If you haven't heard about Drop Box, it's time you head on over to www.getdropbox.com and sign up for a free account. Free accounts come with 2GB of storage space and all the features premium accounts have, the only difference to premium accounts is the fact that you get more storage.
At first it took me a minute to think about what use I would have for it, but once I found out that programs such as 1Password integrate with it, I immediately took a closer look. With the way 1Password handles it's saving of password files, you can use the dropbox as your saving location. The way dropbox works is that you have a folder on your machine, which it uses for its storage. You can see the physical files on your computer and copy files into this folder, but everytime you do, this information gets transferred to the website. When you switch to let's say your laptop that also has dropbox installed, you can access thoses same files you just uploaded, immediately. Keeping that process in mind, rather than having to constantly sync files, everything is always in sync because the dropbox that each machines has access to, is basically the same folder in each case. This same idea counts for 1Password, and if you have it setup properly, you will never have to worry about syncing passwords.
Another great feature of dropbox is the photo feature. If you upload pictures to the photo folder, it automatically turns them into a slide show that's very user friendly. Beyond that, you can share any folders in your account, including non photo folders and make them available to specific users, or to the entire public.
All in all dropbox is one of those services where I really must say that the new internet is here. Aside from the fact that this service is free, it's also very well done and has already received numerous awards for its innovational concept. This is a great service, it seems to be a great group of people running the project and one can only wait to see what else this group has up their sleeves.
The other day I started to install a new Joomla Extension called "Phoca Gallery" as I'm faced with the problem of having a large library of photos which is residing in "Gallery 2". Where Gallery 2 on its own is a great piece of software, the integration with any Joomla site isn't completely seemless. Depending on the template you're using, bridges that are used to connect Joomla with Gallery 2 face the problems of conflicting scripts from templates, css integration etc.
As I wrote in my post titled Putting Phoca Gallery to the Test, I had tried out Morfeo Show which on its own is a great extension for Joomla, however it doesn't offer any ability for users on the front end to upload photos and create categories, which is one of the main needs for me.
The first thing I did with Phoca Gallery was to install a large batch of pictures just to see what happens. The first thing I found out is that my existing photo library contains thumb nail folders which will get scanned as part of any album so that require prior cleaning up. In my case this was easily accomplished by simply logging on to the server via ssh and issuing a rescurive delete command on the folders labelled "_thumbs".
It took quite a while for the 2,500 picture strong batch to get imported and it got stuck a few times on pictures that were corrupt or the wrong format, but every time it gets stuck, Phoca Gallery manages to recover from where it left off and it continues with the thumbnail creation. All of this went OK for me, however due to my initial overlooking of the existing thumbs folders, I had a bit of cleaning up to do afterwards, since the _thumbs folders ended up causing the system creating actual categories based on those folders.
Once I had everything cleaned up, I proceeded to test the front end functionality and I must say I was rather disappointed. Where uploading of files is possible, it's not as straight forward as I had wished, and I'm sure I'm going to have to write a lot of documentation for the users on my site to be able to use it with easy. What makes up for this lack of user friendliness is the vast amount of addon modules, components and plugins which make perfect additions to the already great gallery component. From three and category modules, to content plugins for slide shows, statistics and other modules are also available and I'm rather happy with these plugins as they bring a lot of extra functionality to the gallery.
So, what's my verdict? Overall great extension though I'm not sure how well it's suited for libraries that contain thousands of pictures. The component also doesn't offer any functionality in terms of Community Builder, but judging from reading on the developer's forum of the phoca gallery, I'm sure that's something that will be tackled eventually. For now this is the best solution I can find, I've tried various other integrated Joomla Galleries such as RSGallery and others, however none of them offer the styling I've found both in Morfeo Show and Phoca Gallery.
I'm not shy to say that I'm an extension junkie. I realize that every extra functionality always comes with the risk of vulnerabilities, however I'm constantly trying to best fill the needs of my web visitors, so it make sense to keep looking for the extension I believe will best serve everyone.
