Tag Archives: file management

August 25, 2011, 8:30 am

Receive Files in Dropbox with FileStork

We’ve written before about options for receiving papers electronically outside either e-mail or a campus-based learning management system. (For example, earlier this month I wrote about GoFileDrop, which lets you receive files of any type into your Google Docs account. Also see Send to Dropbox or Dropbox Forms.)

The advantages of such a system are, basically, that it gets files out of your e-mail and directly into a location where you can start to work with them, that it eliminates uncertainty around e-mail receipt, and that it doesn’t get you locked into the LMS. Handy!

A recent entry into the file-receipt market is FileStork (Via LifeHacker). FileStork makes it incredibly simple for Dropbox users to request files from people on either a one-time or more open-ended basis. (This is probably a little easier and safer than sharing a folder with an entire class.) Here’s how it works…

August 4, 2011, 8:23 am

Receive Files in Google Docs with GoFileDrop

By Jason B. Jones

Managing files–including student papers–digitally has many advantages, but you still have to get them. If you use a CMS like Blackboard or Moodle, students can submit files that way, and if you have a Dropbox account, students can put things in a public folder, or use a service like Send to Dropbox (covered previously).

For people who have a Google-centered workflow, or who use Google Docs as an external drive, a new service called GoFileDrop might be appealing. GoFileDrop is an add-on to Gmail that gets attachments out of your e-mail and directly into Google Docs.

(As always, in discussions of cloud-based solutions, the general disclaimers in George’s “Stability and Security in the Cloud” post apply.)

Once you give GoFileDrop permission to write to your Google Docs account, it gives you a URL that you can forward to anyone who wants to send you a file. That URL gives…

July 5, 2011, 11:00 am

Reclaiming your Windows Desktop

By Anastasia Salter

I’ve spent a lot of time making my physical desk fit my work. I flip through new office supply catalogs with anticipation. That doesn’t mean my office isn’t a mess at the end of the semester, but I usually have a number of tools to get it in order. On the other hand, my Windows desktop is–well, out of control. Whenever I’m in a hurry, I fall into the habit of saving almost all files to my desktop for quick uploading or email. This week, I set out to excavate it out from under a mass of rarely-used icons and half-remembered files and found myself faced with the ongoing challenges of virtual organization. Here are a few steps that helped me along the way.

Treat your desktop like your closet. The finite nature of physical space makes it easier to let things go. When cleaning out a closet, for instance, the standards are easy: does something fit? Do you need it? Will you ever use it…

April 7, 2011, 11:00 am

‘Name Mangler’ Does Just the Opposite

By Ryan Cordell

This past week, I was preparing some images to upload to my Omeka archive. The images had been scanned by a special collections librarian, who had named each of the files by number. I wanted more descriptive file names. Each image was a page from a single book, and I wanted to rename the files to reflect the book’s author, title, publication year, and page numbers. With more than 100 individual page files, however, I did not want to select and rename each one.

Enter Name Mangler, a batch renaming tool for OS X (for alternative batch naming tools, including several for Windows or Linux, see alternativeTo’s entry on Name Mangler). Name Mangler allows you to perform a range of specific changes to sets of file names:

Find and replace. This command will find a particular set of characters in your chosen files and replace them with characters you’ve chosen. If you need to correct a typo…