For about 6 months I’ve had my eye on the RicaVision SideShow Remote but they were not available. Diligent monthly searches eventually turned up a purchase link for the Manufacturer Samples @ $249.99 and decided to go for it. My 2 year old really helped me out when he recently found a way to flip my Pronto into ‘Toddler‘ mode, meaning its bricked.

So 5 days later the RicaVision Remote has arrived and so far I am mostly impressed and very excited about the potential not just of this specific device but of SideShow in general. SideShow really is one under hyped platform that Vista enables and Microsoft is really not doing it justice.

Why this remote and why SideShow? Mostly because the default SideShow Gadget gives you full control of Windows Media player, that means headless song selection that is bi-directional! Cover Art on the remote, bluetooth control etc, you get the idea.

I am going to do a detailed review of it shortly but my initial impressions are :

Packaging : NICE, came in a nice faux leather box

Build Quality : Pretty good for a sample. The chrome is a bit chintzy and you can see waves in some of the plastic but really nothing that impacts usage or even is noticeable unless your looking for a problem

Software : Drivers took immediately although I did have to remove/insert the device post driver install to get it to appear in the SideShow Control Panel.

Configuration : None, it Just Works

BlueTooth : So-so, it seems to lose connection randomly but just hitting back and enter tends to get the job done. Slightly annoying but I imagine they are fixing this with the new version coming out later this year. I was able to change songs from 50 feet down the hall so that was cool. Additionally, sometimes you have to hold the button for a full second or so to get a response. A second doesn’t seem like a lot but try it, you’ll see.

IR : It includes an RC-6 Windows IR Receiver so its plug and play and works as expected

Ergonomics : Pretty weird actually. The remote has 3 distinct ‘areas’, a top black area that controls the SideShow app (QVGA screen + 5 way thumbstick + Back + Menu buttons), a middle area that has another 4 way button pad for Media Center and then the bottom area with the standard Play/Pause buttons. Instinct is to always use the 4 buttons, not the thumbstick. You get used to it but a single 4 way with a selection switch might be nicer.

Overall : I am impressed and excited. This remote will let me control the music in the backyard from the comfort of my lounge chair, no laptop required and no more NetRemote. It also controls Media Player in headless mode, this means you can use it on your primary PC and never see Media Player.

What is more exciting is how dead simple SideShow is to develop for. If you can output XML then you can start building basic SideShow apps. My current plan is to use SideShow to control my Matrix Switch and eventually my Sprinkler overrides. As I get those Gadgets rolling next week I will post about them.

So, more SideShow coming soon and a real review with photos this weekend.

You can use your own arbitrary email address as GSpace storage. This latest release (and possibly others, have not tested) seems to communicate with GMail in a way that relays the data via the GMail SMTP servers and back and forth to your personal server. It appears actually to proxy the login over to the specified server, without any valid gmail credentials..

Pretty simple stuff actually, when you configure it, instead of giving it your gmail address simply give it your personal email address and password. GSpace communicates with GMail which then relays the mail to your personal account. When retrieving it does the same and somehow pulls the content back over. Note that the connection to the 3rd party server comes from GMail, not the connecting client.

My GMail account stays empty (since I never gave it my account id) but my personal email account gets the files as per the screencaps. The connection to the 3rd part mailserver comes from GOOGLE and not from my desktop PC.

Last oddity, if I delete the file from GSpace it does NOT remove it from my server but it is unavailable in GSpace (it must be keeping an internal counter?). If I delete from my email it STILL shows in GSpace(It seems to be caching the files locally).

Some security implications of this would be things like large scale piracy. Someone sets up an SMTP server, distributes the file drop information (login info for an email account on the mail server) and that data is transferred anonymously via GMail with no audit trail. Google can’t look for it since the data is NOT ON THEIR SERVER but thousands of people around the world can easily access the pirated data and be anonymized at the Google GMail SMTP gateway.

Anyone know why Google would be relaying data like this? Seems ripe for abuse… I may be missing something obvious but it feels wrong to me.

Some photos and logfiles

This is the contents of my PERSONAL email account (webmail interface)

GSpace files in Thunderbird via IMAP

Capture of the config screen for GSpace, note that its my PERSONAL account login information.

Screen capture of the contents of GSpace.

Here is my mailserver log. Note that the connection is coming FROM Gmail, not from my office ISP. My personal identity is not compromised in this workflow from a Gmail/GSpace perspective, I am totally anonymous to the 3rd party mailserver(my own in this case).

Download the 1.1 Version that requires YAML

Download the 1.0 Version that requires Storable

There are about 4,353.32 Virtual Host tools for webmin so of course I had to write my own! What does mine do differently?

• It uses Apache mod_vhost_alias to simplify deployment and management of sites.
• It automatically gives each domain a restricted FTP account using Pure FTP
• It supports unlimited alias per virtual host.
• Everything is managed via the Webmin interface

I use this to support ~100 virtual sites on a server and it has really freed up my time in a significant way. Mod_Vhost_Alias is highly recommended, its a nice way to have virtual sites created by simply creating a directory. When apache gets the request it checks for a directory using the hostname (www.crackcocaine.com for example). If it finds it then a vhost is dynamically created with that as the DocumentRoot.

Currently tested on Linux and FreeBSD with no issues, its just perl after all!

Read on for details

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