Ben's Blog

Move to the Cloud with a little help from Google, Box, Zoho & Flickr

2008-09-25T15:46:00.001+01:00

I just discovered google mail/Gmail (google email for apps to be specific). I only started looking because my old hosting provider was bouncing my mails and was not helpful in fixing the problem so I figured there are plenty of providers and I would just vote with my feet. In looking for a new provider I noticed google apps email (which lets you send mail from your own domain). You cant send from your own domain with regular google mail which is a shame (yes you are allowed to "fake" the from address but when you do this the receiver sees "xxxx@googlemail.com on behalf of ......." which I think looks naf) So I set up everything on google and had outlook connecting via IMAP and all was good. After a very short while I ditched outlook and just used the google mail web site wich is well designed, easy to use and above all very responsive. I still use IMAP on my phone because with such a small screen its easier to use the built in mail client than the google mail web site. A 7GB limit on my mail is extreemly generous but I hope never to get anywhere near that. And all that for FREE.

Having been converted to google mail I had a look at some of the other stuff they offered and was impressed.

Google Calendar
The perfect compliment to google mail, google calendar can even send invites to outlook users which turns up in thier outlook calendar and vice versa, well impressed!

Google Docs
Fantastic, all my docs stored on google so I can get to them from anywhere and on any platform. Not quite as good as it sounds, you can only "upload" aka "convert" a few document types (.doc, .xls, .ppt, .pdf + open office equivalents) and they are of limited size, still, should be sufficient for most stuff. Its a fairly basic word processor/spreadsheet compared to MS office but let face it most of us dont use a fraction of the power of those apps anyway (especialy when your talking about "personal" documents). I would think much better of this if they gave you eg 1or 2GB and allowed you to upload anything you liked (even if you could only edit the .doc and .xls stuff), remember they give you 7GB of mail so this does not seem an unreasonable request.

Google Apps Vs Google Accounts
Unfortunately you cannot send from your own domain with a google account, only with a google "apps" account (dont see why they cant fix that). It is further unfortunate that google "apps" accounts have a very limited number of "apps" to use (mail, cal, start page, sites, docs) so if you want access to stuff like notebook, bookmarks or any of the other non "apps" stuff you have to have a normal google account aswell which seems a bit of a pain and I cannot see why they would want to limit the usefulness of an "apps" account.

Storage
So I got my "docs" up on google but what about all the other "files" that you cant quite (and more importantly google don't) call "docs"? There are plenty of free file storeage services arround, go pick one based on your needs, web based access/editing would probably be top of the list. but getting all your files on line gives you a great advantage of being able to access everything from anywhere.
Box.net do free accounts and you can access your files via a browser (and even edit a few types) thanks to Zoho.

Photo & Video
Google have Picassa web albums and give you 1GB of photo storage for free. If you need more space you can buy it. I dont think they currently support video.
Flickr, I would probably call the no1 (and defacto) online photo site offers free (but in my opinion very limited, 200 pics or something) accounts, however, for an EXTREEMLY REASONABLE $25 (aprox £12 - £15) per year you get UNLIMITED photo storage. they also support video of upto 150MB and 90sec in length.

Music
So far I have not found any place to put all my music files for free. Humyo (which is also resold under various other brands) give you 25G of "Multimedia" storage and 5GB for "other" files all for free but even this generous allowance is way to small for my music so for the time being at least my music remains offline. Not that big a deal as I have 4GB on my phone to carry arround my current faves.

Instant Messageing
I use Microsoft Messenger but whichever variation you use the same thing aplies. Normaly you sign in and send/receive messages via some kind of app installed localy on your machine (there are even some apps which let you sign into multiple networks at the same time). This means your tied to the PC this stuff is installed on. There are several places that let you sign in to these networks from a web site, meebo.com being one I found recently. So, thats another application moved off to the net meaning I can access it from anywhere.

Conclusion
So with all this, I only had to fork out money on flickr and I have moved my entire day to day computing requirements onto the net/into the cloud. I can do all my email, use IM, access and edit my docs and access and share all my photos all from any web browser running on any platform. Whilst I still need my main PC at home to edit my photos/videos etc before uploading them the vast bulk of stuff I want to do I can do from anywhere. Result.

