Almost everyone has a personal email address (or two or ten) and by far most of them are free accounts at AOL, Yahoo!, Hotmail or Google. We all love our own email accounts at these providers because we can access them from anywhere, the user interfaces are great and we simply trust that our old email messages will always be there. Google Docs, Zoho and other applications like Basecamp have enabled us to move more applications to the Web. So it should be kind of expected that our own desktops, the place where we save our files, should be available to us any time we’re connected to the Internet. Desktoptwo is a virtual desktop with the goal of making you completely computer, OS and browser independent. Desktoptwo offers all the basic applications that one needs on a desktop like email, a notepad, an address book and an MP3 player. It has a desktop-like feel and gives you a taste of what our desktops could become.

Now, I think that I am actually ready to give up my desktop, but I’m not quite comfortable to do it the Deskktoptwo way. It’s an intriguing solution, but somehow it seems too old school and I don’t think it’s how we’re going to get rid of our desktops. But it worth checking out and knowing about.

Have you tested your Web site in different browsers and on different platforms? Web designers tend to focus on the one or two that they deem most important and often forget to test their Web sites in other browsers and on other platforms. That normally means testing sites in IE and Firefox, but the different versions of IE and Firefox and different versions of operating systems are ignored. Besides, very few have access to all the different browsers and operating systems, not to mention the hundreds of combinations that you get when you include screen sizes, Javascript versions and Flash enabled.

Browsershots is a free, open source solution for your problem. Browsershots takes screenshots of sites and displays the screen captures in .png files. You can use Browsershots as a free online service, but what makes this product cool is that it’s available as an open source (written in Python) download so that you can run it on an internal server. This is very useful when you need to test a site that isn’t live or accessible from the Internet yet. (more…)

If you have multiple computers all connected to the same network and would like to access them from one mouse and keyboard, Synergy might be a good alternative to a KVM switch. With Synergy, you can redirect your mouse and keyboard to another computer and screen by moving the mouse to the edge of the current screen. Synergy can be configured to arrange screens the way they are physically arranged to become one big virtual screen. You can also copy & paste between computers and screensavers can be synchronized. It’s great for developers and system administrators that run multiple computers with different operating systems. Synergy is an open source project.

Looking at my Google Analytics reports I noticed that a lot of people are finding my site by searching for terms like “WinXP virtual appliance” and “windows live CD”. My guess is that they’re hoping to find a free download. Well, they are available - but, they’re not legal. Besides not being legal you shouldn’t trust them because it can’t be from a trusted source and who knows what’s installed on there. If it was a trusted source - like a friend - then it’s an illegal copy but hey at least you trust it

However, you can create your own VMware Windows virtual appliance or live CD if you had a windows installation CD. You really need a fresh Windows installation CD (with an unused license) to create a legal Windows VMware virtual appliance. However, you can legally create a Windows live CD from your original Windows installation CD using BartPE. But wait, you can run a live CD virtual appliance so then you do have a way to get a free WinXP virtual appliance! (more…)

Live CDs have become quite popular, but I’ve always argued that it’s easier and more convenient to run virtual machines inside a host OS because it gives you the Internet and file access that you typically need when experimenting with something new. Never mind the hassle to actually burn live CDs. However, there are many more live CDs available than there are VMware virtual appliances. Here’s a neat little script that will enable you to launch a live CD, as an ISO image, inside VMware Player. Here’s what you need to do: (more…)

In a previous post on VMware virtual appliances I wrote about how easy and convenient they are. So it is good news and for good reason that the VMware directory of free virtual appliances has grown. The directory is up to date with recent versions of most (free) operating systems and many applications. They even have a “Voice Mail RSS Feed Generator” :). Personally, I have been mostly using a WinXP virtual appliance - one that I had to create myself using the VMware server (also free, but because of the XP licensing it’s not really “free”). (more…)

Virtualization is becoming more real and if you ever wanted to try Linux, but have been too afraid to install it or give up your Windows or Mac, the VMware Player will allow you to run most operating systems virtualized. The VMware Player is a free application that allows you to run virtual appliances. It is a perfect sandbox solution: test and install applications without messing up your desktop. VMWare Virtual Server and Microsoft Virtual PC allow you to create and run virtual desktops or servers on your desktop. The VMware Player is a light weight virtualization server without the overhead of a full fledged virtual server that has system management features.

A virtual appliance is a fully pre-installed and pre-configured application and operating system environment that runs on any standard x86 desktop or server in a self-contained, isolated environment known as a virtual machine. Virtual appliances provide an evolutionary step in the software distribution model.

There is a substantial list of free virtual appliances available on the VMware site, including operating systems like:

• Debian
• Fedora Core (4 & 5)
• FreeBSD
• Gentoo
• Kubuntu
• Puppy Linux
• RedHat Enterprise
• Ubuntu

and applications like:

• BEA WebLogic
• BugZilla
• MySQL Network
• Twiki

All you need to do is to download install the VMware Player (it’s a 28MB download). During installation it will ask if you want to disable autorun on your cdrom and also if you want to install the Google Deskbar, which you typically would want to disable by unchecking the checkboxes. To use the player you can either download pre-built virtual appliances or you can create your own. To use a pre-built appliance, simply download the one you want and open it with the VMware Player. You can also create your own virtual appliances, e.g. a virtual Windows XP desktop, by installing the VMware Virtual Server. It is currently in beta, but it is free for home use and it works just fine for creating virtual appliances. Note that you will need OS and application licenses (as usual) for the products that you install on the VM instance (e.g. Win XP).

So for me, as a new-cool-app-I-have-to-try-it type of person, this is awesome. It’s like having unlimited sandboxes at hand

VMware
Microsoft Virtual PC (MS Virtual Server 2005 R2 Enterprise Edition is currently available for free)