Florian Jensen’s Weblog|making the world a better place!

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

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. 

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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

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:

1. KDM
   KDM is probably the best if you want to use KDE
2. GDM
   GDM is probably the best if you want to use Gnome
3. 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.

1. KDE
   Personally my favourite on Debian
2. Gnome
   My favourite on Ubuntu
3. Fluxbox
   Never used it
4. 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.

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.

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. Read the rest of this entry »

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 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?

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?

Read the rest of this entry »