There is a new application out there that is getting a lot of buzz lately. Dropbox, a free application that you install and it creates a local folder on your computer. Once you sign up for the free service you get 2 GB of storage space that you can use to store files online.
What makes this so awesome is that you can use this various different ways. The first way to use this is you can put files into the folder on your computer and Dropbox will automatically upload that file to your online account. They give you two options. You have a public folder and a private folder. When you put the files in the public folder you can get a link that you can pass out to whoever you want and they can access that file and download it. If you put the file in the private folder other people can access that file but, you can log onto your account from anywhere in the world and grab that file.
Another great use of this application is, you can install the app on all your computers. It doesn’t matter if it is Linux, Windows, or Apple. When you install Dropbox on different computers and you add or delete a file from your Dropbox folder on one computer, the application will update the other computers you have installed Dropbox on, once they are connected to the internet.
I have been using Dropbox since if was first announced and I have loved every bit of it.
Launchy Application Launcher
I just downloaded and started using Launchy Application Launcher and it is a fantastic piece of software. It is similar to Gnome Do (frequently used by Linux users) and Ubiquity Firefox plugin. This application can be downloaded for Linux and Windows. So go and check it out, you may find it very useful. Have any questions on how to use this application? Click the Help! link and ask me.
Mozilla Labs: Ubiquity
The guys over at Mozilla Labs are doing some amazing work. Check out this video example of Ubiquity.
Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.
Digg’s Read Later Bookmarking Problem
When you have been using digg since 2005 (see my profile seandfeeney), you pick up a few things along the way that, in a way, ruin the experience. It is known that some content that reaches digg popular is, well, less than adequate. In order to really understand the point I will be trying to make, you must first understand why someone Digg’s a story on the popular social news site digg.com. Some people digg to express their liking for the article, others try to drive traffic to their friends or their own website. The overall goal of digg.com is to let the users decide what stories, articles, videos, pictures etc. should be seen by the masses. The problem, is those who use the site as a social bookmarking tool to read an article or follow up with it later.
Back to the original point, unfortunately there are an over whelming number of articles that lack substance on digg popular. Part of this is due to armies of users who push their friends articles for potential fame and fortune or for quid pro quo reasons. This is an issue in itself but, it becomes a bigger problem when other digg users discover the post that appears to be getting a ton of diggs but, the server is down on that small website because of the digg effect. The result, digg users start digging the article to read it later, causing a broken submission that reaches digg popular with no real substance or value. Don’t believe me? Next time you encounter an article that links to a crashed server with no mirror in the comments, refresh the page a few times and watch the diggs keep climbing.
For years now, digg users have been begging for an article caching service that is embedded into digg to help users keep on reading and digging even when the main server is down. Lets face it, duggmirror.com had a lot of promise but, missed more articles than it caught. If the Google to acquire digg.com rumors are true we may just see Google’s website caching tool integrated with digg article submissions. This alone would be a win-win for everyone because Google be able to cache more of the internet without relying strictly on crawling the net and digg users will be much happier to be able to read the articles before digging them.
Since no one outside of Digg or Google really knows if the Google to aquire digg.com rumors are real, there may be an easier solution to help to keep the content on digg.com more substantial. For this, I recommend that the guys/gals at digg.com add a “read later” option to every post. This way people don’t have to digg an article in order to bookmark it for a read, later when the server comes back up or the user has more time to read the article. This will significantly reduce the number of broken / lame articles that reach digg popular.