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:

1. 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.
2. Because I use Evolution, my calendar was a breeze to upload as an ics file.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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:

• Another userful review

And a side note to my readers:  Sorry I’ve been neglecting ND lately.  I’ll be getting married the first week in August and will resume more regular postings after our honeymoon.  (Including a tutorial on the DC power jack failure fix that affects so many Gateways.  If you need it right away, let me know and I can email it to you.)

I recently checked into Google Gadgets again after using it on Windows for many years.  At times gadgets
(also know as widgets to many others) can be relatively helpful, but I just enjoy them for the eye candy.
There’s basically two components to the Linux version:  the actual gadget browser and the gadget library.

First put the Google Gadget repository into your sources list.  Open Terminal and type:

sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

and add the following lines:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/googlegadgets/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/googlegadgets/ubuntu hardy main

Now save and exit.

Update your source list:

sudo aptitude update

Install Google Desktop Gadgets:

sudo aptitude install google-gadgets

Now that the application is installed, you need to run it:

Hit Alt+F2 to open Run Application.  Type “ggl-gtk” and click Run.
A square multi-colored icon should appear in your system tray. Right-click on it to get a drop down menu. Select “Add gadgets…” and the gadget browser should appear. You can now add gadgets and they will appear on your desktop.

If you would also prefer the sidebar along with the gadgets then hit Alt+F2 and type “ggl-gtk -s -bg” and click Run. You should now see the sidebar along with your gadgets where they can be docked and undocked to your liking.

That’s it! If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact me.

ImageMagick is a set of programs to manipulate various image formats (JPEG, TIFF, PhotoCD, PBM, XPM, etc…). All manipulations can be achieved through shell commands as well as through an X11 graphical interface (display).

Possible effects: colormap manipulation, channel operations, thumbnail creation, image annotation, limited drawing, image distortion, etc.

The only effect I needed for, however was image re-sizing.  Here’s what I did under Hardy:

First, you need to install ImageMagick:

jason@ubuntu:~$ sudo apt-get install imagemagick

Create a folder to put all the images you want to resize in.  For my images, I just created a folder named “Batch” on my desktop.

jason@ubuntu:~$ cd /home/jason/Desktop/
jason@ubuntu:~/Desktop$ mkdir batch
jason@ubuntu:~/Desktop$ cd /home/jason/Desktop/batch
jason@ubuntu:~/Desktop/batch$

Now comes the time to do the actual resizing.  I resized mine to a width of 640.  The aspect ratio will stay the same if resizing just the width.

jason@ubuntu:~/Desktop/batch$ mogrify -resize 640 *.JPG

Note that the file extension is case sensitive and will give you an error message otherwise.  If you want to force a particular aspect ratio (such as 640 x 480) then try this:

jason@ubuntu:~/Desktop/batch$ mogrify -resize 640×480! *.JPG

And there you have it!  There are alot of other effects that you can try with this program.  For more effects to use at the command line, see the ImageMagick website.