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I’ve been using Evernote for a while now, so much so that I’m surprised I haven’t written about it yet. The beauty of Evernote is that it can help you remember anything. You can type a text note, clip a web page, snap a photo or grab a screenshot. It’s all searchable too!! Premium users get priority image recognition, though. I’ve been using Evernote recently to keep track of different jewelers my girlfriend and I have visited and engagement rings we’ve looked at. I took photos of the business cards of the associates who assisted us. On the back of the cards are the specifications about the ring(s) my girlfriend liked. I can go back and search for keywords in the specs and view the entire card. I don’t have to keep track of the original card. As long as I have an Internet connection, I can also view the notes on my iPhone. If I mark a note as a favorite, I can view it even if I don’t have Internet access.
Premium accounts can upload 500MB/month (free users only get 40MB/month) and notes up to 50MB in size (free users can only upload notes <25MB). One nice feature about Evernote is it can be configured to monitor selected folders for importing files. I have mine set to monitor my Dropbox folder on my home PC. I wish Evernote offered a referral system, similar to Dropbox, and would grant additional upload capacity (10MB?) per month for each referral.

Technorati Tags: dropbox, evernote

For a while now, I’ve been using ReQall to remember tasks that needed to get done. I tried using Remember The Milk but didn’t like that the iPhone app wasn’t free (you had to sign up for a Pro account). Now, RTM has decided to offer the iPhone app for use with free accounts but limited the functionality. The limits imposed on the free accounts are very similar to what you get for free from ReQall.
One thing I do like about ReQall (should I ever upgrade to Pro) is the integration with Evernote. I can add items to ReQall either by voice or text. I can follow my ReQall calendar in Google Calendar using the iCal URL. I can add items using the official Firefox plugin; RTM doesn’t have an official plugin.
One of the features I like about RTM is that I can tell it that an item repeats however often, in plain text, and it’ll recognize the time frame; ReQall only gives you a dropdown menu to choose from. RTM has a tighter integration with Google Calendar but I like being able to turn the calendar on/off when a day/week gets too crowded with appointments/tasks. RTM allows you to tag an item with a location, regardless of the account type; this feature is only available to ReQall Pro users. The free version of RTM only syncs once a day, whereas ReQall Standard syncs constantly.
They both offer something that the other only includes in the pay version, so I’m going to keep using both until I can decide on one over the other. If I ever do pay for one, right now I would pay for ReQall Pro.

Technorati Tags: dropbox, evernote, remember the milk, reqall

Whenever I wanted to remotely connect to my home computer, I had to make sure the correct ports were forwarded in my router and the PC was statically assigned an IP address. I just learned about a program called TeamViewer through one of the guys I work with. It works very much like GoToMyPC or LogMeIn, yet it’s free for non-commercial use. Some of the capabilities of TeamViewer are:

• Remote Access/Remote Office
• Remote Support
• Meetings/Presentation

Like LogMeIn and GoToMyPC, TeamViewer allows web-based access to a computer without needing to run software on the remote machine. It also allows for file transfer between the remote computer and the computer you’re using. It can be executed without being installed. If it is installed, the remote computer can be configured to be accessed unattended. I’m going to see if I can execute it from my thumbdrive to access my home PC instead of using the web-based access.

Technorati Tags: gotomypc, logmein, rdp, teamviewer, vnc

Shortly after my last post, about moving to the cloud, I found Google Sync. With it, I’m able to sync GMail, Google Contacts and any editable Google Calendars to my iPhone. Because of all of this, I don’t plan on renewing my MobileMe account in a few months. I signed up for MobileMe because I liked the idea of instantly updating my Outlook contacts/appointments when I add/change a contact/appointment on my iPhone and vice versa. Ever since I got my Windows 7 PC, MobileMe hasn’t been syncing as well as it did on my Windows XP machine, especially with the calendars.

In an effort to consolidate as much information as I can, I’ve decided to move everything over to Google. I’ve been using GMail ever since you needed an invite to open an account. Because of the experience I’ve had using GMail, I’ve decided to do more “stuff” in the “cloud”. All of my contacts have been imported into Google Contacts. All appointments and dates are now kept on Google Calendar, even though I have a few issues/complaints. Even though Google creates a separate calendar for my contacts’ birthdays and anniversariesevents, there is no way to view this calendar on my iPhone. I can only view my default calendar. Even though the calendar is named “Contacts’ Birthdays and Anniversaries”“Contacts’ Birthdays and Events”, it only displays birthdays.
I’ve even begun storing some spreadsheets on Google Docs. As I get more accustomed to it, I’ll store non-sensitive documents there also.
I’ve stored some photos on Picasa but still prefer Flickr instead. If Google allowed me to use some of the 7GB of storage they currently give me with GMail to store photos instead of allocating a separate 1GB for photos. For $25/yr, I get unlimited uploads and storage on Flickr. For $20/yr, I only get 80GB of storage on Picasa and I’m not even sure if I can upload videos to Picasa or if they only allow photos.
Once I get all this figured out, I plan on using Mozilla Thunderbird and Lightning to synchronize my email, appointments, etc to/from my home PC.

