40Tech » Cloud

Flickr vs. 500px and more: Why I Use 5 Photo Sharing Sites

Evan Kline — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 18:27:43 +0000

I’m an amateur hack when it comes to photography. I bought my first DSLR last year, and have been shooting away ever since. Thanks to having an amazing toddler at home to whom I gladly dedicate most of my free time, I haven’t had time to really get much better. That doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy it.

One of the first things I did after accumulating some photos was look into options for storing them online. If you’re like me, you quickly discovered that it really fuels your enthusiasm when you get input or even just acknowledgment concerning your photographs. As a result, the five online services in my current arsenal run the gamut from serving as mostly storage, to being replete with sharing and community options. Here’s my take on these services, along with links to my photographs. In the comments below, let me know your favorite services, and feel free to share links to your photographs.

1. The old standby: Flickr

For many people, Flickr is the default photo sharing and photo community site. Flickr lets you store and share your own photos, and also to view and comment on the photographs of other users. You can organize your photographs into sets and galleries, and change privacy and other settings on a very granular level.

I use Flickr for non-private photographs, such as landscape photos. I also weed out most of my photographs before uploading them to Flickr, unlike Picasa Web Albums, which I discuss below. I do have a Pro account, which gives me unlimited photo and video uploads, along with some other extra features. The Pro account cost me $24.95 for one year.

Flickr’s focus is on community. It’s easy to follow other users, comment on their photos, and “favorite” them. Flickr’s iOS app is quite beautiful, too.

You can find my photos on Flickr here.

2. The new kid on the block: 500px

If I’m somewhat selective about what I post on Flickr, I’m reeeeaallllly selective about what I upload to 500px. There are many great photographers there. In fact, I was a bit hesitant to upload anything there, since my stuff isn’t very good, and even a quick visit to the site will leave you dazzled with all sorts of great shots. I just recently bit the bullet, though, and was amazed by the feedback I received. I wasn’t deluged with comments, but I received more feedback than I receive on Flickr, on a much smaller number of photographs.

I think of 500px as a Flickr for the really passionate photographers. While it replicates some of what Flickr does, such as giving users the ability to comment on photos and mark them as favorites, it does so in a much more modern and elegant interface. I have a free account there, but I’m tempted to upgrade to the Awesome account to get unlimited uploads along with custom domain mapping (which would let me use my personal domain name with the site). There’s also a cheaper Plus account that gives you unlimited uploads, without the domain options.

You can find me here on 500px.

3. The obvious fad: Instagram

It’s probably a misnomer to call Instagram a photo storing service, but it certainly counts as a photo sharing service. You do need to upload photos from a device such as your smartphone, but it’s pretty easy to cheat these days. I often transfer a photo to my phone automatically using the Photo Stream built into OS X and iOS. I do this for a reason, though -after listening to an old photography podcast by Lisa Bettany on the TWiT network, I’m trying to upload one photo per day for a year to Instragram (and probably annoying my friends in the process), using the tag #mostly365. Some of those photos end up being very mundane, but the point is to get me at least thinking about photography every day.

I’ve also started following some very talented people, who are indirectly helping me to “see” when I get out my own camera. I look at Instagram as a “quick and dirty” service to get in and get out. There are many great photos to be found, but the focus is more on the social end of things.

You can find me on Instagram here.

4. The bulk locker: Picasa Web Albums / Google+

Google’s Picasa Web Albums, which has been pretty much assimilated into Google+, was the first service that I used. For many years prior to that, I hosted all my photos myself on my web host’s server. That got to be too cumbersome, and I knew that I would start to quickly fill up my space allotment.

I wanted to find a free or cheap service that could work fairly seamlessly with my family WordPress site. I found a great WordPress plugin, PWA+PHP, that displays Picasa albums right on my site, even if those albums are private (i.e. only accessible if you know the link). When my extended family visits the site, it looks to them like the photos are hosted right on my site, when in fact they are being pulled from Picasa. It requires no action on my part, aside from the initial setup of the plugin.

There are a few drawbacks to this approach for me. If I share a photo on Google+, it shows up on my private website. As a result, if you have a thing for sharing funny cat photos on Google+, then beware that those photos will end up on your site. The other drawback is that Picasa limits the size of the photographs you can upload, if you don’t want to pay extra. Those limitations are generous, though, as any photograph that doesn’t exceed 2048 pixels in width or height doesn’t count against your free 5 GB of storage. I simply resize my photos before uploading them. Apple’s Aperture makes it easy to resize an entire set of photos.

