Because Dropbox is so easy to use, it’s easy to forget that it’s also very powerful. Here are two three advanced ways I’m using this great utility.

1. Secure Cross-Platform Password Sync

There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of pieces of software that will securely store passwords and other information you want to keep secret (credit card numbers, etc.). I stumbled upon what might be the simplest possible solution. 

Message Vault is a free/open source self-encrypting/decrypting archive written entirely in HTML and JavaScript. It’s a single HTML file encrypted with 128-bit AES encryption. You can keep it in your Dropbox folder and easily change your archive locally on your computer, plus you can view it on any computer with a web browser via the Dropbox web interface. It’s extremely secure if you choose a good password and requires no special software for viewing. It couldn’t be much easier.

Note: You could also use your Dropbox to sync a Trucrypt archive or a KeePass database file, but both require additional software to decrypt the contents inside.

2. Remotely Start BitTorrent Downloads

On occasion while at work I think of an audio or video file I’d like to download via BitTorrent. In order to take it easy on our office network though, I’ll start the download from my work computer and have our iMac at home do the real work. Here’s how that works.

The Mac OS BitTorrent client Transmission includes an option to have it watch a folder for new .torrent files and then automatically start downloading their content. That preference looks like this (it’s at the very bottom of the window):

If you wanted, you could simply set your watch folder to your Dropbox or one of its subfolders. Then, on the remote computer, you just download the .torrent file and drop it into your Dropbox. Within a few seconds, it will get synchronized with your other computer, which will then start the BitTorrent download as soon as Transmission sees the torrent file show up in the Dropbox folder.

I added an extra step in my workflow.  I’m a user of the rule-based Hazel utility that lets me trigger actions when certain events happen. In this case, I actually have my Transmission watch folder set to a subfolder of my Downloads folder for organizational. When a new torrent file shows up in my Dropbox, I have a Hazel rule that catches this action and automatically moves the file to the watch folder. Once this happens, I instantly get feedback on my remote computer, as Dropbox will inform me that the torrent file has been removed/deleted on both computers. This lets me know my download has started on the iMac.

3. Remotely Add Music to Your iTunes 9 Library

One of the least mentioned new features of iTunes 9 is the addition of a watched folder to allow you to automatically add music to your library. Add Dropbox and a Hazel rule and you’ve got the ability to update iTunes from another computer.

For this tip, I added a subfolder to my Dropbox simply called Music. This is where I move music files on the remote computer that I want added to iTunes library on my Macintosh.

Next, add your Dropbox Music folder to Hazel and create a rule called Move to iTunes that moves any music files found by Hazel to your iTunes watch folder, found at ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Automatically Add to iTunes/

That rule will look like this:

To test it out, drag one or more MP3 files into your Dropbox Music folder on your remote computer. Once the files have finished syncing, you should get notified that they have been deleted from the Dropbox. This means that Hazel has done its job and moved them out of Dropbox and into the iTunes watch folder. After that, it takes only a few seconds for the songs to appear in your iTunes library.

So, there you go — two three clever uses for your Dropbox. There are lots of other tips and tricks too, if you’re interested.

If you don’t have one yet, now’s a great time to signup for a free account.

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If you’re interested to see what Ubiquity can do, keep reading.

What is Ubiquity?

Ubiquity is like a command line interface (cli) for Firefox. Just like how the cli in Linux (Bash) or Windows (PowerShell) gains much of its power from the ability to “pipe)” commands together to create powerful new tools, Ubiquity lets you easily tie together a variety of web services in an intuitive way.

I could spend another couple hundred words trying to describe it to you, but instead I’ll let you see it in action for yourself (direct link if you don’t see the video below):

Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

Is Ubiquity too Geeky?

Yes — for now, at least. This is an alpha/preview release, so there are plenty of areas for improvement. Getting past the bugs and the polish though, I’m afraid that even the idea for something like Ubiquity is completely foreign to most people. The utility of this technology was instantly apparent to me, but then I’ve been a user of Linux, Quicksilver on the Mac, and Launchy on Windows for years now. This things aren’t all that intuitive and have a learning curve that will make mainstream users surrender.

I believe Ubiquity is a huge step forward for web browsing, and I’d hate to see it relegated to the nerds and the geeks. So I’m hoping they can either take the current interface and really make it easy, or maybe add on a graphical front-end that people can pickup without much thinking. Because if we know anything, it’s that web users aren’t patient and they don’t read instructions.

