The Gadgets Page

The one killer app I’ve wanted for a long time is the one where I can sync all my computers AND my mobile. There are plenty of services out there that let you sync multiple PC’s; and some even give you a web interface to access those files on a computer you haven’t synced.

But the one feature that is always missing is the ability to sync from your mobile phone to your other machines. SugarSync gives you all that and more.

The companies latest offering is a 45 day 10GB trial account. Once the trial is over the cost to keep your 10GB of storage is about $25 a year. Compare that to Apple’s 10GB .Mac service at $100, with single machine sync and no mobile access, it seems a good price.

How SugarSync Works SugarSync monitors files in specified folders on your computer and keeps an up-to-date copy of them on a secure, remote central server. It then automatically synchronizes these files to all the devices you specify. The downloadable SugarSync Manager software is required on each device that you want to sync

While having to install the client software on all the machines and devices I want to sync can be a hassle, it’s a small price to pay for the ability to connect everything.

Several months ago I was talking with a senior executive of an online storage company, and I told him one thing I would love to have is the ability to get to media files I store online so I don’t have to cary them with me. His comment to me was the amount of bandwidth needed to download the files was not cost effective. While I agree trying to download large music or video files doesn’t seem an effective use of bandwidth, my unlimited use account with T-Mobile allows me to download as much as I want.

I really like SugarSync. I think it has a lot of potential. I have accounts with Amazon S3, Mozy, Apple’s .Mac and several web hosts. But none of these services have the immediate sync capabilities nor the mobile access.

I’m going to sepnd the next several weeks using the sevice and I’ll write a follow up post. But for now, I recommend you try SugarSync.

Thom Allen is also the writer of Digital Thom.

I love this video of a montage of all the Windows startup screens.

Just seeing those old screens made me feel all the excitement I felt when I was just starting out with computers. Those blue screens and that font reminded me of all the possibilities that computers represented to me. Then hearing the old sounds, especially from Windows 3.1, spurred my nostalgia. I remembered walking into Egghead Software over on State Street by the Shopko. Mike and I used to go there several times a week just to look around.

Now, we hit the Apple store several times a week, but it all feels the same, yet different.

I wonder if I’ll ever feel nostalgic about the Vista noise.

Via: Windows Startup Screens | Joseph Scott’s Blog

Microsoft has created a new online service for you. It’s a portal called Health Vault where you can keep track of all your health information online. It’s free and you are supposed to be able to give your doctors permission to upload your data there. Sheldon Comics eloquently put into words my gut reaction to it:

Sheldon Comics by Dave Kellett (10-10-07): Click to see full comic

The worst thing about this situation is that Microsoft is our BEST option here. Our healthcare system is in such shambles that a website like this is the best we have to keep track of everything. Where other countries like Germany require doctors to give you all their information on your personal microchip, we are trying to drag our doctors into the twentieth century (much less the twenty-first).

• Your Health Data, Plugged In to the Web - washingtonpost.com

According to the Washington Post, doctors are a bit shy of technology:

About 90 percent of physicians and more than 80 percent of hospitals still use paper records, according to Nancy Szemraj, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services.

Good luck getting your doctor to upload his manila file into Health Vault for you. If you actually trust Microsoft enough to use Health Vault, it’s YOU who will be doing all the work of inputting your data.

Sorry, Microsoft. Software can’t solve this problem. Our entire system is broken and half of us can’t even afford it. Canada looks better and better all the time.

Update 10-11-07: Sheldon did it again and said EXACTLY what I was thinking!

More thoughts on the User Agreement for Health Vault here:

• Use Health Vault, Lose Your Rights

If Twitter’s unreliability hasn’t worn you down, you’ll be happy to know that they have added a new feature called tracking:

• Twitter Blog: Tracking Twitter

You can follow friends on your phone through Twitter, but what about concepts? What if you wanted an update anytime anyone mentioned your name, your favorite band, “NYC,” “earthquake,” or “Steve Jobs?” In real-time? What if you were attending an event and wanted to know who else was there?

If anyone in the public timeline mentions the words “Steve Jobs,” you can have their tweets sent to you by tracking those words.

Turn on tracking: track Steve Jobs
Turn off tracking: untrack Steve Jobs

You can track many things at once. To turn off one, use the untrack feature, to turn them all off:

Turn off all tracked concepts: track off
Get a list of all tracked concepts: track

I am racking my brain to think of a topic that I’m willing to let any moron interrupt my day with and I haven’t been able to think of one. Quit adding features, Twitter, and get the IM and SMS to deliver messages in order and within an hour. Or deliver them at all. I’m sick of missing out on half of everything. We’re trying to have a conversation here.

Via: Twitter / Daniel Johnson, Jr.: Twitter tracking enabled Thanks, Daniel!

For more information about Twitter:

• Pick Me! » Twitterpated

• Pick Me! » Why Twitter Is Appealing… to some

• Pick Me! » My Phone Sings Twitter

• Pick Me! » Has Twitter Killed My Urge To Blog?

