You sign up for free and download an application that installs a folder on each computer. When you want to transfer a file to a different computer, simply put it into the Dropbox folder and it appears in the corresponding folder on the other computer almost instantly.

Other features that I really like are

• A public folder that is accessible to anyone – just give them a link to the file they want and they can download it.
• Private shared folders – this creates a matching folder in another user’s Dropbox folder and anything you put into it will sync to their computer as well. We’ve already used this for transferring files among the people I work with. The possibilities with this one are endless.

This is everything that MobileMe’s file syncing should be, but isn’t. Try it.

Disclaimer: If you sign up to Dropbox using the links here, we’ll both get a little extra free space in my account.

It’s really quite simple…

• Go to the theme’s images directory
• Replace banner.jpg with your new image

The existing image is 960px x 134px, but you could replace it with just about any size.

I like it because it’s not only well thought out, but he taken all of his random verbal explanations from the last few years and put them all in one place. It’s definitely worth reading.

As the main cook in the house, I like it because it’s a lot easier to prepare food with the Points system than it is when you’re counting calories. It’s not so easy at the grocery store though…

Choosing one brand over another is more difficult because you need to enter the combination of calories, fat and fibre into the official calculator that I often forget to take with me. To be honest, I don’t like to carry it anyway because it takes up valuable space in my pocket and looks very girly.

So I whipped up a webapp for my iPhone that does the same job.

I present Pica! Simply navigate to here on your iPhone or iPod Touch.

Remember it is a webapp, so you must be connected to the internet somehow to use it. To make up for that, it comes with a fancy icon in case you decide to add it to your home screen.

I have to admit that I never saw the attraction. I think I looked at the sampler once – just once.

You can go to Kiva’s website and lend to someone across the globe who needs a loan for their business – like raising goats, selling vegetables at market or making bricks. Each loan has a picture of the entrepreneur, a description of their business and how they plan to use the loan so you know exactly how your money is being spent – and you get updates letting you know how the entrepreneur is going.

The best part is, when the entrepreneur pays back their loan you get your money back – and Kiva’s loans are managed by microfinance institutions on the ground who have a lot of experience doing this, so you can trust that your money is being handled responsibly.

It’s finally easy to actually do something about poverty – using Kiva I know exactly who my money is loaned to and what they’re using it for. And most of all, I know that I’m helping them build a sustainable business that will provide income to feed, clothe, house and educate their family long after my loan is paid back.

You choose who to lend to – whether a baker in Afghanistan, a goat herder in Uganda, a farmer in Peru, a restaurateur in Cambodia, or a tailor in Iraq – and as they repay their loan, you get your money back. It’s a powerful and sustainable way to empower someone right now to lift themselves out of poverty.

Please consider joining Kiva and helping to change the world – one loan at a time.

Sources say that iTunes representatives have been urging labels to rethink their participation in the Amazon promotion and that they have backed up those warnings by withdrawing marketing support for certain releases featured as Daily Deals

I hope Amazon fights back, and hard. I’ve grown to love their mp3 downloads, and now buy far more from there than iTunes. They tend to have more variety, generally better prices and I don’t have to pay sales tax.

As an example, today’s daily deal – Hospice by The Antlers – is $2.99 on Amazon and $9.99 (plus tax) on iTunes. Moving away from the daily deal because it really is a special price just for today, one of my favorite albums – The Midnight Organ Fight by Frightened Rabbit – is currently $5.00 on Amazon and $9.99 (plus tax) on iTunes.

My biggest worry about something like this happening is that it will drive up prices for consumers. We’ve already seen indications of that happening with electronic books and I would hate to see it happen with music as well. So much of the music today is already overpriced nonsense – raising prices will only make it harder for people to find the really good stuff.

Sure, you can do a google search and get the exact code to enter into the Terminal, but there’s a reason I use a Mac and not some obscure variant of Unix.

Today I stumbled across a great little utility for turning the hidden file view on and off. Where? Surprisingly, on the Apple site.

showHiddenFiles does exactly what Apple should have included in the first place. The only thing that could make it better would be if it was a checkbox in Finder.app, but I guess it’s too much to hope for for Apple to include it in the upcoming 10.6.3 release.

I just put it into my Applications > Utilities folder hoping that I’ll remember it’s there next time I need it.

I’ve recently realized that you don’t go out much when you work from home, and you go out even less when it starts snowing. You could say I’ve been getting a little stir-crazy. We had a brief lull between snow storms today so I took the opportunity to go for a walk.

Sadly, we had so much snow yesterday that this very large shed just couldn’t hold the weight. The roof has collapsed, taking the four walls with it.