Other Tech

Trying out Droplr

Droplr

Having used the excellent Dropbox almost exclusively for file-sharing over the last year, I thought it was about time I tried something different, to compare and contrast to Dropbox.

The similar-sounding Droplr has been around a while and the write-ups I’ve seen for it have always been good. Another plus is that you can get up to 1 Gb storage for free, can store images, videos, files and notes, plus there are several different ways of accessing content – Web App, Mac App, Windows App and iOS App.

I’ve registered for my new Droplr account – as simple as suppling my email address and password – and so far have installed the iOS App and used the Web App. After a small amount of use, things are looking good. I’ll add another post with more feedback after about a weeks use of the Droplr service.

On AppStorm.net – Review comparing Droplr to CloudApp

By |February 13th, 2013|Apps, Cloud, iMac, iOS, iPad, iPhone, Mobile, OSX, Other Tech, Storage, Tablet|0 Comments
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Sauce for Mac

Sauce for Mac

Sauce Labs have recently released a free Mac App which allows you to use their online website testing platform via a desktop Mac App, rather than the usual method of via a browser.

The Mac App can be downloaded for free via saucelabs.com/mac / or iTunes / or the Mac App Store.

I now have this App installed and as I already had a free Sauce Labs account, I logged in with my account info. For a quick demo, I chose my own site’s URL www.patwalsh.co.uk and selected OSX / Firefox 11 as the OS / Browser combination to test on, then hit the Navigate button.

At that point Sauce then starts up a private, virtual machine with the selected setup and displays it inside the Sauce App window, as shown in the screenshot below.

Sauce for Mac - screenshot 1

To setup a Snapshot, you just press the Snap button and Sauce will then save a snapshot of your session.

To end a Session, you can just press the End button. You will then be shown the list of Previous Sessions. If you click one of these, you’re then taken to the Sauce Labs website (which seems a bit odd, as you’re currently in the Mac App) from where you can view all the details of the Test Session and also view Screenshots and Video of the Test Session – very useful when trying to work out how you found that bug you can’t reproduce.

The next Test Session I created was then iOS 6, with screenshot shown below.

Sauce for Mac - screenshot 2

Its pretty cool that this all works (mostly) within a Mac App and I’m sure the peeps at Sauce Labs will add to the App over time. As a freelance website tester these kind of tools are invaluable.

 

 

By |December 20th, 2012|Apps, Browsers, Cloud, iMac, New Tech, News, OSX, Other Tech, Software Testing, Website Testing|0 Comments
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Dropbox – the main advantages

A few people have asked me about Dropbox recently, as they’re not sure why there’s such a positive buzz about it. So I thought I’d list the main advantages I get out of using Dropbox and hopefully it may help a few people out.

Main Advantages of Dropbox

  • Its free to start with – up to 2 Gb of storage for free can’t be sniffed at.
  • Its somewhere you can use as a central repository for documents you may want to access/edit from home and/or work – across Windows and Mac platforms
  • Your documents are also accessible via your iOS devices – iPhone and iPad – so good for when on the move
  • On the iPhone, you can save ‘Favourite’ documents to the device for offline use, for when out of internet connection for whatever reason. To do this, just go to the relevant document and press the * icon. You can then access these documents easily from the Tab menu at the footer, with the Favorites icon.
  • Sharing documents is easily achieved too – place the document in your Public folder and then right click it – there should be an option like ‘Copy Public Link’ – which is an URL which you can use to share the document with friends/colleagues etc
So overall, there are a lot of positives that I’ve found with using Dropbox, especially as a user of multiple platforms (PC, Mac, iOS etc)

 

By |September 27th, 2012|Apple, Cloud, iMac, iOS, Mobile, New Tech, OSX, Other Tech, Tablet|0 Comments
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Mind mapping software FreeMind

I’ve recently been using Mind Mapping concepts to keep track of the main points I’ve been learning whilst studying for the ISEB/ISTQB Foundation certification. The main ISEB course book covers many areas and a wealth of information, so it sometimes becomes a struggle to remember everything.

I’ve found Mind Maps help you to list the main points for a topic in a more memorable way than just writing them down or using a bullet list.

While looking for Memory Map software, I found quite a few different programs but most had a cost of some sort. Then I found FreeMind, which is a free/open source Java program. After a fairly simple download and install process, I began using FreeMind and found it a very good program, easy to use and allowed me to create Memory Maps very quickly. (Screenshots)

I would definitely recommend FreeMind if you’re looking for Memory Map software thats free and easy to use.

 

By |June 11th, 2012|Development, ISEB, Java, Other Tech, Software Testing|0 Comments
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Dropbox

I can highly recommend Dropbox having been signed up to it for about a month.
Wasn’t quite sure how it worked when I signed up to it, but now use it a lot, as I’m often moving between using a laptop PC, iMac and mobile devices.
Using Dropbox I can store documents either on laptop or iMac and then access them across all devices, including iPhone, and there’s also web access via the Dropbox website (which I only just realised was available)
One big plus also is that its free, with more than enough storage to start off with – 2 Gb.

If you’re moving between different computers and devices as most people are nowadays, its the ideal way to have documents available across all your devices.

The link to sign up is:   http://db.tt/2jVedovf

By |April 5th, 2012|Cloud, Other Tech, Storage|0 Comments
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April 4, TV Signal – Digital Switch Over, Stage 1

Updated April 18: – Second stage of Digital Switch Over – Repeated what I did on April 4 and all worked fine again.

Original: As today is first stage of digital signal switchover, thought there might be a few problems with the TV. For this day its only supposed to be BBC2 thats affected as it switches from Analogue to Digital. However, turned on the TV and none of the digital channels worked at all. The TV is a Sony with built in Digital Freeview tuner.

Tried a ‘Digital Auto Tune’ from the remote but that didnt work, still no channels.

Then remembered that the Sony hard disk recorder is hooked up to the aerial and then connects to the TV. So retuned that first from the remote, auto-retune and that worked well.

Tried another ‘Digital Auto Tune’ on the TV from remote but that didn’t work. So next option – which worked perfectly – was to reset to Factory Settings and let the TV do all the setups again. This worked fine.

Will probably need to do the same thing on 18 April, stage 2.

 

By |April 4th, 2012|Other Tech, Sony|0 Comments
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