Chris Owens

Free Hosted Subversion Repositories

Have you ever read an article and sat there literally saying to yourself “Why didn’t I think of that”? Well, in this month’s issue of .net magazine, an excellent article on remote subversion hosting by Ryan Taylor of “Havoc Inspired” had me doing just that!

Quite simply, by using Dropbox, subversion (SVN) and a bit of patience you can have your own remotely hosted and shared subversion repositories free of charge, practically removing the need for remotely hosted solutions such as Beanstalk.

I recommend that you grab an issue of .net and check out the article in full, but in brief Ryan details that by using Dropbox and by storing your subversion repositories in your dropbox that you can effectively host your own shared access subversion repositories. The article goes into much more detail than my simple one line summary, and also details a SVN workflow using Panic’s Coda. Definitely check it out.

I must add that although this has replaced my personal Beanstalk account, we still use Beanstalk as our remote SVN repository hosting service as it’s Basecamp integration, deployment tools, “worry free reliability” and other features are well worth the money.

Let me know if any of you have other SVN tips that you’d like to share.

Foursquare or Gowalla?

Even though I’ve had a few iPhones, it wasn’t until I got my HTC Desire that I started playing about with location based social networking services such as Foursquare, Gowalla and Rummble. Having spent a few months playing with each service I’ve managed to whittle it down to 2 – Foursquare and Gowalla.

Whilst trying to decide on which account to keep, and which to bin I thought I’d put it out there to get the opinions of a few other users.

For the record, I like the Gowalla interface, the look of the icons and the overall “feel” of the experience – but I have very few UK friends using the service. With Foursquare, I like the fact that I have a few UK friends on there but find the overall interface a little lacking. Rummble on the other hand, although a nice experience and very much UK based, didn’t hold my interest and the fact I had no friends, UK based or other on Rummble, ensured it didn’t make the cut.

In terms of features, I feel they’re pretty much like-for-like with neither service offering anything unique – so it’s hard to split them on features alone.

What do you use? Which do you prefer and why? I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

PS: I decided to delete my old blog and start afresh. I’ll get busy with designing a custom WordPress theme as soon as I have some spare time. Until then, the new default WordPress theme will have to do.