Showing posts tagged foursquare

How I Moved My Everything To The Cloud

Moving to cloud-based storage

I hate losing files. I also hate carrying around thumb drives and portable external hard drives. In an age when we’re able to blast humans into space for months at a time, it’s ridiculous to think we can’t keep a friggin’ file from going *poof*. I’ve been lugging a bajillion pound (fact.) Dell laptop around the past five years because I had no clear path to backing up whatever files were contained on it.

So, inspired by VC extraordinaire Fred Wilson’s post on how he moved to the cloud, here’s how I did it and how you can, too. It’s a little scary at first, but trust me, you’ll thank me later. And you won’t lose any files. Keep in mind that successfully migrating to the cloud is about creating a workflow you’re comfortable with. So if these processes don’t work for you, improvise as necessary. 

Step 1: The Tools

You need the right set of tools to make this work. Thankfully these are all free. Go register for accounts with Dropbox, Evernote, Instapaper, cloudHQ and If This Then That. I’ll wait here. 

Ok, good. You’ll probably want to go get yourself a 1Password license as well. And, Google Chrome (taking a leap of faith and assuming you already have a Gmail account…)

Step 2: Getting Setup

Ok, so first things first. Let’s consolidate some data. If you’re like me, you probably have a work and personal computer and have used Safari, Firefox and Chrome throughout the years on each machine. Your data is probably scattered. You’ll want setup Firefox sync and suck all your bookmarks from your other machines over to your current one. Same with Safari (does Safari even have a sync? I have no clue. Use Chrome.). Once your bookmarks and passwords are all sync’d open up Chrome. Go ahead and import bookmarks and passwords from all your browsers into Chrome. The reason we’re using Chrome is that Chrome Sync is superior to Firefox and Safari syncs (again, I have no idea if Safari lets you sync across multiple computers or not. iCloud?) since it brings along extensions to any computer you’re logged into. 

Alright, you will now only use Chrome on all computers. It might take a few hours of idle time for all your bookmarks to populate across browser installs you have on different machines, but once it does you’ll never have an issue with finding bookmarks. You bookmark something at work, and it’s instantly at your home. Magic. 

Setup Dropbox on all your computers. Drag the Instapaper bookmarklet to your Chrome toolbar. Install the Evernote clipper extension. While you’re at it, might as well make a copy of your Google data and put that in Dropbox for safe keeping. 

Step 3: Social

It’s super lovely that we have all these services out there that let you essentially scrapbook your life. It’s super not lovely that they’re scattered across a few different services. Wouldn’t it be nice to collect all those photos in one spot without lifting a finger? Yeah, same here. 

I solved this problem for myself by using If This Then That, a nifty tool that let’s you create triggers to — surprise — do something when something else happens. I created a few tasks that automatically take my Facebook, Foursquare, and Instagram photos and puts them in Dropbox folders with all the metadata and date info still attached. Get the ones I created here:

I also setup a few tasks in IFTTT to take RSS feeds and dump them to Evernote as well. The best example is having my Instapaper items sent as they’re saved to Evernote. Love Instapaper, but having my links saved in Evernote gives me more control over them in the future. You can use IFTTT for just about any service worth it’s salt, so poke around and setup what you need. The goal is to consolidate what you’re doing everywhere else into as few places as possible. 

Step 4: Setup 1Password

I recently got turned onto this nifty app. It stores all your username and password information for all the sites out there, then allows you to retrieve those and autofill using a single password. You can extend this further by storing your credit card and other sensitive information (like address) with it. It takes a leap of faith, but once you’re comfortable with it, you can safely use hard-to-guess passwords on all the sites you visit, and they even have a way for you to access all your information remotely. I’ve setup my account on all computers and devices using this method:

Step 5: Music and Movies/TV 

I love Apple. But I’m not putting my music in their iCloud. I actually use Spotify. However, I’ve sync’d my two iTunes libraries (work and personal) to Google Music. I THEN DELETED MY ENTIRE MUSIC LIBRARY ON ALL COMPUTERS. I’m able to stream this anywhere, anytime. It’s a great companion to Spotify, which already has sync’d up my iTunes libraries. I don’t watch a lot of movies, but if I did I’d probably use some combination of Hulu/Netflix/iTunes paired with AppleTV. The streaming/renting aspect wins out over storing gigabytes of pointless data… Seriously?

