iNuron

Enable internet access to your McNucle Server: troubleshooting

2007-11-05T10:26:00.000+01:00

Hello,

The main purpose of your McNucle server is to make your data available to you and your friends over the internet. To make this possible the correct settings have to be made on your Mac and your internet connection.

In most setups our solution works 'out of the box' and the settings are done automatically but unfortunately this isn't always the case...

Therefore we have put together a troubleshooting page that should allow anyone to enable internet access to his/her McNucle Server. You can use this page as a test to check if your server will be available, or you can use it to solve a problem you encounter.

You can find the troubleshooter here

We've also added a schematic overview of the mechanism we use to enable internet access. You don't have to understand this mechanism to use the McNucle Server but it can certainly help you solving an eventual problem.

You can find the overview here

Offcourse you can as always turn to our forum for help: http://forum.inuron.com

Have fun with it!

Maarten

Instantly sharing all your files with McNucle v1.3. For all ages.

2007-10-23T10:45:00.000+02:00

Hello out there,

do you have an elegant way of sharing pictures, movies, music and documents with friends and family? Are you tired of resizing your pictures before sending them through, or fed up with having to upload your data all the time? Getting phone calls from you parents that they don't seem to be able and access what you have shared? Sharing pictures through Flickr, movies through YouTube, documents through Skype or MSN....

As of today iNuron will be offering a practical and concrete solution for these problems: McNucle 1.3 (beta). With only 1 new, major feature, called WebSharing, added to the McNucle server, users can instantly share all the files they want, right off their desktop.

For those who have missed the McNucle so far: The McNucle server is a data server application offering remote access and data management functionality via a rich, intelligent browser, the Nucle Browser.

With the addition of the WebSharing functionality a number of features come to play:

1. Instant Sharing: since you are sharing data right off your desktop, and don't need to upload your data, whenever you decide to share a zone (folder), its contents will be instantly available.

2. Unlimited volumes: you can also share as much as you want, from whatever is available on your desktop or attached devices.

3. No software to install: people receiving webshares from you do not have to install any additional software themselves. They just use their genuine webbrowser to access your zone.

4. Optimized bandwidth consumption: viewers will not be starting to download all your content and consume all your bandwidth. We auto-generate thumbnails and previews in a micro website, so that viewers can validate content first before downloading.

5. No resizing of pictures: with large previews being generated by the McNucle server and offered in the WebSharing microsites, there is no need anymore to start resizing pictures yourself. These large previews are small enough in size, still giving the full experience of the picture itself.

6. For all ages: really, my parents know how to use this, my kids love to click through the microsites. They even starred in our demo video ;-)

Experience a sample of a microsite of an arbitrary zone here.

And if you would like to see our instruction tutorial with yet not so great audio quality (better coming soon), check it out here.

Hope you like our new approach... Feel free to give it a go!

Check out the release notes for more improvements and fixes in McNucle 1.3.

Regards,
Jorre.

Listening to our users: Serious Update 2

2007-09-09T21:03:00.000+02:00

Ha, we all love to say we listen to our users, but that most often doesn't show obvious from the software. In this case I believe we can say this second serious update is all about listening to our users, i.e. solving their problems...

We have prepared a first makeover of the user interface ànd fixed a couple of important issues.

The user interface update is mainly a reshuffling of the top buttons, but we also added a couple new ones. These will allow the user to invite people to share data, ànd to add new folders or volumes as zones. Quick and easy. For more advanced stuff, the management GUI remains your friend.

The fixes we included are solving less obvious situations, but those people who love to experiment with the software may have run at least into one of them... You can find the details of the fixes in the release notes.

Enjoy!

McNucle Public Beta: Serious Update

2007-07-31T16:21:00.000+02:00

We just released a serious update to our McNucle v1.0 Public Beta! The update contains a good number of interesting new features and fixes. This is a preview of the most important ones:

1. Super-effective data searching with the Metadata Navigator (aka KeyBlocks)
The Metadata Navigator is an amplifying filtering mechanism, providing maximum efficiency when searching for data. A user navigates through his data set by selecting metadata relevant to the data in search.

Our KeyBlocks only show what is possible and update that with every step to achieve the most powerfull data search available today! Read more here...

