~/the/cole/orton

another @scottbourne drobo giveaway!

@scottbourne is giving away another drobo! i mentioned in my own drobo post - he loves giving these things away.

while you’re hear, please check out (click - wink wink) scott bourne’s other websites:

twipphoto.com and mydl.me

details for april’s drobo giveaway can be found here.

my other twitter accounts

so this week’s pick is a bit of a stretch, and i want to apologize in advance for these shameless plugs - but for those of you who don’t know - i manage a handful of other twitter accounts besides @thecoleorton.

i’m always trying to find new uses for twitter. so far i’ve got accounts that can inform you of a new concerts in st. louis including: the pageant, the fox, the gargoyle, and the verizon wireless amphitheater.  i’ve also setup an account for severe weather alerts for columbia, mo (my hometown).  my latest project - @sundaybackup - is an account that reminds you to backup your important data every sunday morning.

so, how do i setup these accounts? it’s a combination of rss feeds, twitterfeed, and sometimes futuretweets.  basically twitterfeed takes most rss feeds, links them to a twitter account, and pushes out a new tweet when something new is added to the rss feed.  futuretweets allows you to schedule tweets in the future - every day, or week, or whatever - it’s up to you.

feel free to follow my other accounts below:

@thepageant - the unofficial twitter account that notifies you of concerts at the pageant - off delmar - in st. louis, mo.

@thefabulousfox - the unofficial twitter account that notifies you of concerts at the fox theater - in st. louis, mo.

@thegargoyle - the unofficial twitter account that notifies you of concerts at the gargoyle on washu’s campus.

@verizonwlampstl - the unofficial twitter account that notifies you of concerts at the verizon wireless amphitheater in st. louis.

@comoswalerts - a twitter account that notifies you of any severe weather alerts in columbia, mo.

@sundaybackup - a twitter account reminding you to backup your data every sunday!

drobo

so, if you have a pulse, and are online, you’ve surely heard about drobo by now.  what is it? at it’s core - it’s an external hard drive - that backs up your data - twice.  drobo requires at least two hard drives to leverage it’s beyondRAID technology.  i like to refer to it as RAID for lazy people.  for example, if one of your drobo HD’s craps out, your data will be safe, because drobo backed up that same data, automagically, on the second HD as well.

watch @CaliLewis demo drobo here.

drobo can take any type or size or brand of HD’s too.  which is perfect for those of us who’ve accumulated different flavors of HD’s over the years.  the only catch is, they have to be SATA HD’s.  drobo is expandable to 16TB’s of storage - use the drobolator to calculate the number and size of HD’s that fit your needs.

oh yeah, another slick thing that drobo supports is being able to add extra HD’s at any time.  so when drobo starts filling up, and you have one of it’s 4 bays empty, you can just slide in another HD, and drobo will consume that extra space, which is available to use in a matter of seconds.

drobo’s also got some nice I/O options; with firewire 800 and usb 2.0 interfaces.  you can also add a droboshare to drobo which turns drobo into a NAS over gigabit ethernet. yay.

yeah, drobo’s a little expensive (which could be an understatement to some), especially when comparing similar devices that actually come with hard drives.  just think of it as the last external hard drive you’ll ever have to buy! it does have some downsides, as said earlier $349 without any drives, no eSATA, no ethernet port out of the box - all might turn some to look for other alternatives.

buy: amazon, newegg, or directly from data robotics.  it’s compatible with windows, mac, and linux (beta support).

you could even win one of these suckers - follow @ScottBourne on twitter - he loves giving these things away. mydl.me is also giving away a drobo this moth, read up how to win here. good luck!

have a question? as always, leave me a comment below.

win a free drobo!

MYDL.ME is giving away a free Drobo (just like everyone else on the web, right?).  Contest rules are below, or check out the blog post here.

“Welcome to Managing Your Digital Life. Thanks for stopping by. We’re giving away TWO free Drobos in March. To be eligible to win, simply link to MYDL.ME from your blog or website. If you don’t have a blog or website, you can get a free blog from Google/Blogger.

We’ll check our referral logs and randomly select two winners. You must be 18 years or older to win and you must live in a country where Drobo ships. Contact Drobo to find out which countries are included on that list. We’ll give away one Drobo late next week and another on the last day of the month. Good luck.”

Please click-through to the links above to enter me in the contest.  Send me your blog post, and I’ll click-through for you!

Good luck!

advantageous mp3

this weeks pick of the week - advantageous mp3 - is an apple script that will look for the song you have selected in itunes - on amazonmp3.com.  so why did this make my pick of the week this week?  here are some reasons:

1. searching - although the itunes music store is a bit more DRM friendly these days, 5 months ago when i discovered advantageous it allowed me to search for songs in itunes (which has always been a better experience compared to amazonmp3.com) but buy DRM free songs via amazonmp3.com. now that most of the song catalog on itunes is DRM free as well - this point is a “push” when comparing the itunes music store versus amazonmp3.com.

2. price - prices per song and even per album can differ in itunes compared to amazonmp3.com. before i hit the “buy song” or “buy mp3” button - i always run advantageous just to see if this same song/album is cheaper on amazon.  albums can range from: the same price or two to five dollars cheaper on amazon. singles can range from the same price as well or thirty cents cheaper.

3. file format - itunes and amazon use different file formats for the audio tracks you buy as well.  itunes uses .m4a’s and amazon uses the more familiar .mp3 format.  .mp3’s can be played on a wide variety of devices, whereas .m4a’s will only play on apple branded music devices.  this one really doesn’t bother me - since i’m an all ‘apple’ shop at home (ipods and iphones…), but this may be a deal breaker for some.  just wanted to throw this out there.

get advantageous mp3 for mac or pc.

hopefully this little app’ll save you some changes to pay the meter’s on the weekends…