Thanks for your understanding.

It appears to create a VPN replicating private network shares called ‘Tubes’ onto a group of subscribed machines. Each machine has its own copy of the files, but when a file changes in any one share, it will be copied to the others. Access rights can be defined so that only certain subscribers can change or remove files but I haven’t found any description of how versioning is controlled when, for example, two people change a file at the same time or if the owner of a file deletes it from his ‘Tube’.

Peer to peer connections are used within the Tubes network, similar to the way Skype uses your bandwidth even if you aren’t making a call. I haven’t found out if users will be host to p2p traffic from people outside their own buddy list though.

Having used community based peer to peer software since Adam Hinkley’s Hotline for the Mac through Soulseek and DC++, I am very interested to see how Tubes develops. If it’s as easy as setting up a Windows share and adding user rights, works through firewalls and with my mobile devices then it’ll be tubetastic.

***UPDATE***
Not such a good experience, I downloaded the installer but it completely failed to run.
Posted for help on the forum so we’ll see if they care.

For now though, I’m still looking for a decent workgroup file sharing system that doesn’t require all machines to be on the same network. Here’s what I’m investigating:

BeInSync – Professional and friendly looking
Unison – Free, open source, academic work. Handles changes to the same file in different locations.
FolderShare – Part of Windows Live, maybe better integrated than the others?

Anyone else got a recommendation?

Late last year, VMWare released a player version of their full Virtual Machine Workstation product. This utility uses ready made disk images or ‘appliances’ with pre-installed OS and software. The only restriction was that the player cannot create new virtual machines. Was a restriction… :)

The following links will help you download and create as many virtual machines as you need, for use with VMWare Player. For example, I currently have a machine running XP with the excrable IE7 installed, while my productive OS hasn’t been soiled.

Creating an XP Pro VM
How to create virtual machines using VMware Player

Software/Tools
VMXWizard – Win32 EXE
ISO Recorder – Burn ISOs natively in XP
VM Builder – Online form
EasyVMX – Online form

Operating Systems
DOS7.1
Knoppix (Linux) installer image ¦ appliance (you need both)

Appliances
More Appliances
Network Analysis
Multi Browser
Old DOS Games

The twist with Webaroo is that they are offering pre-packaged slices of the web, including all of Wikipedia in a 6GB download, as well as a promised 40GB ‘all the web’ package later in the year! Not that it hasn’t been thought of before, and I’m doubtful about the usefulness of a 40GB web archive to me, but the value of being able to grab any number of websites and read them in an airport departure lounge without paying their mad wi-fi charges can not be understated.

One small flaw is that password-protected sites are not easily downloaded – my Bloglines roll would have been nice to have saved on disk, but Webaroo borks at the login page and never gets to the content. According to Webaroo’s online help, there’s a browser-based way to add password sites, but it only works a page at a time… not quite optimal.

It used to be so much easier when I had a Mac. Using the free Claris organiser and its XTND translators I could sync and transfer data in any direction to any format you could imagine including my Palm and Newton devices. This was ten years ago, and I still haven’t got back to that level of control on the PC, although SyncML seems to be a good candidate, if only all the device manufacturers would support it.

Although still quite dependent on Outlook, the writer of this Engtech article has a similar setup to me, and explains how to get all your devices on the same page, relatively smoothly.

Enter Instructables’ step by step DIY USB Phone. Now, all that’s left is to decide on an ordinary household object to build it into. After trying to decide between a power strip and an old Apple mouse (a la Scotty in Star Trek IV) I realised I could just mix it up with another DIY project seen recently… that’s real doody.

To celebrate my successful pre-Wii-order, here’s an Apple spoof comparing the two systems. The Wii definitely comes across as more ‘pick up and play’… but the PS3 seems like the candidate for those long evenings on the sofa. She’ll need her own, I’m afraid…