Item Under Review
While this item is available from other marketplace sellers on this page, it is not currently offered by Amazon.com because customers have told us there may be something wrong with the item, the way we were shipping it, or the way it’s described here. (Thanks for the tip!)
We’re working to fix the problem as quickly as possible.

So, they had discovered the problem and were working on it.  I contacted customer support and they advised me to return the item at their expense.  After doing a little more research I discovered that mini-usb to micro-usb adapters are fairly cheap on Amazon.  I contacted Amazon support once again and asked if I can receive $5 credit to purchase an adapter.  I had little hope that they would oblige.  Much to my surprise within a few hours I received a message that the are refunding my credit card $5.   Way to go Amazon…  this is why I love you… that and free shipping on items over $25.

 By the way… this is a great headset.

What’s the same?

With both Mozy and SugarSync you install an application on your desktop, select which folders you want to backup/sync, and let it go.  Both programs then monitor the folders you specified and uploads changes to the website.  With either application you can download the files either through the application or online.

What makes SugarSync better?

Mozy offers unlimited backup for $4.95 a month.  For the same price on SugarSync you get 30 GB which for most people is plenty and practically speaking all I would every imagine uploading to Mozy in its current state.  The truth with Mozy is that once I got above a few GB it became painfully slow index and upload files.  Now your mileage may very.  The files I’m backing up to Mozy are actually periodically copied from my main drive to my backup drive before being scanned and uploaded (see Backup Strategy).  That means many files are changed all at once not one at a time over many days as Mozy expects.  It takes Mozy a long time to sort out what files have changed and several days to upload all these files.  SugarSync doesn’t appear to have this problem at least during the limited beta when traffic was likely low.  Now I haven’t done any intensive benchmarking so I can’t say for sure but files appear to be sorted and uploaded to SugarSync rather quickly.  Even if the speed wasn’t an issue the SugarSync application shows me what files have been uploaded and which are pending.  It really eases the mind to know which files are safe and which are not.

Understandably because Mozy’s service is for unlimited space they restrict you to one computer.  That is not the case with SugarSync.  After all it’s main purpose is Syncing.  With SugarSync you can install the application on multiple computers, they can all upload to the same account.  They can even be setup to keep certain directories in sync across computers (hence the name).

Probably one of the best things about SugarSync is its ‘web 2.0′ website.  On the website you can view, download, and update files in your file set  If you update the files online they are also updated on your computer next time that computer syncs.  This is really great if you need to work on a file while on the road.  With Mozy you can download the backup through their ‘web 1.0′ website but that is it.  In addition to the website SugarSync has a mobile windows client that can view images in your backup and sync your mobile photos.  You can also visit the mobile version or iphone version of the website to download other files.

Why I’m (reluctantly) sticking with Mozy.

With all this great sweetness with SugarSync (pun intended) it has one serious flaw.  SugarSync lacks file versions.  Imagine that you have a very important word document.  One day you may open this word document and discover that all the images are replaced with big red ‘X’s.  This happened to me in the past with a few large word docs.  The file is corrupted, you need to restore it.  If you then restore this file from SugarSync you will discover that it has the same problem.  SugarSync has "backed up" your corrupted word document over your good version.  Unless you keep another backup somewhere else on your files system you are screwed.  But isn’t that the point of a backup system, so you don’t have to do it manually.  With Mozy you can restore one of the previous versions before the corruption took hold.  Ultimately, I think this makes SugarSync practically unusable as a backup system.  But, as I said before SugarSync is not really intended to be a backup solution.

What I’d like to see.

I really like SugarSync.  I’m tempted to use SugarSync and Mozy together as a Sync/Backup tag team but $25 a year for SugarSync and $50 a year for Mozy I can’t justify it.  If SugarSync had a cheap (or free) low GB version I might continue to use it for essential files that I need to access on other computers.  Instead, for now, I will use Box.net for that and Mozy for backup.

