My good friend and fellow tech head Adrian has been upgrading his home network (substantially) and dropped an open inquiry from his blogsite the other day for user comments about their own setups, as I’m what you may call globally mobile at the moment I thought it might be fun to give a quick breakdown of my travelling tech.

Two years ago I gave up the corporate shirt and tie, sold my house, eBayed all my possessions and now operate online from a suitcase and “carry on bag” from whatever Craigslist apartment I’ve rented in whichever country I happen to be in at the time, and it all works remarkably well (the tech travels in the carry on bag).

The core of the operation is the MacBook Air, I did buy myself a MacBook (Black) 2.14GHZ unit whilst in NYC last year (which was a real flying machine) and whilst the Air is a touch less zippy it’s a different class when it comes to portability and I can’t rate it high enough. Although it’s lowly 1.6GHZ Core-Duo won’t run multiple VMWare Fusion machines (like the Macbook would) I easily managed for 6 months in Costa Rica running a single Ubuntu VS on it and since purchasing the wonderful (and now indispensable) Dell Mini 9 for server development it’s back to breathing easy, even more so after upgrading to Snow Leopard, in fact I’ve a now previously unheard of 20GB of free disk space to play with as a result.

The Dell then, I know I seem to mention it in every blog post lately but it’s worthy of the exposure. Server side it runs Ubuntu 9.04 with a full LAMP stack for development plus BIND9 & Squid proxy DNS/WEb caching, up front I’ve installed the ubuntu-desktop for Vuze-ing and demo-ing the TMG O-Build (and for Lesley to use if she doesn’t fancy taking her Powerbook to Cafe Tous Les Jours), there’s an 8GB (for software dumps) in the SD slot and it sucks down nightly torrents straight onto a SAMBA shared 64GB Spaceloop USB key.

Let’s move on to the fun part now, the infrastructure which connects it all..

When you’re mobile and renting month to month you can never be sure what sort of internet connection you’re going to be provided with, it can vary from a fully wired locally installed router to flaky unprotected shared open Wi-Fi (like it was in NYC), for this reason I never leave home without my stunningly versatile Airport Express, I really don’t think you can beat these little things for either travel OR home use.

Here in Berlin we share the landlords 2MB Wi-Fi link and although the Air’s 802.11n Airport can pull a signal out of the upper stratosphere Lesley’s somewhat more mature G4 Powerbook isn’t as reaching, enter the AExpress and the 2nd man in the game, the pocket sized Netgear FS105 4 port network switch. The AExpress quite happily joins the existing Wi-Fi network, re-distributes through it’s ethernet port into the switch and on via a 4m Cat5 into Lesleys laptop. Cabled it may be but it’s a whole lot easier for her to access Facebook than balancing on one leg in the corner of the apartment trying to catch an intermittent signal through the 802.11g, in fact the AE cabled link is so solid I use it for the Mini server too (hence the switch).

Subsidiary items include -

• My iPod Touch – SO nice to have, I love the Touch

• Mains powered USB charger – For the iPod Touch

• Disk spool of copied software DVD’s – The originals are in the UK

• A second USB key (16GB) – Used for Ubuntu USB boot builds on the Dell

• A spare 2m Cat5 cable – Although you can invariably source them cheaply

• A 1.5″ square 4 port USB hub – Which I haven’t really used this time round

• A 150GB FAT32 USB Powered “Formac” HD – For Time Machine backups

• A UK x4 plug trailing floor socket – Saves buying multiple foreign adapters

• Philips SHL9600 fold up headphones – So much better/nicer than ANY earbuds

• External USB powered DVD drive for the MacBook Air – Invaluable when you need it

And that’s the hardware, it may look and sound to be quite a lot to carry about but it really isn’t, the laptops slip into their sleeves, the cables & other bit’s get chucked into a tupperware tub and it all drops quite happily into the carry on bag with room to spare.

For software sync and backup I use an easy combination of DropBox, MobileMe and a few IMAP eMail accounts to supplement local storage, all of which are seamless and accommodating from wherever I happen to be (providing there’s a web link). Last week I was contemplating a pukka on-line VS but as the Dell caters for all my server needs be there internet access or not I realised there really would be no point.

