Tools I Use: Dropbox

I'm becoming a big fan of Dropbox. At first glance, it's an online backup service. But it also synchronizes files between computers, keeps a revision history, shares files/folders between Dropbox users, and shares files/photos online. Plus it's cross-platform (Windows, Mac and Linux). It's like the Google GDrive that has never materialized.

It's practically replaced my USB flash drives. No more digging in my laptop bag, worrying about safely removing the drive, forgetting to take the flash drive with me, or finding a flash drive in the clothes dryer. No more worrying about forgetting to back up all those LOLCats photoshops.

Since I work on several computers during the week, this has saved me a lot of time and trouble. No more having to remember to email myself that document to review. No more wondering if I have the latest copy of the readme file I'm editing. No more wrestling with Windows file sharing at home. 

Their 50 gigabyte plan is $9/month, or the 2 gigabyte plan is free. If you use my referral link, we both get an extra 256 megabytes of free storage.

Obama Team and Social Norms

An interesting article on how the Obama team pulled off a very successful "get out the vote" campaign. Their winner? A simple phrase: "A record turnout is expected". 

Wow. That's the same Robert Cialdini and his descriptive social norm I heard about over two years ago. 

The basic idea is that "everybody is doing it" is much more powerful than "you ought to do it". We use it every time we ask somebody else if they're going to X's party, if they're contributing to their 401k, if they're tithing, if they're on Facebook, etc. 

Robert Cialdini's book is: Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Collins Business Essentials).

Everyone is buying it.

Nintendo DS Game Chamber - No More Missing Games

I came across this amazing game case for the Nintendo DS in an odd place. David Friedman has a profile and photo shoot with the inventor on his photo blog.

The game case has a unique feature that solves a problem that we've really struggled with. You can only take one game at a time out of the case. To get a new game out, you have to put an old one in. No more empty game cases. No more finding DS games all over the house. No more missing games. (Unless you can't find the case.)

NaNoWriMo 2008

It's time again for the National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo. One month. Fifty thousand words. Ready?

I tried last year but gave up at just over 6,000 words. I don't think I'm going to try it again this year, but I might. Work is much more intense this year and I've got some homeschooling challenges. But busy is good. It makes you more productive.

If you've ever thought you had a novel sitting around in your head and wanted to try to put it down on paper, this is a good time to start. Fail or succeed, it'll be over in 30 days.

There is also a young writer's program for kids. That's what we're more likely to try this year.

North Georgia Adventure

Well, as I promised 11 months ago, we haven't been to Disney yet this year. The problem is, we haven't been anywhere else. So this week we're fixing that. We're headed to North Georgia for the week. A week of car-camping, sleeping in a tent, playing in the woods, seeing waterfalls, Oktoberfest in Helen, Georgia, trees that actually change color, fishing, and cooking on backpacking stoves.

It's a full moon this week and isn't supposed to rain while we're there, so the kids will get to see how bright a full moon really is when you're out in the woods. If the bugs cooperate, we might even be sleeping outside of the tent.