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All posts tagged "dropbox"


Friday, July 8, 2011

Windows Phone (Almost) Document Sync, (or “I Just Want to Work, Not Workaround…”)

Posted by Todd Allcock in "Windows Phone Talk" @ 09:00 AM

Back when the iPhone was introduced to the world to the sort of fanfare and adulation not seen since the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, I was one of the few scratching my head trying to figure out what I was missing that everyone else was seeing. Here was a slick looking smartphone with a brilliant user interface; I got that - it just didn't seem all that, well, smart. The only way to get your office documents on it (at least originally) was via email, and I didn't relish the idea of frantically emailing myself every document I might possibly need to reference on a business trip before leaving.

So, I smugly stuck by my old-school Windows Mobile phones; you know, the ugly beasts with the styluses, file managers, and actual PC document sync capabilities, figuring the the iPhone would cater to the iPod generation, and the business people would stick with devices that actually worked like miniature computers, and paid little attention to the hassles of managing files on an iPhone. However, when my wife finally dumped her Windows Mobile phones and started using an iPhone, suddenly I was forced to become an expert in the "iPhone Workaround" field, kludging and cajoling the iPhone into bending to my will. Read more...


Monday, October 25, 2010

Let Dropbox Know You Want a Windows Phone 7 Client

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Windows Phone Talk" @ 03:00 PM

http://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php...=13#post-164410

Are you a Dropbox user? Would you like to see Dropbox functionality on your Windows Phone 7? I know I sure would, so let's let Dropbox know that this is something we'd like to see by posting a comment in this thread on their site. You only need to have a Dropbox account to post a comment - and if you don't have one, use this link to sign up (you'll get an extra 250 MB of free storage, and so will I). Lastly, the video above is of a third-party Dropbox client - Cloudfiles - that's in development for Windows Phone 7 - it looks pretty cool.


Friday, July 30, 2010

Busting Bandwidth Bugaboos: Troubleshooting ISP Speed Problems

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Digital Home Talk" @ 11:30 AM

Since most Thoughts Media readers are using high-speed Internet, I decided this article would benefit everyone, so it's one of our rare across-the-network pieces of content. I hope you find it useful!

Figure 1: What is this, 1994 all over again?

Whenever bandwidth is discussed, there's always lots of finger pointing because there are so many variables, and players involved, that it's rarely a simple issue. My particular bandwidth bugaboo this morning? I was ticked off that Dropbox (referral) was only uploading at 10 KB/s. I left a 900 MB transfer running all night and it wasn't finished in the morning, and that's when I discovered the awful speed. My first instinct was to point a finger at Dropbox, thinking there was some sort of bandwidth throttling going on. I did a speed test with a tool my ISP provides (speedtest.shaw.ca) and was shocked to see 1.7 Mbps downloads and 107 kbps uploads (Figure 1). It's normally 20x that on downloads and 10x that on uploads, so I knew something was wrong beyond just Dropbox. Read more...


Thursday, July 1, 2010

Microsoft's Sync Strategy: A Bit of a Mess?

Posted by Jason Dunn in "Digital Home Articles & Resources" @ 12:00 PM

http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/re...tm_campaign=rss

"It's fair to say that Microsoft's product offerings are something of a mess. Windows Live Sync and Live Mesh overlap (the difference being that the former is PC-to-PC, the latter is PC-to-cloud), Live Mesh and My Phone overlap (they're both device-to-cloud), and SkyDrive, Live Mesh, and My Phone all overlap (they all incorporate their own cloud storage)."

This article overstates the case slightly - Live Mesh was always a technology preview, nothing more. Live Sync is the consumer-facing sync product from Windows Live, and the new version is using Mesh on the back-end, so it's easy to see that Microsoft's long term plan was to migrate from the original FolderShare code to Mesh. Now that's not to say that the new version of Live Sync is trouble-free...in fact, I think it's almost a disaster in terms of performance. And the limit of 2 GB on Skydrive sync is puzzling...why not let them use the full 25 GB offered by Skydrive and become a market leader in one fell swoop? Maybe there are concerns of people using their 25 GB for piracy and copyright theft?I expect Mesh to be shut down as a service before the end of the year, and hopefully the Skydrive storage component will get increased over time. I think it makes sense for the phone sync component to stand alone for now - it's based on an acquisition by Microsoft - though I hope it comes into alignment with the other services over the next year. Read more...


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