2. Interesting usage statistics
In order to understand which parts of our applications are working, and which don't, we have integrated a statistics gaterhing mechanism in both McNucle server and Nucle Browser. The statistics are collected anonymously and include a number of config parameters (number of zones, number of users) and usage statistics for visual components (scope panel, shortcuts, desktops, keyblocks). The information will allow to tune our roadmap and improve our products. Important to you and us: the (anonymous) information is for internal purposes only and will not be sold to external parties. See also our Privacy Policy.

3. Browser starts up to 5 times faster!
The Browser startup sequence has been changed for the application to start in many cases about 5 times faster. The verification of zones being available is now done once the application is launched.

4. McNucle server runs on any port
The McNucle server runs by default on port 12000. In case of conflict on port 12000, this port can now be changed to any port of the user's choice. The configured port is automatically opened on the firewall if UPnP is enabled. In other cases, the user needs to open this port manually.

5. Complete install on port 80
The iNuron Registrar now listens on port 80 for the entire installation procedure. This will allow almost all people to succesfully install the Nucle Browser, and eventually the McNucle server. Even when behind a closed or corporate firewall...

6. Update mechanism
The new upgrade mechanism allows both the Nucle Browser and the McNucle server software to upgrade themselves. From now on you won't have to reinstall the software to get the latest version. All settings (zones and users) will be preserved. This is not yet the case for the upgrade to this release. Find out how to upgrade to the latest version of our software on our product portal.

There's a couple more fixes and features listed in the Release Notes of this Serious Update n°1.

Hope you like it! Give us your feedback on our forum... replies guaranteed.

Kind regards,

the iNuron team

Will the iPhone change interface design?

2007-07-17T13:11:00.000+02:00

With the iPhone, Apple has brought multitouch technology to the consumer market. Ever since people are dreaming, blogging, predicting, rumoring, announcing and hoping that this technology will soon be used in other devices going from cellphones to mediaplayers to multitouch-tablet-computers and even tables ;-) . It is not unlikely that within a few years a large amount of people will be interacting with websites and applications (even OSs) by touching the screen of a device. Let's think of how this hardware evolution could influence interface design for software and websites.

Interaction design:
The beauty of the iPhone is that the sofware is integrated perfectly with the hardware. Each part of the interface is built to be operated directly with your fingers. This is not the case for all the websites, applications and OSs we use today. In the future both mouse operated computers and touchscreen devices will exist next to each other.

One solution would be to split every application/website into a 'mouse version' and a 'touch version'; designing everything so it fits the interface of the user. Digg must have been (one of) the first website(s) to have a seperate iPhone version of their popular website. The site matches the iPhone's screensize and interface animations. Obviously it would be ideal to have a seperate version of each application/website for each device but we all know that's impossible. Even creating one version for mouse-devices and one for touchscreen-devices will take a lot of effort, money and time but it will produce the best results.

Seperate versions for multitouchscreens will probably first be developed in minisites and small applications where creative use of the multitouch capabilities can draw attention and create buzz. Flash designers must be bursting with ideas for multitouch websites with navigation based on zooming, rotating, pulling, twisting, poking ...

For the majority of websites and applications I think it is more likely that the interfaces will be built to suit all devices. How? Let's highlight some aspects that should be kept in mind when making an interface accessible for touchscreens.

No more rollovers:
Like most touchscreens that are operated without a stylus, the touchscreen used in the iPhone doesn't know where your finger is when you don't make actual contact with the screen. This means interface elements will no longer have an 'over' state. It is no longer possible to 'investigate' if something is clickable by moving the mousepointer over it. Therefore buttons and links must be easy recognisable so you immediately now if something is a link/button or not. Apple likes to make use of rollover effects in their OS (dock, exposé, ..) so they'll have to redesign all that if they are working on a touchscreen-powerbook.

Finger-extentions:
The tip of a mousepointer is one pixel by one. The tip of your finger is way bigger and hides the piece of screen you'r interested in wich makes it unsuited for precision pointing. Apple has solved this in the iPhone by adding a virtual extension to your finger. When you drag your finger over text the textcursor appears in a magnifier above your finger. You can imagine this kind of solutions being usefull in image editing where you often want to make selections on pixel level.

