Well, for whatever reason I haven’t been using a cloud based file syncing service up until now. I think mostly it was because I was just stuck in old habits and ways of thinking about how to manage files. But I finally had enough issues, that I remember not long ago a friend telling me how he used Dropbox to fix some issues I have. I signed up today and I just can’t believe I waited this long. It is pretty awesome.
Any files I put into my dropbox folder get synced to their servers. I can sync the same files to any other machine or phone with the client installed. Clients have been written for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iPhone, iPad, Windows Mobile and Blackberry. It keeps older versions of files on hand and all the syncing happens without any work on my part. It’s possible to make files publicly available via the web or share them with specific individuals. So nice.
You can read about Dropbox on Wikipedia. And as a nice bonus, if you sign up through the following link, we’ll both get an additional 250 MB of storage. How nice is that? My referral link to Dropbox.
Browsing Posts in Geeks In Action
If you are anywhere close to my age and can watch this without at least chuckling, you have more self control than I do. This absolutely cracks me up.
A friend from Hungary told us Kindles for the kids would be a good idea, as it might be tough to find kids books in English. I’ve been mulling it over, thinking about how to fit it in the budget, wondering if there are acceptable options that would cost less. At the same Amazon has been hard at work solving most of those issues for me. First they dropped the price significantly. That made it all a bit easier to swallow.
Today I see they have announced the Kindle Wi-Fi. It doesn’t come with wireless, weighs only 8.5 ounces and has a battery life from 3 weeks to a month. And it costs less than a DSi. Totally awesome.
When I talk to people about how mobile is changing the world, especially the developing world they often ask me how people who don’t have electricity charge their phones. I’ve got some nice pictures of places in Africa where one can pay to get their phone charged. Often it is from a car battery hooked up to an inverter, with a power strip and chargers attached. Nokia is far and away the most dominant phone manufacturer in the developing world and they aim to maintain that dominance. I think their new bicycle powered charger will help. It generates power to charge phones, much like the lights that are bike charged work.
Team that up with the newly announced Nokia C1 and it’s an amazing combination. The C1 battery is reported to last on a single charge up to 6 weeks. It also has a built in flashlight, FM radio and it can have 2 sim cards in at the same time. At $35 it is going to be popular I think.
That’s the lowest end of the new C Series phones. The C2 has some great features and 2 sim cards as well, but in the C2 they can both be active at the same time. I think I’m going to need one of these for traveling. The world is getting smaller every day and mobile technology is a huge part of it.
So the Humble Bundle is a set of 6 games that run on Windows, OS X and Linux. (It started as 5 games but a 6th has been added) You can get all of them for whatever you feel is an acceptable price. You can designate who will get the money you pay – developers, charity or some mix of the two. They are all indie games that would sell for over $80 if you payed full price for each – you can have them for any amount you see fit to pay. But the clock is ticking that there is not a lot of time left.
The games are DRM free and whatever you choose to pay gets them for any or all of the platforms supported. I downloaded all 6 for Win and Lin last night. You can pay via paypal, Amazon or Google Checkout. Here is a list of what is available in the bundle.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – I love living in the future. Last week I flew to Indianapolis for meetings on Thursday morning and was home before the kids got out of school on Friday afternoon. It was two – 1 hour hops each way. The last leg home was on a Boeing 757 and I had a seat just forward of the starboard wing and engine. I love the contrast of the engine so close and the ground so far away. So I dug out my phone ( radio off per FAA regs) and snapped a few shots. This is somewhere between Atlanta, GA and Orlando, FL. Nothing special but it looked very cool to me. Click on the little ones for the big ones.
I’ve been doing a lot of messing around with the Taxonomy Access Control Drupal module. It’s pretty impressive. Basically it creates a whole new permissions interface based on taxonomy. In my case, I break down nodes by requiring a tag for the region that applies to the content. Then I have regional roles that have permission to edit these nodes, based on the taxonomy. It gives a nice new layer of of control over content. I highly recommend it.
