Just like Dropbox, you’ll be able to dedicate a local folder in your computer where you’ll be placing the files that you want to put in the cloud. This folder will sync automatically, “in the background”.

The idea is to be able to access your files from anywhere: your computer, your tablet, your smartphone, the web. You can do this today with Dropbox from nearly every device, not yet with Google Drive though, although I’m pretty sure apps for this are on the way.

Dropbox was the first company to offer this type of functionality. Starting as a start-up, the company was, until now, disrupting and enjoying this industry “alone”. Now not just Google is a direct competitor with Drive, but also Microsoft with SkyDrive and even Box.net, that claims to be focused on enterprise but has been showing interest in the end consumers.

If you want to understand better this industry (cloud storage), Dropbox, and its emerging competitors I advise you to read this post or this one, where although with different points of view, you’ll get a summary of the actual scenario.

But what if you are like me, a heavy Google products user, and also a heavy Dropbox user? Would you stick to Dropbox, or will you move your files to Google Drive?

I always try to simplify my life, and the less accounts and logins I can have, the better. So having everything, even my files, synced to my Google account is an attractive and convenient idea.

But we also know that Google kills products just as easy as it creates new ones, so I wouldn’t close my Dropbox account and jump into Drive, not until Drive really gets to the point where I feel confortable with.

What to do? Use them both.

1. Get you Google Drive account
2. Install it on your computer
3. Reconfigure your Dropbox folder location, and change it to be INSIDE Google Drive folder
4. Keep putting your files on your Dropbox folder

That’s it. Now everything you put on your Dropbox folder will be, as it was before, synced to your Dropbox account, but ALSO to your Google Drive account.

Yup, I know it sounds dead simple, but I’ve found many people deciding between the 2 services, and I don’t know why they don’t think about just using them together. Probably this is one of those little techniques where you say: “Riiight, why didn’t I think about it before?”

While this crazy industry decides which will be the winner, you can
replicate your data between the two, without extra work, “automagically”.

What do you think? Let me know on your comments.

This is a 360 degree panorama view of very popular tourist destinations in The Dominican Republic, here you will see incredible beautiful views of places like: The Isla Catalina, National Park Los Haitises, The “Rincòn” Beach, Cayo Levantado Island, The Samana Penínula, Waterfall “El Salto del Limón”, Bayahibe beach…

You tell me, isn’t it jaw dropping? I thought so.

Soruce

When I’m studying these role models I try to read between the lines and learn about the environment and circumstances that these people were when doing whatever I see today as achievements. Why? Because this will give me the basis to translate the lessons learned into my world, my circumstances, my life. I don’t really know why, but I’ve noticed that many people don’t do this, and I think doing it is very important.

Before I explain why I think that understanding the influence of the environments is important, let me explain the reasons why I became interested in the topic in the first place.

I was born and raised in The Dominican Republic, a very poor country in The Caribbean that shares an island with an even poorer country named Haiti. If you were born, raised and still live in a developed country you would’t understand or even believe many of the things that happen in these countries, but in summary, most of the things that appear simple in a more advanced place, are very difficult in my country.

I knew this then, and I know it better now that I moved to a developed country and probed my theory.

See all those successful stories you read about? Medical advancements? Incredible innovations in California? There is a whole system behind them that works. There is an infrastructure, working and put in place ever since that person was born, that will somehow influence in the number of possibilities that are going to be available for this individual.

Let me give you one practical example:

In the community where I live today kids are picked up every morning by perfectly working and safe school buses, these kids don’t sweat in the summer because the classroom is correctly acclimated, they also have the appropriate lighting to read, and have access to computers and some other conditions that will facilitate learning.

You may see this as routine, as normal everyday, but I can assure you this is not the case in many places in our planet. In my country kids don’t even have chairs to sit at, not even safe public transportation.

So, where am I going with this? Take two kids, one of each of the environment I described and ask yourself this question: Who will have more chances of succeeding? Please, don’t misunderstand me here? I’m not asking who will succeed, I’m asking who’ll have more chances. To which one is going to be harder? Now, see where I’m going?

Your environment will not determine if you will succeed or not, but it will make it easier or harder, that’s for sure.

Now, based on the 2 important facts that:

1. Our environment influences and facilitates possibilites for our success and…
2. That we don’t choose the environment where we are born and raised

We can arrive to these conclusions:

• This is not an excuse to sit and do nothing. With whatever we have, we must stand and make the best out of it.
• If we are aware of the limitations of our environment we can try to change it, for us or even for our children. In my case, I moved out to a better environment. Left my family and my friends, paid that price with the promise of a better system that will make things easier for me.
• If there is someone you are following and admire, try to study first that person’s environment and circumstances, but not to tell you that you can’t because your situation is worse, but to identify the real challenges and the price you’ll have to pay to achieve the same.

