Internet

Melanie and I are the very picture of the modern web-connected family. We both have blogs (hers and mine), Twitter accounts (hers and mine), and Facebook pages (hers and mine). To those social-media outlets, we post photos from Flickr (hers and mine) as well as videos from our YouTube and Vimeo accounts. And to create all this content, we use our digital point-and-shoot, our Flip Video cam, and my iPhone. That’s a lot of stuff to manage.

In the past, when she was using my old broken-down iBook, Melanie had to rely on me to download photos and videos and then upload them so that she could post them on her blog or Facebook or Twitter, which didn’t always work out so well. Too often she had to remind me a time or two or three. Now that she has a newer MacBook she can edit movies if she wants and manipulate photos with ease. She’s even started using my old iPod touch.

We haven’t solved the entire problem (we’re still doing the memory card dance: “Did you download all the pictures from this memory card so I can delete everything?” “I’m not sure. Leave it on my desk so I can check.”), but a few rough edges of the annoyance of having to manage all this content have been sanded off. Part of the solution is a web-based application called Dropbox.

The folder/directory that follows you around

Dropbox is an amazing tool that I use nearly every day. If you ever have to work on more than one computer or if you ever share files with other people, then Dropbox is for you. Here’s a short video that explains in plain language how Dropbox works.

One of the best features of Dropbox is the shared folder. This is a folder within your Dropbox that you explicitly make available to certain people. If they are Dropbox users it shows up in the Dropbox folder on their computers. If they’re not a Dropbox user, they can signup for a free account. (And if they sign up, you get some extra storage space for inviting them.) Basic free accounts start with 2GB of storage. Not bad.

I set up a shared folder with Melanie called “Dom+Melanie” and we use that to share photos and videos and other files. I recently listened to an episode of the public radio show “This American Life” that had a segment I thought Melanie would like so I cut out that portion of of the show and saved it as an MP3 audio file in our shared folder for her to listen to. The best part is that all she has to do is open the folder to get the file; Dropbox automatically synchronizes the folders behind the scenes.

Dropbox also makes me look good at work. My boss was giving a presentation and as we were getting ready to go to the conference room, I dropped a copy of the presentation in my Dropbox folder, along with other important files. When we got to the room, my boss realized he hadn’t put the presentation on a thumb drive to load it on the computer used for projecting the presentation. No problem, I said. I logged in to my Dropbox account via the web browser on the presentation computer and downloaded the file right there. Problem solved. Hero for a day.

The iPhone app

Here’s where it gets really good. Dropbox now has a free iPhone app. Now you can access the contents of the Dropbox from anywhere, not just when you’re at a computer. You can open several common file types, including PDF, text, Word/Excel/PowerPoint, MP3, video, and more. (You can’t edit them. It’s read only.) Remember that show segment from “This American Life” that I’d saved for Melanie to listen to later? She hadn’t got around to it by Saturday, so while we were driving on a family outing we listened to it, streaming from the Dropbox on my iPhone, which was connected to the car’s audio system. How cool is that? usually you’d have to futz around with putting the file in iTunes and synchronizing it to the phone (and remembering to synchronize the phone before you left), but here it was, available at the spur of the moment.

Going back to the beginning of this blog entry, the iPhone app also helps with the photo problem. When I see a good picture, maybe a cute photo of one of the kids, there isn’t time to run and get the camera. The moment will have passed by then. But I almost always have my iPhone on me. So I whip it out and snap the picture. Great! Now I have to rmember to synchronize the phone with my computer, download the photos to iPhoto, and then email them to Melanie. Not anymore! See that camera icon in this Dropbox app? Click on it and it will offer to take a photo or use one that’s already on the phone and upload it to your Dropbox. So now, I can snap a picture and drop it right in our “Dom+Melanie” shared folder where Melanie can grab it and upload it immediately to her blog. Or Melanie can take photos at home and drop them in the folder so I can see them right away at work, without having to wait until I get home.

Why not just use email?, some will ask. Because email is unpredictable. Sometimes a message gets to your recipient immediately, but the vagaries of the Internet can delay it for hours. In addiiton, most mailboxes have size limits, so sending multiple files or anything over about 5 MB is problematic. And let’s not forget the propensity of spam-filtering software to put important messages in your junk-mail folder.

What else can it do?

The potential uses for Dropbox and its iPhone app are limited only by your imagination. I can see myself at the store wondering if a particular product is the one Melanie wants. So I take a photo, put in Dropbox, and call her. She can look at it right away and steer me in the right direction. (Now, if only I could get Melanie on an iPhone, it could go both ways. Hmmm.) Another way I use it right now is to back-up our kitchen computer. We have an old iMac mounted on the wall in the kitchen that we use for recipes and to keep shopping lists. The only important data on it is the recipe database so I keep that in the Dropbox folder, which is backed up whenever I back up my MacBook Pro. Since every computer sees it as just another folder on the computer, it gets backed up by my backup software. I could go on and on, but I’ll leave it there.

If at the end of this, you’re saying to yourself, “I need me some Dropbox!”, then I offer you this link. If you sign up at my referral link, not only do I get more storage space for free, so do you! And if you find that 2GB is just not enough storage space, they offer reasonable paid accounts starting at 50GB at $10 per month. (They really should have a 20GB/$5 per month level, but that’s a little quibble. It’s definitely worth it.)