Email – the enabler of the electronic age? Our very own technological spokesperson, Apple fan-boy extraordinaire, Ubuntu advocate and undisputed King of Twitter, the man Stephen Fry, nailed it with his recent blog-post “Office Slavery” in which he laments the loss of the office secretary and highlights the resultant time sapping vacuum we drop into each day trawling through our digitised messages, as ever he’s right on the button and I’m not going to further drag out the scourge of lost hours spent replying, forwarding and CC-ing, we’re all more than aware how much our lives are ruled by the keyboard and the inbox. No, in this post I just wanted to drop behind the scenes of actual content for a moment to highlight a few of the technical hurdles mainstream users may not be aware of, you may think with email being the prevalent and integrated norm it is there might be some degree of stability around the majority of services offered to us, however you’d be surprised.

Let’s start with the two types of home based email, POP and IMAP, both allow you to read, send and forward etc, but it’s what they do with the actual messages which leads to potential “fun”, basically an email account configured to use POP invariably downloads everything from your ISP’s server onto your computers hard disk, IMAP mail leaves it up there.

Both POP and IMAP have good and bad points. With POP, as the full mail folder is stored on your own computer it’s easier to back everything up to a USB device and equally as easy to replace all folders should you need to restore your account at anytime (for example if you’ve had to rebuild your PC), however POP only facilitates archive mail views from a single machine whereas IMAP, due to all data being held online, offers concurrently synchronised operation and viewing from any number of machines (or handhelds such as iPhones & iPod Touch’s). Although incredibly useful for dynamic users all IMAP data is lost should your hosting company take a dive without adequate backups in place, yes, even if you’ve configured the account for “offline” viewing (IMAP offline viewing only applies to the current “live” connection, re-connection to an empty account will only display what’s online, not what “was” online, contrary to what you may think there’s no local archive once the connection is made back to the server).

Now, I’m sure you have confidence in your hosting company, they wouldn’t lose your email account? No? Believe me it can happen, I previously hosted with http://www.maiahost.com who lost all my data for the whole of May, email, blog posts the lot, and all without so much as an apology, obviously this was somewhat stressful but I suppose it’s a risk you take with cheap hosting and I quickly moved on (luckily I was mid-projects and it wasn’t a major show stopper, others might not have been so fortunate).

Post “maia” I re-located to UK2, one of the largest hosting companies in the the UK. UK2 offered a reasonable package deal with proffered multiple daily backups which after previously jittery hosting unprofessionalism seemed quite alluring, however, after signing up I was rather disturbed to discover that although the web hosting aspect was fine they didn’t offer a secure email option for IMAP. Secure email should (In my earnest opinion) be an absolute given for an IMAP connection, it utilises something called “SSL” (secure socket layer) which unlike POP provides a locked and secure end to end “tunnel” between you and the server, thus preventing your messages and content from being hi-jacked “en-route”, I like that, I like that a lot.

Where am I now then? Well, I had a stable website but un-secure email, still not good enough, so, seeing as Snow Leopard was coming out I decided to blow the dust off my redundant .Mac (dot Mac) account to see what I could do with it.
Apple revamped dot Mac a while back into something new & whizzy called “MobileMe” and I had a hit and miss relationship with it for a few months last year which resulted in me setting it to one side. A year on though with increasingly favourable press I was pushed to think it might be a nice geek-applemac-fanboy touch to start using my legacy “mac.com” email address again (seeing as how you can’t obtain them anymore). Everything was good (of course) and I’d actually forgotten how seamless, quick and easy configuring Mac email from a Mac was, it felt so nice after being away I did actually wonder what the problem had been before (as it goes I actually can’t even remember), as in life this can happen when you re-acquaint yourself with an old friend.

