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!

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.

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.

Dropbox

Yes – I know I’m raving about Dropbox again. But we needed a way to share files and code with a 5 member team, without resorting to e-mailing things back and forth. With various team members using Mac, Linux and Windows, Dropbox’s OS-level, cross-platform integration is a perfect fit.

Setting things up is simple too: Simply create a Folder on the Dropbox website and e-mail a link to that folder to your team-mates. They can free Dropbox accounts (which offer 2GB of storage) and simply drag & drop in their own files or revise yours. But don’t worry – Dropbox has a full revision history, so you can revert to an older version of your file if somebody screws up.

Google Docs

Whilst Dropbox is great for sharing files, there are occasions where you might all be working together on a single file or project  in a local environment. In those cases I’d normally suggest using the excellent SubEthaedit collaborative writing tool, but unfortunately it’s only available for OS X.

Instead, we’ve recently started using Google Docs. It allows you to share a file you’re working on with other members of a team and is a good way to split up assignments without having the hassle of merging the work at the end.

The editing tools are fairly basic and there’s no easy way to redefine things such as headline styles without resorting to CSS hackery, but it’s a good way to pull your text together before you put the finishing touches on in a “real” word processor. 

MIA: Basecamp Webapp for Students

These tools are pretty good, but what’s really missing is a decent webapp to pull these types of tools together in a way tools such as Basecamp do. The free Basecamp account is pretty good, but the lack of file hosting is a pretty large omission and students aren’t going to pay for this type of service. A lot of colleges and universities use software such as Moodle to offer these types of services, but they’re mostly geared towards entire courses, rather than smaller group projects.

So if anyone feels like stepping up to the plate, I’m sure there’s a market for this type of webapp!

Here’s a few setups I’ve tried over the years that helped me stop worrying about backing up by automating the entire process.

Strategy 1: Just the basics

I used this system by itself for a while due to limited capacity on my external harddrive and still use it to keep an off-site backup of my most important files and documents. I don’t back up everything however, so bear in mind that this is a trade-off between storage-location security and capacity.

Basically I use Transmit and Automator to backup all some selected files to an FTP server. If you don’t have your own FTP server, you could also use a free dropbox or mozy account to do the same thing. Transmit installs a handy “synchronize folders” Automator action, so just select the folders you want to back up and save your automator workflow. Then you can use OS X’s built-in cron scheduler to automatically run your workflow to back up your files. (Edit: this guide (link) is helpful for setting things up!)

I usually back up my mail accounts, most of my application preferences, personal documents and files this way. Applications as well as my Photo, Music and Video libraries are not backed up though.

Pros: Offsite storage, access from multiple locations, no peripherals required.

Cons: The first sync could take quite a while, depending on the amount of data you’re backing up, although incremental backups after that are relatively fast. Longest restoration time as you’ll need to install a clean system and slowly rebuild your system piece by piece should your hard drive die. No backups of older versions of files.

Verdict: Ideally only used in combination with 2 or 3. Only rely solely on this strategy if you like reconfiguring your entire system or don’t have an external harddrive.

Strategy 2: Mirror your drive

This was my favorite strategy pre-Leopard. I used Shirt Pocket Software’s excellent SuperDuper! utility (Shareware, but offers a free mode that can also be used for this strategy – backups will take longer though) to create a complete copy of my harddrive on a partition of my external firewire drive (you can also use Carbon Copy Cloner, but I can’t attest to its reliability as I’ve never tried it). If a system update should break something, reverting to your previous settings is as simple as booting off the external drive and putting SuperDuper in “reverse gear”, copying your backup to your internal drive.

I set the external partition up to be the exact same size as my internal drive and ran SuperDuper 3 times a week. The best part about this strategy is that restoring the system is super fast and you can even boot off your backup drive and continue working should you need to.

Pros: Fastest “turnaround” time in case of a crash, fastest backing up, predictable backup size

Cons: No version control, requires an external harddrive, no off-site storage.

Verdict: Great alternative for Tiger users, or if you frequently like to switch hardware or test different OS versions.

Strategy 3: Backup everything, all the time

Of course, no article on backups would be complete without mentioning Time Machine, Apple’s system-level backup utility built-in to OS X Leopard.

Time Machine completely relegates backups to a background process that most users won’t even notice and allows you to really just forget about them. Time Machine will also back up multiple versions of files, allowing you to retrieve older copies of documents in case you’ve deleted something important. As it stands Time Machine is more or less an ideal solution for most users. Turnaround time is fairly fast, although you’ll need to copy your files back onto your internal drive before you can use the system, there’s no way to boot off a Time Machine drive.

Time Machine will consume a large amount of space on your external harddrive however, filling it entirely before it starts deleting older versions of files. One way to avoid this issue is to partition your drive, but as  harddrives have become so affordable, it’s probably worth investing in a dedicated large backup drive. Also, should you discover an issue with a system update, there’s no easy way to revert to your system’s previous state.

There are a few reasons you might want to go with Strategy 2 instead, (say you want to keep around an older OS installation on a spare backup drive to boot into, e.g. to test something under Tiger), but for a lot of users Time Machine will be the easiest backup strategy to go with.

Pros: Version control built-in, unobstusive, most extensive backups.

Cons: Backups aren’t bootable, there’s no built-in way to easily schedule backups for specifc times or intervalls, requires 10.5 Leopard, capacity intensive.

Verdict: Highest level of data retention, not quite as flexible or customizable as SuperDuper!

Conclusion
Personally I currently use a mix of strategies 1 and 3: Time Machine performs my main backups, but I use a  DropBox beta account for my most important “current” files and also backup my photos to my FTP server. Apple’s system updates also seem to be much more reliable and you very rarely hear complaints about a system update making something worse, so the lack of an easy “revert to previous system” with Time Machine is not so much of an issue.

Competing services such as Omnibox, Moxy etc. offer similar OS clients, but DropBox is the first that seems to match Apple’s own .Mac iDisk in terms of seamlessness: Your DropBox appears in the Finder and adding a file is as simple as drag and drop. A utility that runs in the background then uploads that to your DropBox account.

I’d even go a step further and say that it actually seems to work better than the iDisk. Adding files to your iDisk is a sluggish process that usually ends in a two second progress bar claiming your 200MB file has been uploaded in record speed, followed by 2 hours waiting for .Mac to “finish” the file.

The DropBox folder looks and feels like a regular local folder. The default behaviour is even “move” rather than “copy” when you drag items into it, which is a bit disconcerting at first. (Tip: Use option drag!)

Once you’ve dragged in a file, DropBox takes care of the rest silently in the background. Files are instantly visible online at your Dropbox account, even whilst they’re still being uploaded.

I’ll have a some more impressions later this week, but initially it does beg the question:

Why on earth doesn’t .Mac work this well? Apple already has OS integration baked in, so there’s almost no excuse for the current state of the .mac iDisk. For me at least, snappy, pretty DropBox – even in its current beta state – beats the pants off the iDisk in every respect.

Let’s hope the “.mac overhaul” the rumor-mill has promised for WWDC pans out.

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