New ways for you to follow The Nifty Tech Blog!

Now you can follow all the goings on at the Nifty Tech Blog in one of three ways.  You can subscribe to our RSS Feed and get every post as it comes out.  You can follow NiftyTechBlog on Twitter, and see all the behind the scenes banter that is part of the making of The Nifty Tech Blog.  Or you can support The Nifty Tech Blog by becoming a fan of The Nifty Tech Blog on Facebook!  On Facebook you can participate in the forums with other fans of The Nifty Tech Blog, and talk about the best and the worst of what is available in Tech.

And as always, you can contribute to The Nifty Tech Blog directly, by writing to NiftyTech@NiftyTechBlog.com to give us your opinion, recommend something to be included in the Blog, or to just say "Hi!".

We want to hear from you!  Y26H8SP9AUG3

The Boom Effect

This post is going to be a bit of a departure from our previous offerings.  I'd like to ask for your help, and to assure you that this is a good cause.  Yes, I'm asking you to give, but you'll get something back, too.

Back in January of this year, my friend Tee Morris lost his wife Natalie to complications of the flu.  It was sudden, and tragic, for otherwise she was in the prime of her life.  This left Tee as the sole support of their 5 year old daughter, known as Sonic Boom on the internet.  That's Tee and Sonic Boom in the icon.  You can click for a larger picture.

This is a story that plays out countless times across the country.  But what comes next is a bit of a twist.  You see, Tee is a podcaster and an author.  And he has friends in the podcasting and writing communities online.  Friends all around the world.  And his friends who live far, far away from him wanted to be able to do something to help out in his time of need.

And so they found a way to help.  Artists from all over the world have been donating their art: jewlery, audio and graphics, prints, paintings, fairy wings, and the written word.  All these wonderful things, and more, are going into an online auction to set up a trust fund for Sonic Boom, so she can have a secure future.

So I'm asking you to leave my page (whimper!) and go over to http://www.theboomeffect.org and look at all the wonderful things that have been donated.  I'm asking you to place proxy bids.  And to be online this Saturday, February 27th from 10 AM EST until it is all done bidding on items, and winning prizes from talented people from all over the globe.

And best of all, investing in the future of one little girl.

Please bid.  Please attend.  Please help.  Please spread the word.

But hurry, time is running out.

Dropbox

Our next bit of Nifty Tech is a program called Dropbox. Dropbox is software and a service from a company of the same name. Dropbox allows you to sync and share files across computers and over the internet automatically. You can find them at http://www.dropbox.com. As of this writing, the Dropbox client software is version 0.7.97 for Windows and Mac OS X, which might put some folks off as a sign of an unfinished piece of software. But Dropbox is very usable and useful, and best of all, it is free! Versions are also available for several flavors of Linux. There is even an iPhone app.

When you install Dropbox on a computer, you designate a folder as your Dropbox folder, and allow it to connect to your Dropbox account. What the software actually does is create a background process that watches your Dropbox folder and the corresponding folder on Dropbox’s servers. If either folder is changed, the changes are immediately synced to the other folder. This is great for people with more than one computer, as it means that they can easily keep important files in sync between multiple computers just by putting them in the Dropbox folder. Once a file is in the Dropbox folder, the latest version will be synced to all computers on the account, and the file will be available from any computer by signing on to the Dropbox website with the account’s username and password. All communications are fully encrypted, to protect the confidentiality of your data.

So it syncs your files. So what? There are lots of file sync programs and services out there. What is so special about this one? Well, file syncing is only the tip of the iceberg for Dropbox. It makes an excellent collaboration tool. You can share any folder inside your Dropbox folder with any number of other Dropbox users. When you do this, the folder will show up inside their Dropbox folder and they will be able to see and edit the files in that folder. Any changes they make will be synced to everyone else. Dropbox also keeps track of previous versions of the file so you can always return to a previous good version. This makes Dropbox a great tool for working on collaborative projects. Everyone is always in sync, and your files are always recoverable! By default, Dropbox just keeps track of the last 30 days of changes, but they have a PackRat option that lets you keep unlimited changes.

But let’s say that you have some people you need to share files with that don’t want to create a Dropbox account. Or you have large files that you can’t e-mail that you need to get to a large number of people and you don’t know if they have a Dropbox or not, but they all need the file. Easy-peasy. By default, Dropbox gives you a special Public folder. When you put a file in the Public folder, you can right-click or control-click on the file and choose a menu item called Copy Public Link. This puts the URL of the file on Dropbox’s secure server into your clipboard. Now just e-mail that URL to the people you need to share the file with, and let them download it from the Dropbox servers. One drawback of the current version of Dropbox is that Public Links are only available for individual files, not for folders. If you need to share a folder, either you need to zip it up, or send links for each file in the folder.

