My Favorite Cloud-Based Services

As part of my effort to move away from all things Microsoft and desktop software in general, I've been using a number of cloud-based services with regularity and am amazed at how far along they've come over the past year or two.  In fact, I find their convenience and ease-of-use so compelling that I rarely find myself creating new content locally on my hard drive anymore.  Plus, the fact that I can easily access these services from my PC, iPad or Android phone means that my data is always accessible no matter where I happen to be.  And best of all, these services are all free!  So...without further ado, here's a list of some of my favorites:

Google Docs
Not the newest kid on the block, but Google Docs has made numerous improvements since it was launched a few years ago and I can safely say now that I'll never create another Microsoft Office document again.  And if you're like me you only use about 10% of the functionality of MS Office anyway, so why keep all that bloatware on your PC?  Docs is also accessible from both iOS and Android devices, though editing capabilities are somewhat limited on those platforms.  And Google has made it pretty easy to share documents with specific individuals or across an entire workgroup; in fact, it's kind of cool working on a shared spreadsheet and being able to see other members of your team updating cells in real-time.  And for those of you who have shied away from Docs thinking that it just couldn't be powerful enough to replace MS Office, have a look at this presentation.


Evernote
I started to use Evernote when I decided to dump Outlook and needed another place to store all the little notes that I take - my grocery list, names of interesting restaurants I happen to spot, meeting notes, etc.  Evernote does all this and then some.  Among other things I can assign tags to my notes so that I can dynamically categorize them,  with the Evernote browser extension I can push one button to clip a webpage and save it off as a note, I can have my Evernote content displayed within Google search results, and I can create a note instantly using a photo I just shot on my smartphone.  The optional Evernote application is available on all the usual platforms, though on my PC I rarely use it because I find that their web interface to be more than sufficient.  But their iPad app is a must have, as it's simply a thing of beauty.

Dropbox
Why would anyone go through the hassle of setting up a shared public drive in their office when they could be using Dropbox instead?  Dropbox makes it dead simple to upload and store any type of file to its service, and optionally share files and/or folders with selected parties.  It even keeps track of older versions of files and allows you to review their revision history.  If you install the optional desktop application your Dropbox folder will even show up as a local PC or Mac folder, and you can operate against that folder just as you would with a file sitting on your hard drive.  You also receive desktop notifications whenever a shared file is updated, and your local copy is automatically synced with the cloud.  One word of caution, however...If you happen to be one of those unfortunate souls that must login to a Windows domain, then by default your local Dropbox folder will be created within your roaming profile.  To avoid any potential syncing issues when running in disconnected mode you should go into the Dropbox application settings and change the location of this folder to somewhere within your local hard drive.

LucidChart
I just started using LucidChart about a month ago and simply love it.  If you ever have the need to quickly create a diagram or flowchart but don't want to hassle with something like Visio, then this is for you.  Or, if you're like me and don't have an artistic bone in your body but occasionally need to produce a wire-frame in order to conceptualize an idea and share it with others then this is a must have.  LucidChart is a functional replacement for Visio, and its wire-framing and "demo" capabilities are indispensable during the earlier stages of web design.  And the entire application is written in HTML 5 and really showcases its power.  One of its coolest features is the ability to search though Google Images for something you're looking for, and then once you locate it you can just drag-and-drop that image straight into your diagram.

Amazon Cloud Drive
Available just within the past two weeks, Amazon Cloud Drive is what iTunes should aspire to be - a cloud-base service that allow you to stream and/or download your media content over the internet.  As you would expect from Amazon the service is very robust and the UI is excellent.  The optional Cloud Player app just takes a few short minutes to scan your entire iTunes library and creates a listing of all the artists, albums, playlists, etc. that can be uploaded to Cloud Drive.  And for the ones that cannot be uploaded (e.g. unsupported format, DRM-protected, etc.) it displays a list of those files along with the specific reason why.  Amazon gives everyone 5 GB of Cloud storage for free, and between now and the end of the year if you make just one MP3 purchase (I bought a 99-cent album) you'll get upgraded to 20 GB, enough for most people to store all of their music.  I've moved my entire music library onto it and couldn't be happier...I can access my playlists from anywhere now and not have to worry about syncing.  Unfortunately, for you iOS fanboys I'm afraid to say that currently you cannot access Cloud Drive content from an iPhone or iPad - perhaps you'll have to wait for Apple to get their act together and bring iTunes out of the stone ages in order to gain this capability.