In general terms, every person’s circumstances are different, and every person is different, so to come up with inmutable laws is very difficult if not impossible.

Let’s only understand that we can achieve anything we want in life, as long as we are willing to pay the price to get it, knowing that the price is not universal, maybe higher or lower to different people depending on multiple variables, being “environment” one of them.

I leave you know with a very popular quote from a famous spanish philosopher that summarizes my point very well:

“I am me, and my circumstances” – Jose Ortega y Gasset

My take on all that is there isn’t and there will not be a social network that will serve for all purposes or all people. But why? Is it because they haven’t figured out a way to crate it? No! Is only because is on our nature to group based on interests, is on our nature to create different social environments depending on multiple variables.

Let’s analyze our life, out of the online world.

If you are a business person, very serious about it, going from meeting to meeting, from project to project, from investment to investment, Will you be shooting pictures to your partners? Will you be checking in on every bank you go or customers you visit? And ultimately, will you be willing to upload and tag those people in the conference room? Hard to imagine, isn’t it?

So, Facebook wouldn’t be the social network for this type of events. But you still want to connect (socially) with these people. How? Linkedin.

As an active social individual, you have a lot a different social circles you play in. You may be with your co-workers, or with your family, or friends, your girlfriend, your high school friends, your neighbors… every environment is different, so are the activities you do on them.

The previous example was just one of the many I can come up with. Every social network is different from each other, they all serve specific kind of people and interests. Now, do you have to be in all of them? Absolutely no! How do you know where to invest your time? Simple, you don’t like everything, and you don’t know everyone, so choose a social network based on your own personal interests and make the best of it.

I would say that you should have a Facebook account to connect with friends and family, and Linkedin account to connect with other professionals and expand and promote your work. After these two, only your interests will dictate where to be.

Do you like photography? Instagram, Flickr.

Are you a foodie, and like shooting pictures to everything you eat out in restaurants? Foodspotting.

Do you enjoy telling your friends where you are and competing for points on specific places? Foursquare.

Do you enjoy recording videos and sharing them? Youtube.

And so on, and so on, and so on…

Stop searching for the best social network out there. Instead find the best for you, for your friends, for your interests. The odds are high you’ll find one, and if not, create it, so you can be the next Facebook? :)

What is your favorite social network? Let me know on your comments.

Since the Dominican Republic is famous for tourism and it makes a lot of money of it, you may find a lot of videos like this, promoting beach life, chilling, and adventure. Is it true? Totally yes. Not everyone lives like this, but is possible.

Now, this video is one of the best I’ve seen. It transports you and makes you feel like booking a flight right now.

Enjoy a beautiful video, of the beautiful part, of my beautiful country.

This video/commercial is the way a start-up called “Dollar Shave Club” is promoting their new service of sending shaving blades to your door, every month, for a low monthly fee.

Is it a good idea? Is it going to work? Who knows, but their commercial is freaking original and even funny. Why do I like it? Well, because originality and innovation are things I admire, even on this simple video.

Take a look and let me know what you think?

I never let my disk fall and even though it was an external disk almost never traveled with it. So, why did it die? Who knows, that’s not the case here, what’s important here is the fact that without notice I “lost” all of the information I had there and if it wasn’t for the “all in the cloud” configuration I’ll explain you in a bit, I would’ve burst into tears right in that moment, seriously.

We are in the so called Information Age simply because information has become our most valuable asset. The information can be in the format of data, knowledge or whatever, but the more valuable the information becomes to us, the more we want to preserve it and the more we worry about its safety.

The Internet, its possibilities and the advancements in technology we have nowadays are empowering users with an infrastructure that when we learn how to use it, we can boost our productivity and the safety of our information enormously.

I don’t know how I would feel if I lose the years and years of valuable information I have. Have you thought what happens if you lose everything? Your excel spreadsheets? Your pictures? Your videos?

Because of this I started building a data infrastructure in the so called cloud, and after the death of my hard drive and the better accessibility and productivity I’ve got to my information, I decided to explain here how I did it.

What is the cloud?

Whenever we refer to the cloud we refer to “a place” in the Internet where our information is remotely stored, accessed and edited. For example, if you upload a picture to an online photo service like Flickr, you can say that your photo is in the cloud, why?

• Because you can access it from anywhere you have Internet access
• Because you have no idea where (physically) it is, and you don’t care
• Because you can share its location with anyone in the world, so they can access to it as well

Would you like all of you information to have these properties?

