Sparrow and iCloud
Ok, so Sparrow 
has been released on the App Store today and features iCloud support.
Having now tried it, I can safely say it sucks. Don’t get me wrong, Sparrow is a fantastic email client. It very quickly replaced Mail for me as it was nice and simple, uncluttered and allowed me to send email quickly and it worked great with my Gmail, Gmail App account and my Work Exchange Server (accessed via IMAP).
But with the release of iCloud, I decided to ditch Google pretty much – partly because I’m a privacy nut and I think they have enough of my data, what with my search engine results so I gradually started moving everything to iCloud (incidentally, this advice at Reddit made moving everything bar email to iCloud easy).
However, I was lacking desktop email reading. It wasn’t a problem initially but as I’ve slowly begun to move more and more of my website subscriptions and personal email etc over to iCloud, I’ve begun to need to read my email on a desktop, rather than web based or on my iPhone. So the release of Sparrow’s update was a great relief.
That was until I used it.
Adding the iCloud account was simple – just put in your name, email and iCloud password and all is added automatically which was a good start – I’d tried to add iCloud as IMAP following Apple’s guide , but this hadn’t worked. The problems arose when it downloaded the mail. My Inbox contained 1 email according to Mail, iCloud online and my iPhone. Sparrow was showing me at least 5 emails, most of which I’d deleted from my inbox – iCloud had them in it’s trash but Sparrow was showing them in the Inbox. After deleting them, I’d change to see if they were in the trash but on moving back to the inbox, they had magically reappeared (but not on the server). I could find no way of correcting this and so in the mean time, I’m forced back to use Mail.
Not that Mail is bad, it’s just that Sparrow is simple, easy, intuitive and is a great example of why I love Mac software. Mail is a bit more bloated than Sparrow.
All I can do is hope that this is just a temporary hiccup and Sparrow will work well with iCloud in the near future! Please?
Alfredapp Extension
It always annoyed me that Chrome wouldn’t open by default in Incognito mode. Sometimes you just want to be able to open it Incognito for whatever reason you might have…
Anyhow, I lived with opening it manually until I found out about Alfred . This excellent tool lets you open any app from the command line and recent releases has allowed the ability to be extended with user made extensions. Wonderful! But I still couldn’t figure out how to open Chrome in Incognito mode. Until I found out that Chrome could open Incognito from the command line!
So I quickly created my own Alfred Extension using the information gleaned from Cool Geex.
You can download it from my Dropbox here.
Enjoy surfing in private in ease and enjoy Alfred!
Spideroak Vs Dropbox
Intro
Ok, so I’ve been a fan of online backup now for probably over a year or so. I never used to like the idea of my data being stored off-site but then after reading various backup methodologies, I realised I needed an offsite backup solution to be truly safe from data loss.
So I tried the various different options at the time and basically played around with two options, Spideroak and Dropbox. To make it clear, I bought paid for subscription to each over this testing to make sure I was getting the full service.
I’ve now come to the conclusion on each now I think.
Dropbox is a fantastic service. Easy to use, simple and clean. However, whilst it says that it’s data is private, it’s only a very small note in the terms and conditions. And it’s track record for privacy isn’t untarnished.
It’s connivence cant be denied. Simply drop a file in and wait for it to upload and then access on any device you own that’s connect to Dropbox. Pretty sweet.
The main downsides are that you need to mess about moving folders and files into the Dropbox folder to get them to sync (or use Symlinks, something that might be over and above that average users want to learn about). Whilst Dropbox offers versioning of files for 30 days, you cant get an extension to this unless you buy the Packrat extension which adds to the monthly charge.
Overall, the simplest service for syncing and sharing data is great but potential privacy issues are worrying – especially to myself where I want to sync data between my Mac’s and some of that data is personal data such as scans of drivers license, bank statements etc. However, Dropbox support built into web apps, mobile apps and desktop apps allowing easy syncing of non personal data, such as code snippets in Codebox and settings such as Alfred app mean that Dropbox is a great tool.
Spideroak’s main draw is privacy. It’s screams it at you from the very beginning. It’s webpage mentions 2 factor authentication (should you want it), they make sure you know that they don’t store your password. it’s quite clear from the start that Spideroak’s privacy features are a top priority.
Like Dropbox, you can add whatever you want to Spideroak but unlike Dropbox, it can stay where it is on the disk drive – you open up the software and select what you want to backup. Syncing is done via sync option which is a bit more in depth than Dropbox which can be a pain for new users. However, it’s not so hard once you figure it out. it does mean you can select only the folders you want to sync between machines which is quite good (in more detail at least than Dropbox’s selective sync features).
