Have Laptop Will Travel

New Tools For The Blogger On The Road

After only some days, the list can be updated.

With the introduction of the excellent offline Google Reader [modus], we can delete FeedDemon from the list and save $25.
Although FeedDemon still has some more features than Google Reader, Google Reader performs well and fast.

Another addition to the list, comes in the form of the new version of Windows Live Writer.
Windows Live Writer is an all straightforward, out of the box editor for most blog platforms. Installation is easy and writing is even easier. It feels like writing in Word, with support options for your theme, just less bloated than MS Word. If you blog alot and hate to be stuck in your blogplatform editor, Windows Live Writer is what you need.

The Editor comes with many insertion and formatting possibilities and also supports tags properly, but not 100% correctly if you want to use site internal tags.
Live Writer can ping services when publishing entries, or publish entries at a specific time. Basically you’ll find everything you need and the feel is nicer than writing in the WP editor.
Screenshots after the jump

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Tools For The Offline Blogger On The Road

Hardly ever do I go somewhere without taking my laptop with me. When I want to have a break, but still be productive, I go to a bistro and luckily most bistros in my neighborhood offer wireless already.
But sometimes I’m on the road and no wireless is available. Sadly here in UK data plan flat rates only flatten your budget and not the road to being online anywhere (yet).
This means that sometimes I end up in locations without internet connection. I am sure the thought of this alone already scares many among you, but let me tell you, there’s life… even without direct internet connection.
And with little preparation and some (offline) tools you can perfectly continue working without losing your productivity. Actually some tools might even make you life easier.

Lets have a look at a list of 4 applications every web worker, problogger, designer who prefers classic bistros over Starbucks, professional who spends two hours or more daily commuting in a train compartment or traveler on a cruise ship, charged a whopping $15 for half an hour of internet connection, needs.

  • Email : Thunderbird.
    Little needs to be written about the free open source and very customizable Thunderbird. Unless your employer requires you to use Outlook, and you really know how to take advantage of the power of Outlook 2003 and higher, Thunderbird is what you should be using.
    Customize your Thunderbird with one of the many available extensions.
    Start your email client before leaving and read your mail while offline. Prepare your answers on the road, ready to be uploaded as soon as you’re online again.
  • Feed reader : FeedDemon.
    Every modern webworker spends several hours daily reading feeds and every webworker has many entries waiting to be read. Power up your offline feed reader before you leave, wait until all the feeds are downloaded and catch up with your feeds during your commute, at the cafe behind a cappuccino or as morning literature on the ship. Even with 400+ feeds it will hardly ever take more than some minutes to download every entry.
    FeedDemon sadly isn’t free, but the $29.95 surely are worth it. I even FeedDemon when online, because it allows me to set the update rate manually for every feed or for categories. Over are the times when you only read entries when every one had already added their cents or pennies.
    FeedDemon also has an awesome caching engine you’ll love when you want to search for older entries.
  • Offline server : XAMPP.
    Anyone who’s into design, or programming sites based on PHP should have XAMPP installed. XAMPP brings Apache, MySQL and PHP to your notebook, allowing you to play with your design or the code of your sites offline. Have your own (test) server without being connected. Feel free to hack anything without crashing your site. XAMPP even doesn’t need to be installed, unzipping the package is enough. Install now your blog, WP, TextPattern, Expression Engine.
    If I mentioned that you don’t need to install XAMPP there’s a reason for : most blogger will with time play with other, probably also non-PHP blog platforms, such as Django. Especially with older versions the standard installation paths of certain server components might cause conflicts (If you want to run Django on the road, follow this tutorial as the required mod_python isn’t supported anymore under XAMPP).
    AFAIK every platform offers an offline installation kit.
  • Offline blog editor
    There are many offline blog editors available, and Thunderbird probably is the most unknown one. Almost every blog software allows you to post over email, why not take advantage of this and use your Thunderbird also as blog editor.
    Other recommended offline editors are ecto, the choice of most probloggers, but makes you $17.95 lighter.
    Qumana, a lightweight free blog editor, with several features such as integration of Q Ads, and available in French, Spanish and Dutch.
    Biggest problem, on WP, I’ve encountered with offline blog editors is that none supports Ultimate Tag Warrior (most do support Technorati tags though). If you’re über geeky, you can use a tool such as HeidiSQL to easily export your post and tag tables and import them on your localhost (the XAMPP install we discussed earlier on). When back online you synchronize both tables again, and every entry you’ve prepared on your localhost is up and running on your blog now.
    HeidiSQL requires remote database access, you might have to request this from your hoster.
  • BONUS : picture uploader for Flickr, Flickr Uploadr.
    Flickr Uploadr is not a tool for offline usage, but I couldn’t live without it anymore. As soon as I am online again, all I have to do is drag and drop the pictures I’ve taken into the Flickr Uploadr interface and only one click later all my pictures are being uploaded to my account. Easier is hardly imaginable and it saves me time.

Right now this is everything I can think of, but I might add more tools as I discover new ones.
Of course the compulsary tools such as Notepad++, SmartFTP, the best free FTP client for private usage, and The Gimp/PAINT.NET/Photoshop, depending on your budget, also belong to this list, but they are more of general need IMO.

