So I finally got my hands on an Google+ invite and thought that I would share my first views of it. I want to note right away that since this is my first night with it I have not yet so many contacts or content there so some parts of this look might be missing the full picture of some features.

First thing when I got logged in was to just start clicking through the view that was there and I had some problems at a start to see where everything were. I take this as quite understandable since it is a all new layout I’ve not seen before but still, there was a moment of confusion in the beginning. After a few minutes it started to settle though and I got aquiented.

Circles

Circles is what G+ is using to characterize your contacts in a way where you have better control over who that will see what. But the most important thing to point out with circles from my point of view is that you can have “all” your contacts there but still have control over your private content. In Facebook I always had the problem of not wanting work contacts in my account since I want a clear distinction between my professional- and my private life. Circles really makes this distinction a no brainer.

Hangouts

Me and a couple of friends tried a hangout during our first hour of G+ where we discussed as we went along how things worked. I do believe that this boosted the understanding quite a bit since we could help each other and I have to say that the quality and simplicity of video and audio during this time was great. At least as good as a Skype conference, if not even better. What we did miss in Hangouts was a whiteboard to explain functionality and also a simple way of sharing files. Hopefully this will be added along the way.

Photos

Just a quick tryout of photos and the Android client seem to be good, the web interface to be used on iOS until the app is accepted was not that good.

So, all in all after just a couple of hours of Google+ I am still very positive to what I’ve seen. There is a lot of features I want to see in there and just to mention a few; file sharing in Hangouts would be great, Twitter integration and finally Sparks is still a bit.. I don’t really get it.

All in all, Google+ is showing muscles and I like what I see.

If you would like to go directly to the outcome, jump directly to the verdict. If you would like to read the full article just continue reading!

Ten years ago all secure backups was either on CDs or on an external disk which then could be placed in a secure vault or such. Now days the price for online backup services has dropped so that it actually is a really good alternative. So based on this, I set out to try to find a service which gave me what I was looking for. Keep in mind that the choice I make is based on my personal requirements, I do not claim that my choice is the best for everyone.

MY REQUIREMENTS Since I am an amateur photographer and also write a lot of texts I would need a service with unlimited or next to unlimited storage space not to be afraid to run out anytime soon. I do store all photos I like in raw format which become a huge amount of data in a short time. Big storage amounts naturally calls for good transfer rates to be able to transmit changed data or restore data if needed. Since I am located in Sweden, that means a good transfer rate between the central storage server and my local ISP in Sweden. If I need to recover a file I want to be able to recover individual files quickly and easily and I want to be able to do so again with a good transfer speed.

At home I use one stationary computer and one laptop and I want to be able to keep both backed up. Since I do write code mostly on my laptop a system which can keep track of file version would be preferable. If I am going to spend money signing up for a backup service I would like to see a good version based system in place which can be used for not only hardware based failure but also for thought based failures by myself.

Last but not least the price of the service. This is really a secondary requirement for me since what I get from the service is of highest importance. However I will not pay more for a service then I feel I get features back.

THE CONTENDANTS Quickly it was obvious for me that there is a huge amount of services available for online backups, but just as obvious was the fact that most of these services was not what I was looking for. The services I finally came to look into was:

• Backblaze
• Carbonite
• CrashPlan
• Diino
• Dropbox
• Keepit
• Storegate

After a quick run-down of my must-haves I could cut these down once again so all i was left with was Backblaze, CrashPlan and Keepit. Main reason the other fell out of my view was to bad conditions for what I needed and limited storage plans.

I simply added a trial for all three and made a few experiments to backup 2Gb of data which I uploaded and restored to see which was the best for me. I also searched the net for additional reviews to see what other had to say about the three. The service which I did like the best just looking at the conditions was Backblaze, if it hadn’t been for the fact that I had terrible transfer rate to their service I would have gone with them. Secondly I tried Keepit which was a very good service but I did feel a bit limited about the available choices to what data to be backed up or not. I also found it to be a bit complex to add additional service for another computer to be added to my account.

So, last of the three I tried CrashPlan. Looking at the conditions of their offer I saw that they was on a clear second place after Backblaze but really ahead of Keepit. Uploading data ran fast for me and the recovery process was very quick and simple.

THE VERDICT After a going through all the services I had tried one final time, what conditions they were offering and the price they asked for it my choice fell on Crashplan. When all is summarized they do provide the best offer for me personally. This is based on the conditions of their accounts, the transfer rate to my home together with a price I feel is fair for the service I receive.

What service is the best for you personally will be the service which offers the best features you want together with an acceptable transfer rate based on what amount of data you will be transferring. My best tip for anyone trying to choose a backup plan just as I did I’d recommend that you write down a short list of what features you need and then also the amount of data you will be transferring. Looking at the list I compiled with those bullets in mind I hope that you will have a better way of choosing the best offer for you.

