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Tech giants team up to build friendlier security tools
If there's one overarching, fundamental truth about the internet, it's that you're never as safe as you think you are. Dropbox, Google and the Open Technology Fund get that all too well -- that's why they (along with a slew of security researchers) teamed up to launch a new organization called Simply Secure. The name says it all, really -- everyone involved knows there are plenty of effective digital security tools floating around, but not very many of them are designed with friendliness and ease of use in mind. That's where Simply Secure comes in.
Amazingly fast and file transfer with Send Anywhere
I don't typically think of moving files between devices as being very difficult. Then again, I'm an old geezer and remember "sneakernet"-moving files by physically carrying them around on floppy discs because there was no network. It's really not that hard to transfer files anymore and there are lots of ways to easily send them pretty much wherever we want. Send Anywhere, however, surprised me with a different approach to secure, point-to-point file transfers between computers or mobile devices. The Send Anywhere app is free and requires iOS 5.0 or later and is compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch and is also available for Android, Windows, and on the Mac through the browser. The iOS app is optimized for iPhone 5. The app claims to have been created for "simple, unlimited, instant file transfer." That's still needed in a world where not everyone is using an iOS device. Between iPhones and iPads you can use AirDrop. You can also just email or transfer many files using SMS, or use Dropbox (but then again, not everyone does). Considering that, as well as file size limitations, it really is useful to be able to send a single file one device or computer to another, directly, without uploading anything to some server. There's also the matter of security. Email and SMS are "in the open," meaning that the contents of their messages are easily readable by others. If you are concerned about privacy and security, you need to take extra measures. Send Anywhere uses SSL and a 6-digit key for standard transfers and offers enhanced security keys as well. Files are transferred, not stored on any servers. All transfers are only available for a limited time, the default being 10 minutes. That's all good news. To use Send Anywhere devices do need to be online for transfer files. It does not use any direct networking, like Bluetooth. But both devices are on the same local network then your file will not travel out onto the larger internet. It's not often that a piece of software surprises me, but Send Anywhere managed it. I loaded the free app on both my iPhone and my iPad and then transferred photos between them easily. I then visited Send-Anywhere.com on my Mac. I dropped a file into the Send box and clicked the Send files button. Here's where the surprise hit me: there was my iPhone listed as under "Nearby devices." Very cool (NOTE: your device must be turned on and the app launched for this to work). A simple click on my listed phone and I instantly received a notification about the file. That little bit of unexpected nicety was a pleasant surprise. I was more skeptical about the QR code. I typically find them annoying and useless, but with this app they actually serve a useful function. Say that you and an associate are together and she wants to send you a file. Using Send Anywhere on her device she can display a one-time-use QR code and you, using your device with Send Anywhere, can use your camera to capture the code on her device and initiate the file transfer. Slick. It works great, but it may be overkill. If you're together and both have the app launched you should be able to detect each other. Or you could type in the short code number. It worked, but it may not be necessary. There are, however, considerable limitations to Send Anywhere, largely due to how files are used on most mobile devices. iOS is built to largely give you access to desecrate files outside of specific apps. With Send Anywhere you can send and receive photos, videos, and contact records, but that's about it on iOS devices. You can send files that you've received from someone else, but not a file that you might have somewhere else on your device. You can't send music, but you might be able to receive it if sent from another device, although you won't be able to move it to your Music library. I was able to successfully send photos and PDFs between iOS devices and my Mac and it was very easy. I was not able to successfully send a Pages document. I tried sending different Pages files multiple times from my Mac to my iOS devices and each time the transfer ended with an error. I could successfully send and receive Microsoft Word documents between devices. I'm forced to conclude that however surprising and nifty this app is that there's really not much use for it. If you do find that you need to frequently transfer files between devices and can't easily do it with email, SMS, or through online storage like Dropbox, then you might find Send Anywhere useful. I'm certain that you'll find it well made and very easy to use.
