Latest Feature

Lala, a cloud-based music service that I previously blogged about, was acquired by Apple last December.  Today I received an email stating that Lala will be shut down as of May 31st.
Previous to the Apple acquisition, Google was extensively using Lala for their new music search feature.  The folks at Apple saw the potential for [...]

Apple to shut down Lala »

Recent Features

Office in the Cloud: Google vs. Microsoft, June 2010

By Ian C. Anderson | Published: June 10, 2010

Lifehacker published an informative article comparing and contrasting the feature sets of Google Docs and Microsoft’s Office Web Apps.
I’ve been a dedicated Google Docs user for years now, and the fact that Microsoft’s Office Web Apps doesn’t offer any sort of collaboration features (which is Google Docs’ strongest feature!) means that I won’t be switching anytime soon.

I was impressed, however, by some of the features that Microsoft’s Web Office suite is rolling out with:

  • 25 GB free cloud storage space (as opposed to Google’s 1GB free space)
  • Ability to use all of the fonts installed on your computer (assuming you’re running Windows, of course)
  • Full compatibility with existing Microsoft Office files (not much of a surprise but still a big deal for a lot of people)

Check out the article for the full scoop:
How Does Office Web Apps Compare to Google Docs? [Lifehacker]

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Get creative in the cloud with the Aviary web suite

By Ian C. Anderson | Published: April 20, 2010

As it currently stands, Adobe is the king of software aiding the creative professional.  Photoshop is the most famous Adobe offering, followed by such titles as Premiere and AfterEffects (video editing and effects), Illustrator (vector graphics), Flash and Dreamweaver (web design and animation), and Soundbooth and Audition (audio editing).

Ten years ago, it would’ve seemed silly to imagine any of these types of applications running in a web browser.  Well, it’s 2010, and here we have it:

The online (and free) Aviary suite includes:

  • Image Editor (an alternative to Adobe Photoshop)
  • Vector Editor (an alternative to Adobe Illustrator)
  • Audio Editor (an alternative to Adobe Soundbooth)
  • Color Editor
  • Effects Editor
  • Image Markup
  • Screen Capture

I can already here die-hard Photoshop and Illustrator users screaming, “Aviary’s apps are not professional tools!  These are toys!.”  I’ll agree with the first statement.  People who are used to the complete power of a tool like Photoshop will have a hard time transitioning to Aviary’s Image Editor.  However, an intermediate user who doesn’t dig as deep into every single feature would probably feel right at home with Aviary’s image editor.

They may not be professional, but these are tools, not toys.  Don’t believe me?  Take a look at some popular Aviary creations and see for yourself.

Ironically, all of this software designed to compete with Adobe’s products are built using none other than Adobe’s Flash.

You have nothing to lose!  Head on over to Aviary to give the free tools a try: http://aviary.com

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Keep passwords in the cloud with LastPass

By Ian C. Anderson | Published: April 11, 2010

Ever since the dawn of the internet, users have had to remember a slew of usernames and passwords. At first users on had to remember 1 or 2 passwords, but these days, the list of accounts that a frequent web user has can be upwards of dozens.

The first solution? Use the same password across all sites. Sure, you’d have much less to remember, but if your password was compromised, then all of your accounts are at risk of being hacked into.

Writing your passwords down (or typing them into an unsecured document) is another common solution to the password problem. This however, is also an enormous security risk.

Enter LastPass, a cloud-based password manager and form-filler.  It runs as a browser extension (available for Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome) as well as on mobile devices (iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Phone, Android, etc.).  Once it’s installed, it will prompt you to save your username and password whenever you manually log-in to a website (similar to how browsers prompt you to  save passwords).  Once you enter the password into LastPass, it will be auto-filled when you visit the site next.

LastPass vs. built-in browser password managers

So if IE and Firefox and Chrome and Safari can already save your passwords, then why is LastPass necessary?  At first glance, you might think that storing your passwords on your computer (via your browser’s save password feature) would be more secure than storing them online via LastPass.  However, your browser stores your passwords on your computer in an unencrypted manner, while all of your LastPass stored passwords are encrypted using AES-256 (which is accepted by the US government for protecting TOP SECRET data).  For more info on the encryption method LastPass uses, check out their FAQ.

The second advantage that LastPass has over built-in password managers is convenience.  You should get used to this word, because this blog is all about cloud-computing, which is mostly about convenience.  No longer are your saved passwords coupled to any single computer.  You can save a password on one computer, then log in to LastPass on a different computer, and all of your saved passwords are at your disposal.

The interesting part about LastPass is that it can solve another problem of password-based security: passwords being cracked by dictionary attacks (that is, passwords with common names or phrases are targeted by this method).  LastPass can actually autogenerate random passwords while you’re signing up for new sites.  Normally you wouldn’t want a password based on random characters, but since LastPass will remember it anyway, then why not take advantage of a more secure random password?

