Dave Burrows - Tech / iPhone Blog - Technical Evangelist » Cloud Computing

Mac OS X Lion is here

Dave Burrows — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 06:09:23 +0000

Mac OS X Lion is finally here and comes with 250+ new features.

Multi-touch Gestures

Tons more multi-touch gestures available in Lion

Full-screen apps

Although previously available on some apps, OS X Lion offers system-wide support now for full screen mode

Mission Control

Mission Control brings together full-screen apps, Dashboard, Exposé and Spaces in one new feature that gives you a bird’s-eye view of everything on your system

Mac App Store

Mac App Store installed by default – no additional download

Launchpad

Launchpad is a new, full-screen home for all the apps on your Mac
Just think an iPhone/iPad Springboard display for Mac

Resume

Now apps you close will reopen right where you left off, so you never have to start from scratch again. And when you install software updates, you no longer need to save your work, close your apps and spend valuable time setting everything up again. With Resume, you can restart your Mac and return to what you were doing — with all your apps in the exact places you left them.

Auto Save

It’s time to stop worrying about saving your work. Because now your Mac automatically saves what you’re working on so you don’t have to.

Versions

Versions is a new feature that charts the history of your documents, taking snapshots in time, and displaying them side by side with the latest versions in an easily browsable timeline.

AirDrop

Looking for a fast way to share files with people nearby? With AirDrop, you can send files to anyone around you wirelessly — no Wi-Fi network required. And no complicated setup or special settings. Just click the AirDrop icon in the Finder sidebar, and your Mac automatically discovers other AirDrop users within about 10 metres of you. To share a file, simply drag it to someone’s name. Once accepted, the fully encrypted file transfers directly to that person’s Downloads folder.

Mail

OS X Lion introduces a whole new take on email. Mail puts your entire display to work with a gorgeous widescreen view featuring a full-height message and a message list that includes snippets. Conversations presents messages from the same thread in an elegant timeline showing each communication as it was sent while hiding redundant text. Mail also features search suggestions and search tokens, which help you find the messages you’re looking for fast.

Filed under: Apple, Cloud Computing, Mac, Technology

Why Dropbox and Cloud Computing is not all it’s cracked up to be

Dave Burrows — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 09:29:31 +0000

I have been using Cloud computing for about 10 years now with varying services and companies. For the most part I’ve been using varying flavours of Microsoft’s Windows Live Sync to be able to keep folders synced between computers, and for the best part it’s been a very sweet experience. For the last year I’ve also been using Dropbox and MobileMe but have recently dropped Windows Live Sync as it’s changing yet again. I also want to be able to sync between PC’s and add my MacBook Air along with iPhone and iPad, so Dropbox fits the bill quite nicely.

I’ve been finding Dropbox a very good system until today, and I’d like to explain why suddenly I’m reconsidering cloud computing.

Last week I received a new credit card and I did what usually do and that’s update the information into my secure eWallet. The eWallet file is now on Dropbox and when I save this, it should then replicate it to my MacBook Air, which in turn when I sync eWallet to my MacBook Air from the iPhone and iPad, then transfers to these devices and all should be great. A perfect experience! Well I updated the credit card details including my PIN as it’s a new pin and I couldn’t remember what it was, synced my iPhone and iPad to the MacBook Air this morning then went out to do some shopping.

I did my shopping and reached the checkout and was ready to pay for the products I was buying, whipped out my iPhone and opened up my secure eWallet and……CRAP! The Credit Card isn’t showing in eWallet! What happened?! I know it was there because I checked it over several days on my PC. Thankfully I had another Credit Card I could use and was able to remember that PIN but it seriously made me think about how I synchronise between computers to the cloud.

I remember I made a whole host of other changes last week to my eWallet and needless to say these changes aren’t there either. Unfortunately I can’t remember what all the changes were, so now I’m in trouble. I checked Time Machine and these changes weren’t on the Mac, so it looks like either:-

The PC didn’t write the eWallet file to Dropbox
The PC did write the eWallet file to Dropbox but at some point when I opened it on the Mac it took that as a newer file and overwrote it without downloading the update to the Mac

Either way it’s not good. Looking at the Dropbox Events I see that the eWallet file was modified but unfortunately unlike Windows Live Sync, DropBox doesn’t have detailed logs on which computer modified the file.

I’m going to have to scrutinise Dropbox more carefully now when saving files as it looks like it isn’t synchronising as I would have hoped between devices.

Filed under: Applications, Cloud Computing, iPad, iPhone, iPod, Mac, Technology, Windows

Facebook down again for over 12 hours!

Dave Burrows — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 19:06:14 +0000

Looks like Facebook are having major problems and it’s only the 14th day of 2011.

Facebook has been down for most people for well over 12 hours. Facebook denied all knowledge around 10am GMT but finally admitted they were having problems around 2pm GMT. Still at 7pm GMT Facebook is still down.

Is this yet another in a line of DDOS (Distributed Denial Of Service), or some other network failure or overload?

Filed under: Cloud Computing, Security, Social Networking, Technology

Have you tried working in the cloud?

Dave Burrows — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 10:51:26 +0000

For a couple of years I’ve had applications that allow me to work in the cloud (the internet) and sync data up to servers, but as weeks and months go by, I find more and more useful apps that allow me to centralize my data in a single place and have access from multiple devices. I now very rarely have the sinking feeling of “oh I left the document on my other computer”.

Word / Excel documents
I design most of my Word and Excel documents locally in Word and Excel, but when the formatting is how I like it, I then upload them to Google Docs. For anyone that hasn’t used Google Docs, it basically provides you with a free Word/Excel version where you can access and edit your Word and Excel documents over the web and collaborate with others. I can access these on my iPhone, Netbook and any PC via a web connection.

Note taking
I’ve been using Evernote for since it came out, and now it’s up in the cloud, I find it’s really useful to use Evernote for all my important notes. I can access these on my iPhone, Netbook and any PC via a web connection.

Tasks
I use RTM (Remember The Milk) and this is a great task scheduler that you can access from multiple computers including my iPhone. It also allows me to set reminders which I also receive directly on my iPhone.

Email
For personal use I use Google Mail, and Google Mail is not only a great free online email system but it has a kick ass spam filter, better than most other spam filters including Spamcop. This allows me to access my email on the web from any computer and also direct on my iPhone and receive push email direct to the iPhone to let me know when new mail comes in!

For work usage I use Microsoft Exchange 2007 which similar to Google Mail also has a web interface called Microsoft Outlook Web Access, and I also have this configured on my iPhone to receive push notifications so I receive the email immediately on the iPhone.

File Syncing
I use Microsoft Live Sync (used to be called FolderShare) to synchronise folders between multiple computers. This allows me to work across multiple laptops when I need to. e.g. I have a very complicated spreadsheet that has about 100 macros and these macros hang/freeze on Vista using Office 2007 but don’t hang on my other idental Vista tablet running Office 2003. This allows me update the spreadsheet on my main laptop then have it sync to the other within minutes and then run the macros and have it sync back all automatically.

Online Storage
To save files online so I can have them accessible across multiple devices I also use Microsoft SkyDrive which gives you a mounted drive within Windows that you can then open like a normal drive and access files to open, edit or create new files.

Cloud computing is getting more popular by the day and soon will be something that most of us use in every day life.

Are there any cloud applications that you use on a daily basis that I haven’t listed above? If so, leave me a comment.

Posted in Applications, Cloud Computing, Technology