Drop Box… Useful Storage for Cheap

Get Extra Online Storage for FreeI do a lot of design work and i blog a lot, too. Since I'm mobile and meet with clients fre­quently, it's nice to have some­thing I can access quickly, from any­where that has a com­puter and an inter­net con­nec­tion. Drop Box helps me be more mobile. I use it to store my files on the cheap aka free! In addi­tion to being a shame­less plug for a great prod­uct that I actively use, I'm hop­ing that some of you will signup for Drop Box your­self. If you sign up for a drop box account and install it on your Windows/Mac/Linux sys­tem not only do you get free stor­age, but you get an extra 250MB if you use this link.

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Get Your Download of Swype Now!

Swype Keyboard BetaIf you're an avid Android (Google's surg­ing Mobile Device OS) user, such as myself, then you may or may not like the built in key­board or the other avail­able ones from the Android Mar­ket­place. My cousin, Phillip, one day told me about the Swype Key­board. The key­board, to me, is sim­ply amaz­ing. It's respon­sive and sur­pris­ingly accu­rate! It's a total delight to use, in my unbi­ased opin­ion. It's only been avail­able in closed-beta thus far. Also, you have to sign up to get the soft­ware, as well. Since the beta soft­ware expires after a cer­tain amount of time has passed, I've had to make do with other swype apks that have been unlocked and have tried other Apps, like ShapeWriter. Ick! Didn't much care for that one. Any­way, if you want to get on board, act quickly! For just a few days, you can down­load Swype for Android.

Swype Beta for Android Now Open, But Not for Long

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For just a few days, you can down­load Swype for Android.

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Oooh Shiny! Installing the Android 2.2 Update to My Nexus One!

Well Google started leak­ing out it's 2.2 Android update to demo devices that it has shipped out ear­lier this year, accord­ing to those nice fel­las at CNET. Though, if you look around it's easy to find the update mir­ror down­load. Any­way, there's a num­ber of improve­ments over 2.1. One minor irri­ta­tion I've suf­fered with in every other iter­a­tion of Android up to this point was the Gmail in-mail nav­i­ga­tion. There was no nice way to go for­ward and back­ward between mes­sages, I had to back out of the mes­sage and nav­i­gate to the one I wanted to see. Now that's been fixed. Finally!! Read More »

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Rooting the N1 on Android 2.1

Rooted N1 with HTC Sense UI ROM
Rooted N1 with HTC Sense UI ROM

Some­times I can't leave well enough alone. I had my N1 (Nexus One, Mom) for just about a month or so when I began to get an itch, no, not the kind you get that requires oint­ment! I had this awe­some phone and, sim­ply put, it just wasn't doing all it could do.

Don't get me wrong, the N1 is a top notch Android device, it's snappy and zippy and it does well the things a stan­dard smart phone should: Look pretty, be func­tional, allow me to install cool apps.

I had the Moto Droid for a while and only rooted it, but never did any­thing cool with it, I was too scared. How­ever, with my N1 in hand and all these How-To's and cus­tom soft­ware, I just couldn't resist. Yet, I was hold­ing off up until I saw some­thing I thought was pretty neat.

I saw that MoDaCo, an awe­some soft­ware engi­neer and hacker extra­or­di­naire, had cre­ated an HTC sense UI ROM from the HTC Desire device, which makes sense since the N1 and Desire are prac­ti­cally iden­ti­cal… Cousins? I had to have it.

How­ever, I hadn't yet rooted my phone. It wasn't hard to do, but it was a bit of a pain, since I got hung up on some par­tic­u­larly easy steps, such as unlock­ing the freak­ing boot­loader on the phone. So, that said, I'm just going to out­line my steps and hope they're a lit­tle more clear. How­ever, I'd direct you over to the guys at Android and Me for the defin­i­tive guide on Root­ing your N1. Read More »

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Moving to Mac from Windows 7. Ulp!

Okay, okay. You might be ask­ing, "Why? Why move to Mac?" There's really no rea­son for me to do this. I'm per­fectly happy with Win­dows 7 and my quad core desk­top. How­ever, I have this nifty Mac Book pro sit­ting around that I'd like to get more famil­iar and com­fort­able with. Cer­tainly, there is noth­ing that I need that my Win­dows box doesn't cur­rently provide.

I do a lot of web dev and design on my win­dows box, not so much my MBP, which is where it shines sup­pos­edly… Right? So I'm force-weening myself off the win­dows box for about thirty days, start­ing today. Every­thing I do on my win­dows 7 box today will now, for the next thirty days, be done on my Mac. I mean, it's really not such a huge tran­si­tion. I'm already com­fort­able, to a degree, wtih my mac­book pro. If I get in a real pinch, I've got win­dows 7 installed on boot camp… I sup­pose that's cheat­ing, but I need to have that installed because of work and the need to remote in when required.

Adobe CS4 is on both my win and mac sys­tems, so there's no loss there for graphic and web pro­duc­tiv­ity. How­ever, I'm excited to be div­ing deeper in Coda for Mac, ideal for hand coded site build­ing; Dreamweaver is awe­some and I'll always love it, but I didn't use but ten per­cent of the fea­tures in that pro­gram. Coda is lean and mean and I can't wait to get to the brass tacks with it on my upcom­ing projects. Every­thing else is straight forward.

Below are some of the pro­grams that I am using or plan to use to sup­ple­ment my switch for the next thirty days. Noth­ing here is shock­ing or unnat­ural to use. The tran­si­tion, I feel, will be pretty seem­less. How­ever, I'm choos­ing VMware fusion for my vir­tu­al­iza­tion needs, rather than vir­tu­al­box. Why? Well, VMware fusion allows me the oppor­tu­nity to run Mac OSX Server 10.6 and the soft­ware seems to run VMs much smoother than Vir­tu­al­box, in my opin­ion… Not sure why, but that's what I've observed up to this point.

Appli­ca­tion Win­dows 7 Mac OSX 10.6
Email Out­look Thun­der­bird
Office Office 2007 Open Office, MS Office 2008,
iWork
Graphic Design Fire­works, Photoshop Fire­works, Photoshop
Web Design Dreamweaver CODA
Music Song­bird Song­bird,
Video Win­dows Media Player VLC
Vir­tu­al­iza­tion Vir­tual Box VMware Fusion

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