Let’s dive in…

There you go, fifty of our favourite free web apps! If you’ve got your own preferences that we’ve missed, be sure to share them in the comments section below!

Last year, Jarel wrote an in-depth review comparing CloudApp and Droplr, but a lot has changed in the past year. Let’s look at each of these apps features today, including their native Windows and OS X apps, so you can see which app makes the most sense for you.

So What’s the Big Difference?

For apps that are so simple, there are actually a number of little ways that Droplr and CloudApp are different. They’ve both started out as simple ways to share files from your Mac, but both now make it easy to share files from most devices and the web. They may work similarally in many ways, but in some ways they approach sharing differently. Here, we’ll look at each of their basic services, pro accounts, web apps, note and code sharing options, Windows and Mac apps, and other ways you can user them. Hopefully you’ll have a better idea which one would work best for you by the end!

The Service

the core stuff

CloudApp

CloudApp, at first glance, would appear to be the most Mac focused of the two, but it’s actually a great tool for sharing from Macs, PCs, the web, and more. CloudApp may work best from Macs, but you can signup for a free account on their site, then share files right from the web or from any of the apps that work with CloudApp. CloudApp lets you upload up to 10 files, each up to 25Mb, per day for free, and there’s no cap on the total number of files you can save in your account. Your files will be saved with a short cl.ly link, and the sharing pages won’t feature any ads. In fact, you won’t see ads anywhere throughout CloudApp’s service. CloudApp also lets you pick between a short public link and a long, more private link for each of your files.

Droplr

Droplr‘s always been a nice app for sharing files, but this year has undergone a ton of changes to make it even nicer. It’s now very web focused, letting you even upload files right from their site without getting an account. It still works best with their Mac app, though, but there are also Droplr apps for Windows and iOS. With a free Droplr account, you can upload as many files as you want as long as their 25Mb or under. Also, you can only store a total of 1Gb of files with a free account. Your files will be saved with a short d.pr link, and your shared pages will have an ad at the bottom from the Fusion network.

Summary

So, basically, CloudApp and Droplr both allow up to 25Mb files on free accounts. CloudApp lets you upload up to 10 files per day, forever, while Droplr lets you upload as many files as you want each day up to a total of 1Gb in your account.

Going Pro

when you need more

CloudApp Pro

You can’t run out of storage in CloudApp, and there’s already no ads on your shared pages, but you might find the 10 file/day limit a bit restrictive. That’s when you’ll need CloudApp Pro. For $5/month or $45/year, you can get unlimited uploads per day, and can also upload files as large as 250Mb. If you have a Pro account, you can also use your own domain with CloudApp. If you ever decide to downgrade back to a free account, all of your uploads are saved as before, and you’ll just have to limit yourself to sharing 10 files/day with the old 25Mb limit, but the larger files you’d already uploaded are still safe.

Droplr Pro

Droplr just launched their Pro accounts this month, adding a ton of extra features to their standard Droplr accounts. Free Droplr accounts only let you store up to 1Gb of files, so if you’ve filled up your account, or are just looking for more features, you might want to upgrade. For an introductory price of $3/month or $30/year, you’ll get a Pro account which lets you upload up to a total of 100Gb of files, and also lets you upload individual files up to 1Gb each. Your sharing pages will also be ad-free with a pro account, and you’ll get options to password protect your shared files, customize your shared page style, use your own domain, and view detailed stats on your shared files. If you downgrade back to a free account, all of your uploads will still be safe online, but you can’t upload any more files if your account has more than 1Gb of files already in it.

The Web App

when a browser’s all you want to use

CloudApp's Web App

CloudApp’s site lets you use all of its functions right from your browser. You can enter a web address to bookmark and shorten it, or you can upload a file directly from your computer. You can also sort your files by type or popularity, change the names on files, copy their short address, or delete them if you need. Its design looks nice, though it’s nothing that feels very groundbreaking. The good thing is, everything works right from the web, so if you really can’t use a CloudApp app, you can still make full use of the service from your browser.

Droplr's Web App

Droplr’s new web app takes online file browsing to the next level, with a dynamic layout that fills your screen with the best number of files to easily see, and auto-loads the next files as you scroll down. You can also sort your files by a variety of categories: size, upload date, name, number of views, and type. Droplr lets you upload files by dragging-and-dropping them on the drop spot in the bottom left corner, and also lets you search through files you’ve saved, both features that CloudApp’s web app doesn’t have. However, you can’t shorten web addresses from Droplr’s web app, and you also can’t create text notes from your browser. But overall, their web apps is one of Droplr’s nicest features.

Notes, Text, and Code

when you more than just a picture

A Markdown note in CloudApp

CloudApp makes it easy to share text files and code snippets online. If you upload a .txt or .md file, it’ll display the text with Markdown formatting as a nice on-screen note. You can also upload HTML, CSS, or other standard code files, and CloudApp will show the code with syntax highlighting. Even if you upload the text or code files from your browser, they’ll still get the nice note or code views that make them great to share online. If you did want to share the file itself rather than the raw code, you can share the direct link in the top left corner, which gives an easy way to share fully formatted HTML files online without using an FTP server. Then, using the native apps, you can upload your clipboard content or plain text as a .txt file directly to CloudApp.

Adding a note in Droplr

If you share a text or code file in Droplr, it’ll just give you a link to download it from their site, and there’s no way to link directly to the file or view it as a note in your browser. Instead, the Droplr apps let you create Plain Text, Markdown, Textile, or Code notes, which can then be saved to your Droplr account and viewed online much like plain text or code files in CloudApp. The only problem is, you can’t create notes from your browser with Droplr, and you can’t just view .txt or code files online directly.

On Your Mac

where it all started

Cloud.app

CloudApp’s Mac app is minimalist, making it easy to share files and screenshots, and quickly open files you’ve recently shared online. Just drag-and-drop files to the icon in your menubar, and they’ll be uploaded and a short link will be saved in your clipboard to post online easily. Click the icon to see your recent uploads. One nice feature is that CloudApp always shows the extension at the end of your files. CloudApp can auto-upload screenshots, if you want, and also includes a number of Raindrops which let you upload files directly from a number of popular Mac apps.

Droplr.app

Droplr’s Mac app works much the same, with a couple of extra features. You can hover over your latest drops to see a quick preview of them, copy their link, or delete the drop directly. You also have Droplr’s notes feature ready to let you add a new text note or code snippet. Droplr focuses more on the type of upload (file, image, link, note) rather than the file itself, so it doesn’t show the file extension, instead showing a colorful icon of the drop type. Droplr also has a number of plugins to let you upload files from apps, and shows a toast notification when it starts and when a file is uploaded successfully. Droplr’s app ends up feeling a bit bolder and more chatty, but also has more features, while CloudApp’s feels more minimalist and to-the-point.

On Your PC

Windows users don’t need to feel left out

FluffyApp - CloudApp for Windows

Droplr for Windows

Everywhere Else

yup, the other devices and apps are important too

Both Droplr and CloudApp have APIs that let developers integrate their services into their apps. CloudApp is integrated into a large number of apps, with a number of 3rd party apps for iOS (including the nice Stratus app) and Android (such as DroidCloud). It’s also included in Sparrow, one of the nicest email apps for OS X, as an alternate for using traditional email attachments, and is even included as an upload option in the Doxie scanner. Droplr isn’t in as many apps, but it is in many mobile Twitter apps like Tweetbot as a file sharing option.

The Two True Winners

So, which is the best app for sharing files? Turns out, they’re both very nice, and are quite similar in many ways. They’re not precisely the same, and the differences between the way they handle text notes, code, and links make me prefer CloudApp, while Droplr’s web app  and Mac apps are nice enough to make it tempting. If I was still using a PC, though, I’d find FluffyApp’s CloudApp integration much nicer than Droplr’s Windows app. I also find CloudApp’s 10 file limit nicer, so you don’t have to worry about running out of storage, but some might prefer to have a cap on total storage rather than file uploads. Either way, it’s nice to be able to have such a selection of great file sharing tools that work on the web, as well as on Macs and PCs.

Do you use either CloudApp or Droplr? What do you like most about your own favorite file sharing app? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!

This collection has a huge variety of tools, including ways to explore, discover, analyze and more. There are even a few browser plug-ins to really make your Pinterest experience worthwhile. These tools definitely give Pinterest a whole new layer of functionality and you’re sure to find at least one you don’t know how you ever pinned without. Read on to learn about 10 of my favorite Pinterest tools.

Discovery and Exposure

New Pin Types

Analytics

Browser Plug-ins

Pinterest is a fantastic site, loved by many. However, there are a number of features that the site is notably lacking in. Luckily, kind developers have created a number of tools that supplement the functionality that Pinterest is lacking in. These tools add abilities to analyze, pin, discover, share and more.

These are some tools that I think are fantastic, but of course the list is not all-encompassing. As always, I want to hear from you. What are your must-have Pinterest tools?

But then, why would you need both an app to sync files and an app to share files? Wouldn’t one be enough?

Surely Dropbox is enough

Dropbox: Syncing your files, and sharing them too

When it comes to saving your files online, Dropbox is easily the 800lb gorilla in the room. Storing your files in the cloud was nothing new when Dropbox came out, but Dropbox redefined the very idea of cloud storage with its dead-simple approach to syncing files. It gives you a folder where you can keep all of the files you want synced, and it keeps them synced in the background with all of your devices and their web app. It’s one of a few apps I absolutely could not live without, and I’ve been a Pro subscriber for several years now. It’s simply great.

I use Dropbox mainly to keep files synced between my computers and the cloud, so I can access my own files anywhere. I also share folders with friends and colleagues so we can work on the same files. Seamless shared folder syncing is easily one of Dropbox’ best features. And Dropbox even lets you share individual files from any folder, and has a Public folder that automatically shares everything in it with the world. But to share a file, you’d have to save it in Dropbox, right-click on the file, select Dropbox>Get Link, then copy the long link that opens in your browser and share it with your friends. It’s not exactly simple or intuitive. Plus, if you shared the file publicly, you’ll have to always keep that file in the same place in your Dropbox if you want others to still be able to find it.

Perhaps we do need a better solution

It's hard to argue with 1 click simplicity

CloudApp and Droplr, and other similar file sharing apps, are totally different. Sure, file sync and file sharing apps both store your files online. But file sync apps like Dropbox are mostly designed to help you manage your own local files like you would other files saved on your computer. File sharing apps, on the other hand, are designed to make it as simple as possible to share files online.

These apps usually have a menubar app that lets you just drag-and-drop a file to their icon. It’ll then automatically upload the file and save a short link to your clipboard. All you need to do to share a file – any file – is to drag it to the icon, then press CMD-V or Ctrl-V to send the link to anyone. That’s it.