If you can think of any other tools, leave a comment. :)

U.K. Preventing Mobile Phone Theft

The United Kingdom Home Office reported last week that mobile phone network changes, requested by the government, blocked stolen phones within hours of theft.

System Concepts showed that the country’s five major mobile networks (3, 02, Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone) blocked more than 80% of stolen mobile phones within 48 hours.

The U.K. government said that young people and children are more likely to have their phones stolen and requested that companies do something about it.

The U.K. government passed a law allowing five years in jail and unlimited fines for anyone offering to reprogram cell phones. The law takes effect this week.

I really hope that this doesn’t become a law here in the United States because as most geeks know, there’s a lot of cool features built into many cell phones from the factory (Motorola being a great example of this) that require some reprogramming to take place for them to work.

A lot of carriers, Cingular, AT&T and T-Mobile just to name a few, have the factory turn off and/or de-program the extra stuff so end users (that’s you and me) can’t do everything the phone was meant to do which sucks.

I’m always hacking my cell phone and from time to time I’ve helped friends do the same but with this new law in the U.K., I won’t be helping any of my friends across the pond any time soon.

I can understand why they’d want to block phones that have been reported stolen but to make it against the law to reprogram a phone is crazy in my opinion.

From what I know, you can’t easily change or reprogram the IMEI number on a phone, so if it’s reported stolen, it’s of no use to anyone.

Wireless Mesh Networks To Go

Lately, I’ve been using Meraki Mesh routers to set up saturated WiFi environments on the fly at conferences and in small communities. Mesh technology has been floating on the tongues of wireless aficionados for close to a decade now. But until now, it’s either been a fantasy of what could be or an ultra-expensive reality.

Meraki is different. Meraki is not only an affordable technology, but it’s a simple and easy to use technology. Anyone, and I mean anyone, can set a Meraki wireless network up.

Straight out of the box, all you need are a few Meraki routers and an internet pipeline. Got DSL or Cable? Then you’re golden. You can set up a Meraki network for your entire block. Just connect one unit’s ethernet port via ethernet cable into your internet enabled router, give some electricity to the other Meraki routers, and so long as the routers can see each other, you’ve got a self-configured, self-healing wireless mesh network. It’s great for conferences where you need a saturated wireless environment, and it works well for wireless hotspots too because with several routers the signal gets sent out at a variety of angles, and you can get rid of the dreaded dead spot.

While it’s simple to set up, Meraki lets you fine tune, monitor and control your wireless network via a web GUI interface. You can rename the network, change the network’s wireless channel, setup a captive portal, and even enable the billing system to charge people for accessing your wireless network. Community-level ISPs anybody? Worried about bandwidth hogging? Not a problem. Meraki gives you the option of setting user-level bandwidth limits.

What excites me most about Meraki’s technology is that it puts the power of setting up wireless networks virtually anywhere, anytime in the hands of almost anybody. This has the potential to be a disruptive technology to the core.

So what are the limitations of Meraki? Well, for one, they are single radio units so bandwidth gets cut in half with each hop. That means that you shouldn’t have more than 4 hops between any Meraki router and the internet pipeline. While it’s possible to cover an entire block with a single internet connection, it wouldn’t be easy to cover much more.

Currently, I’m working to setup a Meraki network that spans over 90 blocks. That means we’ll need about 90 DSL connections to make the project work. The cheapest business class DSL we can find in our area is $69.99/month per line, so that translates into well over $6,000. Not cheap.

One thing we’d like to see from Meraki going into the future is a solution for larger scale projects. This would involve making a more powerful outdoor unit than the current 60mW version.

Despite the negatives, Meraki has to be congratulated for putting together such a fine product that actually works straight out of the box with zero configuration. Not only that, but they’ve truly upped the ante by including a feature rich Admin Dashboard for each network that allows complete control over each unit. From map mashups to pinging to router restarting to bandwidth control and billing, Meraki has what it takes to make dead spots a thing of the past.

Trojan Roaming Skype Network

Skype users are being hit with a Trojan that using the infected machine to reach out and infect the user’s friends and colleagues.

Websense issued an alert on earlier this afternoon warning that the malicious code, known as both Warezov and Stration, is spreading through the Skype network again.

An earlier version initially attacked late in February.

Dan Hubbard, a vice president of security research at Websense, said:

While the Trojan isn’t widely spread at this point, it is making its way across the network.

While the code itself is not self-propagating, when it runs, a URL is sent to everyone in the user’s contact list.

If their Skype program is running, a message will pop up, luring the user to click on a link, infecting them and continuing the malicious cycle.

The Trojan also opens a back door in the user’s computer, enabling a hacker to get into the machine and steal the user’s information or use the computer to send out spam or even a denial-of-service attack.

The Websense advisory noted that Skype users receive a message that says “Check up this,” with a URL containing a hyperlink.

When users click on the link, they are redirected to a site hosting a file named file_01.exe.

Users are prompted to run the file. If the user runs the file, several other files are downloaded and run.

This is not an exploit taking advantage of a vulnerability in Skype, the Websense advisory noted.

The moral of the story… clicking on unsolicited messages in Skype or any Instant Messaging program is just not a good idea.