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AMSU White-Label brings the same power that’s behind Are My Sites Up to you in a way that lets you easily resell it to others and manage it all from a lovingly crafted web interface.

So, you’re a web designer/developer with a list of clients. In these times, we’re all looking for ways to increase revenue from, and value to our clients. What if you could do both, and keep an eye on your websites and theirs at the same time?  Now you can, and as a bonus, you can increase the effectiveness of your communication with them. Are My Sites Up White Label is a website monitoring service that was built with people like you in mind. It has plans for every budget, and a plan calculator that shows you how much money you can make from it, given a few details like how many sites you have and how much you plan to charge.

“Ok”, you say, “That covers increasing revenue and value to my clients, but what about enhancing my communication with them?”

Ah, you’re speaking of Broadcasts. They allow you to send short messages to all of your clients at once, or just a selected few. Here’s an example of how they help you to save time: You host email for all of your clients, and your email server has an issue. One by one, your customers realize that their email isn’t working, and they call you. You answer phone calls all day, saying to each customer that you’re aware of the issue and that it’s being worked on. Broadcasts solve this problem by letting you send a message to all of your customers at once, these arrive via Push Notification, SMS, email (and even via personalized, automated phone call) telling everyone what’s going on at once, so you get back to work.  Pretty awesome.

So what else is different about AMSUWL? It’s a full-fledged white label service, so your clients never have to know about AMSUWL – you can sell the service as if it were your own.  They can even build a custom iPhone app for you with your own logo, icon and colors, so that your brand is always on your clients’ phone screen, or you can use the white label app if you’d like. Your clients can install the app, log in and see their site status at any time. Clients can also log into the web app and view/manage their sites.

All of their plans have a 30-day free trial so you can start reselling the service and make money from it before they even charge you a cent.

As a special Fuel Your Apps bonus, the first 25 people who sign up for AMSUWL with the following link, http://amsuwl.com/aff/fuelya - will get 2 months free! Sound good? We think so!

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Four months ago Bobby Ghoshal was living in Southern California with a couple very talented designers and was inspired to start working on a secret project with Matthew Ausonio.  It wasn’t long before his living room was covered with whitewashed paper, black and red ink, design books, and crushed up red bull cans.  They worked only during the night to create FLUD – a constant controlled flood of relevant news for each iPad user.  A month later, they released FLUD to the app store for approval that immediately sprung into one of the top three spots of iPad news reader apps accompanied by Pulse and Flipboard.  At four developers strong and currently not benefiting from any investors, they have tripled their user base and continue to push the envelope of relevant news delivery by releasing an iPhone version.

FLUD aggregates content from various news sources into a beautiful Windows Phone 7 like interface.  The iPhone version is slightly different than the iPad because each feed has its own dedicated screen real estate.  You’ll notice on the iPad that there are multiple feeds cluttered together on the same screen, but Ghoshal said that they are working on a complete overhaul of the iPad’s interface and will be pushing it out in early January.

Unlike Flipboard, which depends on your social networks to generate content, FLUD gives you the option to select feeds from their featured list, search the internet to find feeds, or even add them from your Google Reader account.  Currently there isn’t any Google Reader integration on the iPhone, but this is going to be pushed out along with some bug fixes in the update set for next week.

FLUD also gives you the ability to share interesting articles with others via Twitter, Facebook, and e-mail.  It comes equipped with a heart icon that allows users to “Love It” which is similar to Facebook’s “Like” and lets other Fluders know that the article is worth a read.  This feature also allows you to read an article later – even if you’re offline.

Overall, FLUD is an excellent way to catch up on your latest news and discover new articles and feeds.  The FLUD team does have a few bugs to fix with the iPhone including some crazy text that shows up in the feed, but i’m sure those minor glitches will be worked out in the next update.  The iPad and iPhone apps are available in the app store for free right now and you can stay up to date by following the FLUD on twitter.

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Board games are one of those things that have stood the test of time.  Even with iPads, iPods, PSP’s, DS’s, etc…, board games are still very relevant.  And as wonderful as technology is, it can be very refreshing to play a good ‘ol fashioned board game every once in awhile.

