2006 25
Fon Liberator
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
Tired of tying up your laptop when uploading and downloading? Try the FON Liberator.
Follow Martin Varsavsky on Twitter: twitter.com/martinvars
No Comments
Mike on July 26, 2006 ·
Er…and where is the USB port on the Fonera pictures we have seen?
Charbax on July 27, 2006 ·
Wow this looks awesome. I hope it supports a usb-hub so I can plug 4 usb2 NTFS formatted harddrives on the thing.
And I would appreciate if the Samba folder sharing can work not only locally but worldwide over the internet somehow.
So that my terrabyte of DivX files can be streamed worldwide to my Wifi-enabled Archos or Zune video player which supports DivX, h264, wmv.. As well as it would be great to remotely order downloads to happen from VOD and MOD services onto my Fon storage.
Does the Liberator not have 4 ethernet ports though? So one needs both the Liberator and a normal 5€ Fon router to have such ethernet network at home?
Albert on July 27, 2006 ·
It will work with an USB hub, as long as it’s powered by an AC adaptor.
You can share your samba folders worldwide just by forwarding the right ports on the firewall. Keep in mind that doing it has some security implications.
Anyway you’ll need huge upload bandwidth to stream video over the Internet.
Martin Varsavsky on July 30, 2006 ·
I have had a lot of feedback, on the blog and in email about our plans for
the Liberator. We have had a lot of good suggestions about all the things
the Liberator could do. We are sure users will hack our product to make it
do interesting new things.
We are designing the board layout at the moment. We want it not to be too
expensive to make but as useful as possible. At present we think the
Liberator will incorporate:
– FON social router (of course!)
– ethernet socket (is there any reason we would need two?)
– USB port (is it worth the extra cost to have more than one?)
We also need to decide what software it should have. We want to integrate
with open web protocols and applications and use open-source software as
much as possible. Currently we are planning on :
– flickr for uploading photos
– YouTube for uploading video
– BitTorrent for downloading large video and audio files
– SMB/Netbios so you can access the downloaded files on your PC or Mac
– web-based interface, to allow you to control your Liberator from wherever
you are
What other programs or features should we add to make the Liberator even
better?
hombrelobo on July 31, 2006 ·
YouTube ? I thought you supported Vpod.tv …. 🙂
Anyway, YouTube needs no support if you allow people to send emails from their PCs / cellphones …. same with many other video hosting services (blip being my favorite). This could finally be a competitor for the danm expensive GPRS …. and I would be the first one jumping on it …. 🙂
Oh, and keep the ethernet socket … the cost is what ? 50 cents ??
But at the end of the day, you only need to create an OS or virtual OS for your users to decide what they want to install. Specially because wnat I think I need know I am sure has nothing to do with what I will be using it for in 1 year … same like 1 year ago I would have never imagined that I would have a videoblog by now ….
Jacques Arquey on July 31, 2006 ·
A new suggestion about “fon liberator” :
People are managing more and more data which are critical for their point of view: administrative information, music , pictures. Providing the required security to the data needs resources and knowledges that people don’t have or don’t want to have. At the same time, people want to access their personal data everywhere and share it. So coupling online storage and universal access (like FON) seems to be a solution.
A lot of actors are emerging in online storage for individuals even with giants like amazon (S3) and perhaps Goggle (Gdrive ?) . But I am not sure that a centralized solution for online storage is a good one. A centralized solution has a great cost because it requires a enormous storage capacity and almost an incredible available bandwidth on the provider side ( In fact we see that the cost of bandwidth decreases but at the same time the user required bandwidth increases).
So my idea based upon a P2P paradigm : A font access point with storage capability could be a an elementary node a global storage network. A fonero wanting to save its data could use a software system to scatter its data on the network on N nodes (the system managing redundancy, cryptography and access rights). When the fonero is wanting to restore data the system uploads the required pieces of data on the nodes and aggregate them (with the redundancy, even if few initial nodes are out of order it’s not a problem).
This idea is not new. Company like allmydata are already on this market niche but they don’t have the FON liberator (storage rely on people PCs !). The open source community is also active on this kind of project with a very interesting project : http://www.cleversafe.org .
A new challenge for the future FON liberator ?
Roberto on July 31, 2006 ·
Another idea: The owner of the liberator can give part of his harddisk space to the FON users on his fon router. why? The users could e.g. upload some pictures at WLAN spped and just give his own FON-Liberator at home as the delivery adress. While he leaves the FON hotspot (upload was at 54Mbit) the Liberator sends the data via broadband to the visitors Liberator at home. So you could really speed up uploading of big data files (lets say pictures from a camera or video) and dont have to wait until everything is send via the net.
Hans-Peter on August 8, 2006 ·
Is it possible, to build a (S-)ATA connector and enough space for a 3,5″ hdd into the FON liberator?
External storage has either low capacity (flashchips), is expensive (laptop hdds) or needs an extra power supply (3,5″hdds).
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Roberto on July 25, 2006 ·
Would love to see a executable, not a .pdf 🙂