Google Drive is here, now what?
"Insync's target market has always been power and business users and Google Drive's release further confirms this.
While Insync supports multiple accounts, offline editing, external hard drive, context menu, recent changes, etc., Google Drive lacks all of these things for one simple reason: Google Drive is geared towards the average consumer.
With that, we are doubling down on Insync with the following "power" features:
+ selective sync (yes, it really is coming)
+ encrypted sync
+ sync any folder
+ native context menu (no more browser windows)
+ Picasa sync
+ Linux support
We are also going to fix 2 long standing bugs:
+ duplicates
+ random files in root
Furthermore, our mobile apps, which have been in testing mode, are scheduled to be released later this month and next.
Insync for Mac and Windows 1.0 will have the 2 bugs fixed and native context menu support; the other features will follow. Insync for web will be removed so that we can focus our resources on Insync for desktop, mobile and tablets -- no sense in competing with Google Docs web.
Business model
We will make money the old fashion way by asking you to pay a one-time fee. While we don't have exact pricing yet, the desktop app will include unlimited computer installs and unlimited Google accounts. The mobile apps will be sold in each platform's app store.
We have updated our homepage to reflect the changes:
https://insynchq.com
Blog post about our announcement:
http://blog.insynchq.com/davids-err-insyncs-response-to-google-drive
If you have any questions, just reply.
Thanks,
Terence Pua
CEO"
I lately released a beta version of QH Autosave, an extension for eZ Publish that gives editors an autosaving feature. The project has been very appreciated and eZ Systems, the company behind eZ Publish CMS, have proposed to bring it into a release of the product. Along the way it's been renamed eZ Autosave. This is the first attempt of a Fusion of Community and eZ Engineering.
eZ Autosave has recently been released in a first testable version, you can grab it now on:
https://github.com/ezsystems/ezautosave
Please give some feedback here:
More details on the following address:
We just went on holidays in New Caledonia so I took the opportunity to test the Zoom H4n in recording the morning waves in the Isle of Pines. It was our last morning from our trip there, the weather was getting bad but the water was still warm enough for a swim half an hour after this test recording.
New Caledonia is said to be the closest place to heaven on Earth.
The video and photos in the footage were taken with a Nikon P7100. The sound from the built-in mic was too bright lacking of depth. The Redhead Windscreen shielded the Zoom H4n against the noise coming from the wind hitting the microphones.
Photos:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=isle+of+pines&hl=en&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u
More info:
Yesterday was the last time I got fed up with loosing my long content editing in eZ Publish. This is an issue that happens to most CMS not only to eZ Publish, some of them have their own autosaving system but eZ Publish is lacking of this very useful feature. I recently heard of a piece of software that could help with this kind of issue, it is called Lazarus. It is a browser add-on that will automatically save your form's content and would restore it if you have a browser crash. It seems to be a very good plugin for who does spend a lot of time with online editors. But one thing that bothers me, this is just personal, is that I don't want another plugin to my browsers, I don't have the need for such a plugin since I would currently only need it for eZ Publish and also what if I was editing on my laptop and it suddenly doesn't work anymore and I want to recover the work on another computer?
So I thought an Ajax powered script could help and started to investigate on possibilities. Some forums are talking about storing the form content to a cookie, that's quite simple to implement but again I wouldn't be able to recover on another computer. The only way would be to autosave back to eZ Publish DB. So in the train home back from work my mind started to think about how to implement that and I realised that shouldn't be too bad, I would just need to extract all the form's field's content and Ajax post it to a module/view that would store the draft for the object being edited. So I started to work on QH AutoSave extension after diner but then realised that this method won't be as simple as I thought. First issue is uploading images, then issue is to parse extra info about the object, complexity of ezpage datatype etc... So I was thinking of cloning and customising some of the kernel feature, but that would be a bit dirty to my taste.
After more thinking and Googleing for info, I had a eureka moment. I should have thought of it earlier, but you just need to post the form as it is to what ever URL the form is supposed to be posted to but in Ajax way without reloading the current page. So the solution is made of 5 lines of Javascript/jQuery!
qhAutosaveEditForm = $( '#editform' );
var formMethod = qhAutosaveEditForm.attr('method').toLowerCase();
var postURL = qhAutosaveEditForm.attr('action');
var formContent = qhAutosaveEditForm.serialize() + '&StoreButton=Store+draft';
$[formMethod]( postURL, formContent, function(data) {} );
First get the DOM element for the form itself, then retrieving the method for submitting the form (POST in our case), retrieving the URL of the script receiving the form content, preparing the content of the form prior to submitting it (a little hack here is to add StoreButton=Store+draft so that the form processing script knows that we want to save as a draft and then we just asynchronously submit the form.
The final extension is of course more than 5 lines of code, but all the rest is tweaking the extension and adding some more feature such as autosave notification, styling, eZ Publish configurations etc... and most importantly make it easy to install and use: just import, activate and use, the extension will just dynamically inject the functional code to the page so no need to override any templates.
I hope this simple extension will be useful to some of you eZ Publish editors. If you have any comments or suggestions, please add a comment below.
The current release is QH AutoSave v1.0beta2 you can alternatively see it on eZ Publish's Projects website.
Two friends of mine are starting their own business in the garment industry, their services include computerised pattern cutting, grading, laylanning and costing service for the apparel industrial with a high level of technical service for men's, ladies' and children's wear.
Although eZ Publish is very powerful, its flexibility allows the creation from very simple websites to more complex ones. For this New City Corporation Ltd, simplicity was the choice and the front-end editing interface was very useful.
