insync: it is ok to break up with dropbox

I heard about insync on twitter not too long ago.

It caught my attention the fact they sell themselves as a Dropbox killer, I had to try.

Insync (http://insynchq.com) is, like Dropbox, a little program you can install in a mac or pc even if you are not an admin (which for my work laptop is a must) and that has for objective to sync a local folder among your computers, with a copy online… but with a huge difference from services such as Dropbox or SugarSync, or box.net…

First: it is free. But sure, Dropbox is free for a couple of Gigs too, and SugarSync free for 5Gb…

Second: it uses GDrive or Google Docs as storage and online sharing and versioning… so:

They don’t have to host anything, and you pay Google for storage.

The difference with Dropbox is that for instance a 50Gb with Dropbox costs $9.99 per month, and a 20Gb with Google costs $5…. a year!!! or 80Gb for $20 a year!!

• For $200 per year Dropbox gives you 100Gb
• For $100 per year Google gives you 200Gb

For me this is a no brainier. I was already using Google docs, so I switched to insync.

I can edit documents locally or online, I can set up sharing permissions on google docs… it works like charm.

Congratulation guys!! insync rocks.

Now, how is this Philippines based company going to survive?… we will see… maybe Google buys it…

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GTD: Todos, Task managers… PART 2

I had promised for a while that I would write a second part to the GTD To Do review I did some time ago. Well, here it is.

It is not going to be so deep as the one I did back in September 2010, simply because I don’t have too much time to write on my blog.

Since Sept. 2010 the To Do solutions have increased exponentially. Now we can easily find solutions that are web based with apps for iOS and Android, and even more solutions that are focused for teams and they are web based.

I will focus on the way I do it while mentioning the ones I encounter in my way.

Objective:

• I want a way to manage my To Dos, from my iPhone, iPad, Mac and web. I would like it to be offline.
• I need to have access to shared To Dos with my wife.

List of To Dos and Project Management tools

For collaboration project managment and to dos, take a look to this sites.

Teamly

Teamly is a great tool for managing a team. It has private and group tasks.

• http://teamly.com

Huddle

Huddle is more than a to do solution. Pretends to be a substitute to SharePoint.

Here you have a list of all the features: http://www.huddle.com/this-is-huddle/features/

• http://www.huddle.com

Teambox

Teambox is more like teamly. Webbase app for teams. It integrates with Google docs and Dropbox, and they have iPhone app. 3 projects free.

• http://teambox.com

Vitalist

Also based on David Allen’s GTD. Free to try. Take a look:

• http://vitalist.com

My Favorites

Wunderlist

Wunderlist is awesomely designed. It has apps and web and for windows and mac. It is simple and nice. It is a todo program, and has collaboration features, which makes it a perfect candidate.

• http://wunderlist.com

What do I use?

Evernote

I am an Evernote lover. You can see it from my posts. I am a premium subscriber with 1000′s of notes, from all incoming mail, to my books, wine, receipts, to the todos.

Now the new iPhone an iPad app allow you to create checkboxes therefore in combinaison with Egretlist is an option to consider. The downside continues to be the due dates and repeting tasks….

2Do app + Toodledo

I reviewed the 2Do app in September. It is the one I use, with a Toodledo sync.

Why?

I love the app. It is one of the most complete, with location (on demand so no battery concern), tagging, etc.. it is fully syncronized with toodledo and:

I can feed it via emails. I can email a secret email address at toodledo and with some queries I can control where the to do goes, so a task could have in the subject of an email something like

Call Jim !! @phone #today
Finish the Report ! #next friday *ProjectA @work $Active ~1hour
Mow the lawn *Chores @home

Also I can syncronize my toodledo account with my iCal and see it in my mac.

Downside: No mac client (or PC…)

Reminders Mac.

With iOS5 Apple released Reminders. It is a very simple to do. I use it for shared lists with my wife. The shopping list and the shared list.

This is day to day list, perfectly integrated with mac (iCal) web (iCloud).

To share a list go to iCloud click on the icon.