Whereas I use the other services discussed below to display all of my photos publicly, I primarily use Picasa / Google+ as a private repository. I do have a few public albums, which you can find here.

5. The king of the hill – Facebook

One service of which most people are already aware is Facebook, which is the king of photo sharing thanks to its massive user base. I figure that most of you are already familiar with Facebook, so I’m only going to mention it in passing. I primarily use Facebook to share photographs of family and friends. While I occasionally post landscape and other photographs there, I figure that my Facebook friends probably aren’t interested in that. I only use Facebook for private photos, so I don’t have a link to share (yes, I know that many of you are laughing that I use “Facebook” and “private” in the same sentence).

There are many other sites out there that I didn’t mention, such as Tumblr. What sites do you use?

Links

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Let Us Know Your Favorite iOS Apps, With Applr

Evan Kline — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 02:59:52 +0000

Are you like me – a bit of an iOS app addict? I’ve never found Apple’s App Store to be particularly helpful for discovering new apps. A recent tweet by Adam Christianson of the MacCast mentioned something called Applr, which I had never heard of. It turns out that Applr is a web app that helps you find new iOS apps, by following other people and seeing what they’re using. Other users can also follow you, to see your favorite apps.

I’ve only been using Applr for about a day now, but it’s worth checking out. When you sign up, you have to decide whether to give it your Apple ID credentials, so that it can keep your app list updated automatically. I decided against this, and instead have been going the manual route.

When you put your list of apps into the database, you can mark 20 of them as favorites (10 iPad and 10 iPhone), and recommend an unlimited number of them. You can also see what other users have input, and follow users. The site parses data, giving you info on the number of recommendations and favorites that an app has received.

If you want to follow me, I can be found on my page. Feel free to input your page link into the comments below, so others can check out what apps you use.

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Find Out Where To Stream, Rent, or Buy That Movie You Want

Evan Kline — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 16:20:32 +0000

I wish I had seen this back in December, when I was looking for the best place to obtain a couple of Christmas movies. I hopped from service to service, trying to find the movies in question. Little did I know, but there is an easier way.

Can I Stream It is a web site that lets you enter a movie title, and then gives you a list of services where you can stream or download the movie, or obtain the Blu-Ray or DVD. The screenshot below gives you an idea of the kind of information the site provides. It is currently US-only.

I noticed one difference between the normal version of the site, and the version that loads on Safari on the iPad. The full version supports movies and television shows, while the iPad version only seems to support movies.

Can I Stream It [via Ghacks.net]

Popcorn thumbnail image on main page from shannashin at stock.xcchng

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Plain Cloud Gives You App-Free Access to All Documents in iCloud [Mac]

Evan Kline — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 15:20:25 +0000

When you use an iCloud-enabled app on your Mac, it may appear that you can only access that app’s documents from within the app itself. Actually, there is a folder structure on your Mac reflecting the location of your iCloud files, with a folder for each iCloud-enabled app that you use. You can find those folders and files outside of their native apps with a bit of effort, or you can make it easy with a free app called Plain Cloud.

Plain Cloud puts your iCloud documents a click away, and gives you a bit more freedom to work with those iCloud documents in different apps. When you have access to your iCloud folders, it’s almost like you have access to segregated Dropbox-like folders, and are free from Apple’s sandbox. You can get similar functionality without the app, but the app is free (the developer does accept donations) and makes it dead easy.

OS X Daily explains the purpose behind Plain Cloud:

Get Easy Desktop Access to All iCloud Files with Plain Cloud for OS X: “PlainCloud serves as a simple front-end to each app that stores documents in iCloud, listing out each app and letting you see just those apps files – no more hunting around in gibberish folder names to find what you’re looking for.”

The Plain Cloud window looks like this:

Click on the name of an app, and a Finder window will open, showing you the folder containing the iCloud documents for that app. I could see this coming in handy when I want to edit a document in a different app than I used to create it. Byword files are just text files, for example, so you wouldn’t be limited to working on those files just in Byword. Have you ever created an iCloud document in one app, and edited it in another?