The folks over at Tangorang Labs have just released Winter Land, and we’ve had an opportunity to try it out for ourselves.  Winter Land costs $1.99, and is solely for the iPad.

We have reviewed one other app developed by Tangorang Labs, and the Winter Land experience is pretty consistent with our previous review in terms of quality, presentation, and ease-of-use.

The premise of the game is quite simple:  The first person to get to Santa Claus wins!  You move your character around the virtual board by drawing cards.  Along your way, you may encounter special cards that either help or hinder your journey towards the man in red. Additionally, there are also slides and ladders that will either aid you in moving ahead, or assist you in taking a giant leap backwards.  Picture the classic board game concept of  ”Chutes and Ladders” or “Candy Land” , and you’ll get the idea.

Overall, this game is very well done.  The animation and graphics are fun, the music is catchy and not annoying, and the game hits a “sweet spot” when it comes to length.  If you want to treat yourself to an early Christmas present, head on over to the App Store and grab a copy today.

Finally, in the spirit of the season, we’re offering three promo codes for a free copy of Winter Land!  Shoot me a Tweet (@jaley) with the hashtag of #fuelyourapps prior to Noon on Sunday (Eastern time), and we’ll randomly select three lucky people!  Tell your friends!

*A special thanks to Tangorang Labs for hooking us up with the promo codes!

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Earlier this year many of us purchased a MacHeist bundle that unlocked a beta version of Tweetie 2 for Mac.  Shortly after that, the big dogs at Twitter acquired Tweetie and developer Loren Brichter – better known as Atebits.  Since then we have all been in suspense on if we will ever see Tweetie 2 for Mac.  For months I have tried various Twitter clients like Kiwi, Nambu, and even Itsy, but… they’re not Tweetie 2.

Today the team at Raptor Apps was feeling the Christmas spirit and released a beta version of Weet for Mac.  They are also the creators of Weet for iPhone which was released a few months back.  It’s currently available on iTunes for 99 cents.  Now I have obviously only been using Weet for Mac beta for a short while today, but I can see it definitely has potential of becoming a big player among the other Mac Twitter clients.  It’s minimalistic, clean, and well-polished even for a beta.  Weet comes packed with some of the more modern Twitter features and also adds a few others like muting users and blocking keywords.  The one thing that did throw me off with Weet is its inline tweet box.  I like the touch but you’ll notice that there is no submit or tweet button.  You’ll have to click Command + Enter to send your tweet.  The other option is in the General preference pane and allows you to send a tweet by pressing Enter.

While in beta it’s currently free and I’m not sure what the final price tag will look like or the date of an official release.  Check out the screenshots and then give it a try for yourself – let us know what you think.

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Delibar is a tool for searching, managing and storing your bookmarks on the cloud. Browse, tag, edit your bookmarks everywhere with Delibar for iPhone.

A little over a year ago Chad Engle wrote a post on Delibar, a Delicious Mac client.  If you are unfamiliar with Delicious (formerly del.icio.us), it is a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks.  It was founded in 2003 and then acquired by Yahoo! in 2005.  Delibar has also added support for Pinboard, if you aren’t a big Delicious bookmarks fan.

Personally, I have found that installing the official Delicious extensions for your browser of choice is the easiest route for creating new bookmarks.   However, having an app like Delibar touch is really nice for managing bookmarks on the go.  The setup was quick and painless and the interface makes it easy to navigate your way through the app.  An added bonus is that Delibar will open a bookmark within the application so it doesn’t require switching back and forth between mobile Safari.  Although it’s labeled for the iPhone, it is compatible with most iOS devices. I am secretly hoping they will release a separate iPad version in the near future.

Features

• Add/Edit/Delete bookmarks
• Multi-account support
• Global search across all your bookmarks
• Friends bookmark  access
• Ability to save searches
• Navigate bookmarks by tags
• Safari mobile integration (via bookmarklet)

Delibar touch for iPhone is available on iTunes for $1.99.  Follow @delibar on twitter.

Screenshots

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Today is Thanksgiving.  A time for remembering what and who you are thankful for.  I’m thankful for family, friends, health, etc…  But we’re about apps here, so let me share my Thanksgiving app story with you.