Other

I bumped into a nice to do website… but not to manage your todos but to outsource them… take a look:

• http://www.taskrabbit.com/

More….

ther you might consider:

• Diddit – http://www.diddit.com
• Doomi – http://doominow.com
• niid.to – http://niid.to
• Toodledo – http://www.toodledo.com
• Remember the milk – http://www.rememberthemilk.com
• HiveMinder – http://hiveminder.com
• ToDoIst – http://todoist.com

 

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The Books I read in 2011

We are approaching 2012, and before that I wanted to make a list of the books I read throughout 2011.

I must say that most I listened to, some I read on the iPad or even on the iPhone and only a few were actual books.

1. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t (Collins, Jim)
2. The White Lioness (Wallander #3) (Mankell, Henning)
3. The Man Who Smiled (Kurt Wallander Series #4) (Mankell, Henning)
4. Sidetracked (Wallander #5) (Mankell, Henning)
5. The Fifth Woman (Wallander, #6) (Mankell, Henning)
6. The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman (Ferriss, Timothy)
7. One Step Behind (Wallander, #7) (Mankell, Henning)
8. The Pillars of the Earth (The Pillars of the Earth, #1) (Follett, Ken)
9. Firewall (Wallander #8) (Mankell, Henning)
10. The Pyramid: And Four Other Kurt Wallander Mysteries (Mankell, Henning)
11. Along Came a Spider (Alex Cross, #1) (Patterson, James)
12. Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High (Patterson, Kerry)
13. The Black Echo (Harry Bosch, #1) (Connelly, Michael)
14. The Black Ice (Harry Bosch, #2) (Connelly, Michael)
15. L’Oiseau de mauvais augure (Patrik Hedström, #4) (Läckberg, Camilla)
16. The Concrete Blonde (Harry Bosch, #3) (Connelly, Michael)
17. The Last Coyote (Harry Bosch, #4) (Conneally, Michael)
18. Trunk Music (Harry Bosch Series #5) (Connelly, Michael)
19. Angels Flight (Harry Bosch, #6) (Connelly, Michael)
20. A Darkness More Than Night (Harry Bosch, #7) (Connelly, Michael)
21. City of Bones (Harry Bosch, #8) Connelly, Michael
22. Lost Light (Harry Bosch, #9) Connelly, Michael
23. Full Black (Scot Harvath, #10) Thor, Brad
24. The Narrows (Harry Bosch, #10) Connelly, Michael
25. The Closers (Harry Bosch, #11) Connelly, Michael
26. Echo Park (Harry Bosch, #12) Connelly, Michael
27. New York to Dallas (In Death, #33) Robb, J.D.
28. The Brass Verdict (Mickey Haller, #2) (Connelly, Michael)
29. 9 Dragons (Harry Bosch, #15) (Connelly, Michael)
30. Steve Jobs (Isaacson, Walter)
31. Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age is Revolutionizing Life, Business, and Society (Jarvis, Jeff)
32. The Drop (Harry Bosch, #16) (Connelly, Michael)
33. 11/22/63 (King, Stephen)

And Currently reading:

1. The Lincoln Lawyer (Mickey Haller, #1) (Connelly, Michael)
2. The Lost Science of Money: The Mythology of Money – The Story of Power (Zarlenga, Stephen A.)
3. Your Competent Child (Jesper, Juul)

So if I finish this ones, 36 books. Not bad.

2011 has been a Henning Mankell and Michael Connelly. I can say the former is my favorite.

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Making Bread

Teba and Toni were here for a week.

Teba baked some bread. Here you have the videos:
Read more

Travel tips: who needs hotels anymore?

Traditionally when we go on holidays, we used to go to a travel agency where they could either help us build a trip with their limited options, or sell us a package (something still interesting).

Now the biggest travel agency is Internet. We we create our custom trip, filter options like dates, type of travel and get listings of suitable options.

At the same time we can check for reviews of either the website we are using, the hotels they suggest or even the destinations.

The idea of the is post is to give you some of the tools I use and stress the idea that we don’t need to book expensive hotels anymore, that a new bree of websites where you can rent apartments wherever you are planning to, could threaten hotels in the future.

Flights

Kayak will let you search for the cheapest dates to go to your desired destination or suggest you cheap destinations for your selected dates. Kayak has an incredible iPhone app and a pretty good iPad app.

