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Dropbox for the iPad - 2-way cloud sync solution Today? Not quite!

Posted on 05. May, 2010 by admin.

I purchased my iPad the first day it became available in early April and have been anxiously awaiting for an iPad version of my favorite productivity utility — dropbox. As many of you know, I use Dropbox with all of my partners and vendors to effortlessly exchange files. I also love to use dropbox to simply keep files available between all of my computers and to some extent, with my iphone and now my ipad.

Today I read in Techcrunch that an iPad version of Dropbox is now available on the iTunes store.  Of course, I quickly headed over to the store and downloaded it — I was on my iPad when reading the article so it was really easy for me to do so.

The App is nicely done and makes good use of the added real estate on the iPad screen to allow users to browse and preview files.  It’s very easy to view photos, videos and even to preview basic documents like excel spreadsheets.

One really promising feature is the ability to open documents in the 3 Apple productivity apps — Keynote, Pages and Numbers.  I tried the Numbers import and it worked as advertised.  The missing feature of course is the ability to store files FROM these app directly into Dropbox.  This would give us true cloud-based storage for the iPad — a feature which is greatly needed.

Dropbox has attempted to solve the iPad-storage failings with a new Mobile API which they dub “Dropbox Anywhere.“  To make this work developers of Apps need to build functionality for these API’s.  A few 3rd party developers have already done so such as Fuze’s FuzeMeeting app, Dictamus, Air Sharing, GoodReader, QuickOffice and Sprite Mobile’s backup tool.

A NEEDED FEATURE

What I would really like to see in this App is the ability to allow users to email a file attachment right into a Dropbox folder. If we had such a feature, there would be less need for developers to adapt their Apps and users would be able to realize the benefits of two-way cloud storage NOW. We cannot count on Apple to ever make use of Dropbox’s API’s (unless of course they elect to purchase Dropbox), but the Apple Apps do have a feature to email files as an attachment. So imagine if Dropbox assigns an email address to each user account — similar to the way services like Google Groups allows users to email files to an online storage account. Users would be able to specify a folder, either via the subject line or through a naming convention in the email address. Is this the ideal method? No. Would it work and accomplish the need? Probably yes! Dropbox, are you listening?

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Belichick’s Decision was Correct — Convention Wisdom is Sometimes Wrong

Posted on 16. Nov, 2009 by admin.

When the New England Patriots went up to the line last night on 4th and 2 from inside their 30 yard line, I thought for sure that they were trying to draw the Colts offside and could not believe when they snapped the ball. I told my son and wife that it was the worst coaching decision in history — in any sport!

Most of the sports analysts I have heard last night and this morning seem to agree, although when I look at it today from an analytical perspective, perhaps it wasn’t such a bad decision after all. In poker, which I play quite a bit, we often apply math to various scenarios. The math is only one factor that must be taken into consideration when making a poker decision, but it helps establish a base decision making criteria.

Many of you want to quickly dismiss an analytical approach to making this decision, but in truth, most football decisions come down to playing the percentages. The same football analysts who are dismissing the decision to go go for it on 4th and 2 are using math to justify their dismissal of the move. Their arguments usually go something like… can’t he trust his defense to stop Manning and the Colts? They would have had 70 yards to move down the field and Patriots  had been stopping them most of the time. Most stands for a % in these analysts’ minds. Is it 40%, 50%, 60%. It has to be something, right? They are also making the mistake of applying math to some of the decision and not all of it — sure NE can stopping the Colts some significant % of the time, but how often will they make it on 4th and 2 and even if they miss, how often will the Colts score from 30 yards out?  These are all factors that must be looked at.  If not, why not?
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Incredible Model Railroad in Northern Germany

Posted on 19. Jul, 2009 by admin.

As a kid I always looked forward to visits into New York City when my parents would take me to a see model railroad exhibitions during the holidays. I’ve continued to love model railroads and was just amazed when my dad forwarded me a link to the Miniatur Wunderland exhibition in Hamburg. Isn’t this just incredible?
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Bending a Spoon - The Incredible Power of the Mind

Posted on 23. Apr, 2009 by admin.

During a family vacation a few weeks ago a good friend was telling me about some of the seminars he has attended. This friend is a successful real estate agent and often attends seminars by people like Tony Robbins, Eckhart Tolle, Deepak Chopra, etc. He was mentioning that he had walked on hot coals, broke multiple wood boards without any martial arts training and was able to bend a spoon. His spoon exploits piqued my curiosity when he explained that he didn’t simply bend the spoon, he was actually able to corkscrew it — twist it like it was a piece of paper. He explained that his ability had nothing to so with strength, but involved believing it was possible and harnessing the power of the mind. He likened this to the stories we have all read about when mothers are able to lift a car to free their children.

