Category: Software

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Dropbox Tips and Tricks

Dropbox is one of my favorite tools to help small businesses in the D.C. area share files on the cheap.

Dropbox Wiki Info

Besides simply sharing files with your friends, office co-workers, or just your other computers, there are lots of other uses.

See the Tips and Tricks page and Dropbox Add-on page on the Dropbox Wiki explaining things such as:

Other Dropbox Tips and Tricks

  • See any updates that occur to your Dropbox files with the free Growl (Mac) program. Dropbox for Windows does this through the Dropbox System Tray Icon. This is especially useful if you are sharing folders and need to be notified when there are new files.Dropbox Growl Notification
  • Automatically make web photo galleries by moving pictures to the Dropbox Photos directory either from a computer or using the free iPhone Dropbox App.

iPhone Dropbox

  • Use a Dropbox Add-on that allows you to quickly move a file to a public folder and place the URL the clipboard. This makes sending people a file super easy.
  • Change shared folder names. For example, I share a folder with Joe that I name “Joe”. Joe can accept to join that folder and then rename the folder “Rick” so that it makes more sense for him. The great thing here is that the folder is still named “Joe” for me. Alternatively, I can share a folder with Joe that I have named “Rick” and then rename it to “Joe” once he has joined that folder. On Windows machines, renaming a shared folder has sometimes caused me to leave a shared folder. To get around that quirk, rename a shared folder from the Dropbox website.
  • Move shared folders. You can move shared folders, for example, to a directory named “Shared” or “Work”. This does not affect any of the shared users.

Sign Up Referrals

Dropbox ReferralDropbox is free for 2GB of space. See their pricing for more space. One of the reasons that Dropbox has quickly grown in popularity is their referral program. Once you sign up, you can invite others and get 250MB of extra space for everyone you sign up. On that note, please use my Dropbox referral when signing up for Dropbox to give both of us an extra 250MB of space.

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Microsoft Security Essentials

Microsoft officially released Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) today. It is a free tool to protect your computer from malware, viruses, spyware, rootkits, and trojans. Unlike the previously released Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT), MSE runs all the time and actively searches for threats.

Blurb from Microsoft:
Microsoft Security Essentials

Early tests show MSE to be very effective at catching threats. It updates itself automatically and without hassle.

It takes over all antivirus functions and is recommended to be run as the ONLY antivirus software on a computer. You should not run it alongside other popular software such as Norton Antivirus, McAfee, or AVG. Presumably this would cause the antivirus software to fight it out on your computer, hurting system resources and confusing one antivirus program, for example, when it finds a virus in the other antivirus’ quarantined vault.

I recommend this for all Windows computers: Windows XP, Vista, and 7.  The only exceptions are pirated versions of Windows since MSE requires Windows Genuine Advantage to run and make sure that your copy of Windows is legit.

MSE has a small footprint with low minimum requirements:

  • For Windows XP, a PC with a CPU clock speed of at least 500MHz and at least 1GB of RAM
  • For Windows Vista and Windows 7, a PC with a CPU with clock speed of at least 1.0GHz and at least 1GB of RAM
  • VGA (display): 800×600 or higher
  • Storage: 140MB of available hard-disk space
  • An Internet connection is required for installation and to download the latest virus and spyware definitions

MSE Quick Scan

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RIP original Palm OS

The original Palm OS is dead. The company did not make a big deal about it, but they just recently stopped production of all older Palm devices that run the original Palm operating system (OS).  Instead, they are focusing on their completely new WebOS used in the Palm Pre and upcoming Palm Pixi. While this is no surprise given how the company needs to stop hemorrhaging cash, it is still sad to see this venerable operating system gone with such little fanfare.

Palm’s CEO Jon Rubinstein said:

We’re launching more great Pam WebOS products with more carriers, and turning our sights toward growth.

What Made Palm OS Special

Born in 1996, the Palm OS had three main things that made it special in my view:

Graffiti1) Graffiti: The Palm OS had a modified version of handwriting character recognition called Graffiti. Unlike Apple’s earlier ambitious attempt at full handwriting character recognition in the Apple Newton, the Palm worked simply and reliably.

2) Applications: The Palm could load applications and games that you downloaded and installed yourself. This was before the concept of a closed-off Application Store, such as the for the iPhone or Palm Pre.  Palm OS’s approach was less elegant than the modern app store, as many apps crashed and there was no single location to buy apps. Still, there were over 50,000 applications available online, more than any other PDA had at the time.

