Drop.io is a website that allows you to create a private chunk of space that you can use to store and share anything (pictures, video, audio, docs, etc) privately, without accounts, personal registration, or email addresses.
Only people that know the URL of a drop can access it. You can create as many “drops” as you want and password protect access to your “drops”. You can also select whether visitors can add files to your drop and when the drop should expire.
Drop.io recently added FREE faxing to their services.
To send a fax from your drop to a recipient:
1. Click on ‘send’ and then select ‘fax’ next to any document (.doc) or PDF
2. Enter the 10 digit fax number of the recipient (our service is US only)
3. Your fax is sent, end of story
Note: you can only fax out documents up to 20 pages.. Certain word documents with embedded charts, or other OLE objects PDF files made with Postscript 3 will not work.
To receive a fax into your drop:
1. Go to your drop and click ‘receive a fax’
2. Email the cover sheet to the person sending the fax to your drop OR click ‘this coversheet’ and send the custom drop.io cover sheet to the person sending the fax
3. The sender must put the drop.io cover-page on top of the fax.
4. The fax will appear in your drop as a .PDF
Note: So, the basic idea, to fax a document into a drop you must use the drop’s custom ‘cover page’ – give the cover page to the fax sender and you are in good shape (email it to them, print it and send it to them, whatever you want)
I wanted to share a handy tool called YouSendIt that I use quite a bit when I want to send large files to someone without the hassle of FTP servers. You just upload your file to the YouSendIt site, enter the email addresses of the people you want to share the file with, and then add an optional message to go with the email. YouSendIt then emails a link to the addresses you listed that allows people to view or download that file.
You can send up to 100 MB and 100 downloads for free. The link stays active for a few weeks (I couldn’t find the exact date in their help section).
Their free service has always met my needs, but you also have the option for paying for additional features, like:
- Files up to 2GB
- Password protection
- File tracking
I just wanted to pass it along because I find it a quick and useful way to shoot a file off to someone without having to upload it to your own server.
My life is immersed in technology. With my own work online and the client work that I do and with all of the sites where I have registered, including credit card, online banking, subscriptions to site etc…I have so many user names and password that one can’t imagine and for security and privacy reasons each one is unique. For my passwords, I use all of the tricks…letter, symbol and number combinations… Managing, remembering, and keeping my passwords safe has become a major issue for me and I have been looking for a good software application to help me do just that.
I think I found it…based on what I have read…
PassPack is a website that allows you to securely manage your passwords online. They use a process called Data Packing.
When you enter and send your data to the PassPack server, it is encrypted on-the-fly before leaving your browser. They use the AES algorithm, and only you can decrypt your information using your secret Packing Key. Your Packing Key never gets sent or saved to the server, so not even PassPack staff knows it. As far as the world outside your browser is concerned, your Packing Key is a complete mystery. Without it, your data can’t be read.
In addition to Data Packing, they have a very extensive list of security features:
- Anti-phishing protection
- Disposable Logins
- Scrambled Password Field
- Offline Version (optional)
- Password quality tester
- Make personal backups
- Strong password generator
- Double Access login technique
- Locks up when unattended
- US Gov’t approved encryption
The other great feature and time saver is the auto-login. You will be securely and automatically logged in to any online website that you create an entry for and enter username, password, and website url. It also allows quick and easy access to your saved passwords.
An offline version download is also available so you can have access to your information at all times.
With the growing popularity of handheld devices, you should constantly be checking to see what mobile users are seeing when they look up your site. One way is to type the URL into your wireless device, but how do you test on devices you don’t have? Or what if you’re not a mobile user? Now you can use mobile device simulators on your computer to see what mobile users with different handheld devices are seeing.
For a quick and easy look, you can try the pocket device simulator from G-site. This site lets you type in any URL and see what mobile users might see. It displays the page in a generic handheld device.
| For example, here’s a screen cap of yesterday’s Webgrrls Wisdom blog using G-site: |
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Sites like G-site meet many people’s needs. However, they don’t take host files and other local settings into account. To test your site on specific types of devices or to play with more advanced options, you might want to install applications from the different mobile device creators.
| Microsoft allows you to download emulators that can be used with or without Visual Studio. Here’s a glance at the same Webgrrls blog post using the Microsoft Mobile Emulator: |
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BlackBerry also provides its own mobile simulators for BlackBerry devices for you to download, and the Palm Developer Network provides free access to mobile simulators for Palm devices as well.
You can no longer afford to hope for the best when it comes to mobile devices. You should find out what your customers are seeing and then seek out ways to make the user experience on mobile devices simpler and easier to use.
I often talk on the subject of website usability and the importance of designing your web pages with your user in mind.
In the blink of an eye, web surfers make their judgments…they instantly judge your website’s “visual appeal.” If your website is appealing they will look further, if it is appealing and easy to navigate and read…you will have the chance to build trust with your reader and only then can you influence them to take the action that you want …whether it is to click on your ad, call you for a consultation, or just simply come back.
Here are some tools that will help you evaluate and analyze how users use your site so you can improve your website’s design and usabilty.
ClickTale records your visitors’ every action as they browse your website and allows you to watch movies to understand visitor behavior and gain valuable insights and improve your website’s usability.
Price: You can track 100 page visits/week (~400 page visits/month) for free. If you need to track more pages, check out clicktale website for price plans.
ClickHeat is a visual heatmap of clicks of your website pages, showing you hot and cold click zones. The hot zones tell you the most clicked on areas on the page and the cold zones tell you which areas on the page are being ignored.
This is an open source software that equires Javascript on the client side to track clicks, PHP and GD library (image library that should be installed with your PHP) on the server to log clicks and generate the heatmap.
Price: FREE
Clickdensity is another great tool that offers different kinds of reports based on your user behavior on your website:
- Heat maps reports show the most clicked areas on the page
- Hover maps reports show you the statistics on your users hovering over the links but not clicking on them.
- A/B Tests allow you to change page elements to test usability and improve user experience.
Price: You can track one page for up to 5,000 clicks for free. If you need to track more pages, check out clickdensity website for price plans.
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