The interim non-Mac accounts had obviously done a bit of work for me over past year and I needed to keep them active. Dot Mac offers a nice way of achieving just this whilst negating any concerns regarding the potential flakiness of dodgy hosting hardware, you simply configure your Mac account to pull down external POP mail into a sub folder, it’s really cool and offers a nice option for duplicating all external messages by leaving them in-situ on the source, the folder replicates down to your Mac mail client, get’s checked accordingly and everything ends up under one roof, safe and sound on the Apple servers.

The advantages of going “back to Mac” have been immediately apparent, aside from silky smooth integration I use the slick webmail interface to get through Comcast’s fussy mail servers and re-contact my mate Andy in Florida (Comcast seem to block most of the mail from Europe – wf?), the iPod Touch loves dot Mac and I’ve even dumped my Google Cal and gone back to iCal & associated sync ups, yes, everything is back in it’s place and happy with SSL connectivity as standard and the statutory 20GB of available iDisk / Webspace sat waiting for me to fill it up, I can even host websites up there using the interim domain names I purchased which seems like something worth looking into.

Back to Mac then, I may even renew my subscription when it comes round

In the absence of any more imminent Ubuntu releases for a while today I’ve moved back to my other source  of amusement, the iPod Touch, and in particular mobile ‘Document Management’.

Today I’ve discovered the Mobile Studio app from the guys at PixioTech, but what is it, why is it so useful, how does it work, what can you use it for, and how come I’ve only just discovered it?

What is it? Well, it’s an iPhone/iPod Touch app (obviously) and although it’s not free at £1.19 I don’t think it’ll break the bank.

Why is it useful? Mobile studio utilises your devices wi-fi connection and enables you to transfer files to and from your device using any network enabled computer running any flavour of operating system, yes that’s right, OSX, Linux or Microsoft. The iPod/iPhone needs a wireless connection to your network but the client computer can be either hard wired or wi-fi’d.

How does it work? Download and install it to your device from the App store, fire it up and you’ll see five folders – Docs, Movies, Music, Pictures & Sample files (you can edit these, alter  RW options etc, or delete them), you’ll also see a green bi-directional arrow transfer button down the bottom right hand corner of the Touch screen, this is the key to it all, tap it and you’re taken into the sharing screen, tap start from there and you’re shown your iPhone (or Touch’s) wireless ftp address & access port number (mine for example is ftp://192.168.1.11:2121), just use this address in the ftp program on your computer to access the folders on the iPod Touch/iPhone (obviously both devices must be on the same IP subnet). I use ‘Transmit‘ for ftp on my Mac because I like it but Cyberduck is a great free alternative. Just drag and drop, or whatever you do .

What can you use it for? Well not only can you easily transfer non-iTunes based files over from your desktop computer for storage, backup and viewing but you can now edit them later while you’re out and about, yes, I know, cool huh, but there’s more, you can also email them on when you’re done. Mobile studio can handle a multitude of workable file formats from MS Office to iWork to image & audio, basic text and PDF viewing, iPhone users can also take photos from inside the application and edit/mail them straight off, most useful. Unfortunately there’s no method (as yet) for transferring received email files into Mobile Studio however development is an ongoing process and I’m sure it’ll come, for now it’s a huge step up from the standard offering and what with this and now being able to SKYPE from the iPod Touch it seems things are really coming together.

And why haven’t I discovered this sooner? Well it’s a big place the internet, it takes some getting round, I do my best.

Free cloud storage anyone?

I’ve only being able to find a maximum of 10GB for free up until now, mostly a 50/50 split of synchronised media/other data from the likes of Humyo and had settled on the 2GB allocation from the wonderful people at Dropbox, however a possible alternative seems to have sprung up from a rather controversial source, the monolithic IT giant themselves Microsoft who are offering a free 25GB ‘Skydrive‘ to all and sundry.

Too Much Green aims to highlight cost effective alternatives from the stable world of open standards and see no reason at all for running an expensive virus prone Microsoft operating system on your desktop PC merely to access the ever increasing world of browser based cloud apps when there’s Ubuntu to choose from, it’s a no brainer, however you can’t ignore a free 25GB of cloud storage, you just can’t, so I haven’t, hell has frozen over and I now have a Windows Live ID….

