The good news is, since [...]]]>

Image via CrunchBase

I never had a cell phone till six years ago when I began working for Collages.net as a Systems Administrator. I somehow managed to live through my teenage years and my college career without one…but now I wonder how I ever survived without one?

The good news is, since IT folks are generally “on-call” officially or unofficially^[1] I haven’t usually had to pay for my cell service – it is one of the few perks of being always on-call…they want to be able to reach you^[2].

When I went to work at PBU I gave Charity (my beautiful wife!) my old iPhone 3G and now have a Verizon Droid 2. Each month we get the bill for Charity’s iPhone and it is painful! Almost painful enough that I’d say, “Let’s take you back to  dumb phone.” But not quite. Why note?

1. Charity is a really, really wonderful woman and deserves a smartphone.
2. We run extremely hectic lives and staying coordinated with one another and with others is greatly facilitated through our use of our smartphones.
3. We don’t have a home telephone (or television/cable), so I figure its a fair trade-off.

So how much does it cost to have a smartphone these days? Around $80/mo. – if you go with a major provider like AT&T or Verizon and aren’t on a business plan^[3]! It feels a bit like highway robbery!

Don’t get me wrong…I’m not someone who minds paying a premium for a good service, and in fact there is only one part of the provider’s plan that really ticks me off:

We get charged for both a data and a text messaging plan. For anyone who doesn’t know – text messaging is data. There is no reason why we should be charged separately for these two separate plans – just give us a reasonable limit on our data plan and then figure the texts into that data plan usage.

The only reason I can see for the providers not to do this is that text messages take up basically no data and thus they would lose a lot of money as the texts would usually easily fit in with a smartphone’s existing data plan limits.

When you break a plan down into its component parts it looks something like this:

• $40/mo. for 450 minutes – okay, that isn’t bad imho.
• $15/mo. for 200 MB data – okay, you are robbing me blind…but i’m okay with this…
• $15/mo. for 1500 text messages – wait a second…i thought i was already paying you for data…oh, that’s right I am!

But wait…What did I mean about a cell apocalypse? No, I’m not talking about the potential merger of AT&T and T-Mobile (yes, I’m hoping this merger fails miserably…), I am talking about the convergence of technology toward IP based networking. Let me explain…

Traditionally, voice and data communications have operated via two different technologies. Voice is analog, data is digital. But as technology has progressed voice has moved towards data. Data communications are largely based on the IP (Internet Protocol) technology and now voice communications are being built on a similar technology…ohhh, and this reminds me of the other reason I’m an unhappy camper: my bill should be for just one thing – data usage.

See, one can already use voice communications over IP. This is what VoIP is, Skype is, and all those other free calling apps you can get for your computer and smartphone. These apps utilize the data networks to avoid the traditional phone networks – which have all sorts of charges for terminating calls and so on.

Right now phone companies could simplify our bills down to just one charge – our data (whether that is voice, video, web, or text – it is all data) – but an artificial distinction between technologies allows for higher prices.

So, the coming cell apocalypse is simply this: the emergence of devices which will utilize a data network for all types of communications. Significant movements in this direction occurred first with the revelation of the iPhone and then with the Android. These phones are so intelligent and controlled so much by the device manufacturer rather than the cell provider that they have brought us leaps and bounds closer to unified communications over IP^[4]. Where the real change will occur though is as the world is blanketed in WiFi hotspots and as these hotspots become reliable enough to provide coverage without failure across the world – at least to the extent that cellular networks are available in the same place. As this happens we’ll see a movement where phones utilize these existing networks for data access rather than the cellular networks and with this the need for cellular networks will no longer exist! Yes, there is coming a day in which cellular providers will be a thing of the past…

That is, unless they choose to become part of this new technology evolution and undergo a radical shift in emphasis and method…which is doubtful. This would be (a) very risky, (b) reduce revenues, and (c) be unpalatable to shareholders^[5]…but it is the only hope the cellular providers have of surviving long-term. The providers must choose between two painful roads:

1. Stay the same and milk us in the short-term for all we are worth but at some point face a rapid deterioration and eventual unsustainability and bankruptcy.

2. Change the course radically and experience a sharp decline in immediate revenues but sustainability over the long-haul, with ongoing revenues for the foreseeable future.

