Category Archives: technology

Ben Willis recently wrote a short, but thought provoking, post about how the power of our connected world makes meeting, connecting with and reaching out to new people – complete strangers – very simple. He believes that while it certainly does not trump the quality of a face-to-face communication, the power of the ease and simplicity of it can certainly be powerful…

> Three times in the past two days, I’ve made new connections with people (One through Twitter, another through this blog, and another through e-mail) who I would consider highly respectable, and would have likely never had contact with otherwise. Are they high quality interactions? Not necessarily, but they were simple and as powerful as they needed to be.”

I think that there is something to this. What struck me is the fact that several of my online acquaintances have quickly grown into real friendships and professional relationships largely because of the ability to communicate quickly and regularly via the electronic medium.

I will also mention that Princess Bethany is a member of an online forum for women and that has resulted in several close friendships for the both of us. Members of this forum who are also local have become some of our closest friends as a couple.

As with any relationship, it is all about the time and attention you are willing to put into it. I would also say that the sheer amount of communication and interaction methods available to us all in this day and age makes it all the easier for those with a desire to foster and grow these otherwise casual interactions. When we approach a request to “friend me” as more than a desire to expand some popularity credits, but a real desire to interact, we open the potential to make new, honest, fruit bearing connections.

Link: The Remarkable Simplicity of Online Connectedness

I have been an active user (and mostly a fan) of Apple’s iDisk feature. It is probably the main reason I have kept my .Mac membership for so long. With the recent increases in storage there I thought I would never even look in any other direction. That being said, along with the recent storage increase has come even more flakiness. Sometimes, my iDisk will go for days with a “failure to sync” and then, mysteriously, just start working again. After trying everything possible to fix this, it still remains and has become something I just have accepted as “part of doing business” with .Mac because, well, I know I am not alone in my troubles.

Dropbox is a new file synchronization service that has just entered into private beta, and boy is it exciting. It takes all of the features of of other similar services (Box.net, FolderShare, and the aforementioned .Mac iDisk feature) and does them better, faster and more elegantly. I have been happily using it for a couple of weeks now and, dare I say, I am about a few days away from disconnecting my iDisk and never looking back.

In my mind, here are the ways that Dropbox beats iDisk:

* Syncing is faster. Way faster. As in “I can’t believe it synced the files that fast. I better open the file to make sure” faster. This is due, in part, to the fact that once a file is synchronized, and you then make changes to that file, only the changes are then synced. It is also due to the fact that the underlying technology is not Apple’s slow-as-dirt implementation of WebDav.

* It keeps a copy of any and all changes to your documents and files. Make a change that you wish you had not? Delete a file or folder by accident? No problem. Just log into the web interface and revert to a previous version – any pervious version. Or if it was a deletion, undelete it. That change will then sync to your machines. Awesome!

* You can login to the web interface and have access to your files from any machine. Therefore, if you are not on your machine and need to retrieve a file and have synced it with Dropbox, you can do so using a web browser. You can also upload new files via the web interface and those will then sync to the machines you have interfaced with Dropbox.

* You can also share any folder in your Dropbox with others, even if they do not have Dropbox. Simply enter the e-mail address of the person you wish to share with and they will get an e-mail with a link to that folder, granting them the access you have per the permissions you have given them.

To get an even better idea of Dropbox, they have a video demo up on their site that is worth checking out. As stated, this is still in beta and there are many more features coming down the pipe. The beta is closed right now but keep this service on your radar screen and sign up for an invite if any of this stuff may be even remotely useful to you.