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How to Find Out When Google Updates Maps Imagery In Your Area

Evan Kline — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 12:19:43 +0000

The recent brouhaha over the iOS 6 maps app called attention to the strengths of Google Maps. One strong point of Google Maps is its satellite and aerial imagery. That imagery isn’t great everywhere, though. Some geographic areas have images that are less current than others, or that were taken at fairly low resolutions. If you want to be notified when images in a particular area are updated, there’s a website that will do just that.

Follow Your World is a site that lets you input a location, or multiple locations, and be notified when Google updates the satellite or aerial imaging in that location. The screenshot below should give you an idea as to how the app works.

You input an address, or a latitude and longitude, fine tune by dragging the map so your desired location is centered, and then click ‘Select Point.’ If you’re satisfied, click the ‘submit’ button.

The app allows you to submit multiple locations. There’s also a dashboard, from which you can delete locations that you no longer want to monitor.

Is this the type of service that you would use?

Follow Your World

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5 Tips For Surviving With a WiFi-only Tablet

Guest Poster — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 18:27:03 +0000

40Tech is pleased to present this guest post by Simon Butler from Rental Tablets.

More people buy WiFi-only tablets than tablets with 3G or 4G capability. This is partly because WiFi-only tablets are cheaper; in the case of the iPad it’s £100 (UK) or $130 (US) cheaper. In addition to this, if you want to actually use 3G or LTE on your iPad you’re looking at between £10 to £15 (UK) or $15 (US) a month extra for the data plan. So it’s easy to see why some users would just opt for the WiFi-only option.

However, all is not lost. There are many ways you can make the most of your WiFi-only tablet when away from a WiFi hotspot.

1. Tether Your Smartphone Connection

Tethering is a way to piggyback the 3G connection from one device to another. You can tether your smart phones 3g internet connection to your WiFi iPad using an “ad-hoc” connection. Some networks, though, may charge for this or even prohibit this altogether. Some networks like o2 set monthly data limits, such as 500MB per month. So you can tether till your heart’s content but make sure you don’t go over your limit because data charges tend to be penalising once you go over your free allowance.

There are unofficial methods of tethering too. Android users can root their phones or use PDANet to tether, while iPhone users can jailbreak their devices and install MyWi. But not all networks will approve of aftermarket tethering. Note also that jail breaking is a big grey area beyond the scope of this article. The usual disclaimer applies: we’re not advocating or advising the use of jailbreak, consult a lawyer before proceeding.

2. Use pay-for subscriptions for WiFi hotspots

If you use your iPad out in the city center, you’ll find lots of pay-for WiFi hotspots everywhere. But before handing over your card details look around for free bundle deals. For instance BT-WiFi in the UK is free for all BT home broadband users. WiFi hotspots are much faster than 3G hotspots too, plus you don’t have an excessive data restriction like 500MB per month which is only good for pictures and text pages.

3. Pocket it for later reading

Pocket is an ingenious app that saves web pages, web based emails and other web content onto the handset for later reading. It even integrates with over 200 other apps so you can use the pocket it feature with news readers, twitter apps and rss readers. Once you mark a piece with Pocket, it’s saved and you can pull up the saved entries and read them offline. Even if you have 3G this app is still useful to have especially if your signal is weak and you anticipate going through no-3G and no-WiFi areas such as airports, some hospitals and rural areas (and motorways) etc.

4. Send files directly between devices

WiFi Files (iOS) and WiFi File Explorer Pro (Android) allow you to wirelessly transfer files between computers and tablet devices. Currently it’s not possible to transfer files from one tablet to another, which would have had far more useful practical applications.

5. Wifi connection sage

There are many free WiFi networks available like McDonalds free WiFi that require you to enter your login details in a web browser before using the network. For Apple users the notification is instant, but for Android users there is no notification. WiFi Browser Login (for Android) provides that feature for Android users, allowing you to go through the login procedure automatically just like in an Apple device.

Furthermore WiFi Analyser scans all the nearest WiFi signals around you and graphically displays the strength of WiFi signal in much greater detail. Unlike the 3 or 4 bar signal strength indicator, this app gives a more detailed insight. You can use the graphics to navigate your way around thick walls and obstructions to get a better signal.

So there you go, 5 great tips to live with a WiFi-only tablet. Do you have any other tips of your own? Share them in the comments below.

