April 13, 2004
Spike
Holy Carpel Tunnel Syndrome Batman!
Sometime back, I was in a chat room talking to Cory, Mike and Sukhanov about a piece of software that would allow one to share clipboards from different computers running different OS'es. Suggestions of using p2p were brought up, but still nothing. Every clipboard sharing app I've found for Windows or OS X has been restricted to that OS. Until now.
The Authors at Porchdog Software have come up with such a solution and they've named it Spike. Spike runs on Windows and OS X, and I'm guessing because those 2 OS'es are the only ones that do ZeroConf (or Rendezvous to you Mac folks) out of the box. I've been trying it for about an hour now, and I'm very impressed so far.
Another concern is privacy. What if you don't want your office crew to see what kind of stuff you are putting on your clipboard (just a thought, don't watch animal porn at work)? You can set a security password so that others don't view your clipboard contents without your permission. Right now, I have noticed one bug with that feature. If a user is already logged on to your clipboard without the password, and you suddenly set one, or change your password. The server does not do a force-reboot to clients that are connected to the server.
Jasmeet: can you help me test something out? I might have discovered a bug
Da James: ok
Jasmeet: say you're desktop is running it and so is your laptop
Da James: k
Jasmeet: have your laptop monitoring the desktop's clipboard
Da James: k
Jasmeet: and then, set a password on the desktop's spike
Jasmeet: and copy something
Jasmeet: see if the changes show up on the laptop
Da James: still does.
Jasmeet: is it just me, or is that bad?
Da James: yes and no.
Jasmeet: explain please?
Da James: yes cause changing the permissions should disallow them
Da James: but since they're already connected the only way to change it would for the client side to check to see if its allowed every time it updates.
Da James: and that would be extra overhead.
Da James: if they made the server force restart after changing a password that would be a good way
Jasmeet: I'm thinking of another method, but I'm not sure if it applies here
Jasmeet: have authorized users
Da James: thats too much work.
Da James: thats out of the zeroconf spec i think.
Jasmeet: how so? if its zeroconf, you can see the users, and add them if you want to share your clipboard with them,
Da James: it might say something about being single password.
Da James: like if you broadcast it should be password only or something.
Da James: i think the userlist thing is just overkill and its an admin nightmare
Da James: which is what this app was meant to FIGHT in the first place
Jasmeet: you might be right there
Jasmeet: simplicity is the key here
Jasmeet: I just think it would be nice if you could kick someone off your clipboard whenever you need too
Jasmeet: and invite them
Jasmeet: and I figure with the live updating of the password, that could be the key
Jasmeet: no pun intended
Da James brought up a good concern, which was flooding an office LAN with too much data. Say for example you copied an entire directory of MP3's (10 and above) for the sole purpose of moving it to another directory. If you have an office LAN of about 10 or more computers, this could be very bad. Fortunately Spike doesn't download anything to your computer, until you actually request for it by copying it to your own clipboard. Nice move guys!
A special thanks to Da James for helping me test the fuck out of Spike.
Posted by Jasmeet at April 13, 2004 08:33 PM