Alternatives to Kayak: airfarewatchdog, yapta, farecompare…

If you are looking for a set of flights around the world, then I have to recommend you the one we used: http://www.roundtheworldflights.com/

Hotels…

Kayak will give suggest you hotels, and it uses the most notable hotel booking sites such as expedia, booking.com, etc…

If you want Cheap Hostels and Bed and Breakfasts, the we use: HostelWorld, it is great for that.

A cool resource for knowing if the hotel you are about to book is OK with tons of reviews, is: tripadvisor (also for iPhone and iPad).

Another cool tool for hotels (specially for the US) is room77 a website where they show you the best rooms for a specific hotel, with the views and so.

but… who want hotels?

Who wants to book a hotel when you can find a great located and flat or a room shared at an incredible spot…

We went to Paris booking an apartment with hometown, luxury apartments for a fraction of what you pay for a hotel, located at the heart of Paris (highly recommended). I also used Isabel’s apartments in a couple of occasions, also great apartments, even if the website is not that nice.

Here is where I want to go:  big websites covering apartments all around the globe.

The most notable:

•  Airbnb (my favorite): this one is the more professional website, the one with more investment in it. It is incredible the choice you can find there, apartments, rooms, everywhere!
• Homelidays: this one is strong in Europe. You can find a nice house in the beach, with swiming pool for a fraction of what you would pay for a hotel…
• Lofty: similar to airbnb but smaller.
• and one focused more in france: abritel

Now if you want to sleep for free, then you have to use couchsurfing: a huge network of people all around the globe that will let you use their couch to sleep for free.

Les Cépages

Went to les Cepages with Luisa and Michael yesterday. 4 dish degustarion menu with wines, cheese and desert.

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The real causes of the economic crisis

It is obvious we are living one of the biggest economic crisis of the history of the world as we know it, and it is far from over.
We have heard many complaining and writing about the causes and what has been done wrong: the america housing bubble, the banks, the debt… And we are now seeing countries struggling: Greece on the second bail out, Portugal, Spain…, and we hear the politicians trying to fight defaulting by cutting expenses, augmenting debt and going into austerity mode.

I have another point of view on the crisis:
The money is more or less like the energy. It cannot be destroyed it can only change hands. Well, the money can also be created.
When we decided to go for free trade we forgot something. I believe the main cause of this crisis lies here.
The free trade model with the WTO does not takes into consideration the movement of people, only goods and services. Let me elaborate:
The beginning is pricing. We consumers in a capitalist world are looking for the best quality at the cheapest price.
An entrepreneur therefore, if she/he wants to be competitive has to either find a niche product or market where margins can be bigger or/and manage to get her/his product/service at the cheapest price.
With free trade entrepreneurs have outsourced production to developing countries where labour is cheaper. This has been good for the entrepreneur and for the developing country, and even for us consumers because we paid less for the end product… but…. this means that jobs are lost towards this other countries.
It is true that those loosing the jobs could move up the value chain and do something else with more value. The pie grows, at least this is the assumption.
Back to free trade. When moving production of this entrepreneur to a cheaper and efficient country we have not moved the person who was doing the job here. This person has to do/learn something else.
Theoretically if there was free movement of people as we have free movement of goods and services we would end up in a world clustered with regions or countries that are very good at one/few things doing those things only and everybody there being the best in the world at doing those things. In a way this happens even without free movement of people because we learn.
The problem with this is that we become very vulnerable as we depend entirely on trade and we are not self-sufficient.
An exception is food. Countries protect their food and agricultural sectors probably because of this fear. This is why the US, the EU and most of the countries in a way spend such large amounts of money in subsidies even if they know it would be more efficient to buy these items from cheaper countries. In the WTO a lot of the disputes and part of the reason why Doha failed is because of agricultural issues and subsidies.
So what happens? In our developed countries there are fewer and fewer jobs and the wealth is concentrated in fewer successful people and companies (remember the energy comparison).
Developing countries who benefited from this free trade are now consumer countries (We have also benefited by buying cheap). This rich people in our countries knew this would happen and now they are well established to sell their products and services there too. May be now switching production to an even cheaper country.
In theory all this is good: we buy cheap, entrepreneurs have more money and we help other countries to increase their middle class, but there is a big but. Is the pie big enough?
Wealth is partly spreading to this countries that are now consumers as well. Is the earth big enough for all of us driving cars and eating fish at 1000 km of the sea and fruits out of season?. I don’t think so.
This scenario it is not sustainable. We humans are really a plague.
Developed countries can have salaries 100 times higher than developing countries and now are competing with us at the same level…. In principle income should trend to converge with time.
So yes bank mismanagement, speculation, housing bubbles,… are contributors sure, but as I said I believe there are deeper fundamental issues.
What can be done then?
Governments should not focus on the consequences but on the root of the problem, and the problem is employment.
They should do everything to boost job creation: encouraging and facilitating entrepreneurship, aiming at being a better option for companies to stay local, by relaxing taxes, facilitating work permits, training, providing a competitive environment without subsidies.
What can we do? Expect we cannot earn the same if in other places for the same job they are paid 100 times less.
This should hopefully drop prices too or make some of us consider moving to where our skills are more valuable and cost of life cheaper.
Now for those very very rich, it is going to be difficult. The money is the power, and with money they can buy lawyers, patents and do whatever to stay on the edge. Regulation and government should then closely monitor and regulate the limits, specially after the atrocities done by the banking sector.

