Gdovin.net

As I memtioned on my post on Moday, I mentioned that I will provide everyone with a list of services that allow you to get the services that Mobileme provides for $99/year for either free or much less. Another benifit of my list will be that these services do what  they are supposed to and syncronization is somewhat more reliable. So here is my list to save you money instead of getting Mobileme.

1. Web Storage- Adrive gives their users 50 GB of web storage for free! That is a big step-up from paying for 20 GB!
2. Email- Gmail, setup IMAP for all your devices, and you have mail that works just like Mobileme but is free and has more features and more storage space! (7 GB instead of 5 GB)
3. Contacts- Gmail contacts is a great contacts manager and covers the contacts  element of MobileMe
4. Calendar- Google Calendar is another great service provided by Google and if you set it up on your devices you can sync it to all your devices as well if not better than MobileMe.
5. Photo Gallery- Sharing pictures is really a no-brainer, Flickr is the defacto photo sharing site and because of that I am recommending that as a replacement of MobileMe’s photo sharing feature.
6. Website- There are a vast list of free services for making your own website for free, I reccommend Google Sites because it is great for the inexperienced web developers.

I have just listed servics that you can get for free instead of having to shell out $99 every year! I think this is a much better option for people to get Exchange-like services for everyday life.  I know that I went very pro-Google but, that is because I uses Google serivces everyday and use that for personal information and know how easy it is!

The concept of “Cloud Computing” has been floating around the internet for the past few years and I have mentioned it several time and posted about it several times but, realized that I haven’t addressed what  Cloud Computing is and what changes it will make to computing in general. Cloud Computing the concept of running applications and storing data on third-party systems apposed to storing data on computers physically accessed by the user and installing applications on those machines.

The benifit of this is that if the user has multiple computers, as many do, they have to transport their data between systems nor do you have to install, update application and in some cases, pay for licenses for all their machines. This also requires that the user would have to take their machine with them when they travel or go to school or work. With cloud computing people could use their documents from anywhere with an internet connection. This also opens the capabilities of collaboration and working with people who could be across town or across the globe and work together. There are some prime examples of this one being: Google Docs and Spreadsheets another great example is Projectpath which allows people to collaborate on work from anywhere.

There are still some disadvantages to going Cloud only, first of all, you need an internet connection which means if you are in Sticksville you loose acess to all you applications and data because a worldwide wifi connection does not exist yet and until then, backup applications and copies of data is a necessity. Another problem, is that the web-based applications are not as fully developed as local applications. The reason is that  web programing languages are not as well developed as local languages and cannot have as many features as the local applications meaning that if you need some of the more advanced features of the local application equivilents then, your choice is easy to stick to the local application. However, most users do not use all the features any given application has to offer because there is almost never a need for all the features. However, with the added collaboration it is a very useful tool when working in groups.

This is not the last mention that I will not make of Cloud Computing I will post, I plan to post frequently about cloud computing because I really think that in the next few years, Cloud Computing will blossom into a mainstream use and will be widely used soon. I think that as a blogger it is my responsibility to bring these services to the attention of the public and introduce them to a whole new wave of technology.

A few months ago,  Apple had relaunched it’s .Mac service as a MobileMe and has graciously christened it “Exchange for the rest of us”. The idea is getting enterprise-like Exchange features without going through the work and expense of setting it up and managing it! I signed-up for a trial account and would like to post my thoughts about it and to help anyone considering to sign-up for this service to determine whether or not they would really want to get it. First off, I would like to say anyone who knows me well or has read my copious amounts of Apple-related blogs, knows me as a Bona Fide Apple Fanboy and this review will totally go against that  although, this is not intentional, I am writing this post to  save people from signing up for a service that they might regret spending their money on. With that said, I will go ahead and write my thoughts on Apple’s Mobile Me Service.