Big buttons with lots of spacing:
Because of the size of your finger it is harder to hit small elements. More spacing between elements reduces the chance that you hit two elements at the same time.

The impact of touchscreens on interface design will depend on the popularity of touchscreen devices. Untill today, none of the manufacturers has actually announced a multitouch tablet, operated without a stylus that runs a regular operating system. Time will tell how we will use computers in 10 years.

regards,

Maarten

Interesting links:
design guides for touchscreens (a bit outdated but still interesting)
Bill Buxton's article on multitouch technology
some technical considerations

edit: two more related articles; why do people build custom iPhone website?
on TUAW
on Ryan Irelan's blog

100% privacy guaranteed

2007-07-03T09:27:00.000+02:00

We dealt with privacy briefly in this previous post, but I wanted to come back on it, since I believe it is crucial to quite a number of our (potential) customers.

It is just that in times like these where we are all in love with web 2.0 services and uploading files at incredible speeds and amounts, people tend to forget about how private files are to them. Or they don't, but then have no way of sharing those files with family or friends.

We built our McNucle server to help in these cases. Privacy to us is crucial (as is providing an answer to your heavy upload consumption in web 2.0 services) and we would not compromise that what makes our solution so valuable: the 100% privacy guaranteed.

We do this by having the Nucle Browser and McNucle server connect over an end-to-end encrypted SSL tunnel. Off course, if you are on the internet, we need to offer a way for your Nucle Browser to find your McNucle server at home. Many people have dynamic IP addresses at home and regularly loose contact with their home network. To avoid this, we have our McNucle servers registar at iNuron, so that when your Nucle Browser comes and asks us where your McNucle server is, we can hand him your latest IP. Very similar to DNS really. And after this negotiation, the Nucle Browser and McNucle server communicate directly with each other...

Anyway, have a look at this comprehensive picture/animation. If there are questions, shoot..

Regards,
Jorre.

How to make a real smooth software tutorial with Snapz pro

2007-06-22T10:19:00.000+02:00

We use Snapz pro (by Ambrosia software) to make the software tutorials on our website. We did quite a lot of experimenting to get to the result we wanted. So I thought it might be usefull to some of you to round up our findings.

Criteria: We made the movies to put them on our website so we wanted them to have a small filesize and yet, they had to be detailed enough to have the text on the screen legible.

Issues: The biggest issue to us was that we move the mousepointer all over the screen when we use/install our software. So we had to be able to capture almost all of the screen's real estate.

METHOD 1 - failed: Our first reaction was to capture the entire screen. This (of course) resulted in a huge file. So we scaled it down what made all the text blurry and useless.

METHOD 2 - getting better: So we started experimenting with the 'smooth pan' option. With this setting the area that is captured follows your mousepointer in a smooth way.

We set the captured area to 500 px in width (about the width of our wizard) and scaled it down 60% to get a 300px movie. We found out 60% of the real size is about the smallest we could go to keep the text legible and have an acceptable filesize.

But.. we were not completely satisfied; because we had to move the mousepointer a lot the screen was moving constantely. You got seasick watching them. Some of the movies on our website are made using this technique, can you spot them? ..

METHOD 3 - that's more like it: So we came up with this technique. First we capture as much of the screen as possible with an aspect ration of 55 x 50. We scale the movie down to 60%. Then we save this movie and play it in quicktime.

In the next step we play the quicktime movie and capture it again. This time with this settings:
- w:300px h:280px
- scale 100%
- cursor invisible.
- smooth pan

Now start the capture and hit enter right after you start to make your quicktime movie play. Now you can mouve the captured screen around and follow the mousepointer when you want it. Just make sure you don't move the captured area outside of the quicktime movie or the borders will show.

Filesize: To keep the filesize small we use these video settings:
- 10 frames per second
- no keyframes (this makes a huge difference)
- best depth
- medium quality

Secret ingredient: After the movie is published, we open and save it with Amateur. This freeware quicktime clone makes the filesize a lot smaller: 66.4 MB in quicktime to 5.5 MB in amateur. The loss of quality is really acceptable.

We were quite happy with the result. Compare this movie shot with smooth pan to this one made with the technique I just explained and judge for yourself.

