Automation Adventures

Slowly but surely I’m getting to a working Ubuntu workstation. Tonight I finally made some time to set up the VPN connection – thereby freeing myself from lugging a Windows laptop to and from work every day…

Instrumental in setting this up were two websites: PattonCentral (describing his experiences on setting up version 4.6 and 4.8 of the Cisco VPN Client), and popey.com, which is the actual step-by-step instructions (although they are for version 4.6 – version 4.8 doesn’t need the patching as described).

After that, starting the VPN client was simple, and by using the built-in Terminal Server Client I was able to access my work desktop computer. For the connection protocol: RDP works, but RDPv5 works better if you’re using lots of Windows keys.

Next step – bloody iPod synchronization (still haven’t quite figured out gtkPod…).

In the Google Talk blog, Lewis Lin announces that plans are underway to “explore interoperability” between Google Talk and Skype. The press release is here.

Since they seem to be in the exploratory stages, it may be some time before we actually see the product on the market. It will also be interesting to see how the interoperability is achieved, since Google Talk uses Jabber/XMPP, which is pretty open, and Skype uses a completely proprietary protocol. My guess is Skype will incorporate the Jabber/XMPP to allow to talk to Google Talk, and to any other client that uses the same protocol. That way, they don’t have to open up their internal protocol to their competitor Google (Skype being owned by eBay, Google developing their own payment system to compete with PayPal, etc.).

Tags: Telecom