AFTERWORDS After I already made my selection I found out yet another great feature CrashPlan offer. Instead of uploading data to a central server it is possible to place a drive at a friends place and send your continous backup there. Using this technique you can actually get great transfer speeds where ever you may be in the world as long as you have a second location to place a bonus disk. This is a great opportunity for people who have friends in their network neighborhood with a machine that’s mostly turned on.

Also, as I am a Dropbox user since quite some time I will not give up my account there. For me Dropbox fils a gap for me which Crashplan do not. I use to to transfer files between computers and also to have a quick update for files before they are transfered to CrashPlan. Best thing with Dropbox is that you can use it for free! If you want an account and want to help me at the same time, please use my referral link when you sign up!

I ran across an article form Boing Boing! about a guy called Laketide who was selling real life dirt blocks seen from the game Minecraft on Etsy. Naturally I had to check it out but what I did not expect was that the same seller really make Minecraft geek-ware in many shapes and forms.

Just a little while ago I wrote about the game Minecraft and how I see that it has changed the market for indie games. What I did not think of that time was that it has actually also the potential to change how we look at merchandise for a title or IP. Bigger companies and IPs are often secured and people trying to make money out of them are pushed back and stopped.

For an indie title this is perhaps not as harsh which then opens up the market for entrepreneurs to make money out of their ability to create merchandise which other like. Laketide is in this case a perfect example of my point since by looking at the Etsy profile there is more then one object for sale from the Minecraft world. Clearly the seller has put his entrepreneurship into action, trying to find ways to make a side business of this. For some this might look as something that could hurt an IP but for an indie title I believe that this is nothing else then next to free marketing. It can’t be free since you miss out on some income to an external part but since you do not have to risk any money during the process you are quite close to a zero margin risk.

Entrepreneurship is truly beautiful.

Found out that Boing Boing was writing about this video back in 2008 but then not linked to this youtube video. They did however run the story once again just a few days ago and this time, linking to the video I embedded above.

I present to you; FRIDA, the concept humanoid looking friendly robot.

Instead of building bulky robots lifting entire factories there has been something of a wave of new machines being showed off. FRIDA is a concept on how a resource replacement bot should look which would require minimal effort to get into a regular work place. Something that almost look humanoid, not due to the fact that all killer robots should look human, instead to build something you can use to replace a biological worker without having to rebuild factories and workplaces. Simply a machine which can sit in your chair, using your tools, just as if there was another person there.

We need to create machines which will not kill us all.

When we use a machine which look and is sized as a regular human, sitting next to a human, it becomes very important to ensure that it suddenly don’t use the person next to it as lubricant for its new power dril or perhaps just ignore a human standing in it’s path. This is when Isaac Asimov once again come into play. We need to create machines which will not kill us all. Even if the machine has no way of making own decisions, it must have the ability to understand when someone is getting hurt and if so, stop hurting. I bet there are engineers at ABB with a smile on their faces just because of the nature of their work, to ensure that the robots will not hurt the humans.

FRIDA is still a concept so if you are working in a factory, you do not have to start panic just yet. There will some time before these machines can be bought but do think that what we see here is not the last but perhaps the first look of how our robot overlords will look. I do belive that there are many jobs today done by humans where these machines can do the work instead, create a safer environment for people today. Also we should not forget that automation will lead to freedom and increased efficiency. And since they have not yet developed any maintenance bots which can perform maintenance on machines, humans is actually still needed.

However; looking at the images of FRIDA, isn’t it painfully similar looking to the bots in iRobot?

For more information about FRIDA go to any of these sites where I found the information above:

• Geeky-gadgets.com
• Pop-sci
• ABB

To start of this project I have a brand new notebook in my Evernote account named “Things to remember”. In this notebook I store all things that you on different occasions find your self trying to remember. It can be the cryptographic combination of letters and numbers which identify what bags to use for you vacuum cleaner or it can be what socket the lamp has in your bedroom. Drop a note or a note holding a photo of the things you always forget and you’re all set. Some days ago I came up with two new lists for this notebook which is of course connected to the seasonal holidays and the actions surrounding these. The list was created just as normal out of problems seeking a solution.

Problem one, the gift paradigm
During the fifty one weeks of the year when you are not thinking of buying Christmas gifts there is quite often tips and hints on gifts you actually could buy. Moments passing by when friends and family mention things they need or things they maybe just want. Moment that make you think: “That would be a great present for him/her!”.

To handle this I have a new note in my Things to Remeber notebook called “Gift ideas” in which I just have names and things that I could get them for the next birthday or seasonal holiday. The list can look like this:

• Jessica
  Trip to north pole
• Emil
  That red shirt

When I’m away travelling or just out shopping I can just read through the list on my phone and see if there is anything I should pickup!