So a little round-up ([dutch]wat hebben we geleerd vandaag?[/dutch]. The trick is to capture the screen at fullscreen, scale it down, and then capture the movie again moving the camera were you want it to be. then compress it with amateur.

note:this is just the way we do it, this method works for us. Know how to do it better ? Just post a comment :-)

regards,

Maarten

Privacy and security

2007-06-18T18:35:00.000+02:00

We (partly) started building this application because we wanted to do the things you can do with online storage/sharing services, without having to worry about our data not being save and private. None of us was willing to use an online storage/sharing service in combination with private data like family pictures or medical records.. Let me briefly explain how our software works to assure you that you can use our software without the risk of exposing your data:

To enable you to connect to your Mac over the internet you need to know the IP-address that is assigned to it. The McNucle server registers your Mac's IP address to iNuron's 'registrar' and keeps it up to date whenever your IP-address changes. When you start the Nucle Browser it contacts iNuron's 'registar' to find out what your Mac's current IP-address is. The Nucle Browser and McNucle server then set up an encrypted end-to-end tunnel based on SSL. All communications and data transfer goes through this tunnel. Non of your data ever passes through our servers or is stored on our servers.

Others wonder if the use of a McNucle server opens up their system to possible threats. We can reassure you. The only thing the McNucle server does is open 1 port on your firewall (port 12000). This is similar to what other services like for instance peer-to-peer networks do.

regards,

Maarten

Back to my Mac? Not after you tried the McNucle!

2007-06-13T12:02:00.000+02:00

Like many of you, we also took a look (with special interest) at last Monday's WWDC keynote session. And our eyes fell on one particular new feature announced for Leopard: Back to My Mac! Anybody who knows what our McNucle does, can see that this feature has a number of commonalities with our product (for those of you who don't, feel free to get a grip on it at inuron.com). Now, what most people asked me the past 24 hours are obviously the differences. I'll offer you the most important ones below...

Full Support for remote Macintosh and Windows users!
Back to My Mac is only providing support for Mac clients to connect to your Mac at home. The Nucle Browser is identical and full functional on Mac and Windows (handy for people like me who use both platforms regularly).

Finegrained authorization!
The McNucle server offers you the ability to easily create users, and share on a folder level. You can grant finegrained access rights for each folder and each user on three levels: read data, write data and edit metadata. It seems that with a .Mac account, you can grant rights only on a read-write level per system.

Remote administration!
Within our Finder application, i.e. the Nucle Browser, you can administer your McNucle server completely, check out its status, connected users, etcetera... and all that is available at any location, even remote!

Our Finder is a real Metadata Editor!
Apart from offering the capability of searching your data based on metadata, our Nucle Browser offers you at one go the ability to preview the objects ànd to edit the metadata attached to it. On top of that we offer tools (desktops, metadata editting of multiple items, ...) that make metanization a piece of cake. We believe this is the minimum for people to make the jump to a personal, metadata managed dataset.

McNucle is FREE!
Our McNucle v1.0 is freeware at your convenience. The required .Mac account to enable the "Back to My Mac" functionality sadly enough is not with a basic account that is currently available at 99,95$ per year.

McNucle is available today!
Leopard is due to come out in October. Our McNucle offers so much more and is available today! No need to be patient, just download it here...

And there is more to come!?
Well, with Leopard on its way by October of this year, we still have some great plans in the meanwhile. We'll keep you posted via this channel/blog. Hope to see you here more often!

Kind regards,
Jorre Belpaire

Cheap Storage, now what ?

2007-06-11T16:33:00.000+02:00

Last weekend, I bought myself a 500GB harddisk. Heck, I pay less than 30 ct/GB while two years ago, I had something 1 euro/GB as a rule of thumb. So the prices are dropping fast and it seems this is merely the beginning.

Be that as it may, I feel that my habits are changing too. I'm like a hamster. I never delete stuff from my harddisk, and I can hardly bring myself to categorize the things I put in there, so I end up with a lot of "Downloads", "ToDo" and "CleanUpLater" folders.

So, with my storage problems solved by the Lacies and Buffalos of this world, I should be one happy geek, but alas, that's not the case. "Mo' storage, Mo' worries" it seems.