This is a guest post written by Simon Butler, co-founder of Rental Tablets, a UK based iPad hire firm, which rents out iPads to businesses for use in events and exhibitions. More info can be found here.

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Easy Access to US, UK Streaming Services From Anywhere

Bobby Travis — Sat, 18 Aug 2012 08:52:50 +0000

I love being from Canada — but due to licensing issues and the imaginary line I live on the wrong side of, I’m blocked from or limited in using streaming media services that my global neighbours rave about. Fortunately for those of us so geographically challenged (or those of you travelling outside the US or UK and missing your favourite music and video streams), there are services out there that try to solve this problem.

The best one I’ve come across so far, in terms of ease of use and quality of delivery, is UnoDNS.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What You Need to Know

First off, UnoDNS — created by UnoTelly — is not a VPN service in the typical sense. You don’t have to turn it on every time you want to use it, and you don’t have to do any major configuring. It’s easy to get it working on your mobile devices, game systems (PS3, Wii, Xbox), and TV boxes (Apple TV, Roku, Boxee Box, etc.), and it won’t force you to use the service for every internet action you do, potentially slowing down your web browsing. The other side of that coin, of course, is that it doesn’t provide you with extra security or anonymity like a virtual private network — but that’s not its purpose. UnoDNS is meant for entertainment, and it only works on the specific streaming services and websites that are in their Channels list.

And what a list! Pretty much every major television network and app you can think of is in there, ranging from Netflix to Hulu Plus, Pandora, Spotify, Vudu, and BBC iPlayer (no HBO Go listed, however). In fact, the UnoDNS Gold package gives you access to 71 different providers! I was lucky enough to get a reviewers account for the purposes of my research, but a gold account only costs $7.95/month. The Premium plan is $4.95/month and has 47 channels (most everything you could need or want) — and the Free plan has 14 channels. No Netflix in the free plan, but you do get Amazon Instant Video, Spotify, and Pandora, which is pretty amazing. Even better: there’s no contract for any of the UnoDNS plans, and you can try the whole set for free for 8 days. If that’s not enough for you to give it a shot, they also have a money-back guarantee.

How it Works

UnoDNS isn’t the only way to access online content outside of its geographically restricted area. The problem is, getting set up and finding a reliable, inexpensive service can be a bit complicated. UnoDNS tries to make accessing your favourite blocked content as painless to set up and maintain as possible. To do this, it uses your Domain Name System, or DNS — which is basically the online equivalent of a phone book or speed dial for URLs; the URL being like a person’s name and the actual IP address being the phone number. UnoDNS registers your IP address(es) in its system, and swaps out your DNS with its own. Basically, this allows the service to know when you are connected to it and trying to access sites or services that are covered by their channels, and then run your computer through its location spoofing proxy system. The end result is that the service you want to access thinks your are actually in the country you are allowed to use it in.

The genius here is that UnoDNS doesn’t affect sites that are not a part of its system. If you need to access a site that requires you to be in your local country or area, UnoDNS will not need to be deactivated for you to do so, or reactivated when you, say, want to listen to music on Pandora or Spotify, or watch your favourite US-access-only shows on Netflix or Hulu (or Britain-access-only shows on BBC iPlayer).

Still, this is a proxy, and the classic problems with proxies are speed and reliability. I’ve been testing UnoDNS for over a month now, and have had barely a hiccup. Load time is quick enough, and I have had only very rare occurrences of waiting for a stream to rebuffer — no more than when streaming without UnoDNS. UnoTelly guarantees that the service will be fast enough to do what you need it to — guarantees as in you get your money back, if it doesn’t. There’s also no bandwidth cap, or price adjustments for usage, which is a problem with most VPN services — especially if you like to stream movies in HD.

If you are worried about the security of using UnoDNS proxies, your worry should be minimal. It uses Comodo SSL, which is one of the more recognizable names in the online security business.

Setup

Setup varies depending on device, but if you are using UnoDNS on a PC it is only a matter of downloading and installing UnoHelper, and following the prompts. It will do all of the DNS changes for you, and even update your IP address when you take your laptop to different locations. I can listen to Spotify at work or watch US Netflix at my sister-in-law’s house just as well as I can at home, and without having to do anything other than turn on my computer. I’ve even managed to get it working at a few coffee shops and book stores, which are public wifi and unsupported by UnoDNS. If you need to, UnoHelper is easily deactivated, reverting your DNS back to its standard.

