Tonido Blog

Run your Own Personal Cloud

April 8, 2012
by gromit
1 Comment

Android App – Music player improvements

For past couple of months, we have been working on improving performance of music player in our Android app. We faced many hurdles due to the limitations in underlying Android native player. In the latest version of the app (v39), for Android phones above Android 2.3.3, we have improved the streaming (mainly mp3) , mainly time to buffer and latency between two songs. This would also eliminate internment skips that some users faced while streaming music. Consider this update as one of many coming updates to improve user experience in music streaming.

April 6, 2012
by madhan
4 Comments

Announcing Tonido Release 2.50

The next major update for the Tonido platform is 3.0, but we are releasing an intermediate update which will be Tonido 2.50.

Important notes before upgrading:

- Your TonidoPlug: Make sure photos and openid applications are deleted
- Your Tonido on MacOSX: To upgrade, please download and install new app from our tonido.com downloads. You cannot do usual Tonido in-app upgrade.

Major Changes:

Tonido Guests now can use the same Web UI as admins.

Guest login will use the same richer user interface as the admin user. However, guest users will only see the folders that are shared with them and they cannot browse and access anything else.

 

Much Faster Thumbnail Generation

Thumbnail image generation is more than 5x faster, this makes a huge difference on the TonidoPlug.

Control over Automatic WAN/LAN switch and Network Interface

More fine grained controls on these settings to disable Automatic WAN/LAN switch as well as the network interface to bind to.

Tonido on Mac OSX

Tonido now on the OS X menubar

Tonido now on the OS X menubar

Tonido Sync Updates

  • Fixed several problems causing sync to hang
  • Sync performance improved dramatically when handling a large number of small files
  • Updated sync client
  • Can now change the sync location via the client

Tonido Drive Updates

  • Tonido Drive now supports guest login

Reduced Memory Usage of Tonido app

  • Direct result of P2P features dropped Tonido now uses less memory and will be snappier

More Useful Stats

  • Tonido now shows your WAN address, total uptime and total files and data served.

Misc Bug Fixes

  • Fix issue with creating folders with WebDAV using NetDrive
  • Fix crash with Jukebox with certain malformed tags
  • Fix crash on Mac OSX when playing video and some audio files
  • And much much more, many inside the hood

As always please let us know of your feedback.

Enjoy!


April 4, 2012
by gromit
0 comments

Tonido user survey- winning comments

Thank you all for your overwhelming participation, support, and comments. For small company like us,  your comments provide the necessary encouragment to work hard to improve continously. Though each of your comments were very valuable, we picked following feedback for thoroughness that took into account every aspect of the product. We will soon ship a Tonidoplug to the user.

 

Hi Tonido Team,

I purchased a Tonido2Plug several weeks ago and I enjoy using it every day. Yesterday, I received an email from you, asking for feedback and suggestions, where you offer a prize of a TonidoPlug2 for the best feedback or suggestion. I’m am happy to provide you with feedback and would be even happier to win the prize if you think my feedback or suggestion is worthy of such an honor.

My Feedback:

Unboxing everything went well. I was pleased with how the items were found in the box and how easy it was to understand how the device was to be connected to the router, the external USB drive, and to the power outlet.

I could not figure out how to open the Tonido2plug to insert an internal drive. I learned later that the directions were not correct.

The graphic in the directions made it easy to understand the order of the connections, and I was able to get everything connected in less than 5 minutes.

There were parts of the printed instructions that I couldn’t read because of a combination of font size and font color — the blue color that you use for the links was especially difficult to figure out. One of your online pages asked for the device’s MAC address. I couldn’t read it — the label printed on the device was printed in very small text, and some of the characters were not legible
After I got it all connected, the device would not work and I could not figure out why. It took me a few attempts of trial and error, then I added a “help me” post to your forum and had to wait for a response, then I had to call my internet provider (they told me to reboot my cable modem). After that, it worked and I have had no issue since, except for …… I can’t get the wireless to work. I have followed the directions the best that I can but it’s like a trial and error puzzle where I don’t seem to get the settings done correctly. I have a wireless printer that I set up with absolutely no issue, and my family members have several other wireless devices and each of those devices were easy to set up or configure. I haven’t given up but I’m frustrated with this.
My Ratings (scale of1 to 10 where 10 is best):

Packaging and Unboxing: 10

Connecting: 10

Printed Directions:4

First Use: 2

Troubleshooting: 4

Usage after issue was resolved: 10

Owner settings: 10

Setting up a guest account: 10

Guest usage: 10

Ongoing use: 10

Wireless Configuration: 3

 

My Suggestions:

Reprint your instructions so the font is a bit bigger and change the color from blue to something else that is easier to read.