So what’s it like to use? Well, not ideal unfortunately, it’s certainly no FTP offering, you can’t upload folders and there’s a 50MB limit on file sizes, good effort, close – but no cigar I’m afraid, I’ll see how it pans out but as my main requirement for cloud storage is for use as an archive software library I can’t see it being much use above my existing DropBox space.

Will I EVER manage to upload my 2.3GBG Adobe CS3 .DMG? I must admit it’s not looking promising.

So then, in the continuing quest to sidestep MobileME’s $99 a year using existing free services the previous post gave us cloud based calendar & To Do list integration for Thunderbird and set up syncing with the iPod Touch/iPhone (which by the way is working seamlessly) but what about contacts? Without contacts a comms suite isn’t actually a comms suite, again not a problem, hello Google contacts (standalone) and the Zindus add-on (and as before this is aimed at T-Bird on the Mac).

As you know I don’t have a GMail account (I like my private address and prefer to be less generic) which isn’t a problem with the standalone Google contacts service, first things first, let’s set that up, all you need is an empty account at this stage, go HERE to set one up.

All done? Cool, now you’ll need to populate your T-Bird address book, this is easy, just export your Mac contacts as an LDIF file and import it into the T-Bird address book, next download and install the Zindus add on (HERE).

All done? OK, from the T-Bird ‘Tools’ drop down menu select ‘Zindus’ to set up synching with your Google contacts account, input your Google details and your address book will replicate up to the Google cloud, that’s the computer end finished, now to sort out synching with the iPod Touch/iPhone.

The quick and dirty way to do this is through iTunes and as contacts don’t (usually) change *too* much I think we can allow a hard wired solution (well I can). Connect your iPod Touch or iPhone, select it in iTunes, pop the ‘info’ tab and tick the ‘Sync Google Contacts’ box, that’s it.

We’re done.

To sum up, we’ve got cloud sync between desktop and iPhone/iPod Touch for email (IMAP), calendar & To Do’s (using Google & Remember the Milk), and for our storage (using Drop Box), now we’ve also got Contact replication (using Google Contacts), and all for free, not bad for a brief two days R&D.

Give me a shout if you would like expanded advice on procedures in the Sync posts, Linux, or anything else featured on Too Much Green.

As an alternative to MobileME I thought I’d evaluate a replacement cloud calendar service, preferably with desktop sync, preferably with a To Do or Task list (I’m a staunch list maker) and preferably both viewable and editable on the iPod Touch (or iPhone), in fact never mind *preferable*, I demand all three, not only that I want them for nothing (If I had to support myself as a user I’d hate me).

Although I don’t have a GMail account Google calendar had to be the starting point, as did the superb open source mail client Thunderbird for my IMAP mail as it’s no big deal integrating the Lightning calendar add-on and getting it to talk to Google, here’s how.

Before we start make sure you’re running T-Bird version 2, I was on the Beta 3 version and had to downgrade for plugin compatibility (bah..!), you lose tabbed browsing but it’s all more or less the same bar a few on screen fonts, oh and before I forget, I’m a Mac OSX user, the procedure may be similar on a PC but I wouldn’t know. So, OK then, download the Mozilla Lightning calendar plugin and install it (LINK HERE), next configure your Google calendar, you do have a Google account yes? If not it’s a no brainer to set one up, really, it’s very straightforward.

Once you have your Google account (and calendar) set up and the Lightning plugin installed you need to set up a new calendar, this is the fun part and I discovered a super quick way of doing this without faffing about with another extra plugin or having to go back into Google (which is the other, longer way). It’s not *that* bad to do but there are a couple of steps involved so I’ll start a new paragraph and treat you to some bullet points -

• Firstly, in Thunderbird open the Calendars section

• From the ‘Calendar‘ drop down menu on the top bar select ‘New Calendar‘ and (obviously) ‘Create a New Calendar‘

• Select ‘On the Network‘

• In the next box select ‘CaliDAV‘, the address you input here will be as follows – https://www.google.com/calendar/dav/YOUR GOOGLE USERNAME/events/ (*IMPORTANT* – Make sure you have the forward slash at the end or else the window won’t let you click to the next section)

• Input your Google password when asked, give the calendar a name, choose a colour, check the email address is correct and finish, your new calendar will appear in the left hand pane.

