Pancake.io Provides an Even Simpler Web Site Based on a Dropbox Folder

Pancake.io is a web service that allows one of your Dropbox folders to become a web site capable of showing a collection of files that automatically display as public web pages. I thank colleague @PetaHopkins for the heads-up.

Back in March this year I posted about DropPages.com, a way to turn a Dropbox folder into a web site. My test site at mrees.droppages.com still works well. A free DropPages account gives you a URL and allows the download of a set of files giving you a fairly sophisticated web site with templates and styles. Straightforward but not easy.

Pancake is much, much simpler. Get your free account at Pancake.io and grant it access permission to create the Pancake.io folder in your Dropbox files. Then just add files to your Dropbox folder, and each will be served as web page. Supported files are:

Text (.txt)
Markdown (.md)
JPEG (.jpg, .jpeg)
PNG (.png)
GIF (.gif)
PDF (.pdf)
Word (.doc, .docx)
Excel (.xls, .xlsx)
Powerpoint (.ppt, .pptx)

Find the URL for each page in your Pancake.io dashboard. I created the home.txt file and its URL as at http://pancake.io/823a85/home. I put a small PDF file of slides in the same folder. The text files can be edited on the Pancake.io site or, of course, with any text editor from all machines with access to your Dropbox files. I added the script provided to embed the list of files in the home.txt file. Simple and impressive.

The downsides are an obscure web site address, but you can use a URL shortener, and Pancake hint at using your own domain soon. Our old friend Markdown syntax is also present again as all text files go though the Markdown filter. Fortunately if the text content looks like HTML then it is rendered correctly.

A much-needed icon for web apps

I think this is a much needed attempt to put up a standard logo to indicate a web page is acting as a web app, especially when viewed on a mobile device. Developers take note.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/mobile/2011/11/mobile-web-apps-get-a-dedicate.php

Types of Personal Cloud Solutions

I have been a user of 25 GB free SkyDrive for a number of years as it has gone through many guises. For full synchronisation between SkyDrive and local files on your computers you need to add Live Mesh which has lower storage limits.

How do you compare this offering with other personal cloud solutions. From the ReadWriteWeb post on how Windows 8 will bring a personal cloud to billions we see Microsoft introducing some cloud solution granularity to aid user choice:

Omar Shahine and Mike Torres outlined three distinct categories of personal cloud solutions:

1. File clouds; using the traditional file and folder structure. Examples: SkyDrive, Dropbox
2. Device clouds; "A device-centric view of cloud storage "hides" the folders from you." Example: iCloud
3. App clouds; "they fully embrace the cloud [and] can enable new ways to collaborate, organize, and share." Examples: Google Docs, Evernote

From Ebooks to Esites

Especially via our institution’s Yammer activity stream (private Twitter) I and several of my colleagues raise awareness of the evolution of ebooks with their serial information metaphor to what are becoming know as rich media ebooks amongst other names with their highly interactive model. Possibly one of the typical examples is the iPad-specific Inkling platform with about 100 textbook titles across a range of disciplines. Inkling retains the ‘book’ distribution model where the reader pays to download an electronic lump that contains all the rich media – text, images, audio, video, and interactive elements. Admittedly Inkling textbooks can be purchased in smaller chapter lumps.

Just a few days ago a colleague, Allan S, alerted us on Yammer about reactive documents:

Really interesting way of interacting with your web documents - "reactive documents" uses a JavaScript API to allow every word to become an 'explorable analysis'.

Allan pointed us to the Explorable Explanations project created by Bret Victor that allows authors to create reactive documents which take several steps towards genuine rich media ebooks. Try out the examples especially the one Allan liked, the digital filter.

However if you are a budding author of a rich media ebook your doubts might be raised with the need to use a ‘JavaScript API’. As well as a writer you also need some programming skills. Then you need to add skills in graphic design, audio-visual creation/editing and an understanding of user interaction and behaviour.

Going further you need to understand the hosting and deployment of web sites – the only sensible cross-platform technology currently available. After all you will want your reactive rich media content to evolve over time, won’t you? Web site technology allows your readers access to your rich media ebook on all ereader platforms not to mention the wide range of other reading devices such as smartphones, tablets, ultrabooks and desktops.

It is clear by now that your rich media ebook has become an interactive web site or esite. Since it is unlikely you will have the range of skills just listed your esite must be built by a multi-disciplinary team either assembled by you or your publisher. We might expect software developers to create suitable authoring tools eventually that will significantly ease the authorship process. Even so authors intending to join the rich media ebook movement should expect to bone up on their 21st century skills that includes some scripting/programming knowledge and a familiarity with new media creation.

Start thinking esites not ebooks. A corollary is to forget native apps unless they are backed by an esite and are generated automatically by your esite authoring tool.