Get DropBox

My friend and I work in the same field as Graphic / Web Designers and have worked on a few projects together. Our biggest challenge is location. He's located at one end of Jamaica and me at the other, so I'm always looking for ways to improve our virtual work relationship.

Over the years we've used several applications to aid us in our collaboration, BaseCamp (free), YouSendIt, Hamachi along with others. Hamachi was the last one we used and it was a lil difficult to get it to work seemlessly between a Windows Vista Laptop and iMac (running OSX 1.5). Plus there was no official interface for mac users ( I had to type commands in the terminal whenever I wanted to use the application). As a result I went looking for an alternative and I found it - DropBox.

Now dropbox was a term I first heard being used at a advertising agency my wife worked at and was only available to macs. Once all the macs are on the same network users could add files into a default shared folder know as a 'dropbox.' But I came across another DropBox that was available for the specific platforms - Window, Linux & Mac (Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!! As the choirs of angels sing and the beam of light shines done upon my ignorance :-) ).

In no time I had DropBox installed on my mac and my friend and I were able to share files, it was sweeeeeeett!

DropBox Features
DropBox initilally gives you 2Gb of storage for free, which you can upgrade if you want. It allows you to see the various versions of a file once changed or updated, restore deleted files, see previes of images and share specific folders with anyone you desire.

The lovely thing about DropBox is that it's linked to a physical folder on your computer, has a web interface to manage your account and shares files over an SSL connection. If you have growl installed on your mac you'll also get a notification everytime I file/folder is updated.

DropBox is a great collaboration tool, you should get it!

Font Conference

I saw a friend of mine with a link to this YouTube video this morning and thought it was really funny.

Google rolls out themes for Gmail

Today while checking my mail I noticed the interface of my inbox changed so I refreshed thinking it was an error with my browser. Only to see a link, after the page loaded, telling me I can change my theme by going into the settings area. I was blown away.

This new themes feature was released today Nov.19.2008 and Gmail now has 25 themes (Classic, New Blue, Cold Shower, Steel, Minimalist, Green Sky, Bibblegum, Cherry Blossom, Night Shade, Marina, Dusk, Sunset, Silver Lining, Contrast Black, Shiny, Desk, Tree, Summer Ocean, Phantasea, Zoozimps, Candy, Bus Stop, Ninja, Tea & Terminal) excluding the default and you can expect more to come.

Three of the themes were designed by external designers. These are Phantasea Renewal - Matthew Ferreira, Summer Ocean - Jim Honeycutt, and Cherry Blossom - Vania Sofandi. The rest were done internally.

Go ahead and customize your Gmail!

The Matrix Runs on Windows

I came across this video today and I think it describes the Windows experience perfectly...

ThinkFree Office - MS Office Knock Off

I was looking for an alternative to Neo Office recently, after getting frustrated with trying to find features similar to Microsoft Office, using the GUI. That was when I discovered ThinkFree Office and I tried a demo version.

ThinkFree has several products but somehow I was drawn to try their Office product, available for Windows, Mac, and Linux systems. When I installed the product I noticed my iMac was moving a little sluggish but I ignored it because I had several adobe photoshop files open. Once the installation was done I launched the application, after closing my photoshop files, and my computer was still sluggish only to be greeted by a screen encouraging me to sign up for an account. I ignored the screen continued but was surprised by what came next, an exact replica of MS Office 2007. I was thoroughly disappointed.

As if that initial disappointment was enough I created a document and tried saving it but was forced to create an account and store the file online. If I wanted to store my files online I would use Google Docs.

Unfortunately, I didn't see the need to have a desktop application that requires me to save my files online and as a result of this, I'm back to Neo Office with plans on getting iWork.

ScribeFire - Another Great Firefox Addon

So I've always loved Firefox, it's a web designer's dream and now that I've been blogging I've found one more addition to make Firefox that much better - ScribeFire.

With ScribeFire I can blog without having to go to my Blogger home page. It intergrates beautifully with Firefox so I no longer have to bookmark websites before I blog about them I can do it right there.

ScribeFire also allows bloggers to monetize the blog using various ad services such as Google Adsense.

What I also like about ScribeFire is that it gives the user the opportunity to add custom tags and promote your blog on websites like Technorati, Facebook, Del.icio.us and others. All in all, its a really nice addon!

* This post was made with FireScribe

Hamachi - All on 1 Big Network

As a freelance graphic/web designer I have the opportunity to work from home but I also have associates I work with closely on project from remote locations. Therefore I had a challenge, sharing files. With this challenge hovering over my in tray I has a desire to create a secure virtual network like many of those big corporations use as a soulution, for little or no money. So I went searching!

I came across a lot of techie jargon explaining Virtual Private Networks (VPN) and the need to have a VPN Server to facilitate this. Obviously I can't afford a VPN Server so I searched some more and I came across Hamachi, 2Peer, TeamViewer, Leaf and Wippen. Though I found these solutions I still had a problem, only a few had versions for macs, as a result Leaf and Wippen were eliminated.

Out of the 3 remaining solutions I found Hamachi to be the best but with one draw back. I had to install a third party application, Hamachi X, on the mac to manage my networks. I found 2Peer was web based and restricted to e-mail accounts, while TeamViewer was primarily for customer support but Hamachi was ideal.

Hamachi on the mac is designed for those users who don't mind getting their hands a lil dirty - running commands from the terminal. Hamachi has no actual GUI like the pc version but is a powerful tool in the arsenal of those who work from multiple locations, not to mention gamers.

Download Hamachi: Linux | Mac | Windows

Ubuntu Remixes OS for Netbooks

Canonical Ltd. has remixed on of their major products, Ubuntu for netbooks. The operating system is known as Ubuntu Netbook Remix.

The video found here shows how effortless it is to use and customize the desktop of the OS.

On instillation the OS is outfitted with following apps:

• Firefox 3 (web browser)
• Thunderbird (e-mail client)
• Pidgin (instant messenger)
• Rhythmbox (media player)
• FBReader (pdf reader)
• Lifrea (rss reader)
• F-Spot (image viewer)
• OpenOffice (office suite)

gOS for your Netbook

With the growth in the use of netbooks software developers are capitalising on creating operating systems that are ideal, using less resources and providing maximum efficiency, gOS is on such operating system.

gOS, which is linux based, recently launched a beta of gOS 3 Gadgets Beta. This version integrates seamlessly almost all of Google's services - Google Docs, Google Calendar, Gmail - with access to many Google gadgets. The previous version, gOS 2.9 Space, was geared towards social-networkers, primarily myspace.

The interface of gOS is very simple eliminating clutter and allowing users to be most proficient.

Ubuntu for Mobile Devices

Ubuntu has done it yet again and this time in collaboration with Intel. Ubuntu has been making some headroom for linux distributions and now they have taken it one step further by making their distribution suitable for mobile internet devices with a Ubuntu MID (Mobile Internet Device) Edition.

Ubuntu MID Edition supports touch screen devices, eliminating the need for a stylus. With a simple tap applications can be launched and you can use a swipe motion to go through web pages, images or videos. The OS is optimized to run devices with atleast 2GB disk space and 256MB of RAM.