标签: dropbox

Early last year, my computer crashed (just as I was supposed to complete and deliver a killer project) and I almost lost all of my data. So I started looking around at various alternatives, including SugarSync and Carbonite, and I ended up going with DropBox . I have to tell you that I have never looked back. I LOVE this tool. The idea is that you install DropBox on your computer. As part of this you create a DropBox folder somewhere on your system (I put mine in the My Documents folder). Then you drag-and-drop any other files and folders you want to take care of into your DropBox folder. From that point on you are "hands off" – your precious data is backed up into the Cloud. Now, when you create a new file in your DropBox folder, or edit an existing file, as soon as you click the Save button, the copy on your system is immediately backed up. You can easily share any files or folders in your DropBox by right-mouse-clicking on them on your system and selecting the appropriate option, after which the copy in the Cloud is made available to whoever you wish to share it/them with. The great thing about this is that you aren't emailing multi-megabyte files around. If your computer does happen to crash, you can use a web browser interface on any other machine to access your files in the Cloud. But wait, there's more, because if you have multiple computers, you can load DropBox onto all of them. As soon as you use one of your computers to "touch" a file in the DropBox folder on that machine, those changes are bounced up to the Cloud, and from there back down again into your other machine(s). If your other computer(s) are powered-down at the time, then the next time you wake them up, the first thing they do is to resynchronise themselves. I tell you, this is a wonderful idea. In fact I'm using it as we speak. I'm currently commissioning a new notebook computer. You know what it's like; you think you've loaded all of the software you need, then as some critical time you discover that you are missing a vital application. So I have both my new notebook and my old one sitting on the desk together. Most of the time I'm using my new machine, but if I suddenly find I need to use a graphics program I've not loaded, for example, I can spin round to my other computer, create the required image, save it into my DropBox folder, and watch it immediately appear in the corresponding location on my new machine. Of course there are always things you would like to change. For example, it would be nice to not have to drag everything you wanted to backup into your DropBox folder ... you sort of get used to having things where they are. A better idea would be to be able to right-mouse-click on any file or folder anywhere on your system, and select some option like "Make this a DropBox File/Folder" , which would cause it to be backed-up (and auto-updated in the future) without moving it anywhere. Another issue is the amount of data you can store. I'm cheap (grin). I went for the FREE account which allows me to store up to 2GB. This is perfect for my working data, but after all, this is mostly word-processing documents and web-resolution images. So although I personally am VERY HAPPY with my free DropBox account, this would not be sufficient for any sort of business / engineering environment. All of which brings me to SafeSync ... Introducing SafeSync So here's the deal... I recently ran across the guys and gals at Trend Micro (or maybe they ran across me), who introduced me to their SafeSync family of products ( www.SafeSync.com ). They gave me a live (over-the-web) demonstration, and I have to say that I was very impressed. They responded to every feature and function I asked about by saying "Oh yes, we can do that, watch this..." at which point they proceeded to show me. This really is very tasty. If you go to www.SafeSync.com you'll see that they offer both Home and Business versions of SafeSync . My interest at this time is the Business version. Check out the following chart (I'm sorry it's a bit blurry—I had to shrink it down but you can get all of this data from their website). Now, I understand that charts like this are always going to be a bit self-serving, but you can't argue with the fact that SafeSync allows you to run your own data centre (if you wish), which DropBox and SugarSync don't support ( iCloud , Mozy , and Carbonite do). Similarly, you can password-lock files with SafeSync , which you cannot do with DropBox , iCloud , Mozy , or Carbonite (this is supported by SugarSync ) Let's consider an example scenario. Suppose we have a medium-sized engineering firm of 70 or so people working on bespoke, one-off projects. As a result, they often end up working with external partners to support the overall project delivery. As with any engineering / manufacturing company, they need to share and move around very large CAD and CAM files, as well as a bunch of day-to-day work files. The bottom line is that they require a solution that will make the sharing of these files – both internally and externally – quicker and more efficient. If they are like the folks I know, they will have tried playing / experimenting with the following