• Pick Me! » Twitter Is Not The End Of The World

• Gadgets Page » Character Count When Using Adium With Twitter

The newest version of Software for Starving Students is available. It’s right in time for the new school year, so if you have a student who needs software, or if you like free software yourself, this is the place to go:

• SoftwareFor.org: Home of Software for Starving Students

This year, they have a ton of great software to download for both the PC and Windows operating systems. You can see the complete list here:

• Software for Starving Students: What software is on the CD?

Why does Software for Starving Students provide all this software for free and how do they do it?!

The cost of a college education is always increasing — usually faster than students can earn money. We hope our efforts will help lower students’ software costs.

We obtain all of this software, legally free of charge, via the Internet. Most of it is open source, the rest is obtained and distributed by permission. It doesn’t cost us anything but our time (for the most part), so we pass the good will on to you.

If you are in need of software to optimize your computer, try the software they recommend. They’re awesome!

I have enjoyed Twitter for the last few months. I have a group of friends that write regularly and it makes me feel less lonely.

When I use Twitter on my cell phone, some of the messages come out of order and late. When I use Twitterific, some of the messages come out of order or they come in a huge barrage of messages after too long of a delay. When I use Adium, the messages come out of order. When I use Twitter’s website, I have to use the refresh button to see if anything new has come.

There are really no ideal options for Twitter, but out of all the options on the computer, I prefer Adium. The cute little birdie flaps his wings when my friends have said anything, it works with my GMail and Yahoo IM accounts, and it shows the Twitter names instead of people’s real names (like Twitterific does). My only problem with it is it doesn’t tell me how many characters my message is, so I can’t tell if I’m typing too much. After searching Adium Help, online and asking around, I don’t think there is any feature to enable that will give me a character count. So, here is my workaround.

I have sized my Adium window so it is 30 characters wide and then I sized the response box so it’s five lines tall. That gives me exactly 150 characters in the box. If I write more than can fit in that box, I’m over the Twitter limit. In order to do this, I typed the numbers 0-9 over and over again until I had 150 characters and then sized the box accordingly (see picture to the right).

It’s just a small thing, but it has made using Adium with Twitter so much easier for me that I just thought I’d share.

At WWDC last week, Steve Jobs announced that they are creating Safari for Windows. It is available as Beta here:

• Apple - Safari 3 Public Beta - Download

I have read comment after comment about this release questioning why?

I’ll tell you why.

The iPhone uses Safari. If Apple wants to drive sales of the iPhone, familiarity with Safari will help. If Apple wants to encourage people that the iPhone can handle the web, familiarity with Safari will help that as well. In fact, if you’re using an iPhone and you want the bookmarks to be the same as your computer at home, your only option will be to use Safari on your home PC as well as your Mac.

Who knew the iPhone was going to be a Firefox killer?

Type class was my first introduction to ASCII art. After hours of “Type X 15, O 2, X 15…” I would end up with a Christmas Tree on my sheet of paper. There was no backspace on my mom’s old typewriter. If I screwed up, I had to start all over and the teacher could tell at a glance if I had done everything correctly.

Now, all you have to do is upload your photo to Photo2Text and they’ll do all the work for you.

• Photo2Text.com - Convert an image to Ascii Art

This is really cool, but I have yet to upload a photo yet. Maybe I’m worried that some poor school girl in India will have to do the conversion on an old IBM Selectric.

Via: Photojojo » Turn Your Photos into Gibberish — How to Convert Photos into ASCII Art

If you are in need of contact management software, then it’s time to try JibberJobber. It is available right now for a good price. You can read more about it here:

• JibberJobber Blog » Blog Archive » Extra! Extra! Read All About It!

JibberJobber has a focus of career management. We should all be managing our careers at all times, not just during the times when we are looking for a new job. Don’t wait until you’re laid off to start looking for your next position. For all you know, the job of your dreams is right around the corner and all you need to do is take a peek.

If you have wanted to put your videos on the Internet, you probably thought that the only way to do it was with YouTube. YouTube does make it extremely easy to broadcast your videos, but what if you want something more personal? What if you don’t want Google to own your video? What if you already have a blog and you just want to add your latest video?

Freevlog has the answers to all those questions and more. They have just updated their videos, so you have the most current way to learn how to put your videos on the web.

• Freevlog

A little over a year ago, I was faced with these problems. I had filmed lots of little videos that I enjoyed and I wanted to share them on my personal weblog, but I didn’t know how to do anything. I had no idea how to put titles on the videos. I didn’t even know how to upload them. Mike Verdi and Ryanne Hodson were pivitol in getting past my fear and just putting my videos up on the Internet.

They have broken the process of starting a video-blog, or vlog, into these easy steps:

• Setup a Video Blog
• Update your PC or Mac
• Compress video for the web (so the video will look good AND load up quickly)
• Take a screenshot of your video
• Get a blog
• Upload and post your video
• Get an RSS Feed

There are step-by-step videos for each of these parts of the process on their Freevlog Tutorial page.

Almost every digital camera made today and a lot of the cell phones, have a movie mode. No matter where you are, you can record the wonderful bits of your life as they are happening and then share them with your friends and family all across the globe. That’s the beauty of starting your own vlog or adding video to your personal weblog. Now, you can do that and more.