Correct the instructions. There is at least one part that is wrong (instructs you to hold own a switch to open the device, and that isn’t necessary).

Put the instructions on your web site.

Add some videos on youtube or your own site that show how to gt set up (how to connect the parts, how to open the device and insert an internal drive)

And finally, one request: My ultimate goal with the Tonido2plug is to create a mini web server, to host a family web site, and I’ll need to use all the parts of xampp (apache, MySQL, PHP, etc) plus maybe even install wordpress. It doesn’t look like the directions
to do that are written for a person like me (I’m not a software developer or programmer) so it would be great if there were some simple and clear and easy instructional material available to explain how to do that.

I have already recommended your product to one of my co-workers and he says he will place an order, and I think most of my other team members will want one too, so we can have a somewhat distributed file-sharing network at work, protected by the firewall. But we can’t use any device at work unless the IT department has approved it. So if I win a Tonido2Plug for best feedback, I will hand it to our IT department so they can check it out.

March 27, 2012
by madhan
1 Comment

Tonido Release 2.50 Beta now available

The next major update for the Tonido platform is 3.0, but we are planning on releasing an intermediate update which will be Tonido 2.50.

Before a public release, we are releasing the beta version of 2.50 to the general public for feedback.  Please see end of the post for download links.
Please let us know of any issues in our forums. (http://www.tonido.com/forum)

Major Changes:

Tonido Guests now can use the same Web UI as admins.

Guest login will use the same richer user interface as the admin user. However, guest users will only see the folders that are shared with them and they cannot browse and access anything else.

 

Much Faster Thumbnail Generation

Thumbnail image generation is more than 5x faster, this makes a huge difference on the TonidoPlug.

Control over Automatic WAN/LAN switch and Network Interface

More fine grained controls on these settings to disable Automatic WAN/LAN switch as well as the network interface to bind to.

Tonido on Mac OSX

Tonido now on the OS X menubar

Tonido now on the OS X menubar

Tonido Sync Updates

  • Fixed several problems causing sync to hang
  • Sync performance improved dramatically when handling a large number of small files
  • Updated sync client
  • Can now change the sync location via the client

Tonido Drive Updates

  • Tonido Drive now supports guest login

Reduced Memory Usage of Tonido app

  • Direct result of P2P features dropped Tonido now uses less memory and will be snappier

More Useful Stats

  • Tonido now shows your WAN address, total uptime and total files and data served.

Misc Bug Fixes

  • Fix issue with creating folders with WebDAV using NetDrive
  • Fix crash with Jukebox with certain malformed tags
  • Fix crash on Mac OSX when playing video and some audio files
  • And much much more, many inside the hood.

Download the Beta

Note: The installs contain Webshare, Explorer, Search, Sync only. You cannot combine this release with other older apps from before 2.50 as they will be incompatible. So if you are using other apps than those, they will be suspended and cannot be enabled.  However, with the final release, all your apps will work.

Tonido Desktop

Tonido Sync Clients

Tonido Drive Client

 

 

 

 

March 26, 2012
by madhan
5 Comments

Features being dropped in the next Tonido Release

 

 

Tonido beta was originally released in early 2009 and it has been almost 3 years since its initial release. During that time, based on users feedback, we have slowly evolved many of Tonido’s features in the web user interface, mobile apps, introduced Tonido Sync as well as Tonido Drive and improved many many features.

However, there are parts in Tonido which have seen little or almost no use and have been harder to maintain over time. To help have a faster and smaller Tonido app, we are making some changes and removing those features. These are backwards incompatible, in the sense that if you upgrade to this release, some existing features will stop working.

Removing features is never an easy thing, but in this case, like every successful software we have to evolve so that we can concentrate our development on areas that are the most important.

