Another option for sending large files

The links in this post should redirect, but please note that YouSendIt.com is now HighTail.com

Today’s post isn’t going to be very long, but I want to tell you about an option for when you need to send a large file to someone, and it is only going to be a one-time occurrence or maybe only once in a while. In my previous post, I told you all about Dropbox, but what I’m going to tell you about today does not require the other person to use the same program.

When I was editor of my university newspaper, I learned about yousendit.com. The files that I needed to send to our printing company were too large for our school email—sometimes as large as 20MB. Yousendit is great for just this scenario.

Storing, sharing, and transferring files with Dropbox

Dropbox is something I first became familiar with at my university. It is a tool that students often use to share files when working on group projects. I promised you in an earlier post that I’d tell you more about this very useful program.

Create an Account at Dropbox.com

To get started, you’ll need to sign up to use Dropbox. The basic program is free with 2GB of storage, however, you can purchase pro versions with more storage. There are also ways to earn more storage such as through email referrals. If you’re a student—with a dot edu email address—you will receive double the credit for referrals. I recently participated in the Android app Camera Upload beta version which gave me the opportunity to earn more storage just for helping test it. (See 4-3 update at end of article.)

Hard to believe that Picasa is free

In an earlier post, I promised you I would tell you more about Picasa—a Google program that you can download for free. I can’t take credit for discovering Picasa on my own—a friend told me about it—but I like it so much that I want to encourage you to use it, too.

So what exactly does it do? It gives you an easy way to share, search, and edit your photos. I actually don’t use it for sharing, but it basically allows you to create on-line web albums. You can make the albums private and share only with friends and family or you can make them public for everyone to view.

What you can do with a smart phone and some apps

Before I acquired my smart phone, I knew that I wanted it for a couple of main features other than making phone calls. One of these was to receive emails and the other was to have access to the internet so that I could Google an address or pull up a map. I promised you in an earlier post that I would tell you about other things you can do with a smart phone.

Even if email and Google is all you use it for, you’ll thoroughly enjoy those conveniences. But I bet you’ve heard the expression: “There’s an app for that.” And there definitely is.

Preserving photos and paperwork for an eternity

I recently saw a posting on craigslist for someone looking for help creating photo albums. It sounded like she felt she really needed help because of the quantity of albums that would need to be created. This reminded me of a project I undertook for myself over this past year.

First a little background. I am an extremely organized person, so I have all of my paperwork filed in a couple of file cabinets—one larger one for most things and a small one just for school stuff. When I was a young girl I asked my mother if I could create scrap book photo albums of the boxes of photos that she had and she said yes. So basically, everything is very organized.

Upgrading a cell phone the free way

A few weeks ago, I finally joined the twenty-first century and acquired my first smart phone. No, I’m not a Luddite, I just thought I couldn’t afford to do this just yet. You see, for the past couple of years, I’ve been going to school full time and my budget has been tight, tight, tight.

And before you stop reading to get out your dictionary to find out what a Luddite is, that’s someone that doesn’t embrace technology—that has never been me. In fact, if you were physically reaching for a dictionary, you may be a Luddite. Just kidding, if you’ve been in school like me, you have probably been encouraged to own a real dictionary. But I will also tell you, there’s an app for that.

Website creation the free way

In order to separate myself from the competition in my search for new opportunities, and because I don’t feel that my “paper” resume truly shows everything I have to offer a potential employer, I recently designed my very own portfolio website. In the technical communications program at my university, this is something that would happen in one of the last semesters, but I didn’t want to wait until then.

Basically, you can do this in at least a couple of ways, but what I chose to do to get started was to build a free website on wix.com. They also offer a paid version that will remove their ads and give you a domain, but since my budget is tight, I’m keeping it free for now. Besides, their ads are hardly noticeable, and I did decide to visit bitly.com and create a shortened version of my web address—this is a pretty sweet option.

Let's get started

For the past couple of years, I've done all of my writing in a classroom or for my university newspaper. I've been told I'm a good writer, and I do enjoy writing but have not been sure if I have enough to say to keep up with a blog. On more than one occasion, one of my friends has pointed out some items that I should blog about so maybe I'll make those some of my first posts.

First, I need to work a bit on getting the layout the way I want and to decide about any additional information that I wish to include, so if you tune in before I'm done, be sure and check back soon. To get started I had to name my blog, and since I don't think I will limit the subjects that I write about, I wanted something that would be fun and all encompassing. I know, it's a rather current expression, but I've found myself saying it a few times so it seemed like a good one to use. I debated about using sayin' versus saying since it's the same length, but since sayin' is what I am saying, well you get the picture.

So I'll try to write something at least once per week, and please don't hesitate to let me know if you're enjoying what you're reading.