I've long thought that all this sort of stuff sounded like a good idea but I just needed a reason to do it, I was not overly troubled by being tethered to my home desktop pc. It was my wife complaining she was not able go go up to the second floor of the house (where my home PC lives) to use the PC and still keep track of what the kids are doing on the ground floor that gave me the push. I had an old laptop which I thought I would give to her but thats a machine I use for random test builds and experiments etc etc so it wasn't necesarily going to be the same each time she used it and I did not want to put her data on it because I would have to move the data each time I messed arround with it. I could have let her use remote desktop to the machine upstairs but that would mean it would have to have windows on it (which normaly it would but no garantee) and she would have to go up and turn the thing on. Its then that I thought it would be great if I could get everything she wanted to use into a browser, that way she could use any PC or OS as long as it had a browser and a network connection.

Going through the pain of uploading/converting word docs to google docs is not to bad if you have fairly simple docs and the results are not bad, a few tweaks here and there are reuqired. I was so impressed with this new way of working I moved all my own stuff to, the only problem I had was that my files were not all googleisable (is that a word?) so I needed some other place for those visio diagrams, zip files etc, enter box.net (I might move all my google docs over there as well at some point to avoid the situation of having some files at google and some at box. Documents at box are editable in the same way as they are on google via zoho).

Remember!!
Moving to the cloud is all well and good but do you realy trust these guys 100% and in fact CAN you ever trust anyone 100%. Stuff can happen that they cannot predict (or for business reasons let on about even if they do know its comming). The past few weeks have seen very major companies collapsing and the US gov bailing some of them out to the tune of nearly 2 trillion USD. Even the big boys can go out of business overnight! Where am I going with this?? If you didn't figure it yet, BACKUP !!!!!. Yes these boys have Raid, High availability, Disaster Recovery and a bunch of other stuff, things can and do go wrong and in the scheme of things your particular data does not matter to them. It probably does to you though.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Cars back in the Garage

2008-09-01T09:46:00.003+01:00

At last, after around 18 months my car fits in the garage again, Yay!! Last, Feb\March the garage got filled up with stuff for the new bathroom\kitchen and my car got relegated to the drive. Even after all that had been done, the fact that I could not use the garage anyway meant that lots of other junk found its way in there. Now I have managed to get rid of that and my car fits back in. Its sad really but it makes me very happy.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Slickr Flickr

2008-08-22T09:24:00.002+01:00

I love flickr, I think its great in so many ways. Its great as a way of sharing your photos, backing them up, your friends get notified when you upload new ones, there are all sorts of interesting pics on there and I love looking through them (usually the "interesting" stream viewed through flock). However, for a modern photo site it looks very 1980's (functional but not very pretty). Though I could (using php and the flickr api), I dont realy want to spend the time writing a viewer for my photos hosted on flickr so they can be viewed in a attractive less cluttered "gallery". So I asked the great knowledge base that is google. To my supprise there seemed very little if anything out there to let you view your whole photostream (sets and everything). There were quite a lot that would let you view one single set or view the results of a search, neither of which is what I was looking for. I wanted something to let me view all my sets in a "gallery" setting. I had all but given up when I found PhotoFront. PhotoFront creates a flash "gallery" to view your flickr photos, it lets you view all your sets (you can opt not to show selected sets if you wish). You cant completely controll things but you get a few templates and a few options and in less than 5 mins you have a very good looking gallery for your flickr photos. On top of that its free (with a few adds showing at the top). For a very reasonable $10 you can remove the adverts and get a few aditional options available in the setup page. While there are a few aditional options I would like to see (like search) you cannot knock this app. Ten dollars and 5 minutes to have a realy good looking photo gallery!!! I recon that's simply UNBEATABLE !!!

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Flock Rocks !!!!

2008-08-06T09:24:00.002+01:00

I've been using the Flock browser (Firefox variant) for a week or two now and I have to say I love it. Its so integrated with stuff. All your accounts (blogger, flicker, Facebook, delicious etc etc) get embedded in the browser in various ways. It makes everything so much more accessible and usable. Until now I have been wedded to IE for general use and used Firefox for the odd techie investigation of stuff because of all its plug-ins. I just wish it supported automatically picking up NT credentials like IE does (fed up entering them for internal sites). Give it a try it rocks !!!.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Apple I hate you !!!

