Purplenova

This is how a Purplenova Billboard widget looks like.

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Using Sub Domains with Purplenova

Domain name providers package a limited (or occasionally unlimited) number of sub-domains with every domain they sell. Frequently, users do not really have any use for these sub-domains, consequently Domain name providers cannot really monetize the subdomains. Purplenova provides a novel use for the sub-domains - and therefore a sub-domain monetization opportunity for the Domin name provider.

with Purplenova, you can simply point your sub-domains to your various PCs. For example, when you buy a domain "yourdomain.com", the primary domain ("www.yourdomain.com") can continue pointing to your website at the data-center, but additionally, you can set "home.yourdomain.com" to point to your home PC, and "laptop.yourdomain.com" point to your laptop. When you use Purplenova to securely share content directly from your home PC or your laptop, the sharing happens on these sub-domains. For example, you can set access to a Picasa Album on your home PC on the URL "http://home.yourdomain.com".

In other words, Purplenova allows you to share from multiple computers while retaining a single web - identity, that of your own domain name. Further, this extra traffic enhances the PR / Alexa rating of your domain.

With Purplenova, you can essentially get yourself an "unlimited hosting plan" linked to a sub-domain, while your main domain continues to link to whatever hosting plan you buy with your service provider.

Setting this up is as easy as setting your CNAME entry on your domain panel to "www.purplenova.net". We take care of the rest. Note that domain / sub-domain linking capability is available with the Purplenova Web Server versions only.

Regards,
A. K. Soman
http://www.purplenova.com

Purplenova 3.4 - Remote PC Access, Caching, Enhanced Widget

Purplenova 3.4 has just been released, and it gives users the ability to reach the file system on their Internet connected PC from a remote browser. You do not need any plug in or software on your remote browser that you use to access your file system. So for example, you can now reach the File system on your PC from a mobile as well. While Purplenova has always been positioned as a 'Server' offering (a dead-simple alternative to web-hosting at data centers) rather than a system that allows you 'remote access to your PC', some of our users felt remote access would be a nice-to-have feature in Purplenova.

Remote File System viewing needs to be enabled from your Purplenova software (see Accessibility Tab under Settings). In order to reach your PC from a remote browser, you need to login to your Purplenova account (http://portal.purplenova.net) and then look under the content tab. The file system view is optimized for the mobile browser.

Caching has been enhanced in Purplenova 3.4 as well. Not only do we now provide more space on our servers (100MB) but also cache for a longer duration (1 month). There are providers out there who offer more space, permanently. But as far as Purplenova is concerned, Caching is a "fall-back" option. Our primary proposition is enabling you to web-serve directly from any Internet Connected PC with zero configuration/setup effort.

Thirdly, we have re-designed our Billboard widget as well. Take a look at http://callmetrendy.ning.com. The Billboards can be embedded on any Web 2.0 site, and Desktop content can be displayed on the Billboard. Unlike widgets that require you to create and insert widgets for every new content you share, Purplenova Billboard is put up once, and all your desktop content is shown in the same Billboard. These are great for sharing privately over Web 2.0, and also for content that needs to be shared for limited time.

Regards,
A. K. Soman

Funcaster: Sharing on Web 2.0 no longer means having to upload.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - Dec. 12 (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) -- Purplenova (www.purplenova.com) has announced the release of FunCaster - A widget that allows users to make selective PC content directly accessible from popular social networking sites, forums and portals. The FunCaster, says the company, was developed in response to concern among Internet users about having to upload photos, videos and other personal content on to third-party servers to be able to share them with friends.

With instances of content misuse growing in number, many users believe that not all content is to be shared forever and not all content should be uploaded on third party servers. Uploading pictures and videos to third-party servers raises questions about their privacy, security, ownership and fair use. The FunCaster allows users to bypass these questions entirely by making it possible to display content on social networks directly from an Internet connected PC.

The FunCaster widget is embedded once on the user's personal page on any of the popular social networking sites. The FunCaster desktop agent is then used to designate content on the user's PC that is to be displayed through the widget. Only the designated content is displayed, and sharing can be turned on or off at any time from the desktop agent. Viewers who visit the social networking site do not need any additional software in order to view the content, when using any of the commonly used Internet browsers such as IE, Mozilla, Opera, etc.

The FunCaster widget works with most of the social networking sites, including the more popular sites such as MySpace, Blogger, Yahoo 360, Microsoft Live Spaces, Facebook, AIM, Xanga, Ning, Friendster, and hundreds of others.

The FunCaster Widget is free.

About Purplenova

Purplenova offers solutions that promote a "do-it-yourself" approach to web-hosting and content serving. With broadband connections becoming faster and reliable, and with powerful machines residing in people's homes and small offices, Purplenova makes a case for "Unlimited Hosting" directly from end-user machines. Purplenova users not only retain control over their content but also get more from their investment in computers and broadband.

Purplenova has offices in Mountain View, California and India.

Contact Information

Milind Pandit (mpandit@purplenova.net)

+1 262 408 9163

FTP to Home computers

Hi Guys,
This is a minor announcement we recently made...
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FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is a popular means of transferring files over the internet. Purplenova is now announcing support for the FTP protocol from within the Purplenova Home Server.

Purplenova Home Server is typically employed by users to web-host content directly from any PC making it accessible over the internet. Using Purplenova, you can host websites, photo albums, pod casts, all types of files and even web-services and web applications. Unlike P2P technologies, readers only need a standard browser (no plug-in or additional software required), and the hosted content is fetched with a normal HTTP URL. Unlike Servers such as IIS or Apache, Purplenova Home Server can work off any internet-connected computer (private IP / dynamic IP / NAT / etc does not matter).