Web form filling

LastPass has a great secondary feature – automatically filling in forms on web sites.  How many times have you entered your address and credit card information while making purchases online?  With LastPass, you just enter that information once, and click “Fill Forms” when you arrive at a web form that has similar common fields.  You can even set up multiple profiles (for alternate shipping addresses, etc.).

Summary

If you’re currently using a browser-based password manager, then consider LastPass.  It’s more convenient and secure than browser-based managers.  It’s more convenient than secure password solutions like Keepass, while retaining the great security features.  Head over to the LastPass website to download it for free. You won’t know how you lived without it!

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Ditch that planner for RTM and GCal

By Ian C. Anderson | Published: March 18, 2010

There are some applications that I think fit perfectly in the context of cloud computing, and I think two of those are calendars and task management (i.e. a to-do list).  We’ve all been in this situation:

What are you doing the weekend after next?

Uhmmmmm I think I’m free?  I’ll have to check my calendar and get back to you.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could always answer those types of questions, on the spot?

Separation of Concerns

You may currently think of a calendar as a place for appointments as well as tasks/to-dos.  However, I find it very helpful (and even necessary) to separate these two concepts and give them their own homes.  You read it here first – Ian C. Anderson supports task/appointment segregation.

Here are the problems with putting your tasks/to-dos on your calendar:

  • What if you don’t get the task done? You have to manually move it forward in time.  If you forget to move it, you may completely forget about it.
  • Whenever you have time to do a task, you have to look at your calendar and distinguish between appointments and tasks, increasing the chances of you missing an appointment or abandoning a task.

So, I tend to put my appointments (any events with a strict date and time) in my Google Calendar, and my tasks/to-dos (that simply need to be done when there’s time) in my Remember the Milk account.  The layout of my tasks and lists and tags within RTM is another story, but it’s basically a take on Emily Boyd’s “Advanced GTD With Remember the Milk” method.  GTD stands for Getting Things Done, which is a productivity methodology invented by David Allen.

The PDA Problem

Sure, the concept of having a mobile computer-based calendar isn’t a new one.  The rise of the Palm and other PDA’s in the 90’s was responsible for a lot of people, business-oriented or not, moving their calendar and task systems to a machine.  In may ways, this was superior to traditional paper-based day planners.  However, keeping this data in the cloud offers convenience that the PDA can’t offer:

  • What if I lose or break the device?  Your calendar is gone.
  • What if I forget my PDA at home?  The calendar is unavailable to you.

Ubiquitous Access

The beautiful thing about using Google Calendar and Remember the Milk is that your appointments and tasks are available no matter where you are.  This is, of course, assuming you always have access to a smartphone or a computer.  I will indeed assume this, because mobile computing is only growing, and will continue to grow insanely fast, as more and more people get iPhones and Android phones and Palm Pres.

There are several ways to access your Google Calendar and Remember the Milk accounts:

  1. Web
  2. Smartphone apps
    • GCal is built into the mobile Android platform, which I use and love.  Its mobile web version works on Blackberry, iPhone, Palm, Pocket PC, etc.
    • RTM has excellent apps for both Android and the iPhone.  The apps are free, but they require that you be an RTM pro member, which costs $25 a year.  Sounds like a bit much, but I can’t live without it, so I’m happy to pay.
  3. Browser extensions
  4. Email interfaces
    • RTM has a nice email interface, which is handy for the times when a full web browser is unavailable, but plan-text emailing is available.
  5. SMS/Text interfaces
  6. Gmail gadgets

And the list goes on… For the full list of Remember the Milk services, head to their listing.

Other Cloud-based Alternatives

Obviously, GCal and RTM are only the tools that I use, and they each have decent alternatives.

Google Calendar alternatives:

Remember the Milk alternatives:

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MOG : All Access review

By Ian C. Anderson | Published: March 16, 2010

MOG.com Music PlayerOn Monday, I reviewed the Lala.com streaming music service in the cloud.  Today, I’ll be looking at one of its main competitors, MOG.com.  MOG takes the problem of global music access and attacks it in a different way than Lala, using a $5/month all access pass to their entire music library.  There’s still a concept of “My Library” on MOG, but you can really just think of these songs as bookmarks.  Once you pay the fee, you’re inside the door, able to stream anything they have to offer, on demand.

As I’m writing this post, I’m listening to Zach Galifianakis’ celebrity playlist via my MOG.com 3-day free trial.  This wouldn’t be possible on a service like Lala (at least not more than once), because Lala requires you to have purchased individual songs before listening.  It’s this fact alone that makes MOG more than your personal music service – it becomes an exciting place for people looking to discover new music and broaden their tastes.  Think of it as a big record store that requires a small fee to get in, but won’t kick you out if you want to hang out there all day.