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1. If you’re creating a web application, it absolutely needs to work well in Firefox
2. If you’re developing a desktop app, you need to make a Mac version in addition to the Windows one (extra credit if you also have a Linux version too)

Why? The early adopters you so desperately want and need to use and evangelize your product so that everyone else will eventually get to it increasingly use Macs and Firefox. If you ignore them by building only for Windows or Internet Explorer, they’ll ignore you too. And that will kill your business.

Let me repeat: If you’re building an application for the “consumer” (I really hate that word) market (businesses are a different situation) and want to get a lot of people using it, you cannot go the “easy” route and assume everyone is using Microsoft. Sure, most people are, but the people you need the most when you’re launching probably aren’t.

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Improving the Firefox Interface

Even though Firefox is amazing out of the box (or, more accurately, after the download), I use a few extensions to fill in some gaps.

Adblock Plus

Adblock Plus blocks so many web ads, it’s really tough browsing on a computer where it’s not installed. It comes with a set of filter subscriptions that will automatically stay up-to-date so you only have to see the ads you really want to. Highly recommended.

Download Statusbar

Firefox’s default download manager annoys the heck out of me, but Download Statusbar fixes this. Just as its title says, it displays a download status bar at the bottom of the browser window to let you know when your files are completely retrieved.

Tab Mix Plus

I’m a huge fan of tabbed browsing, so I appreciate the extras offered by the Tab Mix Plus extension. Among other things, it color codes unread tabs, gives you the download status for each one, and lets you lock and protect tabs so you won’t close them accidentally.

Fission

One of the nice little touches I appreciate in Apple’s Safari browser is the address bar that doubles as a progress indicator. The Fission extension’s only job is to add this feature to Firefox, and it does it well.

ErrorZilla

ErrorZilla replaces the default Firefox error page with a set of options, including going to a Coral Cache version of the page (if it’s available), visiting the Wayback Machine, or doing a trace route or ping to see if the web server is down. It comes in handy every so often.

Power Tools

Here are some other extensions that don’t fit into the above category:

Greasemonkey

Greasemonkey is a little hard to describe. It lets you create little scripts that can modify pretty much any webpage right before it’s rendered in Firefox. You don’t have to actually write scripts yourself (there are tons available for download), though there’s a good guide available for free in case you get adventurous.

One of my favorite user scripts is one that creates a “smart” subscribe subscribe button for every page that has an RSS feed. If I’m already subscribed to that feed in Google Reader, it displays a little check mark letting me know I’ve already got it. A nice feature, especially when you have a couple of hundred subscriptions.

iMacros for Firefox

To be honest, I have the iMacros extension installed, but haven’t done much with it yet. I like the idea a lot though. It lets you write macros for a web page that automate repetitive tasks.

PwdHash

PwdHash makes it easy to create site-specific passwords, giving you a higher level of security than if you just use a single password everyone.

Operator

Operator exposes Microformats present on pages and makes it easy to work with them. A little handy now, but Firefox 3 will probably have this sort of functionality built right in.

Tails

Tails is another Microformat reader, though this one is lighter-weight than Operator. Basically does the same thing though.

Attention

Attention Recorder

Right up front, I admit this one is pretty geeky. There’s a small movement going on right now advocating the ownership of your personal attention data made as you use the web. I’ll write more about this at some point in the future.

For now though, Attention Recorder captures your clickstream and browsing history in a file on your computer which you can do whatever you want with. You can also choose to upload this same data to a trusted 3rd party such as Root Vault for storage and analysis.

del.icio.us extension

I’ve been storing my bookmarks and links of interest to my del.icio.us account for almost two years now instead of saving them in Firefox. Not only are they now easier to search and available from any computer, there’s also the side benefit of sharing them with everyone else. I’m just that nice of a guy!

The del.icio.us extension makes it really easy to tag and save pages as you browse, and gives you quick access to your account when you need it.

Web Development

As you probably know, I’ve been big into web design and development for a while now. There are some awesome tools available for Firefox that makes the process easier. Here are some of my favorites.

Firebug

Firebug is unbelievable. This tool has become invaluable in debugging CSS and JavaScript. You can easily see how styles cascade (or don’t) across your HTML elements and edit them on the fly to see how things look in the browser. It can also debug AJAX requests, something that has personally helped me in my Ruby on Rails projects.

If you do any sort of web design or programming, do yourself a favor and download Firebug. It’s free, but it’s one extension I’d actually pay money for.

Web Developer

I’ve been using the Web Developer extension since 2004, and it has become an indispensable part of my web design toolkit. Some of its functionality is duplicated by Firebug, but there’s still a ton of other features there, including a “view generated source” option, which lets you view the HTML as it’s currently displayed in the browser window. This is one of those things that come in really handy when debugging AJAX and JavaScript that modify the Document Object Model after the page is actually downloaded from the server.

