Living, breathing mice evolved over millions of years. The Apple mouse has mutated from a beige box to contoured sliver, like a big drop of mercury, in just over 20.
via Gizmodo.
Here’s a great guide from the Tech Arena forum for how you can easily setting your Windows Home Server to accept a VPN connection, useful if you’re travelling and need to access your network directly rather than via the web server.
Create the VPN Network Connection on your WHS
Get the access of your server using a remote desktop connection or via the Advanced Admin Console addin. Move to “Control Panel” – “Network Connections” and select “Create a new connection”. Select “Set up an advanced connection”.
Select “Accept incoming connections”, and then “Allow virtual private connections”. At the “User Permissions” screen, select the user to whom you want to get the VPN access. Select “Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)”. Choose “Properties” and specify IP addresses in a range outside of the ones that are normally used by your DHCP. Confirm by selecting OK, then Next. Click Finish.
Now set up an exception in your firewall. You may need to forward port 1723 in your router to the Home Server IP address.
Setup the VPN Connection on your Laptop
On your laptop, run “New Connection Wizard” by going to “Control Panel” – “Network Connections”. Now select “Connect to the network at my workplace”. Then select “Virtual Private Network” connection and give a unique name to this connection.
Then enter the website name for your home server eg. xxx.homeserver.com. Then select “Do not use my smart card”, “Next” and “My Use Only”. After clicking “Next”, select the check “Add a shortcut to this connection to my desktop” and click “Finish”.
Test the connection by clicking on the shortcut created on your desktop. Enter the username and password. If the connection is setted up properly, test it to make sure everything was done correctly.
Make sure that VPN connection is active and the laptop is connected to the server. Then install the connector software which will be found in the Software shared folder on the server.
via Techarena
One of the most annoying limitations of Windows 7 is the fact Microsoft has removed the ability to remote desktop into a computer running the Home Premium edition, fortunately the experts at The Green Button forum are already on hand to not only enable this feature but extend it, with multiple co-current users able to login.
Whilst this doesn’t sound like much, this has enabled me to remote desktop onto my home media center using a second account whilst the media center is still playing happily on my main television. This helps with tasks like updates, media management and even recording dvd’s.
This update is highly recommended for anyone with a dedicated Media Center box and works with Windows 7 Ultimate, Professional, Home Premium 64 bit and 32 bit.
Update patch
http://www.mediafire.com/file/0qznddamqkz/Concurrent_RDP_Win7_RTM_patcher.zip
via The Green Button
I‘ve always been curious of the Movie Library function in Windows Media Center, whenever I have gone into it, it just seemed to take forever to index my movies and never contain any more information that the pictures + video browser had.
Only recently have I decided to dig around to work out how to get this element of MCE working properly. As it turns out it’s not as simple as one would have thought, it requires external software to download the movie data and store it in the correct place, but is worth the effort setting it up as it brings a new dimension to browsing your collections.
The core issue is that Movie Libary needs an xml file in each of the movie folders, otherwise it needs to scan each folder, which takes so long, it’s really not worth even considering using this service.
Each movie folder needs to contain an image called folder.jpg, which should be less that 1000px high, otherwise the movie library won’t load the image.
Media center holds additional information for the movie synopsis, genre and year in a folder called DvdInfoCache that can be found by going to %AppData%\Microsoft\eHome\DvdInfoCache. This data must be on the local machine and can’t be stored on a remote server, the xml files within this folder contain a code that matches the xml file within the movie folder, this enables the local machine to pull all the details quickly, whilst not having to store the large movie files.
I ended up wanting to manage the process of creating the folder jpgs and movie xml files manually, so I used MetaBrowser a wonderful free app that I can manage remotely on my home server (via remote deskop).
I have paired that to the DvdInfoCache folder which I’ve shared from my media center, this means I can now manage my Movie Library without having to use my media center locally using an option within MetaBrowser.
MetaBrowser can be setup to automatically pull all the top rated movie details found, similar to another fully automatic application called Yammm, but this at least has some options for going back and reviewing and changing those details, it they are incorrect.
Only recently have I decided to dig around to work out how to get this element of MCE working properly. As it turns out it’s not as simple as one would have thought, it requires external software to download the movie data and store it in the correct place, but is worth the effort setting it up as it brings a new dimension to browsing your collections.
The core issue is that Movie Libary needs an xml file in each of the movie folders, otherwise it needs to scan each folder, which takes so long, it’s really not worth even considering using this service.
Each movie folder needs to contain an image called folder.jpg, which should be less that 1000px high, otherwise the movie library won’t load the image.
Media center holds additional information for the movie synopsis, genre and year in a folder called DvdInfoCache that can be found by going to %AppData%\Microsoft\eHome\DvdInfoCache. This data must be on the local machine and can’t be stored on a remote server, the xml files within this folder contain a code that matches the xml file within the movie folder, this enables the local machine to pull all the details quickly, whilst not having to store the large movie files.
I ended up wanting to manage the process of creating the folder jpgs and movie xml files manually, so I used MetaBrowser a wonderful free app that I can manage remotely on my home server (via remote deskop).
I have paired that to the DvdInfoCache folder which I’ve shared from my media center, this means I can now manage my Movie Library without having to use my media center locally using an option within MetaBrowser.
MetaBrowser can be setup to automatically pull all the top rated movie details found, similar to another fully automatic application called Yammm, but this at least has some options for going back and reviewing and changing those details, it they are incorrect.
I’ve been a big fan of this addon for a while, it creates a user interface to view, upload and stream content from your Windows Home Server onto your iPhone (or other smart phones for that matter).
The setup can be a bit trying, it has improved in recent versions, but there are a couple of tricks to effortless mobile connectivity…
1. Always use the most recent addon on the server AND app on the iphone, updating one without the other does cause connection issues.
2. Remember to configure each user in the addon settings within the Home Server
3. Don’t forget to open the port 8169 on your home router (you’ll need to have remote access switched on obviously)
More details can be found at Compugeeksoftware
If you’re having trouble getting remote access working on your Windows Home Server, here’s a list of ports I recommend opening up…
443 – Secure Web Server Access (https)
4125 – Whs Connector over Remote Desktop Protocol
80 – Web Server Access (http)
3389 – Remote Desktop Protocol
8169 – WHS Mobile Addon
1723 – VPN PPTP
Photo by Tim D
Love this guys office space, the mix of large screen mac front and center, surrounded by the brick and boxed wall really works (not to mention the grand piano in the living room and beautiful deck built outside)