I have been fooling
around for a couple of days.
Yes I admit it. From
time to time I enjoy working with something totally different from
what I do in my daily life and something that is absolutely
irrational. This time I suddenly found my self playing around with
ownCloud (https://www.owncloud.org
).
I found that I could
launch a pre-configured cloud server on Amazon (
http://aws.amazon.com ) from
Bitnami ( http://bitnami.com/stack/owncloud/cloud
).
It took me about
half an hour to order and fire up the basic server and after another
hour of configuration I had a safe and sound cloud server running.
And it all comes in my native language (Danish) out of the box.
I wanted to install
a few extra apps for different tasks e.g., a music player that for
some reason isn't included in the standard edition of ownCloud 6. The
only problem with that was that the music app depends on another apps
'App Framework'. Unfortunately that wasn't very clear in the
instructions, and it took me a couple of hours to find the solution
and implement it. I made another mistake by activating the app 'FluXX
Compensator (Y)'. A friend of mine recommended it to me, but it seems
to mess up ownCloud completely. It took me quite some time what
caused the problem but when I found the cause it was pretty easy to
disable it. I couldn't use the web interface (as it was messed up)
but I could remove the app folder through SSH.
So now my family and
I can store and share files in a relatively safe way. I know that
Amazon might not be the safest place (in the Snowden years), but I
somehow feel safer now where I son't have to use Dropbox or Google
Drive. I don't like storing my private documents on a server that
doesn't belong to me.
Never mind.
I'n now using my
ownCloud as family calendar completely sync'ed with my locally
installed Thunderbird/Lightning. The only missing feature is the lack
of inviting and accepting invitations directly in my mail and
calendar program.
What I find
extremely interesting is the way ownCloud can work with documents.
First of all ownCloud supports WebDAV and I can open and save files
directly from LibreOffice.
 |
| Open documents in LibreOffice |
But more interesting
is a new interesting feature in ownCloud 6: WebODF (
http://webodf.org/ )!
WebODF is a separate
open source project that is a JavaScript implementation of the
OpenDocument format. So far WebODF only implemented som very basic
parts of text documents but its a nice first step. And a step in the
right direction. I know that WebODF is working on a spreadsheet thing
too and that's exiting.
Another extremely
cool feature is that WebODF supports collaborative
editing
of rich-text documents. We are talking about two or more editors
working on the same document at the same time.
 |
| Editing on line |
WebODF is not a web
version of LibreOffice but you can create and edit documents with
basic formatting and styles. I even discovered that uploading a
rather complicated ODT document from LibreOffice with a table of
content and cross references works fine. Some visual features are
visible in the browser version of the document, but even if not the
unsupported features survives being edited with WebODF.
Conclusion
My conclusion is
clearly 'enthusiasm'. I will certainly be using ownCloud as my
private cloud server from now on and I can see some very cool ideas
coming in the future. I'm exited about WebODF working with ODF
documents using JavaScript and I can see many useful things to use it
for. I can clearly see ownCloud useful for small business and e.g., schools and NGOs.
I give it a thumb up.
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