David Ensor » web

GetDropbox Drops the Get

dave — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:46:12 +0000

I’m a fan of Dropbox – big fan, actually. In the spirit of their latest changes (iPhone app, site renaming from getdropbox.com to dropbox.com, etc.), I thought I’d give it a little more promotion.

I work from 2 (sometimes 3) computers – Windows and Mac – and switching files between them is a VERY regular task I encounter. At work, I have a personal space that I can connect to on both computers, but I have to have drives mapped, connect to it if not actively connected, open windows to get to drives, etc…needless to continue – I don’t like inefficiency in irrelevant tasks such as this.

Last year, I read about this handy little tool (yes, Dropbox)…I’m a technical guy that enjoys his gadgets almost as much as the next guy, but this one got me “geeked” like I hadn’t been in awhile. It’s free backup space on the web where you can store at least 2GB of space. But, wait – there’s more! Not only do you get free space, it instantly synchronizes with any computer configured with the application.

After installing the application, I can now open and save a file on one computer (mac or win), shift my seat over to the other computer and open and save the updated copy I just opened on the first computer. It’s magical and fast and all you need is a folder on your computer to synchronize to the server. I now have a folder sitting on my win/mac docks that opens right up to the synchronized folders.

Like what you hear? Check out Dropbox (and, yes, that’s a referral link that gives me additional space when you sign up)! Check out their blog for latest news.

A Bug Going Around Last Week

dave — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:39:04 +0000

I’m not talking about the H1N1 virus here…though, I was taking antibiotics by Sunday for a sinus infection. For a few months, one of my clients had been getting a weird error popping up on their WordPress web site. I was (rightly) convinced that there was a security issue causing the problem, but I searched the web high and low without ever finding anything to point to a cause of the problem. I searched for a particular string of text that came up repeatedly when it was broken and the best I could find was a “fix” to correct the issue.

Saturday morning, the answer finally came to me in an email – a WordPress security exploit. Months of suspicions proved true and I was left to carefully analyze the server database for corruption over the ensuing hours. Despite my hesitation to upgrade the site’s WP version (if you only knew how many customizations, hacks and mods there were on this web site…), I went forth with it and haven’t seen the problem return.

Moral of the story – you have to keep an eye on security updates and make sure to carefully upgrade after doing functional testing!

Alas…a site update!

dave — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 04:01:10 +0000

For roughly ten years, I’ve been doing this web consulting gig…ashamedly, for half of that I had used the same old web site. Since business has been picking up over the last year, I decided that it was time for a change (okay, so I wanted to make a change about two years ago, but I never liked the designs I had worked on and just eventually found other things to do).

So, here it is; it’s not the fanciest, cutting edge design ever created; but, I feel it fits me quite well – simple and blue (I REALLY like blue and green – always have!).

One thing that I’ve decided to do is to add a blog/journal to the site – it’s a commitment on my part to be more vocal with the work I enjoy so much.

I’m still working on the portfolio/work page, so hang tight – it will be there soon.