First Look: Amazon Cloud Drive

So, I took a look at Amazon’s new cloud drive service today. What is cloud drive? It’s Amazon’s answer to the cloud-based thumb-drive concept such as the very good Dropbox service. On first glance, it has some advantages to Dropbox: more initial storage and if you already have an Amazon ID you can simply sign in with that.

I haven’t tested it, but I’m assuming anyone can create a new ID easily. My ID is for the US store since that’s my billing address, but I would be interested to know if people form other countries have difficulties signing up. Amazon has said that people in certain countries won’t be able to upgrade their cloud drive with extra space at this time. You can see the upgrade plans and pricing here.

First impression: where’s the desktop client? As far as I can tell at this time, you can only add files to your drive either by uploading them via the web-based interface, or by purchasing music via Amazon’s MP3 store. The latter is pretty cool, since, if you’re going to purchase MP3s from Amazon anyway, they might as well be stored in your free online storage.

You can then play your MP3s via the web-based Cloud Player or on your Android device with the Android Cloud Player. However, when I tried to visit the Web-based Cloud Player, since I am currently located in Budapest, Hungary, I got this message:

For U.S. Customers Only

It appears that you are attempting to use Amazon Cloud Player from outside the U.S. This service is intended for U.S. customers only.

I can feel the “clouds” darkening over my head even as I write this blog post.

The bottom-line deal breaker: without a desktop client (and it’s got to be as good as Dropbox’s), iPhone app, and no support for non-US locations, Amazon’s cloud drive is a nonstarter for me.

 

Is that really God speaking or is it just your shampoo?

A thing for toiletries

I have a confession to make. When it comes to hearing God’s voice, I apparently have a thing for toiletries.

Let me explain.

The year is 1995, and I’m in between college and well, whatever’s next, working as a cashier at the local Wal-Mart.

One day, I receive a newsletter from Youth With A Mission Hong Kong. I had been in Hong Kong back in 1990 for my very first missions trip overseas, and had pretty much sworn off of missions. It’s not that the trip was so bad, it was great, actually, but I was only 17, it was my first time away from home for more than two weeks, first time overseas, etc. You can imagine. So, I had come home form that trip in 1990 and decided that I wouldn’t go into missions; I would go to college, get a good job and make lots of money and support missions.

Read More…

 

Book: Beyond the Cosmos

Check out the first chapter of this book for free!

Beyond the Cosmos: What Recent Discoveries in Astrophysics Reveal About the Glory and Love of God

After the jump…

Read More…

 

Faux pas du jour?

I’m on vacation in France with my family and I went into a restaurant and ordered french fries asking: “a porter?”, thinking I was asking if I could get them to go. I noticed the waiter gave me a strange look, but I thought he was deciding if he could oblige me. Later, I noticed signs by restaurants advertising “a emporter”, and it slowly started dawning on me that I had said it wrong when I was ordering the fries.
And what does “a porter” mean? I think it means “to wear”. I’m sure the look on the waiter’s face was him weighing how much fun it would be versus how much trouble he would get into if he really did oblige my request to “wear the fries out of the restaurant”.

 

Whatchu’ talkin’ ’bout, Willis?

engrish funny donky chicken
see funny english mistakes

 

“Kyoto Box” a breakthrough in boiling water!

An example of a solarcooker from solarcooker.org

An example of a solarcooker from solarcooker.org

I just read about something called the “Kyoto Box” over at Steve Milloy’s blog.

What is it exactly?  According to an article on the BBC website: Read More…

 

Reviewed: WordPress for iPhone 1.2

I’m posting this from my iPhone using the new version of WordPress for iPhone blogging app, version 1.2. It’s pretty awesome and you can check out a snazzy video of it at wordpress.tv.

Well, I started this post several days ago, but never got to finish it because WordPress for iPhone crashed on me and when I restarted it wouldn’t let me access this blog. I was also busy doing other things this weekend and so I forgot about it. Read More…

 

My idea: outsource to a computer

In Dave Barry’s article, Technical Difficulties, he laments the fact that much of modern telephone tech support is being outsourced to foreign countries.

As he so eloquently puts it:

THE GOOD NEWS IS: The foreign tech support people are smart, educated and eager to help, and they speak English.

THE BAD NEWS IS: They speak it in such a way that you understand only about every fifth word.

Read More…

 

More Global, uh Cooling News?

This article Bad news for Catlin Expedition: Satellite Data Shows Arctic Cooling in February and March really ticks me off. I just wish the earth would make up it’s mind. I mean Al Gore’s reputation is at stake here (yes, the Al Gore), not to mention all the trillions we will be spending on fighting global warming.

Apparently, this has been happening since 2005, according to the article: Read More…

 

WordPress RSS Thumbs Widget

This is a plugin which will provide you with a widget in which you can pull thumbnails from up to two RSS feeds.  I created it to showcase the latest posts from my daughters’ blogs with thumbnails of the posts along with the title of the post and a link to the original post.

Download RSS Thumbs Widget here.

I wrote this because I was originally trying to use the very nice KB Advanced RSS Widget, but apparently, the feed parser in WordPress doesn’t support enclosures.  I still use the KB widget for other feeds on my blog. Read More…

 

About

This is the blog where Rodney Blevins comes to pontificate on various subjects ranging from the spiritual to the scientific and sometimes downright whimsical. This is also where you can find his many podcasts.

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