Now, I face 2 other problems: I can't find my stuff anymore, and I can't always get my stuff when I'm not at home. I tried multiple solutions, most of them based on ssh to connect to my home machine and locate, beagle or spotlight to locate my stuff, and then a later secure copy to get it where I am. The problem is that this approach only brings me limited results. For example, some time ago, I was at a party talking about the pyramids in Giza and I was bragging about this picture were I'm almost picking up one of them. Of course, I was unable to produce it fast enough.

I have progressed a bit since my earliest attempts: What I need to do is put my pictures in a zone, and tag them be it briefly. Browsing around with the Nucle Browser, I can quickly locate my stuff, and verify if this is what I wanted.

Ok, great, but I'm not there yet: not everybody has good bandwidth, so I might be able to locate what I want, but downloading my favourite movie (3.9GB) to where I am is not always feasible. I need bigger pipes! Everybody needs bigger pipes! But seen the evolution of file sizes, and comparing that to the evolution of bandwidth, I think it's only going to get worse.

Anyway, as closer I just want to stress, that I am a happy geek most of the time, but that has other reasons: I'm one of the lucky few that can work in a company where they try to solve one of my personal problems. Somehow, that's compensation for all the long hours we put in here @ Inuron.

have fun,

Romain.

PS.
should add the Giza pyramid picture here, but it's at home, on my other machine ;)

Share! Metanize! PowerSearch! Upgrade your Personal Content today!

2007-05-31T10:44:00.000+02:00

iNuron has the pleasure to announce today the release of the McNucle server and Nucle Browser in public beta! Go check out the press release for the official announcement.

At iNuron, we believe that a pure service oriented internet is not what everyone on this planet is waiting for. We do love the web 2.0 movement and participate heavily ourselves, but for some matters we feel it is not satisfying our needs. Like for example when we talk about managing personal content.

We love the idea of having access to personal content from anywhere, but not at the cost of uploading all the data (certainly most intimate or personal data) to an online service. Would it help if we could allow users to keep their personal content within the boundaries of the home network, yet provide secure access from anywhere? Allow sharing with friends and families in a controlled way? If it does for you, I would say go ahead and get to know our McNucle server.

Hope you enjoy it and find yourself a new way of storing, retrieving and managing your personal content.

This blog has been designed to become our main channel of communication on our products in general, their features, roadmaps, updates, maintenance and much much more... Feel free to subscribe the rss feed and stay up-to-date!

Over the past months we have been working incredibly hard to get the software where it stands today. Feel free to download and play with it. That is what we released it for... And although we know that it is only a matter of time before people run into bugs and issues, I do believe we have done what it takes to get most of you up & running pretty smoothly. In any case, do register to the iNuron forum and tell us about your good and bad experiences. We'll do anything we can to help you out when needed...

As a last note I would like to say thanks to all the guys here at iNuron for their dedication to this project so far. I admire their spirit to make this project a success and I hope you (as a user) will sense that while using our products. I guess it is pretty suitable to end this blog entry today with:

This is just the beginning...

Kind regards to all of you,
Jorre Belpaire.

I can walk on fire, it ain´t stopin´ me
It´s just showin´ me the way
Come thunder, lighting all over me
I´d still be on my way

You can put me through loads of trouble
But in anyway

It´s just the beginnin´ and not the end
No use in pretendin´ cause you can´t win
It´s just a beginnin´, the beginnin´
Not the end

It´s not a strange behavior, it´s the way I am
Nothin´ puts me down
And if a situation would get out of hand
I´d still be back around

You can put me through loads of trouble
But never bring me down

It´s just the beginnin´ and not the end...

I can walk on fire, it ain´t stoppin´ me...

You can put me through loads of trouble
But in any way

It´s just the beginnin´
It´s just the beginnin´
It´s just the beginnin´
It´s just the beginnin´

It´s just the beginnin´, and not the end...

Enjoy the silence

2007-05-24T13:24:00.001+02:00

Silence is communication.

While pictures sometimes say more than a thousand words, silence most often raises more than a thousand questions. People have no answers to silence, apart from the one offering it.

Just sit back and relax. Enjoy while it lasts... we may break this silence... soon (again)...

The iNuron Team.