My MacBook had been on loan to my daughter for a month or so and my account hadn’t been logged into for as long. So when I connected via my phone’s data connection DropBox and Photo Stream/iPhoto syncing started.

I only realised that some major syncing was going on when I stopeed and thought about why the connection was a bit sluggish (given that it should be clocking 45 Mb/s).

In an hour or less of syncing I had promptly burned through more than 1.5GB of data. This pushed me into excess data usage and so far I’m facing at least $35.00 of excess usage with still more than two weeks to go before the plan clicks over. Over course I didn’t realise all of this until I got text message from Optus the next day.

So the lesson is…

So the lesson is make sure your devices are synced fully before travelling and then disable DropBox, Photo Stream sync or any other data-hungry syncing apps you may have. Also watch your general web browsing. Because the speeds are so fast it is much easier to burn  data through normal web browsing. Greater speed = faster browsing = more page loads =more data used.

Here’s my first attempt - Setting up a WordPress site on your local computer using MAMP. While this is not something the average client needs to do it just happened to be what I was doing this morning. Here’s the PDF version of this tutorial (PDF 903K).

Not bad for half an hour. Clarify can export this to PDF or RTF plus other sharing options. The link above is sharing through dropbox.

I heard about this via Mac Power Users my source for all things nerdy.

Previously the business operated under my name – Scott Moffatt. But with a view to future growth and diversification we’ve moved our professional offerings under the banner of Pagelogic. You can read more over at the new Pagelogic website.

The change also reflects the fact that nowadays it’s not just me who is doing all the work.

In addition to the great help I get from Inge Moffatt we also rely on a small team of professionals skilled in graphic design, web development and server administration.

Even though we’re evolving, you can still expect the same friendly service and committment to producing great work.

See more at soteriaprojects.org.au.

The feature that I really like is the Dropbox sync option. Using shortcodes you can display and link to the contents of selected Dropbox folders. You can use FTP or Amazon S3 if you like but for busy clients Dropbox is always going to be the easier option. The beauty of this is that you clients can drop updated files into a shared dropbox folder and they will automatically sync to and display on the WP website. This overcomes a lot of the time and cost involved in uploading files.

There is plenty to learn with this plugin and lots of options to explore but well worth the investment of time and some well spent dollars.

LaunchBar

Go to LaunchBar

An absolutely essential timesaver. Launch apps by typing the first few letters e.g. ‘pho’ will get you Photoshop, iPhoto and anything else with ‘pho’ in it. Access clipboard history by typing ‘cl’ (or a shortcut of your choice) to bring up the history and then right arrow to see the last 10,20 or however many many items in your clipboard. Also has a quick and easy calculator function plus a whole lot more.

1Password

Go to 1Password

No need to remember or look up passwords. No excuses either for using the same weak password all the time. Using dropbox my partner and I are able to share our passwords.

Also available for Windows and it’s also iOS and Android but on the handheld can be a bit of a pain jumping between 1Password and the app you are logging into. The latest version apparently overcomes this problem with a good built in browser. However after paying top dollar for the first version I’m loath to spend up again for the new version.

Screenfloat

Go to ScreenFloat

This is a great screen capture app. Hit a shortcut key and drag over your screen. Nothing novel there but the real beauty of this app is how the screen cap floats over your work and when closed is then organised in the ‘shots browser’.

Its especially great for when you need to reference something – you can just put the shot alongside your work and get to it. Also has a ‘Send to Photoshop’ option and its especially useful when working on mockups.

TextExpander

Go to TextExpander

Allows you to type in an abbreviation and this will be automatically expanded to the full text you configured for it. So for example ‘ddate’ is expanded to March 14, 2013. The possibilities are endless.

Dropbox

Go to dropbox

I don’t use it as much for regular file storage as I do for syncing the data between various applications in particular 1Password and TextExpander.

IAWriter

Go to IAWriter

I’ve tried so many text editors and there’s not much in it but I think this one comes out tops as a simple text writing tool with Markdown support. Probably the clincher is the universal iPad and iPhone app with the extended keyboard. nvALT is another I also use mainly for very short text files but is only for the desktop.

Harvest

Go to Harvest

I use this for tracking all my billable time. You can also use it for generating estimates and invoices which can viewed, approved and paid online if your clients want to. I mostly use it just for time tracking since my accountant uses Quickbooks, and make heavy use of the desktop widget that very usefully reminds when I’ve forgotten to turn the timer off.

RescueTime

Go to RescueTime

Set this app up and it will track every minute of your computer use – warts and all. It produced neat graphs that show you where your time went and how productive you were.

It’s great trying to aim for a day when you are above 90% productive i.e. more than 90% of your time was spent on productive work such as working in Photoshop or WordPress or in writing rather than dicking around reading news, looking at FB or otherwise wasting time.

Adobe Creative Suite subscription

Go to Adobe Creative Suite

Access to pretty much all the Adobe applications I need to get my job done – Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, Premiere and many more all for $50.00 a month. Much better than forking out big money for individual licences and paying for upgrades. To me this seems like good value especially since the ACCC forced Adobe to lower the price from $65.00 per month because Adobe was making Australians pay more for software than everyone else.

Image takes you to the live version.