You can get cloud services that offer these characteristics to any kind of files and needs. Are you a photographer? There are cloud services focused on photos. Are you a Videographer? There are cloud services specialized on Videos… So on and so on.

For a typical computer-internet user a complete cloud scenario would be ideal. Most people normally have photos, videos, files, documents… So the easier we can have all of this saved and accessible the better.

So, how do I have my information in the cloud today?

Let me explain which cloud-Internet services I use for my daily digital needs. There are others that serve the same purpose so do your research if these don’t fit you.

Email: Probably this is the only cloud service you’re already using. Hotmail, Yahoo and Gmail are the most commons. Gmail is the best online email service out there, and I personally recommend it because by getting a Gmail account you’ll be getting a Google Account, which will be later used for other cloud services offered by Google as well.

Documents: Google Docs is the best free, online office suite out there. By creating your Google Account you can access your Google Docs account. You’ll have a word processor, spreadsheets, presentations (Power Point) and much more.

The best thing about this service is that you can create and edit your files from anywhere, share them, and collaborate. It’s amazing.

Files: There are a lot services that let you save your files online. My favorite is Dropbox. You can configure it to your mobiles devices, your computer and even access your files via their web interface. The best thing about it is that you configure one folder on your computer to be synced with Dropbox. What I do is I put all of my files in this folder and they are synced online automagically and I won’t even notice. It’s very nice when I’m traveling and I need to access one specific file that I know is on my computer. I just go to my Dropbox account and access my folder.

Contacts: You normally have your contacts on your cellphone and email. With cloud services like Gmail you will have automatic synchronization of all of your contacts.

Calendars: When I see people carrying small notebook-like agendas I wonder if they’ve ever lost it. A couple of years back I lost my agenda along with the contacts I had in the last pages. It was chaos. With your Google Account you can use the excellent and popular Google Calendar. It’s totally online and it syncs with your computer calendar client and your mobile devices. You lost your computer, you lost your phone, or you are using your friend’s computer? No problem, access Google Calendar online and that’s it.

Photos: There are a lot of online photo services. The best for me is Google Picasa Web Albums, it’s free, you can increase the space to 20GB for just $5 a year and it’s also synced with your Google account.  Here you will be able to host all of your photos with lots of features.

Google also offers two software to edit and sync your photos:

1. Picasa: A complete photo management and editing suite. It’s an application that you download and install on your computer. Works on Windows, Linux and Mac.
2. Picnic: It’s an amazing online photo editing software. You can say it is a cloud-based software.

Music: Why would you like to have GBs and GBs of music on your hard drive? You can use Spotify, Pandora, iTunes or Google Music. I personally use Spotify as my music library. Whatever I feel like hearing I just go there and search for it. If I want to listen to a personalized radio I’ll use Pandora. Or if you want just to upload all of your music and listen to it from anywhere just upload it to Google Music.

Videos: You can upload your videos to YouTube or Vimeo. They are both great and you can: 1. Upload videos in HD format, 2. Set them private or public. 3. You can share them easily. 4. You can see them anywhere.

So, as you can see I can just set my computer on fire right now and I will have:

• All of my files on Dropbox
• All my pictures on Picasa
• All of the music I want on Spotify and Pandora
• All of my documents on Google Docs
• All of my events on Google Calendar
• All of my contacts on Google Contacts
• All of my mails con Gmail

I know what you are saying:

• “What if those services fail?”
• “What if they shut it down?”
• “They own my files and information!”

Here is my theory on this matter:

In life there is only one thing for sure, and that is death. The only thing I know for sure is that I will die someday. The rest in life is a game of probabilities.

So, what are the chances that those big cloud services fail? They have millions and millions of users worldwide, hundreds of engineers and millions of dollars invested on optimization and security.

Is it possible that these services fail and we lose all of our information? Yes, it is possible. Is it unlikely? VERY.

Ask yourself one last question: What is more likely to fail, your $300 external hard disk or these services?

It’s very clear that all of your information is more secure, more accessible and more useful in the cloud than anywhere else, and if you want to feel even safer you can have a backup of your information on a hard disk. You can do this backup every 6 months or so and that’s it.

If you spend one weekend configuring and learning how to use the cloud scenario I’ve described here you won’t have to worry about backups any more, you will have more accessibility and you will be more productive. This is the way I do it.

Hope you enjoyed this post and let me know what you think on your comments.

Thanks.

