Continuing on the trend of squeezing the most bang-for-the-buck out of muppethouse.com I have a small handful of half-baked solutions on the verge of existence.
Most muppethouse users have some sort of high-speed internet connection. Usually these services provide you with a dynamic, yet rarely changing IP address. Running servers on this dynamic connection would require at least a static hostname to be useful. DynDNS and No-IP have been the solution for many, but if you are like me you have found these services rather unreliable. For those of you who are connecting to your muppethouse mail through IMAP, providing dynamic DNS based on your IMAP access will be trivial. This will be more reliable than the DynDNS.org client built into my router - you don't have to sign up for anything and it will be secure. I'll probably just change muppethouse.net to be the dynamic zone, then all you'd have to do is set up port forwarding on your router at home and then you can connect to a web server at your house. For example, Wesley opens Thunderbird at his house, then I access http://wesley.muppethouse.net:8080 with my web browser. Fun.
Ok, that one lacked a lot of excitement, but this one is a little better. For those of you that aren't HTML and CSS junkies, I now have a way for you to upload your pictures to muppethouse.com for viewing by the unwashed masses - it's called Gallery. Slide shows, random pictures, and an easy interface await your visit. I still need to do a lot of work on this one, so be kind.
I've saved what is, in my opinion, the best for last. Asterisk, the Linux PBX and constant source of Ryan-raving, will soon be a reality on muppethouse.com. This means free worldwide long distance for those of you that want it. You'll be able to get a muppethouse extension; this allow you to dial 10 to reach Ryan, 11 to reach (fill in user here). Be a part of the muppethouse IVR solution, connect to FWD and IAXtel, have your voicemail sent as an attachment to an email... Asterisk may even be able to do your laundry if I get the right plug-in. I find this rather exciting, but perhaps I'm the only one... ok, I'm outa here.
I have to admit that I did not understand that first techie thing at all... and I am still somewhat tenative about using Gallery based on my previous experience with it (which boils down to a forthcoming deathbed regret that I will never get that wasted time back)... But I am excited about the whole phone thing. Cool stuff. Lemme know if you need any testing or whatever. It all just seems so "The Future".
ReplyDeleteOk, here's more details on the Dynamic DNS thing. Lets say you're at work... you know you have that important file, bookmark, picture, or email on your home PC, but driving home is a huge pain. Enter Dynamic DNS and VNC. Install a simple program on your PC, spend about 5 minutes caressing the config page of your Linksys router, and you're done. Now you can go to a web page and bring up your home desktop.
ReplyDeleteYou could also use this to share files a-la Tom's FTP server... now you don't have to connect to ftp://62.83.212.117. You can use a user-friendly name like ftp://tom.muppethouse.net.