Have the cake, eat it too. I just got an invite to DropBox (thanks EngTech), and it’s everything the screencast says. So far, I’m loving it.
Basically it’s a file system in the cloud, so you can access files from any computer, synchronize between machines, and share folders with others. Usually that means “as slow, flakey and annoying as your Internet connection”, which DropBox works around by creating a duplicate folder on your machine. Opening files, saving changes, copying and moving, everything happens at HD speeds, offline or online. DropBox quietly synchronizes in the background.
There’s an activity stream — 2008′s contender for Buzzword Bingo — which here makes perfect sense: double check that a change went through, or find out what’s happening on a shared folder. On OS/X it growls at you whenever someone drops a file into a shared folder. And of course, this being 2008 and all, it keeps a copy of every version and holds on to deleted files.
Technically not a backup solution, since files get duplicated in source and DropBox folder, and the suggested symbolic link workaround doesn’t live up to the hype, but hopefully that will be fixed soon. The rest boils down to the yet undecided pricing scheme, and a few more security options (permanent delete, private keys), but if it pans out, I’m thinking DropBox over TimeCapsule.
You too, or just me? Google down? What gives? Most likely it’s just Firefox playing mind tricks on you. Check you sanity. (Thank Alex Payne)
Lazy web. Atlassian is giving away $5,000 for a cool plugin or extension on each of its products. I can’t guarantee this one will land you the prize, but definitely my appreciation: a JavaScript widget that I can drop into any Web page that will show recently open/updated issues from JIRA.
Love the outfit. That’s what I think of Ryan Tomayko’s new blog design. Separately, check the post that led to it, good point worth practicing:
Many of the design decisions were based on the goal of reducing administrative debris, integrating various bits of workflow directly into the content as much as possible, and attempting to accentuate the strengths of HTML’s interface capabilities instead of perverting them.
TGIF. Microsoft Bob.
Above, Alan Dean helps make sense of the HTTP Status Spaghetti.
engtech