Online Storage

I wanted to have some files available to me wherever I go. A simple request, but to get it the right way, for me, was not so simple.

I tried a usb drive and that works great for many things, especially for times where I don't have internet access, like at church. (I'm in the bishopric and bring the printed program on my usb drive so it can be printed and copied at church for Sacrament Meeting).

But, the usb drive takes some time to insert open, nativate to, etc. It would seem like a trivial amount of time and sometimes it is, but other times it is just too much time, especially when I am online and working feverishly. I'm a software developer and am online a lot.

So, I looked around for free online file storage services, and while there are a plethora out there, and even for free, none had the feature set I wanted.

• A programmatic API
  
• access from Linux, specifically Ubuntu (my home and work desktop OS)
• free or very cheap

Here is what I have found and am very happy with so far.

• Amazon S3 service for the file storage (which has only a programmatic web services API)
• www.s3browse.com for my one-off interface needs. It is a completely free web interface to your S3 account. Very nice! I wonder why, or rather how, it is free though.

Now, I'm free to automate any file storage and retrieval I want when the needs arise and I'll be paying less than $5 a year (estimated).

Mindmapping and access

Yesterday I tried mindmapping software for the first time.

Wow! Where before I had many huge projects floating around in my mind, now (at least for the projects that I mapped out) I have a calm and in-control feeling. That makes mindmapping something worth doing to me.

I tried first www.mindmeister.com which I liked a lot.
Pluses

• online
• AWESOME openid login (I highly recommend everyone use openid. It saves so much time and energy with managing logins)
  
• easy to use
• Google Gears offline support
  
• looks nice
• responsive interface
  
• imports from freemind and others
• exports to rtf (even with the free account!!!)
  

Minuses

• You have to use it if you want to save more than 6 mind maps (after the first 30 days)

Being the cheapskate (I like to say, "frugal") that I am I decided to look into other options.
I noticed freemind, which a coworker had been using and recommended. Freemind was great too and seemed to have everything I needed except for the online part.

So, here is what I worked out.

• use mindmeister when I need a mind map that is instantly available (I'm tempted to put my GTD lists into a mind map and online would be really nice)
• use freemind for project mindmaps that don't need to be accessible from multiple places
• put my freemind mindmaps into my amazon s3 storage account using www.s3browse.com (excellent free online interface to the awesome and cheap amazon s3 online storage service)
• whenever I need to export a mindmap from mindmeister, I'll export it to rtf, open it in openoffice, and then save it as a text file. Then, I'll use vim or python to change all initial spaces to tabs and then open the file back up in openoffice. Now, a quick copy and paste from openoffice to freemind recreates my mindmap no matter how intricate it is!

I'm happy.