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The cloud, much can be said about it, and much has. Privacy issues, lock in, integrity, whatever. The only thing I know, is that it is freaking awesome! Reason I think so, is something happened today. My pc @ work broke down… Hardware failure, can happen… So, took another pc from the stock, powered it up a bit, you know, extra ram, better video, installed ubuntu, installed dropbox, et voila, back to work!

Ok, not exactly that fast, because I had to install several other programs, fix my ssh keys and setup a static ip, and wait a pretty long time to get all data synced back, but that was about it. Up and running again! I have my mail at google, data at dropbox and notes at evernote. Sadly enough I also have to use m$ stuff to develop on, but ey, got that on a virtual machine running somewhere on the network. And yes, got a dropbox installed there too, so no worries.

So, cloud? Yes please! I know, you gotta take some precautions, because you never know if one of those services will go down or just quits. That is why I like dropbox: I have local copies of all my files! And not just at work, but at all my machines! Mail is backed up trough a machine that does nothing but popping it, so nothing can get lost.

And if you have really, really private files, like some sex tape or whatever, yeah, do NOT put that one in the cloud. But I think that is pretty obvious, right?

I was thinking about what tools I use, and noticed that there are actually quite a lot. Then I was thinking about what tools do I use and actually pay for to use them? This narrowed the list down quite a bit, which, made me and my wallet a bit more happy. Still, I do pay quite an amount of money to use these tools, but ey, the tools do rock! Just to put it down again for myself, I thought it would be nice to make a little roundup of these tools. And hell, maybe you like some of these so you can start paying those tool-builder guys some money as well!

Evernote is one of my favorite tools. I use it to store about everything I need to remember. Ey, a mind can remember loads of stuff, but not everything. So, Evernote’s slogan remember everything was good enough for me to persuade me into using it. But seriously, this is an awesome tool! You can use the free version as well by the way. I started out using the free version as well, but since this tool got more and more important to me, I decided to go premium. Not only do I think it’s fair to pay if you make extensive use of a service, but I also feel better that my data is safer, because I pay to store it. Now, I know that the fact that I pay for a service means that I can never ever lose my data, but at least it gives me the opportunity to bitch at someone if it does get lost. When you use something for fee, you lose the right to bitch if you ask me…

So, why is this tool awesome? Check it out here and decide for yourself if you think I’m an idiot to be using this or not…

Oh yeah, I pay to use gmail,gcal and other Google services. Why? Because I think gmail is the most kick ass mail tool around. So why do I pay for this while the free version is just as good? Well, kind of the same story as with Evernote or any other payed service I use: I feel better and saver when paying for tools that contain data which is very, very important to me. That’s why…

This is where I keep my photo’s. And yes, pictures are extremely valuable! Just to me ofcourse, as your pictures are extremely valuable just for you. Anyway, SmugMug is an awesome tool to keep you pictures save! And yeah, it does look cool too! Check out my SmugMug page to see what I mean. And yes, I know that I did not customize it yet… The reason I pay for this service is because, well, I already said it: pictures are important! Besides having a nice way of displaying these pics, it is also a great way of backing your stuff up. All pics are uploaded and kept in the original format, so if my hard disk ever breaks down, not to worry! I can download all my albums again. Hell, SmugMug does even send you a bunch of dvd’s if you can’t/won’t download. This one really is worth a look and your money if you ask me.

Yeah, as I mentioned before, I just cannot remember everything… That is why I use Passpack to store my passwords. And trust me, it is safe! And it makes logging into different services a breeze. Why do I pay for this? Well, besides the fact that my passwords are quite important, I also like to support cool services to keep being a cool service. And Passpack charges just a little bit, so I have no trouble with paying cool dudes.

Yeah, this tool I actually only use to sync my gcal with my mobile phone. This is cause I have a Nokia phone and the syncer that google provides just doesn’t do the job. Goosync appears to be a master at doing this right, so yeah, I’m willing to pay for that. I got myself a lifetime subscription, so I never have to worry anymore…

Now this is really an awesome tool! Loved it ever since I started using it. Sure, they have a free plan, but 2gb of data just doesn’t cut it for me. Oh, what is it? Dropbox is a sync tool, which allows you to sync data between several computers and the interwebz. Seriously don’t mind paying for this tool, because it saved my life at several occasions, especially because of it’s time-machine. If you don’t know Dropbox you seriously should check it out! Start here. Trust me, you’ll love it!

This one is one I do not pay for. Yet… I’m using it more and more lately, so I think it would only be fair to pay some bucks to the Rememberthemilk.com dudes. This is the most awesome tool to manage your todo’s. Well, it is when you ask me that is of course. Well, go judge for yourself here.

Ah, writing down why the hell I pay for these services really made me feel better again! Seriously, you have to think about where and why you spend your money. Money still is not very easy to come by, right? I have to work hard for da money, so it is good to spend some time evaluating where you spend it. Anyway, I know I’m doing the right thing again. And ey, maybe some of these services do it for you as well!

