Dropbox and Versions on the horizon
Given that it has been a month and a half since I’ve written to this blog, I feel compelled to tell you why it has been so long. I, Adam Merrifield, mild mannered web designer by day, and… er… mild manned web designer by night, have been so swamped with work that contributing to this little blog has been all but impossible. I could have jumped all over a dozen new apps that I had been given for beta testing, but sadly I had no time to test them.
There are two however, that are worth mentioning, as I really do want to try and work them into my daily flow. The one is Dropbox, which is a remote syncing type app that will “push” all updates and changes made from one computer to all other computers linked to the same account. Now from what I can tell the intent is that it be more of a storage/portal device that takes what you are working on here and sends it there so you can keep working on it when there become here… er.. or there… anyhow, you get the point. You’re working on a project at work and the boss tells you it need to be done by tomorrow so you send it through the pipes to home, work on it there, send it through the pipes back to work in time for the big presentation the next day, landing your company the BIG account and your boss loves you and gives you a raise and the keys to his Cadillac and owe it all to drop box…
But that’s not what intrigues me about Dropbox, no, what really has me interested in Dropbox is to see if it can be used as a remote backup device and what capacity is available to the user. As soon as I get the chance I will put this one to the test to see whether it’s worth getting my clients excited about a beta.
The other app for which I have been waiting to get my hands on for more than a year is Versions, a subversion client for the Mac. If you don’t know what subversion, I am not going to explain it here, but in short it eliminates the problem of multiple developers working on a single project at the same time. You don’t need an app to take advantage of the power of subversion (command-line in Terminal or TextMate will do just fine), but it does make it a tad sexier when you put a GUI to the process.
I did try Versions.app just briefly, signing up with a free beanstalk account for testing purposes, but I failed to get the connection. I will have to come back to this one in a few days.
So if you have any experience with either of these apps, feel free to leave your comments and let me know what you think.
I dun did broke RW?
Ouch! In an attempt to understand what it was that was holding up my RapidWeaver page view I decided to sample the processes going on behind the hung app… and uh… this is what I got. I don’t know what caused my troubles for sure but I hope I don’t do it again.
Rogers Wireless Home Page
Umm… yeah we know already… did you miss the news conference? It’s like… nearly 24 hours AFTER the fact and you are still covered in a shroud of mystery? Sheesh, no wonder you tell me two years after the fact that my current plan was made obsolete two years ago, you are just THAT clueless. So will I be standing in line on July second while your Rogers employees are wondering what all the fuss is about? Or do you think you might let them in on that little secret before then?
FlipSide5 at WWDC '08
Well the reports abound from friends and colleagues who were fortunate enough to be at Apples WWDC this year; FlipSide5 games, graphics and references can be seen everywhere! This is a pretty big honor for seyDoggy, a little web and graphic design based in Kitchener-Waterloo, to have their work meandering through the largest Apple conference in history, seen in demonstrations, talked about amongst developer elite, given nods to by VERY important people, and seen in the top row of the Graphics State of the Union when presenters started in about the web app success!
Now don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to take any thunder from Michael Sanford and FlipSide5, where all due credit lies for the vision and ambition of the company. I am just glad that I was able to play a part in shaping the face of a company that is set to really take off. It just really gives me warm fuzzies inside.
Apple Store (Canada) – iPhone 3G
A 3G iPhone in Canada for $199 AND Rogers new and improved data plans? Oh yeah, I see an iPhone in MY future. This is pretty cool since I am so involved with iPhone software developers and the most I can do to simulate the experience is to use the iPhone Simulator app in the iPhone developers SDK. Do I need this phone? Not really, but for $199 I can really say no to be honest.
Apple Canada – iPhone
Here it is ladies and gentleman, it is 1005 official, the iPhone is in Canada and is on the Apple Canada website. It has been long awaited for us Canadian folk who felt a little ripped off considering the gap between Canada and the United States is a mere few meters. I can say nothing more that hooray for the iPhone coming to Canada.
The Daily Slurp
I love so many showcase sites, but none more than The Daily Slurp. You can’t submit to the slurp (or not so that anyone is really paying attention), the slurp just happens to you. And that is exactly the case with FlipSide5, which got Slurped on June 4th.
FlipSide5 got Slurped
I hate to keep going on about FlipSide5, but when I have a winner I just keep quiet about it. One of the biggest honors for me as a small town Kitchener web designer is to see my work in the showcase sites. So far, FlipSide5 has appeared in DesignSnack, CSS Mania, Most Inspired, and now, my favorite showcase of all, The Daily Slurp.
What I like best about The Daily Slurp is that designers have little say in what gets listed there. You can submit a site for review (which I’ve never done) but from all accounts it does little good. The Daily Slurp just happens to sites for whatever reason. The good ones just get found.
your moo minicards are inside
Ohh… shiny… new… cards… mmmm! So I thought I’d better order myself a new batch of cards to go with the new seyDoggy 2008 website, something more in-line with the site itself. I decided to go with moo (they love to print) as they are cheap enough that if I didn’t like the concept, I could afford scrap the whole lot. You’ll notice the impulse purchase, the card holder that moo now offers, which is equally shiny and new, and I must admit, VERY handy. I haven’t yet found room in my pocket to actually use it as a key chain, but I working on it.