ExpanDrive

For those of you out there who have BIngodisk accounts – please be aware that at the end of the month Bingodisk, an only disk service formerly run by Joyent – is being turned off. We are offering all Bingodisk customers a simple and hopefully painless migration path into Strongspace. Simply log in to www.strongspace using your username@bingodisk.com username and password and you will be presented with a path to migrate in. More on this soon, but we wanted to make sure the word was out. Thanks!

In case you’ve missed one of the many many reminders we’ve sent – please note that Strongspace v1 [Joyent Strongspace] is closing down this weekend. To migrate over to the all-new Strongspace just sign in at www.strongspace.com and you’ll be presented a transition page. For those who get this notice late, we’ll still be accepting migrations through mid-August. If you’re having trouble logging in, please email support@strongspace.com letting us know you need help or a password reset – please include your username!

BingoDisk migrations will be starting in a few days, so be on the lookout for that. Thanks!

We’ve just released ExpanDrive 1.8.4! To upgrade you’ll need to download the new installer and install overtop your existing installation. It will require a reboot to complete the installation as we have made a variety of tweaks to the filesystem driver.

This is the first ExpanDrive for Windows release in a bit and we want to let you know we haven’t forgotten about any of our loyal Windows users. We’re currently hard at work on merging ExpanDrive for Mac and ExpanDrive for Windows into a single product with a shared feature set. It’s our highest priority.

ExpanDrive v1.8.4 fixes most outstanding bugs as well and adds in a new automatic update system based on WinSparkle. Additional, this release adds in provides licensing for users of our upcoming Strongspace online storage service.

This is a solid update and we recommend you install it.

• NEW All new auto-updater based on WinSparkle auto-update framework
• NEW Automatic licensing for users of Strongspace.com online storage – ExpanDrive’s upcoming online storage service
• CHANGED Updated to OpenSSL 0.9.8l crypto library
• CHANGED Improved support for running in unprivileged environments
• CHANGED Updated command line processing to include support for passwords
• CHANGED Improved browsing performance of drives
• FIXED Fixed issue causing playback to fail on Windows Media Player 10
• FIXED Fixed issue where ExpanDrive would cause DFS mounted drives to function poorly while ExpanDrive was running
• FIXED Fixed licensing issue that could incorrectly warn of a corrupted license
• FIXED Fixed and tweaked many other small issues

We’ve just released ExpanDrive 2.1.0! To upgrade you can use our auto updater in the Preferences tab for Software Update or download and install by hand.

This release brings a major improvement to our S3 engine. It is a near-complete rewrite with a new high-speed connection engine that will really boost performance for most users. Large files still take time to transfer, but browsing and interacting with S3 is even better. We’ve also fixed a variety of of small bugs and made a number of small but meaningful improvements.

In addition ExpanDrive 2.1.0 adds a Strongspace drive type for our upcoming online storage service. Keep your eye on this blog for more info about Strongspace coming soon.

This is a great update and we highly recommend you install it.

• NEWStrongspace drive type for easy connection to ExpanDrive’s upcoming Strongspace online storage service.
• NEW All-new high-speed Amazon S3 connection engine that will drastically performance during transfers and while browsing.
• NEWImprovements to ACL handling with S3 – Access-control policies on existing files are now preserved through modifications, including renames.
• NEW Sequential polling in large directory structures to improve browsing performance in large trees
• NEW S3 Files now have an r/w extended attribute named “com.expandrive.s3fs.ContentType” allowing access to set MIME-Type.
• NEW Symbolic links are now emulated. When viewed in earlier versions of ExpanDrive, these will appear as empty directories; when viewed in other S3 browsers, they will appear as keys containing the link target.
• NEW [Experimental] If a file has not been assigned a MIME content type, then when it is written back to S3, a content-type is inferred from the file’s contents and its filename. The result can be overridden using the extended attribute.
• NEW [Experimental] Experimental support for inheritable S3 ACLs on directory keys.
• CHANGED Improved stability against temporary network errors
• CHANGED Increased timeout for connection and slow operations
• CHANGED Updated logging interface
• CHANGED Updated to use Python 2.6.5 internally
• CHANGED Updates to German, Dutch and Lithuanian localizations
• CHANGED More robust handling of FTP servers with broken SSL implementations.
• FIXED Fixed issue where ExpanDrive would occasionally not notice unmounted drives.
• FIXED Fixed issue where ExpanDrive would not correctly clean-up its mount point.
• FIXED Fixed a rare issue which could cause a stall launching ExpanDrive on Snow Leopard
• FIXED Fixed a rare issue that could prevent a password from correctly being saved
• FIXED Fixed an issue that could prevent automatic updates from being noticed
• FIXED Several fixes to the FTP directory-listing parser.

You may have notice from out sidebar that we’ve played a little bit of Flight Control, a simple but extremely addictive iPhone game. If you think Flight Control is exciting, then this FAA simulation of real events at Charlotte Douglas International Airport will probably get your heart racing.

I’ll set it up for you a bit, because the radio chatter can be hard to follow if you’re not used to listening to it. The blue blip labeled JIA390 is a regional jet with 46 people on board. It’s leaving the commercial airport and planning on taking off from the end of runway 18L, which is the left end up the upper horizontal runway. On the radio they’ll refer to this aircraft as “Blue Streak 390”.

The yellow blip labeled N409DR is a single engine turbo prop with 3 people on board. It’s leaving from the civil aviation part of the airport, and it’s told to expect to take off from the middle of runway 18L, by means of taxiway A (which is pronounced “Alpha”). This aircraft has the radio call sign is 9DR (pronounced “Nine Delta Romeo”).

The that after the incident:

ASDE-X is a radar and transponder system that sounds an alarm in the control tower if it thinks there’s a “runway conflict”.

ExpanDrive 1.8.4 is now in testing – you can download it here:

www.expandrive.com/windows/1.8.4b1/ExpanDrive1.8.4b1.exe

The most important new features for this release is that Strongspace [our upcoming online storage service] users are automatically licensed when they connect to their Strongspace account using ExpanDrive. In addition quite a variety of small bugs surrounding some installation quirks and Windows 7 problems have been fixed.

Werner Herzog is the director of Rescue Dawn, Grizzly Man, and many other films.

Maybe there’s a killer app on the way, something on the order of VisiCalc for the Apple II, but as far as I can tell, this’ll be the biggest dud since the G4 Cube.

–Cosmo on the iPad. Saved for posterity.