FolderShare: Kickin' butt, takin' names & flingin' bytes!

So far I have to admit that I really like the ease of use and simplicity of FolderShare. I am impressed. It takes less than 5 minutes to set up a machine - and it's all done online. The setup is a bit cryptic and left me wondering for a bit how to select the folders. There isn't a contextual menu like I first thought, instead you log in at FolderShare.com and create libraries in which to sync to the various clients. You have to do this for each client, and again it's all online; so you can select the path, and even create a new folder if you are syncing an empty folder to a specific library.

I really have to give credit where it's due. This is an excellent application, and I am glad I found it on Scott's list of tools.

I have yet to connect up the remaining two systems to sync to this library, so I may still be disappointed, but I don't think so and I certainly hope not. Here are the Operating Systems I have synced so far:

• Windows XP Pro SP2
• OS X 10.4

I have still another XP box and my Vista (Home Premium) install to sync with these two.
The syncing is extremely fast as it works over your LAN. Just sitting here watch it go it seems to be taking 5 - 7 minutes for every gb of data transferred, give or take. It's still going to take quite a lot of time; seeing that I have 49 gb of music and video in my library so far. You have 2 options for syncing the folders as well; active sync or on-demand sync. For now, I think I will leave everything at active sync, but I may change it later to only sync when I tell it to - and even then, that will probably only be for my laptop. I don't really see myself trying to sync any of this library over the web.

FolderShare is still only in beta right now, so I wouldn't be surprised if I run into some sort of trouble, and I would expect more features to come as well. The web interface lacks some polish giving plenty of room for improvement in how the interface functions, how it looks and how it lends itself to ease of use while still looking nice. It's not ugly now; just sparse.

Microsoft has pulled off a good little free application, and hats off to them for making it cross-platform when many other right now are not. Mac is their primary competition, so it was quite refreshing to see them tip their hats to the folks at Apple.

Epilogue

It's been a couple of months now since I purchased my Western Digital My Book  500 GB Hard Drive, and overall I really like it, but it isn't working out like I had hoped. It's really my own fault for getting Windows Vista just so I can play Halo 2, and I probably should have just gone for the gusto and got into a NAS, but I didn't want to spend $300 and change, just to share my music and backup files between computers. It's my home for crying out loud - I don't need a SAN! Br4x tells me I should just get a Linksys NAS200 like his, but I think he just wants me to buy stuff through is Amazon Associates account so he can get more dough. First the good; then the bad.

The good

It's ginormous! 500 gb, that's big enough to hold a lot more stuff than I have accumulated, so I don't ever half to worry about space. It's small in stature, so the footprint on my desk isn't even enough to notice. It's quiet and has a sleep mode, preventing the platter from spinning like a whirling dervish, just bidding its time until it decides to crap out and take my data with it. The drive also has excellent write speeds (for being an external USB drive) , and powers up quickly from sleep mode. The biggest reason I bought it was its price however; $130.00.

The bad

It's not a NAS solution. I switch between XP and Vista quite a lot and it doesn't seem to like that much, so my wife's computer is getting all uppity since it can't always find it, or, for that matter, any other shared drives. That's it, the only bad part.

As you can see, I like it more than not. What I need to be able to do though, is sync all of our music between 3 or 4 machines within the house. My XP box, my Vista box, my MacBook Pro and my wife's computer. Also given the fact that we have about 40 gb of collective music stored, it could be a daunting task. So I am looking at some folder sharing/syncing utilities to help with this problem.

The candidates

I started a Google search and found a few possibilities but couldn't find much reliable information to help me decide if they were going to do the trick, or delete my stuff instead. The first I found was Microsoft's SyncToy, although it was quickly ruled out as a contender, as it's a bit old - and it has Toy in its name. So after some poking around this is what I narrowed my search to:

• FolderShare
• SyncBackSE
• Stardock ThinkDesk

FolderShare won out the first time test for two reasons: 1) it's free and 2) it's cross platform. I know I could probably just get something else for the Mac, but it would be nice to use the same thing across the board. Although I will still test out the other two over the next few months unless I am so overwhelmed by sheer joy with FolderShare.