Yesterday evening, we began our 400-mile or so trek east, to the great state of Ohio.  This journey is really not too difficult, aside from the usually snarled traffic in Chicago.  To complicate matters, last evening, the weather in Chicago was reported to be lousy: rain, sleet, potential snow, heavy winds.  Include with this, the fact that it’s supposedly the busiest travel day of the year, and you have a recipe for a traffic nightmare.

Avoiding this traffic situation really is impossible.  But, there’s strength in knowing exactly where and when to expect the traffic snarls.  I decided to give INRIX Traffic! a try, which is available as a free app in the app store.  As you might have guessed, INRIX Traffic! was developed by INRIX, Inc.  I tested out the iPhone version, but they also offer up an iPad and Android version of their app.

I found this app to be really surprisingly good.  That’s not a slap at the folks at INRIX – quite the contrary.  Considering the fact that this is a free app, I had somewhat low expectations on usability, appearance, and accuracy.  I was really surprised – and did I mention the app is free?

Usability – This app is very usable.  It just makes sense.  I only tested the free features (there is a Pro version available within the app), but they all made sense.  Speaking of the Pro version, if you want to make that jump, it will set you back $9.99 for a year of Pro membership, or if you are a more long-term commitment type of person, there is a lifetime version available for $24.99.  Pro membership will give you additional features, such as enhanced commuting information and traffic cameras.  All of that sounds really nice, but honestly, the free app is pretty solid.

Appearance – I have seen some pretty ugly apps in my lifetime, but this is not one of them.  The real place where appearance matters in these types of apps is the maps; and INRIX Traffic! does a nice job at displaying maps, traffic conditions, and other potential incidents, construction zones, etc…

Accuracy – All of these cool features are useless if the app isn’t accurate.  INRIX Traffic! was extremely accurate on our Ohio-bound journey.  Traffic jams were accurately reflected, and construction zones were spot-on.

Also worth mentioning is that users can submit accidents, construction zones, “live police”, etc…  I’m not completely clear on how this is verified, and I didn’t want to become too distracted while driving!

Overall, I highly recommend this app for your next journey.  It does exactly what it says, and does it quite well.  And, in case I didn’t mention this before – the app is free!

Happy and safe travels!

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When I first purchased my iPad on launch day, I was very optimistic.  This was the device that was going to help me read more books, carry less laptops, and – *cough cough* – watch more Netflix.  And in many ways, the “magical” iPad has delivered on that promise.  For some strange reason, I do find myself reading more books, I will only bring my iPad with me on Thanksgiving, as opposed to a full-fledged laptop, and I definitely watch more Netflix!  What hadn’t occurred to me is that this thing could be a really good educational tool for our three boys, too.

So, my 4-year old and I decided to browse the iTunes App Store one fine morning, and came across ABC:  Look.  Listen.  Write. We decided to make the $1.99 plunge, and purchased the 67.6 MB app.

ABC:  Look.  Listen.  Write. was developed by Tangorang Labs, a self-described “team of semi-domesticated orangutans dedicated to spreading the fun through original and innovative mobile apps for the iPhone and iPad.”  I took a brief look at their site (which is rather cute), and they offer several other apps as well.

Anyway, we sat down and started our ABC:  Look.  Listen.  Write. adventure.  And for the most part, it was a fun journey.  Whenever I review educational apps, I like to look at the functionality, and of course, what kind of educational value the app offers, but just as important, I try to pay careful attention to the “independence” factor, too.  For example, my 4-year old doesn’t read yet, but that didn’t stop him from being able to figure out how to get started with this app, thanks to the simple splash screen accompanied with a very obvious “Start” button.

It doesn't get much easier than this.

Once you enter the app, it really is quite easy for a child to figure this process out.  The whole alphabet is presented to you, and the helpful voice prompts tell you to touch on a letter to get started.  Again, that all important “independence” factor!

After deciding which letter to tap on (that was easily a 2-3 minute process for us), you have several options available to you.  Initially, the screen will show you the letter you selected, a picture of something that represents that letter, and the lovely voice prompts will read to you as well (”K is for Knight”, etc…).  You can tap the speaker icon to hear the voice prompt again, tap the arrows to navigate through other letters, tap the pencil to enter the “tracing mode” (more on that in a minute), and there is also a home button that will return you to the letter selection screen.  So far, so good!