Warning: Dropbox isn't playing well with iOS 8
If you're a Dropbox user who is planning on upgrading your iOS devices to iOS 8 today, be careful. According to the company's blog, Dropbox and Carousel are having issues uploading photos and videos to cloud storage. While the app's developers hammer out the kinks, new Dropbox and Carousel updates have been pushed that prevent photos and videos from uploading automatically in order to prevent further breakage. If you've gotten into the habit of assuming your content is being uploaded automatically to Dropbox, and then deleting the copies you have stored on your iPhone or iPad, take extra care to make sure your photos and video recordings are fully backed up in your Dropbox before axing them elsewhere. Dropbox notes that it is in the process of fixing the issue and should have a new update ready soon, so keep an eye on the company's Twitter support profile for details on when that will arrive.
iOS 8 doesn't play well with Dropbox's automatic backup feature (update)
You excited that iOS 8's scheduled to land on your iPhones and iPads later? Cool, but if you avidly use Dropbox to back up your photos and videos, the new software comes bundled with a dash of disappointment. According to Dropbox, its service has an unfortunate compatibility issue with Apple's latest mobile platform that specifically affects the Automatic Backup function. The new software apparently prevents both Dropbox and its photo managing app Carousel from properly uploading photos and videos to the cloud. Update (9/18): Refreshed versions of Dropbox and Carousel are now available that address the automatic backup problems, as well as an issue that caused some duplicate photo uploads and crashes. Users on iOS 8 are encouraged to grab the new versions ASAP.
Security app automatically encrypts your shared files so you don't have to
In this post-PRISM world, basically everyone is worried about privacy (and rightly so!) -- especially when it comes to cloud-based storage. Offloading your files to the likes of Dropbox doesn't come without a share of caveats regarding security, so that's where Places comes in. What sets the startup's service apart from its peers, according to TechCrunch, is local, automatic, end-to-end encryption for your documents and media. There apparently isn't another step you need to take between uploading the video of your toddler's first steps and it being securely locked away. What's more, Places uses your local machine to host offloaded content, relying on its centralized servers only when your PC is otherwise unavailable. And because your digital life is encrypted on the client side, Places claims it doesn't have the key to unlock anything stored on its end should the government or anyone else come knocking. That, of course, is reserved for the intended recipient and no one else.
OneDrive takes cues from Dropbox to make file-sharing easier
Looking for some OneDrive news? Good, because we've got it. First up, now you can upload files as big as 10GB using the Mac and Windows desktop apps, and all of the mobile applications, according to Microsoft. Redmond says that its also increased the amount of simultaneous uploads and downloads which allows for faster syncing as well. Perhaps the biggest new bit, though, is the ability to get shareable file-links directly from Windows Explorer without the hassle of going to the web client and copying the file-address that way. It sounds a whole lot like what Dropbox has been doing for awhile now, and Microsoft says that this was a top feature request. Last but not least, the outfit says that it's worked to bring dragging and dropping folders directly into the OneDrive website via browser, specifically namedropping Chrome, into the fold too. If there's anything else you want to see in the app, drop Redmond a line -- it seems like those requests don't fall on deaf ears.
Hands on with Voice Dream's ebook narration
As the school year heads back into session, many students have a lot of new reading on their plate. Parents whose children struggle with assigned books might be considering ways to augment that material. Over the summer, Amazon regularly offered to add Audible narrations to assigned reading titles for my kids. For example, I purchased E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime for US$9.99 (pre-tax) and picked up its companion audio track for just $4.99. The normal price is $9.95 on iTunes. The audio cassettes, incidentally, sell from $138.45, not including shipping. I needed to lend her my iPad 2 to access the Kindle app/voice integration (it is not available for releases that run on the original iPad), but on the whole it was a successful experiment. With that experience in mind, I decided to investigate more automated solutions. Voice Dream Reader ($9.99, additional voices available with in-app purchases) represents one of the better-reviewed text-to-speech apps currently available in the App Store. I obtained a promo copy and tested out excerpts from several books. At the suggestion of the developer, I tried both the default built-in voice and a purchased upgrade, the $4.99 Salli voice from Ivona. The upgraded voice was clearly superior to the default, with better intonation and inflection. And yet, despite that, each of the testers had difficulty listening to long-form reading material. No matter how excellent the synthesis, a lack of human performance really impacted the comprehension and enjoyment of text. I suspect this is a learning process, and one that our short testing framework could not accommodate, as visually impaired readers do quite well with synthesized material. However, for augmenting reading for learning, my real-world trials had me more focused on the synthesis of the speech than its content. My testers agreed. For them, the mechanical dictation became a distraction rather than a supplement. I found the app very well made. It easily imported the non-DRM ebooks I downloaded from Safari and added through Dropbox integration. Support for each book's table of contents made it simple to navigate to the portion I wanted to read, and word-by-word highlighting helped reinforce the content / audio integration. I suspect Voice Dream would work best for short material and for those who have trained themselves to efficiently process automated speech. As for my commute and my children's reading, the Audible tracks remain the winners, but I'm glad I was able to give the app a good try. For those who can best take advantage of automated text-to-voice, it seems to offer a solid choice.