Dropbox has another special folder. This one is called Photos, and as you’d expect, it is used for sharing Photos with other users. Create a folder in the Photos section, and put the images you want to share in that folder. Then go to http://www.dropbox.com/photos and select the folder. On the gallery page, there is a link that you can copy and send to anyone you want to share that gallery with. Dropbox even gives you a sample gallery so you can test it for yourself before putting any of your pictures online.

With the basic Dropbox account, you get 2 GB of storage space on the Dropbox servers. For most personal users, this is plenty. But if you need more space, you can purchase the Pro 50 account and get 50 GB of storage for $9.99 a month, or the Pro 100 account that nets you 100 GB of storage for $19.99 a month. Or, you can become a Dropbox Evangelist! For each friend that you invite to join Dropbox that actually joins, both you and your friend receive an additional 250 MB of storage on your Dropbox accounts, but only until you hit 3 GB. Dropbox even gives you tools that let you invite friends directly, or post a link on your web page for referrals. My referral link is https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTIwNzc1NDI5, if you’d like to check out Dropbox and give me some additional storage space.

But the really Nifty thing about Dropbox is the many, many ways you can use it. One friend had a problem with trying to put samples of music in her blog so that her readers can hear what she is working on. Dropbox Public Links. Using iWeb on multiple machines? Put the Domain file in the Dropbox folder and put a symbolic link to it on each of the machines with iWeb. It seems like every time I hear of someone having a problem involving multiple computers or the web, it seems like the solution that comes to mind always starts with Dropbox.

Dropbox is definitely a useful tool to have in your software toolbox if you’ve got multiple computers, need to distribute large files, or do collaborative work. And even if you don’t, it’s free, and it is Nifty Tech.

And We're Back!

After a very busy week of work, we are proud to display the fruits of all these efforts: the New Nifty Tech Blog site!  The new site is hosted by Blogger, and provides me access to a number of widgets and tools that will make posting and maintaining the blog easier for me.  For you the reader, it provides a more robust archive page, the ability to search entries by labels, and a number of subscription options.  And a new RSS feed hosted by Feedburner.

Despite putting in a lot of work this past week, I wasn't quite able to make all the updates I wanted to.  So you may see little changes to the site in the coming days and weeks as I make little tweaks here and there.

For those of you following the OLD RSS feed, I'm afraid you're going to have to go to http://www.NiftyTechBlog.com and re-subscribe with the new RSS feed.  I'm sorry about that, but I just didn't have any good way to feed the new feed through the old one.  The old site will remain at it's underlying URL for a while, until I am confident that folks have moved to the new incarnation of the site.

All the posts and comments have already been transferred over to the new site, although I'm afraid the date-time stamps for the comments couldn't be preserved.  The comments are still there in the correct order, but the date-time stamps reflect when they were migrated rather than when they were posted.

There will be a review posted later today, but I'm afraid it will be a bit late.  But it WILL be up on Monday, February 15, 2010 in Eastern Standard Time (GMT -5).  Promise.  The new post will only be on the new feed.  This will be the last post that will show up on the old feed, so the time to switch over is now.

Please let me know how you like the new site, and feel free to offer constructive comments and suggestions.  I'm always happy to hear from my readers!

Maintenance

On Sunday, February 14th, 2010, readers may experience some problems accessing the blog. During this time, I'll be doing the switch over from the current site to the new Blogger hosted site. I'm not sure how long this will take, but a new review will be posted on Monday, February 15th.

Please bear with me during this transition. Hopefully all will go smoothly. I hope everyone will agree that the new site is an improvement.

Changes coming

First off, I’d like to thank everyone who read last week’s review and has left comments and sent messages of support.  Your support means a lot to me.  I know my audience is small right now, but I’m glad to hear that you’re enjoying what you’ve read.  And I look forward to bringing you more reviews in the future.  Hopefully ones that you’ll want to share with your friends.

But first, there will be some changes.  As some of you have noticed, the current site is built using Apple’s iWeb.  While iWeb is great for someone maintaining a single site, I’m running two separate domains off of iWeb.  And some of the things I’ve had to do to make that work haven’t given me the best results.  And some of the features I really want to offer on this site are things iWeb just doesn’t offer.

So I will be moving the site to a new host.  When I have everything set up, the change over should be relatively smooth.  The URL will remain the same, although those who are subscribed through the RSS feed will have to switch to a new feed.  The new site will be hosted on Blogger, which will give me access to tag entries, and more robust archiving.

