JOSEPH KONY IS ONE OF THE WORLD’S WORST WAR CRIMINALS AND I SUPPORT THE INTERNATIONAL EFFORT TO ARREST HIM, DISARM THE LRA AND BRING THE CHILD SOLDIERS HOME.
This, I think, is one of the most campaigns of this year. Please join and help make a change – make Kony famous and thus visible. Also this is not the only thing we have to work on.
Time machine has been a safe harbor for me since it had been first introduced by Apple. About a year ago I ran into a problem. I only ran one backup disk connected to my MacBook at the time. But I bought a new iMac and thus I now had two machines to be backed up. But eventually non of the two was able to back up because they could not decide who was allowed to save how much. But there is a solution for that. You can create disk images (Sparse-Bundle) on you Time Machine hard drive and thus specify the max size. This can not only be helpful if you want to back up two computers to one hard drive but also if you would like to use the backup HDD for saving other data than just the Time Machine Backup.
In English at michaelnozbe.com by Michael Sliwinski.
And in German at h-ein.de by Andreas Hein.
Note both of the tutorials above focus on ‘secure’ Time Machine backup. If you just want to have a file-size limit for the Time Machine Backup you can just not select the encryption mode while creating the disk image with ‘Disk Utility.app’.
Hope that helps!
This little program is simply awesome! If you have not heard of it yet, here is the introduction post of this series, I will now tell you what it is all about. This time: Use DropBox on your mobile device (Android / iPhone / Blackberry).
If you already have DropBox you probably already know they advertise their free mobile Apps. I use mine on my iPhone and I love it.
The most important to know: DropBox Mobile does not download all the files to your phone (this can be good and bad). The good thing about this is that you do not waste valuable mobile storage on your device. The bad thing is that you need internet all the time you would like to access your files. But that is not 100% correct. DropBox is intelligent. The program can be set up to have a local cache which means every file you open will be saved locally. In addition to that, you can specify files to be favourites which get updated every time u launch DropBox Mobile on your phone or tablet.
Basically that is all you need to know about DropBox Mobile.
About this series: The basics are now covered. Probably I am going to post some quick tips about DropBox in the near future. But nothing too fancy.
Take care and have a nice day!
This little program is simply awesome! If you have not heard of it yet, here is the introduction post of this series, I will now tell you what it is all about. This time: Share folders with friends to work on projects together.
As already pointed out in the past posts: DropBox can be a very handy tool for sharing files and pictures (last post about the public and photos folder). This time I want to tell you about the ‘shared folders’. Those folders are basically folders which you and your friends or co-workers can use together to work on the same files. One thing needs to be noticed here: This is not for ‘working with the same file at the same time’ because that can corrupt files.
This function is very useful to share needed files with all participants. For example: I have to work with someone else together on a PR job. We both need files like pictures of the company we are working for and files which hold the details about this company. In addition it would be helpful to have some sample text to have an orientation.
In another case I use shared folders with friends and family (just me connected to another person) to give them files or receive files from them. For example: I shot some photos of them. Instead of having to email them or upload to some FTP or other service. I simply put the files into the shared folder and: done. The great thing and the difference to the public folder in this case is that the person gets the files to their file system (not a link to download) and the communication is two-way!
But how does this work?
First I suppose you already have a DropBox account. If not please follow this link.
Second you will have to head to their website to the ‘Sharing‘ area. There you click the ‘Share a Folder’ button at the top and now you can select either to create a new folder or select a folder which already exists. Now you are asked to enter the email-address of the person / more persons you would like to invite (you can even invite people who do not yet use DropBox), in addition you can enter a custom message. Done. Now you have a shared folder and can start sharing files.
But hey! There is another way to do this: Instead of heading to the ‘Sharing’ area you can just go to DropBox.com, login, browse to the folder you would like to share and click the ‘Invite to Folder’ button at the top. That way you are instantly asked to enter the other person’s email and you are done.
If you are already sharing a folder, you can find the settings for this folder either by searching for it within the ‘Sharing’ tab or just open the folder on the DropBox website and click ‘Shared folder options’ where you can manage the people who are in this folder and invite new people very easily.
Shared folders come in very handy if you would like to share files on a regular basis. If it is just a one-time-thing better use the public folder and a zip-file. But be careful with bigger teams. If one person deletes a file, it might be gone (even though DropBox provides security
by saving the files up to 30 days). One more drawback is that everybody invited to a folder can invite new people and delete others (there is no privileges-function).
This little program is simply awesome! If you have not heard of it yet, here is the introduction post of this series, I will now tell you what it is all about. This time: Your own website create and publish via DropBox.
Nowadays it is easy to get a space online where you can publish your content. Probably the most useful for just your little personal status updates are Facebook, Twitter and the alike social-networks. But if you would like to be king of your site, the design and all other aspects you might find Tumblr, WordPress.com or anything like that useful. Still there are people out there (like my self) who would like to host their site them self. Now I heard about a cheap alternative. Your DropBox.
You already know that your DropBox has a folder called Public and you already know you can share files through that folder (if not, here I describe what I mean). But you can also use it for Websites. This works like the following:
<!doctype html> <html lang="en"> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <title>The HTML5 Herald</title> <meta name="description" content="The HTML5 Herald"> <meta name="author" content="SitePoint"> <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/styles.css?v=1.0"> <!--[if lt IE 9]> <script src="//html5shiv.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/html5.js"></script> <![endif]--> </head> <body> Your Text Here </body> </html>
It would be awesome to be able to write some HTML but there are plenty of programs out there which can help you with that. If you are running on Mac OS X you already have one called iWeb. You can use iWeb to produce the HTML code!Sidenote: if you are interested in learning HTML (5), here are two resources: camendesign.com and net.tutsplus.com.
