Do you use Dropbox, Google Apps like docs and Picassa, Amazon webservices or any other sort of oline data storage options ? If you are like me, always worried about the privacy and security of your own data, AND you don't trust others with your own data, then I think I have the solution for you.

I've been following up the development of ownCloud for the past few years, pulling the newest code from the git repositories on a regular bases. I was sceptical initially about the success of this project and it's future directions, but I have to admit now that I am really impressed so far with the way it's advancing. What started as a simple PHP interface to serve files inside a web browser improved fast to become a complete cloud solution that allows you to access, download, edit, view, share and synchronize data across multiple devices and platforms. With the increasing number of applications and developer support, I am now a strong believer that ownCloud will emerge to be one of the opensource cloud computing's best options. It's not that I ever doubted Frank Karlitschek technical abilities and skills, I've always been a fan of these hardcore KDE developers and admire their dedication and experience, it's just that I've seen few good ideas in the past emerge within the opensource community and then die due to lack of support and enthusiasm. But with ownCloud, the objectives were clear, the planning was precise and the execution was exceptional. Their new commercial business model adds more certainty about the future of the project and encourages more supporters and adapters, and it provides needed assurance and security to the developers sending a lot of time developing it.

Enough praising ownCloud, let me give you a bit of information about my experience with it. I started testing ownCloud from version 1, the installation was buggy and frustrating at times, the options were limited and the web interface was anything by simple. At that stage I didn't trust it well enough to allow the access to my data over the internet, but with ownCloud 3.0, I am now using to synchronize data and calendars across my devices all the time.
It's webdav interface allow you to mount the remote server to your phone and use it as a local storage, it's very useful if you, like me, take a lot of picture using your phone and want to back it up and synchronize it online in a place you TRUST and CONTROL. The caldav and cardav interfaces are very useful to synchronize your calendar and contacts across your devices too, now of course you can use google calendar or nokia ovi contacts or whichever service that offer these options, but the main point I am trying to make is that I don't TRUST anyone with my personal data.
Another wonderful option is the Ampache server support, I have more that 50GB of music that I would like to listen to some of it every now and then, and it's very impractical to store this amount of music data on your phone or music player, the solution is the wondeful Ampache server integrated with ownCloud that allows you to stream your music online to any of the player that support the Ampache interface (Amarok for instance).

You can test drive ownCloud and try it here: ownCloud Demo
ownCloud is available in 23 languages, I managed to translate it into Arabic myself with extreme difficulty . A summary of the features offered by ownCloud (copied from wikipedia):

• File storage in conventional directory structures (also via WebDAV)
  
• Calendar (also as CalDAV)
  
• Address book (also as CardDAV)
  
• Music streaming (through Ampache)
  
• User and group administration (via openID or LDAP)
  
• Sharing of content across groups or public URLs
  
• Online text editor with syntax highlighting and code folding
  
• Bookmarking
  
• Photo Gallery
  
• PDF Viewer
  
• Synch clients similar to the dropbox ones for majority of the O.S
  

A good to have options/bugs that I think are crucial but currently ownCloud doesn't support in my opinion:

• Ability to share Calendars and contacts accross multiple users (currently I create a common a count for sharing calendars and contacts with friends)
  
• Incompatiblity with Thuderbird's Calendar plugin , I failed to allow the lightning calendar plugin in Thunderbird to synch Calendars even though I can do it easily with Kontact
  

There are new set of applications plugins currently being developed as part of the ownCloud platform that I haven't had the chance to test yet “like the mail client” that will enrich ownCloud even more.

In the future if I have more time I might create a tutorial on how to setup and configure your own “ownCloud” server.

google   picassa   amazon   storage options   web interface

I think I am not getting enough of knowledge. I've been addicted recently to online courses and TED lectures to feed my brain more and get an insight into other interesting topics. I finished recently the "Machine Learning", "Artificial Intelliegence", "Programming a Robotic Car" and I am currently taking "Design and Analysis of Algorithms".

The next will be "Applied Cryptography". Even though I know quite a good deal about some of these courses, it's always good to test your knowledge and see how experts in these fields present their ideas and pass down their knowledge. I have to admit I've been quite impressed so far with majority of the lectures, in particular Anrew Ng. I highly recommend everyone to indulge yourself with the privilage of free and pure knowledge, it's such a rewarding and self satisfying experience

More for later ...

