Category: Toys & Tech

Dropbox is addictive

Getting more Dropbox space is like earning achievements in your favorite video game.

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It’s been a while since I wrote about Dropbox vs. Google Docs (for MS Office document backup), and there have been new developments since then that really make this software interesting. So how do you get started?

First, create a Dropbox account (clicking this link gives you and I both 250MB extra storage space on top of your initial 2GB)

After you sign up, you will be presented with a list of basic tasks that teach you the basics of the service. As an incentive, you are awarded extra storage space (250MB) upon completion of all the tasks.

Next, complete simple tasks (like linking your Twitter/Facebook accounts to Dropbox) on this page to further boost your Dropbox space (128MB x 6). Note: You may not want to connect Dropbox to your social networking accounts due to privacy concerns.

Finally, make links for your friends/visitors with your referral code (like this) to boost space for both of you.

Get your own custom icon for comments on this blog

The icons (AKA avatars) that appear next to your name in the comments on this blog and many others is controlled by a company called Gravatar. If you sign up on their site, you can choose your own icon and the information that appears when you comment here and anywhere else using Gravatars.

Note: Even if you don’t make an account, my site is set up to assign you a randomly-patterned icon each time you comment.

RIP Bloglines, wistrab Loris

So Bloglines is dead. Just as well, since it seems the owners are busy licking Twitterific balls. I’m glad I switched, even though it was a couple years late.

Feeling nostalgic, I logged in one last time and encountered a captcha – a brilliant one. Inspired by a series of captcha cartoons my brother showed me last week, I spent a whole five minutes creating my own:

…I guess I’ll be keeping my day job.

INN-DARA SMS Spammers deserve to die

I use text messaging on my mobile quite sparingly, as is the case with voice calls as well, since my life has become devoted to babies. So it’s a real irritation that some stupid fucking Thai celebrity news service called INN-Dara has been spamming me with 15-20 messages every day for the past two weeks; it’s basically caused me to stop checking messages altogether.

I’m on DTAC, and all the other people I know receiving this spam are also on DTAC. However, calling DTAC to complain has proved unhelpful – they simply say that this is a “service” that will cut off automatically after 15 days if we don’t subscribe.

DTAC and INN-Dara, please take notice: NOBODY LIKES YOUR FUCKING SPAM! PLEASE CHOKE ON FETID RAT DROPPINGS AND DIE HORRIBLY, SLOWLY, AND PREFERABLY AWAY FROM THE VIEW OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN (and don’t let us know about your funeral by text message, either – nobody wants to go).

UPDATE: Of course, within seconds of publishing this post, I received a new message from INN-DARA. Aaaaaaaargh!! Karma’s a bitch, bitches!

UPDATE: I’ve found out how to unsubscribe from this irritating as hell service (a tested solution). From your DTAC phone, dial *74852 and press the call button. You should receive a final message that you have unsubscribed. If you are on another mobile carrier such as True Move or AIS, or are subscribed to another “service” perpetrated by the spammers at INN News, refer to the chart below (I’m keeping it on my server so as not to send these fuckers any traffic). What really gets to me is that DTAC won’t tell you how to unsubscribe; it’s quite obvious they are getting paid to allow this spam on their network.

Dropbox vs. Google Docs for document backup

Hey, that rhymes, yo.

Before Dropbox came along (I actually tried 3 or 4 similar services, but Dropbox was the best), I was backing up all of my Office documents (MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint) in Google docs, which replaced the time-honored practice of e-mailing documents to myself… As it turns out, I was better off doing just that, because I recently discovered that a lot of the formatting in the documents (particularly tables and tabs) were being corrupted by Google docs, whereas I haven’t had a problem with e-mail attachments for many years.

But all of that is moot now because Dropbox has largely replaced both e-mail backups and flash drive transfers (for “small” files) between all of my PCs. Don’t get me wrong, I still use Google docs on a regular basis and prefer it to any other Microsoft Office alternative (although not to Office itself), but for pre-existing Office document backup and fidelity, I prefer Dropbox.