Spideroak offers a better value for money in terms of storage. 100GB of storage is $10 a month ($5 if you’re a student) compared to Dropbox’s $10 for 50GB. Unlike Dropbox, Spideroak offer de-duplication. Meaning if you upload the same file on one computer linked to Spideroak and then upload it on another, upload will be fairly instant (as it’s already on the server – which Dropbox do as well) – however, Spideroak only count it once towards space used on your account.
However, after using for a while, the cracks have started to appear in the sync feature. In the event of a clash of updated files, Dropbox will create a conflicted copy – Spideroak silently updates both files to the newest version and keeps the previous version. Not entirely good to see as often you wont notice. And it seems that sometimes sync actions seem to fail for no reason – good reason that I found today was that I access a file yesterday, made a change and saved. Spideroak uploaded it. I went to access it today and the changes from yesterday hadn’t synced across (sync and backup set to instant and the laptop was on all day yesterday to allow sync) – Spideroak even showed in the software that the laptop version had uploaded yesterday but no reason was given why it hadn’t downloaded to the Macbook.
The uptime of Spideroak is lacking slightly behind Dropbox as well. It’s been quite often that I’ve found that Spideroak is having trouble uploading whilst Dropbox is having no issues.
Conclusions
Overall, both bits of software are great. However, both are lacking. Dropbox is lacking privacy and Spideroak is missing out on sync functions that work all the time and desktop notifications. It’s a shame.
I feel that Spideroak is an offsite storage medium, rather than a sync tool. It compares fairly well to other services like Crashplan+ as you can add unlimited devices without paying extra. Dropbox is unrivalled by Spideroak as a syncing program – it’s ability to sync documents easily, quickly and transparently is great -it’s greatest flaw however is the privacy issue.
At the end of the day, you pay your money and take you’re choice. For me, it looks like a potential return to the hard drive for syncing private data, however, should I want to download a file – I know the Spideroak will have the latest version on it’s website to download securely.
Of course, there’s always the option of running my own SSH server…
Well that’s another awesome point for Mac
The sharing settings menu has some decent settings in there to get started with. The ability to setup SSH access is pretty awesome (once you get the ports forwarded!) and then you can remote browse and download the file system using a terminal or an SFTP client like the awesome Transmit.
Also, screen sharing Mac to Mac is pretty damn sweet as well - had to leave my machine on today and come to work sending emails out for UKAPU. However, just enable screen sharing, open the port of the router and then I can connect from my Mac at work! Pretty slick.
A month using Evernote Premium
Well, it’s been a month since upgrading Evernote to the Premium account and I thought I’d write a quick piece on it.
Evernote for those that don’t know, is a fantastic application designed to take notes and sync across multi platforms (Mac, Windows, iOS, Android and others) and it does this very well. There is a limit on how much can be uploaded to the cloud on a free account (60MB a month) but if you use it mainly for text like I do, then why would it be worth upgrading?
Essentially Evernote Premium gives the user extra space (1GB upload a month) and adds some nice features - the best in my mind, is the attach any file feature. Evernote basic allows for PDF and image attachments which can be displayed inline in the notes. However, an upgrade to “Pro” allows any file you want to be attached. I thought this would be a bit of gimmick to start with but it soon became apparent that for how I use Evernote, this was the best part of the upgrade!
I use Evernote for a variety of reasons. One of which is for my PhD and also for computing references. Both of these require some computer coding, from simple batch scripts, upto javascript files and other files. Now my main backup and sync method is Spideroak but I keep a record in Evernote on what each file does - I can then add the file to the note and instantly be able to run it when I find it.
The same applies to technical help or conversions - you know, articles like this Kindle Jailbreaking on How to Geek. These articles can easily be saved to Evernote for future reference thanks to the fantastic web clipper (and the Firefox/Chrome plugins) but in the future, you might want to do this and follow the instructions in your Evernote notebook, but the files might have disappeared off the internet! With Pro, you can attach those files and at a later date, everything you need will still be there!
Overall, this alone makes the upgrade worth the $5 a month. That’s a pint of beer a month for piece of mind and the ability to sync anything across all platforms :) In my mind, well worth it.
Source: evernote.com
Reeder for Mac
Laughed at the point of Reeder for Mac. Why would anyone want to access Google Reader though a separate program?! Google’s online system is pretty damn good.
Then…
Realised that I use iCal to access my Google calendar, used Sparrow to access my Google Mail and used Mac Address Book and Android to access and manage my Google contacts…
Touché Reeder, touché.
Source: reederapp.com
Evernote
Well finally got round to upgrading to Evernote Premium. Excellent news is the offline notebooks, ideal for me as my iPod Touch and phone don’t have internet when out and about so it means I can still download notes.
It’s an excellent service so I always felt I should pay something for it and to be fair, the $5 price is peanuts. The ability to add PDF files and have them made searchable is gold - especially as some papers stupidly don’t allow searching.
Source: evernote.com
