This week’s vein of Online Ore can be found at http://drop.io/

Drop.io is a free online file sharing service with visual twist.  It has all the speed of an FTP transfer, but you can view images, share files and add comments directly from your web browser.

Quick sort options let you view lists by date added or type of file, and drop.io comes with easy to select pre-built templates optimized for sharing through twitter, presenting material in presentations, working in collaboration, or make the content exclusively available to friends or paying clients.

Wendy Wentzel, one of MB/I’s crackerjack designers …

What is Online Ore?
Online Ore is a new feature here at the Gold Mine, and one that has us all fired up.  Each week, on Monday morning we’ll be featuring a new site or service to improve the life or productivity of business owners or their employees.

Online or not, each of these nuggets is a tool that can be used to find value, joy, or efficiency, either inside the workplace or out of it.

So far we have featured

• Mint, a personal finance management site.
• …
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Some days I just can’t find things to write about - the day just seems meh.  And while I’d like to say the cause is grabbing a pair of horse’s blinders instead of my glasses, it’s just not true.

Thankfully there’s a website for just such occasions.

Mylifeisaverage.com

My Life is Average (which is conveniently abbreviated the same way as My Life is Awesome), is part of a not-insignificant trend of anonymous public micro-blogging sites.

And that right there is what I’ll talk about.

Most of this month I’ve been talking about blogs, specifically business blogs.  And there is good reason to do …

One week ago a new four-colored dialog box appeared in my Gmail account.  And I don’t mean some clunky square computer dialog box that we’ve all grown accustomed to, I mean an honest to goodness comic book style dialog box.

Clearly this was some new sort of chat functionality, which surprised me, as I already had a GTalk session open.

Apparently Google was launching it’s answer to Facebook and Twitter, and you know what, I couldn’t be bothered.  I already have all the personal social media tools I need.  In fact, I have more social media tools at my disposal than I …

Apple is playing a dangerous game with its new iPad release.

Like the iPhone before it, the iPad seems positioned to sell itself as a digital multi-tool: all the apps of an iPhone, same G3 wireless connectivity, additional functionality as an e-reader, multi-touch recognition (allowing true on screen keyboards) and the size and processing speed of a laptop.

However the iPad also has one of the same shortcomings of the iPhone, no Flash.

In a handheld device where all internet access is still something of a novelty visitors who can’t load a page will simply (and correctly) assume that it does not have …

No, this isn’t the 6-Million Dollar Man we’re talking about, but your telephone.

The combined market share of smartphones has been growing, and not even the Great Recession could slow it down.

$6 million is a pittance to this behemoth.  Palm alone grossed approximately $20 million on smart phones last year, and they aren’t even considered the industry leader.

Proof in the Usage

The NPD Group found that smartphones made up 28% of all cell phones purchased in the 2nd Quarter of 2009, up from only 12% at the end of 2007.  On top of that, Gerry Purdy of Frost & Sullivan predicts that …

Augmented reality refers to any technology driven display or device that provides you with information on a scene beyond what you could experience with your five senses.

You can find examples of AR in many televised sporting events.

• In baseball, a pop up display will show you a batter’s statistics.
• In football, the line of scrimmage and first down lines are highlighted to make them easier to view.
• In racing, a moving line or overlaid image of previous footage lets you track the current field against an earlier time.

Imagine What You Could Do If You Could Take That Ability With You

Mobile AR combines several …

Steven Wolfram’s new “knowledge engine” has launched to mixed results.  While the tool is just as powerful as advertised in some areas (like the comparing stocks, answering physics questions, or performing complex numerical calculations), there are other areas where it falls short of the mark.

While Wolfram|Alpha can compare the 2008 season of the Oakland A’s against that of the San Francisco Giants, it still can’t figure out when the baseball season begins.  Perhaps, in time, Wolfram Research will be able to work out the bugs.  But for the time being it is still a very specialized tool.

Thankfully, Wolfram|Alpha does excel …