options: * An FTP Server: Too complex for use by non-technical folks and too time consuming for use on all of the day-to-day work files. * Emailing: Very often the CADS / CAM files (and other files) are simply too large to email. Plus this sort of thing can quickly consume all of the space on the mail server. * USB drives and DVDs: I can't tell you how many CDs and DVDs I've cut. USB drives are a lot quicker and easier, and they are relatively cheap these days, but shipping the result is expensive and time-consuming (it can take days), and it's a mega-pain if you are trying to share the data with multiple sites. Plus, the speed with which things change these days mean that the data on the USB / DVD is almost certainly going to be out of date before the package has even left your facility. Also there's a security risk if a USB / DVD goes missing in action. * Online File Sharing: There are tools that are OK, but it has to be said that uploading and downloading the files is a hassle on a good day – plus it's so easy to forget to upload the latest version of something. Once again, I cannot tell you how many times in my career I've discovered that I'm working with a different version of a document to my colleagues (although I prefer to think that it's they that are working with a different version to me ). Let's further assume that our example engineering company embraces a teaming environment, which means that sharing and collaborating on projects is very important to them. In a very competitive field, however, it is critical to keep proprietary documents secure. Would you be surprised if I told you that SafeSync for Business addresses all of these issues? It allows users to securely share links with anyone, whether they are in the company, a partner or a vendor. These links can be password protected and expiration dates can be set to further improve privacy and security. The user can also manually break the sharing link at any time. The "Team Folder" feature acts as a hosted file server, allowing users to post and share files with other groups as they wish. In addition to this, the changes to these files will be automatically pushed down to each person sharing the document, so everyone always has the current version. I tell you... when I look back even a few years, these sorts of capabilities were beyond my wildest dreams. I could waffle on about this for hours, but if you are interested in learning more, why not simply bounce over to the www.SafeSync.com website and root around to your heart's content. Meanwhile, I have to get back to commissioning my new computer...  

In early 2011, my computer crashed (just as I was poised to complete and deliver a killer project) and I almost lost all of my data. So I started looking around at various alternatives, including SugarSync and Carbonite, and I ended up going with DropBox . I have to tell you that I have never looked back. I LOVE this tool. The idea is that you install DropBox on your computer. As part of this you create a DropBox folder somewhere on your system (I put mine in the My Documents folder). Then you drag-and-drop any other files and folders you want to take care of into your DropBox folder. From that point on you are "hands off" – your precious data is backed up into the Cloud. Now, when you create a new file in your DropBox folder, or edit an existing file, as soon as you click the Save button, the copy on your system is immediately backed up. You can easily share any files or folders in your DropBox by right-mouse-clicking on them on your system and selecting the appropriate option, after which the copy in the Cloud is made available to whoever you wish to share it/them with. The great thing about this is that you aren't emailing multi-megabyte files around. If your computer does happen to crash, you can use a web browser interface on any other machine to access your files in the Cloud. But wait, there's more, because if you have multiple computers, you can load DropBox onto all of them. As soon as you use one of your computers to "touch" a file in the DropBox folder on that machine, those changes are bounced up to the Cloud, and from there back down again into your other machine(s). If your other computer(s) are powered-down at the time, then the next time you wake them up, the first thing they do is to resynchronise themselves. I tell you, this is a wonderful idea. In fact I'm using it as we speak. I'm currently commissioning a new notebook computer. You know what it's like; you think you've loaded all of the software you need, then as some critical time you discover that you are missing a vital application. So I have both my new notebook and my old one sitting on the desk together. Most of the time I'm using my new machine, but if I suddenly find I need to use a graphics program I've not loaded, for example, I can spin round to my other computer, create the required image, save it into my DropBox folder, and watch it immediately appear in the corresponding location on my new machine. Of course there are always things you would like to change. For example, it would be nice to not have to drag everything you wanted to backup into your DropBox folder ... you sort of get used to having things where they are. A better idea would be to be able to right-mouse-click on any file or folder anywhere on your system, and select some option like "Make this a DropBox File/Folder" , which would cause it to be backed-up (and auto-updated in the future) without moving it anywhere. Another issue is the amount of data you can store. I'm cheap (grin). I went for the FREE account which allows me to store up to 2GB. This is perfect for my working data, but after all, this is mostly word-processing documents and web-resolution images. So although I personally am VERY HAPPY with my free DropBox account, this would not be sufficient for any sort of business / engineering environment. All of which brings me to SafeSync ... Introducing SafeSync So here's the deal... I recently ran across the guys and gals at Trend Micro (or maybe they ran across me), who introduced me to their SafeSync family of products ( www.SafeSync.com ). They gave me a live (over-the-web) demonstration, and I have to say that I was very impressed. They responded to every feature and function I asked about by saying "Oh yes, we can do that, watch this..." at which point they proceeded to show me. This really is very tasty. If you go to www.SafeSync.com you'll see that they offer both Home and Business versions of SafeSync . My interest at this time is the Business version. Check out the following chart (I'm sorry it's a bit blurry—I had to shrink it down but you can get all of this data from their website). Now, I understand that charts like this are always going to be a bit self-serving, but you can't argue with the fact that SafeSync allows you to run your own data centre (if you wish), which DropBox and SugarSync don't support ( iCloud , Mozy , and Carbonite do). Similarly, you can password-lock files with SafeSync , which you cannot do with DropBox , iCloud , Mozy , or Carbonite (this is supported by SugarSync ) Let's consider an example scenario. Suppose we have a medium-sized engineering firm of 70 or so people working on bespoke, one-off projects. As a result, they often end up working with external partners to support the overall project delivery. As with any engineering / manufacturing company, they need to share and move around very large CAD and CAM files, as well as a bunch of day-to-day work files. The bottom line is that they require a solution that will make the sharing of these files – both internally and externally – quicker and more efficient. If they are like the folks I know, they will have tried playing / experimenting with the following options: * An FTP Server: Too complex for use by non-technical folks and too time consuming for use on all of the day-to-day work files. * Emailing: Very often the CADS / CAM files (and other files) are simply too large to email. Plus this sort of thing can quickly consume all of the space on the mail server. * USB drives and DVDs: I can't tell you how many CDs and DVDs I've cut. USB drives are a lot quicker and easier, and they are relatively cheap these days, but shipping the result is expensive and time-consuming (it can take days), and it's a mega-pain if you are trying to share the data with multiple sites. Plus, the speed with which things change these days mean that the data on the USB / DVD is almost certainly going to be out of date before the package has even left your facility. Also there's a security risk if a USB / DVD goes missing in action. * Online File Sharing: There are tools that are OK, but it has to be said that uploading and downloading the files is a hassle on a good day – plus it's so easy to forget to upload the latest version of something. Once again, I cannot tell you how many times in my career I've discovered that I'm working with a different version of a document to my colleagues (although I prefer to think that it's they that are working with a different version to me ). Let's further assume that our example engineering company embraces a teaming environment, which means that sharing and collaborating on projects is very important to them. In a very competitive field, however, it is critical to keep proprietary documents secure. Would you be surprised if I told you that SafeSync for Business addresses all of these issues? It allows users to securely share links with anyone, whether they are in the company, a partner or a vendor. These links can be password protected and expiration dates can be set to further improve privacy and security. The user can also manually break the sharing link at any time. The "Team Folder" feature acts as a hosted file server, allowing users to post and share files with other groups as they wish. In addition to this, the changes to these files will be automatically pushed down to each person sharing the document, so everyone always has the current version. I tell you... when I look back even a few years, these sorts of capabilities were beyond my wildest dreams. I could waffle on about this for hours, but if you are interested in learning more, why not simply bounce over to the www.SafeSync.com website and root around to your heart's content. Meanwhile, I have to get back to commissioning my new computer...