London SOS has contacted me for a relook of their static website. We've agreed on migrating all their content onto eZ Publish which will allow them to maintain their website content themselves. As per requirement, the new website is located on a shared hosting account, so we will be keeping an eye on how the performance is on that type of hosting.
After few discussion on his website and Joomla, the CMS engine behind it, Frank and I decided to migrate his website to use eZ Publish, another very powerful open source CMS. So there it is, we have simplified the structure, no more nagging page, use of the frontend editing bar to make it easy to modify pages and multi-upload images.
The iPad 2 is a wonderful tool with an app for everything (like the iPhone ;-). As a FT's staff, I have enjoyed a huge discount on the purchase of my iPad 2 and I'm loving it. Very light and the large screen is a real comfort for the eyes. Enough of iPad praising, this is not the aim of this post.
The big advantage of the iPad 2 is to be small and portable, which means you will take it with you outside of your home, away for your fast internet broadband WIFI connection. So unless you want to invest £100 extra for the 3G version you're a little bit stuck. Even though I had the discount from the Financial Times, I didn't want to put more money for the 3G version and opted for the 32GB iPad instead. The reason why is, for the 3G iPad 2, I would need to pay £100 extra but also would need to subscribe to a 3G mobile broadband contract which is redundant to my iPhone 4's contract. Having an unlimited mobile data contract I just don't see why I should get another 3G contract...
Having already jailbroken my iPhone 4, I have used an excellent piece of software called MyWi. It's a commercial app that transforms your iDevice into a WIFI access point. You can thus connect any device to the internet by having it connect to your mobile WIFI network. Intelliborn, the company behind MyWi, have also developed another wonderful add-on called MyWi On-Demand. This add-on, after being installed on both of your iDevices, will allow the 'client' to connect to the 'host' via Bluetooth automagically. All I had to do was pairing the iPad with the iPhone and just forget about that. Since, when I switch my iPad on, a few seconds later I hear my iPhone (in the pocket) giving the MyWi connection tone and my iPad is connected, simples skwiieekkk (meerkat's sound).
Now lets talk about Jailbreaking. I'm not going to describe you this as it is now widely known, but to be brief, it allows you to free your iDevices from Apple's jail. After jailbreaking your iDevice, you will be able to install any third party app even if it hasn't been approved by Apple. Lets first clarify some of the Jailbreak Myths:
- Jailbreaking will brick your iDevice. This used to be true, but it is not anymore. Remember that jailbreaking is achieved by trying to guess how Apple did their stuffs, so of course on the very first attempts there were bugs, but after all those years, the technique have been improved a lot and is now very stable.
- Jailbreaking is illegal. It is not anymore. You've bought your iDevice, you should be able to install what ever is installable on it. Read more about this here: "Go ahead and jailbreak, it's legal now"
- All interesting apps are on the AppStore. You can't be more wrong. Loads of interesting apps are on AppStore, but loads of them are also on Cydia, the AppStore for the Jailbreak community. A few example: MyWi as described above, SBSettings (a floating control panel that shows up when you slide your fingers on the top menu), IntelliScreen (a dashboard on your lock screen), Winterboard (powerful app to customize anything: design, ring tones, keyboard, look of your SMS app...), Infinidock (no limit to the number of icon on the dock) etc...
- Apps for Jailbroken iDevice are all pirated apps. No, Cydia apps are all original, some are for free some are commercial (such as MyWi).
- It's too complicated to jailbreak. It can sound daunting but jailbreak is made easy by a lot of tools such as RedSn0w, but you cannot make it easier than the latest jailbreak tool: Jailbreakme.com all you need to do (if you have iOS 4.3.3 or an iPad 2) is to use your iDevice's Safari and browse to http://jailbreakme.com/ click on the 'Free' button, it will transform to a 'Install' button, click it, one second later (literally) you're done. More details on the Dev-Team's blog.
Now if you have decided to dive in and give jailbreaking a go, then good for you, enjoy all the tools Apple (and mobile broadband providers) are afraid that you would discover.
eZ Publish is one of the most complete commercial open source CMS (Content Management System) out there. I've been developing with it since 2008, starting from when I joined the Energy Saving Trust. In 2009, the EST has won the 'Website of the year' award at the eZ Awards 2009.
Earlier today, I've received an email from eZ System (the company behind eZ Publish) telling me I have been nominated for the 'Tutorial of the year' award. The winner will be announced at the eZ Awards ceremony on June 16th 2011 evening after the eZ Publish Conference where developers and businesses from around Europe and some other countries of the world will be gathering together to discover and learn new subjects around this powerful CMS.
I was already excited to see some friends from other countries but this is adding more excitement. So fingers crossed for the award!
I'm coming from New Caledonia and the Ukulele so I'm used to the sound of it since younger age. But it was just since this summer that I got personally interested and bought myself one. I first got a Tanglewood TU2 Soprano Ukulele, but found it was out of tune on few strings, so returned it and bought a Risa Instruments cut-away top spruce tenor Ukulele, and again got a defect on several frets... I'm finally settled on a Mele Mahogany Tenor uke, an awesome piece of instrument.
I've since joined the H.U.G (Hammersmith Ukulele Group) and the Ukulele Wednesdays, although these days, I'm too busy too be active as before.
At one of the Ukulele Wednesdays meetup, I met Duncan, he was setting up a new band and asked me to join, unfortunately I couldn't commit as my agenda is never sure. But I offered to do a photo shoot for the band to help them start. So I went to one of their rehearsal and had a lot of fun not only shooting them but also listening to their awesome sound. Well done guys!
So I'm introducing you to KoaSound, check out the photos on the website ;-)
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