Migrating virtual machines from Amazon EC2 to Google Compute Engine

My Amazon EC2 discount contract is almost up, and I’ve been playing with Google Compute Engine (GCE). Initial impressions are that it’s faster and costs less money, particularly if you don’t want to pay up-front for EC2 reserved instances. Google’s web console is more modern than Amazon’s, though slightly less sophisticated. Google’s CLI tools are much faster and don’t require Java. Google’s API uses JSON instead of XML. In terms of capabilities, GCE is not as advanced as EC2, but it’s vastly more powerful than Linode, Digital Ocean, and the like. [Read More]

Secure browsing on open Wi-Fi hotspots

I frequently connect to insecure Wi-Fi networks on my iOS devices and my Mac. Aside from the risk of eavesdropping and malware when connecting to these hotspots, they frequently block access to services, insert advertisements in web pages, or worse. To work around these problems, I’ve tried numerous virtual private network (VPN) services. My experience with most of them has been awful. They tend to connect slowly or not at all, and I frequently can’t access anything on the Internet once the VPN connection is made. [Read More]

Use Dropbox to host public files on your own domain name

I’ve been using a Dropbox public folder and some Apache trickery to share files directly from Dropbox on my own domain at pub.noxon.cc. Dropbox is drag-and-drop file sharing at its finest, and by sharing my files on my own domain instead of on dl.dropboxusercontent.com, my files are accessible to corporate folks who would otherwise find themselves blocked by an over-zealous web filter. Last but not least, if one of my files becomes too popular, Dropbox won’t shut down my account. [Read More]

Google Hangouts for iOS: Google Talk gets pushy

Since switching from Android to iOS, I’ve been looking for an instant messaging client that works well with Google Talk. Push notifications are essential for the “instant” part of instant messaging. Unfortunately, most iOS Talk apps only have push capability until the application times out in the background (10 minutes); One client, Verbs IM Pro (App Store link), has server-based push notifications, but it times out after a week, and has some bugs and reliability issues. [Read More]