For me it is more important to be financially organized than financially abundant and let me explain my point of view with a practical example:

John and Jose are two normal guys. They are married (not to eachother!), they both have a job, they both have one decent car, their wives don’t work, and they are neighbors in a very decent apartment’s community.

Now, both wives decided to get a job and after a couple of months going to interviews they found a very nice job and they even had the luck of being close to their husbands’ job.

John was making $3,000/month. His wife was about to start a job of $2,000/month, so they will be producing $ 5,000/month.

On the other hand we have Jose, he is making also $3,000/month and his wife was about to start a job of $1,500/month, so they will be making $4,500/month.

So you get the scenario, let’s say 5 months have passed, who would you think would be financially better? John or Jose? John? Why? Because he’s making $500 more every month? Mmm, well my answer to this question would be: “it depends”. Depends on what? On how much John is keeping.

See, to be financially good is not totally defined (although influenced) by how much you make, but how much you’re able to keep. That’s the trick. People think that if you make more you should have a more expensive car, or a bigger house, or a more expensive TV cable plan. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Let me just describe you how are John and Jose after 5 months, so you can visualize my point here:

Jose was very happy with his car, and since his wife was working close to his job they managed to coordinate their schedule so in the morning he would take her and in the afternoon he’ll pick her up. They were even enjoying the warm conversations while driving together everyday.

On the other hand, John got a new car for his wife. With an easy down of $2,000 he started paying $600 a month. That doesn’t include gas, depreciation and risks not covered by insurance (deductibles for example)

John also signed up for a better TV cable plan and increased his monthly payment from $50 to $125.

Finally John moved to a bigger apartment with an extra bedroom and a bigger kitchen with new appliances, which represented a $225/month increase on his rent.

As you can see, Jose’s life is still the same, he didn’t really need a new car for his wife, they just shared it. He didn’t need a bigger apartment, and he was just fine with his cable plan. Actually, if you analyze what percentage of the day John and Jose spend on their “big apartments” in front of their “cable TV” is not even worth the price (this will be for another post though).

In summary, John and Jose were making the same ($3,000/month), John increase his earnings to $5,000 and Jose to $4,500. If we assume that they were spending the total of their $3,000 before, we can do the following calculus:

John: $3,000 (previous earnings) – $3,000 (previous expenses) + 2,000 (new earnings) – $600 (new car) – $75 (new cable) – $225 (new house) = $1,100

Jose:  $3,000 (previous earnings) – $3,000 (previous expenses) + $1,500 (new earnings) = $1,500

After 5 months, Jose has $7,500 on his bank account, and John has $5,500. Jose has $2,000 more, same quality of life with more possibilities. After one year? $4,000 After 2 years? $8,000 !

So I ask you again, who is better financially speaking? I hope you can now agree with me that without any doubt Jose is better.

They have pretty much the same quality of life. An extra car, an extra bedroom… doesn’t make you live longer or with more dignity. It doesn’t actually improve your quality of life. And after a couple of months driving your BMW it starts to feel just the same as your Camry of the same year. You just got used to it.

I know what you are saying now. You may be thinking I’m stingy or penny-pinching and I’m ok with that. But I prefer to look at it in a different way.

Do you really need all of what you buy? Think about it! If we define what is decent and necessary in our lives and we stick to it, we can improve our financial health without hurting our lifestyle. We can plan better our future and we can invest in experiences, assets and helping others instead of having more material goods that doesn’t do more than complicating our existence.

So next time you think you are better off by making more think again, you are better off by keeping more while having all your necessities covered in a dignified way.

Do you agree with me, or you don’t? Express yourself on your comment.

Thanks.

It doesn’t really matter the topic you are interested in, there’s always a “guru” that knows it all and has a step-by-step guide for you to do the same. Try it, pick any industry and go to Google or Amazon and 90% (being modest) of the time you’ll find tons of “experts”. Now, is this bad?

We are in the Information Era, so we should be able to have access to all kinds of information, and with the Internet and technology, we can reach millions of people and resources around the globe, so yes, it’s logical that we will find pretty much anything, about anything out there. So what is the problem?

The problem arises when you look for orientation, for advises, for guidance and you don’t screen your counselor or advisor well. Be it your course instructor or the author of the guide/book you are about to read, we should always question the competencies of our “guru”. Being a best-seller or being popular is not always the best metric to evaluate that.

Let’s pick one popular industry: getting rich, making money, personal finance, etc…It’s amazing how many people are getting rich by teaching others how to get rich. See the catch? They are getting rich teaching you how to get rich, but they weren’t actually rich in the first place!