3) Synchronization: Unlike the Sharp Wizard or other pocket organizers, the Palm had sync software called HotSync which could deal appropriately with updates from the computer (using Palm Desktop) and the Palm. Although it wasn’t fancy, the synchronization worked great.

Corporate Fun

The corporate maze that Palm and the Palm OS went through was amazing.

Before the Palm OS’s development in 1996, Palm Computing Inc. was bought by US Robotics in 1995. US Robotics was in tern bought by 3Com in 1997. Palm was then spun off to its own company in 2000. In 2002, the Palm OS part of the company was made a subsidiary company to Palm named PalmSource. PalmSource (makers of the OS) then spun off to a completely independent company and licensed back the OS to PalmOne (hardware maker). In 2005, PalmSource was acquired by a company named ACCESS who then licensed it back to Palm, Inc (hardware maker, formerly PalmOne) in perpetuity.

As if that weren’t enough confusion, the original inventors of the Palm Pilot were frustrated and started their own company called Handspring in 1998. They made a competing device running the Palm OS called the Handspring Visor. In 2002 they started the successful Treo line, which weren’t yet phones.  In 2003, they merged back with Palm (hardware maker) and formed PalmOne.

Sony also sold Palm OS devices until 2004.

OS Development

All this craziness hampered the development of the OS, but there were updates to the OS over the years. The last released version, 5.4 (Garnet), supported WiFi, Bluetooth, and multiple screen resolutions. However, the Palm OS was still not scalable or modular compared to Windows Mobile or the current Apple iPhone OS which competed recently with the Palm OS in Palm Treo phones.

Palm OS 6.0 (Cobalt) was announced in 2004 and was actually a completely new OS based on the acquired assets of BeOS. This was an attempt to truly evolve the OS. It provided modern features: multitasking, memory protection, and better graphics. This iteration of the OS never saw the light of day, however, as it did not get any interest from manufacturers and was never used in any devices.

Because the Palm OS was antiquated, Palm started selling both Palm OS and Windows Mobile versions of their Treos in 2005. Along with recently stopping production of Palm OS devices, Palm has just stopped production of all their Windows Mobile devices.

WebOS was announced in January 2009 and has now replaced Palm OS. If you need to run some old Palm OS applications, there is a third-party emulator called MotionApps Classic that runs the original Palm OS within WebOS. With the rapid adoption of WebOS and the Palm App Store, most people won’t need this.

Palm’s CEO Jon Rubinstein said on their August 28 2009 earnings call:

We had a really unique opportunity in being able to develop Web OS.. and the old Palm OS lasted us for 16 years, which is really amazing when you think about it. We are designing Web OS to last us for the next 10 or 15 years.

Off to OS Heaven

Although Palm OS has had a difficult life, it’s been the most dependable pocketable operating system for me until a few years ago. From my first US Robotics Palm Pilot 5000 to my Palm Vx (my personal favorite) to my Palm Tungsten 5 with color and WiFi, the Palm OS has been a great companion. It is now part of OS history, off to join other notables such as IBM’s OS/2 and the AmigaOS.

Palm Pilot 5000 Palm VPalm Tungsten T5

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Snow Leopard Review

Snow Leopard

Snow LeopardThe latest version of Mac OS X is out, already with a system update available.  It costs $29 but you can find it cheaper at places like amazon.com.  Overall it is probably worth getting for most users but it is not without its troubles.

The Good

The behind-the-scenes components have been optimized to be far more efficient.  For apps that are designed to take advantage of the new OS, they are significantly faster.  For now, that mainly means Apple applications like Mail or Safari.  Boot time and resume time are also much faster.

There is a new dock expose feature where you can hold down on an app icon in the dock to see all of its windows only in expose.  This can be handy if you have a lot of open windows and only want to see those of a particular program.  This is one of the very few new features since this OS is mainly just background improvements.

Several of the OS enhancements are not being taken advantage of yet by third party application providers.  Once snow leopard versions of programs come out, the benefits will become far more prominent.  The new OpenCL feature is particularly interesting.  Typically your powerful graphics card is not doing very much.  OpenCL allows programs to perform calculations that would normally be done on the CPU to also be done on the video card.  For many tasks, this could result in massive speed improvements.  Only time will tell how many developers take advantage of this but it seems likely for the big developers like Adobe to do so.