The “tracing mode” feature of this app is pretty well done.  It’s nothing fancy, but it doesn’t need to be, does it?  You are given a simple outline of a letter, and with just the dragging of a finger, you can trace that letter over and over again.  You can clear the screen to start over, tap the speaker to hear the letter and word combination again, navigate through other letters, flip back over to the word/picture combination screen, and head back to that letter selection screen.  Easy-peezy!  And, perhaps most importantly, this app was able to harness my son’s attention for over 10 minutes – which is quite an accomplishment.

There are a few improvements, to the “tracing mode” in particular, that would make this app even better.  My son can easily trace within the outlines of a given letter, but he doesn’t necessarily do it in the right order.  Some directional arrows of some sort would be a helpful addition for teaching kids how to create letters, rather than just learning how to outline them.  Also, when you are in trace mode, my son became frustrated because at times, when he attempted to trace a letter, he pressed one of the navigational buttons by mistake, which switched him to a different letter.  I don’t know exactly how to improve upon this, and it may have been the way he was holding the iPad.  One item that I found somewhat humorous was the words that were sometimes chosen to represent a given letter.  Maybe I am not as refined as I should be (maybe I need to read more books on my iPad), but when I think of the letter “F”, I think of “Flag”, or “Firetruck” – not Film Noir. I still chuckle at that one!

But overall, I found this to be a really solid app, and I highly recommend giving it a try.  $1.99 perhaps is a little pricey, but with a few refinements, I think that price would likely be well worth it.  Kudos to that team of semi-domesticated orangutans!

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I’m guilty of this as much as anyone – taking photos of my food to share with friends on Facebook or Twitter.  In fact, my first photo of 2010 was on January 1st of two biscuits and a piece of bacon on a plate simulating a smiley face.  The team at Foodspotting describe their app as a visual guide to good food and where to find it.  It answers the question “What’s good to eat around here?”

Foodspotting allows you to take a photo of your food and uses your phone’s GPS so that you can tag where you’re eating it.  After taking the photo you can choose to share it with other foodspotters or your Facebook, Flickr, and Foursquare friends automatically.  Others viewing your photos can then “Nom” them if they’ve tried something you posted and loved it.  Whenever someone compliments, wants, or noms a food that you have spotted you will earn tips.

Overall, I think that Foodspotting is not only a great app for sharing my foodie photos, but also for those days that i’m traveling.  Usually when I’m traveling to a new place, I have no idea where to go and it’s nice to see a picture of the food instead of just an address and rating.  The app is free and is currently available in the iTunes app store.  According to the website there is an Android version in the works, but until then they have a pretty snazzy web app to go along with it.

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The guys from Zurb just launched a free version of notableapp.com called Bounce App.

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Start the New year off with your own brand new shiny Google Wave account. We have 10 invites to share, and since Wave was one of the most talked about Apps in 2009 what a better way to ring in 2010 than with a Giveaway.

Just comment on this post with your new years resolution is going to be. We will choose 10 random comments and the winners will be picked Friday, January 8th, 2010.

I love it when everyone’s a winner!!!

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I had the unique pleasure of beta testing this app and I am extremely excited this app is finally in the appstore and I can talk about it. Pastebot is a new way to command copy and paste on the iPhone. It allows you to save your clipboard history with images, text, emails, tweets, links or whatever else you desire. Both Mark & Paul did an extremely amazing job on Pastebot & I think its one of the most functional apps I have ever used on my iPhone to date.

Some of the features on Pastebot include:

• Save, organize, and edit text & image clippings with ease.
• Search capabilities and folders for organization.
• Apply text & image filters like “find & replace” on text or convert an image to black & white. 14 filters total with more on the way.
• Create new text clippings within the app.
• Create a new image clipping from your iPhone camera or import from your photo library.
• Useful metadata like image dimensions, character/word count and creation date.
• Copy items back to the iPhone/iPod clipboard with 1 tap.
• Send clippings as emails within the app or save images back to your photo library.
• Push text and images from your Mac to Pastebot instantly over wifi**
• Paste text and images to your Mac from your iPhone or iPod Touch instantly over wifi**

Hop over to the appstore and get yourself a copy of Pastebot because its an amazing little app that you are going to want to use again and again.

More Info:

Site | Twitter | iTunes

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Whenever you need to implement a facebook fanpage for yourself or for your business the first thing you want to do is customize it. So you changed your profile picture and added some details about the brand or the person but, it’s still the same page as everyone else. Luckily there is an app called Static FBML (Facebook Markup Language) that you can add to your facebook fanpage. This allows you to make some customizations to a specific page but isn’t a full blown application so anyone that can use some HTML can do it. So in order to see what you can do with this app on a facebook page I selected a few resources as well as some great examples of good static FBML usage. You should install FBML here.

Resources:

Facebook Developer Wiki

The developer Wiki has everything you need for making a page with FBML. They have tons of resources, API’s, dev resources and more.

Facebook Starter Kit

This kit gives you a ‘hello world’ template for building ColdFusion applications for Facebook. It is very much a barebones project, enabling you to easily modify and add to it and use it in the way you like to build ColdFusion applications. This is deliberate; its purpose it to get you passed the first hurdle of dealing with facebook, leaving the application framework design up to you.

FBML – Facebook Markup Language

A nice little slide rocket presentation about FBML. A quick crash course or a good starting point.

Static FBML: Not Every Facebook Fan Page Needs an Application

An article about using Static FBML vs. Regular FBML which is also a great case study from the designer of the Sunkist soda facebook fanpage. It provides some really good content and some really good rules of thumb. Also, it

FBML Essentials

Do you have an idea for a Facebook application? With FBML Essentials, you’ll learn how to build it quickly using the Facebook Markup Language (FBML) and other easy-to-use tools in the site’s framework. This book not only gets you started with this toolkit, you also get a complete reference on every FBML tag Facebook has ever written, with advice on the best ways to use these tags in your code.

Comparing Flash iFrame and FBML Facebook applications

A table from adobe that summarizes the differences when creating your Flash Platform application as an iFrame or FBML Facebook application. The two most significant differences are the ability to control the embedding of a Flash object and the ability to access scripts.

Examples:

Sunkist Soda

Twilight

Southwest Airlines

Nissan

Mountain Dew

Honda

Harley Davidson

Dunkin’ Donuts

Coca Cola

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Tweetdeck updated today to the beta build of 32.0. Just one of the updates Tweetdeck made is the use of lists. Like the last version when you added people to specific columns you can now add them to lists through the same interface and pop-up panel. This is a simple and efficient way to add people to specified lists or create new ones. Tweetdeck now supports Linked-In as well as Facebook and I think the term “SocialDeck” seems a bit more appropriate since they have stretched their term “Tweet” about to its limits.

Another feature that is new is the new Twitter Retweet feature. It allows you to setup your RT style as the old version (manual) or the new version (auto). You can also tell Tweetdeck if you would like to keep the new or old version as standard and not bother you with annoying updates. There are several subtle (but nice) UI changes and it looks as if they have worked out it being such a ram hog. (running three accounts and about 12 columns and humming along at 218MB) I think the update is great and adds more functionality to some other twitter API’s.

Screencaps

Get It

I only listed a few of the updates about but you should checkout the full update right here.

Site | Twitter

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Delibar is a full featured Delicious.com Mac client. Delibar focuses on giving Mac OS X users an easy and quick tool for searching, managing and sharing their Delicious bookmarks. Delibar will be your best friend while using Delicious!

Delibar is a beautiful Mac App by Shiny Frog that solves the problem of being able to share your bookmarks to delicious simply and easily. I know what you’re thinking, “Oh good grief Charlie Brown! Another delicious application that I will never use?!?!” Lets stop that train of thought there. If you don’t know Delicious is a social bookmarking platform that has been around since 2003. In 2006 Yahoo acquired what was then del.icio.us now known as delicious. Delicious provides a way for you to bookmark your sites  and share them with your friends, co-workers or anyone who has access to the site. Delicious allows you to “tag” your websites so that other people searching on delicious can find specific resources and sites based on your “tags”.

So which app is right for you? A plugin? A Standalone? But if I get a standalone I can’t update it from the site! Not true. Delibar has all of this covered in a small and neat package. I think I have tried every for of delicious app or plugin at some point and could never get anything that worked just right. Delibar has solved that and  I am can undoubtedly say that “Delibar brought the fun back to delicious”. No, that was not a paid plug. The reason that Delibar makes this so easy is because it utilizes  a bookmarklet to upload the URL which is great because you can click, tag and then go do something else. A really big asset to the app is that if  other people have already tagged this site, in the right column it shows you what they have already tagged so you too, can tag the site with the same tags (with a few clicks) or add your own.

Delibars integration is very good it allows you to share via email, twitter, shorten the URL, share with MarsEdit or send to Facebook all from its nice little compact interface. A benefit of Delibar is that you can run it in menubar icon only so you can that precious dock space for apps that you run on a daily basis and let your Delicious network only be a click away. The UI of Delibar is amazingly simple, clean and beautiful. Its not overpowering nor weak and puny. It is also is very easy to setup and use on a daily basis.

Delibar is definitely the last delicious app you will ever need. The app is updated regularly which is a great sign that this app will receive some awesome features in the next version. We can only hope that the second released will be as feature packed and successful as the first.

More Info

Site | Twitter | ShinyFrog Home

What is Shiny Frog?

Shiny frog is a small software and design company based in Italy.  Since 2005 they have been dealing with web design and development of high quality applications for Mac and iPhone. Their mission is creating applications that combine nice look-and-feel and usability with a great set of features, both for Mac and Web.

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Dropbox is a very sound system for file sharing, syncing my macs and keeping everything I need in check. I have used dropbox before and only lightly to share files between myself and some friends but the vast capabilities this app has because of its sheer speed and simplicity is something that I overlooked. I am now learning all the tips and tricks of Dropbox and going to share them with you as I shift my cloud computing from MobileMe to Dropbox.  I have had MobileMe since the service was released. I was on the beta for the app and was a little let down by its performance. I didn’t realize how much money I was throwing away a year for slow syncs, a bad backup resource and overall a sluggish service. My MobileMe account is set to renew at the end of this month. Long story short I am not renewing. I figured out how to couple Dropbox with some free apps or apps you already have and turn it into a cheaper/equal price version of MobileMe.

Why Dropbox? The straws that broke the camels back

MobleMe’s iDisk

First of all, have you ever uploaded anything to an iDisk? Did you go to the grocery store and come back and it still has not finished uploading? This has been my typical experience and one of the main reasons I am cancelling. Speed. That alone is a reason for change. I was so frustrated with sharing files, images or anything of the like that took my entire day to do so.

Sync

The sync feature that resides on Apple’s computers is a joke. This app is visible in the menubar and eats your system resources like you wouldn’t believe. The program syncs contacts and emails so why should it eat 99% of my CPU? It shouldn’t.  I am one of the biggest mac fanatics/fanboys you will find and I am thoroughly disappointed with MobileMe. When you “sync” your computer is rendered un-usable. This is not on a computer running Tiger with one gig of ram here either. This a fast Macbook Pro that turns into a Brickbook Pro when MobileMe is syncing my iCal and some contacts.

Dropbox – Salvation at last?

Files

The first time you sync a file to your dropbox account you will smile. Its really silly how something so simple can draw a smile on your face. The reason you smile? It just works. Its fast, easy, and gives you Growl Notifications when a transfer is completed or a file has been altered. What’s better than that when you are sharing across multiple computers? Speed and notifications when something has been changed.

Sync

Now, on the surface it looks like you can just sync some files with dropbox. Not true. With a little bit of thought and some Terminal trickery we can adjust Dropbox to be something that syncs not only files, but apps, contacts and a slew of other interesting things.

Other Thoughts

All in all I am pretty excited about this change and the fact that I get to share it with you and maybe help a few people make a more educated decision on what to do and spend there money on. I am not trying to take down Apple or MobileMe. I love both and have just found a better alternative for MobileMe as some before me have found. Be sure to keep an eye out for part two when we get into the nitty-gritty and maybe you can turn dropbox in your next cloud computing solution.