Dropbox Pro changes increase storage to 1TB at the same price
Perhaps the most useful utility on all of my Apple devices is Dropbox, which makes sharing data between all of those various and sundry devices a literal no-brainer. Until today, Dropbox users with a Dropbox Pro account paid US$99.99 a year for a rather paltry 100 GB of storage. That sounds like a lot until you begin using Dropbox to back up all of your RAW photo files, videos, and every selfie you've ever snapped from your iPhone. Well, worry no further -- if you're a Dropbox Pro user, you'll soon find that your storage has magically increased tenfold to a full terabyte. While the storage bump is the big news, the Dropbox gang also announced a number of other impressive changes to Dropbox Pro. First, and most important to those who use Dropbox to share documents with others, a number of changes have been made to sharing controls. It's possible to apply a password to a shared link now so that only those who have the password can view the document. Those shared links can now have an expiration time and date, and you can give files in a shared folder view-only permissions so that they can't be inadvertently (or maliciously) edited. Living in a mobile world, there's always a chance that one of our devices is going to be lost or stolen. The new Dropbox Pro remote wipe feature lets you tell Dropbox to delete files from a specific computer the next time it goes online. Most Dropbox Pro users have already received email notification of the changes, which will roll out to all of those users within the next couple of days.
Dropbox Pro plan now offers 10x the storage for the same price
Beefing up your free Dropbox account with extra space isn't hard if you know what to look for, but the company just smartly streamlined its Pro plans in case you need even more cloud action. Kiss those tricky tiered plans goodbye: all that's left now is a 1TB option that'll set you back $9.99 a month (or $99 a year). Not a bad deal considering that's how much you would've paid Dropbox monthly for 100GB of cloud storage just a few days ago, and the company is sweetening the pot with some neat new sharing and security features too. Left your laptop at that seedy diner over in Toledo? A few clicks is all it takes to remotely wipe all the synced files that were still on it. You can exercise a bit more caution with your shared links too by slapping password protection and expiration dates on them, too. Really, it's those features that Dropbox hopes will give it an edge over some larger rivals -- Google Drive's monthly rate plans dipped to similar levels earlier this year, while Amazon still costs a ton compared to both.
Dropbox for iOS now lets you search within Word and PowerPoint documents
Finding exactly what you're looking for in Dropbox has gotten even easier thanks to the latest update to its iOS app. Thanks to newly improved "high fidelity" previews, users can now search within Word and PowerPoint documents for the content they're looking for. The app also now features support for larger animated GIFs and assorted bug fixes, like being better at opening back up to where you were when you closed the app. Finally the app's caching has been improved so it uses up less data and disk space on your device. Given the incredibly low 16 GB ground floor for iPhone space ever little improvement to storage management helps.
Mailbox for Mac begins rolling out in beta to a handful of lucky testers
The transition from mobile to desktop seems like a natural evolution for Mailbox, which began as a clever time-saving email app for iOS. Four months ago, the Dropbox-owned venture excited fans by announcing that it would soon have an option on Mac as a limited beta. Today's the day: Mailbox is ready to roll out the app to the first batch of early adopters. The service will begin rolling out to those who've signed up for the beta online, as well as a handful of current Mailbox users. If you're not one of the lucky winners tomorrow, be patient -- the rollout will come in batches, and the company assures us that you'll still get your hands on it before the final version is ready. Each beta tester will be issued a betacoin (not to be confused with other forms of digital currency), and you'll even receive additional betacoins to share with friends as soon as you download the app.
