Friday, May 22, 2009

Spreadsheet of all my Collages with Date, Link, Title, Sizes etc.

Two years ago i started a nice spreadsheet (yeah, i like spreadsheets!) to keep a record on some basic info about my collages, like:

  • Date

  • Title

  • Type: Analog or Digital

  • Sizes (of the original and the scanned version)

  • Observation

  • Owner


I've finally added this list to my main website, so everyone can enjoy this overview on my artworks.

Have fun:

http://www.iuri.art.br/collage/list



note: i'll be slowly adding the flickr links...

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Reliable Unlimited Cheap Online Storage and Syncing Solution

So i've spend some time in the last weeks and months trying to find THE BEST solution for my problem. I have ~500GB of data that need a good damn Reliable, Unlimited Cheap Online Storage and Syncing Solution. Specifying:

  • Reasonable price: ~ 100U$/year maximum

  • Unlimited storage / bandwidth

  • Accepts any file sizes

  • Makes Backup of all my files (with versioning)

  • Syncs to multiple machines

  • Syncs external drives

  • Syncs just specific folders in each computer

  • Has shared folders (file-sharing with coworkers and friends)

  • Shares specific files via URL

  • Win, Mac and Linux client

  • Web access to download/upload files


I've searched many options, including the populars:

And none of them have at least a big part of my needs. Here is the incomplete research template i did (on google spreadsheet). I intended to finish this list but since there wasn't a perfect choice, i stopped wasting my time on this.

The big issue is that:

  • The 'Pay by GB' Solutions (amazon/rackspace) are too expensive for 100GB+

  • The 'Unlimited Backup' Solutions don't sync (Mozy etc)

  • The 'Syncing' Solutions (Dropbox etc) don't really backup (they sync) and none has unlimited storage


So i decided to wait and keep:

  • My Work Documents: Dropbox (a free 2GB account) - which nicely syncs my computers

  • My Photos & Collages: Flickr - its unlimited storage, so i still need to upload my older photos

  • My Videos: Youtube & Vimeo

  • And on the External Harddrive: 100GB of Music and 200GB of Videos (documentaries/movies) - this NEEDS some online backup....


Totally related to this, see Dan Ariely's presentation (youtube) on this year's TED, around 11min he talks about our problem dealing with choices...

Thursday, May 7, 2009

Wireframing and Prototyping with InDesign CS4 p1

Two years ago i wrote a post about how i used Inkscape to Wireframe & Prototype. Now FF to 2009: while inkscape's new version (0.47) is coming soon (June 09), it seems that some issues (like Font Styles & Master Pages) are still on the future roadmap. So i made some research on what people were using and found that InDesign CS4 (ID from now on) was getting popular (with Omnigraffle, Visio, Illustrator, Fireworks, Keynote, Powerpoint...). My final decision came with Nathan Curtis presentation: Unify your Deliverables.

Here are the main advantages i've seen on ID so far:

  • Master Pages and easy Embedding of other files (even indesign files, with the Frame Tool + Place)

  • Styles for Object, Paragraph & Character


But on the downside:

  • its very, very, veeeerrrryyy expensive - while inkscape is free & open source.

  • the file sizes are big and proprietary - while inkscape is a SVG: clean, lovely XML format that even notepads and browsers read


So i'll try ID out for a while...

Here are some great resources i've found so far:

more on this soon...

Google Profile URL = username = more spam?

And so i've created my google profile:

Terrible URL don't you think?

So google gives you one only option: use your google account username. Great!

Butt ass they say:
"(Note this can make your Google email address publicly discoverable.)"

Well this will be a great resource for Spammers and Pricks.

Looks like Matt Cutts - from Gmail Spam team - will have some tuff days ahead:

Thanks, but I'll stick with my lovely 24 digit number instead...

source: gmail blog