Most of us are like kettle. We go with the flow. There are few celebrities/leaders/entrepreneurs we follow. These include the rich who employ us, but who controls their ambition? The right laws and the governments.

What is going to happen?
I don’t know. Riots in London, disruptions in poorer districts, people defaulting payments, banks absorbing this defaults, government printing more money, countries not trusting the US money, EU bailing out Spain and others, or dissolving single currency… all this here. In the developing world? well, learning to leave without us. Us becoming the old economy, they becoming the new pole of the economy.

I see less problems for the US than for the EU though…

Note that I believe that free trade is good. It is fundamental to boost productivity and efficiency, it is just that is more complex than we believe, and it has been proven that as it is, it does not work very well.

This are just some thoughts I am writing from my iPad. I would love to see a discussion on the comments…

2011 Logo Design Trends

Logo Lounge, for the past nine years, has posted annual logo design trend reports and they have just released the 2011 logo design trends report. I would love to hear your thoughts on the showcased trends.

Do these identity / branding trends effect you or your process? Do you agree with these suggestions? Have you noticed any other trends?

• Logo Lounge: 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003
• Disucssion on JCD: 2011 | 2010 | 2009

Disclaimer

On this topic of trends, one should not follow trends for the sake of following them. As Bill Gardner points out:

Every year, it’s worth noting that this is a report on trends, not a recipe book of styles. It is also not a finite list: There are other valid trends out there that are not mentioned here.

The report should serve you as an ongoing view of where logo design is headed. The word “trends” in itself can have a very negative cast, but in truth, trends aren’t bad. They reveal our growth. It’s our take on them that allows us to move even further forward.

2011 Logo Design Trends

Gradients

Juvi

Vibrate

O

Earth

Monoline

Series

Brown

Dandruff

Concentric

Loopys

Banded

Comma

Buckys

Fruit

Back Again

Isometric

Blackhole

PickUpSticks

Reactive

Medallions

Do these identity / branding trends effect you or your process? Do you agree with these suggestions? Have you noticed any other trends?’

© Artwork shown is copyright of their respective owners. Designer’s names & clients can be found on the original posting linked above. Original compilation by Bill Gardner.

(from justcreativedesign)

280 daily diary

280daily is quite possibly the future of consistent journaling and the easiest way to create a searchable archive of your life.
Secure, completely private, encrypted and safe.

How could you put 280daily to use? Below are 7 possibilities.

1. Journal. Realistically keep a journal, 280 characters only takes 2 minutes!
2. Travelling. You’re too busy having fun to write down every detail!
3. Business. Keep track of your business life.
4. Sport. Running a marathon? Track your progress.
5. Food Diary. Losing weight or getting fit?
6. Target Progress. Record progress of a large task.
7. Backwards To-Do List. What did you get done today?

280daily: Sum up your day in 280 characters from 280daily on Vimeo.

Celebrate the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day on March 8, 2011

We invite you to join tens of thousands of people coming together on bridges all over the world — from the Millennium Bridge in London, the Brooklyn Bridgein New York City, the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, to the Grand Barriere Bridge joining Rwanda and Congo — to show your support for women’s causes and celebrate women’s achievements.