Setting up on mobile devices requires a tiny bit more work. It’s still fairly simple, however, and there are detailed instructions that walk you through it. UnoDNS provides you with the DNS information you need from a variety of servers (http://currentdns.unotelly.com) and shows you how to change the DNS on devices like iPhone, iPad, Android, XBOX 360, Nintendo Wii, PS3, etc. Basically, if you can find where to change your DNS settings, you can use the service — this includes doing it right on your router. If you only plan to use UnoDNS in your own home, you don’t need to install anything. Just change the DNS settings on your router and your entire house and every device in it is instantly connected to UnoDNS, all at the same time.

Issues

The only real issue I found is that some services, such as Spotify, require you to be in a specific location to download their software. Spotify is covered by UnoDNS, but when I tried it, the download server wasn’t. As a result, I had to turn on a VPN to download the Spotify software, but didn’t need the VPN once everything was installed and my account set up. A related issue is that some services require the use of an American credit card to even sign up to them, but you can always use something like Entropay to get a prepaid virtual US credit card number, and then you’re good to go.

For mobile devices, you may need to use a US and/or UK iTunes account or Google your way to the appropriate Android APK to install the apps you need.

The great thing, for the purposes of this review, is that none of these issues are directly related to the UnoDNS service. These are side effects of getting signed up to streaming services outside of their specified country. The UnoDNS service worked flawlessly for me, and I have no complaints whatsoever. I do wish that it worked on mobile internet, though – it isn’t directly supported, because mucking about with your provider’s DNS is not a fun idea.

Be aware of the terms of use of the streaming services you use! Some may have protected themselves by adding a clause requiring users to only access their service in a specific country, or forbidding access to their service via proxies or other means of location spoofing. They may never act on these clauses, but this gives them the ability to remove your account, whether you are a paying customer or not.

Conclusion

I would recommend UnoDNS to anyone willing to listen. It’s easy to set up — pretty much set it and forget it — and opens you up to all kinds of content without having to get your hands dirty. There are no bandwidth caps, so you can stream away until you start looking like a Smurf. Most importantly, it works — and it works well. It’s fast, there are no lag issues that I’ve come across, nor complaints that I’ve seen from others.

To top it off, the cost is near to nothing. In fact, if you were to purchase a Netflix subscription, as well as Hulu Plus, Spotify, BBC iPlayer, and maybe even one or two others — as well as UnoDNS Gold — you will still probably spend less than or close to what you pay for cable, and get more content that you are actually interested in. If you live in the US, you should check it out for travel, or just for the use of iPlayer. Those BBC shows are insane! Give it a shot!

UnoDns by UnoTelly

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How Many Domain Names Do You Own? [Reader Feedback]

Evan Kline — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 01:00:00 +0000

You’re a pretty technical bunch. From some of the comments here, and also through getting to know some of you, it ‘s clear that many of you fall on the high end of the tech know-how spectrum. Years ago, only the most technical owned a domain name. Now, it’s a pretty common occurrence. How many domain names do you own, and what do you consider your level of technical expertise to be?

I checked my registrar’s dashboard, and was surprised to see that I own 20 domain names. 11 of those are in use, to one degree or another, while the remainder are either dormant, or forward to one of the other domains. For example, fortytech.com forwards to 40tech.com. Even among those in use, some are barely in use. I have one site that I use as a testing ground for 40Tech, another that was created for my wedding several years ago, and a couple for a gaming group that is no longer active. I also have my PlayerMatching site, which is a video game player scheduling and matching service that is functional, but still needs some polish and quite a bit of word of mouth.

So, let us know the answers to the following questions in the comments:

1. How many domain names do you own?

2. How many are active?

3. What is your level of technical expertise?

Photo from CLUC.

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Crowdsource Your Disputes With Side With Me

Evan Kline — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 01:00:00 +0000

Our parents had Dear Abby; we have the hive mind of the Internet. When it comes to resolving arguments and disagreements, technology can play a role. Factual disagreements are easy to resolve – a quick Google search or a visit to WIkipedia can resolve most such disputes. But what about a disagreement that boils down to a matter of opinion? Side With Me is a web site that helps declare winners and losers in arguments that aren’t based solely on fact.