Depending on the service, they’ll also let you share links you drag from your browser to their icon, and many let you share text notes or code snippets easily. They often offer easy ways to upload screenshots directly, or send files directly from certain apps. CloudApp, for one, is built into a number of apps such as Sparrow, so you can share files directly. And on their web sites, file sharing apps usually let you see how many people visited the things you’ve shared.

In short, they’re built around sharing. You don’t have to even remember you shared the files ever again. They just live on in their service without your attention. You don’t even have to see them cluttering up your hard drive, or worry if you can safely delete a file you shared long ago. Now, the service could go out of business in the future, but that’s a risk you take with both sync and sharing apps.

For the most part, the pros of a sharing app are strong enough for it to make sense to keep both around. Perhaps if you share a very large file that a sharing service won’t accept, using a Dropbox link would make sense, and would be easily worth the trouble. But for sharing random text notes and images, file sharing tools are much simpler to use.

Or perhaps we won’t need separate sharing apps…

Twitter keeps adding the features everyone else hacked in

Then, there’s the other side of the coin. Most of us use sharing apps to share images, links, notes, and other little files on social networks. But Facebook lets you share images, videos, and notes directly, and Twitter recently added image sharing. So is there still enough reason to use a separate sharing service?

That might depend on your needs. If you want to share images on only one network, then using their native sharing might make more sense. But if you want to, say, share a picture on Facebook and Twitter, then a sharing service would make much more sense. Plus, it’s hard to argue with sharing tools’ drag-and-drop simplicity, which makes them much quicker to use than Facebook’s convoluted image sharing tool.

Conclusion

I’ve been a happy Dropbox user for years now, but I’ve also used CloudApp and Droplr increasingly over the past couple years. To me, they’re perfectly complementary services, and neither could replace the other. Dropbox could, perhaps, change their app to make sharing individual files easier, but it seems to make the most sense for Dropbox to stay focused on being the best online storage and sync app, and for CloudApp and Droplr to keep being the best ways to share small files and images online when you just need a one-off sharing tool.

Your needs might be different. If you don’t share files all the time, then Dropbox sharing might fit the bill for you. And if you don’t use multiple devices and have no need for file sync, then just using a file sharing tool might be enough. It’s nice to have enough selection today, though, to not have to stick with one tool if you need both functions.

But web development involves a steep learning curve, and could easily scare beginners away. You can hire a professional developer to do the chores, but that can be prohibitively expensive for small businesses. Is there any simple yet inexpensive way that makes it easy? That’s exactly where Weebly comes in.

What is Weebly

Weebly is a California based web app that helps people put their information online quickly with their own unique website. Backed by YCombinator, it has even been listed as one of 50 best websites by Time Magazine. Since then, Weebly has continued to improve their service and add features and more modern designs. Most recently, they released a Weebly iPhone app that lets you create full websites on the go right from your phone.

Weebly comes in 3 flavors: a regular Weebly.com account, a designer platform to create a white-labled CMS for your clients, and a platform for education. You don’t need any technical knowledge whatsoever to create a webpage in Weebly, or so they claim. It’s not designed as much for the designers and coders of the world that know HTML5 and CSS3 inside and out, but is more aimed at the rest of us, making it easier to launch a site even if you don’t know the first thing about web development. Let’s take it for a spin and see how it fares up in the real world.

Getting started

Weebly offers a flexible toolkit to set up your business online quickly and efficiently. It allows you to create webpages or even setup a blog in a jiffy using prebuilt templates. Then, with their powerful WYSIWYG editor and drag-and-drop page elements, you can tweak the theme to make it your own and give your site your own flair easier than ever. Weebly offers a ton of features to help make your site the way you want, so let’s look at all the things you could add to your site.

Multimedia

Choose your style

Weebly makes it so easy to manage your Multimedia content. It allows you to create a custom Gallery or a Slide show with apparent ease. Interestingly their slide show comes with various styles and you can pick anything you like. Another interesting feature, especially for online stores, is the YouTube video embedder and Google Maps integration.

Customization

Weebly has an extensive array of page templates for your to choose from. It’s really easy to change from one theme to another and works like a charm. If you’re looking for a custom design, Weebly even offers a professional design service, but it’ll cost you.

Revenue sharing

One of the best parts of Weebly is their revenue sharing program. You setup Google Adsense in your webpage and get 50% of the revenue generated out of it. But the catch is that even paid accounts have to share their ad revenue.

Smartphone support

Another feature which I love in Weebly is that all their pages are optimized for smartphone browsers. Even if your customers are searching for your site on the go, they’ll still be able to see all of your site’s content. With their new iPhone app, you can now manage your website on the go or even create a new site right from your phone.

SEO

Stats for you

SEO is essential for any website’s success. Weebly allows you to enter your page’s keywords, metadata and it manages the user data. You can also view the unique page visits statistics from the dashboard. One thing to note is, Weebly allows you to add your Google Analytics code and manage your visitor information. This helps you in analyzing your visitor trends and improving your service.

Usability

Just drag me and drop

Weebly, true to its tagline, is really simple to use. There is no learning curve involved and just takes minutes to set up a fully fledged website. With the drag and drop interface, you can add any component into your page with ease. Once you’re done with all your changes, it just takes a click to publish your content online.

Pricing & Support

Weebly is absolutely free, no strings attached. But if you need more features, you can always upgrade to their Pro plan. At under $3/mo, I’d say it’s a steal.

Go Pro

Support is available in abundance in this wonderful community and they’ve a wonderful Knowledge base which should resolve most of your issues.

Wrapping up

I took the application for a ride to find out what it’s missing and to my surprise I didn’t find any. It has everything that I could think off and that’s not something I get to say often. Overall, I’m really impressed with the service offered at Weebly.

Sure, designers and developers will never take a second look at it, but it’s a service that deserves praise. It has opened up the doors of the web to all and has helped millions of people to set up their online presence. I’d strongly recommend you to try it out if you’re looking for a simple way to get your business website started without having to learn anything about running a website.

Odds are, you’ve shared a file online this week. From a simple screenshot to a code snippet to a PDF document you’ve spent hours writing, we’re sending and sharing more files online all the time. My youngest brother the other day commented on how odd a floppy looked after he’d discovered an old one laying around the house. To him, sharing a file meant using the internet, and he couldn’t even imagine having to use a piece of plastic that couldn’t even hold one picture from most digital cameras today.

Fortunately, there’s plenty of ways to share files online. I personally love using CloudApp, though the new Droplr updates make it a very attractive solution as well. Abhimanyu recently wrote up a great overview of the best apps for sharing files online, including these and other options to share even bigger files.

That’s why we’re curious which app you use for sharing files. Do you use any of these, or do you only share images on social networks and other services that keep you from needing to use a file sharing tool? Or are you still sending files in email attachments? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the poll and the comments below!

That is why when an app like Wappwolf comes around, I get pretty excited. Wappwolf has a suite of apps that connect to certain cloud services where you can create automations to help with your workflow. I have been using it for the past week or so and I have definitely loved the different ways that I can use it to help me in my every day life.

Getting Started

First of all, Wappwolf can connect to both Google Docs and Dropbox right now. In the future they are planning on connecting to Sky Drive and Box.net. When you first start to use the web app, you have to connect to your Google Docs and/or your Dropbox account. What made this a little confusing is that you cannot connect to both services at the same time on one web page because they have different web address. If you want to connect to both you have to open one page and connect to one service and then open another page and connect to the other one there. Once you connect to both of them, you can start the automation process.

Log in screens for Google Docs and Dropbox

Creating Your Automations

This is where the fun and creativity truly begins. Depending on the service that you are using, after you log in, you will see the different folders you have in there. In order to get started, you are asked the question, “Everytime you put a file in…..which folder?”, where you then select the folder you want. Once you select a folder, you are then going to want to set an automation task. There are over 10 different automations, anything ranging from turning a document into a PDF to uploading it to Dropbox or other cloud services.

Choosing a folder

The automation can be as simple as you want it to be and it can also be as complicated as you want it to be. For example, I create contracts for my wife’s photography business in Google Docs, but I also need them to be turned into a PDF when I am done so I can email them off to the client. In order to do this, I select the folder in Google Docs where I usually put a contract. Then I select the automation that I want it to do, in this case I want it to turn into a PDF. Now, I am done and I can go and test it out to see if it works.

Choosing an Action

This is where creativity and a little patience can come in very handy. Since there are so many actions you can do in your process, you really can come up with some great automations. The nice thing is that automations can have more than one action. So, for example, I can put a picture into a Dropbox folder then it can automatically be cropped to a specific width and height, then a logo stamped on it, and finally be sent to Facebook to be posted.

Photo Actions

Could Be Better

Although I really like the service and how easy it is to make an automation, I really do not like the setup and organization of the app. Like I had mentioned earlier, Wappwolf has different url’s for Dropbox and Google Docs, so if I want to make an automation in Google Docs then switch over to Dropbox, I have to first log out of one and into the other every single time I want to do this. I wish there was a way where there was one universal web app where you can log into all of your cloud services once and not have to worry about it again.

The other thing that bugged me about this app is that the organization of the actions was a little confusing. For example, when I started to create an automation, above where I selected the folder that I wanted to use there is a slider that has all of the major actions and if you didn’t know it, you would think that these are the only actions to choose from. But, instead if you don’t select one of those actions and hit “Next”, you will see that there are a lot more than just the ones that were in the slider. There are actually over 30 actions to choose from, which is a big difference than the 10-12 that are in the slider. My thought would be to get rid of the slider all together and just make the user click the “Next” button and give them all of the actions there. Way less confusing this way, if you ask me.

Conclusion

Overall, I have to say that I really like the concept behind Wappwolf. I think they really have a solid web app here, for the most part. If they could somehow integrate all of the services into one web app, that would make the user experience a whole lot easier, in my opinion. Granted, I am not a web developer, so I have no idea if this is even possible or not.

But, overall, I like the service and the more that I use it the more ways I find to automate things down to 1 step that used to take me 3 or 4 to do. I would definitely say that if you are interested in cutting some time down on your work flow, go and check this app out and give it a try.

However, things do seem a bit different this time around. Our very own Oliver de Looze recently published a nice oped piece titled, Facebook Timeline- Friend or Foe?, where he voices his concerns about the new layout, primarily Privacy. After reviewing the new Facebook Timeline back in October, and then using it since then, I’ve got a different perspective on it.

Timeline: Winning me over

I’ll admit that I didn’t like Timeline when I first got it either; it was different, kind of clunky, and it brought up some very old posts. I had to go through and hide some stuff from 6+ years ago I didn’t necessarily want people seeing. Then I started to use it and instantly realized the value of it. Timeline allowed me to look back on the events of my life- both big and small- and see how far I’ve come. It’s really a very interesting and novel concept.

