Amahi Blog

Wow! We are blown away with the innovative ways in which the community responded to the theme and app contest!

We got 9 new themes, which we are releasing live today (screenshots below) and we even have a top notch VoIP/PBX app, FusionPBX and a hot full-disk backup solution, Redo Backup, in progress!

Today we bring you this: The winners, the features, and … a new Amahi release!

Amahi 5.5!

Amahi 5.5 brings a guest dashboard for non-logged in users, a few fixes and some better networking and app support, along with Wake-on-LAN/WOL. Also included is an update in Greyhole with some bug fixes. Thank you for reporting and testing them!

And the Winners are …

Without further ado, look at the new features the new themes brought on: vertical tabs, mobile support, highlights in rows, nicely shaped tabs, … even an Easter egg in the theme! These innovations result in a smoother looking, cleaner dashboard, just another step forward in the evolution of Amahi.  Kudos to the individuals who contributed, you are another reason why the Amahi community is a great place!

The entries for the theme and app contest came from Florida, Indiana, Germany, Georgia, the Netherlands, Canada and Texas!

One of the biggest new features in a theme is Ben Wyatt’s Touch Theme that integrates mobile functionality, allowing for better control and improved rendering in iPhone/iPod/Android/WebOS devices. Check out our wiki for how to mod your Android based phone or iPhone to add VPN capabilities. What’s better than controlling your server from your phone?

Coming up!

What’s coming up? Amahi 6, with a whole slew of new features! Amahi 6 will leverage new features and advancements of Ruby on Rails 3.0 (released yesterday BTW). Amahi 6 will incorporate performance improvements, javascript helpers, cross site scripting protection, and very cool Amahi Gadgets and Widgets. More on this soon!

Enjoy the screenshots below, and congratulations to the winners and runner-ups! Can’t wait to see what you guys do with your new Plug Computer!

Touch Theme submitted by Ben Wyatt

Ocean Theme submitted by MartinF

On the Horizon submitted by slm4996

Celestial Theme submitted by SolaR

Zombie Parade submitted by llamallama

Carbon Theme submitted by MartinF

Shades of Grey submitted by slm4996

Chupacabra Theme submitted by the one and only Chupacabra

Colorus Theme submitted by Guillaume Boudreau

Sheeva theme launched to kick off the Theme Contest

Congratulations to twitter user @delring for winning the Amahi Plug Retweet contest!

We had fantastic tweets and superb followers retweet for the chance to win their own Amahi Plug Computer! The retweeting got interesting near the end with 200 tweets in the last six hours and a great response for the entire contest!

But have no fear if you didn’t win the retweet contest! The Amahi theme and app contest is going strong and gaining speed with 6 chances to win a Plug Computer! Just remember that it ends on Sunday August 22 at the stroke of midnight (Pacific Time, if you are wondering ).

Check out how the contest is going so far. See the the two entries by @slm4996 including Shades of Gray and On the Horizon, the bright Chupacabra theme by (ironically) Chupacabra, the popular Colorus theme by Mouton. For those of you who still want to get into the action we’ve got some cool resources in our wiki, like a detailed guide , including the new ability to have custom Javascript on a theme. Don’t forget to check the rules.

It does look like we may even get a mobile theme!

So get out there do your thang and get your Theme on!

Intrepid observers noticed that you can get a PogoPlug in the US with a nice rebate from Fry’s until the end of the day TODAY (note that the PogoPlug is not too friendly when it comes to rooting it, so you are better off doing a nice theme ).

We did not forget about the apps – bring on a new and exciting app and enter the contest! We will value apps with more weight than themes, so your extra effort will be compensated!

Cheers!

The Amahi Team

We’re very happy to announce the first release of Amahi Plug Edition for the Plug Computer platform based on the Marvell ® ARMADA processor! And you can snag one FREE in our new contest!

The Amahi team is all jumpy in excitement with this new “Plug Edition” release to the  ARM ecosystem and the Plug Computing platform, in partnership with Marvell. In these days when eco-friendly technologies are a must, the Plug Computer brings a number of advantages to running a home/media server at very low power. Now you’re probably thinking …

COOL, I want one! How do I get in on the action?

If you have one already and are ready to take the plunge, head on to the release page to see how to install Amahi on it! Or buy one if you need the hardware … OR … wait … get one FREE …!?

Today we’re also launching a theme and app contest, where 6 winners get a FREE 1.2GHz Ionics Stratus Plug Computer (pictured above), with WiFi, Bluetooth, Z-Wave (for wireless home control) and Gigabit Ethernet, sponsored by Marvell!

You don’t have the artistic or coding skills? Follow @amahi and retweet this tweet and you could win one FREE Ionics Stratus plug too! Follow the rules in the contest page.

To kick things off, we are releasing the brand new Sheeva theme (high res) inspired by Marvell’s PlugComputer.org site.