I've long referred to my office as "the pleasure dome" in jest – but recent changes have made it such a pleasure to go to work. A few months ago I decided to invest in a large computer monitor on the basis that (a) I spend all day every day slogging away on my computer and (b) my eyes aren't what they used to be. I looked around and found a 28-inch beauty for a very reasonable price, and I was absolutely delighted with it when it arrived (if this was Lord of the Rings I would refer to it as "My Precious"). In fact, I was so delighted that I decided to invest in two more. I know, I know, this was really rather extravagant of me, but I decided that I needed to give myself a treat (and who deserves one more than me?) This was around the time that my notepad computer crashed due to a virus, almost causing me to lose all of my working data. In order to address this, I purchased a refurbished multicore Xeon processor based tower for use in the office. This Tower came equipped with a rather ferocious graphics card capable of driving two monitors, and I picked up an additional refurbished graphics card from eBay for only $35 (this was a GREAT deal because the retail price for a new card was $500+ ... Eeek!). This also prompted me to start using Dropbox to synchronize my working data across my Tower and notebook computer along with Google Business Apps to synchronize my email . But the really cool thing, of course, is the fact that the three 28-inch monitors give me a humongous desktop. Apart from anything else, this has the added bonus of making me the envy of all the other guys in the building (yes, I know, people will tell you that it's not the size of your desktop, it's what you do with it, but trust me on this one ... in this case bigger really is better ).     Using this setup, I typically keep my email up on the left-hand screen; one or two Word documents I'm working on in the middle screen; and any graphics (Viso, Paint.net, etc.) applications up on the right-hand screen. When I first got the three monitors I was working on a standard rectangular wooden desk, but this really wasn't conducive to swapping back and forth between screens. Happily, I spotted a nice, unused curved desk in the corner of one of the other rooms in the building in which I have my office, and I managed to make a trade with its owner. As you'll see from the picture above, in addition to the three screens, I also invested in three keyboards and three mice (thank goodness for USB is all I can say). This really makes it easy for me to spin from one display to another. Of course all of this might seem like overkill, but if it saves me as little as 15 minutes a day over the course of the next 10 years than it will be worth its weight in gold – plus it's really cool (and you can't put a price on "cool" ). There is just one small fly in the soup. The way things are at the moment, all three mice control the same cursor. This means that if I'm working with the left-hand mouse-screen combo and I spin round to the right-hand mouse-screen combo, I have to use the right-hand mouse to drag the cursor all the way from the left-hand screen across the middle screen to the right-hand screen ... and so forth. I know, I know ... this is a minor niggle in the scheme of things and it really doesn't behoove me to moan and groan ... but "still an' all" as they say, it would be great if each mouse could have its own cursor. This way I could arrange things so the left-hand mouse had its cursor on the left-hand screen; the middle mouse on the middle screen, and so on. At the moment I don't think this is possible, but I am open to suggestions...

I've long referred to my office as "the pleasure dome" in jest – but recent changes really have made it a pleasure to go to work. A few months ago I decided to invest in a large computer monitor on the basis that (a) I spend all day every day slogging away on my computer and (b) my eyes aren't what they used to be. I looked around and found a 28-inch beauty for a very reasonable price, and I was absolutely delighted with it when it arrived (if this was Lord of the Rings I would refer to it as "My Precious"). In fact, I was so delighted that I decided to invest in two more. I know, I know, this was really rather extravagant of me, but I decided that I needed to give myself a treat (and who deserves one more than me?) This was around the time that my notepad computer crashed due to a virus, almost causing me to lose all of my working data. In order to address this, I purchased a refurbished multicore Xeon processor based tower for use in the office. This Tower came equipped with a rather ferocious graphics card capable of driving two monitors, and I picked up an additional refurbished graphics card from eBay for only $35 (this was a GREAT deal because the retail price for a new card was $500+ ... Eeek!). This also prompted me to start using Dropbox to synchronize my working data across my Tower and notebook computer along with Google Business Apps to synchronize my email . But the really cool thing, of course, is the fact that the three 28-inch monitors give me a humongous desktop. Apart from anything else, this has the added bonus of making me the envy of all the other guys in the building (yes, I know, people will tell you that it's not the size of your desktop, it's what you do with it, but trust me on this one ... in this case bigger really is better ).     