Html Validator

I’ve become used to regularly validating my HTML documents during development, and the Html Validator extension makes this process automatic. Instead of manually going out to the W3C validator service, this extension will do the validation locally on your computer right after the page is rendered in Firefox. This can save a lot of time over the course of your project.

I’ll make one small note on this extension: I have run into some cases where this extension says a page has valid markup, but where the official validator picks out some problems. Even so, it’s still a good first line defense.

Live HTTP Headers

Useful mainly when doing web development/programming, Live HTTP Headers lets you take a peek at the conversation going on between your computer and the web servers it gets content from. You probably won’t use it on a daily basis, but it comes in handy in special cases.

Professor X

Professor X lets you take a look at the content of a page’s “head” section without viewing the source. Nothing earth shattering here, but still a nice option to have.

SEO For Firefox

The SEO For Firefox extension adds a bunch of search engine optimization links and resources that’ll give you better insight into a page’s search rankings, along with a bunch of other useful info.

Well, there you go. I hope you found one or two tools that can help you out. If you’ve got a favorite extension, please let me know about it in the comments.

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David has got some really good examples of what’s wrong with software today. His book blog (Suckbusters) covers some of the same ones he talks about in the podcast. His basic thesis is that people don’t care about the inner workings of an application — they only care about completing the task they’re doing. Like he says, people don’t go to Home Depot and buy a drill because they just want a drill — they want the holes the drill lets them make. That may seem like a really simple and obvious observation, but developers forget it all the time.

One of my recent pet peeves is programmers who assume you’re using their web application all the time. One example is MyCheckFree.com — an online bill pay service that we’re required to use by several companies. It works pretty well except for one thing — its internal messaging system used to inform you of any problems that occur while drawing from your account or paying a bill. It looks like this:

This information is great, but there’s one problem: In order to see it, I need to log into their website. I usually only go to this site once a month when I pay our American Express bill (our others are on auto-pay). That’s probably going to be a little to late to fix any problems that have shown up in my inbox.

The better thing to do would be to just email me if my attention is needed. They’re already doing this when a new bill arrives and needs to be paid, so it wouldn’t be a big leap to do it here too. Sure, keep the message inbox on the site in case I want to see a history of messages, but don’t assume I’m checking in daily. The world doesn’t revolve around you!

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So, what does this mean for Bloglines? Should Ask make it painful to leave their service so that I’d have to think twice before going?

My answer is the one I’m sure Bloglines would give you: Heck No. Why? Because lock-in is the new lock-out. My freedom to leave Bloglines at anytime was a key reason in why I joined in the first place. Knowing that I could walk away without trouble made me comfortable and gave me warm fuzzies. If I had faced the possibility of lock-in, I just would have moved on to one of the many other options that do give me freedom.

The nice thing for Bloglines is that while I’ve moved over to Google Reader for now, the same openness that let me leave can let me come back in the future just as easily. Zero barriers to entry and exit mean that companies need to rely on innovation for success instead of just locking customers in and throwing the key away.

While that makes doing business a little harder, the customer wins, hands down.

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You see, when you login, you can only use your unique 8 character ID number. Nevermind the fact that the system has a valid email address stored for me — it forces me to use my new campus ID number that replaces the previous one I had for nine years. Then, if like me, you happen to mistype your password after finding your ID, you get this beauty of an error message:

bea.jolt.ApplicationException: TPESVCFAIL - application level service failure

That message means absolutely nothing to the end user. They should never, ever have to see internal errors like that. It’s not their problem — just tell them what happened and what, if anything, they can do to fix the issue.

Once in, try, just try, to find what you want in their menu system. My best guess for what I wanted was “Student Self-Service”, so I chose that option. Upon clicking it, this shows up on my screen:

Authorization Error -- Contact your Security Administrator

So according to their system, I have Student Self-Service listed as a choice, but I’m not authorized to use it. Brilliant! But wait — there’s more! On the same page where I see this error message, a sub-menu has expanded beneath my choice. I click on “Learner Services” and — what do you know!? I actually do have rights to view it!

I’m just happy I didn’t have to try and schedule a class through PeopleSoft today. It’s the most backward, complex process I’ve seen — it simply defies all logic. To look at the academic catalog to find class call numbers, the program first asks you for a term, without actually ever saying what they’re looking for. A date? A year? No, actually, it’s a random number which you can eventually find by doing what amounts to an “I’m feeling lucky” search for “2006”. It turns out spring semester is 0630, which makes perfect sense, right?

