service provider to another.
But what about Identity theft? Isn’t that more dangerous if you have your own identity for every service? I.e. one E-mail adress gets hacked, and boom, you loose your identity?
Is this worthy of an XEP?
Think about it 
Tell me what you think.
/Florian Jensen
Links: XSF; DataPortability
AOL adopting XMPP aka Jabber
Jan 17th
Proprietary protocols are things from yesterday. Today, Opensource technologies are taking over the world! AOL / ICQ has just launched a test server using XMPP, an open technology. This means that you’ll soon be able to talk to your ICQ / AIM contacts via Jabber. Google has already started using it. So who’s next? MSN!
AOL seems to be making its ICQ and AIM services compatible with XMPP: xmpp.oscar.aol.com PS: it’s still buggy and is only claimed to work in Exodus and Coccinella. It works in nearly all Jabber clients. But that is probably because the server is overloaded.
There has been a vivid discussion today on the Jdev MUC room about this. It looks like Jabber will be the solution which will rule the future of all messengers.
You can try to log in to ICQ with the username icqnumber@aol.com on server xmpp.oscar.aol.com on port 5222. TLS is required.
Let’s see what happens in the next few months with Jabber.
You can find Jabber Hosting for your Domain on Flosoft.biz . You’ll probably be able to chat to your ICQ contacts soon!
UPDATE: AIM seems to work too!
UPDATE2: There is a tutorial here on how to setup your Jabber Client
UPDATE3: I just recieved this picture from jjkobra. It works with Gajim! 
UPDATE4: It seems to work in Psi too!
UPDATE5: A comment by AOL.
2008 and more!
Jan 1st
Hey,
just wanted to say, happy new year!
In the next few hours, you’ll also find some more tutorials for the Flosoft.biz FlexServ. If you have any request for tutorials, just post them here.
Greets,
Florian Jensen
Howto: Install a frontend on your Server with NX
Dec 31st
This howto will explain to you how to install a frontend on your server which is accessible via NX. This tutorial is for Debian based systems, and has been tested on an Flosoft.biz FlexServ (RPS).
1. Check the basic Debian setup.
We need to modify the sources.list
vi /etc/apt/sources.list
Add the following 2 lines:
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian etch main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.debian.org/debian etch main contrib non-free
Close and save (:wq) and run this command to update:
apt-get update
Then check if your system is up to date, and if necessary install updates.
apt-get dist-upgrade
2. Installing the X window manager xorg.
Just type in:
apt-get install xserver-xorg-core xorg
There will be a few questions at the end, for now just go with the defaults.
3. The Login Manager
Now you have 3 options. You can install any of the following Login Manager’s. Your options are:
- KDM
KDM is probably the best if you want to use KDE - GDM
GDM is probably the best if you want to use Gnome - XDM
XDM is probably the best if you want to use Fluxbox or XFCE
Once you have chosen one of the GUIs run one of the following three commands:
apt-get install kdm
apt-get install gdm
apt-get install xdm
4. The GUI
Now again, you have a choice of different Graphical User Interfaces.
- KDE
Personally my favourite on Debian - Gnome
My favourite on Ubuntu - Fluxbox
Never used it - XFCE4
Never used it
Once you have chosen one of the GUIs run one of the following three commands:
apt-get install kde
apt-get install gnome
apt-get install xfce4
apt-get install fluxbox
Thats all for the base setup.
5. Reboot
You should reboot to make sure the X server starts.
shutdown -r now
6. Create your user
Once your server has rebooted, and you have relogged in, you should create a user which you will use for the GUI.
adduser mynewusername
6. Getting the NX packages
Now we need to setup the NX server, so that you are able to connect to the server from your home. So you need to download the NX server pacakges:
wget http://64.34.161.181/download/3.1.0/Linux/nxclient_3.1.0-2_i386.deb
wget http://64.34.161.181/download/3.1.0/Linux/nxnode_3.1.0-3_i386.deb
wget http://64.34.161.181/download/3.1.0/Linux/FE/nxserver_3.1.0-2_i386.deb
7. Installing the NX packages
As you have the packages now in your directory, you need to install them via dpkg.
dpkg -i nxclient_3.1.0-2_i386.deb
dpkg -i nxnode_3.1.0-3_i386.deb
dpkg -i nxserver_3.1.0-2_i386.deb
8. The Services
Now we need to make sure the services are running.
/etc/init.d/ssh restart
/etc/init.d/nxserver restart
9. The Browser
Last, but not least… well actually least … Firefox! You will need a nice Browser, so Firefox is the way to go.
apt-get install firefox
Now you’re system is setup and you’re ready to use it. Simply setup your NX Client and have fun!
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask me or just leave a comment.
Flash 9 on Linux!
Oct 29th
Hey,
are you tired of stupid Flash 7 on your Linux. That you are not able to watch any cool stuff on the web as it is Flash 8 or Flash 9? Are you sick of the audio not being synchrononous with the video?
Well finally someone has thought about us Linux users at Adobe. They have published the first beta of the Flash Player 9 for Linux.
The only problem now is: Why is there no .deb for my Kubuntu?
Well there is no need for it. If you have flashplayer-nonfree installed you can simply do this:
# wget http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/
flashplayer9_update/FP9_plugin_beta_101806.tar.gz
# tar xvzf FP9_plugin_beta_101806.tar.gz
# sudo cp flash-player-plugin-9.0.21.55/libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/flashplugin-nonfree/
# sudo cp flash-player-plugin-9.0.21.55/libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/
This will get you and install you your FlashPlayer 9. Then just restart Firefox / Opera and you’ll get your FlashPlayer 9!
Have fun watching all that video content on Youtube, Google Videos, DailyMotion or Myspace.
Roundcube Webmail
Jun 21st
Are you using Thunderbird or Apple Mail? Or even worse, Microsoft Outlook (Express)?
Are you always annoyed that you need to setup your Account in your Mail Client?
But you don’t want to use Webmail as they are ugly and slow?
Well then it is time to change! Roundcube Webmail has Drag & Drop, you can use the keys, for example the delete button and the arrow keys. More >
Let’s find you some help ;)
Jun 16th
Are you tired of looking for help on all these Forums for help?
Well here is the solution! Qunu.com!
At qunu.com you can find instant help for all your Computer related problems. And the nice thing is, it uses Jabber!
So just register or login with your own JID and start helping out people. You just enter your fields of expertise in your Profile, and you’re ready to go.
If you are only looking for help, no registration is required. Just browse and find!
I haven’t seen any site which was better than this one.
PS: Jabber Rocks!
amaroK 1.4
Jun 11th
amaroK 1.4 is out now since a few weeks. I must say it is great. I haven’t seen any music player which is nicer than amaroK. It looks nice, has a nice library, and alot of extensions.
iTunes is crap compared to amaroK. It is my favourite application under Linux.
At this point I want to ask: What is your favourite Music Player? Or is it even amaroK?
OpenSource!
Jun 5th
What is open Source?
Open Source exists as a result of the combined efforts of millions of computer programmers, users and software vendors from around the world.
They share their itellectual property freely. And they believe that software should cost nothing and should enrich the lives of users.
Open source software is the alternative and biggest challenger to close source or proprietary software.
It generally costs the user nothing. It can be distributed freely to anyone.
Download it, use it, modify it and give it away.
It’s a whole new world. Open Source is the future of computing.
Why do I tell you this?