We’ve been chronicling our lives without even realizing it, and Facebook now gives us easy access to that. I’m actually excited to see even 5 years down the line what I’ll uncover by viewing my Facebook account. By then, it will be 10+ years since joining the social network, which I got on in 2005.

My Timelime from 2009

Timeline also makes it easier to share what you’re doing. I’ve connected Spotify and Goodreads to my Facebook account because I want people to know what I’m listening to and what I’m reading. It also automatically creates an amazing archive for me, which will help me rediscover old songs or books years down the line.

Facebook is a social network that has had a pretty clear modus operandi from the very start: share with your friends. They are staying true to that mission, and things don’t seem to be slowing down. People love the fact that they can share what’s important to them.

What About My Privacy?!?

Oliver does mention a very good point that people are seemingly less concerned about their privacy in today’s info-sharing culture, and that might be true. I try to drive the importance of privacy home when I teach my students (college freshmen). Surprisingly, most of them realize it, thought a lot still don’t. He called Timeline a privacy disaster and that could be true too.

However, Facebook and Timeline simply make it easier to share, they don’t make you share. Your personal privacy is whatever you make of it. You can always delete, hide, or leave Facebook forever. You can turn of sharing in apps when you authorize them with your account. Timeline threatens your privacy as much as forks threaten your health- it really depends on how you use it. If you don’t want it out there, don’t share it.

This does require some work. Facebook has some fine grained privacy settings. You have a lot of control over who can see what. You can even set certain things so only you can see them.

Facebook Privacy Settings

You can even edit stories right from your Timeline, hiding or deleting them completely.

Editing in Timeline

I’d also like to point out that these same privacy settings make it so only friends can see your profile at all, and they will also make sure Google doesn’t index your profile. You can even divide your friends into groups, and only share certain things with certain people. Again, it takes some work, but if privacy is important to you, it’s worth the work.

Conclusion

Facebook is a social network that was designed to share information- to tell the people of the world (or at least your friends and those people you met that one time at that place) who you are and what you’re about. They are doing exactly what they set out to do, and Timeline not only makes it easier to do that, but it also allows you take a trip down memory lane when you want to. It’s an interactive scrapbook, and much like a scrapbook, you get to choose what goes on it.

The bottom line is if you don’t want people seeing something, don’t post it on the Internet. My advice would be to take the time and make your timeline something that you want people to see- it tells your story. It might as well be the story you want people to read.

That’s why we thought it’d be a good idea to compare them and see which ones come out on top. To evaluate these services, we’re going to look at their ease of use, file size, storage, and bandwidth limits, and pricing. This is less of a comparison and more of a roundup of some popular and useful apps, so check out the details of each to decide which one suits your needs best. There’s a wide variety of apps here, ranging from no-registration-required file transfer apps to feature-packed cloud storage solutions, and hopefully you’ll find something that fits the bill for you.

A quick word of caution: There’s plenty of reasons most of us need to share files we’ve created with others, and that’s what these apps are for. However, you should never use them to share files that you do not own the copyright to. If it’s a copyrighted file, you should never be uploading the file online to distribute it to others if it’s not your creation to share.

Dropbox

Quick no-frills file sharing that’s great for home and work use.

Dropbox creates links for your files which you can share however you like

AppStorm Articles about Dropbox

Dropbox has become the standard for personal cloud storage services over the past few years, and does a good job of allowing its users to share files as well. The web app was recently overhauled with a great new user interface and makes sharing files from your account easier than before.

To share a file or folder, all you have to do is right-click on it and select ‘Get link’ in the options that appear – and a page with the files, or a preview of a single is instantly generated. You can copy the URL from your browser’s address bar and share it with anyone via email, IM or social networks, even if they’re not Dropbox users. There are no ads displayed on these pages, which is great if you’re sharing files with clients.

If you’re uploading files using the web app, the file size limit is 300MB; if you’re using the desktop app you can upload files as large as your account capacity (example: a single 50GB file if you’ve a 50GB account, or multiple files of any size totaling up to 50GB). A nice touch is the ability to generate links from the desktop app itself. One thing to note is that Dropbox limits public links to 20Gb of bandwidth per day on free accounts, and 200Gb of bandwidth on paid accounts, but unless your file is really popular, you shouldn’t ever hit that limit.

Dropbox currently offers 2GB of free space (with an additional 500MB per referral, up to 18GB) and has paid plans starting at US$9.99/month for 50GB. For the reference, Google Drive is cheaper at about half the price but is still a bit rough around the edges. If you’re already using Dropbox on your desktop, this is a great option to stick with.

AirDropper

Elegant, secure white-label file sharing for professionals

Airdropper lets users upload packages of files

AppStorm Review: AirDropper: Kill FTP and Let Anyone Send Files to Your Dropbox

AirDropper is built for freelancers and companies who need to send and receive files securely, with control over who can see and share files. The app allows you to create packages of files, share them with people by giving them a link and passphrase or request files the same way – while restricting/granting access to them the way you need to.

If you use Dropbox, you can connect AirDropper to your account, and it’ll deposit all the files you receive (up to 300MB each) into a separate folder in your Dropbox. When you share or request files, users will be greeted by a clean page with your custom branding on it. You can choose to share a link with a passphrase for others to access, or create a link that’ll work only once.

AirDropper accounts are available at US$9/month or US$90/year (with a free 7-day trial), come with 10GB of storage space, support for files up to 2GB in size and SSL encryption for your files and logins as well. It’s not as flexible as standard file sharing services, but it makes up for that with fine control over who can see and access your files. Also, if you want a basic way for others to send files to your Dropbox, you can use their original beta AirDropper for free.

Droplr

Easy-as-pie personal file/clipboard/code sharing with great desktop companion apps

With Droplr you can share files, text and even screenshots from your desktop easily

AppStorm Review: Droplr: File Sharing, Reinvented

If you share screenshots, text and code from your desktop regularly, you’re going to love Droplr. The web app allows you to quickly drag-and-drop a file (up to 25MB) without registering to quickly upload and share it via Facebook, Twitter, email or by embedding it on a web page. This is great in a pinch, but the fun begins when you sign up for an account.

Once registered for free, you’ll get 1GB of storage and a dashboard to manage your shared files (called drops). To get the most out of Droplr though, it’s best to use their desktop apps (Mac/Windows), which allow you to not only share files and folders by dropping them on to a customizable drop zone, but also screenshots, clipboard contents and even text (plain text, Markdown, Textile or code) using the baked-in composer.

When you share a file from your desktop, a short URL is generated and automatically copied to your clipboard. You can also access your recently-shared files and share them from the page that opens up. Free users’ drops show accompanying ads, but you can get rid of these with a paid plan (US$3/month or US$30/year) which also scores you 100GB of space, 1GB file limit, statistics, optional password protection for your drops, and even custom domain support.

Droplr is ridiculously simple to use and looks great for both users and recipients. It’s also very affordable and should cover most home users’ needs.

CloudApp

The Droplr competitor – share anything from your desktop or the web

Cloudapp allows easy drag-and-drop uploads on the web and your desktop

AppStorm Review: Share Files & Links with CloudApp

CloudApp is very similar to Droplr, offering a simple webapp to share files (yes, there’s drag-and-drop) and a powerful companion app for Mac. The difference here is that there’s no limit to how much storage space you can have on CloudApp; the free plan allows you to upload up to 10 files a day with a maximum file size of 25MB, while paid plans (US$5/month or US$45/year) allow an unlimited number of files per day, up to 250MB in size, and custom domain support.

The desktop app for Mac is great and allows for easy uploading and sharing of files, and even supports plugins to easily share files from within other apps like iPhoto and Adobe Photoshop. Windows users can grab a copy of FluffyApp which features similar desktop sharing functionality. Droplr and CloudApp are very similar in features to each other, so you could pick whichever app’s plan works better for you if you’re looking for a simple way to share smaller files via drag-and-drop.

Mediafire

A robust app with unlimited storage space for free

Uploading files with Mediafire is a breeze

MediaFire has been around for a long time but doesn’t show its age, thanks to a fresh, user-friendly UI. If you want to broadcast files, this is a great choice. You’ll need an account to use MediaFire and its desktop apps – among which, surprise surprise, there’s one for Linux (Ubuntu and Fedora in 32- and 64-bit versions)!

One of the best things about MediaFire is that you get a lot for free, including unlimited storage space and image/document previews for recipients. However, free users are limited to 200MB per file and these are deleted (following 4 notifications via email) if not regularly downloaded. Paid plans (Pro – US$9/month, Business – US$49/month) allow for larger files (up to 4GB and 10GB respectively) which are stored forever and display download statistics.

The free app is fine for most home users, but download pages also contain ads which may not rub clients the right way. The apps for Win/Mac/Linux work great and allow uploads from files right-click context menu, while a notification lets you know your upload is complete and gives you a link to share as you please. The web app is very well-built and makes managing files a snap.

YouSendIt

Professional file transfer and storage – not recommended for home users

YouSendIt allows simple email-based professional file transfer

YouSendIt is another one of the old-timers on this list. They’ve been in the game for a number of years now and have stuck to what has worked well for them – simple, email-based file transfer that’s perfect for business. The free plan is really only for users to get a taste of the app; it offers 2GB of storage space and a 50MB file size cap.

Paid plans (Pro – US$9.99/month or US$99.95/year for – 5GB space and up to 2GB per file; Pro Plus – US$14.99/month or US$149.99/year for unlimited storage and file size) offer more enterprise features, including control over file expiry dates, a dropbox to receive files securely, download tracking and notifications and phone support. YouSendIt also offers multi-user enterprise solutions for those who need them.

The web app works well enough, as do the desktop (Mac/Windows) and mobile (iPhone/iPad/Android) apps – but remember that you can only send files via email. If you need fine-grained control over your files and professional service, YouSendIt is a good choice.

HotFile

A simple way to broadcast and hotlink files

HotFile doesn't make the best impression on recipients

If you need to allow files you’ve created (such as open-source software, independent films or ebooks) to be downloaded by a large audience, you might want to consider a service like HotFile. The app requires you to create an account before you can upload files and share them with the world. Once you try it, though, you’ll realize this is mostly suited for Premium users.

Free users can upload files of up to 400MB in size and there doesn’t seem to be any limit on storage space – but files are deleted if not accessed for 90 days. Premium users can not only upload files but also allow hotlinking, i.e. high-speed downloads via direct links to your files for all users, even those not subscribed to HotFile. Plus, you won’t have to wait before downloading a HotFile.

That’s right – if you’re using a free account your recipients will have to wait a few seconds before they can download your file. They’re also presented with a page featuring a free/premium features comparison chart – which means it may not be ideal to send files using HotFile to clients. Unsubscribed users will also find their downloads to be significantly slower than elsewhere online.