Even better, if you are a developer and are interested in learning more about developing for this platform check out Marvell’s developer day, PlugIN 2010 (August 18th). Attendees will get a full day of developer sessions and receive a Plug Computer development kit.

Amahi + Marvell = Smart

The synthesis of the Plug Computer’s compact design, low power, and headless operation with Amahi’s powerful, easy to use features, efficient network management combined with one of the largest app stores of its kind, is a very smart choice for a home server:

• The Plug Computer offers remarkably low power consumption: 3 ~ 8 Watts. Nice!
• It’s fanless and virtually noiseless. If you run yours with a flash drive, it has zero noise
• Small footprint. You can put your server wherever it’s convenient. If you are in tight quarters, this is the perfect solution!
• It’s inexpensive. Typically Plug Computers run $99 for a base system

Low Power, Heavy Lifting

Amahi Plug Edition is a powerful home server, capable of running lots of apps, from the simplest file sharing to iTunes streaming, to wikis, backups, and soon, DLNA media streaming to Sony or Samsung TVs as well as popular set top boxes with DLNA clients built-in.

Amahi Plug Edition running on a typical Plug Computer draws about 3 Watts idle, 7 to 8 Watts while booting and about 4 Watts with bursts of 6 Watts while streaming a full movie to an iPad with our very popular Videos5 app or a full 1080p stream to an HDTV. Not bad!!

All this goodness does not come without effort. While everyone was fussing about net neutrality, the iPad and antennagate, the team toiled, getting this release ready for your maximum enjoyment. Kudos to Scott, Guillaume, Rod, OB, Ofer, Pat, Peter & the crew. In addition, none of this would be possible without the Fedora ARM team for a great job!!

Cheers!

Hey Home Servers can be for gaming too!  With this latest app release, Amahi brings Arcade gaming to your Amahi Server! ArcademSX and Game Packs 1 & 2 bring classic arcade games to your network.  Many other game packs are also available.

If you’ve visited the Forums or Community Channel, you have no doubt seen the question, “How do I access my Apps when I’m away from home?”.  It is one of the most requested features for Amahi.  Contributor Guillaume Boudreau took on the challenge and created Amahi Web Apps Proxy.  This App makes it simple to access your Amahi Apps over the Internet, if  VPN is not an option for you.   Please educate yourself on the security implications of Hosting a website.

If you do host a website, commercial or personal, Piwik can provide you with a plethora of information about the traffic and visitors on your site (known as analytics).  Piwik is hosted on your server, so the visitor data stays private. It also has a plug-in feature for easy customization.

We hope you have fun with these new Apps and find them useful. Read on for more!

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ArcademSX
ArcademSX is here, the most advanced free arcade script ever released. With ArcademSX, you can install game packs from AVArcade, GameSiteScript, phpArcadeScript, and even use highscore compatible IBProArcade games to allow your users to compete for the top spot in your arcade.
No other arcade script is as easy or feature packed,  as Arcadem Pro. There are many more great features, check them out here or at the parent site here.

Also check out the two game packs that we are releasing ArcademSX Game Pack 1 and ArcademSX Game Pack 2

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Amahi Web-Apps Proxy

Amahi Web-Apps Proxy allows the use of multiple Amahi applications using a single host name (URL).

This could allow you to access all your Amahi applications by using your http://username.yourhda.com URL, from outside your local network. Make sure you enter a username and password to limit access to only authorized users, the first time you access the application.

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Piwik
Piwik is a downloadable, open source (GPL licensed) web analytics software package. It provides detailed reports on your website and its visitors, including the search engines and keywords they used, the language they speak, which pages they like, the files they download and so much more. Piwik aims to be an open source alternative to Google Analytics.

All the program’s features are built as plugins, which means you can easily add new plugins built by the community to customize your own Piwik installation. If you have specific needs then you can build a plugin that processes data in a different way.

Cheers!

The Amahi Team.

It was one of those brilliant things in life…

Funny things happen in FOSS communities, and Amahi is no exception!

It was a normal to quiet day on the Amahi Community Channel, when an un-named regular said:

“You know what would be cool? a “Wake” button, next to each entry in the Static IPs page.”

Wake-on-LAN (or WOL), standard that allows a computer to be magically turned on or woken up by a network message.

The community wheels really kicked into motion when other team members started searching for icons to use in the dashboard while many others tested some code. Then, before long, the team had a working platform with the new WOL feature to be released in the next update!

Amahi is taking long strides to bring your network back to the land of the free! This is but another step on our path to bring you the best that Amahi can offer!

The World cup championship is this weekend. We hate to pick sides! Really we do! But if we had to well … Our Spain supporters argued that our long term logo had been supporting the Netherlands all along with all that orange, so we decided to give a nudge to Spain for a few days

OK, we’re a bit biased, as the core team is partly formed by one spaniard

So sit back, relax, and enjoy friendly competition while two great teams battle each other for the coveted World Cup Trophy!

Cheers!

The Amahi Team