Functionality isn’t 100% as far as I can see but it’s close, and only lacking in so far is there seems to be a glitch with the alarms, no big deal for me however and I’m going to look into it, I may have overlooked something in my excitement.

Right, tasks (or ‘To Do’s) next then. The Google calendar doesn’t support such a low end requirement (beats me why) so I use the superb (and free) cloud based service ‘Remember the Milk‘, pop on over there and create an account, I’ll see you in a moment.

OK, now you have your RTM user name the next thing to do is to download and install the relevant Lightning Add-On for it, again very easy and available HERE (Register with Mozilla first to access). Once installed it’s the same routine as before (up to a point) -

• Top menu bar > New Calendar > Create New Calendar > On the Network

• This time select ‘Remember the Milk Provider‘

• Input the web address of your RTM account, the format will be as follows – http://www.rememberthemilk.com/home/YOUR USERNAME (No forward slash required this time)

• Name the new calendar (MILK?), choose a colour, check the email address and finish.

You will now have two calendars in your list, one from the Google cloud and one from the RTM cloud, one for Events and one for Tasks, cool, but you’ll be wanting to view them on the iPhone/iPod Touch too of course, no worries, this isn’t a problem and only involves downloading one app (Remember the Milk only offer a chargeable optimised iPhone app, obviously trying to make a few quid to offset their free service, fair enough)

First download the Google Mobile App, install it and fire up the Calendar, fill in your details, save it to the home screen and that’s the calendar done. Access for Remember the Milk is even easier, just open Safari and go here > http://m.rememberthemilk.com – This address takes you to the old skool generic mobile interface, it’s not iPhone-esque but it does the job and it’s really not bad, stick your user-name and password in the boxes, save the page to the home screen and that’s it.

There we have it, another free software solution for you put together from ‘what’s already out there‘ by Too Much Green, not *super* straightforward but certainly a workable solution which I know will only get better with the final release of Thunderbird 3, and of course you have to remember this is a FREE solution, Apples MobileME service will set you back $99 a year.

In todays global financial meltdown we’ve never been as aware of our cashflow, I’m certainly more on the case than I’ve ever been although do suspect moving from a regular job with a regular wage dropping in month in month out to a more *interesting* income stream may have contributed somewhat, in fact yes, most definitely.

Online Banking is the norm these days but if you’re like me you may also keep your own separate tally (I’m the sort of guy who keeps all his ATM slips for weekly input into my own records). There’s a whole shedload of personal finance packages out there with the apparent best ones obviously to pay for if you want to install them onto your computer (“Quicken” for example, admittedly free online but only US based as they request a ZIP code, plus it’s all listed in $) however me being me and this being Too Much Green I do of course have a really nice free alternative from the cloud (where else), this post will not only save you money it will help you to keep track of the cash you already have.

I use an online (cloud) service called ‘Moneytrackin‘ which is clean, simple and intuitive, however it’s other big pull for me is it’s total anonymity (depending on how you configure it). You can set yourself up as Yogi Bear if you wanted with an account named “Yogis Picnic Basket Fund”, it doesn’t matter as you’re only keeping a tally of numbers, it’s simple and effective (to coin a phrase).

You can set up as many accounts as you like in multiple currencies (Boo Boo’s college fund or Ranger Smiths Retirement), you can add tags and categories, view graphs and expenditure forecasts, set up periodic transactions, transfer between accounts and projects, set monthly limits and both export and import data in CSV or XLS format, the service also provides a public API should you wish to link in with third party applications.

I really like it, it’s free, it’s cloud based and there’s an iPhone/iPod Touch app, what more could you want.

It’s just a shame the Picnic Basket Fund isn’t doing as well as it was, ING emailed this morning with their new interest rate – a whopping 1%, jesus, this time last year I was pulling 6.5, mind you that was from an Icelandic institution, what fun I had when that all went tits up.

