DropBox

Hi Everyone
I hope your start to the year has been a good one!, no doubt over your holiday period you would have taken a heap of pics that you want to share with your friends and family. There are places like Facebook and Photobucket where you can do this, but what if you want a your own private place where you can not only share photos, but files, documents, movies and songs, and you don't even have to log onto a website!.


I am talking about a product called Dropbox, basically it is just like a folder on your computer and when you put anything in it, the same item you put in there appears in a folder on any computer that is linked to the same Dropbox account. You do not have to bother with and transfers, uploads, or downloads, it just appears in there next time you open the folder on that computer (providing both computers have had an internet connection, since you put the item in the folder). Dropbox is also available as an app for your smartphone.


So here's how you do it - Go to www.Dropbox.com and download Dropbox to your computer, create an account and that's it!. It looks like any other folder on your computer, you click on it and it has sub-folders already in there, as well as you can create your own. When you put an item in a folder, it automatically syncs to a mirrored folder in the cloud. On any other computer you like, you can download Dropbox and link it to your existing account, when you open Dropbox on that computer you will see the item you put in there sitting waiting for you!. As you put an item in a folder, or create a folder you will see a little blue circle beside its icon, when that circle turns green with a tick in it, that means the folder has automatically synced with its matching folder in the cloud.


This is also very useful if you want to access files or folders from your computer at work, just put them in your Dropbox folder at work, and when you get home open up your Dropbox folder at home and it will sync and be there. You can make changes to that item and those changes will be synced back to the folder at work. It is very important to be aware though, if you delete that item from your folder at home, it will also be deleted from the folder at work!. Another thing you need to be aware of, is that as items are synced back and forth with the cloud, they do use uploads and downloads of you internet account.


As far as I am aware you are only able to link one account to your Dropbox, so if you want to have one Dropbox folder for work and one for friends, you only need to have another user account on your computer, and you are able to have Dropbox with a different account. If need be, just create a user called Dropbox or Family Share. 


There is also a folder that comes already installed called "Public", any file you put in this folder has a link attached to it, just right click on the file, select "copy link" and send that link to anyone you want to share it with!.


I would like to state that I am in no way linked to DropBox, or receive any benefits of them, I believe and have seen that it is an easy to use great product. Hope you enjoy it.

To the Cloud!! Where? What cloud?

After a few heavy days talking about passwords, we will have a nice light day today.


So where is this "cloud" that every one talks about, "To the cloud!", "Icloud", "skydrive", does all our stuff just float around up there somewhere?. I had a friend ask me a while ago "Where is the Internet?" Its a very good question.


All the information that exists on the Internet has to be stored somewhere, information is stored on hard drives, just like the one in your computer, but usually a lot larger in capacity.
These hard drives may be located on their own, or be part of a large group of drives stored in the one place, these are known as "server farms" and maybe located anywhere throughout the world.


The hard drive is connected to a server, the servers job is basically to serve up the information to you, when you type in a website address it goes to a particular server who finds the information on the hard drive and sends it to you.


The "cloud" as every one refers to now, is just a group of hard drives somewhere that belong to who ever the company is that is offering the service. These companies offer you a certain amount, or block of storage on one of those hard drives. Its possible to go online and get access to use these blocks of space for free up to a certain data limit, if you want more storage you can pay a fee or sign up to a service. 
Companies like google, amazon, Microsoft, apple, dropbox,and many many more have this resource available.


Cloud storage can be used in two ways, as an online backup resource or as storage where you are able to log in from any computer or smart phone and access your information. This can be a good way to share things like photos, or documents with friends and family. There are sites out there where your storage is specifically for photos, flickr, picnic, photobucket, are three of the well known ones. 


There is upsides and downsides to using cloud services, the upside is once your information is up there it is safe from being lost forever if your computer dies, or in the case of floods or fires or coffee spills!.The down side is you are relying on the security of the provider to keep your material private, for this reason and for the reason of longevity it is always better to stay to the big name providers, and never store sensitive material online.


One important point to think about when you are considering using an online storage facility is that somehow the data has to get up there as well as be retrieved. this is known as uploads when you put it up and downloads when you bring it down. You need to know your Internet plan that your'e on and how much upload and download data you are allocated every month. On a lot of plans the upload limit is smaller and the speed is often slower, so this will make it longer to put your data  up to your storage. This is changing now as online storage becomes more popular, but its best to check with your provider and always try and do your transferring of data at off peak times when it will move faster.


So now you know what the cloud is, don't hesitate to ask me any questions you may have.