This shift is similar to what must occur in the television and movie industries – if the traditional companies expect to survive (and what companies like Blockbuster and Hollywood Video failed to embrace with tragic results).

The end result is inevitable – unified data communications. Unfortunately for consumers, this desired end may be long delayed if cell providers continue to embrace the current revenue strategy…but eventually it will be overcome.

Here is to holding out that one of the few remaining independent cellular providers (e.g. Sprint) who isn’t a currently top-market player will take a gamble on the better road and force everyone to move this direction sooner than later!

Related articles

• LTE Insufficient from the Start, Boingo IPO Propitious (circleid.com)
• Apple blames bugs for storing data on users’ locations (knoxnews.com)
• Wireless Carriers and Tablets: What Is the Opportunity? (fool.com)
• AT&T’s Cell Phone Tower-In-A-Trunk For Disaster Zones (fastcompany.com)
• Sandvine Turns to Citrix to Cut Mobile Latency (pcworld.com)
• Meet The Geniuses Behind The Cell Phone, Texting And Other Mobile Tech You Can’t Live Without (businessinsider.com)
• Smart Software Saves Money on Voice Calls: Bababoo (gigaom.com)

1. ^[1] Aka, no, you aren’t on call but yes we will still call you in the middle of the night. =) ↩
2. ^[2] At all times. Yes, that includes Christmas. ↩
3. ^[3] Businesses get discounts, since they bring in a number of customers. ↩
4. ^[4] A discussion of the details of how these devices advanced this cause is far too large to undertake in this article, you’ll just have to trust me. ↩
5. ^[5] Who, ironically, are us…the same folks who complain about cellular service prices. ↩

Here are the latest selections of the most interesting amongst Amazon’s currently available free eBooks. While they are optimized for the Kindle ereader, you can read these ebooks on Windows and Mac PCs as well as the Apple iPhone and

Here are the latest selections of the most interesting amongst Amazon’s currently available free eBooks. While they are optimized for the Kindle ereader, you can read these ebooks on Windows and Mac PCs as well as the Apple iPhone and Google Android.

• Gutteridge, Rene. Listen: Your Private Conversation Just Went Public. Christian Fiction / Thriller.
• Funaro, Greg. The Sculptor. Crime Thriller.
• Baart, Nicole. After the Leaves Fall. Christian Fiction (Female).
• Ferguson, Teresa. The One Year Devotions for Couples. Christian Non-Fiction Devotional.
• Mikalatos, Matt. Imaginary Jesus. Christian Fiction (Theology). – Recommended by Gary Thomas about Sacred Marriage and Sacred Pleasure.
• Peterson’s Ultimate Word Success. Non-Fiction, Test Prep.
• Perkins, John M. Welcoming Justice: God’s Movement Toward Beloved Community (Resources for Reconciliation). – Christian Non-Fiction. Forward by Philip Yancey, published by InterVarsity.
• Torabi, Farnoosh. Psych Yourself Rich: Get the Mindset and Discipline You Need to Build Your Financial. Non-Fiction, Financial.
• Peterson’s Green Careers in Energy. Non-Fiction, Environmental, Jobs.

For years I’ve done side work relating to my profession (Information Technologies) – systems design / implementation / support and web design / development / hosting. For years I’ve gotten the work done, but not always the billing. I [...]]]>

For years I’ve done side work relating to my profession (Information Technologies) – systems design / implementation / support and web design / development / hosting. For years I’ve gotten the work done, but not always the billing. I hate billing. I hate invoices. I hate paperwork.

When I found Freshbooks – I thought I’d found a little bit of heaven…and I still think I have.

Freshbooks is free for a very simple, base account that lets you manage up to three clients, track time invested (for a single person), and create and send/email invoices. It works great! It makes recording my time easy, creating invoices easier, and mailing them out a cinch (whether postal or email!). You really couldn’t ask for much more…

Now, I’ve usually kept a pretty small client based and also worked solo by and large…but lately I’ve been getting a lot of leads…and I can see I’m going to either have to start turning down clients or start scaling out. So what do I do?…I’d like to upgrade my Freshbooks account, but the cost is a bit steep – $20/mo. for the first tier “seedling.”