The Bad

Besides Apple apps, most programs don’t seem much faster.  In fact, some seem a tad slower, probably in need of a snow leopard built version.  In the worst case, there are some applications that don’t run in snow leopard at all.  Some of the more notable ones are older versions of Photoshop or Parallels.

Since installing snow leopard, I’ve seen an odd behavior every few days where the transparent menu bar becomes opaque white and the system becomes quite sluggish for no apparent reason with no programs using up a lot of resources.  Only a reboot resolves things.  This is very un-Mac behavior.  This is an upgraded system that has been migrated from other Macs a few times so it is possible it just needs a fresh install of the OS from scratch but that just makes me feel like I’m using Windows again.  I’ve only seen this on one system, a current model Mac Pro.

Perhaps the worst thing about Snow Leopard is just that it isn’t a major change and there isn’t much obvious benefit besides some current performance improvements while waiting for programs to further take advantage.

Conclusion

Snow Leopard will probably be pretty sweet once there are more programs built to fully use it.  In the mean time, I do enjoy the fastest browser I’ve ever used and having my email pop up instantly.  You definitely can’t argue with the $29 price.  However, there’s really no rush for most users to upgrade.  Waiting a few months is probably more than fine so you can give developers time to make necessary changes.

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Network Attached Storage for Automated Backups

Prevent Lost Data

Many DC area residents have been contacting me lately with hard drive failures and lost data. Data can sometimes be recovered using software such as SpinRite. But it’s easy and relatively inexpensive to be proactive and backup your data. The best backups are automated, using free software such as SyncBack for Windows or the built-in Time Machine for Macs.

Backup Locally

Backups can be sent to a local USB flash drive or local USB hard drive. The Western Digital My Passport Essential 500 GB costs about $107. These use laptop hard drives which have the advantage of being able to run only on USB power. Larger 3.5 inch external drives can hold more data but require an additional power supply.

Network Backups

If you have more than one computer, a better solution can be to backup to a network attached storage (NAS) drive. This connects by ethernet to your router allowing you to connect to it through your home network.

Here are a few solutions:

Apple Time Capsule

If you are a Mac user and you want the simplest solution, you’ll have to pay a lot more for the Apple Time Capsule. Apple just upgraded their large capacity Time Capsule to 2GB for $499. The Time Capsule is both a NAS and a wireless router, so it simplifies your setup. However it is only a solution for automated Mac backups that use Apple’s included Time Machine software.

Apple Time Capsule

Buffalo Linkstation

Buffalo Technology Linkstation Pro LS-XH1.0TL 1 TB is a great NAS that costs about $215 currently. It is fast and works as a Time Machine drive for Macs just like Apple’s Time Capsule above, though you’ll have to login to the Buffalo to set up that capability. You pay a bit more for the Buffalo’s speed than the below Iomega. If you are only using the NAS for automated backups, speed is not particularly important. Speed is helpful if you are also using the NAS as a network shared drive. The other advantage of the Buffalo and the Apple Time Capsule is that they are near silent. You have to put your ear right up to them to hear the small fan.
Buffalo Linkstation

Iomega Home Media Server

Iomega Home Media Server 34337 1TB is a good media server, which is cheaper ($148) but a bit slower than the Buffalo. It is not loud at all, but the fan is noticeable. It includes software for automatically backing up 5 PCs. You can also backup to it with a Mac by using free software such as SuperDuper.

Iomega Home Media Server

NAS Reviews

SmallNetBuilder.com is a great site for NAS reviews. They also have charts such as this one which show you the speed versus price. I circled the Buffalo and Iomaga drives mentioned above illustrating the Buffalo’s excellent performance.

SmallNetBuilder Single Drive NAS Chart

Multi-drive NAS

For larger businesses or those who want an extra backup of their backup drive, consider a NAS that consists of multiple drives. This could be a RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) box such as a Netgear ReadyNAS. Or it could be a Drobo and Droboshare. These solutions are more expensive and often slower than single drive solutions. But they ensure that your data will safe if one of their hard drives crashes.

Backup Your Data

In the world of computer support, nothing is worse than seeing someone lose family pictures or days of important accounting data. Given the low cost of storage, there is no excuse for avoiding backups. Automated solutions are a simple way to keep your digital data safe.