Willem314

In this digital age lots of people (like me) use more than one computer. One at work, one at home and a laptop for everywhere else.  And while the computers we use are different, a lot of the files we use on them are pretty much the same. While this is a common problem and solutions just aren’t that complicated anymore now that  everybody has an internet connection, OS developers still refuse to offer a proper build in solution.

So, as with so many things we improvise: We mail ourselves the file, we store our files in a service like box.net, put them on our USB key that we leave in the train which leaves you’re privacy in the hands of whomever takes your seat afterwards. If you’re fond of new stuff like me, you can also pay 79 euro’s a year for a service like mobileme that is perfectly implemented on my Mac but completely useless anywhere else.

And using Ubuntu at work and Windows XP with most of my clients I need something that people actually spend time thinking through and it is here: The solution to all of your file carrying problems on Windows, OS X and even some Linux distros.

It’s called Dropbox and quite frankly I think it is one of the simplest, smartest, most honest and most useful pieces of software I came across in a longtime. The principle is easy: you use 3 different computers that are (sometimes) connected to the internet on which you install Dropbox. This basically asks you to subscribe and to appoint the Dropbox directory on each computer. You put the files you need on all three computers in the folder of one of them and hocuspocus: next time look in your Dropbox on the other computers you’ll find exactly the same files! And this is not all! Open a file on any of the computers, modify it, save it and the changes will automatically be updated to your other computers.

So why honest? You can use it with 2gb of storage space for free, which gives you plenty of space for your working documents. If this is not enough you can upgrade your account to 50 gb for a totally reasonable 9,99 dollars a month or 99 dollars a year.

I’ve been using it for a week now and I cannot image life without it anymore. I don’t have to anticipate working on my laptop in the park anymore, I just go. And not just to me, I’ve recommended this to a lot of professionals around me that consider it a real lifesaver!

I’m not sure if it is the lack of creativity or if companies think that they have something to gain from not advancing. The music industry that I wrote about earlier is not the only one.

Ever heard of mint or buxfer? In short they are free online budgeting software; they allow you to keep track of all your spendings and income and of course to analyse them afterwards.

They give you quite a nice idea on what you spend on what and how you manage to balance things out a bit. The downside of this is that you have to go to this website everytime you buy a chocolate bar to put in all the data. Another possibility is to give this totally unknown site the codes to your bankaccount. Very nice of course, and I do really believe that they will not use these codes to take my money to some far away island. Either way I don’t even give my codes to my mum, why would I hand them into a site that undoubtedly doesn’t spend half as much on security as my bank does.

Oh yeah my bank, why don’t they do this? Doesn’t their marketing department have bright ideas or are they affraid I’ll start cutting down on my spending and ruin the economy? Why can I get this stuff on several different free websites but not with the organisation that I pay to make profit with my money?

France isn’t exactly known for it’s innovative attitude towards business. It is mostly seen as a country where paperwork and pride of traditions keep it from making significant progress. However even the biggest France critics will have to admit that they came up with something fantastic now. As of the first of January 2009 the French government put in place a law that allows people to more easily start a company.

1. You subscribe fast and easy on the internet, you can stop it anytime you want. Both for free!
2. You don’t pay any taxes if your turnover stays under 32.000 (services) or 80.000 (products) euros
3. For administration you just hand in 2 lists: one with spending’s and one with income and you’re ready. So you don’t have to spend half of you’re income on accountants.

Especially the latter is quite revolutionary I guess, most of the administrative moves in this country come with a lot of paperwork. I don’t know if similar things are being done in other countries. Either way I think this is a great idea for stimulating economy and employment ratings.

Slowly, very slowly we see our cellphones evolving and where phone producers need help from computer producers to innovate their products the phone networks keep on limiting their services to make sure they squeeze every penny out of their customers.

Especially for people that travel a lot calling is very expensive and even if the EU is trying to put some boundaries to this madness you can still expect a huge bill when you take your cellphone abroad.

There seems to be a solution for the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and France since the creation of Transatel. The company has one offer for the four countries which should allow you to save plenty of money even though they are not the cheapest. Interesting for managers traveling to these countries regularly I would imagine.