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EverNote Free Giveaway Only Today

Posted on November 15, 2007 ·

EverNote was my favorite notetaker for several years – now I have a love and hate relationship with it. Why?

The love part is easy to understand; it’s a handy, easy-to-use notetaker, which I preferred to the comparable Microsoft OneNote, and the $0 price is quite unbeatable. (I did not need handwriting, so I used the free “light” version).

The hate part: it really did not fit into strategy of moving off the desktop into the Cloud.

In fact it was the only application that broke my sync efforts between two laptops using FolderShare: if EverNote was loaded at bootup (which is the best way to use it), it “renewed” it’s data file even on the PC I was not actively using, and FolderShare would attempt to overwrite my good working copy with an older one (which however had a newer time stamp). Eventually I just got sick of it and stopped using EverNote.

Ideally I would need an online/offline note-taker, and I really don’t care if it’s a web-based product with offline capabilities or a client product with sync to the Web. Last year EverNote received $6M funding and was expected to release the web-enabled version in a few months. A year later than predicted, but here’s a new version, but from what I can see without the Web capabilities. That said, it is still a good – perhaps the best – offline notetaker, and if that’s what you want, then today is the day to download it: The $50 full version is available free, only today.

Installation is a bit confusing: first you unzip a file, click “setup” only to find it unpacks yet another set of files, then you can click the real install file. Before you get to install the program, you somehow find yourself connected to giveawayoftheday.com which will tell you your program is now activated. Whether that’s the case or not I don’t know; after installation there is no way to tell if my program is registered or not, there is, however a “purchase” link… not very promising, but let’s hope. You will know in 60 days, when some features either de-activate or not. Confusion aside, you should perform the installation today, as somewhere along the process I saw a warning that the install, not just the download has to complete within the promotional period (today).

As for the Foldershare / Sync problem, here’s a good workaround. Happy note-taking!

Filed Under: Personal Productivity · Tagged: , , , , , ,
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Windows “Live” Foldershare Dead For a Week

Posted on November 12, 2007 ·

Foldershare is a very handy tool that keeps several PC’s in sync – when it does.

Although the actual synchronization process is P2P, in fact in a local network your data typically stays behind the firewall throughout the entire process, Foldershare needs to log in to their servers to read your configuration data. And that’s where the process often dies. So far it hasn’t bothered me though, sometimes Foldershare could not log in, but I could safely rely on it getting through in a few hours and catching up with synchronization.

Now it’s been dead for days, which is really bad, as it has become a key part of my infrastructure: I sync three computers using Foldershare, and run Mozy to create online backups on one. With these types of services it’s all about trust: you don’t actively use them, check them daily, you just trust that they are there, doing their job in the background. When they don’t you’re in trouble, since you don’t know what fell out of sync. There goes the trust, quickly.

Foldershare was acquired two years ago by Microsoft, and it’s now branded as part of the “Live” services. A brand that turns into pure irony when it comes to a dead service. smile_sad

Update: there’s now an announcement on the FolderShare site. Thanks, Chris, for the pointer.

newsNovember 12, 2007

Windows Live FolderShare experienced a few technical difficulties over the weekend. The service is functioning normally now but it may take a while for all clients to reconnect. We apologize for any inconvenience this causes you.

Update (11/16): The above announcement turned out to be optimistic – that much is obvious just reading the comments below. As of today, FolderShare is completely down, with this status message:

Nov 16, 3:00PM PST
Windows Live FolderShare is being taken offline for maintenance.
The service will be resumed in the next 48 hours.
Thank you for your patience.
FolderShare Team.

I keep my fingers crossed.. and if it really works in 48 hours – well than it only took Microsoft a week to fix a so-called “Live” service. smile_angry

Update (12/11): FolderShare AutoDeletes Files. Whoops – on TechCrunch

Filed Under: Personal Productivity, Software · Tagged: , , , , , , , ,
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Picasa Photo Sync on Multiple Computers

Posted on November 19, 2005 ·

Update: this is an old post, describing an obsolete solution. Please read How to Use Picasa on Multiple Computers – The Updated Definitive Guide instead.

A while ago I wrote about Google’s otherwise excellent Picasa photo management program,  complaining that all your editing, labeling, captioning information gets lost when you move / copy your photos to another computer.

That’s because Picasa does not store such information in the photo files itself, rather uses a set of system files.  This is actually a good concept, you can experiment and safely revert back to the original –  as long as you view / process pics only within Picasa.   However, with thousands of photos, who would not want a backup?   That’s when the nightmare starts .. which files / directories should be copied?  Yes, I know … I should be on Flickr.. call me old-fashioned, I prefer to have a local copy of my images.

Well, unbelievably, Microsoft comes to help with this Google application:-)  Since they recently acquired Foldershare, it is now a freely dowloadable application.   Install it, then set up the following directories to be auto-synchronized between your computers:

  • My Pictures (or wherever the Picasa photos are) with all subdirectories.
  • C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Picasa2
  • C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Picasa2Abums

This will synchronize not only your photos, but all the edit / label ..etc information between any number of computers, over a local network or the Internet.  Btw, the program can be used to sync. any filetypes, not just your photos.

Filed Under: Personal Productivity, Software, Technology · Tagged: , , , , ,
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