Bloatware No More, aka Goodbye Microsoft Outlook

I've used Microsoft Outlook as my preferred email client literally from the day the first beta was released back in the late 90's - I think the initial version was called Outlook 97.  To me it was a breath of fresh air, as I could do all of my email and calendaring from the same window.  My company was in the process of rolling out MS Exchange across the enterprise, and so Outlook was a huge improvement over having to use the kludgey combination of the MS Exchange client along with Schedule Plus - anyone but me remember that one?

Over the dozen plus years since then I've used each and every version of Outlook. Functionality-wise it keeps getting better and better, especially when you've got an Exchange server on the back-end.  However, at the same time its footprint seems to get bigger and bigger with each release...sometimes I go into Task Manager and see that it consumes half a gig of RAM...WTF does it need half a gig for?  And the time it take to load the software on my machine seems to increase the more I use the product...somehow all these plug-ins get installed on my behalf and I'm forced to stare at the Outlook splash screen waiting for each of these to load - a real exercise in patience. And finding out how to disable these plug-ins is no easy chore, and also can only be done within Outlook itself.   This ended up being a major headache for me a couple of months ago when my Outlook was hanging every time I launched it and the culprit was this antivirus plug-in that had been recently updated.  Suffice it to say that it was quite the challenge to finally fix this problem - it took multiple attempts before I could disable the plug-in within the short time window between launching Outlook and having it start hanging again.

I've written in the past about how I've reduced my dependency on Microsoft over time, and now I'm pleased to report that I've finally ridden myself of this overly engineered, bloated piece of software called Outlook.  I've been using Gmail and/or Google Apps mail for the most part anyway these past few years, and the native web versions have also gotten a lot better over time.  Offline viewing has been available for the past couple of years; a few months back they finally allowed you to disable "conversation view", which for the life of me I could never get used to; and they even implemented a few new features such as notification pop-ups that you'd normally only find in traditional desktop applications.  And I've also come to appreciate the way Gmail uses labels as an alternative to folders - it's actually a much more elegant solution than having to manage a folder hierarchy.  Since I've made the switch I've never found a need to go back, and my laptop thanks me for it!

As far as the other functions of Gmail/Google Apps go, I think it handles my calendaring and contact management needs just fine.  A weak point in my opinion has always been its task management.  There have been some recent improvements here as well, but features I've grown accustomed to in Outlook such as the ability to create recurring tasks are still not supported - not a show stopper, however.  Getting rid of Outlook has also made it easier for me to synchronize data to my mobile devices.  Since I've been using Android for awhile it's great never have to think about synchronizing my mail, calendar and contacts to my Nexus S, and there are some great 3rd-party solutions for  syncing other types of data such as tasks and notes.

So goodbye Outlook, my old and dear friend....I don't think I'll be missing you.  But despite all the frustrations I've had to endure, I guess it could have been worse.

Just Became a Gingerbread Man - My Nexus S Upgrade

I received an unexpected gift yesterday, the latest and greatest "pure Android" phone, the Google Nexus S and its interesting curved screen. When it was announced a few weeks back I wasn't sure if I was going to upgrade or not - I had planned to drop by a local Best Buy to check out a demo unit. But receiving a freebie certainly solved that dilemma for me...and boy, now that I've used it a bit I would have gladly paid for the upgrade myself.

Probably the biggest improvement is the overall speed of the device. My Nexus One was and still is no slouch in this regard, but the Nexus S puts it to shame in just about every way. I'm not sure if it's the upgraded hardware or the optimizations that were made in the latest Android version (Gingerbread) that made the big difference - probably a combination of both. But routine tasks such as web browsing and downloading/installing applications are much faster than ever before.

The other major improvement is the substantial increase in the amount of available "Internal Storage". The Nexus S ships with 16GB of flash memory and devotes a portion of that to "internal storage", which hold apps and app-related data; and the bulk of it to external "USB Storage" - this is in lieu of allowing for a user-replaceable SD card. Some people have griped about the lack of an SD slot, but 16GB is quite a bit of storage and so I don't think this is a very big deal. But what's really nice about this is that the amount of internal storage the Nexus S sets aside (~1GB) is so generous that I never have to worry about overloading my device with apps and running into the dreaded "low memory" errors. On the Nexus One I always tried to always stay above 20MB of free memory so that I didn't run into this problem, but after setting up the Nexus S and installing the exact same set of apps it showed me that I still had over 800MB of internal memory available. So now I can go on my merry way and start installing new apps with reckless abandon again!

