December 2007 Archives

(This article was called 'Jungle disk and iPod problems on Windows', but as Dave from JungleDisk points out below, it's not really a JungleDisk problem, and I like their service so much I didn't want it to sound too critical.  I also appreciate Dave doubling my readership.  Hopefully the article will be useful for others though)

I recently bought an iPod nano (finally!). More on that, and the nike+ kit I bought with it anon, but in the meantime I had a problem today which I thought was worth sharing with others.

JungleDisk is an online storage service that works with Amazon's S3 storage service. I've been using it for a few months now to backup our photos. For about 30GB of data, it costs me about $4 per month, which is very cheap.  It's very easy to use, and I highly recommend it. There are clients for Windows, Mac and Linux.  But today it (edit: sort of) broke my iPod.

My employer has recently started offering discounted bikes using the government's Bike to Work scheme. Under the scheme, employees can effectively buy a bike tax-free, therefore saving 30-40% on the original cost of the bike.  It works like this:

• The employer buys the bike
• The employer allows the employee to use the bike
• The employer deducts the cost of the bike from employee's salary, over a 12 or 18 month period
• The deduction is made before tax, meaning no tax is charged on the amount paid for the bike
  
• At the end of the 12 or 18 month period, the employer can sell the bike to the employee for a nominal fee