I have been using Sync ever since it was introduced in FF(4 I think?!?) and I have to say it worked really well for me.
Not only does it sync your usual suspects bookmarks/passwords/history, but it also syncs your installed addons and their settings (if supported). For example it syncs AdBlockPlus's list of whitelisted websites.
Another neat Sync feature is the possibility of seeing the open tabs on all your synced devices. For example I am looking right now on my phone and I can see the add HN comment tab in the mobile version of FF (Android).
On top of that the Sync server is open source so basically you could deploy it yourself if you have privacy concerns, although your data is encrypted before it is uploaded to the server anyway.
I have done something similar, but used a Raspberry Pi and Seafile (http://seafile.com) instead of BTSync. I did not get the chance to test it with large media files, but works great for documents and photos. Also has mobile and cross platform clients.
I'm using Seafile with a VPS. I had the VPS anyway for other projects and it's great to be able to access my files from anywhere. I'm really impressed with Seafile's polish, too.
The only feature I miss is not being able to host files publicly so others can download them like Dropbox lets you. I ended up with a workable solution though by installing a seafile client on the seafile server as well. I then used it to sync a particular directory with my PC and made that directory available through nginx.
Could you share your experiences, for example how many files do you have on the server? I have read[0] that Seafile struggles with larger amounts of files and I was hoping to use it as a drop-in NAS replacement for businesses.
The website is using h.264 at ~3Mbps in a QuickTime movie container in <video> elements. It'll work for anyone with the following conditions met:
- Using a browser that supports the QuickTime container format (i.e., has the QuickTime or compatible plugin installed)
- Using a browser that supports the <video> element with the h.264 codec (not Firefox).
- Using a device that can decode 3Mbps h.264 video (not iOS devices).
This is more for the sibling comments, but on Hacker News, I'd expect people to take a minute to check why something is or isn't working for them on a page instead of just commenting what browser/OS combo they're using.
Oh, but I checked why it is not working as soon as I saw "Video format or MIME type is not supported.". Just to see that the extension of the video file is mov and of course it would not play in my FF-Win7.
As for your points:
- installing QuickTime is not an option (in my opinion it's a piece of bloatware crap that should be retired)
- why should I not use Firefox? just because it chose to support only open video formats
- last time I checked iOS devices sold way more than Macs and I bet a lot of people check out HN using them
Problem: the page is more or less only addressed to people using MacBooks and Windows/Chrome !?! (maybe should include that in the HN link to the article)
Solution: it only takes 10-15 minutes to convert the videos to ogv or webm and add new source tags to the code for fallback thus making the page accessible to the rest of the world
P.S. I did not mean for my first comment to sound like a snarky remark (the blood rush to the brain took over for a moment). I should have included more details about the nature of the problem. Cheers.
Like I said, the last line of my comment was more directed towards the sibling comments: you at least recognized the basic issue, which is a reliance on Apple—or more specifically, Mac+WebKit—without a concern for cross-compatibility.
To that point, the list of conditions I presented weren't normative, they were descriptive. The videos won't work in Firefox because Firefox doesn't support h.264. Likewise, they won't work on iOS devices because even the latest generation only decodes 2.5Mbps h.264 video. So 10 comments listing all the browser combinations people tried is pure noise: taking a minute to look at the video would've been enough to know which browser/OS combinations were going to work.
Yeah, the thing that would prevent me from buying that "book" is the limited RAM. It is easy to expand storage, but only having .5GB on-board RAM is not ideal, especially for something that is going to be a desktop replacement.
Not only does it sync your usual suspects bookmarks/passwords/history, but it also syncs your installed addons and their settings (if supported). For example it syncs AdBlockPlus's list of whitelisted websites.
Another neat Sync feature is the possibility of seeing the open tabs on all your synced devices. For example I am looking right now on my phone and I can see the add HN comment tab in the mobile version of FF (Android).
On top of that the Sync server is open source so basically you could deploy it yourself if you have privacy concerns, although your data is encrypted before it is uploaded to the server anyway.