I was skeptical of this and assumed, if he was able to do it at all, that the spoon must have been made of extremely thin metal. My friend is in good shape, but his build is very average and he would never be confused with an NFL linebacker. That night we had the friend and his family over for dinner at the condo we were staying at and after a great meal and a few drinks I brought out a spoon. The spoons at the condo were far from thin. In fact, they were extremely thick and heavy. I could not even budge the metal when I tried to bend it the long-way. My friend had claimed not to only be able to bend it, but to corkscrew it like it was paper! The friend looked it over and appeared to want no part of it. He hadn’t attempted his mind-bending on a spoon this thick and it had been a few years since he had bent any spoon.
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Techcrunch Interviews Digg’s Founder Kevin Rose

Posted on 20. Apr, 2009 by admin.

Techcrunch.com sat down with Digg’s founder Kevin Rose for an interesting interview on the state of the company, past decisions and developments and future directions. It’s a bit long but is well worth your time.

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Fun Twitter Video - Laughs Guaranteed!

Posted on 17. Apr, 2009 by admin.

This video does about as good a job as I’ve seen yet of describing Twitter. Perfect to send your friends who are clueless!

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8 Steps to Improve Your Bounce Rate!

Posted on 15. Apr, 2009 by admin.

In my previous post Bounce Rate - How Much Do Visitors Really Like Your Site? I gave an introduction to Bounce Rate. In short, Bounce Rate measures how many people come to a page on your site and never click another link. In this post I’ll discuss what you can do about this to get people to stay on your site.

1. Include Clear Call-to-Actions

If you want a visitor to click on links and dig further into your site, why not ask them? Many websites fail to offer targeted options for visitors. Here is an extreme case.

Notice that this website, samanzerin.com, includes NO links. Even the email address has no hyperlink. The designers might argue that the site is simply a calling-card for their magician client, but don’t you think it would be helpful to a visitor to view pages about the magician, where they can see him perform, what people have to say about his magic, links to videos of past performances?

The best sites include clear, targeted links to compel the visitor to read more. RELATED ARTICLE or RELATED TAG sections at the bottom of your articles are helpful.  ‘Popular article’ and ‘most commented’ widgets like the one you see in the top-right of this page can also be a plus.

Why not include the call-to-action text right at the bottom of the article? For example, most blog posts (including many of mine) simply ask the read to comment in the box below. Why not include specific links asking them to read something related? Look at the bottom of this post for an example of this.

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Google Analytics - Bounce Rate: The Simply Powerful Metric

Posted on 13. Apr, 2009 by admin.

I recently did a post on Bounce Rate and one of my readers pointed out that there’s a good video by Google by Avinash Kaushik on this subject. Most of the ideas in the video are discussed in my post, but I would definitely recommend that you view this. I strongly recommend that anyone interested in delving further into the world of web analytics visit Avinash Kaushik’s web analytics blog.

Around half-way through the video Avinash mentions that the Bounce Rate on the slide he’s discussing is great, but it’s very difficult to see what it is. I did some stopping and starting of the video to save you the trouble and it turns out that the rate is 31.7%.

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12 Wordpress Plugins That You Must Have

Posted on 10. Apr, 2009 by admin.

I’m often asked for advice and help from both experienced and new Wordpress users and the questions mostly involve themes and plugins.  In this post I’ll  give my top 12 plugin picks.  My favorite plugins are always changing as I learn of new ones and find that I cannot live without them.  Plugin needs also vary depending on the project.

Plugin Central

To me this is the one essential plugin that every Wordpress installation MUST have. In fact, it should be your very first plugin and the only one you need to install via FTP. Why? Once you install this plugin, you never need to use FTP again to install plugins. I realize that Wordpress 2.7 has some functionality to automatically download plugins, but it doesn’t compare to Plugin Central.   Plugin Central is very simple and straightforward.   You simply enter the name of the plugin you wish to install and that’s it.  Plugin Central does all of the heavy lifting by downloading and installing the plugin for you.  You do need to get the name right and you also need to go to the main plugin page once the plugin is downloaded and be sure to ACTIVATE it.

You can enter as many plugins as you want in the form and all will be downloaded and installed at the same time. One great feature is the ability to list all plugins (or active plugins) in your Wordpress installation. By doing this on existing installations, you can simply copy and paste the names into a new installation to get all of your favorite plugins downloaded and installed at one time.

WP-DBManager

When I first discovered this plugin I was amazed it was free. If you don’t already have it RACE to download and install it immediately. WP-DBManager essentially does what the name implies — it manages all aspects of your Wordpress MySQL database. The plugin allows you to optimize, repair and drop tables, backup the database to a directory and best of all, send you a backup copy on a scheduled basis. The backup can be compressed at your option.
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Made it to the Winner’s Circle at Santa Anita

Posted on 06. Apr, 2009 by admin.

I took the family to Santa Anita this weekend with our good friends Marshal and Julie.  Marshal often invests in racehorses and showed us around the track.  The guys who he invests with had a horse running in the 10th race — Hard Bill —  and we visited the paddock, met the jockey and owners of Hard Bill.   [...]

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