Having said that, HotFile is great if you need a way to distribute your files by paying for this bandwidth separately as opposed to adding on to your web hosting bill. Paid plans (US$9/month for unlimited downloading and 100GB of hotlinking or US$55/year for 1200GB of hotlinking) come with a certain amount of hotlinking bandwidth and allow you to add more when needed.

UploadingIt

Simple, affordable storage, sharing and hotlinking for freelancers

UploadingIt offers a simple user experience at a fair price

AppStorm Review: Simplify File Uploading with UploadingIt

UploadingIt tries to do a lot of things and gets most of them right – meaning it’s not unpleasant to use. You can’t drag-and-drop to upload files but you can do so within the app to organize and arrange your files and folders. Plus it comes with quality iPhone/iPad apps (Android version in the works) to access your files on the move.

The app requires you to sign up for an account – a free plan scores you 10GB of storage and daily bandwidth, 200MB file size limits and ads on download pages. Paid plans starting at $US10/year offer additional disk space, high priority downloads, hotlinking, and no ads. The larger plans offer a pretty decent value for freelancers and home users.

You can generate direct links, thumbnail links and embed codes for your files and share them where you like – and they can subsequently be shared on social networks by your recipients. The app offers good value for money with its paid plans and hotlinking, so it’s worth a look if you’re distributing files en masse.

WeTransfer

Sleek file sharing allowing up to 2GB per file for all kinds of users

WeTransfer doesn't drop the ball when it comes to looking good

AppStorm Review: Share Files Elegantly with WeTransfer

WeTransfer gets full marks for its clean design and scores high on usability as well. The app allows you to upload files without signing up for an account, collects your recipients’ email address before beginning to upload and sends you email notifications letting you know when your upload is complete and when it is downloaded. There are no paid plans for users, only advertisers.

In general, files can be shared using WeTransfer via email – but your upload notification email also contains a link that you can send to anyone. The email sent to your recipients looks professional and ads are displayed on the file download page as a background image (which usually aren’t hideous). Plus, you can upload up to 2GB of files (or a single 2GB file) at a time.

Unfortunately for mobile users, this app is built on Flash – but word on the street is that an HTML5 version is in the works. Until then, if you’re using a desktop, you can send files with WeTransfer to clients and friends alike.

Ge.tt

Dead-simple file sharing that anyone can use

Ge.tt keeps it clean and simple

Ge.tt really is as simple to use as it looks – just drag-and-drop files on to the page to get started. You don’t need to sign up to use it and you can upload files up to 250MB in size. You can register for free to get an account with 2GB of space, store email addresses of recipients and track how many times your shared files are downloaded.

Recipients will receive a short email with a list of the files you’ve shared, and be taken to a page with your files and a banner ad. They can also share your files via Facebook, Twitter or Google+ from there. There are paid plans (starting at US$5/month for 5GB of space and ads removed, up to US$20/month for 100GB) as well, which are suitable for professional users but are a bit on the pricey side.

All in all, Ge.tt is great for those looking for the simplest way to share their files – and look good doing it too.

Let’s Crate

Flexible, affordable plans for massive files

Let's Crate makes it really easy to share files

Let’s Crate is real serious about file sharing – but that doesn’t mean it’s complicated. You’ll need to sign up for one of three paid plans to use it, but the first month’s free. And here’s where things get interesting – the plans vary in file size limit and a couple of extra features (such as password protection and direct upload-to-email) – and you pay for storage separately.

The plans start at US$10 year (+ 50¢/GB of space) for files up to 2GB in size and go up to US$50/year (+ 20¢/GB of space) for files up to 5TB in size. This seems to make a lot of sense if you want to be careful about how much you spend on your web apps. Uploaded files can be shared with a short URL any way you choose and recipients will be taken to a clean ad-free page.

There aren’t many extra features like desktop apps, social network sharing or even a dropbox to receive files. But If you’re sharing large files regularly and are on a budget, you should definitely consider Let’s Crate for your file transfer needs.

Minus

File sharing for the social set

Minus is great for sharing photos, videos and music

AppStorm Review: Minimalistic file-sharing with Min.us

When we reviewed Minus last year, the app showed a lot of promise with its variety of features and minimalistic interface. Since then, the app has improved greatly and is now a veritable force in the battle of file sharing services. You don’t need to sign up to use the service and can get started by dragging and dropping files up to 1GB in size, and even upload images from the web.

Minus is chock-full of features – from mobile and desktop apps (yup, Linux too) to browser extensions to image, audio and video previews, this service has you covered. It’s also built for sharing – individual files and sets of files can be shared via social networks, voted on, commented on, collaborated on and even made public for other Minus users to browse, making it almost a super-powered Pinterest of sorts.

There’s presently only a free plan on offer with no apparent file limit and 10GB of free space (you can score up to 50GB by inviting friends to join) to get you started. Files are presented in a flexible gallery-style page which allows multiple views and the option to download individual files or the entire set as a zip. If you’re sharing multimedia files, this is the way to go.

DropSend

Just your everyday storage and sharing service for 2GB files

DropSend isn't exactly a pretty sight, but gets the job done

The first you’ll notice about DropSend is how long in the tooth it looks – gaudy, outdated graphics and pushy copy dominate the app’s homepage. However, behind its crusty exterior lies a fairly decent sharing app. DropSend allows you to share files up to 2GB in size without having to fill out a form (though you’re automatically signed up for a free account – no harm in that, really).

DropSend is built to share large files over email and does an average job of it. Free accounts don’t get access to the drag-and-drop uploader and have to settle for the old-school upload mechanism – and only 5 uploads (sends) a month. The user experience leaves a lot to be desired, but at least you can share large files for free. The account you get comes with 250MB of storage, and you can choose to save a copy of your uploads there if you need to.

Paid plans start at US$5/month for 1GB storage and 15 sends/month, to US$99/month for 500GB storage, up to 100 users, corporate branding, unlimited sends and a dropbox to receive files. However, there are several other options out there that would better suit similar needs and offer a better experience, so try this only if the others are down.

Conclusion

The web is swarming with file transfer apps and the ones listed above are some of the very best out there. It’d be unfair to compare these directly, because they’re designed with certain kinds of users and user experiences in mind. I personally prefer using Dropbox and Droplr because most of my file transfers are for individual recipients (clients, friends) and I need ease of use more than features like download statistics.

It’s great to see how most of these apps have grown and evolved over the years to accommodate users’ changing needs and habits – which means there’s definitely something out there that’ll work for you. Choose with care, and be sure to try an alternative or two – free trials are your friend here. And if you’re more looking for ways to keep your own files synced with your own devices, privately, then check out our roundup of the best apps for syncing your files. Most of us use both a file sync and a file sharing tool, so hopefully you’ll find the perfect tool for both of your needs. Happy sharing!

Unlike some apps however, CronSync hasn’t been lying idle for the past twelve months. The team, based in Germany, has been hard at work upgrading and adding new features. For the past twelve months, I’ve watched CronSync slowly get better and better, and over the last two months several fantastic updates have convinced me that a second review was necessary.

If run a business, hate doing the books and are fed up with Excel, read on.

Overview

CronSync is a web-app that allows small business and sole traders to track their work and invoice accordingly. It also allows online teams to work remotely and log time, as well as regular staff members to log their work on a project to bill a client.

Cronsync

It can take a while to set up completely, but once you have entered in your list of suppliers, customers, and financial data, then the accounting section comes to life, giving management an overview of their financial position.

Each section is packed with information such as profit margins, expenses, creditors, debtors, work reports and project management tools. For a look at what we’ve already covered last year, click here.

New Features

Customise an invoice by time, component or project status

The first new feature in CronSync was the addition of Component Invoicing. Many of us, particularly those in the IT field, invoice clients on a regular basis for recurring costs. Things like maintenance and consulting in particular. So instead creating new invoices from scratch each month you can set up components which will appear in a drop down menu when creating an invoice. This speeds things up a lot and enables you to invoice the client whichever way they want – by time, work completed or project status.

Time management has also improved tenfold since this time twelve months ago. For example, a recent feature now allows you to enter in working hours for the whole week which eliminates tedious logging throughout the day.

View work reports by user, client or project along with costs, profits and margins.

Work reports can also be viewed and filtered for a snapshot on how projects and team members are coming along. By clicking ‘Reporting’ along the top menu-bar and selecting from either ‘Client’, ‘Project’ or ‘User’ (or a combination), you can see which clients bring in the most revenue, which projects get the most attention, which employee works most or earns the least. Anyone who has ever managed a small business will know that that kind of information available at the click of a mouse is priceless for decision making.

Pretty much all information, whether it’s financial statements, graphs, team reports, or client databases, can be downloaded as PDFs or fully formatted Excel spreadsheets.

The invoicing has also improved a lot. You could always add your own logo but the ability to further customise the look and feel of the invoices and add your signature are great. I’ve used several invoicing programs and CronSyncs is by far the slickest.

Pass expenses onto clients and they automatically appear on the project invoice

In most project management or accounting programs, expenses must be charged to your own accounts and then charged to the client’s invoice as two separate transactions. CronSync has included a cool new feature which allows you to ‘allocate’ expenses. So any billable expenses such as travel, materials or outsourced work can be billed directly to the main client or project.

Addition of OS X, Android, and iPhone apps make using CronSync much more enjoyable. Although the mobile apps are very limited, little features such as a timer for keeping track of your working hours, updates for projects, teamwork and clients and a snapshot of all incoming and outgoing transactions makes time-tracking and managing your projects much easier.

Room for Improvement

There are still a few things I’d like to see the CronSync team do to make it better. I’m an avid Google Docs (Drive) and Dropbox user. Their apps are integrated with most business web apps, yet there’s not even a hint of it on the horizon for CronSync. Sure you can download data in spreadsheet format and upload it, but I want to save time.

What’s more, although the lag I mentioned last year has completely vanished, there remains one or two bugs. I noticed that drop down menus and text can often overlap. Graphs and timelines eat into the margins every once in awhile too.

Why I Still Use CronSync

Without a boss to tell me what to do, what to use, what to think and how to feel, I used to jump around between programs from old-school Excel to new shiny webapps and desktop software. The result was a mess, which made taxes, or just figuring out how much I was earning, a nightmare. Over the last year CronSync has consistently performed for me and is an extremely stable, easy-to-use tool.

I also still use CronSync because they don’t fix it if it isn’t broken. I have used apps before which were always changing. The design and original features are still there because they all look good and function fine. What’s more, new features are integrated seamlessly with other existing ones. For example, the ‘Proposals’ section which features prospective projects flows gracefully between the clients and projects sections, consolidating all information under one section.

Finally, it’s cheap. For the price of a coffee and croissant a month (€5), I can take care of all my financial matters in a matter of minutes. I recommend taking the free trial which allows up to two team members to work on a few projects to get a feel for the app before making the commitment.