Problem two, the holiday cards
Every year when I am to write holiday greeting cards to send to family and friends I start wondering who to send to. The social rule I’ve learnt is to send to family and to all that sent you a card the previous year. So all easy then, with the small problem that I never ever remember who sent me cards the past year.

So, a list in my notebook it is! The list hold information on what occasion and from whom I got a letter as shown below:

• Christmas 2010
  Parents <address goes here>
• Bertil <address goes here>

Both these lists are so simple I wonder how come I haven’t created them before. But still, now their in place and I hope I now just remember to read them too! And by the way, today it is New Years Eve so; Happy New Year!

Evernote

Evernote is an application in which you store notes of text, sound or images. If you want to read more about Evernote, please see what I wrote about it or head over to their official website.

I have been using Evernote since version 2 something and when I first started to use it I was amazed over the quickness of the very light client. With every new version there have been tons of features added and with every new version, the client has become a bit more bloated. Of course this can also be connected with the amount of information I keep in my account (the number of notes increase in an insane rate) but I do believe that some of the blame actually is the client. In fact, I have thought that it was the client up until today when Evernote 4 was released and by reading the release notes; I was correct. The client has been re-written!

“On our test hardware, Evernote 4 starts five times faster, and uses half the memory of Evernote 3.5.” –blog.evernote.com

Evernote 4 is lightning fast, just as I remembered the old version 2. The new version has all those new features and still is fast though. I once again feel calm that I can keep pushing everything I need to remember into my Evernote account and to be able to get to it fast and easy, just as I wanted to do when I first started to use it.

Apart from the increased speed of the client there is also new features as improved clipping, improved editing of notes, a new UI and more. One feature that do stand out from my point of view is the improved handling of tables in notes which I have requested many times before. Now it is fast and easy to keep even table-data in your notes!

More information

• Evernote can be downloaded and purchased from the Evernote website.
• You can also follow their blog for more information.

All in all Evernote 4 was a great upgrade and I do feel that the new client was exactly what was needed to keep conquering the world. I can only but recommending everyone to get it and try it out to see how it can help you both private and in the workplace.

Evernote is available in both a free version and in a premium version which cost $5/month or $45 for a year. Embedded below is a short movie on what Evernote is all about. Please note that all images and the movie belongs to Evernote Coorporation and I got them from the Evernote website and therefore do not claim any rights to them.

Every new system we encounter ask us to choose a password. There is always a ruleset attached that it must be a minimum amount of characters, capitalized and non-capitalized characters, numbers and sometimes even special characters as explamaition marks, dots and commas. Most of us see this as something very frightening and looking at a seaming random password as W1cmp;7ac5h! we feel there is no way we could ever remember something as complex.

There are a few techniques we can use in situations like this and I would to share with you my favourite way of chosing and remembering complex passwords. This is a technique I daily use when I need to create passwords and since I started I have not yet needed to create yet another password like qwerty1234 or 123qwerty. Instead I can keep passwords of ten characters or more with mixed capitalization, numbers and special characters.

This is how I do it.

It all start with a sentance which can be connected to the password I am to create to simplify my way of remembering it. If I was to create a password for my Facebook account for example I could use a sentance like:

The place where I go to meet Ally and Bob; twice per day!

We now have created our source of randomness which we then can use to create an actual password. By attaching a ruleset to this sentance we can make it look more complex but still for ourselves completely logical.
First of all we can try to find all numericals which we can exchange with numbers. The word “twice” can be changed to a singe letter “2″. By using only the leading characters in all words together with the number two we now have created a password with upper- and lowercase letters, special characters and numbers!

The place where I go to meet Ally and Bob; twice per day!

become

TpwIgtmAaB;2pd!

More information/Disclaimer

• This is a commonly used technique which you can find more information about it in many places but I do recommend an article by Microsoft which I found to be very useful.

At first you might think that it is hard to remember a full sentance instead of just a few characters but I was amazed how much easier it was for me to do it this way. Next time you are to login to your Facebook account all you have to do is to remember what Facebook is all about – The place where I go to meet Ally and Bob; twice per day!

I got my hands on an 16Gb Wifi iPad a couple of weeks ago when I was on vacation in New York. Not only did I get my iPad, I got the opportunity to visit the wonderful store located just next to central park, the glass cube, which made my creative mind jump because of the stunning architecture. Almost make me drool a bit even now when I think about it. But, enough about that, let’s jump straight into the usage of the device.