Granted, this $20/mo. gets you basically the whole kit and kaboodle. You can add slightly expanded features by moving up to “evergreen” ($30/mo.) and get it all for $40/mo. with “mighty oak” – but for 90% of folks, I think seedling is going to cover it…

But, moving from $0/mo. to $20/mo. is a pretty big jump. I’d like to suggest that Freshbooks create an intermediary level between free and seedling. Yeah, yeah, it ruins the whole naming scheme – maybe they could call it: “runt seedling”. But naming apart, here is what I’d like to see in a $10/mo. plan:

If I had to I’d even be willing to give up logos on invoices, to be charged per instance for data imports/exports, to not be able to send snail mail invoices, and to not be able to accept online payments. When it comes down to it – the number of clients and the number of contractors are what really matters to me. I think something that stripped down might be “Sickly Seedling” (underneath runt) for $5 or $6/mo.

I wonder how many folks would convert to paying accounts at these sort of levels? It seems to me that while a select few might downgrade from the $20/mo. level, most would grab a $10/mo. account and as business expanded, continue to hop their way up the chain.

Alternatively – if FreshBooks doesn’t open up any lower tiers, does anyone have competitive solutions they’d recommend that offer free/lower prices?

Related articles

• MiniBooks for FreshBooks: Invoice Clients From Your iPhone or iPad (iphone.appstorm.net)
• Fast-growing Freshbooks adds host of new features (techvibes.com)
• FreshBooks deepens integration with Salesforce (techvibes.com)
• FreshBooks Announces Integration with SalesForce for Easy Invoicing (readwriteweb.com)
• Need to Get Paid Faster? Online Billing Tools to the Rescue (entrepreneur.com)
• 5 Best Scheduling Tools for Freelancers (quickonlinetips.com)
• Invoicera Online Invoice Billing Application [Giveaway worth 300$] (madrasgeek.com)
• Five must-have time management web services for small businesses (techvibes.com)

I think of myself as a fairly busy person. Whether I am or not one thing is certain – I have a horrible memory. I am always thinking of what I need to do at just the wrong moment, and forgetting what I need to do at just the [...]]]>

I think of myself as a fairly busy person. Whether I am or not one thing is certain – I have a horrible memory. I am always thinking of what I need to do at just the wrong moment, and forgetting what I need to do at just the right moment. How do I cope?

Well, I’m never far from technology. If nothing else my Verizon Droid is always in my pocket. When I’m at work I’m at my computer and when I’m at home, I’m at my computer. See the common thread?

For a number of months now I’ve been using Evernote to facilitate my life organization skills – and it is a huge help. With the release of 4.0 I’ve become even more impressed. I haven’t quite reached SugarSync levels – where I’m paying for my account – but it is getting close.

Here is what I love about Evernote:

• There are applications for just about every kind of computing device imaginable – Windows, Mac, iPhone (iPod, iTouch), Android, Blackberry, Palm (Pre / Pixi), and Windows Mobile – not to mention a web-based interface.
• When you delete an item from Evernote it first gets thrown into a trash bin from whence you can undelete it.
• It seemlessly synchronizes between all of my devices – my notes are the same whether I access them on my home or work computers, on my Android or via the web-based interface – it all just happens.
• It allows for a number of advanced ways to search / filter / organize your notes – but I find tags is more than sufficient for my needs.
• The note-taking interface isn’t just for text – you can make audio and photo notes as well.
• The textual interface has a nice word processing feel offering a number of nice features such as fonts, textual alignment, bulleted lists, and so on.
• The software is extensible. While I haven’t used any of the extensions I’m pretty excited about Dial2Do and find the LiveScribe smartpen pretty interesting.
• The freemium account is more than adequate for my needs. I’m still using 0% of my storage!

When I think about products I always try to think, “but what could be better?” I’m not sure I can think of much for Evernote – other than perhaps a synergy between Evernote and SugarSync. The two should work out a deal – some way in which the features of Evernote are integrated into SugarSync. This really would be a coup for SugarSync. SugarSync is already the best file backup / syncing / archiving / sharing application around and integrating Evernote functionality would just level everything up a layer.