CloudFella manages cloud accounts but is hampered by crashes
CloudFella for iOS manages your files in four of the major cloud services: Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, and Evernote. CloudFella gives you access to all of your files across these services, provides searching, statistics, local storage, and a duplicate files finder. Unfortunately, it is marred by a cumbersome interface and frequent crashes. CloudFella requires iOS 7 or later, and costs US$1.99. It's a universal app, but is optimized for iPhone 5. Getting started is simple. After tapping on the big cloud (the only way to reach the "Link Cloud Services" screen) you tap on each service and authorize CloudFella to access your files. Once linked you need to download the information about your files by swiping right on each service. The item you swipe your finger across does not actually move as it does in other apps, but just begins downloading the data. If you swipe to the left by accident (as I did my first time through) you unlink the account and have to start over. There is no warning or confirmation. It just happens. Downloading the files info went smoothly for three of my four accounts. Downloading files info from Dropbox led to a cascade of error dialog boxes. After clearing twenty of these dialogs, I force-quit the app and re-launched it. Dropbox showed up in my statistics on the dashboard even though the "Link Cloud Services" screen still showed it as not downloaded. Subsequent attempts to download the files info for Dropbox resulted in crashes. When I unlinked Dropbox, it still showed up in the dashboard. The dashboard shows you some statistics about your cloud accounts. Unfortunately, the main pie chart cannot handle the number of files I have and displays a graph with largely illegible numbers that are either cut off the left edge of the screen or jumbled together. Other charts display file sizes, last modified dates, and the number of files and directories. CloudFella has a search function that can search all four services at the same time. This, for me, is incredibly useful as I am a heavy user of both Dropbox and Evernote and being able to search both at the same time would be helpful to me. Unfortunately, searching did not always work. When you perform a search you have to click cancel to begin a new search, which is non-standard and initially confusing until you get used to it. More concerning is the fact that some of my search queries did not return files I know exist. CloudFella lets you download files for local storage and fast access. With the first PDF file I tried, it indicated that it was downloading the file. After a few minutes of this, I force quit the app again (I could not tap on anything else) and re-launched it. The file appeared in the vault anyway and I was able to open it and scroll through it. Finally, CloudFella offers a duplicates feature that is supposed to find duplicate files across all four services. There is little I can say about it because the app crashed every time I tried to use it. CloudFella has the potential to be a useful tool for anyone who manages more than one large cloud account but its non-standard approach to many basic functions and instability get in the way of its usefulness. Once the interface and bugs are cleaned up, it will be worth its US$1.99 price tag.
Dropbox for Android finally gets a smarter search system
With cloud storage options becoming as numerous as actual clouds peppering the sky, it's nice to see app developers hunkering down to make serious improvements. That's exactly what the folks at Dropbox did with their latest Android app update -- it packs the ability to preview documents (perfect for all those lengthy, similarly titled PDFs you've got kicking around) but the biggest draw here is the app's much-improved search system. Need to find a pesky file hidden in a certain folder? That's a cakewalk now. Hazy on the exact name of the photo you're looking for? The app suggests filenames while you peck out your furtive queries, and highlights potential matches while you type. If anything, the only sore spot here might be the brief wait involved: the update hasn't hit our devices just yet, but Dropbox says it'll trickle out into the wild over the next few hours.
Dropbox for Business lets you limit your coworkers' access to shared files
Dropbox for Business is good for collaborating on files stored in the cloud, but it hasn't had fine-grained permission control -- not great if you have a sensitive project you'd rather not share with the folks in Accounts Receivable. You'll be glad to hear, then, that Dropbox is introducing some much-needed access limits. You can now say which of your colleagues can edit or view a given file, and you can both set expiry dates and passwords for shared links. In other words, contractors won't get to peek at that big company report once their work is done. The new tricks are available through Dropbox for Business' early access program today, and there are promises of more features within a few months; they'll get the ability to search for text within files, work on Office documents with others and preview that same content on Android.
Dropbox makes syncing your large files faster
Cloud storage service Dropbox has announced a feature called Streaming Sync, which promises to improve the way its platform handles the syncing of large files. Thanks to Streaming Sync, which is part of a revamped desktop client, users will get a major speed boost when syncing any file over 16MB -- up to twice as fast as any regular sync, according to the company. Dropbox notes that it was able to accomplish this by overlapping the upload and download phase of the file synchronization, meaning it can use its servers to push the data to your device, rather than letting your smartphone, tablet, laptop or desktop do all the work. Along with Streaming Sync, Dropbox also brought support for four additional languages to the app, as well as the ability to view your most recent account activity via a new notifications menu.
Google, Dropbox, Canon and others team up to disarm future patent trolls
Patent litigation from non-participating entities (casually known as "patent trolls") is the bane of a technology firm's legal department. Fighting patent lawsuits from firms that subsist completely on licensing and legal action is a frustrating waste of resources, and one that often stifles innovation indirectly. Now, a new partnership between Canon, Dropbox, Google, Asana, SAP and Newegg hopes to cut off would-be patent trolls at the knees. It's called the License on Transfer Network (LOT), and it's a patent-licensing agreement that neuters a patent's potential for litigation before prospective trolls can exploit it.