The reason I bought the iPad was to use it as a casual device to use at my couch when watching TV in the evenings together with a portable movie player for when I travel. The idea of reading magazines and books on the device also tickled my imagination and I wondered whether or not I would like this over a good old book. The reason I did not buy the Amazon Kindle a year ago was that I feel that it was a bit to locked down and the ways it could be used seemed very limited. Since I’ve used the App Store for my iPhone for quite some time now I knew that this would not be the case with the iPad. I find new ways of usage for my iPhone every day thanks to it and the feeling is exactly the same with the iPad.

The screen is bright and have a high amount of detail, I never feel that it is blurry on text or on moving media so I can without any problems read text on it without any tired eyes. The touchscreen features is just as quick as one would want it and the response I get when using it is wonderful. Books with black text on white background is rendered very smooth but also colorful magazines (I use an app called Zinio to get magazines, recommended) is rendered very nice and vivid and the move, pan and zoom is working in a natural way. There still exist a few things I do miss on the device, some things might seem like small things while other are bigger. First of all the home button on the device is not lit in any way. When using the iPad at night in the dark I often find myself to spin the device around every time I put it away for some reason which leads to that every time I need to press the home button, I do not know on which side of the screen it is and I have to start fumble about to find it. Small thing, but I think of it every time. Lack of Flash need to be mentioned since it has been a very hot topic in media ever since the release. I personally have not really missed Flash-support during the time I have used the iPad so in my personal opinion, no loss. The battery is drained faster then I’d like it to but still I know that I have been using the device heavy. I have been watching a few movies on it in a row without any problems and that’s about what I need.

So, what is it that I actually use my iPad for today?

More information

• For more information about the Apple iPad, App Store or iBooks, visit apple.com.
• For more information about Zinio, visit zinio.com
• For more information about WordPress, visit wordpress.com

I must agree that I have played quite a few games on it since I got it in my hands. Just as I did when I got my iPhone. But part from the gaming I have also found myself to use it for most part of all random surf I do when I’m home. I no longer find a reason to start my desktop machine if there isn’t something special I need to use it for. I’ve been using it for movies and TV series also, the ability to watch what I want where ever I am is just great. And last but not in any way least, papers and magazines is made for the iPad. For quite some time I have been wondering how the media would look like to get me to see the benefit of digital editions of paper magazines, and this is it. Good size and wonderful screen makes reading and watching great. Of course the iBooks application makes it easier then ever to find something to actually read as well.

I do love the iPad more then I thought I would and I find myself using it more and more every day passing. My desktop computer is feeling ever more alone as I find out that I can do almost everything I need on the iPad instead.

Oh and by the way, I wrote this article on my iPad using the WordPress application available from the App Store.

To make this list as easy as possible to over-look I tried to categorize them for usage: Everyday tools, GTD, Graphical and Development.

Everyday tools

Launchy

Application launcher so that you don’t need to have manus organized or tidy. Hit a shortcut and write the name of the application you would likt to launch and press enter – done! Takes a litle time to get use to but when you have, you wont be able to work without it.

Miranda IM

Instant Messaging-client which can be used for ICQ, MSN, Yahoo etc.

Chrome / FireFox

Personally I use Chrome as my favourite browser nowadays but I would recomend both Chrome and Firefox, they do deliver so much more then Internet Explorer, Opera or Safari currently does to mention a few.

Related:
Chrome instead of Firefox

Spotify

For all countries where Spotify have been allowed to operate, the service has opened the door to music for the people.

Total Commander

Better controll over files and folders, integrated ftp-client etc.

Dropbox

A network-based service where you get 2GB of space for free at a remote server to store your files. Secure and swift!

TrueCrypt

For times you want to remotly store documents which are personal at places which can be in-secure you can encrypt them in a “vault” to increse security.

Putty

THE SSH and telnet client for windows.

Filezilla

Sftp and ftp client.

Open Office

Replacement for Microsft Office, free if course.

uTorrent

When it comes to torrents, this is the most minimalistic client I’ve found.

WriteMonkey

Zenware for writing which let you focus on the task of writing and nothing else.

GTD (Getting things done)

Remember the Milk

Task-manager which can remind you on the thing you should do.

Evernote

Take notes of everything! Text, photos, sound or files.

Graphical work

GIMP (GimPhoto)

GIMP is the open source alternative to the comercial Photoshop. By many said to be a complete alternative. Anapplication called GimPhoto also exist which is more specialized on photo editing (based on GIMP).

Inkscape

Vector-drawing and illustration-tool. This is a good alternative for Illustrator for the happy amateur.

Related:
Inkscape 0.47 released

Development

Notepad++

Minimalistic editor with syntax highlighting for multiple languages and support for addons.

Eclipse

A full development-studio with packages for almost all languages.

Cygwin

Get you favourite *nix-tools on the windows platform by using this console in a box.