Regards,
Tarek

robotic car   privilage   interesting topics   insight   ted

CasPlanner is now featured as a showcase project in Qt Ambassadors showcase. Check out this link for more info: http://qt.nokia.com/qt-in-use/ambassadors/project?id=a0F20000004tNQMEA2

showcase project   project id   ambassadors   nokia

I've been working recently on a "Vision Classification" library, this library is based on the EyePatch library but targets Linux/Unix users and it's only the core library (No GUI). This gives you the flexibility of using the library in any application. It's relies on OpenCV for the core algorithms to provide basic classifiers:

• Background Classifier
  
• Color Classifier
  
• Shape Classifier
  
• Sift Classifier
  
• Surf Classifier
  
• Gesture Classifier
  
• Motion Classifier
  
• OCR Classifier (using Tesseract)
  

This is basically an early release, I just wanted whoever is interested in vision classification to give it a go and let me know what they think. You can get the library from svn by : svn co https://cas-robotics.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/cas-robotics/VisionClassification
Email me for any questions/recommendations. Check the wiki: http://www.tarektaha.com/wiki/index.php/VisionClassificationLib for basic information

Regards,
Tarek

opencv   unix users   core library   classifiers   svn

Hi,

  Sorry for the lack of update in the last few months, I've been very busy with work and thesis and didn't have time for anything else. Expect more updates from now on and I will be adding more tutorial sections soon. I've been receiving a lot of emails about the mricp driver and compiling for the new playerstage release. MRICP is now an official plugin in playerstage and you don't have to compile it separately any more, here is the location of the updated driver code if you are interested http://playerstage.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/playerstage/code/player/trunk/server/drivers/mixed/mricp/, it is bundeled with playerstage so you don't have to download it. The driver's name in playerstage is "mricp" instead of "MRICP" (case sensitive) so update your configuration files with the new name.
 Finally, I released (un-officially) a new beta version of autogallery too, this version contains some major improvements and a lot of new features were added since the old alpha version. This release is stable but expect few bugs and you can get it from http://plugins.e107.org/e107_plugins/psilo/psilo.php?artifact.510 (3656 downloads until now ).  More for later ...

Regards,
Tarek

tutorial sections   alpha version   e107 plugins   autogallery   beta version

I just finished from integrating my N95 internal accelerometer with my wheelchair system and now i am able to control the wheelchair by simply tilting the mobile phone. This application has great potentials, i will write a detailed instructions about how to integrate the accelerometer with a linux P.C and upload a video soon. Check this forum link for the code.

accelerometer   forum link   wheelchair   mobile phone   linux

SSPP (Search Space Path Planning) player/stage plugin driver has been added to the download section. This driver is a wrapper for my path planning library and it simplifies the interaction between player clients and the library. The driver works just like the wavefront driver, but it's better suited for narrow areas and passages where the wavefront fails to find paths. All you need to do is provide a goal destination and the driver will find a path and use the underlying position device to drive the robot to that destination, check the wiki for more information. This is the first release of the driver and i haven't really tested it well enough. If you find any bugs or problems please report them to the bug tracker.

narrow areas   planning library   search space   bug tracker   passages

My Path Planning library is now added to my downloads. I have been developing this library for a while and I think it reached a decent stability, therefore I decided to share it with the rest of those who might be interested. This Library uses an efficient path planning strategy that is described in one of my papers . I tried to make the documentation as clear as possible, you can either check the doxygen generated documentation that comes with the library or visit the wiki that contains a guide about how to compile and link the library to your code. Hope you all enjoy it, please report any bugs so that I can fix it ...

planning library   wiki   bugs   downloads

You can now get the MRICP driver from the download section. This is a player/stage driver that provides you with resonably accurate localization and locally consistat maps for navigation and path planning. This driver supports multiple lasers and uses the MRICP (Map Reference Iterative Closest Point) algorithm to scan match. This driver has many configuration parameters that i tried to document as much as possible but the default configurations are sufficient for many cases. Let me know if you find any bugs. Enjoy ...

point algorithm   configuration parameters   stage driver   closest point   default configurations

After a month of travelling in between Lebanon and UAE i am back to Sydney and i will be updating the website more often. I will also add some photos from the trip soon so keep on visiting.

lebanon   sydney   photos