Left your files at home? FeelHome makes them accessible

Since the dawn of networking, people have been able to use FTP to connect to remote systems and access files on them. When windowing environments came into vogue, developers began putting windows around the basic File Transfer Protocol. And when the World Wide Web was born, software developers soon put a web front end on remote access. The latest example is FeelHome, a client/server system that makes it easy for users to access their remote files.

Developer Thomas Thelliez says FeelHome comprises two components: a desktop application written in C++ using the Qt open source SDK, and an online application written in JQuery, PHP, MySQL. From any Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux desktop you invoke a small application that asks for a username and password. FeelHome then connects to a web-based FeelHome server, which checks its database to see if any remote computers are connected with the same account as the one that signed in, and lets users connect to the remote computers with a single click. Once connected, users can access files and folders on their remote systems directly from their favorite web browser.

Thelliez says FeelHome’s key strength is its simplicity and ease of use, which he contrasts with the “long and difficult server configuration and good computer and network (TCP/IP) administration skills” necessary for FTP. The tradeoff for this ease of use is the necessity to register at FeelHome’s site before you can use the software.

In this beta version, FeelHome uses the insecure HTTP protocol to connect computers and transfer files. Thelliez says the next release, scheduled for next month, will support more secure HTTPS connections with SSL encryption. “We chose this protocol because it has no proxy limitations. You can access the Internet from anywhere in the world.”

Even with a secure protocol, the developers are addressing security concerns in other areas. “The application’s job is to transfer information, not to keep it,” Thelliez says. “Each time users explore a new folder or transfer a file, as soon as they receive what they requested, every related file and information is automatically deleted from our server. During the short interval when this information is on the online server, it is stored in an encrypted folder. We keep no sensitive information in the database. Every password is encrypted with a specific algorithm such that even the team cannot read users’ passwords.”

During the current beta period, which Thelliez expects to last for a few months, the project hopes to gather user feedback and improve stability and performance. Eventually he hopes to add features to the application such as a file manager, “and we are also thinking about creating a universal mobile client to access remote computers.”

Thelliez began working on FeelHome after becoming frustrated at having left documents behind when he needed them for meetings or presentations. “I needed a way to easily access my hard drive from whichever device or platform I had handy. I realized it would be a great idea to make drives accessible to everyone.” He spent four months working on technical specifications for the software and then six months developing and testing it before its first release. A second bug-fix release arrived last week.

Thelliez uses the Eclipse and Qt Creator IDE to code the C++/Qt and PHP parts, and Firefox and Firebug for the JavaScript and JQuery parts. The FeelHome web site runs Apache over Debian Linux. “I chose those tools mostly because they are all efficient, documented, and of course open source.”

A similar respect for good tools led him to SourceForge.net. “I began hosting another project on SourceForge.net two years ago and I was very happy to see the enormous amount of features provided. Every tool we need is provided by SourceForge.net: there is a great file manager, a simple way to manage releases, and also a lot of great open source software available for managing the project, such as Piwik for the web statistics and dotProject for team management.”

In addition to welcoming feedback and comments on the software, Thelliez says the project could use help from testers and developers to port the client source code to other devices and platforms, including various Linux distributions and mobile phones.

What’s brewing in open source

All open source software is free as in speech, and some is free as in beer. And then there’s the open source software that’s all about beer.

For instance, there’s Brewsta, which lets you create and maintain beer recipes. It’s written in Python and runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Its developer is also the brain behind Brewiki, an online resource for home brewers.

Brewtarget is similar to Brewsta. It’s cross-platform too, and under active development, with its most recent release just in time for the New Year’s Eve parties and code commits already this year.

And Brewthology makes three. This app is a web-based brewing recipe database that allows users to create or upload beer recipes. Visitors can view, rate, and download recipes as BeerXML files.

Part of the home brewing experience is keeping a log of your triumphs and disasters. BrewBlogger runs under Windows, Mac OS X, and BSD operating systems, and not only lets you record your brewing activities, but also provides a blog-like forum in which you can share your experiences.

If none of the above slake your thirst for the perfect beer application, you can check out a host of older, less popular offering, such as CyberBrau, The Brewery, BrewNIX, brewCalc, and MacBarley.

If you’re ready to take a break from all that hands-on with hops, check out the FH-Ingolstadt Beer Game, a Java implementation of the MIT Beer Game created by students of the Fachhochschule Ingolstadt University of Applied Sciences. It’s not a drinking game (hi, Bob!) but rather a way to demonstrate principles of supply chain management. Lots of people speak highly of German beer; now you can try a German beer game.

If you’re still sore at Germany because of a couple of major wars in the last century, how about Belgian Brewer? This web-based multiplayer game is designed to let you buy a pub and buy beer for that pub.

Finally, all the cool breweries produce not only beer, but also beer mats or coasters. Some folks like to collect them – and for them, there’s phpBddb.

Both Belgian Brewer and phpBddb are inactive and never got very far, but they’re available for some enterprising developer to take over and give them new life. Prost!

Tellmatic stands out for do-it-yourself newsletter management

There are several online alternatives for managing mailing lists and sending out newsletters, but if you prefer complete control and no ads, you really need to do it yourself. One good alternative is Tellmatic, an application for writing newsletters and sending them out via SMTP.

Tellmatic includes features you usually get only when buying proprietary newsletter software. It helps you take care of the quality of the addresses in your pool, because no matter how big your mailing list is, it’s not worth much if you don’t know whether your addresses are valid. You can send messages to a queue, and configure Tellmatic to use a cronjob every X minutes to handle message sending in steps so as not to overload the server. Tellmagic reports some statistics, and can show a world map of mailing readers and subscribers courtesy of the free GeoIP library. The software also features bounce management, supports multiple SMTP/POP servers, provides import and export of e-mail addresses, and offers a form generator to make individual subscription forms. You can customize all of its features through a graphical user interface.

Developer Volker Augustin began working on Tellmatic in 2006, when he was asked to write a newsletter tool for a company. “They pointed me to a commercial web site and told me to make a newsletter system with the same feature. Three months later, when I showed them the first version, they decided they were not willing to pay for all the features, so the job was canceled. That left me with half an application. What to do with it? I decided to go open source, with a first release in March 2007. I created a project on SourceForge.net, because while there are several obscure download platforms out on the Net, SourceForge was the most reliable, trustworthy, and worthwhile I knew.

“I was really surprised at how many downloads I got, and I got a lot of very nice feedback. Feedback was worth more than money at the time, so I continued to add new features and make fixes. Last year Tellmatic won second prize in its category in the Trophees du Libre contest. The prize was €1,000, and that allowed me to get a small notebook and a new server.”

Augustin codes Tellmatic without the assistance of any development frameworks – “just plain PHP, MySQL, and some helper libraries, such as the very nice SMTP class from Manuel Lemos, some drawing libs, icons from famfamfam, the TinyMCE WYSIWYG editor, and optionally the GeoIP stuff, along with some snippets from php.net forums.”

The latest version of Tellmatic came out earlier this week. In upcoming versions, Augustin hopes to add better statistics, better tracking, optimized send routines, automatic bounce management, and other enhancements. He aims to release an update every three to six months, or when he has added several new features.

For some of that work, Augustin could use help. “I get a lot of requests for translating Tellmatic into other languages, but I don’t answer them quickly because of other projects. I’m a freelancer, so work on Tellmatic is limited to my spare time.