FolderShare started off on the right foot since it installed perfectly on my Vista box with no errors, and is up and running. That's saying a bit since several of my applications don't like Vista at all. I haven't set up any other computers yet, since, well... none of my music is accessible on my Vista install since the RAID drivers for my ASUS MoBo brick my desktop if I install them. I will have to reboot and reinstall FolderShare on my XP install as well, before I can really get started. That's next.

I chose the applications based on recommendations, feature set, and the fact that I like Stardock as a company. That being said; I have my 3 top choices listed and selected - all I have to do is wade through them and get going.

Mozilla is so cool. Their latest stunt is pretty brilliant, for a seriously blatant marketing ploy. Enlist an entire community of people who will gladly volunteer their time and resources to help market and advertise a company and their product; and how to do it without spending a virtual dump truck load of scratch. Operation Firefox seeks to employ the ingenuity of 50 teams or individuals to place their logo in publicly visible places of strange, interest or what have you. So maybe on the side of a Microsoft campus building in Redmond? Nah, too obvious. How about on the side of an armored truck that just stopped for a pickup? Ha! Not if you like life, methinks.

So here's your chance to figure out some devilishly clever way to get your hands on one of fifty Fathead Firefox logo stickers. I know I would love to get one, that would be cool. I have no idea where I would permanently display one - but it would still be cool to have. While you're on their site, you might as well check the SI section, and get your massively huge swimsuit model wall graphic too, I'm pretty sure your Mom won't mind that you just put a life size Anne V in her basement... errr... I mean your room.

So get to it. Pick your flavor: be it Performance, Customization, Security or Community - then figure out how you can wow the big-brain on Brad, and create your diabolical scheme. You could win a MacBook Pro or Nintendo Wii. Just make sure you put some thought behind what your Wow factor is; I'm willing to bet a meh response from the judges will get you a steaming pile of bupkis.

I'm brewing mine as I write....

I started playing with the Amazon MP3 Download service today and I have to say it's pretty easy to use, and it incorporates itself nicely with your default player - in my case iTunes.

The only thing I can see folks complaining about right off the bat is the download, but it's tiny and non-intrusive. I also have to say at least it works on my Vista desktop, my FTP program doesn't, so I started using FireFTP, and that works great - plus it's a Firefox plug-in and free. Just like iTunes, it creates a new folder in your Music folder, and is aptly named Amazon MP3. The best thing is they are DRM free MP3 not the MP4 or Real Audio or Windows Media files that limit how they can be used unless you rip them to another format - which I wouldn't ever do of course.

They have done a good job of getting some popular albums (they have the new Feist album, The Reminder - which is a great album) online already, and honestly are right on par with all of the other services when they were still a bit younger - so I would expect it expand the available selection quickly. The songs are good quality (from the few that I have downloaded so far), they are as little as .89 cents (most are .99) and Amazon incorporates your existing account information just to make that much easier. Right off the top they have a lot of bands that I like, Relient K, Fall Out Boy, The Stones, Weezer, Pink Floyd, Kanye, just to name a few. There are plenty of bands that they don't have yet, it's just a matter of time though. If they would have had Hawthorne Heights, I would have bought it - but back to iTunes I go.

I'm not sure if I will ultimately switch - but there's a good chance I will start buying music from Amazon and branch out from iTunes now that they have this available. I love iTunes, and my iPods; but let's face it, the fact that I have hundreds of songs that I can only play on my machine and only on iPods is a bit of a pain in the jar. It's not like I am likely to switch to the Zune - but I'm not a huge fan of being pigeon-holed into a single decision. But no one is twisting my iPod laden arm into buying from Apple either - so feel free to blah blah blah me....

