Terminal > Preferences > Settings > Keyboard

Use the “send string to shell” option for each key.

They provide:

• Cross platform server software (written in Java)
• Live transcoding of audio
• Apps for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone
• A web interface using a flash player

No matter how large your music collection, you can stream it to your mobile device in real time over the cellular network.

While they claim to be an Open Source project, Subsonic is really open source donationware. Ads are displayed in the web interface and streaming to mobile devices is given as a 30 day trial until you make a donation of at least 10 euros (which at least is a reasonable price). I should note that the license is for the server software, not the client, so once you have the server software installed any number of clients can connect.

The licensing issue

While I think it’s a good idea to donate to open source projects, I don’t like how Subsonic forces people to donate. So three minutes into the source code, I found this:

    public boolean isLicenseValid(String email, String license) {

        if (email == null || license == null) {
            return false;
        }

        // Little point in doing anything more fancy, since there are
        // easier ways to disable the nag messages.
        return license.equalsIgnoreCase(StringUtil.md5Hex(email.toLowerCase()));
    }

So basically, take the md5 hash of any email address, and you have the license code.

echo -n any.email@address.com | md5sum
529df0963c44d1ee53d2d574fa311e01

Wrapup

The interface could use some work, but the base of the software seems pretty solid. I’ll be testing it out for the next few weeks for sure.

The Requirements

• Enable syncing of a single folder across all registered computers in real time. If a part of a file is modified, only the modified chunk should be sent to the server.
• Web application that enables playback of video (mkv/avi/mp4) and audio (mp3, m4a) files and download of all other files.
• Android and iOS apps (no syncing, just streaming).
• Ability to host the central server myself.

Possible Solutions

Ubuntu One’s service seems perfect at first, and I assumed (wrongfully) that they would release the source code for their server for all too use. So scratch that idea. There’s quite a controversy about it actually.

Sparkleshare appears to be getting closer to what I want for file syncing. The used the git protocol for version control. However git is not optimized for the syncing of large binary files like media. It would work perfectly well for text though.

Tahoe – LAFS is a very interesting concept which fully encrypts the data stream and spreads it out among various servers. It still doesn’t address the problem of media streaming.

Rolling my own

With the options I found with Google exhausted, it looks like I need to start planning my alternative system. I can use some existing open source software to build upon.

• Rsync – should enable the computer-to-server syncing where only modified bits are transmitted.
• FFmpeg – will be needed for the live transcoding of media files for the web service and iOS / Android apps
• Apache or perhaps some other webserver.

It’s going to be a long project, but perhaps someday it will be completed.

The keyboard works pretty well in both portrait and landscape mode. I’ve also installed the swype keyboard, which is going to take some getting used to. I don’t really like the idea that the keyboard requires network access

The camera, while good for a cell phone still is not at the same level as the iPhone 4′s camera. While some people believe the lack of 1080p video is a major problem, I think it is just a selling point for advertising. A lens that small can’t really be expected capture HD video anyway.

Three display on the Nexus S is quite excellent and usable in sunlight. I still need a good app for reading epub and PDF books. On the iPad, I used GoodReader, but I have yet to find something for Android.

While the iPhone might have a superior interface, the Android phone’s voice recognition features are very useful. One handed texting via swype works quite well now too.

My whole family also got android phones (Samsung Replenish) which they are getting used to.