UPDATE: I’m giving iTunes Match a try. So far, so good. I revived my libraries via Time Machine and have sync’d both personal and home libraries. I can now grab anything from any device. I imagine I’m going to use iTunes now for the things I care about that are not on Spotify (i.e. fill in the holes with the Adele’s and Black Keys of the world who refuse streaming services). Spotify will remain my chief tool for simply consuming, sharing and discovering music and playlists. I’m thinking Google Music will stay there as a nice backup if I’m neither at a computer with Spotify, or if I’ve lost my iPhone (gasp!). It runs in the background so it’s not much of a concern to me if it’s used, or not. 

Step 6: Putting It All Together

Still with me? Good. So this is how I work… I use Gmail for email and for to-do’s using the Tasks feature. Google Docs for all my writing and spreadsheet needs. I do a one-way sync from Google Docs to my Dropbox using cloudHQ. This makes my docs available on all my devices for quick access. Google Calendar for calendering.

Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/Foursquare keeps me social, and all the photos are saved straight to Dropbox, automatically. I bookmark destinations in Chrome and use Instapaper to save articles for reading later (both on computer and iPhone/iPad), while I clip things I’m researching or collecting information about using the Evernote clipper extension (recipes are great for this sort of thing!). When I can’t use Spotify, I’ll use Google Music.

1Password works on all my devices and keeps me secure. 

I plan to export my Google data once a year. And every month or two I’ll export my Instapaper (I really don’t know why I do that since it’s also saved in Evernote…). I dump this into Dropbox, too. 

I lean on Dropbox pretty heavily. However, just because I have a 150gb hard drive doesn’t mean I need that much Dropbox space. I get by on 50gb. Seriously. Once you remove storing music and movie files from the equation, you open up a ton of possibilities. 

I didn’t discuss them, but I use Basecamp for project management and Google Analytics for, well, analytics. 

There you have it. A pretty straight-forward approach to moving your life to the cloud and having near data ubiquity across all your computers and devices. And, like Fred Wilson said, ”The sense of freedom that exists when you know your applications and files are available from any device with an internet connection and a browser is amazing. I feel lighter already.”

Enjoy. 

Why I Love foursquare (And How You Can Too)

Matt Kiser Loves Foursquare

I resisted foursquare for a long time. I didn’t really care about badges or mayorships. It didn’t strike me as a particularly interesting way to record the places you’d been, and it was too difficult to extract that info at a later time. There wasn’t a rich community of friends or conversation. The idea of getting deals, or specials, seemed neat, but it was still too difficult and often overly complicated. It was quickly dismissed from my iPhone (twice!) as just another thing I wasn’t going to waste time updating. 

That was until I realized the point. And forgive me for this sounding remedial, but foursquare works in two ways: 1) the more you put into foursquare, the more you get out. Especially since the recently released feature, Radar. And, 2) foursquare is a lot like Twitter in that you don’t necessarily need to tweet in order to extract value. In this case, you don’t need to check in to use the “explore” feature for recommendations, but it helps.

Let me explain the first point: Add your real friends on foursquare. Then add some brands like Time Out New York, which curate tons of “best of” lists. Speaking of lists, follow some lists, and add places to your personal to-do list. Check in at places you like to go to (e.g. don’t waste time checking in at the laundromat, but do check into your favorite coffee shop). Turn on Radar. Done. 

See, what I didn’t realize about foursquare was that once you reach a threshold of places you’ve checked into (both in terms of quantity as well as diversity), and places you’ve explicitly added to your to-do list, you’ve created an amazingly rich graph about who you are and what you like. 

The recommendations get really good at that point. Foursquare has become everything I wish Yelp was. The recommendations are fantastic. I’ve found a ton of places I wouldn’t have normally gone to. The tips keep you hip to what to get/try/avoid. Oh, and there is a certain barrier to entry with foursquare that keeps the spam out (I believe the use of real identities is super important when it comes to recommendations). 

I really like their Radar feature. Once you turn that on and you have your friends and lists, it’s always a nice surprise to get a little notification on my iPhone that reminds me that I actually want to stop by certain businesses when I’m in their area. It’s like I have a sidekick. Who doesn’t want a sidekick?

But if you don’t want to to go through the trouble to do all of that, you can still fire up foursquare and check out the recommendations. They’ll just be a little less personal. 

Here are a few lists I created to help you make sense of the world:

Enjoy.