Wow, this blog is old.

So it seems I had entirely forgotten that this blog existed. Only a few posts, all of them years old... While it probably won't be useful to anyone ever again, I'm going to let the site live as a curious view into the past. Mostly just for my nostalgia, I suppose.

Well, it's likely that I'll never post here again, but it's not like I'm clogging up the Internet by keeping an old blog around.

GermanType

I've never really liked memorizing ASCII codes; have you? Didn't think so. As a student of German, there are many times where I'll need to type characters that don't appear on a regular keyboard. To heck with ASCII codes! GermanType makes it easy.

Driving a Home Theater

Our family is upgrading to an HDTV for Christmas, so you might be surprised to learn that we don’t have cable or satellite.  In fact, we hardly ever watch television shows.  Our TV is mostly used for playing Wii games, watching DVDs, and streaming movies from Netflix — a really great service that I highly recommend.

Here’s the reason for this post:  we need some way for our TV to:  a) stream Netflix in HD, b) play ripped DVDs from a drive on our network, and c) play Blu-ray discs.  There are many solutions for getting things like this done, but I’m going to compare the products and ideas that we considered the most seriously.  Your needs are probably different, but I still hope you can use this information to make a better decision for yourself.

A discussion about Apple TV, Google TV, HTPCs, and Blu-ray players.

Dropbox vs. SugarSync

Lots of people use more than one computer. Between your home, your work, and your laptop, you might be using more than three computers every day. This can cause all kinds of problems with keeping your files straight. Knowing that technology is always helpful, there must be a solution, right?
Despite that sentence being sarcastic, there actually is a solution — several, really. I’m going to focus on two of them today:  Dropbox and SugarSync.

Both services offer free versions, so you don’t have to pay anything to benefit from them. Both allow you to synchronize folders among different computers over the Internet. And both tools let you access your files through a web browser, giving you control from any web-connected computer. The main difference between the two is in their approach to synchronizing.

Approach: 
Each time you install Dropbox onto one of your computers, it creates a folder called “My Dropbox” in a location of your choice. All of these “Dropboxes” are synchronized with each other and backed up, but nothing else (without workarounds). With SugarSync, you select the individual folders, and those folders are synced and backed up. When you install SugarSync onto additional computers, you can repeat the same process with the option to download those folders that you selected on other computers. SugarSync’s approach is more flexible, but Dropbox is more simple.
Winner:  Your choice

Storage: 
Until recently, both Dropbox and SugarSync allowed their free users to keep a maximum of 2GB backed up and synchronized. However, not long ago, SugarSync upgraded their free accounts to a max of 5GB. Both services offer ways to expand your allotment for free, typically through referring friends.
Winner:  SugarSync

Sharing: 
When you need to share things that are too big to email, these services are convenient ways to do so. Each one allows you to make a file “public”, which assigns it a unique URL that can be accessed by anyone on the internet. This lets you share any file through a simple link — much easier to email than huge files. Another powerful feature is the ability to create shared folders. When you share a folder with another Dropbox user, the folder gets synced onto every computer between the two of you, and all the files inside it will stay synchronized. This makes it easy to share and collaborate on work with others. SugarSync works in much the same way, but again, the syncing is not restricted to one single folder.
Winner:  Tie

Platform support: 
Both offer clients for Windows and Mac, but only Dropbox supports Linux. As far as mobile clients, both support iOS, Android, and BlackBerry; only SugarSync has official Windows Mobile (app in beta) and Symbian apps.
Winner:  Dropbox

Web interface: 
While each website has its pros and cons, I prefer Dropbox’s web interface over that of SugarSync. I find it to be cleaner and better designed, and it also includes a very nifty feature that I never noticed until I needed it. I was in a rush to get a file printed, and I had to use the website because I was on a school computer. As soon as I logged in, I typed “Book Notes” into the search bar, and I had my document within five seconds. It was really handy, and I scoured SugarSync.com in vain looking for a similar feature.
Winner:  Dropbox

My opinion:
Both programs have their strengths, and both have their weaknesses. Even though I normally prefer the techie, tweakable approach (and yes, I just turned ‘tweak’ into an adjective), Dropbox’s simplicity creates a compelling pull that makes it my favorite choice for file syncing and sharing.


However, you should know that I don’t synchronize my music, videos, or pictures between computers; I sync mostly just my projects and my schoolwork. SugarSync has features that Dropbox doesn’t, and vice-versa. I encourage you to give each of them a test run before deciding which (if any) you’ll use.

Using multiple Gmail accounts at once

A lot of us use more than one Gmail account.  Some have one for personal mail and one for business conversations, and some of us access Gmail for spouses at times.  Wouldn’t it be nice if you could have more than one Gmail account open at a time?

Hey, you can!  Well, kinda.

You can’t have two Gmail accounts visible at the same time, but you can change some settings to allow you to switch between them instantly.  It’s not just limited to two accounts, either—you can set this up with as many as you want.  It’s not even that difficult:

1.  Head to www.google.com.  Once there, click Settings > Account Settings.

2.  Click ‘Edit’ next to ‘Multiple sign-in.’

3.  On this page, Google warns you about the potential risks involved.  Most of them are completely harmless, but heaven forbid you lose an email and decide to sue Google.  Regardless, you should read it through and make sure you’re not losing anything important.

4.  From now on you’ll notice a small arrow next to your email address on most Google sites (in the upper-right corner).  Click this and select “Sign in to another account” to do exactly that.

And that’s it.  The account you start this process with will become your default account.  Any accounts you sign into via the pop-up menu will become linked with each other, and you’ll be able to switch between them at will—on most Google sites.  Feel the powah!  (It helps to read it out loud.)

gleeBox and Instapaper

Preface:

Recently I have discovered an interesting phenomenon - when you are supposed to be working on an assignment, the time spent on the work has an approximately 1 : 2 ratio with the time spent messing around. Therefore, when you propose to spend 3 hours doing work, you inevitably spend 6 hours doing completely unrelated things.

This ratio holds true specifically for Internet work, and may vary slightly for other computer-related tasks.

Luckily for me, I have spent enough time working on assignments in the past few days to discover some very fun and useful tools. Top of the list is gleeBox, which (I feel) is easiest described as 'browsing the internet with a keyboard.' This extension for Firefox and Chrome is simply amazing, and has impressed me many times over in only a few days. Even if you love your mouse like your mother, this tool will be extremely useful! Not only is it an interface for the pages you view, it can act as a command line for your browser. DOS has nothing compared to gleeBox. YubNub commands, jQuery selectors, bookmarklets, page sharing -- this tool handles these tasks and more with Web 3.0 ease.

On the subject of bookmarklets, did you know that Instapaper creates bookmarklets for each folder you make? Each bookmarklet sends the link directly into that folder. I found this extremely useful while doing research; I created a folder for cited references, copied the bookmarklet, and named it 'cite.' Doing this enables me to activate it through gleeBox using a simple !cite command - sending whatever page I'm viewing straight to a collection of links. If you don't like using the LastPass extension, just copy some bookmarks! All you'd have to do is type !login, and it would be done!

GleeBox is a wonderful tool that can do many things for an internet user. Paired with the powerful bookmarklets of today, it can help you accomplish virtually anything with just a tapping of the keys. The TipJar has even more strategies and tools to show you. This is an extension that's worth looking into.