Thursday, May 21, 2009

Speed Demo Bonuses: Dropbox & Picnik

At the Sacramento Classroom 2.0 workshop a couple of weeks ago during our "speed demos" session, one of the participants showed a program called DropBox.  It's turned out to be an amazingly helpful tool for me.

Dropbox creates a folder on your computer that automatically backs up all data put in it (2GB for free) to their backup server in a password-protected account for you.  It also allows you to put a parallel folder other computers you use, syncing those folders among your computers and the "cloud."  That means that every computer I use (and that's actually four--which amazes me) has the full folder with all the files, and dragging a file into or out of a particular computer's folder mirrors the change on the my Dropbox folders on the other computers and in my web storage "locker."  

I'm not exaggerating if I say it's saved me a TON of time and work, since I now always have access to all my graphic, logo, and doc files no matter which computer I'm on, and that everything is accessible and backed up on the web.

If you sign up using this link, you increase your and my 2GB free quota by 250MB:  https://www.getdropbox.com/referrals/NTEwNDQ5MDg5

Picnik: photo editing awesomeness
Another program that I'm using almost daily--and which I'm now demoing with some regularity at the workshops--is Picnik, the web-based photo editing program that crops, resizes, and more without even registering.  While I've bought the full-featured version (my kids love the high-end effects features), I often don't even log in since it's not required for many of the fast graphic editing I need to do.  I just make the changes and save the file to my Dropbox folder! :) 

Have fun!

5 comments:

  1. Thanks for the note on Dropbox, Steve. Sounds great. I assume that it would also work to put that same dropbox on the desktop of a group of people so that they can easily share the same files.

    We use Picnik all the time. In fact, our Instructional Technology team (Robin Galloway, Magda Galloway, Jason Vetter and Garey Gill) teach Picnik for our Educational Technology and Design class for our preservice teachers. Much easier than PhotoShop Elements and more comprehensive than iPhoto.

    Keep up the good work. Love to see what you are doing.

    Leigh Zeitz
    http://drzreflects.com

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  2. It's perfect software. I love it. Price is not so much as speed :)

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  3. Do you know if there is any way how to use Dropbox as default storage for Picnik ?
    regards
    Jan Kyselak

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  4. @Jan: you asked this question elsewhere on the Web and I thought the answer from http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/picnik/thread?tid=586e45e2ffc29ebb&hl=en was perfect. Cheers.

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  5. I noticed that the link to Piknic doesn't work. I use Picnik all the time to edit some of my family photos and use Dropbox to share them with my family overseas.

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