I just finished watching The Hour, Canada’s great pop culture news show on CBC. Tonight they interview Robert Munsch, one of my favourite authors from childhood. On the show they are giving away a signed copy of Love You Forever, also one of my favourite and first books my mom would read to me. Here’s hoping I get it!
January, 2009
24
Jan 09
Free Community WiFi Routers Available!
I put up the PayPal page for our Free WiFi Project. Now anyone is able to easily order a router from us.
I made the “executive” decision to start calling each device a Community Router. Alternatively you could say Community HotSpot or Community Node, just throw Community in there because that’s what it’s all about 
Whether you want to help out at home or work you can order a community router on our website for $60. We’ll send you a box in the mail with instructions and everything you need to get started.
Tell your friends and let’s get Edmonton connected!
23
Jan 09
Dropbox is Amazing
I’m almost floating in the cloud. I wrote earlier about ditching my laptop and I just found another awesome app that does the file syncing I’ve been longing for.
It’s called Dropbox, and it’s amazing. Essentially Dropbox allows one to create a special folder on their hard drive which will sync anything in there with whatever computers you have your Dropbox account on. If you run a Mac, Windows and a Linux box you can have speedy up to date sharing of files. All of your files are also kept remotely on Dropbox’s servers where you can access them anywhere.
Your Dropbox web interface allows you to share folders and files with friends or even with the public. They also handle images really well with auto creation of galleries just by dropping photos, or folders with photos into the Photos folder in your Dropbox.
I used to play around with trying to sync my USB keys with my laptop but things kept screwing up. Dropbox is another slick example of how you can ditch your laptop.
I use the following services which I can essentially operate from anything with a web browser and an Internet connection:
- For my homepage I use Netvibes. It’s really awesome and displays my RSS feeds, Digg, email, and bookmarks in a great way.
- My main email address is hosted with Google Apps for your Domain. It’s basically a free and private GMail install that directly uses my ericwarnke.com domain instead of a gmail.com account. I would even pay for this if I had to.
- Along with Google Apps several of my friends and I use Google Docs to take notes together in class as well as collaborate on all the group assignments we need to do. Working on the same document at the same time kicks ass. We tried Microsoft Office Live for a bit as well but the versioning ended up sending us back to Docs.
- All my bookmarks are kept on Delicious. I’ve used this for a few years and their Firefox plugin is a life saver. I’ll never use any browser based bookmarks again.
- Now I use Dropbox
So my email, bookmarks, homepage, and now my files are all going to be available basically whenever I need them!
23
Jan 09
Turned Off Delicious Updates
The Delicious auto-blogging was getting annoying so I turned it off. If they ever add a “forblog” tag I would definitely turn it back on. However, right now I just bookmark a ton of stuff that I don’t want to have to question having on my blog!
20
Jan 09
I am busy
Since I post so infrequently I thought I would make an update to let you all know just what I’m up to.
Currently I am:
- A fulltime (5 courses) student in the School of Business at the University of Alberta
- Also the IT Director (glorified webmaster) for the Business Students Association at the U of A.
- The sole owner of 3rd on Whyte, an Internet Cafe located at 201, 10351 Whyte Avenue, in Edmonton, Alberta.
- The founder of the Free WiFi Project which is slowly slowly starting to bring free wireless Internet access to public spaces in Edmonton. I’ve almost finished the payment system for that so check back soon and get a router!
- On the Old Strathcona Business Association Board of Directors.
- Involved in various web development projects and I am looking at starting a web development firm with my best friend Rob.
- Playing rec league ball hockey with my buds, even though I played basketball all the from elementary school until my second year of college. Our ball hockey team sucks isn’t that bad, btw.
- Still finding time for my amazing girlfriend, Megan.
- Oh, and I’ve started swimming a kilometre a day to try and get back in shape!
Busy busy!