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All posts tagged "dropbox"


Monday, August 1, 2011

iTwin: Your Missing Link Has Been Found

Posted by Chris Sacksteder in "Digital Home Hardware & Accessories" @ 08:00 AM

iTwin first picture

Product Category: File Sharing Utility
Manufacturer: iTwin, Inc.
Where to Buy: Amazon [Affiliate]
Price: $99.99 USD
System Requirements: Windows 7, XP or Vista (32-bit or 64-bit)
Specifications: Size: 90mm x 21mm x 8mm; 50g. Symmetrical USB (2.0) connectors, LED activity lights.

Pros:

  • Easy to use.
  • Can connect two computers to copy files when other means don't work.
  • Easier than connecting to a remote file share.

Cons:

  • May not be as good as connecting to a file share.
  • Needs access to company's server to operate.
  • No local help or trouble-shooting options.

Summary: This is a unique little device that enables secure file sharing between two (and only two) computers, and may be just the thing you need when other methods are blocked by company firewalls or home routers, or are simply too difficult to set up by a novice user. The company's slick marketing-oriented web site may over state its features, but it works well. Read more...


Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Wuala: The Best Alternative to Dropbox?

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Digital Home Software" @ 03:00 PM

http://lifehacker.com/#!5798179/wua...xtra-free-space

If you're looking to get more bang for your buck than what Dropbox offers, Wuala might be worth checking out: their prices are cheaper, they have more "in-between" pricing in terms of storage, and they cover the Windows, OS X, iOS, and Android platforms. Perhaps the coolest thing they've done though is allow you to offer Wuala the use of your hard drive; if you give them 100 GB of space on a your always-on computer (that's an important part), you'll get 70 GB of storage on their servers. Given how cheap local storage is, that seems like a good deal to me! I'm a very happy Dropbox user, but I find myself tempted by this...how about you?


Friday, December 17, 2010

Dropbox Hits the Big 1 Dot 0

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Digital Home Software" @ 04:00 PM

http://blog.dropbox.com/?p=581

"We're super excited to announce the new hotness that we've been cooking up for the past few months: Dropbox 1.0! In addition to hundreds (yep, hundreds) of bug fixes, vastly reduced resource usage (think of it as the Prius model of Dropbox), Dropbox 1.0 ("Rainbow Shell") also offers support for extended attributes, selective sync, and a shiny new installation wizard. Those are just the CliffsNotes though - here's the true story behind Dropbox 1.0..."

If you need to keep files in sync, Dropbox is a great tool to do it - they've reached the big 1.0 milestone, and added a few new features. The most important of which is likely selective sync; if you're synching 30 GB worth of files between your PCs and you have a netbook with 32 GB of storage, you might want to trim that down a bit - now you can.

Don't have a Dropbox account yet? Sign up for free using this link and you'll get a bonus 250 MB of storage (and so will I).


Friday, July 30, 2010

Busting Bandwidth Bugaboos: Troubleshooting ISP Speed Problems

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Digital Home Talk" @ 11:30 AM

Since most Thoughts Media readers are using high-speed Internet, I decided this article would benefit everyone, so it's one of our rare across-the-network pieces of content. I hope you find it useful!

Figure 1: What is this, 1994 all over again?

Whenever bandwidth is discussed, there's always lots of finger pointing because there are so many variables, and players involved, that it's rarely a simple issue. My particular bandwidth bugaboo this morning? I was ticked off that Dropbox (referral) was only uploading at 10 KB/s. I left a 900 MB transfer running all night and it wasn't finished in the morning, and that's when I discovered the awful speed. My first instinct was to point a finger at Dropbox, thinking there was some sort of bandwidth throttling going on. I did a speed test with a tool my ISP provides (speedtest.shaw.ca) and was shocked to see 1.7 Mbps downloads and 107 kbps uploads (Figure 1). It's normally 20x that on downloads and 10x that on uploads, so I knew something was wrong beyond just Dropbox. Read more...


Thursday, July 1, 2010

Microsoft's Sync Strategy: A Bit of a Mess?

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Digital Home Articles & Resources" @ 12:00 PM

http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/re...tm_campaign=rss

"It's fair to say that Microsoft's product offerings are something of a mess. Windows Live Sync and Live Mesh overlap (the difference being that the former is PC-to-PC, the latter is PC-to-cloud), Live Mesh and My Phone overlap (they're both device-to-cloud), and SkyDrive, Live Mesh, and My Phone all overlap (they all incorporate their own cloud storage)."

This article overstates the case slightly - Live Mesh was always a technology preview, nothing more. Live Sync is the consumer-facing sync product from Windows Live, and the new version is using Mesh on the back-end, so it's easy to see that Microsoft's long term plan was to migrate from the original FolderShare code to Mesh. Now that's not to say that the new version of Live Sync is trouble-free...in fact, I think it's almost a disaster in terms of performance. And the limit of 2 GB on Skydrive sync is puzzling...why not let them use the full 25 GB offered by Skydrive and become a market leader in one fell swoop? Maybe there are concerns of people using their 25 GB for piracy and copyright theft?I expect Mesh to be shut down as a service before the end of the year, and hopefully the Skydrive storage component will get increased over time. I think it makes sense for the phone sync component to stand alone for now - it's based on an acquisition by Microsoft - though I hope it comes into alignment with the other services over the next year. Read more...


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