Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on March 13, 2008 by CyberNet.

Yesterday in the CyberNet Forum, Max mentioned a site that he recently saw which looked awesome called Dropbox.  We checked it out and sure enough, it is pretty awesome and I think you’ll agree. It’s currently in the private beta stage so you’ll need an invitation to check it out, but they’ve got a video posted that does all of the talking and really demonstrates what you can do. I highly recommend watching the video to get the best idea of what Dropbox is all about while you’re waiting for your invitation to join the private beta.

In a nutshell, Dropbox is a new way to store and share files online. It also serves as a great way to synchronize files between computers. After installing Dropbox on your computers ( it doesn’t matter if they’re PC’s or Mac’s), you’ll see a Dropbox folder.  This is where all of the storing and sharing takes place. If you were to add a bunch of files to your Dropbox folder on one computer, within seconds the Dropbox folder on the other computer would have those same files. The same goes for changes to files. If you were to make a change to one file, the same file on the other computer would be updated. Each of the icons in the folder will have a green checkmark to let you know that they are up to date. This could really come in handy for those who have one computer at work and one computer at home or for those of you with two computers in the house that you’d like to keep synchronized.

Below is a list of some additional features that really stand out:

• If you update only a portion of a file, for example, a picture — only the portion that has been changed will be synchronized with your other computer. This means the update is quick and loads of bandwidth is saved.
• If you delete a file from your Dropbox folder, you can view it online and bring those files back with a couple of clicks
• View the contents of your Dropbox folder online
• Easily get the most recent version of a file that you’ve changed, or any previous version
• Share files and folders with just a click

Another great feature is that it comes with a built-in photo gallery that is integrated into the desktop. All you do is drag the folder of your pictures inside of your Dropbox folder.  Dropbox will create an album online with the same name an then you’ll be given a URL to the folder so that you can easily share them.

At this point they are in a private beta, so they haven’t really mentioned how they intend to make money from this service. From the looks of it though, they will probably end up having some size limitations because they actually store file changes. Dropbox could easily set-up different plans where users can pay a certain amount for different levels of storage space.

Update: We received notice that there’s a 5GB storage limit in the beta.

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

Related Posts:

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This article was written on August 25, 2006 by CyberNet.

Free For All Friday

With a new semester of college underway, many students will be looking for a way to organize themselves whether it be with their class notes or assignments. Simply keeping track of notes and assignments can be quite the task, especially when students are distracted multiple times throughout the day with social sites like MySpace or Facebook.  I’m guilty of using both, and at times they are addicting and can keep me from staying on task.  One site that was brought to my attention called mynoteIT.com has lots of tools that college students would be looking for to keep themselves organized.

mynoteIT.com is a fairly new site in beta that is easy to use, and best of all, free! Afterall, what college student has money they’re willing to fork out for the sake of organization?  In an email we received from Alex Weidmann, one of the developers, he says “[mynoteIt] was created and developed by two college students who are just trying to make school a little easier for everybody.” That’s the first plus– college students designing something FOR college students, you can’t go wrong there! They update their blog regularly with notes and updates to the site. What is mynoteIt all about? Here are some of the features (this list is not exhaustive):

–Workspace Utilities–

This feature certainly would have been helpful for me last semester while I struggled my way through Spanish class. Many colleges and universities require students to take a foreign language whether they want to or not. And of course, many struggle or barely make it through.  With workspace utilities, you’re able to look up and translate words, even sentences between languages. This can be done while you’re taking class notes and would definitely help the struggling foreign language student.

–Share notes with friends–

There are a multitude of reasons why students miss (or shall I say skip?) class. And of course after the fact, you can find them scrambling to get a friend to email class notes or visa versa– you’re the one your friends are coming to after they’ve skipped class because they know you take good notes. Regardless of the situation, sharing notes with friends is made easy. You have the option when you’re taking notes to make them private or public.  And then when you’re wanting to share them with friends, you’re able to email them, send them through mynoteIt, or give them a direct link to the notes.