Some of the other niceties on the Nexus S are:

• The Super AMOLED screen is not only gorgeous but actually usable in bright sunlight. This was one of my biggest gripes with the Nexus One's screen, especially when attempting to shoot daytime photos and videos.
• The call quality through the headset seems to be stellar, better than on the Nexus One.
• Real (vs. quasi) multi-touch capability allows me to take advantage of some of the newer apps such as the uber-cool Google Maps V5 with its 3D rendering.
• The new Gingerbread keyboard works better and is more user-friendly than the prior Froyo version, though probably still not in the same league as the iPhone 4.
• Built-in support for 3rd-part VoIP (SIP) providers - this is useful mostly for geeks like me, but now I don't have to install a separate SIP application when needing to do Wi-Fi calling while traveling overseas or if I'm in a bad reception area.
• Near Field Communication (NFC) support. This is the first device I'm aware of that supports NFC, so we'll wait and see how useful this will be over time.
• Oh, did I say the Nexus S is fast? :-)

Okay, now a few Nexus S downsides:

• The omission of an LED light and a trackball/trackpad - the latter is not a big deal to me since the only time I ever used the Nexus One's trackball was when I needed to position the cursor within a block of text - Gingerbread handles this pretty well now without that need for it. I do, however, miss not having the LED notification as it was a very useful way of letting me know when I received an email or text without having to turn on the screen.
• Because it uses a plastic vs. metal backing it doesn't feel quite as solid as the Nexus One, but I don't find this as bothersome as some of the other reviewers. Also, taking off the back cover in order to get to the battery or SIM card takes more work than on the Nexus One.
• Lack of 4G support - This is the major reason why I would not have purchased the phone on my own. Though 4G availability on T-Mobile is not yet widespread, it would have been nice to include this support in order to make the device more future-proof. On the other hand, 3G speeds are pretty good and noticeably faster than on the Nexus One, and I guess not having 4G saves me the $15/month that T-Mobile inexplicably dings their customers for using that service.

Overall I'm very happy with the device and will definitely hold onto it for awhile.

Late to the iPad Party

Since I've been hating on Apple for quite awhile now, it should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me that I did not "invest" in the iPad when it came out back in April. But truth be known, I came very close to buying one back then, and mainly didn't because of the lack of Flash support and the omission of a front-facing camera - two "gotta haves" in my opinion back then. Since that time I've reconsidered this decision numerous times, then as the months progressed I told myself that rather than purchase one now I would instead hold out for the next-gen model - it still wouldn't have Flash, but for sure it would have the built-in camera plus the latest and greatest multi-tasking iOS version...and maybe even some other neat bells and whistles.

Well, after 6 months of pondering I finally caved in and bought one a few weeks ago. What was it that finally put me over the edge? Well, for one thing a few of my friends had recently purchased or considered one and that got me more interested, and as a result I spent more time playing around with the iPad and fell in love with some of the applications. In particular I can't say enough good things about the amazing Flipboard app, which takes content aggregation and formatting to a whole new level. I particularly like how it aggregates and displays Twitter and Facebook feeds in a more user-friendly and consumable format...great stuff!

I also wanted the ability easily read or watch videos while laying around the house or in bed. Sure, I can do that already with my regular laptop, but in reality I rarely do so because it's a bit too clunky and inconvenient, and I always have to worry about running out of battery. The iPad does a fantastic job of this. Both the iBooks app and the Amazon Kindle app work great for reading books, the built-in Safari browser does a formidable job in rendering web content (although I prefer the 3rd-party Atomic browser), and the free Netflix app as well as the overly expensive SlingPlayer Mobile player do a fine job in streaming TV shows and movies. And the iPad's battery life is simply out of this world...I can last a full week on a single charge using the device a an hour or two each day.

Lastly, I wanted something more lightweight than my normal laptop which I can tote around with me wherever I go and still have access to the internet as well as any applications I might need to use. My netbook was supposed to serve this purpose, and though I previously raved about it I soon came to realize that it really didn't do anything particularly well...I've since given up on it. The iPad's form factor and light weight make for great portability, and though its lack of a physical keyboard as well as support for some of the more common desktop applications prevent it from being a full laptop replacement, I feel that at least 80% of my computing needs can be fulfilled by it. The iPad is hands down the best reading device on the face of the planet, and let's face it - most computer users, including myself, spend the majority of their time simply consuming content - email, web browsing, social networking, watching videos, etc. As for the other 20% of my computing (including writing this blog article) I'll still have to go back to my laptop, though by using a nifty remote desktop app such as Desktop Connect I can even get away with using the iPad for accessing some of my Windows-based applications.