Any way, check it out - you're bound to find something worth buying.

In a fierce battle which raged between Fairly Odd Parents and the final showing of Sponge Bob, three Imperial Troopers gave their lives to uphold the balance of power on Lamintooie.

It's really discouraging to see such carnage wrought by a fun-loving 3 year old. I'm not exactly why it is so much fun to pull the heads, legs, and even rend hands from limbs of these poor, defenseless minifigs. One Trooper is now disabled as he has permanently lost the use of his left hand. Which is slightly better than one of his not-so-lucky Fire Fighter buddies, who no longer has any hands at all.

I set out to build some cool Lego vehicles with the boys this evening before the enduring struggle of bed time ensued, and Dylan proceeded to dismember 2 of these hapless souls before I stopped him. Luckily he only removed the hands from one - and I recovered one hand thus far. He's a strange little beasty - he has done this repeatedly, and I'm not sure why it's so much fun. I never really got into destroying my toys until I got my hands on some Black Cat fire crackers in the 8th grade. The it was all over but the crying, at least for my GI Joe and Star Wars dudes.

Oh well. Survival of the fittest.

There are literally dozens of Software Development Methodologies for a would-be programmer to select from, with an equally mind-numbing number of papers, blog posts, rants and raves to confuse the best intentioned developer into not knowing which one will work for their application, because according to all supporting data: they are all the best. Or maybe they are all the worst; it really depends on which side of the fence you are looking out from.

Agile Development seems to be the Methodology in current favor among developers and programmers these days, but that doesn't invalidate the rest of them; so there's no need to penalize everyone else for being first. One you most likely haven't heard of is the Tossed Gruel Methodology of software development.

Simplisticity

Tossed Gruel development is a very simplistic approach to designing, developing and maintaining applications. Defined by reactions to the overly complicated practices plaguing software development today, in which far too much detail is paid to the general minutia of development. At its core is an instinctual desire to free the developer's time and mind from all of the clutter of Project Management and focus purely on writing line after line of code. Think of it as being identical to the Waterfall Model, simplified by removing all of the heavyweight components that interfere with the developer's desire to simply; create. Requirements, design and testing; all find their rightful place in the trash heap as wasteful steps to be stripped from the core principles, leaving the beautifully simple paradigm of Tossed Gruel Development.

One could think of it as a monkey throwing (or tossing) Oatmeal (Gruel) at a smooth surface, creating layer upon layer until something unified presents itself. Naturally, some of the globs will fall away and maybe expand and spread out into a unique branch from the core - this is expected. The chunks that do not stick are unneeded and not necessary so they are naturally and diplomatically discarded, While the branches, and the core are creations of the uninhibited flow of evolution, creating the core functionality and feature set of the application.

Principles - The Gruel Manifesto

This is where the methodology really begins to take shape. The Gruel manifesto is really a singularly concise truncation of well thought out paradigms lumped into a single, linear ideal which, once fully realized in a any given project, begins to shape, form and even control the development cycle in ways even the most seasoned developer will fail to predict and in some cases fully comprehend.

The core principles are:

• Client buy-in by rapid, self evolving development
• A single delivery point - you'll get it when it's done
• Progress is measured by the sheer volume of code being churned out
• All changes are met with the same response  *** See YAGNI
• Black Box coding is the best practice - If no one sees your code, they can't give you their opinion can they?
• Build, deploy, test
• Users generally don't know what they want - so make sure to tell them ahead of time

This process is gaining in popularity, but I haven't been able to readily determine how far into the software development realm it has permeated since it is a stealthy process by design. It' simple, easy to understand, very efficient at achieving a goal, and doesn't cost anything at all to instantiate into an existing development process. In fact, using the Tossed Gruel Methodology can actually save money.

This is by no means a perfect solution, but like so many others, it is just another notch in the tool belt - so keep it in mind the next a big project get dropped on your desk. It just might turn out to be worth the effort.