The appearance of the site will change, and there may be some additional ripples as I tweak it where I want it.  And I will also be setting up a Facebook page and a Twitter feed for the blog.

And by being able to tag articles, I should be able to add new articles with editorials, speculation, news, and other goodies in addition to the reviews.

So please bear with me as I go about improving the site.

Talk to you soon!

Delicious Library

Welcome to The Nifty Tech Blog!

This blog came about because of an event that happened not too long ago.  A friend of mine sent me an e-mail about a new piece of tech that he had discovered and that he thought that I might be interested in.  It turned out that his new discovery was something that I had been using for months.  In fact, I had tried to tell him about it when I discovered it and he hadn’t been interested.

So this blog is an attempt to time-shift some of my discoveries.  I can write about products in the height of my enthusiasm, and my friends can discover them when they’re ready.  And with a little luck, I am hoping that others will flock around and give me their suggestions on nifty tech items to share with the world.

Starting out, I’m going to be publishing reviews every two weeks, but there may be the odd special event item or commentary published from time to time.  If things work out well, I’ll step up the schedule.

So I’m going to start out this little adventure with the same product that my friend recommended: Delicious Library.

Delicious Library 2 is a product from Delicious Monster (http://delicious-monster.com).  As of this writing, the latest version is version 2.3.3 and is available for $40, although a limited free download is available.

So what is Delicious Library, and why is it Nifty Tech?  Delicious Library is an inventory application for the Macintosh (Sorry Windows, and Linux people, it is Mac OS only right now).  DL was originally designed to help users keep track of their book and movie collections, but soon evolved beyond that.

So it is an inventory application.  So what?  What is so special about that?  Well, there are several nifty things about DL, but by far the Niftiest of them all is the method by which you enter your items into the library in the first place.  DL makes use of the built in iSight cameras in all the late model Apple computers.  Just take your book, or your CD or DVD, or the box from your latest toy or gadget or piece of software and hold it up to the iSight camera, and Delicious Library will scan the barcode of the item, connect to the internet and identify the book, CD, etc., and download the relevant information, and a photo-realistic image of the cover or box of the item.  DL displays these items on virtual “shelves” so you can look at your titles with a glance.  Just show the computer what you have and it will identify your stuff for you!  How cool is that?

Naturally, DL sometimes makes mistakes, and sometimes you have an item that is so old or obscure that it cannot correctly identify it.  Fortunately DL has a convenient display of characteristic that makes it easy to manually enter the information about the items it can’t correctly identify.

For more convenience, you can buy an optional Bluetooth barcode reader that will feed the data wirelessly to your Mac, or will store up to 4000 barcode entries if you wander out of range.  But hold on to your hats if you want to go this route.  Delicious Monster only sells the barcode scanner at the time that you buy Delicious Library.  And it isn’t cheap.  It may be cheaper than you’ll find elsewhere, but $215 is still a significant chunk of change.  Even for a supercool barcode scanner.

So once you’ve entered your items into the library, then what?  More nifty stuff.  Do you have friends who borrow your stuff?  Just create an entry for each friend.  DL creates a virtual “shelf” with your friends name on it, based on an address book entry.  Now drag the item borrowed from your regular collection to your friend’s shelf.  DL makes the connection, and if you’re wondering what you’ve loaned out to whom, DL keeps track of it.  When it gets returned, just drag the item back to the main library.  Items on loan show up on your library shelves as phantom items.

You can create your own shelves to represent different locations.  Work, bedroom, library, whatever.  Or you can create smart shelves based on your own rules against any of the data fields in the library.  For instance you could bring up everything that cost more than $100 dollars.

If you’re looking to reduce your stuff, DL can help you find your most sale able items.  DL pulls data from Amazon.com and gives both the retail price and the current asking prices.  It can suggest similar items to things in your library, and can help you list your items for sale, or help you buy new things if you’re flush with cash.

Once you’ve compiled your library and gotten it the way you want it, you can share it with your friends who also use DL over a network.  Or you can publish it to the web, or to a Mobile Me account.  In addition to sharing your library items, this provides an off-site backup in case someone steals your stuff and you need to provide the insurance company an itemized list of what things are missing.

Delicious Library provides a lot of useful tools to help you manage your library items the way you want to.  It doesn’t take the chore away from you, but it provides enough tools to help encourage you to do it in the first place.  And the Delicious Monster crew seems dedicated to making continual improvements to evolve the software.  It may not be for everyone, but for an easy entry price of $40, there are bound to be a lot of people who will find it Nifty Tech.