Lately, there has been a lot of talk about cloud computing, where most of the work is done on the Internet. One of the first uses of cloud computing has been web-based file storage services like Dropbox and FilesAnywhere. There are three main choices, that I know about right now, when it comes to online file storage (if you don’t count typical FTP/SFTP file servers, etc) – Box.net, Dropbox and FilesAnywhere.
Box.net offers 1GB of storage for free with a 25MB file size limit. For $10/month, you can upgrade to 5GB of storage, and a 1GB file size limit. You also have the ability to view the previous five versions of a file, with the paid membership. Right now, unfortunately, Box.net doesn’t have a utility to upload/sync files to their storage from a Windows, Mac or Linux computer, but they do have an iPhone app.
Dropbox offers 2GB of storage for free. Files uploaded to Dropbox via the desktop application have no file size limit. There is, however, a 300MB cap on files transferred via the website. For $10/month, you can upgrade to 50GB of storage; or for $20/month, you can upgrade to 100GB of storage. Dropbox keeps snapshots of every saved change in your Dropbox folder over the last 30 days. If you upgrade to one of their paid versions, they offer a service called Pack-Rat, which keeps an unlimited amount of previous versions and deleted files. Dropbox also offers an iPhone app.
FilesAnywhere offers 1GB of storage for free, and doesn’t appear to have a file size limit for uploading, but free accounts have download limits of 10MB per-file and 25 downloads/day.
I have an account with all three services, but if I had to choose only one, I would choose Dropbox. They even offer a way to get up to 3GB8GB of storage for free by getting other people to sign up. They add an extra 250MB of storage to both my account and the person who signed up, when they use a referral link.

Technorati Tags: box.net, dropbox, filesanywhere

My recent lack of updates to this blog are mostly because I have been micro-blogging on Twitter. You can read my Twitter updates in the sidebar or click on the link to follow me. I wanted to make this post to make sure I had at least one post for May 2009.

After reading about the money management site Rudder in an article on Lifehacker, I thought I would check it out and see if I liked it more than Mint. I’ve been using Mint to track all of my finances for quite some time now. I tried Quicken Online when it became free but, at the time, it didn’t have all of my financial institutions listed. I recently logged in and they have added the places where I have accounts which had been missing when I first joined. Like Quicken Online, Rudder doesn’t have all of my financial institutions listed. It, however, is only missing one, whereas Quicken Online was missing two. Rudder also can’t track loans. It can only keep track of checking, savings, and credit card accounts right now. When I gave it the info for my American Express login, it only returned two of my three Amex cards. An unreleased feature, which I would like to see on Mint, is Goals. They don’t give much information about it but, if I had to guess, I would say you would provide how much money you want to save towards a goal (first home, car, emergency fund, etc.) and when you would like to reach that goal, and it would tell you how much money you have to save each month to reach that goal. Nowadays, with automatic scheduled transfers, anyone can do that if their bank offers it.

Technorati Tags: Mint, Mint.com, Quicken, Rudder

I bit the bullet today and jailbroke my iPhone 3G using QuickPwn. I’ve been thinking about it for a while so I could record video and stream video to the Internet using Qik. Qik is supposed to have an approved app for the iPhone but Apple as yet to approve it. Some other neat things I am now able to include:

• Themes
• Five icons in the dock
• Five columns in the springboard
• Tethering – so I can surf the Internet on a regular computer using the connection on my iPhone

If Apple ever does finally release a firmware for the iPhone that includes video recording and/or approves the Qik app, I might switch back to an unjailbroken iPhone.

Technorati Tags: Apple, iPhone, jailbreak, QuickPwn

About three months ago, I was using Twitterific as my default Twitter client on my iPhone. I liked it except it didn’t separate incoming tweets from @replies and direct messages. TwitterFon has separate areas for each of these and it also shows the latest tweets since the last time you ran the program. When Twitterific updates their program, I may give it another chance even though the free version is ad supported.

Technorati Tags: Twitter, TwitterFon, Twitterific