Dropbox is a wonderful little program. What it does is put a folder on your computer, and anything you place inside of that folder will be backed up to the internet. I shouldn’t need to convince you that keeping an off-computer backup of all your project files is a good idea.

Unfortunately, you have to manually put anything you want backed up in your Dropbox folder, and that’s lame, especially if you have multiple folders that you want to be constantly backed up. The good news? It’s 2009, robots are about to control the world, and we can automate it!

This tutorial will show you how to use Dropbox and Automator to do automatic backups of multiple folders.

Get Dropbox

Obviously, if you haven’t already, you’re going to need to get Dropbox and install it.

Create Action

Now you’ll have to create an Automator action so your syncing will be automated.

1. Load up Automator (It should be in your Applications folder)and create a Custom Workflow
2. In the Files & Folders tab, find “Get Specified Finder Items” and drag it to your workflow. Choose the first folder you’d like sync’d.
3. Now drag “Copy Finder Items” to your workflow.
4. Choose your Dropbox folder as the destination, and click “Replacing existing files” if you so desire.
5. Keep doing this for all of the folders you want to keep sync’d with Dropbox.
6. Save your Workflow.
7. Right click on the action you’ve saved, and go to “Open With”. Navigate to System/Library/Core Services and choose to “Always Open With” Automator Runner. This makes it so when your action is opened it automatically runs.

Sync

Now, already we’ve made syncing multiple folders with Dropbox easier, as you can just run the action you’ve saved whenever you want to backup your things, and it will copy everything from your selected Folders to the Dropbox folder.

But wouldn’t it be nice if your computer would do this automatically at a specified time every day? I think so. We can do th

at with iCal Alarms.

1. Load up iCal
2. Go to File > New Event, and call it what you’d like.
3. Double click on your Event and go to Edit
4. Choose the time you’d like it done
5. Repeat: Every day
6. For Alarm, choose “Open File” and then find your Dropbox action

That’s it!

I hope you enjoyed the tutorial.

Note:  There’s also a free version of Dropbox available but it’s limited to 2GB.

Freedom

Freedom is a hit man. Its client? Your efficiency. Its target? Your internet. Ah! But don’t worry because Freedom is also a doctor and will revive your internet connection when the time is right. If you just can’t stop refreshing Twitter and going on Facebook all day when you’re supposed to be writing, designing, or making christmas cards for your Mom then Freedom is the application for you. Give it an amount of time to disable your internet and it will force you into work, not letting you fall into the trap of the world wide web until that time is up.

Write Room

Write-Room is not a full-featured word processor. It will not help you add pretty letterheads, footers, and a table of contents. It will however allow you to write. It looks like the computers of 1985 but sometimes we need to kick it old school to really get things done. Full-screen, no toolbars, just you and your words. There’s a Windows equivalent too.

Think

Sometimes you need to focus on something other than a text editor, and that’s where Think comes in. It’s a simple program: all it does is make one application full screen. Get those other windows and distraction temptations away! Focus on what you need to focus on.

Those are my three favourite tools for distraction-free writing. If you know of any that aren’t here but are useful let me know. I’m always on the look-out for cool software.

Ecoute is a gorgeous looking, light-weght music player that uses your existing iTunes library. No need to launch iTunes, Ecoute does all the integration behind the scenes and gives you a full-featured media player that’s a little more classy and system-friendly than its bloated big brother.

Features:

• Supports entire library including podcasts and video
• Integrated search
• Last.fm support
• Themeable
• Desktop and menu-bar controls

And I can’t say it enough – it’s friggin’ good looking!

Oh, and free. (But a $10 purchase is recommended)

Get it now.

I was never into Twitter. I was a twitter hater; a twater if you will (yeah). Recently though I decided to get into it because I felt like I was really missing out on big marketing potential. Not just for spamming links (Die spammers, die), but for finding people with the same interests as you to grow the user base of your website. So in doing this I’ve been on Twitter quite a bit. Now I’m a complete newbie to Twitter, so I was just using the web-based client. I decided I wanted to be cool so I’m now on a search for the best desktop twitter client to use. Here are my findings so far…

Tweetie

Pros // Clean interface, threaded message, trend search

Cons // No groups, ad-supported

Now this was a nice Twitter client for basic use, but groups was the main reason I started looking for a Twitter client. I wanted to be able to group all the people I was following by the main topic they wrote about (Photography, Graphic Design, Music, etc etc). So Tweetie didn’t do. Onto the next one…

Seesmic

Pros // Groups, facebook integration, short URL service, free

Cons // Didn’t like the interface

This was more like it. Group (”Userlist”) support, and also URL shortening. I like the automatic URL shortening a lot. One less step to go through to tweet something. However, I don’t need Facebook suppport and I really just wasn’t a fan of the UI. It’s not that it’s ugly, it just didn’t go with the rest of my theme choices and stood out.

Twhirl

I’ve heard good things about Twhirl. It’s by the same people who do Seesmic and they had good features, so hey, maybe this one will do it for me. Turns out no. The interface, even though one column, seemed to busy for me, and no groups. It was a step backward from Seesmic (obviously, since it’s their older client). The search continues.

TweetDeck

Pros // Free, facebook and myspace integration, synchronized between computers (with a TweetDeck account), backup (with a TweetDeck account), URL shortening, groups

Cons // busy

Now this was an impressive Twitter client. Lots of features, but I also found it quite busy. I don’t need it linked to my Myspace and Facebook account. The UI was ok. This one was very similar to Seesmic in the pros and cons and general use.

Conclusion

In the end, I didn’t find the perfect Twitter client for me. I want something basic, clean looking, and with group support. That’s it. I guess you can’t find that right now. I’m going to give TweetDeck and/or Seesmic more of a chance and maybe I’ll get used to the interfaces and fall in love.

I guess I’m late. Really late. Notational Velocity has been out for a number of years now to very good review. I only got my Mac last May and have been using Text Edit to write. I thought I was doing so good by not using Word or Pages or anything else filled with clutter to get my writing done. Oh how silly I was.

So for those who have been living in the dark like myself, I’d like to tell you a bit about Notational Velocity. Its purpose is to write very quickly. You type your notes – that’s it. No saving (automatic), no mouse (oh hell yeah), just type what you want to say and you’re done.

Reasons for using Notational Velocity as opposed to anything else:

• Lightweight and efficient
• Free (and open-source)
• Mouse-less operation
• Constant saves
• Quick search

So stop reading this and get it here.