So they write some fancy advises, research some information online, put it together into a nice package and call it “How to get rid of your job in 30 days”, “How to fire your boss”, “How to make money while sleeping”, you name it. They invent stories about rich dads and poor dads, about how to buy buildings with a $30,000 salary, etc, etc, etc…

Now even though these titles look attractive, and reading them could be (sometimes) pleasant, we should always ask ourselves if the author of the book or guide (the “guru”) actually did what he or she is trying to sell teach me. Let me give you some examples:

• “How to get rid of your job in 30 days” – Did you get rid of your job in 30 days?
• “How to make money while sleeping” – Do you make money while sleeping with something besides this book, and before writing this book?
• “How to become rich investing in Real Estate without having the money” – Did you become rich with Real Estate before this book? Can you show me your portfolio? Can you prove it?

When you start screening the authors of all those fancy titles, you would probably be surprised of how many of them are actually getting rich by selling you the book and not by practicing what they preach.

I really would like to have the opportunity to tell this kind of authors that if  ”you don’t do what you tell me to do, how do you know it works?” They just don’t. It’s a nice advice, it sounds nice, it’s organized, well presented, well marketed, and puff, a best-seller. And hey, if it sounds like is right and I look like I’m right, well, many people will think I’m right!

Does this mean there aren’t good books out there from respectable and competent authors? Of course not! What it means is that in a world of such load of information, confusion and marketing, we should stay vigilant and skeptical; we should always make our own rational analysis and research, and do our best to screen the authors so we can be able to tell the false gurus from the real ones.

So just remember, if you want me to read you book about “How to learn any language in 3 months” please provide lots of backup for it.

What do you think? Do you know any false guru? Let me know on your comments.

As you may probably know, Steve Jobs is acclaimed to be one of the most successful entrepreneurs of all times. I’m actually reading his biography written by Walter Isaacson and having already read 50% of it I can tell you it’s amazing, actually I’m going to post my review about it in the next couple of weeks.

A very short background:

NeXT Logo

Steve Jobs founded Apple Computers in 1976 along with Steve Wozniak and converted it into a millionaire company. Apple products have been revolutionizing the computer industry ever since. In 1985 Steve Jobs left Apple and went to form another company, a company that he named “NeXT”.

Many of the initial meetings, ideas and discussions of NeXT were recorded by this TV Program called “Entrepreneurs”. Today, thanks to YouTube I was able to see that chapter and let me tell you this: I’m fascinated with it.

After repeating it a couple of times I was amazed with the many lessons we can extract from it on entrepreneurship, innovation, people persuasion and even business planning.

If you’re really into these topics I encourage you to watch the video (at least twice).

Let me now list the lessons (share yours on the comments) I got from the video:

• Entrepreneurship has always been the same. Visionary, insistent, leader, and crazy people that make others do whatever necessary to achive something.
• Entrepreneurship is very hard. At first, even though you have to know how to delegate and distribute resources, you end up doing most of the tasks. Building a company is not easy and the will power needed is just provided by a big passion for what you’re after. Passion is the key.
• Funding is very important. Pay attention to how many times Steve makes reference to the available funds, funds that he puts from his own money. Funding was a key back then, imagine now.
• Have a clear Goal. When I see that video, when I transport myself to those meetings and hear and see Steve talking, you can clearly tell that there is one specific goal and deadline. They are just figuring out how to reach it.
• People first reaction to something hard is “no”. Again, see how Steve Jobs is fighting with an audience of Software Engineers, Marketers and other professionals, saying “no” to many of Steve’s ideas. He had to be able to convince these people to do what he thought was the right thing to do, not the “possible” thing to do. As it later turned out, it was not only possible, but right as well.
• Be perfectionists and stick to the best. Pay attention to the process when the designer of the logo brings the designs for the first time to the team, Jobs explains how the designer was one of the best at that time, and how important was every detail. Does that mean we should hire always the best? No, it means we should pay attention to details and make the best of our own possibilities.
• Planning is very important. Deadlines, diagrams, resources, and actions are all coordinated with a white board and multiple meetings. They are planning, and studying their industry. That’s still necessary nowadays more than before.

In general, most of these lessons are in all entrepreneurship books, right? Well, maybe not. But the beauty of this video is that:

1. You are seeing it live, not reading it, you are seeing it in action.
2. It comes from what today is considered one of the top entrepreneurs of all times.
3. It is a reality show, what you see here are the real things that happened and most of the lessons are deducted by transporting yourself into the show, they are not listed, there are interpreted by you, the viewer.

Enjoy the video below, identify the multiple ideas I’ve shared with you here, and comment them or add yours.

See you later.

See video on YouTube.