Posts Tagged "dropbox"
GrabBox: Screenshot sharing with Dropbox
Okay – by now I think you’ve all heard me rave about Dropbox enough.. but one of the things that is really making Dropbox super useful for me is the number of third party applications that are starting to use Dropbox for fast & easy cloud storage. 
I often find myself sharing screenshots with colleagues and friends. There are a ton of applications out there that will help you do this, but most of them rely on you taking a screenshot and dragging it to another application.
GrabBox is a free app that lets you share a screenshot whilst skipping that second step: just take a screenshot and it will automatically add it to your public Dropbox folder and creates a short url for you to share with friends. It puts that url on your clipboard so you can paste it right away.
Here’s a clip of GrabBox in action:
[video src="movies/GrabBox.mov" width="640" height="400" options="controls autobuffer" id="vid-1"]
What I love most is that I don’t need to change my workflow: I just hit the regular OS X keyboard shortcut to take a screenshot and GrabBox does the rest: snap, paste, done.
The ugly icon, and the fact that it runs in your Dock instead of your menubar are two minor gripes, but overall it’s highly recommended!
Read MoreDropbox tip: Store documents there!
We’ve talked about Dropbox here before on the site, but did you know that you can use Dropbox for more than just storing files? If you use multiple Macs, you may also want to store some of your application data on Dropbox, allowing you to keep your todo lists, passwords, clippings and other data in sync across all your machines. Of course you could also do the same with a USB drive or MobileMe iDisk, but the instantaneous syncing Dropbox does makes this very practical for users who use multiple Macs a lot.
So far I’ve tested Dropbox syncing with the following apps:
- 1Password: Involves a few steps, but Agile has also written a great setup guide.
- VoodooPad: Just drag your .vpdoc files to your Dropbox and you’re all set.
- The Hit List: Just move the library file from “~/Library/Application Support/The Hit List/The Hit List Library.thllibrary” to your Dropbox, hold down the Option key while launching The Hit List and select the file on your Dropbox.
- Things: Setup is similar to The Hit List, a user-contributed how-to is also available.
Most other applications can probably also be synced using one of the methods above, provided they support a custom library location or use documents to store your data. I have yet to run into any issues, however there are a few things you’ll want to look out for, to preserve your data integrity:
- Try to avoid running your synced applications on both Macs at the same time – otherwise you might run into “lost updates” and other syncing conflicts
- Occasionally check your Dropbox folder for aforementioned conflicts: Dropbox doesn’t give you a lot of warning if there are conflicts, so take a look every now and then to see if there is a “sync conflict” folder in your Dropbox.
- Make sure you have the same version of the application on both Macs.
- Your preferences are usually stored in a different location than your data, so don’t be surprised if those aren’t synced
Tip: if you sign up for free using this referral link, you’ll get an extra 250MB storage.
Read MoreFree alternatives to MobileMe
Continuing in the series of posts hating on MobileMe, today we’re going to look at free alternatives to Mobileme. This article will focus on the core Mobileme features and take a look at the pros and cons of the alternatives.
Mail alternative: Gmail
I’ve never been willing to lock myself into a $99 / year e-mail service, simply because my main e-mail address is something I’d like to be able to keep indefinitely. Gmail can collect (and send) e-mails from a variety of providers and addresses, offers free IMAP support (a must-have for iPhone owners!) and doesn’t include advertising in the messages you send. The storage is basically unlimited and nothing is ever deleted.
Pros: No ads in mails, best-of-breed webmail interface, IMAP support, works great with Mail and iPhone once configured
Cons: IMAP mailbox configuration a bit tricky
Calender Alternative: Google Calendar
Surprise surprise, another Google app! Google Calendar offers basically the same range of features and can be configured to sync with iCal (Google actually provides a handy tool called ‘Calaboration‘ to set things up for you automatically). Perks include free SMS appointment reminders, simple calendar sharing and fast natural language scheduling (e.g typing “Dinner tomorrow at 9pm” will schedule the appointment accordingly).
The web interface is a little less pretty than MobileMe’s, but it gets the job done.
Pros: SMS notifications, iCal integration, CalDAV support, natural language entry, useful “Agenda” list view of upcoming events
Cons: -
iDisk Alternative: Dropbox
I’ve raved about Dropbox in a number of other posts, so I won’t rehash to much of the details here. Suffice to say that Dropbox has the best cloud-based document syncing and storage service I’ve come across. It’s integration with the Finder is perfect, it offers seamless version control and makes sharing with Windows & Linux users a breeze as well.
The only real difference is the storage size – but it’s a big one: While free Dropbox accounts can sync up to 2GB of files, Mobileme offers 20GB of storage. Beyond the free plan, Dropbox also offers a 50GB package, but that costs as much as Mobileme does.
If you don’t need to sync and store large amounts of data in the cloud, Dropbox is perfect. If you do need more storage, then Mobileme is worth reconsidering.
Pros: Seamless cross-platform OS integration, easy sharing, version control & “undelete”
Cons: Only 2 pricing tiers, web-interface a bit tricky at first
Photo Gallery Alternative
Mobileme’s iPhoto Gallery feature is probably my favorite aspect of the entire package. The galleries are a little slow to load, but are very nicely presented. The ability to download an entire Zip file of an album is also a nice touch and the iPhone presentation is the icing on the cake.
But there’s a plethora of picture sharing websites out there that offer similar functionality: I’m just going to name a few that stand out for their decent iPhoto integration:
- Facebook Photo Gallery
- Pros: built-in iPhoto support, support for Faces, fast & simple web presentation
- Cons: no album downloading, requires Facebook account
- Picasa Web Albums
- Pros: Dedicated upload tool, album downloading, 3rd party application support
- Cons: less storage space, uglier web interface
- Flickr
- Pros: Community-features, built-in iPhoto support, nice web presentation
- Cons: Limited monthly uploads and image downloads for free accounts
Overall this might the dealbreaker if you really need to share a lot of images with friends online. Sure, you could always just throw a zip file of your images on your Dropbox account (see above), but if there’s one standout feature of Mobileme, this is it.
Conclusion
There are lots of great alternatives for Mobileme’s individual services worth checking out. Whilst they may not offer the integration that Mobileme does, they sure give the service a run for its money and are worth a look if you’re on the fence about signing up or renewing your account.
Oh, but if you do decide to stick with Mobileme, you can save a bundle if you buy it through Amazon.
Read MoreCollege Collaboration Tools
This semester we’ve been assigned a lot of coursework that needs to be worked on in teams, with each team usually consisting of around 3-6 people. To help us share files, work on document together and generally stay in sync, we’ve started using a few different online services…
Read MoreBackup strategies compared
OS X 10.5.4 has just been released, so this seems like a good opportunity to talk backups. Even though I expect this update to go as smoothly as the others of recent memory, it’s never a bad idea to use OS updates to make sure your backup system is in good shape. I used to run a backup immediately prior to each 10.4.x update, just in case any weirdness occurred.
Here’s a few setups I’ve tried over the years that helped me stop worrying about backing up by automating the entire process.