Using this setup, I typically keep my email up on the left-hand screen; one or two Word documents I'm working on in the middle screen; and any graphics (Viso, Paint.net, etc.) applications up on the right-hand screen. When I first got the three monitors I was working on a standard rectangular wooden desk, but this really wasn't conducive to swapping back and forth between screens. Happily, I spotted a nice, unused curved desk in the corner of one of the other rooms in the building in which I have my office, and I managed to make a trade with its owner. As you'll see from the picture above, in addition to the three screens, I also invested in three keyboards and three mice (thank goodness for USB is all I can say). This really makes it easy for me to spin from one display to another. Of course all of this might seem like overkill, but if it saves me as little as 15 minutes a day over the course of the next 10 years than it will be worth its weight in gold – plus it's really cool (and you can't put a price on "cool" ). There is just one small fly in the soup. The way things are at the moment, all three mice control the same cursor. This means that if I'm working with the left-hand mouse-screen combo and I spin round to the right-hand mouse-screen combo, I have to use the right-hand mouse to drag the cursor all the way from the left-hand screen across the middle screen to the right-hand screen ... and so forth. I know, I know ... this is a minor niggle in the scheme of things and it really doesn't behoove me to moan and groan ... but "still an' all" as they say, it would be great if each mouse could have its own cursor. This way I could arrange things so the left-hand mouse had its cursor on the left-hand screen; the middle mouse on the middle screen, and so on. At the moment I don't think this is possible, but I am open to suggestions...  

I am a bundle of joy. My data is not just backed up and secure, my email from several accounts is now so synchronized it brings tears of happiness to my eyes...   Let's first remind ourselves how we got to be where we are (and when I say "we" I really mean "me", because after all – at the end of the day – it's all about me, isn't it? :-)   Synchronizing data files A few months ago I almost lost my working data on my notepad computer (I'd been working from home for a couple of days and thus I hadn't performed my usual daily backup).   The solution I decided upon was to have two computers – my notepad at home and a tower system in my office – and to ensure that exactly the same working data files were present on both machines. This spurred me to write an article on Dropbox.   A very brief summary (in case you are new to all of this) is that you install the Dropbox software on all of your computers. When you create a new file or modify an existing file on one of your computers – say my tower at work – that change is immediately copied up into "The Cloud" (where it is securely stored using military-grade encryption). And when you power-up one of your other Dropbox-enabled computers, your data on that computer is automatically synchronized with your data in The Cloud.   Actually, if I happen to have both my notepad and tower computers powered up at the same time (on the odd occasion when I bring my notepad computer into work, for example), then as soon as I make a change to a data file on one computer I can immediately see that change appear on the other ... this really is amazingly cool.   Synchronizing emails (the way that DIDN'T work) In addition to my data files, I also wanted to synchronize my emails (and calendar and contacts) so that I saw exactly the same thing on both my computers. My first approach blog turned out to be a ghastly failure.   I don't quite know how this came about, but over the years I've accumulated a number of email accounts; different people send me messages on different accounts, so I have to keep them all going. The way I had this set up on my notepad computer was to use Outlook 2010 to automatically access each of these accounts every five minutes or so and to download any new emails from them. Also, when I replied to an email, Outlook was set up to send the reply via the appropriate account.   So far so good; the problem was that I wanted to do the same thing on my new tower computer. Also, I wanted to make sure that the current state of play was identical across both of my computers with regard to which emails I'd read, which I'd responded to, and which I had deleted.   My original plan (which was really rather "funky" now I come to look back on it) was based on the fact that Outlook stores all of your emails (and contacts and calendar and "stuff") in a database called a PST file. My idea was that – at the end of each working day – I would copy the PST file from my tower computer onto a memory stick. Then, when I subsequently powered-up my notebook at home, the first thing I would do would be to copy the PST file from the memory stick onto the notepad ... and then repeat the process in the other direction when returning back to work.   