I look at the features Evernote offers for going premium ($5/mo.) and I really don’t see anything I need…but if I could get a combo SugarSync / Evernote package for $7/mo. – I’d jump on that. SugarSync would get a huge boost in features, Evernote would be pulling in $2/mo. right and left – and no, this need not include the premium features – charge the other $3 if people want not only SugarSync integration but also Evernote premium features.

Related articles

• Evernote Grabs $20 Million For Cloud-Based Notetaking (nytimes.com)
• Evernote CEO Discusses Plans for Brain Implant (Seriously) (readwriteweb.com)
• Evernote Crosses 5 Million Users (techie-buzz.com)
• iOS App Update- Evernote for iPhone Gets an Update (geardiary.com)
• Evernote 2.0 for Android: Notes Leave the Cloud (gigaom.com)
• Evernote for Android takes a huge leap forward with Version 2.0 (Philip Constantinou/Evernote Blogcast) (techmeme.com)
• The Path From Apple’s Newton to Evernote (readwriteweb.com)

Here is another list of volumes currently available for free from Amazon in the Kindle eBook format. You do not have to have a Kindle in order to view/read these ebooks. Amazon has made Kindle software (free) that runs on [...]]]>

Here is another list of volumes currently available for free from Amazon in the Kindle eBook format. You do not have to have a Kindle in order to view/read these ebooks. Amazon has made Kindle software (free) that runs on Windows, the iPhone, Android, and so on.

• Purves, Dale. Brains: How They Work and What that Tells Us About Who We Are.
• Kraus, Harry. Perfect. Zondervan (Fiction).
• Sproul, R.C. Can I Be Sure I’m Saved? (Non-Fiction).
• Templar, Richard. The Rules of Life: A Personal Code for Living a Better, Happier, More Successful Life.
• Blanchard, Ken. Helping People Win at Work.
• Alcorn, Randy. Safely Home. (Fiction)
• Dwight Eisenhower’s Leadership Lessons.
• 15 Successful Communication Lessons.
• Grimes, Nikki. A Girl Named Mister. Zondervan (Fiction).
• John Wooden’s Winning Ways. (Non-Fiction, Business/Leadership)

Related articles

• Amazon Kindle deal could clear iPad periodicals (electronista.com)
• Amazon Will Let You Loan Kindle Books To A Friend – But Publishers Can Turn It Off [Kindle] (gizmodo.com)
• Amazon making Kindle into digital lending library (techflash.com)
• Amazon to allow Kindle lending (i-programmer.info)

If you love studying the Scriptures – you’ll want to get your hands on a copy of Logos Bible Software. Logos is probably the largest manufacturer of bible software – and while there are competitors out there none can compare with both the sheer quantity [...]]]>

If you love studying the Scriptures – you’ll want to get your hands on a copy of Logos Bible Software. Logos is probably the largest manufacturer of bible software – and while there are competitors out there none can compare with both the sheer quantity of material available and the quality of the Logos 4.0 underlying software engine.

I buckled down and put myself on a payment plan and purchased the Logos Bible Software Scholar’s Edition Silver and I haven’t looked back since. This software is amazing and a huge blessing in my Scriptures studies and teaching!

Software Engine Highlights:

Logos is built on an impressively robust software engine that runs on both Windows and Mac computers. There are also user interfaces for the Apple iPhone and the web. Here are a few of the features I love:

• Mouse over any word in any resource and see a dictionary definition of the word.
• Extensive cross-referencing with a variety of resources – beyond the usual linking to commentaries, concordances, and bible dictionaries – for example, the inclusion of related images (of high quality and relevance), links to audio and transcripts of sermons on the same topic, and powerpoint layouts for specific sections of Scripture.
• The automatic passage and word study guides that appear when you search for a specific passage of Scripture and garner together the innumerable resources you need to pursue your studies.

