DropBox

As a historian on the go (well, a freeway flier working at at least two different jobs at a time) I have several different workstations and places where I get things done. For instance there is the macbook that serves as my desk work station, and my new Aspire One (the CoalBook) that comes with me now wherever I go to work. So, at the coffee shop I have the coalbook, but at home, I like to use the mac. Its got a little bigger screen, and I can plug in the 10-key to enter grades. What's not to love.

The issue is keeping things like gradebooks together. I was working manually, just updating to a rotating backup, but there was a better solution out there. Dropbox. Just a little research would have turned it up, but it took a crisis to find it. So the coalbook crapped out the other day and wouldn't load the Xmanager. That's a serious problem as it had my work notes and student comments trapped on it. I needed to get in there and manually ftp the files out without using X. A major notch on my nerd belt, but not the way I wanted to do business. I searched for a solution after reinstalling ubuntu 9.04 netbook edition on the coalbook.

Dropbox is for mac, linux, and windows if that's your bag. It does a nice job of providing a unified working folder for each system. So, if i edit a file on the go, its also on my desktop when I get home. There's a 2GB limit for the free edition, but with the automation, what's not to love? I'll keep you updated.

-S