As you know I’m presently a big fan of the mobile lifestyle, partly through need and related ease of transportation but also partly due to the mental clarity and lack of conscious clutter it brings, it’s quick, compact and cathartic being able to pack all my worldly possessions into a Caterpillar travel case and a Crumpler backpack – clothes, toiletries, books and tech, it’s all in there.

Admittedly I could do it all with even less as I hang on to a few nice to haves. I have two cameras for example, the little robust W60 is the one for travel proofing and the E-410, although a DSLR, in it’s defence (and mine) is the smallest of it’s kind, I also only have the kit lens so it’s no real hardship to lug about for higher end photo-projects such as KONEKTION:KOMUTE. As for computing, my needs are a notch above a regular traveler due to the nature of my work with JINGSOFTWARE but even so are trimmed to the bone by the wonderfully lightweight and inversely powerful MacBook Air, however for anyone without the need for full blown development I.T resources en-route there are some superb options available for basic e-mail, web & SKYPE/Twitter-ing, it depends how low you want to go and how much you’ve refined your addiction/need for compulsive on line activity (I struggle with that, I know it and admit it).

Across the modern connected world of today there’s an abundance of internet cafes which negate completely the need to carry any personal tech at all, coupled with the increasing use of cloud computing it’s logical and  easy to keep copies of important documents online with photographs uploaded into the likes of Flickr or Picasa, everything’s accessible but you are of course tied to the cafes with their hourly surfing costs, so, what are the options?

Let’s pass over netbooks for a start, although portable (and fashionable) they’re still no more than a small laptop, we can get much more compact and a great place to start is the iPod Touch.

Basically the Touch is a Wi-Fi enabled mini AppleMac computer running OSX, as such it runs the Safari browser for 640×480 web surfing, will connect to Twitter & Faceache and will allow you to check your e-mail, it’ll even play MP3′s (remember it IS an iPod..!), with the addition of an inline headset mic the 2nd gen units will also function as a verbal comms device using apps such as TruPhone, if SKYPE got their act together and brought out a native client for the Touch’s we’d really be motoring.
The Touch’s are a great little device but as WYGIWYH units (what you get is what you have) the lack of any data manipulation can be restrictive, you’re also limited to the availability of Wi-Fi and although it’s getting better free hotspots are still substantially in the minority…….plus…….we can go even smaller, not only that but smaller with more options, how about a computer on your keyring? If you need data manipulation & local file access coupled with uber portability in the extreme you could always consider a PenDrive computer.

A PenDrive computer isn’t exactly as it sounds, of course not, a USB stick sized computer would obviously be too small to use. What a PenDrive computer does is to hold the operating system and your data files only, you have your own personal configuration and information all ready to roll, all you need is a host to plug it into and boot from, it’s much easier to ask someone for a loan of their computer if you’re not going to be touching their installed operating system (and reading their emails). Data on the host computer isn’t accessed or modified in anyway and once done the files you were working on are saved, the stick goes back on your keyring and the host grinds itself away booting it’s virus riddled instance of Windows XP from it’s rattly old IDE hard disk (ha ha).

All operating systems these days have configurable options for creation of a USB PenDrive computer however to keep things cheap, robust, cross platform and fun I’d recommend a flavour of Linux from the world of open source, specifically Linux Mint, or the even cooler cat in the club – Dreamlinux, the swish OSX-ey style desktop release from Brazil (yep, Brazil…!). Both are freely available distributions based on the Debian>Ubuntu version of Linux but with an even more desktop orientated experience and comprehensive range of ready to roll applications, they both look superb and PenDrive creation is a breeze.

PenDrive computing is an embryonically exciting area with huge potential due to the increasingly mobile human demographic and our related computing requirements, admittedly it doesn’t offer the flexibility of personal web access from your room in the hotel like the iPod Touch but hey – use both, that’s the beauty of the whole solution. A USB PenDrive computer needs a footprint of around 2GB max, add an extra couple more for extremes of data storage and you still won’t break the bank, I use a 16GB USB stick from Play.Com which cost me under £20, it doesn’t break the bank, or my back.