Now with that said I think SugarSync has a lot of room to grow.  It feels to me that Mozy is basically use-as-is software for the foreseeable future while SugarSync is actively pursuing improvements.  If they added file versions I’d jump ship today.  I have a couple of other ideas that would make it the ultimate backup/syncing/mobile documents solution. 

When storing files "in the cloud" security is a serious concern.  SugarSync has robust security in place on their servers but what about on the users end?  If you need to access a file while on the road you may be logging in on a uncontrolled desktop in a cyber cafe or maybe an open wi-fi hotspot.  In this situation your password my be sniffed or key-logged.  With so much of your personal data online this can be disastrous.  I’d like to see a mechanism of protecting against this either with a security token or perhaps restricted throw-away logins that can only access files you have deemed accessible while on the road.  I don’t see anyone doing this at this time but it is necessary if we are to feel comfortable keep private data online.

Since I don’t want to use SugarSync "on the road" I use Box.net.  Box.net has what they call OpenBox services.  Files uploaded to your box.net account can be viewed and edited online using any number of online services including Zoho (office documents) and Picnik (image editing).  I’d like to see this type of services added to SugarSync.  If SugarSync is going to become my one stop shop for online file storage this is a must.  Or how about using the OpenBox platform to sync a SugarSync folder with box.net?  That would be cool.

Thank you, goodnight.

If someone from Sharpcast (makers of SugarSync) see this I want to thank you for allowing me to participate in your beta.  I look forward to seeing where you go from here.

What is it?
So, first of all what is ReviewMe?  ReviewMe is a pay per blog post advertising service.  Like other pay per post services ReviewMe pays a commission to blogger that post on a particular topic.  Unlike these other services ReviewME requires that the poster disclose that the post is sponsored and they do not require that the post is positive.  Also unlike other such systems ReviewMe doesn’t allow every blogger to post on every review topic.  Instead ReviewMe has established a per post price for every blog (my post price is $60, I get $30).  An advertiser can then decide if they want to pay that much to have a review written on that blog.  The only requirement is that the post be 200 words or more.

Is that ethical?
Well, if you look to your right (my left) you will see a ads (if your screen width is > 800 px).  These ads generate some petty cash for me (very petty).  So in a way this blog is already sponsored.  Now you know that the ads on the right do not influence my posts so you are probably very comfortable with that.  What about paid posts?  Well, let’s think about my type of blog for a moment.  I don’t blog that often.  Most of my posts are the ever mediocre links of the week.  Other then that I usually post about a my programming projects, a blogging tip, or a skeptical rant.  Most of the posts I write do not drive repeat traffic.  Visitors come to my site for one purpose and one posts.  That means mostly only people seeking information on a particular topic visit my site.  Most people will never see any of the sponsored posts unless they are specifically looking for information on that topic.

But also scattered around my blog are a few product reviews.  These posts usually contain an affiliation link.  So if you click on the product I may earn some more petty cash (again not much).  So in a fashion these posts are already bought, and bought very cheaply I might add.  Do these posts influence my opinion?  Obviously not otherwise my blog would be filled with them.

So the ethical question is should I accept sponsored posts of significant value?  Is that ethical?  Well, let’s look around the world for a while.  Sports stars are paid to sip the latest sports drink.  All television shows have sponsors commercials.  Just about every major Internet site has a high priced adverting deal.   In all of these cases there is usually a high paid advertisement sales staff behind the deal.  In my opinion ReviewMe is simply an advertising sales staff for the small time blogger.

Will it work?
Well, actually, I think it will not work for me and my blog.  First of all ReviewMe requires the advertiser to find the blog.  That means advertisers have to look though all the blogs on the ReviewMe site and for some reason feel that having a post on my blog is worth $60.  Now lets say they do (silly them) and they offer to sponsor a post.  I will not be writing any reviews unless I think I have something interesting to say… good or bad.  I doubt I will  receive many requests for reviews and if I do most will not be interesting to me.  And believe me it has to be pretty interesting to get me to write 200 words.