Tonido Groups

Originally, Tonido groups feature allowed P2P communication between two tonido installs. This was used by some apps including (now obsolete) Tonido Photos, Tonido Workspace and Tonido Backup. However, based on user feedback, Tonido Groups were difficult to setup and get working reliably. Going forward, Tonido Groups feature will be removed. You will no longer be able to create new Tonido Groups via Tonido.

Tonido Messages

Using the Tonido P2P functionality, it was previously possible to send messages between one Tonido system to another. This feature will be now dropped.

Tonido Workspace P2P Synchronization

Tonido workspace allowed two Tonido installs to synchronize workspace data between themselves. With Tonido Groups being removed, this feature will be now dropped. Note that it will still be possible to create new Tonido Workspaces and allow guest users to access it via URL.

Tonido Remote Backup

Tonido Remote backup allowed users to backup files and folders from one machine to another machine via Tonido P2P Groups. This feature is being dropped. Local Tonido Backups will continue to function. Going forward a new Tonido Backup client app (similar to Tonido Sync) will be released that will be much more powerful and easier to setup and use than the old Tonido Remote Backup.

Although these features are going away, a whole host of exciting new features are coming as well. It is certainly made easier because of the increased focus on the features that are the most important and critical for users.

 

 

March 15, 2012
by madhan
5 Comments

Tonido 3.0: Improved Sync Client

A preview of some of the enhancements coming to the Sync Client in Tonido 3.0.

The sync client has been significantly enhanced to handle a lot of files efficiently and faster. In addition to the under the hood enhancements, here are some of the visible changes.

Force Sync: Forces a check for file changes so those can be synced to the server

Improved Stats: Shows the file size as well as number of files synced, so it is easier to track

Change Location: Change the location of the Tonido Sync folder quickly and easily via the UI without editing XML files. This will also copy the contents of the TonidoSync folder into the new location.

Reset all Sync Data: Clears all Synchronization data stored in the database so that the client will start from a fresh slate

February 27, 2012
by madhan
1 Comment

Tonido iOS App v3.3 now available in Apple Appstore

This is primarily a bug fix release with the following bug fixes:

  1. Performance improvements (Access speed improvements)
  2. Crash issues in certain autolock condition
  3. Better video playback support (still only supports native formats of iOS) with retry in cases of bad network
  4. Autorotate issues reported earlier (initial login can disable autorotate)

This should work in iOS v4.2.1 onwards. Let us know if you hit any issues.Thanks

February 24, 2012
by madhan
9 Comments

Tonido 3.0 Coming Soon…

We are hard at work on the next major Tonido release version 3.0.

And it is all about speed and performance..

With Tonido running on so many different environments, from desktops to NAS and embedded devices, we took a hard look at almost all the core pieces of the system and trimmed the fat  to make it even more lean and mean. Tonido 3.0 will use even less system resources, respond faster and use less disk storage for its binaries.

In the coming days stay tuned for some of the main features that are coming down the pipeline for 3.0.

We are sure you would like them all..

Image Courtesy: CELstart-rocket

February 8, 2012
by Ethan Hall
1 Comment

New Tonido for Blackberry Version 7.0

We are happy to release the new version 7.0 of Blackberry. Version 7.0 can be downloaded from the Blackberry Appstore.

Photo Gallery:

The images in your folder can be viewed in a gallery format.  From the blackberry menu, click “Gallery”  Menu Item, when you browse through folder that contain images. All the images in the folder will be displayed in a gallery view.

screenshot_2012-02-01_23-39-35_by_s4bb

Click on an Image from the Gallery to view the full picture.

screenshot_2012-02-07_22-40-28_by_s4bb

Guest Access:

Your guest accounts from the Tonido Server or TonidoPlug can now access their shares through Blackberry. From the login screen, enter the admin URL. For example, http://jim.tonidoid.com where “jim” is the tonido admin. In the account box enter your Guest Account Name followed by the guest password. Your guests now have direct access to their share files and folders through blackberry smartphone.

screenshot_2012-02-07_22-47-46_by_s4bb

Additionally, some specific network issues have been fixed. As always, you must update your Tonido to latest version.

All this functionality is provided free of course without any sort of catch. No Ads, No “use X times a month”, No fee and No Gimmicks.

We, however, do ask you to add reviews and ratings to the Appstore and let us know your feedback on how we can improve the app via our Forums.

It would also help if you spread the word!