Archives for February 2014

February 17, 2014

BookBook for the MacBook Air

Are you looking for a laptop cover for your MacBook Air? TwelveSouth has a laptop cover called BookBook. It looks like an old book. I mean a really old book. It’s made of genuine leather. It has a hardback case with a strong spine, with reinforced corners for impact protection, extra padding, and your laptop is kept secured by a zipper. Did I say it looks like a regular book? I guess it’s worth repeating. It’s a good disguise. It looks like you’re carrying a book instead of a laptop. The only gripe I have is, it’s a bit pricey for a laptop cover. It looks like a really nice, elegant antique book. That’s the draw. If you really want it, just be prepared to dish out $80 bucks for this item.

February 16, 2014

Upgrading ownCloud

Are you looking for a Dropbox alternative? Try ownCloud. Dropbox and ownCloud are both free as well as a paid service. The main difference between the two is that you can run ownCloud from your own server. Like Dropbox, you can access ownCloud from your browser, desktop or smartphone. The ownCloud server software runs on any server, mine runs on Ubuntu Linux, and it doesn’t require special permissions.

The latest version is ownCloud version 6. I was still running on version 4.5. So, the following instructions will upgrade your ownCloud to the latest version on the Ubuntu server. If you have large amounts of data, it would be wise to backup your ownCloud directories. If you don’t have many files, you can opt for a clean install.

Go to your ownCloud directory.

cd owncloud

Delete everything except for data and config. You will most likely need sudo to delete your files. I opted for a clean install, so I deleted everything.

ls | grep -v 'data\|config' | sudo xargs rm -r

Download ownCloud. Since I did a clean install, I went up one directory level.

cd ..
wget http://download.owncloud.org/community/owncloud-latest.tar.bz2

Unpack the tarball. It will create a new directory ‘owncloud.’

sudo tar xfj owncloud-latest.tar.bz2

Give it write permissions. By default, the owncloud files are owned by nobody. So, you might see an error message saying it needs write permissions to ‘owncloud/data.’ I changed the ownership of the files to Apache, which is www-data.

sudo chown www-data:www-data -R owncloud

Access ownCloud by opening up your web browser and going to your ownCloud URL. If you did a clean install, you will be asked to create a new admin username and password. Otherwise, enter your former credentials. Finally, download the desktop clients as well as the mobile apps and install on your devices.

Synch your files and have fun.

February 13, 2014

Engenius ENS202ext Outdoor AP

I installed a couple of Engenius ENS202ext Outdoor access points for a client the other day. The range on these AP’s are extremely good. The device operates at 400mW Transmit Power. It has two omnidirectional antennas rated at 5dBi each. They can be replaced with even a higher gain antenna. It supports 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi standards running at 2.4Mhz. The maximum data rate is 300 Mbps. Each SSID can be tagged to a separate Vlan and they come with the EZ controller which is a free download. The Engenius ENS202ext Outdoor AP currently sells for under $100.