I run a community site for a local alternative community here in South Florida called the Positive Vibe Movement and due to the fact that many events are held, the amount of pictures we have is immense. When the site was small, I used Gallery2 and where I personally liked all the options it has, one disadvantage for anyone trying to run a nicely integrated Joomla site and that's of course that it's not made for Joomla. It can be 'bridged' with various modules, however it never works as well as an extension such as Morfeo Show or Phoca Gallery. I have worked with Morfeo Show for a few weeks now, and it offers just about anything one could ask for in terms of importing options, content integration, and many other functions.
Recently I had posted on twitter that I was rather fond of Morfeo Show and I got a reply from the Joomla Podcast who recommended the Phoca Gallery extension and now that I have some time to play around I thought I'd give it a shot. Currently I'm importing about 2,500 pictures ranging in size and dimension and I'm basically going to see whether it gives up on me or whether it will successfully rifle through creating this large number of thumbnails.
The server is equipped with a Quad Core Intel CPU and 4GB of Memory so I'm assuming it will be able to handle it, I'm more interested in whether the component itself will handle this extended import process. The "top" command is currently showing the machine to be nearly maxed out, with the CPU usage showing a constant 85-95%.
I will follow up with another post once this process has been completed and once I'm done testing the integration of the Phoca Gallery via plugins, modules, etc.
I couldn't believe my eyes the other day when I randomly visited our local Comp USA store right around the corner. As long as I can remember, the only real value this store had to me was the fact that they were local. If your power supply had blown, or if you need an odd input device quickly, Comp USA was the store I would go to, among others.
What I had also mocked, and not just with this particular store, was the fact that they often had close out sales, inventory sales or whatever they called them and it was never really a good deal since their prices were inflated to begin with. In other words, when things were on sale at Comp USA, then it really just meant they were matching the prices of onlne retailers such as www.newegg.com. So it barely raised an eyebrow with me when in March the same thing happened again, they were conducting a national close out sale. I wen to check the inventory and was dismal. The rebates just before they closed the stores, where still laughable.
Fast forward to my revisiting their store recently where I saw astonishingly low prices on items. A 500GB external harddrive from Seagate was going for $99 and I saw various other price tags that made me check online to compare. Turns out Comp USA seems to finally get it. Not only is their inventory now something that matches places like www.tigerdirect.com but they are now obviously also competing with online retailers. From what I could tell, all the prices matched almost identically what newegg is offering which is the my main place for purchasing any hardware online.
All I have to say is smart move, without this they probably would have just shut their doors forever. The fact that I will buy locally what I would normally order online I'm sure will have an effect on things, as I'm sure other computer freaks will catch up to this. After all, if you buy it locally that's the same price as something online, you have the advantage of not having to wait for the delivery and of course you can go right back to the store and exchange it. This will be very convenient for me tomorrow when I go and return the 4GB of OCZ Ram that I just bought there yesterday not realizing that I only have four slots for memory on my motherboard which are already taken up by 4x1GB sticks. Out of some reason I thought I had 2x2GB. That's what you get for not double checking the specs of your motherboard before going out to buy new hardware to interface with it.
The bottom line here for me is this, as long as Comp USA keeps up these prices, I'll be seeing little to no reason to buying my part online anymore.
Many Musicians under estimate the power of podcasts. I'm guilty of under estimating the power of this automated process for a long time, until I realized: "Wait a minute, once subscribed all users have to do is open iTunes and if I added a new mix, then they will automatically get an update about it - neat."
Posted by: wackedmarketer in joomla, extensions on
Sep 24, 2008
Everyone has a different opinion on things, and I'm basing my judgment mainly on how well the extensions integrate into the site I'm building, and how well these extensions are managed from the front and back end.
I usually don't get too excited when software or web applications get updated but that's different in this case. Azrul Studios who are the makers of "MyBlog" and JomComment have just released the latest updates to these two great extensions.
No idea what twitter is? Neither did I until recently. A business partner of mine, Jim Spencer made me aware of this relatively new and unique communications and marketing tool. If you go to their website you'll see a quote that reads that twitter is comparable to many other things that people don't "get" at first. I have to admit I had the exact same thing happen to me. I heard about it, checked it out and wondered why anyone even signed up to it.
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