Dropbox.. do it for free

So 2nd post... I'm still wondering about what to write about on blogs, i will try not to ramble or to moan about whatever assignment that i am doing (currently writing or extending a scanner for a compiler... weeee so much fun). But no guarantees

Anyhow - Dropbox. Yes indeed

So last year dropbox was quite handy, i hadn't formally decided how to do backups of school work.. well backups full stop really, but the school work was probably the most important.
I struggled a bit too with the idea of having to write code or work on the uni computers, and then magically remember to plug a flash drive in and write to it so i could carry on at home. So i still had masses of storage left in my dropbox from when i purchased my Galaxy S3. So decided that was the best route to take, since all i had to do was login from the uni computers and then drag and drop onto the webpage and it was done. Didn't need to worry about doin' my laptop cos i had the app installed and it just came down automagically ... yes.. its what the cloud does... magic.

So - like i said i dealt with this for a year, and then recently when my extra space "time" period expired, i was suddenly faced with the dropbox being full of all the photos from my phone camera (instant upload).

Here enter google! (hah-rah!)

I pondered the thought - can i run my own dropbox, and it turns out - yes, yes i can! I found some really nifty open source software called owncloud. Looks like a great piece of work. Very fast and very nice GUI, and most importantly very easy to install.

So - hah - my server is now paying for itself :P

There's a raft of android apps (and probably apple as well) that support it. I'm still looking a bit for an app that will synchronize my camera folder to the owncloud so that when i delete something locally it disappears from up there as well. The instant upload thing is great... until you have kids that hold down the capture button... and then you have to delete 25 fotos from 2 different locations.

Early days yet, but will see how it pans out.