In Side With Me’s own words, “two people submit, and we publish, both sides of an argument and the Side With Me community votes for who has the better (more ‘right’) side.” In addition to posting a summery of each position, users must decide how many votes will be required for a winner to be declared. Voting for a side is a simple matter of clicking on your choice. Users can also leave comments on a post, which allows advice and opinions to be given.

Side With Me isn’t going to bring world peace, and there’s a part of it that seems to appeal to those who are insecure. Many of the posts are also of a very “gossipy” nature that could be off-putting to visitors. At worst, though, Side With Me can be entertaining. At best, it might help you resolve disputes.

Would you subject your disputes to the scrutiny of the Internet?

Side With Me

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Could Google Drive Be An Evernote Alternative?

Bobby Travis — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 20:29:34 +0000

So let’s talk. There’s been a lot of conversation around the web — and on this site — about possible alternatives for Evernote. Springpad was the goto app for many, though the most recent update has pulled them further away from that comparison, and drawn the ire of many users in the process. If you look at Springpad, though, as well as several other apps that offer services that are considered comparable to Evernote (Shelfster, Thinkery, OneNote and Catch, for example), you can define a general criteria for a note taking application that I think — no matter how odd it may sound — could also be met by Google’s latest cloud offering and the new face of Google Docs: Google Drive.

Stick with me. I’d love to have a conversation with you all about this.

First: What is Google Drive?

Google Drive is the latest cloud drive offering to hit the web jungle. It came out just this past week and has already been cited as a direct threat to Dropbox, Skydrive, Box, and all the rest. On the flip-side, it’s also received the standard Ahhhhh, Their Stealing My Private Information!!!!! treatment by the web media, as well — in this case, somewhat unfairly (more below).

Google Drive Features

Once you start using drive, you can say goodbye to the docs.google.com url. Your docs shall forever become a part of Google Drive. You’ll still be able to revert to the old Google Docs interface, for a limited time, but the default new dashboard is where you will start, and eventually end up.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here’s the feature-set, in a nutshell:

Storage is low cost and in abundance. And it can take crazy large files, and allows you to view files most other services don’t. Sync with your computers and mobile devices (iOS coming soon) in the same manner as Dropbox.

5GB of free storage space — and Gmail goes up to 10GB
Additional space starting at $2.49/month for 25GB, $4.99 for 100GB — all the way up to 16TB (these also up your Gmail to 25GB)
Google Docs don’t count against your storage
10GB filesize limit per file
Upload up to 30 types of files –this includes Photoshop, Illustrator, movies, photos and more, as well as viewing of those files (graphic designers, rejoice! — and yes, this means movie and music playback, too)
Add and manage files from your desktop environment
Google Docs files (.gdoc, .gsheet, etc.) are actually shortcuts to their respective web editors, so don’t take up additional hard drive space on your PC
Offline viewing (offline editing is in the works, too)

Sharing, sharing, sharing! Collaborate! Individual files, folders, or your entire Drive…

Add a person, go public, or share a link — you can even give people without Google accounts editing capability
Send Drive links in Gmail to make sure everyone always has the updated version — no attachment worries
Or send Drive files as attachments, or even in the body of the email (classic Google Docs features)
Share photos and videos right from Google+
Easily view and manage files and folder shared with you
Collaborate on any type of file — comment and chat on any of your files, in real time
30 days of revision history

Search — including including OCR and Google Goggles

Filter by keyword, file type, file owner, and more
Search text in scanned documents
Find a photo using the search bar — Goggles can recognise objects in your images

Third-party apps. There are already several available on the Chrome Web Store, many of them free or freemium services. These apps will plug right in to your Google Drive allowing you to do all kinds of fun things. Some examples:

HelloFax lets you send free faxes right from Google Drive — it also has signature signing capability, as do a couple of other Google Drive apps like DocuSign
Pixlr and Aviary for Google Drive let you edit uploaded photos
SlideRocket can be set up to be your default presentation app
Revisu lets you share designs for feedback and track version history
Lots more available and lots more coming via Google Drive > Settings > Manage apps > Get more apps

Any of you starting to see why I couldn’t help but compare it to Evernote? More on that, below.

What About My Privacy?