Now, users will be able to use FTP to remotely fetch or send files from / to their PC's running Purplenova. This means for example, that you can fetch via FTP a file from your home computer while you are on the road. You can use any FTP client while you are on the road, including mobile FTP clients. The only requirement is to have Purplenova running on your remote Home computer.

Purplenova Lite subscription is priced at $1.49/month, and the software can be obtained from

http://www.purplenova.com/download.html

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Thank you!
A. K. Soman

Great video on CNN about "Who owns your photos?"

I came across this important news video on CNN. The topic was "Who owns your photos?"

On the face of it, it sounds like a stupid question. If you have taken pictures using your camera, you should own them..right? ..wrong! say the third party providers who let you upload your pictures, videos on their portals for FREE.

Here is what happened...Virgin mobile used pictures of a sixteen year girl which she had uploaded to flickr. The pictures were taken during some church function. Virgin mobile took these pictures from Flickr and used them to advertise their services all over Australia. They also added some text to the pictures..Now the the family of this 16 year old girl is suing virgin mobile.

Now, what should the users do? the simple answer is, keep control over all your content and see if you can still share it with your friends and relatives. I think Purplenova gives them that control..it also let's them share their content publicly or privately..

Here is a link to the video

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2007/09/24/intv.virgin.flickr.lawsuit.cnn?iref=videosearch

This is just one example of what can happen to your content. However, I do not think we have seen the end of it..

The private car analogy

People have asked us why a self-hosting solution is needed when there are so many hosting service providers out there today. In response, we often give what we call the "private-car" analogy. Purplenova self-hosting solution is like owning your personal car... the "do-it-yourself" option. Sure you have to keep your computer ON, and manage your own content (just as you need to pay for your own gasoline & car maintainence and learn how to drive!), but its about putting the control (steering wheel) in your hands.

With Purplenova, no one tells how much disk-space you can use or what applications you can run. No matter how cheap public transport gets, people who get used to driving their own cars rarely prefer to take the bus!

A. K. Soman

Purplenova team

(www.purplenova.com)

Pune Firm makes the World Web Wider

The Times of India on the 29^th July, Sunday, provided an insight into the Purplenova technology.

The article was well drafted and it could make a common man, who is not very tech savvy; understand the underline benefits of this technology. It stressed about all the aspects of this technology and how one can make use of it in his day-to-day life. Also it said about the new cool feature of Domain name pointing that has been added to Purplenova along with its other offerings. The do-it-yourself web hosting solution for individual PC users and small offices was something which made it very exciting.

Many of the readers visited the website and downloaded the free version of the software. If you have not already, then this is a good time to do it.

Here is the glimpse of the article that I have scanned for everyone to read it.

Purplenova Buzz at the Pune Bloggers Camp

Thanks to all the organizers of BlogCampPune for arranging such a fantastic event!
 

Cheers to BlogCampPune that was held on the 16^th of June at SCIT. Over 200 blog enthusiasts showed up on a pleasant Saturday morning just to have fun and exchange notes with other bloggers.

Our Purplenova team was ready for action, it was our first camp, and we were very excited about it.

We had a presentation followed by an actual demonstration of the product delivered by our marketing head Mr. Milind Pandit. The entire room was thrilled by the fact of they could do all the blogging, sharing and hosting right from their PC, People were happy to get to know about this new technology and wanted to know more about it, Hence the loads of questions that we received in the end.

There were many media’s present to cover the event. We were covered by many of them; here is a piece of article that published in the Sunday Newsline of the Indian Express.

Apart from Purplenova, many other bloggers spoke on diverse topics like how to write a blog and how to commercialize it.

We are looking forward to meeting all of you again at the bar camp on July 7^th

Cheers.

Hosting your JAlbum through Purplenova

The User Guide for Hosting JAlbum through Purplenova

At a Glance

• Create a JAlbum (Click for JAlbum Website)and save it on the hard disk in an Album Directory with an index page.
• In Purplenova, Host the Album Directory with a drag-n-drop on the Files and Folders tab.
• Your friends will use the Purplenova-generated URL of your index page to access your Album from your computer over the internet retaining full JAlbum capability.

 Detailed Steps 

1. Creating JAlbum

Keep all the Pictures and Images to be included in the album in a single directory. You can create the new album by selecting ‘New Album Project’, by giving the album name and album location, with the choice of various skins and styles; the album gets created at the Album location path on your computer hard disk. This path can also be alternatively specified at the image directory in the settings tab.

2. Using Purplenova

To host the album through Purplenova, launch Purplenova and keep the active tab as ‘Files and Folders’.

1. Host New

Select the ‘Host New’ button, and set the select hosting option to ‘Host Folder’ radio button, give the name of the directory which contains your album; you can also drag and drop the directory in the main Purplenova window.

2. Access Rights

Select appropriate access rights either Private or Public access. Albums intended for private viewing should be hosted as ‘Private’, and will be delivered over SSL.

Now the directory will automatically show up in a tree structure format under ‘My Shared Files’ in the main Purplenova Window. Browse through this directory tree to locate index.html, and right-click to copy the URL that has been created for it.

3. To Access your Album

The URL to the index page can be used to access your album through a normal browser. Your album resides on your computer, and the pictures are streamed directly from your computer to the viewer when the viewer navigates through the album. You can unhost your album at any time.