Content Highlights:

The underlying engine would be magnificent in its own right, but it is really the content that I am most interested in and that will attract others. You can buy Logos at many different levels and each level includes differing content. I would suggest getting at least the Scholar’s Silver Edition. You can go on a payment plan and the resources included are simply amazing. Here are a few of my favorites:

• New American Commentary – This commentary series is written from an evangelical perspective and is exhaustive in its approach. It offers a tremendous amount of background and content analysis before one even dives into the commentary and the commentary focuses on providing insight not only at the verse level but also at the thought level. The cost to purchase this commentary set alone in print nearly covers the cost of Scholar’s Silver Edition.
• The Bible Knowledge Commentary – A smaller, two-volume commentary on the entire bible written by the faculty at Dallas Theological Seminary it is a bit dated at this juncture and will upset some for its heavy dispensational focus – but provides excellent insights from a conservative, evangelical, dispensational perspective in a concise format.
• The Bible Exposition Commentary – Warren Wiersbe’s ‘BE’ commentaries covering the entire New Testament. These commentaries are more lay/devotional in nature but still include a good bit of technical thought and are useful in sermon preparation or other teaching/devotional arenas.
• Holman New Testament Commentary – A series on the entire New Testament. This series is written more for pastors/teachers than academics – but does a good job of providing applicable insight into various passages.
• There are numerous volumes of a practical nature also included – these books focus on effective ministry and are extremely useful for anyone working in ministry.
• Just about any bible version you can imagine is included such as the NASB, NET, ESV, NLT, KJV, HCSB, and The Message.

What’s Missing:

There are a few enhancements I’d like to see Logos make. I’ve outlined them below:

• Audio Pronunciations: I’m self-taught in reading, and this is great except for when one needs to pronounce complex or unfamiliar words. I have sometimes been embarrassed when I accidentally butcher a word I’ve only seen on the printed page and never heard anyone speak aloud. It would be great to simply click on a word and hear a correct enunciation of English, Hebrew, and Greek words.
• Latin to English Translation: There are oftentimes phrases in Latin in the commentaries and various resources. Unfortunately, I don’t read Latin. It’d be nice to have a built-in translation facility to convert these phrases into English.
• Processing Offloading: The Logos software has always been known for being a bit heavy – liable to slowdowns and freezes – due to the heavy processing it is doing behind the scenes. Its certainly worth it for the intelligence the software has in providing the correct resources on-the-fly, but my Intel Centrino Duo laptop with 4 GB of RAM and a 256 MB video card still grinds to a halt. I’d like to see Logos work on offloading some of this processing to centralized servers, rather than doing all the work on my machine – and thus hopefully speeding things up a bit. They should still have the ability to do it on my local machine, in case I’m not connected to the internet or have a slow connection – and should do a quick analysis to determine which method will be faster – but this could make Logos an amazingly fluid application.

A Philosophical Difference:

I’m a bit of an open source fan. I grew up in a fairly poor family – there was not a lot of extra money floating around. My computers were always several years behind the times and oftentimes were given to me by generous individuals in the church or at great sacrifice in saving by my parents, or later, through significant endeavors on my own to earn and save money. I had no money for software and learned to scavenge for free alternatives for many years – out of necessity not b/c I didn’t want to spend anything on software.

Logos dominates the market and rightfully so…but I would like to see them move to a more open source philosophy. No, no, I’m not suggesting they abandon their model entirely. I’d like to suggest a nice hybridization which would be beneficial to those less economically fortunate individuals looking to study the Scriptures as well as to Logos.

Specifically, I’m suggesting that Logos continue to raise purchases of public domain resources as they do now – that is the way they gather together individuals who are willing to pay for the software to cover costs before they begin producing the software – but then once they have recouped the costs they move the public domain resources to be free.

Yes, yes, I understand that they bring significant added value to these free resources via all the interlinking, cross-referencing, and other features they integrate, but…that’s what the prepub would exist to accomplish.

How would this benefit Logos? Individuals such as myself used free applications like e-Sword for years. Many of the individuals using free alternatives know nothing of the power and content of Logos. Imagine getting your shoe in the door. Many a poor college student who currently uses a free application would switch to Logos – and when they secured their first position, purchase upgrades. Many individuals who now can only afford the base might one day secure a different economic position that allows them to purchase more content.

This would be a significant commitment on Logos part. They offer a significant number of public domain products at fairly high prices and these products make up a significant portion of their base products – but still, I think they could maintain their economic income while expanding their user base.

Further, I would suggest it is necessary to open the process of developing resources for Logos. They could use a verification process like Apple does for the iPhone app store to keep people from creating illegal materials – but there needs to be an ability for third parties to create resources – at least free resources – there could still be a licensing fee / royalty structure associated with premium resources.