Google Drive’s privacy policy and terms of use came under fire almost the moment it launched. I have this picture in my mind of writers hearing about the launch and rubbing their hands together with glee as they consider all the readers they will be able to draw in with negative Google headlines. Don’t get me wrong, I still think Google may be the sweet face of Evil, and many of the concerns were and are valid — they’re just out of context.

Google’s Terms of Service states:

“You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours.”

This is a good thing. But here’s where the confusion comes in:

“…you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones.”

At first glance, this is freaky — but the reality is that this is used so that Google can integrate Drive with its other services — for you, of course — and to provide the other functions of the service, such as OCR and image recognition. Of course, this also means they can use the content to better provide you with more accurate advertising, but this is something they do with their services already.

Bear in mind that they can also be compelled to give up your information to government bodies or law enforcement agencies if required to by law. This is a standard thing that applies to every online service that houses its servers in the United States.

All of these things can be found in similar fashion in the Dropbox terms of service — and even the Evernote terms of service, though some may find Google to be a bit more ambiguous. Personally, I find the Amazon Cloud Drive terms of service much more frightening.

What does this all mean? Only this: Google’s scary privacy points are, in this instance, not so different than any other online drive’s terms of service. Does this mean there aren’t potentially frightening possibilities; that it’s all really candy and roses? No. Not unless you consider that the candy and roses could be laced with Rohypnol, that is. But these privacy issues are simply the risk you take when you put your files and personal information online. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be concerned, just that you need to make the same decision, no matter what cloud service you use.

Next: Google Docs vs Evernote

*Evernote*	*Google Drive*
Sync between devices (including mobile)	Yes
Offline viewing	Yes
Offline editing	Not Yet
Collaboration	Yes
Sharing	Yes
Keyboard shortcuts for quick launch	With tweaks (custom shortcuts)
Rich text editing	Yes
Easy organization by notebooks and tags	Yes, but with folders (no more tags)
Powerful search	Yes
OCR	Yes
Add attachments	Yes
Search within attachments	Yes
Third party integrations	Yes, with more on the way
Add content by email	Not at the moment
Web clipping	Only manual copy and paste works at the moment
Low cost	Yes
Upgradeable storage	Yes

NOTE: You can create desktop shortcuts to open new Google Docs files, and then add custom hotkeys to those shortcuts to easily open new “notes”. The same urls used for the shortcuts can be used to create a dropdown in your browser’s bookmarks bar, although one bookmark, loaded in the browser sidebar is a great option for Firefox. The URLs you need are in this Google Document: http://bit.ly/IIiHAo. I’ve also added the shortcuts I decided to use, while testing. If there’s interest, I’ll do a full how-to on this.

NOTE: You can also add Google Drive to the Windows Send To context menu by typing %APPDATA%/Microsoft/Windows/SendTo to a Windows Explorer window – press enter. Then open another Explorer window, create a shortcut of your Google Drive, then drag it to the Send To folder you just opened. Now, when you right click on a file, you will be able to send it right to your Google Drive (this is based on the Windows 7 OS and also works for Skydrive and Dropbox).

Where Google Drive Wins

Google Drive allows you access to a full office suite, from full document and spreadsheet creation to presentations. It will also allow you to handle files more easily, as well as have real-time, collaborative conversations within the files/notes themselves. For people who want to have a powerful suite that they can leverage in nearly the same way as Evernote, then Google Drive could be a very good option. The same goes for people who don’t like the new Springpad, but find that Evernote just isn’t enough for them.

Where Google Drive Lacks

The lack of speedy clipping is an issue for me. This can be overcome with some simple copy and paste, or with extensions like Send to Google Docs (turns a whole web page into a PDF and sends it to Google Docs), and will likely no longer be an issue once some enterprising person or business creates an app for just that, but for the moment it is a bit of an annoyance. Not a deal breaker, though.

The other thing is that it is just not as straightforward as Evernote. The workarounds I put together make it easier to get going, but I find that the keyboard shortcuts I created sometimes fail until I remake them in the shortcut’s properties. And as I’ve mentioned in posts before, Evernote is really good at the simple things it does: taking and organizing notes. Once you add all the extra power and options of Google Drive, then you run into the potential of it becoming unwieldy, unless you manage it really well.

So there it is, my curiosity and thought process laid out before you. Your turn now! I want to know what you think – feasibility, practicality of application, pure ridiculousness, et al. Let’s chat about it and see what we can come up with as a group!