THE Career Site for Accountants and Consultants.
Tonight my family and I decided to go out to dinner to one of those hibachi style restaurants. We don’t go there often but when I do, I like to make the most of it. By that, I mean the lobster tail and filet mignon combo is usually my go to.
A little after the onion volcano – easily the fan favorite – my wife asks if I saw her text. I hadn’t so I checked to see why she was texting me from 3 feet away. [Read more…]
This weekend, I read the follow-up to one of the most bizarre stories in recent memory. The story involved a young Ivy League student, by the name of Nayla Kidd, who went completely off the grid for about three weeks.
Nayla’s story caught my eye originally because we went to the same small boarding school, and after she was reported missing, there were a number of people sharing posts looking for any details on her whereabouts. Fearing the worst, I also shared her story in hopes that her family would have some closure one way or another.
Nayla recently resurfaced and this is where things start getting a little weird. [Read more…]
I think it was back in February when my buddy sent me a link about this new email app called Mailbox has quite a few features going for it and as with anything else it has some limitations, so to change things up from the usual routine, I’m going to start with the cons. One key limitation is the search functionality. As it stands, the search in the Gmail app is unmatched by either native iphone mail app or this latest offering from Mailbox. And it’s not even close.
The biggest “fault” with Mailbox is the fact that it’s only for iPhone and only works with Gmail. Believe it or not, people still exist who like to use Yahoo and Hotmail as their email services of choice. And with hotmail 2.0 aka Outlook aggressively pursuing users, Mailbox excludes a large cross-section of mobile email users from its user base.
The app is free now but one would think the goal is to have as many users as possible to convert to customers at some point in the future.
Mailbox has already been purchased by Dropbox so maybe that was the goal of the original developers. As for how this benefits Dropbox, I’m still trying to figure that one out. Part of me still thinks selling Mailbox to Google makes a lot more sense than the deal that took place and once I talk you through some of the features you’ll feel the same way.
Now that we got that out of the way let’s talk about what Mailbox can do. When you first log into Mailbox, it looks similar to the iPhone native email app, nothing spectacular at first glance. One difference, though, is the the app badge is the number of inbox messages, regardless of how many are unread. Once you start sorting your emails, though, that’s where the magic happens.
The interface for Mailbox makes the Gmail app look amateur in some ways, and that’s saying a lot because I really like the Gmail app’s functionality. Using swipes almost exclusively makes Mailbox surprisingly easy to use. Short and long swipes to the left or the right provides pretty much all actions you need to execute within the app on your journey to #inboxZero.
Do I like it? Yes, I might even go so far as to say I love the interface…but without better search and support of Microsoft Exchange email accounts, I can’t yet rely on it as my exclusive email app.
Here’s a look at some screenshots from the app so you can see the interface for yourself.
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| You can easily acess the different sections of Mailbox from the main screen. |
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| Short swipe right: archive |
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| Long swipe right: delete |
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| Short swipe: later |
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| Options for choosing “Some Day” |
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| Long swipe left: add to list |
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| Default Mailbox lists |
As promised, I spent some time playing around with the Box and Dropbox cloud storage apps to see if one is better than the other. What prompted me to do this is that Box was/is giving away 50GB of storage free for life to new users.
I’ve been a Dropbox user for a while but getting 25x more space for free seemed like it was worth at signing up for and then figuring out if it was a better product later. Standard operation for any of these cloud storage systems (Box, Dropbox, Google Drive) is to have an app for tablets, mobile, and desktop in addition to the basic web-based access you get by going directly to any one of those services’ respective websites.
Before jumping into the comparison, let’s establish some basics about cloud storage for those who aren’t familiar with it. To put it simply, cloud storage is a system of offsite servers where you can maintain all of your data without using any of the precious space on your hard drive. So why all the talk about the cloud? You can access this information from anywhere with an internet connection. You never have to remember to bring that flash drive or portable hard drive again. If you’ve ever used Microsoft SharePoint before, these cloud storage options work in a similar fashion.
Now that we took care of that, we can move on with the point of this post, comparing two cloud storage options, which will cover three areas:
Note that all descriptions and screenshots that follow are based on use of the iPad/tablet versions. Experience may vary depending on the platform you use to access either service.
When logging into Box or Dropbox, the home screens look almost identical, so I’ll only screenshot one of them below. You get a nice split screen view with all of your files and folders on the left with the contents of the highlighted file or folder appearing on the right. Both services have the ability to create folders and move files around within the application. You’ll also find that you can flag files as favorites to make finding things a bit easier to find if you have lots of files stored in the cloud. Advantage: Push
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| Box Home Screen |
Dropbox and Box each have the ability to allow you to open files in different programs for different viewing and editing purposes. The strange thing here is that Dropbox treats photos differently than other files as you’ll see below. By that I mean, you don’t have as many options available to you if you want to save a copy of the file in a different application. This could be for photo editing, marking up PDF documents or transferring to a different cloud service. There’s no reason the same type of functions shouldn’t be available for all file types. Advantage: Box
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| Box Photo Options |
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| Dropbox Photo Options |
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| Dropbox PDF/ebook options |
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| Box Sharing Options |
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| Dropbox Sharing Options |
At the end of the day, you have to do what’s best for you but I’ll tell you how I approach this decision. With the proliferation of options available, my first priority is using the one that gives me the best chance at keeping everything in one place. All of the apps I tested that integrated with Dropbox functioned just as well with Box. Within each app, the features were comparable enough that the choice came down to space, so I’m going with Box.
Which one are you using? Is space alone enough to make you switch?
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I’m fairly new to the blogosphere having started blogging in the middle of last year but I’ve taken a liking to it. If you ask my wife, she might say it’s an obsession but I can’t help it. When I do anything, I like to do it well. Part of that means reading lots of other blogs. One particular blog that provides great information on blogging is Dukeo.
In this post I’m reviewing Dukeo as part of a contest that is going on for the blog’s two-year anniversary. This review could put $200 right into my bank account.
Breadth – My twitter stream consistently produces shares of Dukeo’s content. And by consistently I mean a number of users (many high profile bloggers in their own right) all sharing different posts that I haven’t read yet. For a site that’s only two years old, the breadth of content is quite impressive. If you want to know anything about blogging or just get another perspective on a blog-related topic, you can find it here.
Simplicity – Dukeo’s simple design also ensures that new visitors to the site aren’t overwhelmed by a bunch of different elements they probably will never use.
Downloadable content – Many blogs cover their respective subject matter in depth but don’t provide an easy way for you to access the information when you’re offline. Dukeo provides three ebooks now in exchange for your email address, which I have downloaded already but haven’t gotten around to reading them yet.
About Page – While I know the author of the blog makes his living on the site, the about page comes off a little too sales-y for my liking and the emotional appeal with an assurance that you can “take care of people you love when they’ll need you”rubs me the wrong way.
Pop-ups – I HATE pop-ups in general but what I don’t like here is that I’ve already provided my email and I still get the pop-ups. Now this could be a result of me using multiple browsers but it doesn’t make it any less frustrating. On a related note, I’ve found the pop-ups to make browsing on my iphone 5 almost impossible because the “x” to close the pop-up window does not get displayed.
Search – If there is a search field somewhere on the site I can’t find it. Given the amount of content on the site, a search option would be a nice add to help parse out the info you’re looking for.
Even with the areas of improvement note above, the value Dukeo provides greatly outweighs any of the negatives and I continue to come back to the site.
photo credit: Annie Mole via photopin cc