One thing that easily sets Droplr apart from other file sharing tools is that their team has kept refining the service. Today, it’s one of the best ways to share files from your browser, and with new pro accounts, it’s got more features at a better value than most of its competitors. If you’re looking for a better way to share files online, Droplr is definitely one of the first apps you should consider.

The All New Droplr

Droplr has been a popular file sharing service for a couple years, but this year, they took things to the next level and nearly reinvented the service. It was originally built around having a Twitter account, since most people looking for a simple file sharing tool were wanting to share files on Twitter. With Droplr 2.0, however, it’s been redesigned with a nicer interface, one that’s focused solidly on the web. Its sharing pages and file organizer was originally very spartan, with few options to do much directly from your browser. In fact, you originally could only upload files using the app.

In the new Droplr, sharing files takes only one click right from your browser, and works blazingly fast. Without even signing up, you can drag-and-drop files to Droplr’s webpage, and they’ll be instantly uploaded with a short URL you can share online. Files uploaded like that will only be kept around for 7 days, but if you signup for a free account, they’ll be kept forever. Free accounts let you upload up to 25Mb files, and you can store up to 1Gb of files for free. It’s not the highest limit, but if you’re sharing small images, screenshots, text files, and other smaller files, it’ll likely last you for a long time.

Upload files to the new Droplr, without even signing up!

You can then download their Mac, Windows, or iOS apps to upload files quickly from your computer. Or, you could just keep sharing files right from your browser. Even in your account page, which looks like an online version of Finder, Droplr lets you drag-and-drop files to upload them. You can view your uploads by their type, search through them, or sort them by name, size, number of views, and more. Each file you’ve shared will show up with a thumbnail, the file’s name, size, number of views, time uploaded, and the short link Droplr created to make it easy to share. You can select multiple files to delete them, or scroll down to see the rest of your files, which will load as you scroll. It’s a very nice online file browsing experience.

Organize your files online, and add new ones via drag-and-drop

Droplr lets you share files with a short d.pr address, and the url is usually only 11 characters long. Your files will be displayed with a nicely designed texture background, and can easily be reshared via the sharing buttons on the top. One nice thing is that the .pr domain is from Puerto Rico, which should be a bit safer than sites using a .ly domain, which is from the rather volatile Lybia.

One thing to note is that on free accounts, Droplr shows an ad from Fusion Ads on the bottom of your share pages. The ads from Fusion are usually nice looking and represent high-quality products and services, but it still can be frustrating for those who don’t want their sharing pages to have ads on them.

Share screens are beautiful and make it easy to re-share

One very nice Droplr feature is notes. You can upload plain text or Markdown formatted notes, and Droplr will display them nicely in your browser. You can even upload raw code, and Droplr will display the code with syntax highlighting. The only problem is, you can’t add new notes or code snippets from your browser, and have to use a native app to add notes. Even if you upload a .txt or other plain text file, Droplr will show it as a file download, not as a text note. That’s the only downside of using Droplr as a browser-only sharing tool.

Droplr works great with notes and code, but not from the web

Going Pro

Then, to make a great app even better, Droplr just added new Pro accounts. With a pro account, you can upload up to 1Gb individual files, and can store up to 100Gb of files online. Pro accounts also have no ads on their sharing pages, which give your viewers a much nicer experiences. You can set your own custom URL for shares, view statistics on files, pick a drop background color, and more. Right now, pro accounts only cost $3/month or $30/year, but the price will go up for users who sign up after the current introductory period. The good thing is, if you go pro and then decide to downgrade to a free account, your files will never be deleted and will still be ready for you to share.

Nice pro options, in a neat settings pane

As mentioned before, Droplr’s web app is very fluid, and really feels more like a native app running in your browser. Click the Settings button, and your file browser section slides away to reveal the settings underneath, similar to the options in Facebook’s new mobile apps. With a free account, there aren’t many options available, but pro accounts have quite a few more settings. One of the less useful but still nice options on pro accounts is a setting for your drop appearance. Droplr share pages have a light texture view by default, but you can select a dark texture or a plain white sharing page in the settings. And as always, with free or pro accounts, Droplr shares recognize the file you’ve shared and make it easy to view it or play it back in your browser.

New beautiful share screens, with Droplr's built-in playback goodness

Droplr has option menus on your shared files in any Droplr account, but when you upgrade to a Pro account, the option menus get much more useful. In addition to setting the title of the file and deleting it, you can now also choose to make them private, and set your own password on the file. Alternately, if you set your drops to be private by default, you can make individual drops public easily.

Droplr’s private file integration, though, is a bit confusing. When you create a private drop, Droplr will change its link to something like d.pr/5vhz/dofP86Ks. If you share this link, anyone with the link can still see the whole file without needing a password, but it’ll still be much harder for someone to find without knowing your link. If you want to share the private drop with a password, you’ll need to share just the first part, such as d.pr/5vhz for this file, and then share the last part of the URL as the password (yes, this is a real, private Droplr link, and feel free to try it out to see how it works). It seems odd that Droplr doesn’t make the private link and password more obvious. As it is now, sharing private links is still slightly awkward.

Share files privately, with passwords you set

Another nice feature of Pro accounts is file stats. Click the options menu on any file to open its stats, which will show a graph of yoru visits over time, as well as cumulative visit numbers and the links that referred visitors to your files. For the most part, stats aren’t really that necessary for most file sharers, but it can be fun to see more about how your files are being shared. You might discover what people are sharing your links and content the most with the Referrers list, which might be nice especially for brands using unique URLs with Droplr.

Stats, for all the sharing geeks out there

Conclusion

There’s so many apps for sharing files online, but when it comes to quickly sharing small files from your browser or menu bar, there are two main apps that stand out: CloudApp and Droplr. I’ve used CloudApp by default for the longest time, using it to share everything from long, complex links to quick text notes to screenshots. It’s worked great, and seldom given me any reason to want to switch. The new Droplr web interface, combined with their new Pro account features, is almost enough to win me over. I’ll be using it by default over the next several weeks, and we’ll see how it goes. At the end of the day, what really matters is being able to share your files in the way that works best for you, and Droplr’s nicer web app definitely makes it easier to use in my browser-centric workflow.

Have you given Droplr a try lately, and do you like the new features? If you’re already using it, would you be interested in getting a Pro subscription? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. And if you haven’t tried it lately, go give it a shot. You just might find yourself getting hooked with one of the nicest file sharing apps on the ‘net today.

But not all the books are worth your time. We often rely on critics like NYTimes, who heavily rely on sales numbers to measure a book’s quality, to find our next book. But, more often than not, we walk away disappointed. Wouldn’t it be a better idea to listen to your like-minded friends rather than a complete stranger? That’s what GoodReads is all about.

What is GoodReads?

GoodReads- Social Library

GoodReads is a thriving web-based Social network for books. It uses an engine that analyzes you and your friends’ reading patterns to recommend books that you are most likely to enjoy. It is the 10th largest Social network today with 7.7 million users. Simply put, what Netflix does for movies, GoodReads does for books, without actually letting you read all of the books they recommend. With their recently acquired book recommendation engine, GoodReads promises to help you discover your next book. Let’s find out if they live up to their word.

How does it work?

Facebook integration

Imagine yourself wandering around a huge Library on your own without any idea on which book to read. It you’re anything like me, you’ll probably find the Librarian and have him pick a good book for you from your favorite category. If you’re lucky enough, you might strike up a conversation about books you like, and discover more books that you’d like to read. Likewise, once you login to GoodReads, you specify your favorite genre. You can then see the books your friends love, based on your interests, and even join the book discussion. With a closely coupled Facebook integration, you can now follow what your other friends are reading anytime. You’ll have to rate 20 books before you start getting recommendations, but it shouldn’t be too hard to think of 20 books you like if you’re a heavy reader.

Bookshelves and Rating

Virtual Bookshelf

As the name suggests, a bookshelf is a personalized book shelf where you can add the books you’ve read, reading and planning to read. This is a pretty cool feature and helps you track the books you’ve read over the years. Once you add a book to your shelf, you can simply rate the book with just a mouse click. Another important thing to note is, every book has a personalized discussion thread where you can connect with fellow readers. One cool feature which took me by surprise was when you rate a book which is not in your shelf, it is automatically marked as read and placed in your shelf.

Recommendations

Seamless recommendations

Any Social Network would be a mess without a proper recommendation system and GoodReads does a great job at that. All you need to do is rate at least 20 books you’ve already read, preferrable across genres, and Voila! your personalized recommendation is ready. Simple isn’t it? Let’s delve a little deeper.

The way GoodReads works is, it analyzes your bookshelf for books you actually liked, and finds similar books from your friends shelves and present it to you. Is this more credible than the conventional 5 point system? Before answering that, I’d point you to this post.

Any system is as good as its users. Please put your knives away. I’ve a point, I swear. the 5 point scale is easily corruptible. If I like a movie, I’ll give it a golden 5 and on the other hand if I don’t like it I’ll give it a 1. When done on a large-scale, the results are doomed to fail. Plus, opinions differ. What works for me might not work for you (I know people who like Attack of the Clones, seriously). So, the answer in short is Yes. I’d rather take my friend’s word than a million strangers.

Overall, GoodReads has a pretty solid recommendation engine. Another feature worth taking a look it their Request for Recommendation. This works well if you’re in a wild adventure.

Other thoughts

GoodReads offers a wonderful service. I discovered many awesome books and connected with a lot of other like-minded people. But as with any other social network, it’s not without its limitations.

Oh Boy!

If a person likes a specific book in a Series, let’s say Lord Of the Rings -Fellowship of the Ring, it’s only fair to recommend its sequel. Surprisingly, GoodReads doesn’t seem to be doing that, instead recommend other fantasy books. Another bug that caught my attention is duplication of books. It treats books separately based on their editions. There was another minor issue while setting date of completion. You’ve to reload the page, for the changes to reflect. But all these are minor irritants and shouldn’t spoil your experience.

That’s a wrap

GoodReads is an awesome service that makes your reading experience much better. It’s even easy to keep track of the stuff you’ve read and is really exciting to discuss your favorite books. I’d strongly recommend you to try this one out.

How was your experience with GoodReads? Have you tried any other Social Reader apps?

Much like its name, it’s quaint and is a nice little app that really packs a punch in the field of issue tracking. Packed with an incredible interface and a really practical pricing model, it can be a really good addition to any developer’s toolkit. Read on to find out more!

Overview

Snowy Evening is a beautiful and efficient issue tracking app for those who want to focus less on navigating an interface and spend more time fixing those bugs. It provides some powerful filtering features for users to find the bugs and allows administrators to open up their projects to allow any visitors to also add their issues. In addition, it provides a nice integration with Github and its own API.