Dropbox for iOS update adds new setup and file management options
Dropbox for iOS has been steadily improving since it was released, but the latest update makes the service easier to use on both your phone and your computer, along with introducing new file management options. The biggest, or maybe the most interesting, development is the ability to set up Dropbox on your computer using your webcam and iPhone. In the updated app there is a section called Connect. After you click Connect, the app prompts you to visit http://www.dropbox.com/connect, and point your iPhone at your webcam, which scans a QR code that downloads Dropbox to your computer and sets up your account for you. If you've ever struggled to explain setting up Dropbox to a computer-illiterate friend, this change will make your life easier. File management also gets a big boost. The app has added recently used locations to make saving files to your most common folders easier. In addition to recent locations, Dropbox has streamlined favoriting files to ensure the files you need are always with you. Now users can move files around in the favorites tab by simply holding on the file and dragging. In addition, by swiping right on a file in your favorites the app now saves the file to your phone so it can be accessed even when you're offline. Finally, the app has added support for four additional languages: Danish, Dutch, Swedish, and Thai. You can find the latest version of Dropbox right now for free in the iTunes Store.
Alfred, Dropbox, Hazel, and Markdown? All in a day's work
"How does a geek-pastor use a computer?" is a question that I assume a lot of people ask themselves, although they probably don't. But if they did, this would be one answer: I need to make a list of the readings and sermon titles for the church secretary and choir director, so one can make the weekly worship guide, and the other can plan the music. I put my schedule up as a web page, like this: The reading is linked to the text so that everyone involved can easily access the text (I'll need it for sermon preparation, and the choir director will need it to see what the text is about so she can try to match it to potential hymns/anthems). Which reminds me: I have an Alfred shortcut for looking up Bible passages from the NRSV: A month year of Sundays Today the church secretary reminded me that I needed to update the list, as I had gone through all of the previous weeks that I had scheduled (oops). I decided that it was a good time to make a list of all of the Sundays between now and the end of 2015; that way I could start to fill in the dates of special events, vacation, etc. So... how would a sane person make a list of Sundays? Maybe look at a calendar? Try to figure them out in your head? Not me. I wrote a shell script: Actually I made my loop a little more complex, in order to give me the Markdown formatting that I wanted for the list: That gave me a nice, clean "unordered list" in HTML. The first line under the date will be the Scripture Reading. The second line will be the sermon title. The third line (if any) will be any notes about that particular Sunday. Fortunately I didn't have to include all of that in the output because I could use CSS' "generated content" feature to automatically add it for me: Markdown Markdown is a simple way of writing plain text which can be automatically translated into HTML (the language of web pages). But I don't want to have to remember to manually update the HTML page every time I edit the plain text Markdown file. So I have Hazel do that for me: Translation: Any time the file worship.mmd in the folder worship.luo.ma is updated, run that script on it, which will automatically convert it from Markdown to HTML and save it as the file index.html. The ~/Sites/worship.luo.ma/ folder is linked to my Dropbox, so I can edit that file on any of my Macs (or on my iPad or iPhone), and every time I press "Save" the website version will update, usually in less than a minute (the amount of time it takes Dropbox to sync and Hazel to notice the file has changed). (Have I mentioned how much I love having a MacMiniColo server? Because I do. A lot.) You can see the result for yourself at http://worship.luo.ma, or view the Markdown file at http://worship.luo.ma/worship.mmd. Now... if only I could get Hazel to clean up my actual desktop.
Tech CEOs push US Senate for stronger surveillance reform
The CEOs of AOL, Apple, Dropbox, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter and Yahoo! all agree: more needs to be done to reform the government's snooping capabilities. That's the thrust of a letter that appeared online yesterday, anyway. Though the list of signatories contains a handful of rivals, all of them agree that the version of the USA Freedom Act that recently passed through the US House of Representatives still sucks and that the US Senate needs to fix it.
Apple takes on Dropbox with iCloud Drive
Apple's slowly improved iCloud since it transitioned from MobileMe, but this year, it's getting a serious upgrade. On stage at WWDC 2104, Apple's SVP of Software Craig Federighi introduced us to a better way to manage files with the new iCloud Drive. With Drive, all of your iCloud files are available right inside Finder, letting you access documents and media wherever you are on your Mac. Because they're on iCloud, they're automatically auto-synced across devices and are fully searchable and taggable. You will, of course, need OS X Yosemite to take advantage of Finder support, but Apple hopes you'll ditch Dropbox's and Google's services in favor of Drive's deep OS support. As expected, iOS 8 will also include iCloud Drive functionality, letting you to work with a single version of a document on all of your devices (which surprisingly includes Windows machines).