Conclusion:

Logos Bible Software is simply amazing and well worth the monetary investment. I hope that Logos will move towards offering a free base edition which includes public domain resources. I believe this would allow Logos to consolidate its market leader position and would significantly assist the spread of the gospel throughout the world.

Related articles

• Logos 4 Mac released (tuaw.com)

On Sept. 26th I wrote a provocatively titled post entitled, “SugarSync – A Love/Hate Relationship.” I’m happy to report that SugarSync has fully addressed the dilemma in our relationship and I’m now happier than I have ever been paying my $5/mo. to SugarSync.

As a sign of this [...]]]>

On Sept. 26th I wrote a provocatively titled post entitled, “SugarSync – A Love/Hate Relationship.” I’m happy to report that SugarSync has fully addressed the dilemma in our relationship and I’m now happier than I have ever been paying my $5/mo. to SugarSync.

As a sign of this renewed relationship I figured I should do something nice from my end…You know, that whole give-take concept in a relationship? So here I am, writing a fuller review of SugarSync and without the downer of last time.

Why YOU Must Get SugarSync NOW!

I work in the Technology Services Department at Philadelphia Biblical University. On occasion individuals walk into my office and ask, “Can you help me get my files back? I have all the pictures I ever took in my life on this hard drive…and it isn’t booting.” Yes, there is variation to what is lost and how it is lost – but the point is, I hear quite regularly – at work, at home, everywhere – that people are losing data. Sometimes the data is relatively unimportant – sometimes it is heartbreakingly important. That masters thesis you were 3/4th’s done with? Gone. Those emails from your beloved, now-deceased family member? Obliterated. Those copies of legal documents you need for an upcoming court case? No longer available.

Back in the day it was a hassle to ensure your files were backed up – that is no longer the case. No one has any excuse for not having a backup of their critical files - and SugarSync eliminates this excuse. As a teenager, in spite of knowing better, I twice lost significant numbers of files to a systems crash – applications I had developed, documents I had written, emails I really wanted to save. Back in those days it was a bear to save things. You were using dialup internet and floppy disks were all the rage. Today, those excuses no longer exist – thanks to SugarSync.

Other Options?

There are other options. When it comes to backups the options are multitudinous – for example Mozy and Carbonite. Unfortunately, while I once was a Mozy fanatic (I was with them from the early beta days when Josh(?) sent us very random emails masquerading as newsletters) they refused to make their pricing competitive – continuing to charge for software licenses (almost nobody else does) and exceeding the going rates for data storage (I’d say Amazon S3 defines this) by 2x-3x! Carbonite’s user interface has never particularly impressed me.

Now SugarSync extends far beyond backups – though backups are the must-have feature everyone needs – and there are numerous competitors on this front as well. Probably the best known is Dropbox. At the time I was considering Dropbox you were forced to place all your files in one directory – I’m not sure whether they removed this limitation or not – but this was unacceptable to me, and I generally liked SugarSync’s clients and interoperability better anyways. Now I’m a bit of a SugarSync fan-boy but for good reason. I’m open to alternatives – if you believe you know of a better one let me know – but it will take more than feature parity to make me switch (and I’ll ask SugarSync if they have intentions for the feature first…and it’d have to be a pretty killer feature).

How Much Does it Cost?

For most people it is free. If you just want to ensure your critical files are protected you can use the free 2 GB account SugarSync offers and will likely never need anything more. If you want not only your critical files but your music files, saved games, pictures, and so on – then you’ll need to pay, but still – it is really reasonable. I pay $5/mo. for 30 GB and I utilize around 8 GB. If 30 GB isn’t enough you can get 60 GB for $10/mo. and so on. It is really reasonable^[1]

What Else Can it Do?