Music Discovery Engine

The most unique feature to MOG.com’s approach is a single horizontal slider built into the music player.  When you drag the slider all of the way to the left, the songs that follow the current queue will be from the same artist.  To listen only to similar artists, drag the slider all of the way to the right.  Anywhere in between, you get a mix between the current artist’s songs and songs from similar artists (as shown in the above screenshot).  The ability to control the discovery engine at this level of granularity is attractive to the power music listener.

Paying for Music??? That’s so 1994.

I know, I know.  Paying for music has become a radical idea.  But why?  We gladly pay upwards of $100/month for cable or satellite packages, $10-20 for a Netflix subscription, and some people even spend $5/day on coffee.  Make one less trip to Starbucks or eat one less value meal per month and enjoy the music discovery goodness that is MOG.com.

Mobile MOG on the Way!

One of my qualms with Lala was its lack of mobility, especially pertaining to Google’s Android platform.  I honestly don’t see Apple releasing a Lala Android app, and if they do, it won’t be anytime soon.  Mog, however, has just recently announced that MOG will be available on the Android and iPhone platforms in Q2 of 2010.  Sure, the mobile service will cost you $10/month (including the regular web MOG subscription), but at least there will be a mobile option.

In short, I’d recommend MOG to you if you’re an avid music listener who wants to discover new music regularly.  However, if you need access to a smaller subset of this library (50 or less albums), it might be more cost-efficient to purchase the 10 cent web songs on Lala.  I’ll leave you with an easily-digestible list of the pros and cons I’ve encountered after using MOG for a day:

Pros

  • On-demand access to most popular songs.
  • If MOG goes out of business, you’re not really out any money (as opposed to Lala)
  • Fun features like celebrity playlists (like iTunes except all of the songs are included in the subscription).
  • Android and iPhone (?) apps will be available soon (solving Lala’s current lack of mobility).

Cons

  • No support for scrobbling to Last.fm (Lala supports this with a beta feature)
  • Scrolling the playlist in the Flash player causes audio glitches
  • $5/ month subscription model may be too expensive for the normal music consumer
  • Music library may be large, but many of my favorite albums aren’t available

Maybe all of this will be moot once (if?) Spotify launches stateside.

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How Lala.com Could Conquer the Music Industry

By Ian C. Anderson | Published: March 15, 2010

lala_logoLala.com is an on-demand online music streaming service that was recently acquired by Apple.  I’m a musician, as well as an avid music listener.  I’m also not a fan of Apple products.  However, I don’t see myself ditching it anytime soon.

I started using Lala before Apple bought it, and it’s solved a difficult problem of mine – how do I listen to my enormous music library when I’m away from home?

Lala lets you store your existing mp3 collection in their cloud.  The process of moving my collection was simple:

  1. Install their “Lala Music Mover” Windows app.
  2. Point it at the music folder(s) you store your mp3s in.
  3. Let it do its magic (can take quite a while for large collections).

The Music Mover will even monitor those folders and upload tracks as necessary to your Lala account.  For each song that Lala already has in its web collection (which are most of them), your track won’t actually be uploaded to their servers.  It will simply be added to your web collection.  Tracks that it can’t match with their collection is actually uploaded.

My music collection’s on Lala.  Now what?

Now, wherever you are in the world, you can point your browser to lala.com, log in, and your music collection is available to stream.  The price?  FREE

To get more songs into your web collection, you can purchase what are known as “web songs” from Lala directly, for 10 cents a piece (and a little less than that when buying full albums).  As you might guess, these web songs don’t come with downloadable mp3s.  They simply authorize you to stream that song anytime you want via Lala.com.

The next step – ubiquitous access

I’ve purchased 50 or so web songs so far, and it’s nice to legitimately purchase music for such a tiny price.  However, if Lala could make consuming your Lala collection more convenient, then I’d be a user for life.  This is what I mean by “more convenient”:

  • Release mobile apps for Android, iPhone, etc.
  • Figure out how to stream Lala in my car (3G-enabled media player?)

I must say that I was much more optimistic about Lala before it was purchased by the kings of closed platforms.  Only time will tell how Apple will treat their newly-acquired cloud music service.  Will they turn it into an extension of iTunes?  Obviously there will be some sort of iTunes integration, but it’s not yet clear what that will look like.  As an Android user, I’m not expecting an official Lala app anytime soon, considering Apple and Google are in the middle of a vicious war over the mobile computing space.