Overview

Pricing Model

Similar to pricing structures seen present in other web apps, Snowy Evening offers the freemium model with a twist. The number of private projects, file storage limit and collaborators are all capped and an upgrade is required to ensure more of each of these. The plans range from free to $99 per month, with the free plan offering no file storage, collaborators and only one private project with the higher plans going up to 100 private projects, 100GB file storage and 300 collaborators. Though it’s highly unlikely that most users will need the higher models, they’re there for those that do require that extra bit more.

Pricing Plans

In addition to this, the app also provides unlimited public projects for any account for free. These allow anyone with the URL to access the Snowy Evening project and then add issues to them. This is ideal for public or open source projects that also want to be able to collect issues directly from users of the project.

Projects

Once an account has been created within the app, users can then add their projects to the system. Depending on which plan the user’s on and whether it’s public or private, this will change the ability to create projects but every account allows for at least one project to be added so this is a mandatory step to begin using the app. After providing a project name and a description, users can then begin adding additional collaborators (should the plan allow) along with significant categories, milestones and versions that can help to categorise the tickets further. This is incredibly useful if you’re working on a large-scale development project with lots of varying versions that need to be tracked.

Adding a Project

Adding Issues

After the project has been created, users are prompted to immediately begin adding issues. Though this is an optional step, it can be good to populate the app from the get-go if you want to get up and running as quick as possible. Summaries are first added which are essentially a title for each ticket that should accurately sum up the issue. If required, additional detail can be added and Snowy allows for some basic formatting to be applied to this and then categorisation and files can be added. The app understands that a lot of people are going to be using this form so they’ve tried to make everything as simple and streamlined as possible – a move that can seriously be seen from this particular interface.

Adding an Issue

Responding to Issues

Once issues have been added, they can then be acted upon. From the main dashboard, a list of the individual issues is displayed which provide some information such as the type, status and other factors such as the person to whom it is assigned. The app provides some basic search functionality to allow users to search the contents of issues based on a query that the app will then attempt to find but one of the main selling points of this particular section is the filtering.

Filtering Issues

In the sidebar, the app includes some standard filters that can be chosen such as any open issues, any open issues assigned to the person applying the filter and more. However, the more interesting bit is Snowy’s ability to allow users to define their own filters. The dropdown menus allow certain requirements to be added to the filter such as the priority, status, assignee, etc. and should the user feel that they will need the filter again, they can save it for future use in a single click.

The Filter Sidebar

When an issue is accessed through the app, it provides history about any other prior action on the issue and allows those added to the account to update them. Users can watch the issue to presumably receive updates and comments can be added to ensure that they are completed successfully.

Updating an Issue

Integration

For the more techy of users, Snowy Evening makes it easy to get integrated with other services to ensure that users can make the most out of it. One of these bridges is an integration with Github. For development projects that rely on the version control site to get their projects’ code organised, Snowy Evening ensures that users wanting it can use that app instead of Github’s native issue tracking to get issues sorted. In addition to this, the app also offers developers an API that allows them to also further add tickets from their own native services.

Conclusion

Snowy Evening is a really well-designed app that can make developers’ lives a ton easier. It has its own clear focus and it does its best at providing its users with the tools they would need to do this. There’s not much I can say about the app’s disadvantages because I haven’t really found any major issues with it – instead, it just seems to work like a charm. Full marks from me and kudos to the team!

Of course, you don’t want that image reflected in your own business. With so many companies doing tech support wrong, doing it right can be a big selling point for your company and can make you stand apart from your competitors. It might be time to find a good customer support system, and Ticksy might just be that. Ticksy is a bloat-free customer support managed that even features integration without our very own Envato marketplaces. Even the smallest personal business needs to handle customer support, so lets take a look and see how Ticksy fits the bill.

Getting Started

Ticksy is an incredibly simple app, so signup isn’t a lengthy process. Instead, you’ll put in a few details and choose a custom subdomain to host your system at. Ticksy’s pricing is based on how many customer service agents you have assigned to a project, so a slider determines your final price and how many users you’ll be able to have, at $5 per user per month.

Once you’ve got your site setup, you’re going to want to add your products so that tickets can be created for them. You can add unlimited products, and doing so is a painless experience. You merely need to name the product and assign it to a user who will lead support for that particular product. When you’ve done that, you’re essentially done and users will be able to start filing tickets for your product.

A sample thread created in Ticksy.

Envato Integration

Ticksy has one especially nice feature that makes it stand out from other apps: integration with Envato’s marketplaces like ThemeForest and CodeCanyon. By heading to your settings in Ticksy, you can paste in your Envato API key from your marketplace account, alongside your username, to be able to add products straight from your catalogue there. Ticksy will even be able to confirm or deny whether the person filing tickets owns the product they’re asking for support on, allowing you to avoid wasting time on those who may have pirated your work.

Adding Envato items in Ticksy.

Of course, don’t worry if you don’t sell your products through Envato. This is just a convenient option for those that do, and isn’t a prerequisite for using the service.

Brandon Jones, who’s amassed over 24,000 sales on ThemeForest, uses Ticksy to support his customers, and told me the following on Twitter after I asked about him using Ticksy:

Yup – & it rocks! Loooving it since moving over last week. They’ve got some new features like public tix coming soon too

It gets my seal of approval though Happier customers, and it’s a more manageable support system from the author’s side.

To and Fro

Now that you’ve setup your users and assigned them products to manage, it’s just a matter of waiting for the (hopefully infrequent) problems to arise and for your users to enquire about them. You’ll be able to direct them to the same subdomain you manage from, where they’ll sign in (either with a Ticksy account or a social network) and log their complaint.

When they do, your dashboard will be updated to show their message and tagged with an orange “Response Needed” badge to clearly notify the outstanding issue, as well as an email being sent to the associated user’s address. By selecting it to view more details, you’ll be able to access the full message, in addition to the Envato purchase confirmation, if applicable. When you respond, the user’s dashboard will be updated to notify them of their response too.

Submitting a ticket from the end user's perspective.

Ticksy also displays some pretty cool statistics alongside the thread. For example, it’ll track the time in between messages, calculating an average response time that can be useful in setting expectations for the user, while allowing you to observe and optimise. The user can also rate the current thread, which will be fed back to the customer service agent too.

Once it’s time to make your final response, you, or the customer, will be able to mark the thread as closed. If it happens to be a frequently asked question or query, you’ll actually be able to publish your response and/or solution as a public FAQ, also accessible through the end user’s access to the site.

You can create FAQs out of frequent questions.

Final Thoughts

There’s very little else to say about Ticksy. The UI is simple, clean and minimalist, and incredibly straightforward. The app isn’t plagued by levels of navigation or completely useless rubbish. Instead, it focuses on what’s important and allows you to get through customer support requests in a breeze.

The statistics that are presented are pretty useful too, allowing you to take feedback on how you’re responding, and potentially see where you’re leaving it too long.

Plus, at just $5/user/month, it’s fantastically priced for such an amazing product. If you’re working independently, or as part of a team, Ticksy is well worth considering, especially if you’re looking for a simple integrated way to support your customers from the Envato marketplaces!

For a product with so many users, Facebook seems to be incredibly quick to change its designs and layout. Is this actually a good thing for users, and can they possible keep changing without facing a sharp user backlash?

If it isn’t broken..

Facebook, despite its ever growing popularity, seems to have a nasty habit of changing its format and layout quite frequently, which often causes a brief period of uproar amongst a small group of users. As quickly as the protests start they disappear, but the decision to introduce Facebook Timeline seems to have had a lasting impact with many (myself included) of Facebook’s users.

Are Facebook changes inevitable ?

The switch to Timeline saw one of the biggest overhauls of the Facebook layout, ever since the site was started back in 2004. I imagine the idea in Palo Alto was that a drastic overhaul may help to stem the trend of a number of users leaving the site, and that it will keep users clicking through more Facebook posts every day.. In my opinion, however, I feel the introduction of Timeline may have had the opposite effect, especially if the consensus of my Facebook friends echoes that of the wider Facebook user.

Is Timeline a Privacy Concern?

I must confess that I myself have yet to switch to Timeline by choice, however I know that the day will arrive when I log on to find that I’ve been automatically moved over to Timeline. Despite this, I have had ample opportunity to experience Timeline for myself as my flatmate choose to adopt Timeline as soon as it was launched back in December 2011.

My first impression of it was simply “Privacy Disaster” – his entire life had been documented by the year (and month) for everybody to see and nosey through. When I asked him how he felt about this, he replied that he wasn’t really that bothered. This response baffled me greatly and I began to wonder if many Facebook users had the same attitude as him and that perhaps I simply valued my privacy more than many other people. However, I quickly realised that my flatmate was an exception amongst my Facebook friends and that most of us were against the change.

Timeline exposes all your Facebook history

Now, I know that you do have control over the level of access that you give to people who view your Facebook profile, and I also know that Facebook gives you seven days once you’ve switched to Timeline in order to tweak your privacy settings and the content that goes into your Timeline. But why should I have to spend, quite possibly, a number of hours of my time sifting through my past posts and settings to make sure that certain items don’t go into my Timeline?

Whilst I appreciate that the only content that will be used are things that I have already posted, I like the fact that those past posts from way back in 2008 are consigned to the depths of my Facebook wall and while they could be seen, I doubt that any of my friends would go so far back through my wall in order to see them. Timeline, however, makes it easy for people to sift through my Facebook history, see the jobs I had or the girlfriends I dated with only a few clicks of the mouse.

If that wasn’t enough, Facebook has also made it easier to share the music you’re listening to, articles you’re reading, sites you’re visiting, and more with their new Facebook Connections to seamlessly share content. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that social news apps usage is declining sharply, and it wouldn’t be surprising at all if this is not due to people wanting a bit of privacy with the things they’re reading. Facebook seems to want to make your past history more visible, and then get you to add even more of what you’re doing daily to your new Timeline.

Conclusion

Whilst nothing changes regarding the content on your Facebook profile, I feel that the ease of which people can access your past posts and life events leads to Timeline being (in my opinion at least) cause for some concern regarding privacy. The old cliché “Out of sight, out of mind” seems an apt description to the way most of us have traditionally treated our Facebook profiles. What will happen when I eventually get forced into using Timeline? Maybe I’ll quit the site in protest, or perhaps I’ll do what I’ve always done and grumble about the changes before slowly accepting them. After all, that’s what most of us have already done through all of Facebook’s other privacy gaffes.

What do you think about Facebook Timeline? Leave your comments below.

There’s dozens of ways to keep your files in sync, from the old standby Dropbox to Google’s new Drive app. We recently did a roundup of the best sync services, and many of you chimed in with your other favorite sync services in the comments.