Many analysts say one of the causes of the decline of the newspaper industry has been Craigslist, which has co-opted what once one of the most profitable parts of the newspaper business, classified advertising.

Well, some time ago the Boston Herald decided it wasn’t going to take this lying down. Every time there’s a crime story with any kind of hook to Craigslist, the Herald plays it up. If someone sells something online and they get robbed by the buyer, the headline will scream, “Craigslist!” If police clean out a nest of prostitutes using a local hotel to meet johns, the Herald headline will note that the trysts were arranged through Craigslist.

Of course, before the ‘List was a gleam in Craig Newmark’s eye, criminals were setting up dupes with fake offers to buy through newspaper classified and ladies of the evening were peddling themselves through ads in “alternative” newspapers and magazines, so this isn’t a problem unique to Craigslist. But that doesn’t matter to the Herald, which is fighting tooth and nail for its very survival. It doesn’t mind getting into the gutter with its rival, unlike the well-coiffed and oh-so-proper other newspaper in town, the Globe.

Thus it didn’t surprise me this morning to see the front page of today’s Herald blasting in huge type: “Cops hunt Craigslist killer”. The “Craigslist killer.” Oh, you know that the paper’s editors are hoping that the sobriquet sticks. And they offer not one, but four articles in the paper today about the heinous crime, including one profiling “escorts” advertising on Craigslist who are now in fear for their lives.

This is indeed a tragic crime, but apparently the Herald isn’t above making sure its mortal enemy gets shackled to the criminal who committed it.

N.B. Don’t get me wrong. I much prefer the Herald to its pretentious rival on Morrissey Boulevard. It’s the one newspaper I subscribe to and I find its editorial focus much more compatible with my own outlook. I’m just pointing out that the Herald doesn’t have pure motives here.

Photo credit: Flickr.com user AntyDiluvian. Used under a Creative Commons license.

I sometimes forget that while I find myself writing and hanging out in many corners of the Internet, many of my friends only know this blog. Yet, there are several social media sites where I’m much more “present” than here at Bettnet these days, mainly for the quick, slice-of-life thoughts and moments. And I know that many of you have found me in those places, but many have not.

So occasionally I will post here to remind you where else you may read my musings if you so desire:

 
• Bettnetlog: My tumblog where interesting links and an aggregation of material from other places I visit ends up.
 
• Twitter
 
• Facebook: I’ve friended a lot of people there. I’ve found it a great way to re-connect with people I’ve lost touch with.
 
• Plurk: Plurk is like Twitter but with a twist. Conversations are much easier here than on Twitter. Lots of Catholics here.
• Delicious: A bookmarking service where I save links to interesting stuff online
• Friendfeed: Another place that aggregates my online presence, but it’s more wide-ranging and it also includes commenting.

So if you’d like to friend/subscribe on any or none of those sites, please feel free. Of course, I’ll still be posting here with about the same regularity as I’ve been posting.

Back in August I wrote about my frustration with Lighthouse Catholic Media, a Catholic apostolate that distributes CDs of talks by popular Catholic authors and others. Read that short post to see what I was dealing with, but the gist is that they would not stop sending me their sales and marketing emails despite my repeated entreaties.

I believe I was extremely patient with them, waiting literally over a year before taking the final step, which was to write my blog post. Only then, when I had publicly exposed their behavior did I get a response. Finally they sent me a check for the small affiliate money I’d earned in the brief time I’d been an affiliate plus a bunch of CDs and a book I hadn’t asked for. they also requested that I take down the original blog post. I refused, on the grounds that nothing I’d said was untrue, that it reflected my experience, and that others who might be thinking of doing business with them should have the whole picture. They repeatedly made efforts to contact me and today I received a phone call—while I was at work no less—from the company’s president.

He accused me of slander, to which I responded that as a former journalist I know the definition of slander and this does not fit. Then he said that as a Christian I had to forgive. I told him that I do forgive him, but that doesn’t mean he gets to sweep this under the rug and make it disappear. He complained that there are plenty of anti-Catholics out there trying to undermine Catholic apostolates and that Catholics shouldn’t do it to one another. I responded that that he shouldn’t give cause for complaint then. He retorted that my is the only complaint online out of all the hundreds of plaudits they’ve received. So I asked why then does he care what one Catholic blogger says out. Mine is but one opinion and anyone looking online for information about his company will see my one comment amid the sea of others. Heck, he should look up my name and see the nasty stuff people have written about me.

In the end I agreed only to update the original blog post to reflect the fact that they finally heeded my requests and stopped emailing and that I have not received any further emails from them.

Lighthouse doesn’t have to win my trust back because I have no desire to interact with them. They’re not on my radar anymore. But if they want to ensure that my lone blog post doesn’t affect their efforts let them earn it back among those who would write compliments on other blogs and sites. Let them prove me wrong in the marketplace of ideas, not by badgering me to make my blog post disappear.

We all love memes, right? Well, even if you don’t (and I don’t love all of them), this one was kidn of fun. It’s the Band and Album meme.

 
1. Band Name: Random Wikipeda Link
 
2. Album Title: Random quote generator (take the last four words from the first quote on the page)
 
3. Album Art: Flickr Interesting Photo (pick one)

Here’s what I came up with for Band Name, Album Title (“It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.” (H. L. Mencken). I cheated a little to make it fit), and Album Art.

And the album cover:

The meme comes from The Catholics Next Door