Another reason I think ReviewMe will not work is that the posts are not required to be positive.  For me freedom to write negative reviews is a requirement for my participation.  But if you are an advertisers looking for blogs to have review your product/service would you pay for a post on a blog with a history of bad reviews.  I suspect most advertisers will not.  I think pretty soon bloggers taht post bad reviews will find that they don’t get offers.

So, I have signed up for ReviewMe.  I’ll collect my $30 for this post and see what happens.  I’m not boking it in my monthly budget just yet.

**is this 200 words already?**

With all this application goodness I was floored at the utterly horrific spell check. One of the main reasons I ever want to use a blogging tool is to provided integrated spell check. I’ve tried BlogJet and W.Bloggar and others not worth mentioning. All of them have problems with their spell check in my opinion. Unfortunately RocketPost is the worst. First of all it breaks the standard convention for spell check. Normally when you run a spell check in most applications you will be presented with a dialog box that allows you to ignore or replace the misspelled words one at a time. Often many of the words are not misspelled but just missing from the dictionary. For these you need to either hit ignore or add to dictionary. Because I am often presented with many of these in a row it is easy to just click-click-click through several at a time. In RocketPost you are not presented with a dialog box but rather a drop down menu that drops form somewhere in the vicinity of the potentially misspelled word. So in order to ignore several words you need to click ignore, move mouse to new drop down, click ignore, move mouse… and so on. It eliminates the ability of motor memory as the buttons are constantly moving. Also, sometimes the word you are checking is covered by the drop-down that fails to repeat the word. You stuck guessing… “What word did I type that looks like gurge?”. Also you need to be aware that if your misspelled word contains any punctuation (for example wo’nt) it is ignored and therefore assumed correct. Why anyone would choose to break the well established paradigm for spell check is beyond me.

In addition there is my pet peeve. I am coastally writing the word “teh” rather then “the”. MS Word is smart enough to automatically make all my “teh”s into “the”s. In BlogJet and W.Bloggar I has to perform a scroll to replace “teh” with “the” during the spell check. Even worse in RocketPost “teh” isn’t even one of the options. It also provides not capability for replacing the word with your own word not in it’s dictionary. That means every time the spell check comes across a “teh” I need to stop the spell check, change it manually, and start again. That is very unproductive. In then end I still haven’t found any blog posting software better then good old MS word or bloggers built in WYSIWYG editor.

I have also noticed that there appears to be no feature to publish your blog. In blogger you can post an article but it will not be updated until you publish your blog. This means after you post your article you need to log into blogger and manually publish. Then what is the point of blogging software.

[Edit: Wow! They charge $149 for the full version.]

1. Tabbed Browsing: See above.


2. Popup Blocking: Maybe I missed something but my IE on XP has this same feature.


3. Find Stuff Easier: Ahhhh…. Yes. The search feature in Firefox is nice. But it is almost exactly the same as I had in IE with A9 Toolbar installed.


4. Simplified Privacy / Annoyance Eliminator: This is nice you can view cookies and such but did I really need to know that Amazon set a cookie to “KJHDKLQUWBCMNZUI”?


5. Better Bookmarks and History: The bookmark manager is nice but I had no issues with the IE method of using the favorites folder.


6. Accessible, Intelligent, Responsive: A bunch of shortcut keys I’ll never use.


7. Customizable and Extendable: This is really cool. Extensibility in Firefox is off the hook. If I just look at the shear number of extensions available on their website I am very impressed.


8. Modern Download Manager: So far I’ve considered this a drawback. When you select “save to disk” from the download dialog box the file is saved to a preset folder. It was a while before I realized that all downloads were being sent to my desktop. Sure you can change this but I’m used to being asked each time I want to download something. Maybe I’ll get used to this new method.