We also invite you to donate to one of the incredible

Find a bridge event near you and register, or create your own bridge event

Register to join a bridge event. Attend in person or virtually. Use the search box at the top of the map to find and select a bridge event near you. Or create your own bridge event: click the “Create new event” button at the top of the map and invite others to join using our Event Toolkit.

The Event Toolkit includes assets that you can take with you to the event such as hand held banners or use to promote it such as online banners or posters.

organizations that work to improve the lives of women worldwide. Support a cause you care about at the bottom of the page. See you on the bridge!

Support a cause that you care about

Room 77

This website offers you a very cool service (in the US so far).

Room 77 is a site (and iPhone app) that helps you choose the right room in a hotel.

Normally you go online and book a room, and in the same hotel you could have very different room, one facing the sea, one with a building on the site. The idea is to have a database of the best rooms for each hotel… cool isn’t it?

Subway Animals

In 1988 the british artist Paul Middlewick started seeing something else but subway plans in the Londonian underground. He took a second look at those maps and saw a forrest. In fact he saw many and many animals formed by lines and dots that actually make the subway map. From Dogs to parrots, passing elephants or turtle, they’re practically all there. He then started drawing them and these were pretty successful. He nows sells all of these Subway Animals on his own website called Animals on the underground.

Subway Animals – Bird

Subway Animals – Cat

Subway Animals – Chicken

Subway Animals – Deer

Subway Animals – Dino

Subway Animals – Dog

Subway Animals – Dog

Subway Animals – Elephant

Subway Animals – Fish

Subway Animals – Fox

Subway Animals – Ostrich

Subway Animals – Parrot

Subway Animals – Penguin

Subway Animals – Pig

Subway Animals – Rihno

Subway Animals – Turtle

Subway Animals – WoodPecker

(from whitezine)

Irina Werning 2

I am LOVING Irina Werning‘s brilliant photo series ‘Back To The Future’. What a cool idea! And it’s good that this is an ongoing series, because I could keep looking and looking with fascination.

Irina Werning is a photographer born, and currently living in Buenos Aires.

Irina Werning

Came across this project today called ‘Back to the Future’ by photographer Irina Werning and just had to share. I think its quite genius.

I love old photos. I admit being a nosey photographer. As soon as I step into someone else’s house, I start sniffing for them. Most of us are fascinated by their retro look but to me, it’s imagining how people would feel and look like if they were to reenact them today… A few months ago, I decided to actually do this. So, with my camera, I started inviting people to go back to their future.

Tablets

Tablets have been there for ages. I remember few years ago laptops with touch screens based on windows. They were sort of a flop. I wanted a tablet laptop back in 2008…

iPhone was the pioneer of a new generation of smart phones… and the iPad set a before and an after on the tablet world.

The iPad was launched a year ago and we are expecting a new version in the coming months. This new version will probably have a front camera, and they expect also a back camera, but who is going to use a 10 inch device to take photos? for me it makes little sense.  Probably it will be lighter (not aluminium, maybe fiber or a strong resine) and will have a better processor (maybe dual core). The screen will be improved but not as good as the retina in the iPhone 4 (it would be too expensive).

Since the iPad was launched we have seen many promises of Android tablets, which never materialized. Only one the Galaxy Tab, with a very interesting form factor (7 inches), two cameras… very nice… but the current android version is not meant for tablets but for phones, so I guess it has not been as popular as expected.

Now we are seing many other tablets coming up: HTC, Blackberry, … some with new OS (fighting against Apple and Google) but most of them adopting the new version of android for tablets (so dual core). Now the fight becomes interesting.

I foresee that android will skyrocket and overpass iPad soon, even iPad 2. Lets remember it is not married to the hardware so everybody can build a platform for an android tablet, therefore bringing a lot more competition.

Also specific in the near future we will start to see devices targeted to specific tasks, like the nook color, based on android but just for reading, or even more into the future  we will seeing the stylus coming back, specially for students, or just to take notes and draw diagrams more precisely than with the fingers.

I did not buy any tablet so far, not even an ebook reader. The iPad lacked the camera and for me it would be mainly a tool to do email, internet, video conference and reading.

Now I am waiting to see what Apple has to show for the iPad 2 and I reckon I will buy it.

I still think I will switch to Android in the future. Android honeycomb is in the right direction…