links for August 18, 2008

• manishrjain - flickrfs

links for August 17, 2008

• T.E.D. : Electricity Monitor, Energy Monitor, Power Monitor
• GCALDaemon - Access Gmail contacts from Mozilla Thunderbird
• BBC News Online | Health | Bird flu hopes from 1918 victims
• Pipes: RSS Filter By Date

WHS Download Manager

Our Windows Home Server is running all of the time, so I would love to use this machine as a way to download large files, especially when I am not at home.  I thought that WHS Download Manager would do exactly that I want.  This Add-In allows you to specify urls to be downloaded and where to download the files to.  Unfortunately, the only way to access this is trough the Windows Home Server Console.  So, if I wanted to start a download when I am not at home, I need to vpn into my network, and then rdp into my server.

I am thinking that uTorrent and the Windows Home Server Add-In would be a better solution, at least for torrent files. At least with this solution would allow me to use a web browser to start the downloads.

email security

I have used gpg, off an on, for several years now.  I have always liked the ability to confirm that I was the one that actually sent an email, and the ability to send an email and know that the receipient is the only one that can read the email.

Originally when I started to use gpg, the only way to sign a message was to incude the text based signature.  Then SMiME allowed the signature to be included as an attachment.  The problem that I have had is to explain to people that I am sending the email to what the attachement is or what the text at the bottom of the message is.

I think that I will have to come up with a good description that I can put in the signature comment that can help explain what the signature is.

So now, I am using FireGPG when I use the Gmail web interface, and Thunderbird with the Enigmail support  when I am using the desktop client.

GParted Live-CD

On my laptop, I haven't booted into Windows for several months, and I am running out of free disk space, so I decided that I would delete my windows paritions and then resize my root partition.  This page mentions the GParted Live-CD as an easy way to accomplish this.

Once I booted the CD, it was very easy to delete the partitions, and specify the size of the root partition.  I was a litte worried about my situation, because my existing parition needed to be moved in addtion to being resized.

But it worked perfectly, and after a few hours, my parition is 70GB larger.

boxee

Boxee looks like a pretty interesting "10 foot" experience for watching content from your computer.  Recently they announced a linux version, and I was interested in trying it out on my XPS m1330, especially since Joost is not available for linux.

The install was very easy, but I have not been able to successfully run it.  When I try an launch it, the window appears, but it never finished drawing.  Also, I am not able to select anything.

I have installed it, and may install it again when it enters beta.

Skype for Windows Mobile

This post mentions that the Windows Mobile version of Skype has been upated.  We use Skype at work, so I was interested in trying this out.

The download and install went well.  I was able to use it to send text messages, but I wasn't able tomake a voice call.  I am not sure if it is possible for Skype to use the microphone on my phone to send audio to Skype.