Being a coder I write loads and loads of code. But besides being a coder, I’m also human. And being a human, it’s merely impossible to remember everything I wrote. The mind doesn’t work that way. Well, mine doesn’t… Sure, I can remember loads of stuff, but that usually has to do with “experiences” and not too much with code. Or passwords, another problem…

So, it is advisable to store the cool codes you’ve been writing somewhere. I mean, it’s kinda silly if you’ve spend a fair amount of time solving some problem someday, and have to solve the same kinda problem another day, but you cannot remember how anymore. That is frustrating! So, store it! Well, that is what I do anyways. I’ve been using evernote for this purpose for quite a while now. Hell, I store everything there! I just luv that app! Anytime, anywhere I can access my information. And searching around there is very good as well.

The thing with evernote is, that I use this for all my “private” data. Sure, I could share my snippets notebook, but I found some other service to do that. Well, not that I write such hot code, but ey, I like to share. Somebody out there could benefit from it, if it was only one… Hell, if nobody shared their code, my job would have been harder. Many minds make great work, right? If nobody shared their code, writing code would take way longer I guess. So, found snipt, which is a service dedicated to store snippets. I share my snippets here. Not much there yet, but will add more and more.

Why use snipt and not use my own webspace for this purpose? Well, those snipt guys already wrote it, so why spend time on something those guys did a hell of a job already? Exactly! So, check it out and see if it could be of any use to you. I go back to coding, got bugs to fix here…

I’ve been moblogging for years. I can’t even remember when i started, but it must have been way back. I do remember that the first phone i used for moblogging died after falling in the toilet and that happened many years ago… Anyway, i’ve had different periods in moblogging. I mean good periods, where i posted loads, and bad periods, where i posted jack. I used to upload all my pictures over gprs to a xml-rpc api on my home based server. That way i moblogged “live” photo’s to my website. This was an awesome thing back then, that hardly anyone did. Yes yes, i’ve been an innovator once.

Now that i’ve moved everything from my homeservers to online services, i had to find some other way to do moblogging. After some considerations and tests, i now use the following setup: email to pixelpipe, which uploads my pics to twitpic and smugmug. Why do i use it like this? Let me tell you.

When i used to upload my photo’s just to my own website, hardly anybody noticed those. First of all, just a few wandered souls where to only ones actually looking up my site once in a while. Hmm, there is not secondly… Anyway, i did not have much exposure with my pics. Not that they are interesting at all, but still, it is nice if someone actually takes a quick peek at them. Since i use twitter, i thought that one should be a good medium to share that you have a new pic uploaded. So, i snooped around for some nice twitter integration. You got a few, but i found twitpic the most appealing.

Since i have a pro account at smugmug and i like to keep the photo’s i shoot, it made sence the pictures had to end up there as well. The first setup i actually considered was email my pics to my smugmug account and then have some cron job check out the rss feeds for new photo’s. If a new photo was posted, it should be posted to twitter. There were two problems with this setup. Problem one was time. I just could not find the time to really sit down and create some script to do this. I know, you can create time for stuff like this, but ey, if it can be done easier, then why not? The second problem i had, was the emailing feature of smugmug. About 25% of the mailed pictures actually arrived there. Well, that is crap! I need a reliable service. I still need to make a cron script, because pixelpipe does not post everywhere i want yet… But that one is for later.

So, decided to go for a reliable service, which to me is pixelpipe. It posts to twitpic, so my pics are tweeted and viewed by interested twitterpleeps. It also uploads my pics to smugmug, which rss feeds are read by a plug-in on this blog and shown on my website. This makes me 90% happy. I will try to pick up my moblogging more now it is working again. Just hope you will all enjoy my moblogged pics:)

But seriously, if you would like to give moblogging a try, pixelpipe is a nice place to get you started.

Today, with those zillions of social apps out there, you have to make choices. Sure, if you have nothing better to do then to keep up with all your social apps whole day long, then you don’t. But hey, who does have time to do that? Ok, apparently many people do, but i’m not one of them. So, because i do have better things to do, i have to make choices.

Being interested in all new stuff, i’ve tried out many. And many of them were not for me. But since i like to have a good discussion now or then, i stick to one site. And that one is kwippy. I prefer kwippy above other networks for several reasons. First of all, it is not so enormously crowded there. Sure, i know that you can handle the crowdedness of social apps yourself, by not following many people, but i think just following 2 or 3 people is not what social apps are intended for.

In my oppinion, a social app is there, to contribute. You can learn from social apps by reading other people’s views. What i don’t like about many socail apps, is the trend to use only 140 chars. The 140 chars creates very fast conversations, which is nice ofcourse, but to me, it is way too hard to keep up with. Now, i’m not talking about twitter here. I was referring to plurk. I like the way plurk is setup and the nifty features it has. But to me it is just way to time consuming.