The absolute, must-have feature is backups. If you don’t use SugarSync for anything else you should utilize it for backups of your files. That said, SugarSync offers a wide variety of sheer awesome features, let me outline a few of my favorites below:

• Security – Worried about your files being in the cloud? How about knowing they are protected by 128-bit AES encryption and that all communication to/from the servers occurs over a SSL (Secure Socket Layer) connection?
• Infinity Device Sync – I have a home laptop, a home desktop, a work laptop, a work desktop, a Verizon Droid, and an Apple iPhone 3G…If I want to have my files synced to all of these computers – I can. I can also define specific subsets to go to specific computers. For example, don’t want those work files going home? Exclude them.
• File Versioning – What happens if you accidentally overwrite an important file? Delete the file? What happens if you need to look five revisions back? SugarSync offers seamless and intuitive file versioning – and any file that is deleted gets dropped into their deleted files bin – waiting to be permanently deleted, so if your little kid deletes a critical file – no worries, SugarSync still has it ready to go.
• Cross Platform – SugarSync has clients for Windows, Mac OS X, iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Windows Mobile, and Symbian. Pretty nifty aye?
• Sharing – Want to share files with someone else? With the whole world? No problem! Its easy and intuitive and with the latest revision you can have those files you shared or others shared with you sync to your computers just like any other files you personally own.
• Archiving – Have files you want to keep around but never use? Put them in the Archive folder and they won’t be kept on your local machines but will be kept on SugarSync’s central servers.

What Would You Still Like to See?

So, I know I said I’d be happy if I saw just this one additional feature – and I am…but I suppose the grass does always look greener on the other side…So, here are a few dream wishes:

• SugarSync has upgraded their customer support portal and forums, I hope this indicates a new era of responsiveness to consumer feature requests, even if it is only to say, “Hey guys…we really don’t have enough demand for this feature right now” or “Yeah, we are working on it…We’ll keep you updated on how it goes.” Transparency is a huge feature to me.
• While I was raving about the cross-platform support I noticed SugarSync doesn’t support Linux…wait a second? I swore they did once? Anyways, no matter – point is, SugarSync should support Linux…and, yeah, I mainly say this b/c I’m an open source lover – not b/c its necessarily a sensible business proposition.
• As soon as I heard about the new sharing feature I opened SugarSync to check for updates…but wait, there is no check for new versions? Boo. Please add one, I don’t want to have to navigate to a website to grab the latest client. Give me an option to force a check for updates. Again, just a small issue.

Conclusion

You better be on your way to get SugarSync right now…or when you complain about losing your files I might just have to…okay, I’ll try to help you anyways, but you should get SugarSync and save yourself a lot of time and headache.

Related articles by Zemanta

• SugarSync Now Syncs Between People for Easy and Instant Sharing of Files (eon.businesswire.com)
• SugarSync Allows File Sharing Between People (intomobile.com)
• SugarSync’s File Sync Gets Collaborative (informationweek.com)
• What Do I Do When Dropbox Goes Down? [Ask Lifehacker] (lifehacker.com)
• SugarSync for Android is just like Dropbox… but better (downloadsquad.com)
• Fuze Meeting Posts Dropbox and SugarSync Tutorials for IPad (pcworld.com)

1. ^[1] If you have a huge collection of photos you may want to consider sending those over to Google’s Picasa Web Albums as their pricing is ridiculously inexpensive. ↩

I still haven’t gotten my hands on a Zeo, but I’ve been wanting one…but now I’ve learned about a new little gem of a unit that looks quite fascinating called Fitbit.

Unlike the Zeo, Fitbit is not specifically focused on sleep [...]]]>

I still haven’t gotten my hands on a Zeo^[1], but I’ve been wanting one…but now I’ve learned about a new little gem of a unit that looks quite fascinating called Fitbit.

Unlike the Zeo, Fitbit is not specifically focused on sleep – rather it tracks a variety of health factors that includes sleep but also covers activity levels, calories burned, and distance traveled. Its like a Zeo+ from all appearances.

The real kicker is that the Fitbit only costs $99 compared to Zeo’s $200 price tag. Granted, I’m not too eager to drop $99 on a device either – especially when I think my iPhone/Droid should be able to provide similar tracking using applications (in fact, I’ve been using Sleep Cycle on the iPhone to track my sleep for the last five days…and love it…but more on that in a separate post).

I do think the Fitbit has a ways to go before it becomes a complete tool. For example, I’d like to see it measure my blood pressure, perhaps allow for pin pricks and some basic blood measurements…see my earlier post on this topic which I imagine will show up in Related posts below.

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1. ^[1] ::cough:: If  wanted to send me a demo unit, I’d love to test it out. ::cough:: ↩