9. Built for standards: That’s right we all need standards. It is nice that Firefox conforms to all the W3C standards but Microsoft tends to be a standards setter not a follower. I’m sure when IE7 comes out there will be some fancy features that will only be in IE until an equivalent is incorporated into a standard and then into Firefox. Will developers wait that long? I doubt it. This same sort of thing hurt Netscape.


10. KISS (Keep It Simple and Straight-Forward): Not sure what this means. I thought IE was pretty simple. Plus using the same system for file browsing and internet browsing seemed pretty straight-forward a simple to me.

Word travels fast on the internet. I posted my review of BlogJet yesterday and less then 14 hours later someone from BlogJet posted a comment. I hope they take my opinion constructively. Let me clarify my point of view. BlogJet is a decent and solid program. But for me I get the same abilities using outlook and blogger.com with some added inconvenience of copying and pasting. This added inconvenience is offset by the inconvenience in using spell check BlogJet. Let me illustrate. As I wrote this post I typed “the” as “teh” 11 times. When I hit spell check in BlogJet I get the dialog in figure 1 below. Notice where the correct spelling of “the” is? No? That is because it is down the list a couple of lines. To get the correct spelling I have to scroll down and then hit “the”. I would have to do this 11 times using BlogJet (scroll, click, scroll, click, etc). Now look at outlook spell check in figure 2 below. Notice that “the” is the first item on the list and the default selection. Outlook knows that this is a common spelling error and orders the suggestions based on commonality (or so I assume). Furthermore, notice the button on the right “Change All”. When I hit that all “teh”s will turn to “the”s. One click is defiantly better then scroll, click, scroll, click, and so one. In figure 3 is the spell check from iespell “a free Internet Explorer browser extension that spell checks text input boxes on a webpage.” It also has “the” as the first suggestion and a “Change All” button.

I know what your saying. Learn to spell jackass. Well, maybe if I tried hard I can fix my “teh” issue but the same goes for other words. The BlogJet spell check is not poorly written it just is not as smart as outlook’s (or iespell’s) which I believe is common across all office applications. I hope the BlogJet developer, if he returns, will take this as constructive criticism and take their spell check up a notch.

Figure 1: BlogJet spell checker

Figure 2: Outlook spell checker

Figure 3: ieSpell spell checker

The other day I mentioned that I’m testing BlogJet. I’ve used BlogJet for every posts after (and including) that one. Well, first for the cons. Using BlogJet provides a convent HTML editor for creating and uploading your posts. The HTML editor is slightly better the the post creator at Blogger.com with the added convenience of a spell checker. It allows you to add graphics and the graphics are uploaded automatically to an FTP server of your choice. This is very convenient as blogger doesn’t have the capabilities to add a graphic and when posting to blooger you need to open a support FTP application to upload your graphics to your server then embed the image URL in your post. BlogJet does this automatically. Unfortunately, that is the only feature I liked.

Like I said the HTML editor is only slightly better then bloggers and if you really wanted embedded spell check your could always use ieSpell or similar tool. The spell checking tool in BlogJet is plain dumb. As a habitual keyboard pecker I often type “the” instead of “the” and the BlogJet spell check requires me to scroll to the bottom of the suggested corrections list to hit “the”. Additionally there is no “change all” feature in the spell check. With my spelling abilities I need a good spell checker. Personally I think I prefer spell checking my posts in outlook. I construct my post in outlook as I would an e-mail, spell-check, then copy to blogger editor. The inconvenience here is that the images wont upload (requiring an FTP upload as I sated above) and that I can’t edit the HTML directly inside outlook. So far I’ve been finding myself writing in BlogJet, copying to outlook, spell checking in outlook, copying back to BlogJet for posting. After posting I then usually pop over to my blog to make sure the upload is complete. If I’m opening the blog anyway I might as well post it directly into blogger and skip the middle man.

Well my BlogJet trial version is expiring soon and I don’t think I’ll be renewing it. When someone embeds a blog posted inside outlook then I’ll be all over that.