According to their blog entry on August 15th, they’ve added the ability to tag your notes which also means you’re able to search for notes by tags. Just think about the possibilities with that! They also have a comment system so that users are able to comment and leave feedback on your notes– this could potentially be beneficial to you and those who view your notes.

–mynoteIT search–

The search feature makes it possible to search your notes or community notes.  For now, it is probably best to search your own notes until more users start using the service.  I did a community search on “computer programming” with no results. As more users add content, the community search feature could become a useful tool for writing papers, researching, etc.

–Auto-save notes–

Worried about losing all of your notes? mynoteIT.com uses a WYSIWYG note editor that will save your work every 10 seconds. This leaves you with no room or reason to worry about what happens to your work when your browser crashes. Occasionally that does happen and normally it does so when you least expect it.

–Upcoming assignment reminder–

After setting up an account, I spent a few minutes playing around with the site and some of the features. With the upcoming assignment reminder, you’ll be emailed when you have an assignment due in the next week.  Additionally, if you are involved in groups, the group activity feature will track the activity and email you when/if there are updates. The reminder feature ought to keep you from being that unreliable group member that always forgets to show up for group meetings!

–mynoteIT Groups–

I don’t know about you, but in previous semesters I’ve been bombarded with group projects. When you have multiple groups you’re working with, sometimes it’s hard to keep track of where to meet and when and with who, and then of course communicating about the project when you’re not at school can be a nightmare. That’s why I like the group feature where you can add all of your group members and send messages to them. Another option within the groups is to share a calendar with important group dates on it. 

–A few additional things–

As of August 10th, they’ve redesigned their grade tracking program. While I was not familiar with their previous version, the new version is said to make things a bit easier. You’re able to enter in the scores you received, and the grade tracker will tell you what grade you have for each class. On your  mynoteIt homepage, there is a “to-do” list to help keep yourself organized and on track. It’s easy to add an additional item to the list with a click.

One thing that might be a useful addition would be a graphic of your schedule of classes.  I always like to visually see what chunks of my day are blocked out from classes so I know when I can schedule a group meeting or when I have free time, etc.

All in all mynoteIt.com  is a very useful site for any college student.  Again, as mentioned, the list of features I covered is not exhaustive. There are lots of things to play around and you don’t even have to register in order to try it. They haven’t been around for too long and are clearly growing. Once students utilize the note feature, searching notes from other members would be pretty useful. If you’re a student and you need some help with organization, check it out and let the team of developers know what you liked and what you want to see. I know they’re open to any suggestions!

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on April 18, 2006 by CyberNet.

It appears that Yahoo is testing out a new homepage with a completely redesigned layout. From the image you can tell that they are trying to condense all of their navigation into a few key spots (notably the sidebar). I believe that this is a nicer interface than the current Yahoo Homepage but it still seems to have a lot of information stuffed on to one page.

If you want to be able to try out this page then you better hope that you get randomly chosen (that is how it appears they are choosing people). If happen to get chosen then Yahoo will redirect you to this page to notify you of the change. Unfortunately, that link does not enable the new homepage so that you can test it, instead it is just what gets displayed after they have ’selected’ you.

News Source: TechCrunch

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on April 03, 2007 by CyberNet.

Back in August of 2006 I wrote about a guy who had his unlimited Verizon EVDO Wireless Data Service canceled because buried deep into the Terms of Service (TOS) they mentioned some things that were unacceptable. Some of these things included downloading/streaming music and videos…which is what the Internet is all about these days.