That’s why we’re curious: what file sync service do you use? I personally use Dropbox Pro, and many on our team use Dropbox with either free or pro accounts to keep their files synced and shared around with their coworkers. But I also use iCloud to sync files to my iPad from my Mac, and have tried out most of the services listed. What about you?

That’s where uSnap.us comes in. uSnap.us allows you to “see your wedding through your guest’s eyes” by getting them to download an app which, in turn, takes their images and publishes them to an online gallery. A very interesting concept, uSnap.us could be a fantastic way to capture any event from a number of perspectives without having to chase after attendees to get ahold of shots afterwards.

Getting Started

Setup for uSnap.us is pretty simple, and doesn’t require you to fill out pages and pages of details just to be able to access the service. In fact, all you need to do is to enter your name, email address into the uSnap.us homepage to create an account for the service.

Once you’ve got an account setup, you’re probably going to want to set up your event straightaway. Doing so requires you to simply hit the “Create an Event” link to begin a wizard-style setup. Here, you’ll name your event and set a date and address for it. Once that’s done, you’ll be able to choose a privacy setting, allowing or disabling the ability to view shared images without being invite to log in.

The service relies on your location to pull in photos, but you can also choose a custom code to be able to assign photos captured elsewhere to the event. If you do, that code also becomes your custom URL for your photo album.

uSnap.us

Taking The Photos

The web app works in unison with an iPhone app, which can be downloaded from the App Store for free. Once you’ve got the event setup within the app you just go ahead and capture the event as if you were doing it locally with the native camera app. It’s that simple, and images are automatically uploaded to the event’s webpage for instant viewing. By tapping on the top-left button, you’ll be able to choose which event to associate photos with either based on your current location or by entering your custom event code.

Shooting a wedding with the uSnap.us iOS app.

The only problem is, with only an iOS app, you’ll be missing out on tons of pictures from everyone else, which seems rather odd for a web app. Thankfully, they’ve also added an option to let you upload pictures to an event by email. That way, users with any camera phone can directly email shots, and even your high quality shots from a trusty point-and-shoot camera can be added to the picture stream from a laptop or tablet during the event, or anytime later.

Viewing the Photos

When it’s time to relive the event, you simply need to navigate to your own uSnap.us event page (uSnap.us/youreventcode) to view all your images in a grid-view album. You can also launch a slideshow of these images at the click of a button, offering you an alternative viewing experience.

Or, if you’re actually at the event, you can stream the upload photos live through the click of another button. Unfortunately, I’ve yet to get this working, so the live stream might not be 100% stable yet.

An example uSnap.us gallery, used for a wedding.

You’re able to request a bulk download of all your images, too. Unfortunately, however, this simply makes a request for them to be emailed to you, so you won’t get them instantly. I can’t help think this could be something automated, for instant delivery, which is a disappointment.

Pricing & Availability

Now, uSnap.us is not cheap. Each event will cost you $199 to get unlimited photos that are stored on your event’s page indefinitely. It may seem like a high price but, for a fantastic concept, I reckon it’s worth the price tag. You can, however, not choose to use pay and instead use the service with limits, but for free. However, it’s probably not an option you can consider, since it will only allow you to see ten of the uploaded images, which will only be kept online for 30 days. That makes the free option a testing mode more than anything.

Conclusion

uSnap.us is a brilliant concept and, for the most part, it works as you expect. You setup an event, punch in the code to the iOS app or grab the unique email address, take a photo and it’s uploaded to the internet. Admittedly, it’ll probably cost you $199 for the pleasure, but in the grand scheme of the average wedding, that’s a worthwhile price.

Obviously, it’s just on iOS now which would mean the majority of your guests would have to have iPhones (or perhaps iPod touches, if the venue has a stable WiFi connection) to get the full experience. That can be a problem, and I’d hope to see the app become available on other platforms including Android and Windows Phone 7 soon. Emailing in pictures fills in the gap for now, but it’s far from the best solution for everyone without iOS devices.

And there’s one other problem: the 900-pound gorilla, Facebook. Most people will already share the pictures they take of your special event on Facebook, and it’d be hard to convince most people to use yet another app to take the pictures. uSnap.us gives your wedding shots a much nicer interface, but sometimes, it’s just more fun to get your whole social network talking about the pictures. It’ll be interesting to see how they continue to enhance uSnap.us to make it even more attractive for storing and sharing wedding shots.

File sync isn’t anything new in 2012, but it’s increasingly needed as we’re using more devices and sharing files with others more often than ever. At its core, file sync is file sync, but there’s still a lot of other factors to consider when looking for the best file sync service for your needs. Here, we’ll take a look at these services in detail to see which you should go with.

The Stuff that Really Matters

The most important thing is to know what you’re looking for when trying to find the best tool for your needs. For file sync services, we’re going to look at:

• Amount of Free Space Offered
• Pricing
• Syncing
• Backups/Repositories
• Sharing

That basically covers everything there is to think about with file sync, especially when we’re thinking of the web app end. With that in mind, let’s start with my personal favorite, Dropbox.

Dropbox

Dropbox

In my eyes, Dropbox is the service that popularized cloud storage/file sync, and boy did they do it right.

Free Space: Initially, Dropbox offers 2GB of free space, which compared to some of the other services is pretty low. However, they have a nice referral program in which you get 500MB for each person you, and can get up to 16GB for just referring people. You can also get up to 3Gb of free space for using Dropbox’ new picture uploading from memory cards and cameras. That’s quite a hunk of space you can get for free. I’m close to 6GB now from referring friends, family, and students.

Pricing: Dropbox also has some of the highest pricing for these types of services. At $9.99/mo for 50GB or $19.99/mo for 100GB, you’re paying around $0.20/GB/month. I’m much less inclined to upgrade my Dropbox account because of this, and the ability to gain more space through referrals. One nice thing, though, is that Pro accounts keep the free space they already have, and then 1GB of space for referrals, up to a max of 32GB, so your 50GB account could actually be up to 87 GB for that price.

Sync: Where Dropbox is high in pricing, it’s also high in availability: it has native apps for all of the major platforms except for Windows Phone (this includes Linux). It also has a very robust web app that lets you drag-and-drop files to upload them from your computer or move them between folders, and syncing files with Dropbox seems so fast, it’s hardly believable. Dropbox hasn’t said anything about a Windows Phone app on the horizon, though, which could prove to be a problem as Windows Phone is gaining popularity, but then again, hardly any other sync services other than Skydrive support Windows Phone right now.

Backup: This could be my favorite part about Dropbox- the backup/repository. Dropbox keeps several pervious versions of the file for up to thirty days back, which saved me a few times as I accidently deleted or overwrote some very important files. I have also used this as a simple code repository for smaller projects I’m working on. If you’re a Pro subscriber and really want to make sure you never lose old files, you can pay $39 extra per year for their Packrat service, which keeps all versions of all files you’ve added to Dropbox, forever.

Sharing: Another strong point for Dropbox, it is incredibly easy to share with this service. Not only is there a public folder you can put files in, but you can now create a public link for any file, regardless of what folder it’s in.

Read more articles about Dropbox here.

Google Drive

Google Drive

Google Drive is the newest service to join the cloud storage foray, and something I recently reviewed. My overall thought is that it’s a good start but could be better.

Free Space: Google offers 5GB of storage for free, which is quite a step up from Dropbox, but rather average compared to the rest of the services. One nice extra, though, is that Google will bump your Gmail inbox from 7GB to 10GB if you sign up for Google Drive.

Pricing: Drive offers a couple more paid tiers than Dropbox, and each one is considerably cheaper. They offer 25GB for $2.49/mo, 100GB for $4.99/mo, 400GB for $19.99/mo, all the way up to 16TB if needed. This works out to between $0.05-0.10/GB/month, which is almost cheaper than Amazon’s S3 storage.

Sync: Right now, Drive offers apps for Windows, Mac, and Android, with the promise of an iOS app coming very soon. That means no Linux sync, which as far as this review goes is unique to Drobox, and no Windows Phone or Blackberry. Google last said their iOS app was “98% done” which means it’s at least 2 weeks out from hitting the App Store, due to Apple’s rigorous review process.

Backup: Similar to Dropbox, Google Drive will keep revisions for upto 30 days. In addition, they will allow you to choose a revision to save forever, so you’ll be able to access it beyond the 30 days. This is a nice touch!

Sharing: This is something the Google Drive simultaneously excells and fails at. If the people you’re sharing with have a Google Account, sharing couldn’t be easier. You can even allow them to collaborate on the document, depending on the type. This is great. However, if they don’t have a Google Account, sharing is a bit more complicated. You can still find your way to a menu that will allow you to email the document as an attachement, but when you just share a link, it has to be accessed through a Google Account. There is no Public folder like on Dropbox and no public link to send. However, Google does say that in the near future, you’ll be able to add attachments in GMail directly from Google Drive.

Microsoft Skydrive

Microsoft Skydrive

Free Space: This is one of several reasons Skydrive why I feel it’s inexplicable that Skydrive is not more popular. Up until very recently, users got 25GB of space…for free. Microsoft changed this to a still lofty 7GB, grandfathering in users who signed up before the change.

Pricing: Here’s another reason Skydrive should be more popular. They offer 3 plans: +20GB for $10/Year, +50GB for $25/year, and +100GB for $50/year. That $0.50/(additional)GB/Year, or roughly $0.04/GB/month. Remeber, this is also onto of what you already have. If you have a 25GB free account, you could be looking at less than $0.02/GB.

Sync: Skydrive is the only sync/storage service that can tout Windows Phone integration, and from what I’ve read it’s pretty nice. However, there isn’t a lot beyond that. The do offer an iOS app, but no Android or Blackberry, and they offer Windows and Mac Desktop apps, but there are kaviats. For Mac, you need Lion (10.7). For Windows, you need a 64bit machine. You can also mount Skydrive as a drive, but only for Windows 7, not XP (without jumping through a lot of hoops). That means no Skydrive on my work computer, which is a bummer.

Backup: Skydrive also offers version history of documents, but I couldn’t find anything on how long or how many versions are kept. It’s safe to assume they keep it for at least 30 days, similiar to the other services.

Sharing: Skydrive also does sharing pretty well. Users will get a link to a document that they can view (without logging in), and the owner can allow users to edit certain types of documents. The owner can also for users to login, but like I said, it’s not a default. You can also create a link to “View” or “View and Edit” as well as make the file Public. Skydrive even conveniently includes Facebook and Twitter buttons.

Skydrive should really be more popular than it is.

Apple iCloud

Apple's iCloud

Free Space: iCloud offers 5GB of space for you to use between your computers and iOS devices.

Pricing: You can also add storage to iCloud similar to what Skydrive offers: +10GB for $20/year, +20GB for $40/year, and +50GB for $100/year. As you can see, this is kind of the reverse of what Skydrive offers, as you’re looking at $2/additional GB a year. The pricing is still better than Dropbox as far as GB/month goes (around $0.08/GB/month).