Is the device perfect? No, like anything else it does have its share of flaws. The biggest annoyance for me is the lack of multi-tasking, which I hope will be addressed with an iOS update that supposedly arrives here in November. Too often I find myself having to break out of the current application I am using (sometimes even forced out), then when I come back to it later it reloads rather than resumes where I left off. And boy it would be nice to have Pandora running in the background all the time. I also find both the CPU and graphics rendering to be pretty sluggish at times, but not nearly as bothersome as with my netbook. And though it is the quintessential reading device I do find the iPad to be a bit on the heavy side, especially when compared to the pure e-readers such as the Kindle and Nook. The lack of Flash support is also a bummer, though it seems like many sites have aggressively moved to HTML 5 in recent months - so it hasn't been as big of a problem as I thought. And finally....a front-facing camera would sure be great for video conferencing and the like, but now that Chatroulette is on its death march I guess I can live without it :-)

Bob

New Job, New Tivo

This is just a quickie update to let folks know what I've been up to lately. First and foremost, I am happy to announce that I started a new gig last month as CTO for a cool (and profitable!) startup called Cypher Media. They are in the online marketing business, and in addition to that there are some major plans afoot to evolve the company in some new and potentially game-changing ways...so stay tuned!

I also recently purchased the new Tivo Premiere box that came out earlier this year. It wasn't a conscious choice on my part to buy the new unit, but my trusty (and recently out of warranty) Tivo HD all of a sudden crapped out one day and refused to boot up. I'm almost positive it was a hard drive problem, and I'm sure that given some time I could have hacked into the Tivo and replaced the hard drive myself. I also had the option of paying Tivo $149 for a refurbished replacement, but that would leave me DVR-less for at least several days. That may have been okay under normal circumstances, but the timing of the failure couldn't have been any worse because it occurred right during the middle of the Tour de France! So unless I was willing to wake up at 5am each morning to watch the live coverage (NOT!) I needed a quick fix, and that quick fix was to just buy a new Tivo Premiere and get it shipped overnight from Amazon.

As usual, setting up the Tivo was a very painless exercise, and props to Tivo for making this as easy as possible for the average Joe. Getting things setup properly with Comcast is an entirely different story, however...as usual it took a couple of calls plus a lot of wait time on the phone before the CableCard "pairing" process successfully completed and I was able to access all of my channels - for some reason HBO always seems to be a problem.

There's been a fair bit of discussion regarding the new Premiere and how it differs from the previous generation of Tivo's. Quite honestly, the differences are relatively few, and so if you are a happy Tivo Hd or Tivo XL owner then I don't think there's enough new functionality to justify the switch. The major new "feature" is the revamped, Flash-based "HD" user interface, and quite honestly it is a mixed bag. If you have an older Tivo you probably have seen what this looks if you've tried the Tivo "beta search" feature, which lets you search for content not only within the Tivo guide but across the various internet sources that Tivo supports - Netflix, Amazon, YouTube, etc. The biggest problem with the UI is that it is incredibly SLOW...the system often hangs and hangs when switching between menus. And the UI is still not complete, i.e. some of the menus sport the new UI but a good number of menus are still using the older UI - making for a very disjointed user experience. There are two very nice things I like about it, though: 1) the Now Playing list (aka "My Shows") now displays the percent utilization on the hard disk for programs that you've recorded and saved; and 2) within some of the top-level menus you can still see what's currently playing on your Tivo via a small window on the upper right corner of the screen. I always found it annoying with the old UI that as soon as I hit the Tivo button whatever I was watching got instantly preempted...the new UI allows you to keep watching that program while navigating within the menu.

The other really nice improvement is the increase in speed when transferring content to or from the Tivo. I can now transfer HD content via PyTivo at a rate nearly equivalent to real-time, i.e. I can start viewing the content almost immediately and not have to worry about getting ahead of the file transfer itself. SD content has never been a problem, but with HD content you're talking 5x or so more data and the old Tivo just couldn't transfer data fast enough to keep up when I wanted to play something "on demand".

Hopefully Tivo will address the UI sluggishness issues before too long. The Premiere also contains a dual-core processor, but my understanding is that the second core has been disabled by Tivo due to some multi-threading problems that were encountered during testing. Perhaps if they can fix this and enable the second core that may help speed up the UI as well.