THE Career Site for Accountants and Consultants.
You may know I go on Reddit sometimes to see what people are sharing and to keep track of trends.
And one trend that has been the same since I started to write this emails is that people really don’t understand what makes a good resume bullet.
I’m hoping I can help you out with that today.
[Read more…]
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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