Sync: iCloud is a bit different from the other services, as there is a website, but it’s not a file system and you can’t browse individual files. You can view your files from iWork online, but that’s it. It is integrated into iOS, but there is no stand alone app for other platforms. On traditional computers, you either need Mac OSX Lion or Windows Vista or 7, as well as Outlook 2007 or 2010. In order to sync, you need to turn some settings on from your iOS device. It also seems you can’t view photos from your photo stream online, only on your iOS device or with iPhoto.

Backup: As far as I can tell, iCloud does not offer any sort of versioning like the previous three services.

Sharing: It also seems you can’t really share from iCloud, though with the old iWork.com document sharing being killed this summer, it’d seem that they’d add some sharing options.

It really seems that iCloud is just a backup service for iOS devices and Mac computers. Actually, for the most part, iCloud for now is mainly a cloud service to keep your iOS devices backed up, and offer some basic sync integration with your computer. I’m not so sure I would put it in the same category as Dropbox and the other services listed here, but even with syncing files from individual apps, it’s gunning for the same space. It’ll be interesting to see how it evolves over time and if it takes on more features of other file sync services.

Amazon Cloud Drive

Amazon Cloud Drive

Free Space: Amazon gives you 5GB of free space, as well as unlimited storage for music purchased from Amazon mp3. This is great if you buy music from Amazon (which I do. They have the best prices, after all).

Pricing: You can also upgrade that 5GB to 20, 50, 100, 200, 500, or 1000GB for $1/GB/Year, putting it right in the middle of Skydrive and iCloud. As an added bonus, you get unlimited storage for all music, not just music you purchase from Amazon.

Sync: Unfortunately, this is where Amazon fails. It only has a web-based interface, so while you can access your files anywhere, there is no syncing ability. There is a new Cloud Drive app that lets you easily upload files to the cloud, but it doesn’t let you sync them to your computer. The exception here is music through Cloud Player, which has two-way sync between Mac, PC, and has an Android app.

Backup: There is no versioning with Amazon Cloud Drive.

Sharing: There is also no sharing with Amazon Cloud Drive.

Box

Box

Free Space: Box offers you 5GB of free storage, though you can often get more space if you sign up with a promotion. They have in the past offered free 50Gb accounts for signing in with their mobile apps, among other promotions.

Pricing: Box offers several different types of accounts: Personal, Business, and Enterprise. Focusing squarely on Personal, you can upgrade to 25GB for $9.99/mo, which makes them one of the most expensive options on this list.

Sync: For personal accounts, Box offers an Android and iOS, but no desktop app. You’ll have to upgrade to a paid account to get file syncing on your desktop. One nice thing about Box is that it has an whole set of apps you can install, which integrate with other services you use, such as GMail and Salesforce.

Backup: Versioning/Backups are only available if you have a ‘premium’ account. It’s ambiguous if this means upgraded personal or business.

Sharing: Box makes it incredibly easy to share files; just click on “share” and it will give you a public link. You can also share folders and collaborate with others, depending on the plan you have.

Final Thoughts

This list is obviously not conclusive. There are tons of other file sync and storage webapps out there, including more popular ones like SugarSync and SpiderOak. I’m inclined to both continue with and recommend others use Dropbox, despite its lower initial storage and higher pricing. I’ve used it for a long time, sharing is easy, and you have the opportunity to get more space through referrals. Its syncing is still faster than almost anything else, and it really does work great. Plus, it runs on every platform, has a very robust web app, and simply seems the most focused file sync app out there. If you’re looking for something different, Microsoft’s Skydrive is also a great service that just needs to get its sync apps in order, and it’s actually surprising it doesn’t get more press. Google Drive also offers an interesting alternative, one we’ll have to keep more of an eye on going forward.

That is why I got really excited when I came across SmartyPig. It is a web application that helps you with your savings goals and gives you the opportunity to create and save for them. Sounds simple, but there is much more to it than just that, so let me show you around the app.

Getting Started

When you first go to SmartyPig you are actually taken through a pretty lengthy process to sign up. Which to some degree is understandable, because this is not only a place where you will create your savings goal, but also a place that will act as a savings account for it. So, you have to fill in more personal information than you normally would for most sites. You also have to be willing to give them a bank account so that you can transfer money into your SmartyPig account.

Creating A Goal

Once you get through the sign up process, you can now start to create your savings goal. Your goal can be anything, a family vacation, a new computer, college fund, etc. Once you decide on what you want it to be, then indicate how much that goal will cost and when you want to meet it by.

Creating A Goal

When that is done, then you will have to fill in your bank information so that SmartyPig can get the funds from there to put into this savings account. You also have to indicate the frequency at which you want to save for this goal. So maybe you want to put away $25 a month toward something, and SmartyPig will automatically take out $25 from your bank account each month and put it toward your goal.

Your Goal

Accepting Money From Others

This next part is one that I got kind of excited about and that is the ability to accept contributions from others. A unique feature of SmartyPig is that you can accept contributions from other people toward your goal. What I like about this is that say you want to start a savings account for a child and when birthdays come around if someone wants to give them money, instead of writing you a check and you having to deposit it, you can just send them your SmartyPig link and they can contribute to them online. What a great idea!

In order to get the word out about your goal, SmartyPig has created a way for you to share your goal with others. You have your very own sharing page that you customize with links to your social networks and your financial goals. You can point people to that link so that they can contribute and help you save even faster.

Customizing Your Sharing Page

SmartyPig gives you a couple more ways to get the word out about your goal. You can connect your Twitter and Facebook so that whenever you add a contribution to your account, it tells people on your social networks that you contributed. This helps keep you motivated to save and hopefully gets others to donate to your cause. You can also create a widget to put on your web page if you have one that lets people contribute to your goal by clicking on it.

Creating a Widget

Cash Rewards Card

SmartyPig gives you another opportunity to earn money a little quicker. You can get a Cash Rewards card that you preload with money from your bank account. Whenever you use the card you get 1% back which goes toward your goal. The card is reloadable so when you run out of money you can always put more on the card. I think this is a great and easy way to earn a little cash to help you out.

Retailer Gift Cards

This is just another way that SmartyPig helps you save even more. Once you have reached your savings goal, or have some money in your account, you can use it toward purchasing a gift card to one of the retailers that SmartyPig is connected with. What is nice about this is that depending on the retailer you will get a percentage back on the amount you spend for their gift card. For example, if I had a $100 in my SmartyPig account and I wanted to use it to purchase a Gap gift card, I could get 10% or $10 back, so really I am only paying $90 for the gift card.

Retailer Gift Cards

Makes Sense To Me

The nice part is that not only does SmartyPig act as a place where you can create your goal, but it is also a savings account. With these type of accounts now days, you definitely cannot get a great interest rate and with SmartyPig, they offer a 0.7% interest rate, which isn’t great, but it is better than just about anything that a major bank is offering. Better yet, it makes it easy for others to contribute to your goal, which gives you the ability to be very creative with this app. Think about it, you don’t even have to necessarily be saving just for you. What if you are a student and you are taking an educational trip that you needed help funding; this is a great way to help make that happen.

With a decent interest rate and an easy way to save and letting others help you, this app to me, is a no brainer. If you are trying to save short or long term, and for whatever reason, you have to give SmartyPig a try. They make saving for something fun to do and really that is what keeps us motivated to save. Check them out and let us know what you think.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to give financial advice, and only use the app at your own discretion. It is intended for personal use and we always recommend that you look into the app and use it at your own risk.

Isn’t there any light weight solution that makes ad-hoc meetings simple? Google+ hangout is an interesting option, but that would again mean registering an account in their social network and adding your “friends” to it. No, I need an app that doesn’t require any setup whatsoever. In my endless quest to find the perfect app, I stumbled upon meetings.io. It looks promising at first-glance, so join us as we take it for a spin to see if its the group video chat app we’ve always needed.

Overview

Meetings.io

Meetings.io is a California based start-up that vows to make the world of web conferencing simpler. They’ve managed to build a lightweight, free, browser-based, peer-to-peer video meeting app. With meetings.io,  you can  connect with your co-workers, casually hangout with your friends,  talk to your clients seamlessly, and more, all without going through any complex sign ups, bulky downloads or expensive subscriptions. It’s already had some rather impressive success, gaining around 13,000 users and 4000 meetings within the first eight hours of its launch.

Getting started

Schedule meetings

Setting up a meeting is really simple with meetings.io. You don’t need an account to set up a meeting, though if you do register, you get to schedule meetings, browse through your meeting history and, best of all, get your own custom URL for your meeting room.  So, it’s your choice. If you want to create a quick meeting without creating an account, just click Schedule Meeting to get your meeting room URL, share this with your friends to begin your hangout (for up to 5 participants). It’s that easy.

Take simple notes

One of the most interesting feature that caught my attention is the built-in note book. It allows you to easily document the meeting minutes and share it with the participants or even print it. Another cool feature is YouTube integration – click on a YouTube link from the chat room, and the video loads neatly inline and automatically mutes the microphone. It’s a wonderful way to play videos inline without having to leave the meeting room, and comes in handy when you need to show a quick demonstration to your clients.

Inline video

The interface

Minimalistic interface

Meetings.io has a beautiful, minimalistic interface. The interface focuses on the user, making your conversations center and getting out of your way. Whenever a guest joins or leaves, the meeting room automatically adjusts itself beautifully.  The controls in the meeting room are well organized, letting you easily add people to the meeting, take notes, and turn off/on microphone.  Double clicking anywhere on the screen enables the full-screen mode, helping users focus on the meeting without any distraction.  Local time, weather, and place on top of each video is a nice touch as well that makes international meetings a bit less confusing.

Other thoughts

Coming soon

Meetings.io has done a great job and has certainly made online video chats easier. Every meeting is secure and the organizer has the ability to restrict entry only to specific users. You can simply reuse the same meeting place code rather than having to login and get a new meeting id. Best of all, it’s free and will work everywhere. With file sharing, screen sharing, SMS invite and mobile app development on the horizon, I can only expect that things will get better. The only major problem with the app, in one way, is that it’s built on Adobe Flash, but then, there’s few other ways to do 2-way video chat directly in your browser without Flash today. It’d be great to see an HTML5 based alternative pioneered, but for now, you’ll have to deal with using Flash to use meetings.io, or really any other online videochat tool.

Wrapping up

Overall, I walk away quite impressed. It’s hard to believe that it’s just a month since it’s launch. Through it’s unique approach,  meetings.io stands out in this crowded market place. I’d strongly recommend this to anyone who wants a web-based conferencing tool without having to get caught in the complex web of setting up complex videoconference tools.

Have you tried meetings.io? Feel free to share your  experience with meetings.io or other online videoconferencing apps in the comments below.