I would like to list the service you would get if you decide to sign-up for Mobile Me:

1. Web Storage- You get 20 GB of storage which is good for backing up files and sharing media or hosting a website. However, you can sign up for Amazon S3 account and pay just $3/Month or $0.15 per Gigabyte and you can expand that and not get cut off at 20 GB making it a much more useful service.
2. Mail- You get a 5 GB email account with the username of your choice @me.com. The exchange part of this service is that the email pushes to all your devices like your iPhone, iPod Touch, computer mail client, and webmail. I will write further on this “Push” service and it’s reliability.
3. Address Book- You also have a Push address book where you can add contacts from anywhere and it “Instantly” synchronizes with all your devices.
4. Calendar- It also synchronizes your events calendar with all your devices as well “instantly”.
5. Photo Gallery-  Share your photos online once again, you could get free flickr or if you want unlimited picture uploads, get Flickr Pro for $25/Years!
6. Iweb- A service that allows Mac users to use iWeb of the iLife Suite and publish websites with ease. Once again, using a higher quality web service like my amazing host 1and1 which is a much more professional host and allows the developer to do virtually anything with plans starting for only $3/month.

In concept, MobileMe is a great concept cloud computing solution however, the “Push” services are some what unreliable and have given early adopters issues. I also have tried to use their web applications and they are extremely slow in comparison to Google’s apps, which are FREE, and is ridiculous in my opinion to pay for web apps which I live in daily that are slow and lagging. I also think that to be a  complete web suite it needs a task list application like Remember the Milk with sync capabilities that actually works. If a service doesn’t work 99.9% of the time, then it is not worth paying the service fee. I do believe that in a few months, Apple will finally kick out all the bugs and make it a good Cloud Computing service but, I think that most of it’s services can be obtained for either free or for a smaller fee. In fact, I will write a blog post later this week on how to save the $99/Year from MobileMe and I expect a cut of the savings!  So, check Gdovin.net everyday this week to find that post. Until then, reconsider getting Mobileme it is not worth the price especially since I will be writing a post about how to get the services for much less in a few days!

Many of my friends have been using Flickr for a long time and kept trying to convince me to join in and use it.  I finally started using Flickr yesterday and have to tell what I think about it.  The user-interface is both simple and elegant, you can easily upload your pictures from your web browser or a variety of installable applications that you can use to post your pictures.  You are limited to posting only 100 Megabytes of pictures every calendar month with a free account however, if you pay $25 a year you will be unlimited in pictures and can also make unlimited sets and post video.  Once you upload your pictures, you are able to tag people who are in the pictures and give descriptions, you can also make your pictures private so only your friends or family you designate are allowed to see the pictures or you can set it so that only you are able to view the pictures. Flickr is a great way to share your pictures and I recommend that everyone should give it a try because it is a great way to share and store your pictures.  You can share your pictures that you take with your friends and family both across the street and across the World!

I will have to admit that because of all the many different things I do in my life I have accumulated over 1,000 bookmarks in my web browser! But, what would happen if  something happened to my computer or a file was corrupt? All those years of bookmarking would be gone! I had been previously use Foxmarks which is a great Firefox extension that synchronized the bookmarks on my computer with a webserver which is also great, if you have many computers and need your bookmarks synchronized between them all. However, I wanted to share some of my bookmarks with the world so they know what I think are the best.

I had heard of Delicious before, and decided to give it a try and I have now been hooked! I imported all my bookmarks and allowed Delicious to automatically tag them (big mistake, I now have over 1000 tags as well) I now have all of my bookmarks online now and I can share my favorite sites with everyone and if there are still things I don’t want to share then I can just keep them private and can access them from anywhere in the world. You can also get a delicious extension for Firefox which will allow you to automatically add browser bookmarks to your delicious account. The tags you add allow you easily access the bookmarks you want. My friend Michael Plasmeier said he uses Delicious as a “micro-blog” where he can give quick links to his favorite site and Delicious is great for that!

PS. My most recent Delcious bookmarks are on this website’s sidebar!