I could go on, but it would probably cause me to have a heart attack at age 27. It’s just not worth it. I find it amusing though, that a company called PeopleSoft develops and sells a product by the same name that is anything but people friendly. I realize that ERP software is complex because it’s attempting to solve complex problems, but I just can’t comprehend the fact that the a package selling for tens of millions of dollars is so poorly designed. There doesn’t appear to be any consideration for the end user and their productivity.

If I had to guess, I’d say the backend system was written by programmers and then the user interface was slapped onto it during the last few weeks of development. I’d be very surprised if a user interface expert ever had their hands on this monstrosity. If one did, he should be fired, in addition to being ashamed at the fact that there are people working with this crappy software all day long.

Do you think there’s ever been a study looking at the correlation between using PeopleSoft and self-inflicted gunshot wounds to the head? That would just confirm my thesis that it’s just not healthy for you.

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Lately, a lot of small, but very important, pieces have been falling into place that could mark the beginning of the end of Microsoft’s position as market leader and monopolist.

First is the rise of an unlikely enemy: Google. Google first figured out how to make money (a lot of money) with online advertising through its AdWords and AdSense programs and has since moved into email, maps, instant messaging, and more.

Second, open source software continues to make inroads with each passing year. While Linux on the desktop is not yet a reality, businesses and organizations quickly adopted it as a rock-solid, low-cost server platform. On the consumer side, the Firefox browser has proven to be one of the most successful free/open source projects based on it being downloaded over 100 million times in just one year. And recently, OpenOffice.org, the open source alternative to Microsoft Office, has become a serious contender and is “good enough” for 95% of the tasks people commonly perform.

Third, Apple is in a completely different position than it was in 2000. While Microsoft has continually pushed the release date of Windows Vista, the successor to Windows XP, Apple is currently on the forth iteration of Mac OS X, which is widely regarded as the best desktop operating system available. Beyond that, Apple has had unbelievable success with the iPod/iTunes combination, to the point that it dwarfs every other competitor in the market. Despite all its efforts, Microsoft has not been able to gain significant market share with its Windows Media audio formats.

Fourth, there has recently been a lot of success in moving open standards forward instead of relying on closed, proprietary formats — Microsoft’s traditional specialty. In the past, documents stored in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint proved to be notoriously limiting in how you can create and modify them. For the most part, if you didn’t have MS Office, you couldn’t really work with these formats unless you could live with a small subset of their features. Now, formats based on XML, the general purpose markup language, let anyone create programs that read and right them. A very good example is the OpenDocument alternative to Microsoft Office formats, which is now gaining support from many companies in the industry, including Oracle, Google and Novell, among others.

Every so often, Bill Gates comes to the realization that something big is going on and that Microsoft is on the sidelines, out of the game. The best example of this is when he recognized the threat posed by the Internet ten years ago and began its infamous campaign to destroy Netscape. Other examples include when Microsoft first began taking the open source threat seriously in 1998 (see the Halloween Documents) and Gates’ push to put security and privacy as top company priorities in 2002. It also happened again just last week.

In an announcement November 1st and in “leaked” emails from Bill Gates and Microsoft CTO Ray Ozzie, the company has drawn some vague outlines of its software-as-a-service strategy. SaS is the way a lot of applications will likely be delivered in the coming years. Instead of you purchasing a license for Microsoft Office and installing it onto your computer, you’ll be able to pay a monthly subscription fee and receive the latest and greatest version through your web browser. This model may not be a good fit for everyone and for all computer programs, but it’s already proven itself through some business applications. Salesforce.com has been a pioneer in the software-as-a-service market and had much success getting subscribers for its web-based customer relationship management software.

Can Microsoft remake itself as a provider of software over the Internet? Time will tell, but a lot of people have doubts right now. In many ways, I think it’s a classic example of the innovator’s dilemma: Microsoft has a ton of existing customers with certain needs and expectations they must meet. Software-as-a-service may not be what they’re looking for, so the company risks losing them as clients. Looking at it the other way, Microsoft is also highly dependent on the licensing fees it gets from Windows and Office. Investors probably won’t be big fans of giving those up in favor of advertising and subscription revenues that might not stack up.

Personally, I think so much has changed to the benefit of the little guy and that Microsoft has too much momentum going in the wrong direction for this to play out well for them. A lot of technology people, particularly the influential ones, don’t trust Microsoft anymore and are instead moving toward Apple and the Mac OS on the desktop and a variety of open source solutions everywhere else. Microsoft may not die a horrible, dramatic , and public death, but I think the best days are over. Stick a fork in ‘em and watch them fade away into irrelevance.

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