A really convenient feature of Drobo is the ability to setup email alerts from Drobo Dashboard, a powerful companion utility application that shows you what Drobo is up to and adds important functionality including alert emails, data usage visualization and more.

If Drobo wants your attention or wants to alert you of something critical happening it can be configured to send you an email. Well, if you are like me and you use Google Apps (or Gmail) as your email solution, you might need to know how to configure Drobo Dashboard to do this.

Here’s a quick guide to get you up and running.

Getting Started

Get started by selecting “Email Settings” from the Drobo Dashboard menu. Then all you need to do is follow the steps below to get your setup configured for email.

Drobo Dashboard can send messages on all useful information, when a situation is important, or on critical situations only. Personally, I prefer the middle ground, which happens to be the default setting. You have the freedom of using any address you’d like, but I prefer have my alerts to my regular email address. The “sender” can be set to anything you’d like, but I think Google apps defaults it to your email address regardless of what you have set. At least that’s what I’m seeing happen.

All email messages will be sent from Google, but you can send to any email account. Use these steps regardless of who you are sending to.

Configuring Google Apps and Gmail

1. Enter the email address you want the alerts sent to as the “To” email address
2. Enter anything you’d like as the “From” email address
3. Enter “smtp.gmail.com” as the “Mail Server”
4. Enter “587″ as the “Port”
5. Check the “Authentication” box
6. Enter your valid Google Apps or Gmail address as the “Username”
7. Enter your valid Google Apps or Gmail password as the “Password”
8. Check the “Use SSL” box

If you want to test this out before selecting “OK”, click “Send Test E-mail” to make sure everything works as expected. If you get the test email alert, you’re golden! Click “OK” and you’re done.

Enjoy!

When I installed Chrome on my MacBook Pro, Firefox was my primary browser. During the installation process of Chrome, you are asked if you want to import bookmarks, history, etc from another browser. I said yes to copy over my bookmarks and history from Firefox. This gives you the power of Google search on your browsing history.

This isn’t really anything “new”, other browsers have been doing history and providing search on your history for ages, but not with this type of interface, speed or accuracy! I was able to go back as far as Sunday – September 20, 2009. I just opened Firefox to confirm the depth of the history settings (waited 30 seconds for it to open) and it seems they took that level of control away. Now, it seems, you only have the choice of recording or not recording history. My guess is the range is something like 90 days. Oh well.

A useful hotkey (Cmd + Y) opens the Chrome history manager where you get complete information on your browsing history.

Keep in mind that the History page doesn’t store pages from secure websites, those you’ve visited in incognito mode, or those you’ve deleted from your browsing history.

Rakefile features:

• Clear and generate tasks that clear and generate new styles (via Compass)
• Preview, build tasks that preview and build the StaticMatic site using the default StaticMatic commands (I hate typing staticmatic over and over and over…)
• Deploy task using Rsync that clears the styles, generates new styles, builds the site, and finally deploys the site using Rsync

I also created a StaticMatic-Bootstrap that you are welcome to “watch” or “fork” on GitHub.

It supports: Haml, Sass, Compass and jQuery out of the box and comes with said Rakefile noted in this post.

Laziness is a trait of a good developer.

When I started to use Wordpress again, I WAS NOT excited about using the FTP protocol to ship off changes to my theme. I wanted a simple and easy use process to deploy updates to my theme and also automate a few processes that I needed to support as part of using Sass and Compass to create my CSS styles.

What’s the alternative? FTP? Nope. Typing the rsync command by hand each time? Nope again.

This is a simple Rakefile I wrote that helps me to do all this in simple and concise manner.

Features:

• Clear and generate tasks that clear and generate new styles (via Compass)
• Deploy task that clears the styles, generates new styles and finally deploys the theme using Rsync

It’s 21 lines and simple to use. Besides, $ rake deploy is much better than what most WordPress users are doing to deploy updates to their theme. Capistrano could work too, but IMO would be over-kill. Rsync is a much better fit, and using the --delete option ensures that you delete files that don’t exist on the sending side. Keeps it simple and clean.

This Rakefile is a bit opinionated and assumes you’re using Sass and Compass. You could fork and update this Gist to suit your own setup, but if you want the scoop on using Sass and Compass with WordPress check out the Compass-WordPress extension on GitHub.

I love Whuffie (The Whuffie Factor / Amazon) and all that it represents. I loath and detest liars, thieves and those who choose to be dishonest and take for granted another person’s trust in them.

This is my humble little blog. It is a place that I will share my current thoughts on the web, new media, society and sometimes life. These thoughts may appear in the form of links, pictures, audio, video or whatever “media” I decide to share with the world. Because I’m reluctant to share too much of my personal life with the general public, this blog will mostly contain my personal perspective on my professional life.

I run Handcrafted and I produce two podcasts, The Web 2.0 Show and The Changelog. Wynn Netherland and I produce The Changelog together and it’s been a work in progress – evolving each and every day since we started it back in November 2009.

If you have feedback or would like to get in touch with me, email me at adam [at] myfullname [dot] com.

Please enjoy!

Thanks!

I’m in the process of re-launching my personal brand. So expect to see some changes here as well as at The Web 2.0 Show and the Handcrafted site.

If you want to connect, follow me on Twitter (@adamstac) or friend me on Facebook – or anywhere else you find me.

Until next time…