I tried doing it this way. It was a pain in the rear end! Also it didn't work. For some reason I couldn't get Outlook 2010 on the tower to read the PST file from Outlook 2010 on the notepad. Of course the PST file wasn't created with this usage model in mind, but still...   Actually, now that I come to think about it, I was incredibly lucky that this didn't work. If everything had gone as planned, I might have spent the rest of my life copying PST files around, and once you've done this one time you've pretty much exhausted any fun you can squeeze from it (grin).   Synchronizing emails (the way that DOES work) As fate would have it, I was chatting to my friend Mike Smith, who owns the IT consulting firm Serenity-Networks. Mike is based here in town, so I asked him if he could help me with my email synchronization problem.   When Mike came into my office and I explained what I was trying to do, I could see that it was taking all of his willpower not to burst out laughing (or maybe he was fighting himself to not slap me around the head for my stupidity).   Now I don't fully understand all of the ins-and-outs of what Mike did, but I will try to give you the gist of it. First of all he set me up with something called Google Apps for Business . This costs $50 a year, but as far as I'm concerned it's already paid for itself many times over in the last few days alone.   Next, Mike used my Google Apps account to assume control of my primary email account. Again, I'm a bit "fluffy" about the intricate details, but my understanding is that he did things like changing DNS entries such that any emails to max@CliveMaxfield.com no longer go to my old account that was part of my www.CliveMaxfield.com website – instead they now go directly to my new max@CliveMaxfield.com account that's controlled by Google Apps.   Once this was set up, Mike used my new Google Apps thingy to go out and link into all of my other accounts. So now the Google Apps account is doing everything that Outlook 2010 used to do. It automatically accesses each of my email accounts every few minutes and downloads any new emails from them. Also, when I reply to an email, the reply is automatically associated with the appropriate account. So now I can access my Google Apps email from any computer in the world using a web-based interface, which is rather handy. Of course I could do this with my old email accounts, but there was a separate (and different) interface for each account. Now everything is under one "umbrella".   But wait, there's more, because this is where things start to get REALLY clever...   On the one hand it's wonderful to have all of my accounts centralized as discussed above, but... I personally loath web-based email interfaces. I really prefer using Outlook 2010 as my main email. So the next thing Mike did was to download and install something called Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook onto both of my computers. Once he had done this, Mike went into the Outlook applications on both of my computers and connected them back into my main Google Apps email account. So what does this all mean in real terms? Well, just for the sake of argument, let's assume that I have both of my computers here in my office. When I power-up my tower computer and open Outlook, the first thing it does is to synchronize with my Google Apps email account, so any new emails appear in my "Inbox" as you would expect.   Now let's assume that I power-up my notepad computer and open Outlook on it. Not surprisingly, it also synchronizes itself with my Google Apps email account. The clever thing is that from this point on it doesn't matter which machine I'm working on. If I read an email on one machine, that email shows as having being read on the other. If I send an email on one machine, a copy of that email appears in the "Sent" folder on the other. If I delete an email on one machine, that email is immediately deleted from the other. (Of course if one machine is powered-down, it will resynchronize itself the nexttime it is powered-up again.)   And it gets better and better... if I add a new contact on one machine, that contact is added to the other. If someone sends me an invitation to a meeting and I accept and that meeting is added to my calendar ... it appears in the calendar on the other machine.   But wait, there's still more...   The way Mike has things configured is everything I ever dreamed of ... but just to add the last dollop of icing onto the top of the cake, the last thing he did when he set all of this up was to import my original Outlook 2010psT file into my new Google Apps account (you basically use the "Import" command in Google Apps and point it at your old PST file). This took a while, but in addition to all of my old emails, it also imported all of my existing calendar entries and contacts and suchlike.   Even better, it imported the old hierarchy of email folders I'd created over the years and then it stuck all of my old emails into the appropriate folders (this hierarchy of folders is – of course – replicated on my Google Apps account and both of my computers' Outlook accounts).   I cannot tell you how "tasty" this all is – it is everything I ever dreamt of and more – I have a great big silly smile plastered all over my face just thinking about it all – this has been a good week!