So, why do i like kwippy? This is a matter of personal taste of course, but several things appeal to me. As i mentioned earlier in this post: it is not so damn crowded. While i follow quite some people, it does not feel too demanding to me. I do not have to check for updates every 5 minutes. Another thing i like, is the fact that i get notifies about replies. This can be by email or im. I can fully concentrate on the things i’m doing, and when i have some time, i just check my mail and make a bunch of replies. I know, it is a matter of discipline and can be done for other networks as well, but still do those other networks feel too demanding to me.

Another thing i like, is the ability to reply in more then 140 chars. Way more then 140 chars that is! You can just type on and on when you make a reply. And because i like to reply with long texts once in a while, i consider this a very good thing. It also gives you the ability to actually say what you want to say. What the hell can i say in just 140 chars? Not much… I know that the other apps are designed to say not too much, but i also like to say as much as i like now and then. Kwippy also has a nice dev team, who actively participate in the community. Those guys are very reachable and actually take the time to talk to you. I like that! It makes you feel part of the network!

I know i should post a bunch of screen shots here and give much more in depth information, but i actually do not have the time to do that at the moment. But don’t you worry, this will NOT be the last you will read here about kwippy. Those screen shots and more in depth information can be found on this website soon enough!

In the meantime, check out if you like kwippy for yourself here: http://kwippy.com. They have a blog here and you can check out my page here. Hope to see you there!

Ping.fm seems to be really taking off these days. Not a social site where you do not encounter posts entered through ping.fm. It is actually a very sleek and nice service and by the amount of posts made through it, more people seem to think so. When this service first arrived, it thought it was just awesome! Write at one place and post to many sites at ones. But it did not take long before i started to dislike it. Hardcore.

I mean, it appears to me, that on many social networks, people are just shouting out and never actually come back to the network to reply to other users. And even when somebody replies to them, they will never know, because they never check in. And since most networks have no notifiers, or it it has, they just turn them off, they will never ever know… Well, being that way, does NOT make you very popular on the particular network.

Because this fact annoyed me so much, i decided to put it to the test. I did my experiment at kwippy, because they provide excellent ways to notify you of new comments. Well, this resulted in quite a large thread, which can be found here.

This thread actually changed my perception on the point of view. Many people reacted to this thread and several things became clear to me. People in this thread actually only are on the kwippy network because of ping.fm. They would probably never knew of it’s existence if it wasn’t for ping.fm. What they also made clear to me is the fact, that the polluters can be easily ignored. Just stop follow the non repliers! Well, could have thought about that one myself… Duh! I was just so annoyed by all the pollution, that my own mind got polluted…

Still, i think ping.fm is causing much pollution around the web. First i thought it would be the job of the network owners to just keep the pingers out, by not allowing them to post. But that would not really make sense, because people like to post to several networks. Many people do actually reply on all their networks and those i do not consider polluters. I just wonder where they manage to find the time to do it, but that is another discussion…

It is just the ones shouting their fantastic (according to themselves) ramblings all over the place. But, as advised by the kwippers, i will just stop following them. Well, it does actually kinda make sense… There is a jungle of social sites out there and people know a bunch of people on each and any of them. To share their thoughts among all of them, ping.fm is a great service! Ey, i post this post trough ping.fm and blast it out in the open. Not that i ever get any responses on it, but guess that makes me a polluter as well…

So, if you actually are one of those polluters, don’t take it personal. Just wanted to get it of my chest. And ping.fm, keep up the good work!

I have never been into all this socializing websites, up until recently. I have a colleague, who is totally into that stuff and this bloke invited me for some services. And ever since i’m into using these social services, i do actually like it quite a lot! It’s not just rambling about loads of nothing, but it actually provides me with very useful information! It appears that there are a lot of smart peeps on those networks. If you pop some question there, most of the times, you are provided with very useful information. I love that!

But i wonder if it does not go over the top. I mean, there are a lot of social networks out there. And i’ve tested loads of them. But most of these networks are just being updated trough specialized “update as many networks as you can” tools, like hellotxt and ping.fm. This makes me wonder why i’m on all those networks anyways. Sure, there are a few of them that i actually “use”, but most are just being updated. There is no interaction at all. I love plurk, which i use often. And of course there is good old twitter, which i also like. And recently i discovered rejaw, which i think might have potential.

But really, it is impossible to use all those services actively. I mean, jaiku, pownce, brightkite, identi.ca and dozens of others. No way you can keep up with all if it! Unless you really have nothing to do all day long. It is funny though, that you meet the same people at most of the other networks as well. The peeps on plurk are on twitter as well.

I think many people face the same problems, with this overload of social services… And as much as i like those networks, it is really overkill. I think they all want to be the next twitter or something. It annoys me actually. Although many people on these networks are using multiple of them, you will always have friend A on network X and friend B on network Y. In my opinion, one of these networks should “win” and have the whole world using it. That way you don’t have scattered information, but all in one place. I guess that it will never happen, but ey, a man can dream, can’t he?

Just curious, what networks are you on and are you using it actively? Because to me, all it does (with a few exceptions), is giving me stress! It is just impossible to keep up!