Oct

20

Box.net – 50GB Free Online Storage for iOS Users

iPhone/iOS / Tools of the Trade

Online storage is becoming quite a popular commodity. Between Dropbox.com, iCloud, minus.com, Ubuntu One, and box.net, there’s no shortage of options if you find yourself running out of storage space locally.

Recently, box.net started a promotion where they’re offering 50GB of free storage to iOS 5 users. There’s no catch. You don’t have to have “x” number of friends sign up. You don’t have to tweet anything. You don’t even have to write a blog entry (hmm…). All you have to do is download the box.net iOS app to your iOS 5 powered iPhone or iPad and log in from the app. The promotion began on October 12th, and runs for 50 days.

Seems like a pretty good deal, especially given that Dropbox only offers 2GB for free. So.. is it?

Getting the free space is as easy as it sounds. As soon as you log into your account (or create a new one) within the iOS app, you’ll see that your account has been allocated 50GB. From there, it’s a bit touch-and-go. There’s a lot of upselling attempts going on. Make no mistake about it, the promotion is a loss leader, and box.net wants to convert as many accounts as possible to paid accounts. I’ve been signed up for one week, and have gotten two “I’d like to talk to you about upgrade options” emails.

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Oct

19

Sublime Text 2

Clojure / ColdFusion / Programming / Tools of the Trade

Early last year, I blogged about TextMate, which I referred to as my “new IDE of choice”. Embarrassing choice of words really, since TextMate is anything but an IDE. That was primarily what drew me to it. It is a text editor with some extra features, and much more lightweight than a typical IDE. I was happily using TextMate for day-to-day work up until a number of months back when I switched over to ColdFusion Builder 2.

I’ll say up front that I’ve never really been a huge fan of Eclipse in general, which is the framework on which ColdFusion Builder is based. I think it’s a great framework, but it can be quite the resource hog. Yet I started using ColdFusion Builder because my boss used it, and seemed to really be a fan. I figured he knew something I didn’t (which is often the case), and that I just needed to start using it and getting used to it. I was sure that after a few weeks, I’d be over the hump and happily coding away.

It’s been pretty close to a year now, and I still don’t feel comfortable with Builder. It still feels like I’m trying to like it. But it still sucks up quite a bit of RAM, CSS editing is a chore (we have a few _very_ large CSS files that Aptana chokes on), and the keyboard shortcut for commenting a block of code is:

CTRL+SHIFT+OPTION+Q+Z+BACKSPACE+UP+UP+DOWN+DOWN+LEFT+RIGHT+LEFT+RIGHT+A+B+A+B+START *
* not intended to be a factual statement

Additionally, some things that I had gotten used to with TextMate weren’t present in Builder. I was used to a closing bracket/curly brace/parentheses being auto-inserted, and me being able to type over that character. But in Builder I kept ending up with 2 closing elements. I eventually turned off the auto-close feature. Long story short… it just never really flowed for me. It never felt “right”.

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Aug

30

The DC Comics Reboot

Comics / Personal

Today is the last day of the DC Universe as we know it. Tomorrow, and I mean at 12:01 am, the DC Universe reboots.

There’s a jaded, cynical side of me that wonders if this is simply a gimmick that will be erased in a year. Let’s face it, it’s not like super heroes die and then eventually come back. Granted, this is a much larger scale, but it could be a shrewd marketing move to boost sales for a year before returning things to the status quo. But let’s assume for a moment that this is a true reboot. If this is truly the case, I think it’s brilliant.

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Aug

07

Preparing for your Next Tech Conference

Beer / Humor / Programming

When surrounded by your peers, you want to be able to speak intelligently about certain subjects that may arise. When your peers are computer geeks, you want to be able to speak intelligently about… well, beer of course.

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Aug

03

Clojure in 3 Minutes

Clojure / Programming

There are a few different ways to install and configure Clojure. I was shown this way, which seems to be the easiest, most straightforward way of getting Clojure up and running. I’m pretty sure it’s the most straightforward way that I’ve seen of getting any language up and running. Stick with me and you’ll have written your first line of Clojure locally within 3 minutes. Five at the most.

We’re going to use Leiningen to get Clojure installed and running. Taken from the readme file:

Leiningen is for automating Clojure projects without setting your hair on fire.

Working on Clojure projects with tools designed for Java can be an exercise in frustration. With Leiningen, you just write Clojure.

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