Tonido seems to be one of this years hidden wonders.
I have begun local testing for implementation in a small consulting firm. Thus far I have no significant issues with the Music, files or other documents. Setup has also been super easy thus far (up until my thunderstorm). I tested things on three PCs including :
- an eeePC running eeebuntu
- a laptop running Ubuntu 9.04
- a Desktop running Windows XP
-within our four walls — office– things linked fine.
That it is… until a Colorado thunderstorm came along a blew all the settings out on our modems and firewalls. Actually (in retrospect) that was a good thing because I really got a good look at how things work. On Linux machines that are servers and probably on Windows, too, you need to pay special attention to Port Forwarding — in order to gain access to your Tonido files through your firewall. For ‘normal’ machines that are not servers, it simply happens automagically assuming their DSL modems offer UPNP. However, NO UPNP equals a manual Port Forward for those guys, too. For those systems that are buried in a secondary (or lower) network, you need to remember to Port Forward all modems between them and the internet. It only took me two days to learn these simple points. Undaunted by skill or knowledge, I finally slugged it out!
Otherwise, my testing has provided a few additional items worthy of note including:
- You are only able to upload data from your ‘home’ machine it seems. When I tried adding my contacts from my netbook browser nothing happened; however, when I moved over to my main laptop it was happy to upload things.
- Because I use Evolution, my calendar was a breeze to upload as an ics file.
- It is important to note that not everything you upload is easily “deleteable.” Contacts for example are only removable one at time… my 1300 person error will be a mess for quite a while.
- Tonido screen layouts look very nice on a big screen but for netbooks they make things very difficult. Icons and text are simply too LARGE. You can work around by using your browser in full screen mode; that little F11 thing in FireFox makes the too large icons almost tolerable.
- Calendar, contact export does not appear to be supported. This means the information flow has to emenate from your main PC and out to the share environment. I think that is somewhat sub-otimal; but it is perhaps a short-term problem(challenge); this may get fixed.
- Having read quite a bit on the web, I agree that the tonido website content does the toolset a ‘huge’ disservice. Tonido is a great environment which is unclearly under-communicated, under-stated, and unclear. It is interesting that the Tonido site does not appear to emphasize the application’s use for small business; which is huge. I find this strange since there is a heavy emphasis on items such as Music and Photos- neither of which can be as profitable as file, contact, calendar, task and information sharing. I guess that just proves we all have biases.
Interestingly, I was barely able to find mention of tonido on the Ubuntu Forums site (buried in a single posting)… on the main Ubuntu site it appears only once prominently.
Observation: