Tech & Tattoos

Let's talk about the Cloud!

The big buzz word relating to the future of computing seems to be 'The Cloud'
Last week Apple announced a new service called the iCloud and there is a lot of excitement in the air about it.

Set to launch in the fall, the new service will allow users to stream content from their libraries to their iOS device when they are on the go.  5GB will be free, and costs will incrementally increase past that. 

In my last post I told you about how I have switched my laptop to run Ubuntu now, and it looks like they thought of this first!

Ubuntu One is essentially the same service, it allows you to store data online, and stream to your android or iOS device.  The cost of this is $3.99 per month.

The main feature of these two services is the ability to stream music, whether it means ANY music file from ANY source is yet to be seen with the Apple product, but Ubuntu One will not care about the source that you get your music from.

Aside from music streaming features you can also use these systems for online storage, which brings us to the third service I will be talking about today.  Dropbox allows me to to store (for free) 2 GB of data online and retrieve them from anywhere.

The Ubuntu One app allows me to stream music... and thats it.

So basically, as I am too cheap to care to pay an additional fee to take some more music with me, this makes the app rather unattractive for me.  I feel that the meager 16GB i have in my iPhone are enough to keep me in tunes, and what i am really interested in is a better way to access and share my Photos.

Since iCloud is not available yet for me to play with, I am only left to compare Dropbox to Ubuntu One.  The main appeal for me behind the idea of cloud computing is not in the ability to stream music, but the ability to share files across platforms.  In this regard Dropbox seems to be a MUCH better product.  It is not so much the actual service that makes it better, it's the iPhone app...

Enter DropBox:

The DropBox app is simply amazing.  It allows me to upload or download any files in any of my shared folders!
So, if i take a few dozen photos on my phone, instead of waiting to get home to retrieve them to my PC I can just dump them en masse into the appropriate folder.  I can combine this functionality with the ability to set up 'Shared' folders, and create custom URL download links to email and IM friends and family.


News from the Tattoo Front:

For Junes session of the 12 months of Tattoos I completed the piece I was working on from May:

First Session in May

We came up with the design based on something we found on the online and I liked the multi-religious suggestions behind the piece. The work was done by Darryl Hart formerly of Mata Mata Studios in Hamilton.  The outline went smoothly and without any issues and the follow up session in June ended up adding all the shading.

Finished Product

More updates to come soon... and we may soon be moving to another platform