An alternative to publishing your stuff via the Public folder is Scriptogr.am. They help you set up a special folder into which you only need to save txt (text-file) documents. They provide a specific format which enables you to set your Post Title, Date, Post Type (Post / Page) and other structural stuff. And then provide a link for you where your blog now can be reached. The site than checks once in a while if something changed in your text file folder and that way updates your site. They do the design stuff and even support Markdown!
“Scriptogr.am is the first blog publishing tool I’ve tried which is truly dead-simple to use.”
~ Rasmus Andersson | Product designer at Facebook
This is a nice alternative to WordPress.com. With ease of use and simply administered. Still this method lacks some functionality like plugins and comments.
The problem with DropBox as a web server is that it does not provide the ability to run PHP scripts nor does it support a database like MySql. That would need DropBox Server to run some additional software which they currently do not support. So The websites are online. You can publish stuff but you are not able to really get something interactive out there.
I might not really use it for my own site. But I used it for presentational purpose of HTML Templates of a website and I already saw some people publish their holiday diary using this free DropBox Public Folder Website Method.
All in all one more simple method to get your word out there in a simple way. Hands up to Freedom of Speech!
This little program is simply awesome! If you have not heard of it yet, here is the introduction post of this series, I will now tell you what it is all about. This time: Hardlinking files and folders so they sync with your different machines or to have a backup of settings and other stuff.
For some time it was a pain to sync folders outside your DropBox. On Windows you had to install a new program which than provided the ability to do hard links. But I am not going into Windows right here (if you are interested please visit the DropBox Wiki.
But I just found out that there are programs which allow you to manage this process easily now. The DropBox Wiki provides a great list of tools which make it really easy to hardlink a folder into your DropBox. For example on my Mac I now use MacDropAny. Probably this could be done even nicer and more user-friendly but I think it is much better than to think about the terminal commands for creating hardlinks.
I hope this helped.
Well first and for most: I sync my Documents folder. There are all my needed Documents such as School stuff, talks, keynotes and all the alike. But I noticed early on that some other programs tend to use the Documents folder too. For example Final Cut and thus the Documents folder tended to outgrow my DropBox. Now I have a Documents folder inside my DropBox and linked to that folder in the Sidebar of the Finder and no longer sync the Documents via the hardlink.
I sync my Coda settings. That is a little tricky and I have not figured it out completely but it works for the plugins and workspaces which I created. A full tutorial on how to sync your Coda preferences can be found at eggfreckles.net. But basically, you only have to sync:
~/Library/Preferences/com.panic.Coda.plist~/Library/Application Support/CodaThis little program is simply awesome! If you have not heard of it yet, here is the introduction post of this series, I will now tell you what it is all about. This time: Sharing files made easy!
As in the last post, you already know what DropBox does in basics. They also provide very nice tutorials on how to use DropBox. I would like to show you one in particular this time. Sharing files and photos via DropBox.
Most of the time it is the case that you are shooting a birthday party and then you have to send the photos to all the people, burn a CD or get your self a server. Now you just creat a folder inside your DropBox/Photos folder and DropBox will create a web-viewable gallery for you. To grab the link you need to share it with your friends, simply do a right-click on the folder you just created and select “DropBox->Copy Public Gallery Link”. Now send this link to your friends via email and all they see is a beautiful gallery of all the photos. Just that simple.
But what about doing all this downloadable? So all you would like to do is provide some friends a Song which you created and you would like to share it with some of your friends? Now there is a folder for that. It is called Public. So if you want to share a file with friends, just drop it into the DropBox/Public folder and do a right-click “Copy Public Link”. Now you send this link to who ever you would like to download your file.
This simple. I am always amazed just copy it into the DropBox folder and you are done. I love it!
DropBox is a service where you create an account and download a little program to your PC (Mac, Windows and Linux versions available). DropBox than provides you with a simple folder, which acts just like all the other folders you have on your system. But DropBox is a little different. All the files you put in there are synced with the DropBox servers. That way all your files are in sync with the internet and accessible for you from all over the world. The best part: if you install DropBox on a second PC and authorize it with the same DropBox account, all your files are in sync between those two PCs! All the time.
Probably the best about this service: you get 2GB for free and if you refer friends you can pump that 2GB up to 10GB free online storage or you buy it.
But there is more about DropBox. And I would like to give you a little insight in how I use it over the next days.
Currently I am getting a little deeper into timelapse photography and so I thought maybe I should share some love with awesome people in the field. Here are 3 (um its four to be exact) high end timelapse photographers who are doing some awesome work.
Today my topic is “Think Tank” the Wikipedia definition is like this:
A think tank (or policy institute) is an organization that conducts research and engages in advocacy in areas such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, and technology issues. Most think tanks are non-profit organizations …
But I think that is not what I understand by that term. I would like to define a Think Tank as a collaboration of different people from different backgrounds working together to reach a goal. I implement that in my circle of friends a couple of weeks back. I initialized a meeting of a bunch of people with totally different backgrounds and some overlaps. We met just to have a nice meal together and then talk about ideas, random thoughts and concrete once as well. Discuss those thoughts and ideas with all the people and get totally different inputs.
In contrast to just meeting each other to sit together and talk some small talk we decided to do the same but also have some productive outcome. Sure we also strayed from the topic but that was and is OK (even wanted and needed sometimes)! We always found our way back.
This for sure is not a golden rule for such meetings. But I suggest 3 things!
So this you should remember! And get started. Call 3 – 6 friends and propose to make something to eat and discuss interesting topics. It is fun and maybe you will come up with a business idea?