UPDATE:

Directly after writing this post, I came across an interesting service called mog.com.  It offers a $5/month subscription model, which includes premium music discovery features, both algorithmic and socially via your “trusted moggers.”  I’m going to try out the 3-day free trial of Mog in the next week or so to get a better feel for the service.  Stay tuned!

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Google Apps Marketplace – the App Store of the Cloud

By Ian C. Anderson | Published: March 11, 2010

It’s hard to deny that Google borrowed the idea for their Android Marketplace directly from Apple’s successful App Store for iPod, iPhone, and (soon) iPad.  The idea of a centralized store for (almost) all available products is very appealing to the consumer.  From one interface, you can browse products within categories, compare them with competing products, and read reviews from existing customers.

Google has decided to apply this one-stop application store paradigm to cloud applications with their newly announced Google Apps Marketplace.  The average computer user won’t be directly affected by this announcement.  However, this is wonderful news for organizations that are already customers of the Google Apps suite, as well as organizations who are considering moving from the Microsoft suite of office and business apps to Google Apps.

Integration is integral

The Google Apps Marketplace is all about integration with 3rd party tools and services, opening the floodgates for developers to build useful extensions to the Google Apps suite.  Once you purchase an app on the Marketplace, it will be able to access your organization’s data within Google Calendar, Google Docs, Gmail, etc. (after it is granted explicit permission to each service it wants to access).  The 3rd party app can leverage this data to provide a richer experience to the user, seamlessly operating on the data that already exists within the Google Apps domain.

What apps are available?

For now, there aren’t a whole lot, but the list is rapidly growing, as developers are eager to get their slice of the growing pie.  Experienced tech blogger Gina Trapani wrote about four marketplace apps that are worth installing right now in her article at FastCompany.

UPDATE 3/15/2010: Lifehacker showed off the Top 10 Google Apps Marketplace Apps.

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5 Annoyances Cloud Computing Will Remedy

By Ian C. Anderson | Published: March 10, 2010

Happy CloudI often see people ripping their hair out while using their computer no differently from 10 years ago, and I just want to say “There’s a better way!!!”  Here are five annoyances that could be remedied by moving your data into the cloud:

1. Installing software

You read that right.  A pure cloud-computing platform will require no client software except for your browser (along with some plugins and extensions).

Google’s taking this idea to the extreme with their ChromeOS operating system, due to be released later this year.  Google Chrome, in case you don’t know, is Google’s web browser that directly competes with Firefox and Internet Explorer.  ChromeOS takes Chrome and rolls it into a minimal Linux environment, where the browser essential becomes the operating system.

Theoretically, after installing ChromeOS, the idea is that you won’t need to install traditional desktop applications, because there is now a web equivalent to most consumer and even prosumer applications (including Photoshop, iTunes, Outlook, etc.).

2. Backing up your local data

I cringe every time I hear stories about people losing all of their baby photos, financial records, or other irreplaceable files in a hard drive crash or a house fire.  If everyone used the cloud for storage, this would no longer happen!  Upload your photos to Flickr or Picasa Web Albums and use Dropbox to store your financial records (or better yet, use Google Spreadsheets).  If you’re extra paranoid (like me) then hook up your cloud services to Backupify with a few clicks.  It supports automatic backups for your accounts at Twitter, Gmail, Google Docs, Flickr, Picasa, Facebook, and more, all free!

3. Merging together out-of-sync versions of documents

Here’s the scenario: you have a writing project that requires the input of multiple people.  You send out a draft version of the document to everyone, and you get edited and revised versions of the document back from all 5 people.  Merging all of those changes by hand is brutal.

A much more common example is when you are working on more than one computer.  You haul a file back and forth between the two computers on a flash drive, but one time you forget to save to the flash drive, then you have out-of-sync versions of the same document.  In the cloud, there exists one copy of the file that everyone can edit simultaneously.  Forget merging by hand after the fact!

4. Losing some of your data when getting a new computer/phone

One of the most annoying Facebook notifications I can get is: “hey guys I got a new phone and I need all of your numbers again!”  One of the most amazing features of Google’s Android mobile platform is that the phonebook that Android uses is your Gmail contacts list.  When you lose or upgrade your phone, all of your Contacts data is still there because it’s stored in the cloud.

The same goes for getting a new computer.  If all of your documents are on Google Docs and all of your photos are on Flickr, then you get to skip the stressful and frustrating step of transferring those files over to your new machine.

5. Forgetting (or losing) your flash drive

Flash drives are great for some things, but they can’t provide the convenience that the cloud offers.  Too many times have I seen rewards being offered for lost flash drives.  Also, being able to access your data with a flash drive requires you to either designate some keychain space for the drive or having the foresight to remember to bring the flash drive where you want to use it.  Remembering stuff in my brain is not one of my strengths.  I have Remember the Milk, Evernote, and Google Calendar for that…

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