2008-07-31T19:42:00.001+01:00

After having installed Quicktime (a viewer for a particular video format from apple) I find my pc infected with all sorts of apple crap, Itunes, services I dont need and the Killer, some sort of network component that it then forces everything else to use (meaning of course, you cant delete it). Thanks, but my networking worked just fine before. Ive never been apple biggest fan but this definately clinches it, I will deffinately never buy anything of these monkeys EVER!!!

Blogged with the Flock Browser

moonset

2008-07-25T23:08:00.001+01:00

moonset
Originally uploaded by @!ex

WOW !!!!!
Some folks do the most amazing images !!!
Check out this guys Flickr.
Truly incredible.

Sky Broadband

2008-07-15T13:11:00.004+01:00

Sky Styling
Originally uploaded by DeclanTM

I switched over to sky broadband a while back after my company decided to stop paying my broadband costs. I went to sky because at 16Meg and unlimited downloads for £10 per month I recon its about the best deal around. I did ask before I signed up if I could use my own router because a) I like it, b)Why install new kit to do the same job as the existing kit for no benefit?. They said I could and I duely signed up. When all the stuff arrived (inc a new router) there was no username\password. When I asked them for this info they said I didnt need it, "its already in the router"! When I said I would be using my own (as I previously had been told I could) I was told I had to use the sky router and they refused to give me the username\password required for my own router to work.

Figuring that if the details were "already in the router", there MUST be some smart people out on the net who also figured this and had also figured out how to extract that data. Turns out that the info is not exactly in the router already but it calculates it from the serial number and the MAC address (both printed on the label on the bottom of the unit). Those smart people out there figured out how this is done and put a nice website up, type in you serial and your MAC and hey presto, here are your login details. Thanks guys !!!

This no username\password hiding idea is a fantastic idea from sky. Most people dont care what router they use and the less set up they need to do the better. I did actualy have to try this out in order to get on the net to figure out how to get my details and it was very simple indeed. Step 1, plug it in (phone, power etc) Step 2, Use internet. Fantastic !!! Thats how it should be. But for those of use who want a bit more control, why hide the info we need. Those who realy want it will figure it out anyway and with the internet, everyone can just google the answer.

Bluetooth Audio

2008-07-07T21:55:00.004+01:00

I just got this head unit, to be fair it's a bit of a downgrade from my previous alpine unit but its got a killer feature, bluetooth Audio Streaming & bluetooth handsfree, adding that to my alpine would have cost more that buying the new unit. As head units go these days its fairly basic but the sound is prety good and it works well with my phone (HTC Touch Diamond) so I got all my tunes n my phone playing through bluetooth streaming, sweet. And to top it off, if I get a call in the car I can answer it hands free.

Touch Diamond - No iphone killer here

2008-07-07T08:24:00.004+01:00

Now don't get me wrong, I like the touch diamond but even before I got it I doubted its iphone killer hype. If you want an iphone, go buy one, you would be very disappointed with the touch diamond.

I like the touch diamond for a few reasons.

Its windows mobile which means it syncs very well with outlook taking almost everything you have for contacts etc including contact photos, full address etc etc.

It conects to your pc \ charges via a standard (mini USB) connector.

Being windows mobile you can install whatever apps you like (without resorting to to hacking the thing) and there is a huge array of apps available (yes, some are complete rubbish).

Connecting to a PC its asks you "activeSync" or "disk drive"? selecting the former behaves as expected but the new "disk drive" mode makes it look just like a usb key so you can connectit to an PC \ OS and transfer files to or from to pc.

Touch Flow 3D, makes it less windows mobile, more phone. Much more "finger friendly" than wm. Does some nice iphone style UI stuff but unfortunately, you need a lot of patience. This thing is SLOW. When I first got it I expected it to "keep up" with my finger and got into a right mess as you "swipe" 3 times thinking it had not responded, then it does and does all 3, getting you somewhere other than where you wanted. You need to swipe and wait.

I DONT like it for

The battery life is truely apauling !!! I mean we are going back 10 years here!!! you need to be charging this this EVERY day minimum. This is not a complete killer for me because its plugged in most of the day at work, I have usb in the car and I tend never to be too far away from a pc, though it is anoying you need to have it in you mind how charged up your phone is. I could see for many people this single thing making the phone totaly unusable.