To be honest, I’ve had a twitter account for a while, but since I need a browser (or phone) to get access to it and twit, I hadn’t used it. But that’s about to change (maybe), since I found out how you can twit from command line. Yep, twit away from any UNIX, Linux, OSX (and Windows) Command prompt. Here is how:

1) First find the program CURL for your intended platform. It comes built into OSX and most Linux distros and there is a port for windows as well (use google).
2) Setup your twitter account.
3) Use this command when you want to twit:
curl -u yourusername:yourpassword -d status="Your Message Here" http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml
Now one thing to remember is that the username and pass get added to your shell history, so if you’re on a public machine (or friends) you might clear the history file (ie: use history -c in bash to clear the command history).

Here are two new shots I’ve been working on. I personally like the light-field version (white background). Although the black does have a certain sexyness to it…..what do you think?

Well if you frequently need storage in a flash or don’t want to spend the money on multiple HD enclosures, the HD Rack Super Combo might be the solution. HD Rack Super Combo provides you with just about every external connection you can think of (USB 2.0 mini, Firewire 400, Firewire 800 and E-Sata). On the disk side it accepts 2.5″ and 3.5″ SATA HDD’s. This is perfect for people who just want to have a docking station and plugin bare drives in and out all the time.

Check this out…..it’s absolutely amazing that the pilot actually managed to pull it off.

Been working on dark-field lighting on different glass textures. Pretty neat effect, and as usuall I’ve included howto pics on flickr page so you can study the setup.

Okay so I had two shots….can you tell?

Well I finally took the plunge and signed up for google apps for my domain, nerdlogger.com. I use easyDNS (DNS-Only service & Registry Fees) for DNS and having gone through the setup I thought I would put a summary together for anyone else interested. Remember that this is specifically written for easyDNS (but should apply to other DNS providers with a bit of tweaking).

0) I assume you have your domain registered with easyDNS already.
1) Go to apps.google.com and sign up for a standard account for your domain.
2) Once you provide your info, google will take you to your control panel/Dashboard.
3) Note that google needs to verify that you own your domain. So click on the link to verify your domain ownership.
4) At this point there are two ways of verifying ownership, I used CNAME method and that’s what I outline here.
5) Once you choose CNAME method, the page will pump out a random hostname that you need to add to your easyDNS account so that google can verify your ownership of the domain. These hostnames are in this format: googlefffggghhh12345
6) So now hop over to easyDNS.com and log into your account. Once there under “Domain Settings” look for the DNS link beside your domain entry. Clicking this will take you to the DNS entries for your domain.
7) Scroll down to where aliases and add the following two CNAME entries to the table (ie: add one, click next, go through and come back to the page and add another one):

• “googlefffggghhh12345″ CNAME (without quotes) which points to “google.com”. This entry is temporary and for verification only, once your application for google apps has been verified, you can delete this entry (make sure your domain is verified first).
• “pages” CNAME (without quotes) which points to “ghs.google.com”. This is the permanent address (URL) to get you to your start page (ie: pages.yourdomain.com). You can (if you like) also create more CNAMEs for the other services offered under google apps (ie: calendar, mail, docs and sites could be other CNAMES pointing to ghs.google.com).

The second entry (pages) in the table will just make things go faster, that’s all. Now that you have the entries added to your easyDNS account go to googles verification page and click verify the CNAME button. The process normally takes a couple of hours. So relax, have a coffee, surf a bit and revisit the apps page (just reload it), once verification is done you will see “active” beside all the entries on your apps dashboard.
9) Now, if you like you can have google apps also be your mail server so that people sending mail to userid@yourdomain.com will get routed to google apps. If you need this, log back into easyDNS and go back to the DNS panel for your domain and add the following to the MX (Mail Exchanger) section. Make sure you delete the default MX entry that is already there.

This literally requires you to go through the loop seven times and add the seven entries, maybe if someone from easyDNS reads this, they can have a bulk screen so you can fill it in once and be done with it. Remember that the “Mail for Zone” field is “yourdomain.com” (without quotes). When you’re done and if you’ve done it right your DNS control panel should look similar to this screen shot. Don’t worry about the www CNAME and the A Record that’s pending, those are mine and are required for having a easyDNS custom domain name for your blogger.com account.

10) If you like (highly recommended) you can add the TXT field as well. This will get rid of a lot of spam that would normally originate from yourdomain.com. Do it — please — no one likes spam and it’s super easy. Add the following text (without the quotes) as the text record for your domain “v=spf1 include:aspmx.googlemail.com ~all”.
11) Wait a couple of hours for the dust to settle in DNS land. Now go to your google apps dashboard and activate your Email app.
12) Now back to google apps dashboard, click on each one of the services in the “service settings” menu and change their web addresses, you can see the services I’ve created CNAMEs and modified URLs for in the picture below (ie: click on “Start Page” and change the default web address to http://pages.yourdomain.com or whatever you used for CNAME under item 7).

DONE!

Sixteen months after it’s purchase by Google, JotSpot has been launched into orbit as Google Sites. Our favorite G-Folks have completed their overhaul of JotSpots hosted wiki product. Users now have a choice between five basic templates – a standard wiki, a dashboard where google gadgets can be embedded, a blog-like template for announcements, a file cabinet for file uploads, and a page for lists of items.

Users will now simply embed spreadsheets, presentations and word documents from Google Docs, as well as Google Calendars, YouTube Videos and Picasa Albums. Like Google Docs, Google Sites wikis can be made private, shared with others, or made public. All wiki pages have RSS feeds associated with them to allow users to track any changes.

Google Sites is free (as usual) with a 10 GB storage limit. A premier edition is also available for larger organizations for $50/year/person. Hopefully google will merge it’s undergraduate Google Pages project with Google Sites and create the killer collaboration/social-net site.

Just came across this article over at Lifehacker that outlines how you can build your very own cross platform backup server for FREE…….more information on Restore’s own website. These are some of the key features that set RESTORE apart from the competition:

• Browser Based- Access your RESTORE system remotely from anywhere using the internet. This allows for users and administrators to run backups or check the status of automated backups at any time from any web accessible location
• Access Backups via WebDAV- RESTORE provides the ability to access prior backups via WebDav.
• Web Host Model Reseller environment- RESTORE DC was developed with the web hosting environment in mind also, shifting customer backups from a cost of doing business and turning it into an income generator.
• Permissionable at User Level- Give individuals and groups specified permissions on filestores.
• Security- Set up what you want your users and groups to access.
• Multiple Revisions- of filestores, which allow you to choose the specific filestore you wish to recover at a certain time.
• Error Reporting- Receive reports of errors on the system on various levels and at various intervals.
• Dynamic Scheduling- Allows for simple and complex scheduling that is fully customizable.
• Backup Many Operating Systems- Linux, OS X, Windows (95, 98, 2000, ME, XP NT) and Novell Netware.
• Rapid Recovery- Quickly and easily restore files that you need recovered in real time.
• Incremental- RESTORE will backup only the files that have been modified since the previous backup took place, optimizing disk space and bandwidth usage.
• SSH/SFTP- Backup Linux/Unix operating systems including OS X.
• MySQL Database- You can backup your MySQL Database.
• Servers and Workstations- Backup all server and workstations regardless of operating system.
• FTP Sites- Allows your company to backup websites and online storage.
• Notification- RESTORE will email the administrator and users of successful and failed backups.
• Offsite Backup- (coming soon) Your company can have a separate copy of data kept at an off-site location as a second security resource.

So STOP NOW and backup your system….otherwise you’ll be very sorry, and I will do my standard HhaaaHhaaa when your hard drive takes a nose dive .