Tiernan's Comms Closet

Geek, Programmer, Photographer, network egineer…

Currently Viewing Posts in Cloud Computing

Cloud Desktop becoming a reality

I have talked about the theory of the “Cloud desktop” twice on my older blog (Rackspace’s Hosted Virtual Desktop and More on the desktop in the cloud) way back since 2011. Since then, a few things have changed:

With all the increased bandwidth for mobile devices (4 and 5G, expanding wifi, etc) the idea of having your desktop live in the cloud is getting nearer… interesting times, my friend… interesting times…

[Update] Thinking a bit more about this, and if this was to work correctly, your phone could be everything required. Get up in the morning, check your emails on your phone, calander items, and news. head off, head to the coffee shop and plug your phone into a “laptop” style device like a NexDock and catch up on some emails, checking more news sites, etc. When you get into the office, plug your phone into the docking station and Remote Desktop in to your cloud desktop to do your development work, or whatever needs to be done. basic Office apps and Email can be run direct from the phone. When you get home, you can use the Microsoft Wireless Display adapter to watch videos on the big TV, or show web pages. And if your cloud desktop is available outside of your work network, you could work anywhere also…

Mobile Phone as a Service

After my post about the Raspberry Pi acting as a VoIP server, and being able to add a 3G Dongle and allowing it to act as a Mobile Phone gateway, it got me thinking… Why not have something that allows you to rent a mobile phone number in a country, send and recieve text messages, phone calls, etc, all from anywhere in the world? Thats where Mobile Phone as a Service comes in…

The theory behing MPaaS is quite simple: A SIM Card for a mobile phone is placed in a USB Dongle, plugged into a VoIP server (Asterisk box, probably a Raspberry Pi) and shared with the user who requests it.

Its only a theory at the moment… Any interest?

Send Emails as a Distribution Group in Office365

I am in the process of moving my Email domains from one Office365 plan (a Professional) to an Enterprise Plan. During the move, i set up some Email Aliases for older email addresses, which are still being used, but i dont send a lot of email from. But if i do need to send emails from these addresses, with the help of Powershell, I managed to set it up. The full details are listed on “how to send as an alias in Office 365”. It works perfectly! And, as a bit of shamless self promotion, if you are interested in Office365, why not drop me a mail at Tiernan at LimitedSlipNetworks dot com and i can set you up with a trial and more information.