At the time Verizon didn’t explicitly state that their unlimited service really was limited, but I was looking at the service once again yesterday for someone and decided to see what the terms look like 7–months later. Now they explicitly come out and say that their unlimited plan can only be used for up to 5GB a month otherwise your usage will be considered unacceptable and your service will be terminated (the bold text points out the important things):

Unlimited Data Plans and Features (such as NationalAccess, BroadbandAccess, Push to Talk, and certain VZEmail services) may ONLY be used with wireless devices for the following purposes: (i) Internet browsing; (ii) email; and (iii) intranet access (including access to corporate intranets, email, and individual productivity applications like customer relationship management, sales force, and field service automation). The Unlimited Data Plans and Features MAY NOT be used for any other purpose. Examples of prohibited uses include, without limitation, the following: (i) continuous uploading, downloading or streaming of audio or video programming or games; (ii) server devices or host computer applications, including, but not limited to, Web camera posts or broadcasts, automatic data feeds, automated machine–to–machine connections or peer–to–peer (P2P) file sharing; or (iii) as a substitute or backup for private lines or dedicated data connections. This means, by way of example only, that checking email, surfing the Internet, downloading legally acquired songs, and/or visiting corporate intranets is permitted, but downloading movies using P2P file sharing services and/or redirecting television signals for viewing on laptops is prohibited. A person engaged in prohibited uses, continuously for one hour, could typically use 100 to 200 MBs, or, if engaged in prohibited uses for 10 hours a day, 7 days a week, could use more than 5 GBs in a month.

For individual use only and not for resale. We reserve the right to protect our network from harm, which may impact legitimate data flows. We reserve the right to limit throughput or amount of data transferred, and to deny or terminate service, without notice, to anyone we believe is using an Unlimited Data Plan or Feature in any manner prohibited above or whose usage adversely impacts our network or service levels. Anyone using more than 5 GB per line in a given month is presumed to be using the service in a manner prohibited above, and we reserve the right to immediately terminate the service of any such person without notice. We also reserve the right to terminate service upon expiration of Customer Agreement term.

So all the service is really good for is viewing websites and sending emails since you cannot download or upload anything. They say that sending emails is okay, but what about if you constantly have large attachments in your email which results in high bandwidth usage? Does that fall under the download/upload restriction that can terminate your account, or is that considered acceptable use since it is an email?

One of the other restrictions that they mention is that you must have another Internet service as well since you cannot use it as a substitute or backup of a dedicated Internet connection. Even if all you do is check emails for work, you must have another Internet connection as your primary source for access.

So why would anyone use the service? Many people use it because their employers pay for it, and I’m sure they never inform their employees about what they can and can’t do with it. For that reason, a lot of people are “inappropriately” using the service which is good news for Verizon because they can terminate your account whenever they want. I look at it as Verizon’s way to cover their own back since they can sell the service to as many people as they possibly can, and then when their network starts to see a pattern of overall heavy usage, they can just terminate the people who use their accounts the most. This will maximize their revenue while keeping the network usage to a minimum.

I definitely understand their reasoning for limiting the service to only 5GB of bandwidth per month, but what boggles my mind is how they can advertise this as unlimited when they explicitly say that any usage over 5GB will cause your account to be terminated?

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on June 20, 2007 by CyberNet.

While online applications have turned into the next “big thing,” taking them offline seems to be just as big. ThinkFree has just announced that they are taking their Online Office Suite Offline with ThinkFree Premium Edition. Before you get all excited, you should know that it’s not free.  Starting in August they will charge a monthly fee of $7 per user for the ThinkFree Premium service. If you decide to purchase a year up front, you’ll get a 10% discount which brings the price down to $75 per user, per year.

With that said, what’s great about ThinkFree’s Premium service is that you’ll now have ultimate portability with access to your documents both online and offline. And because ThinkFree is compatible with Microsoft Office products, it’s perfect for business or personal uses.

Using Java, ThinkFree was able to “create a productivity solution” that allows users to access their applications and documents both online and offline. The Premium service also encourages more collaboration. If you’re working on a project for work with multiple people, it is easy for everybody to collaborate with ThinkFree Premium.

Features include:

• Authoring and editing tools
• Unlimited storage
• File synchronization
• Smart save
• Archiving features
• Priority email support
• Built-in multi-lingual support

Currently it’s in beta which you can download for free here, and below are some screenshots of what you can expect:

After you download it and give it a try, check back here and let us know what you think of it, and whether it’s worth the $7 per user, per year.

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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