But Dropbox’s biggest strength is also its weakness. While the simple concept of synchronizing everything inside one Dropbox folder is the factor that keeps it above its competitors, this simplicity also means that it’s (almost) impossible to synchronize everything else outside that folder.

Meet Symlink

If you are a Mac user who doesn’t like the idea of moving everything to Dropbox folder for the sake of synchronizing the content, there’s another way to achieve that. Basically, what we do is utilizing “symbolic link” (symlink) to create a reference to a folder and then place the symlink inside Dropbox folder. Anything that happens to the folder will be mirrored by the symlink and vice versa. So, symlink is a perfect solution to the problem of synchronizing outside folder to Dropbox.

You could create symlink via command line in Terminal, but common computer users are “allergic” to command line. So here are two free and simple tools that you can use to create symlink without having to touch any command line.

1. SymbolicLinker

SymbolicLinker is a tiny contextual menu plugin (for Puma through Leopard users) and software service (for Snow Leopard & later users) that, once installed, allows any user to create symbolic links to files inside the Finder. SymbolicLinker does this by adding a contextual menu item to the Finder that generates symbolic links to the selected files.

To use SymbolicLinker, download the compressed installer file. There are two important files there: SymbolicLinker.service for Snow Leopard (and later) users, and SymbolicLinker.plugin for Leopard (and previous version of Mac OS X) users. There’s also the installation instructions that will give you all the details.

The usage is also simple. Create a symlink of a folder (either by right clicking or by using Service), then place the symlink inside your Dropbox folder.

2. MacDropAny

MacDropAny is a tool built specifically to create symlink for Dropbox. The first time you open the application, it will ask you to choose which folder that you want to sync via Dropbox.

Then the next step is choosing where in the Dropbox folder do you want to put the symlink. This option gives you the ability to organize those symlinks into a specific folder inside Dropbox. You could name the folder “External links” or something else according to your preferences.

The last step is to assign name to the Symlink. To avoid confusion, it’s advisable to name the symlink similar to the original folder.

MacDropAny will offer you to open the newly made symlink.

Testing Time

Then it’s time to test the result. I dragged a text file into the symlink inside Dropbox folder.

The text file appears on the original folder that I placed in the Desktop. Then I made changes into the text and saved. I checked the synchronized text on another computer, and it was updated. So the conclusion: the system works fine.

Words of warning though, it’s not advisable to sync folders with too many items inside – something like the Applications and Pictures folders – since Dropbox tends to behave erroneously when it tries to sync too many files. Read more about this in the Known Issues page.

This two tools are the simplest solution that I could find to synchronized folders outside Dropbox. If you have other alternatives, please share them using the comment below.

The main idea behind using aliases in Gmail is to help you automate organizing incoming emails. Most people I know have separate folders for different people or projects. When an email is received, it eventually gets manually moved to the folder in which it belongs. Some who use desktop programs like Mail or Outlook may have rules set up. Few people however, take the time for this with their web based email accounts. This is one of the reasons people spend so much time dealing with email everyday.

By simply giving your client, work, contest entry forms, social media site… an alias to your email address, you can have it automatically sent to a specific folder. This will save immense amounts of time sorting the messages in your inbox.

It is really quite simple to add an alias. All you need to do is add a [+] then your a word or abbreviation to your notmal email address. Here is an example. Let’s say your email address is john.doe@gmail.com. If you wanted to add “jm” for junk mail, your junk mail alias would look like this john.doe+jm@gmail.com

You may want to write down the additional words or abbreviations you use so you can use them more than once. Here are some examples of short additions. There really isn’t a character limit for the alias, but you don’t want to go overboard.

eb = ebay
sc = soccer team
jm = junk mail
bt = beta trial
ja = job applied for or job application

There’s really no limit as to what you can use for the alias. The sky is the limit.

Examples Uses

1. Job Hunting – This can be a super handy feature to use when seeking employment. You could have your john.doe+ja@gmail.com alias on your resume and applications you fill out. This way when you get a reply, it will be aggregated into your “job hunt” folder.

2. Selling Online – Give an alias link such as john.doe+cl@gmail.com for your contact information in an ad on Craigslist.

3. Sports Teams – If you are on or manage a sports team (yes, even a fantasy football team counts).

4. Collaborating on a Project - Have all of the emails for different projects go into different folders.

Setting Up a Filter

Setting up a filter is pretty important. If you don’t do this part, it makes using an alias pointless. For those of you who don’t know how to create a filter and label, here’s how.

1. Click the Settings tab in the top right of your Gmail inbox page.

2. Click on Filters

3. Click on Create a new filter

4. Type your email address with your alias in [To:] field

5.  Click Next step

6. Check the boxes for the actions you would like. In this case I chose the following options:

• Skip the Inbox (Archive it)
• Apply Label – Job Hunt (If you don’t have a label created, click “Create new label” and choose a name.)
• Never Send it to Spam

7. Click Create Filter

In the end, you should see something like this.

What are the ways you plan to use aliases?

Image credit – Adria Richards

For those just starting out with Linux, or the command line specifically, the program that displays the command prompt and handles your commands is called bash, or the Bourne Again Shell. In this article we’ll be using the words command line and shell interchangeably to refer to interacting with Linux through bash.

Today we’ll be covering:

• Changing the shell startup routine
• Making a more useful command prompt
• Creating aliases for long or complex commands

.bashrc and .bash_profile

These two files are often the source of some confusion. At first appearance, they seem to do the exact same thing – running startup instructions every time you open a command prompt. In short, .bash_profile runs when you start a shell from a login screen (such as a console system login) and .bashrc runs for non-login shells (such as running Terminal from your system menu). The .bashrc file is the one you’ll be using the majority of the time so that’s the one we’ll use in our examples today.

As I said, .bashrc is loaded by bash whenever you open a new shell. Chances are you already have a .bashrc file that was created for you when you first installed your Linux system. To see what’s already in there, load up your preferred text editor and open

/home/YourUserName/.bashrc

(By default, the file is hidden from public view. You’ll have to right-click and select Show Hidden Files before it can show itself.)

You’ll probably see several lines of code, bash shell scripting to be precise, already in there. The default .bashrc in most distros has some code to do things like color prompts (which we’ll get into a little bit) and some handy aliases (which we’ll get into a lot).

Feel free to glance through the current contents of the file so you have an idea what’s already happening on each new shell session, but for the sake of this article we can safely ignore the current settings and just add what we want to the end.

Instead of putting our new items directly into the .bashrc file, we’re going to take a slightly different approach.  Each user on the system has their own .bashrc file in their home directory. If we wanted to make changes to the way bash runs, we’d have to place our changes in each of those files. If you later decide that what you did wasn’t quite what you wanted, you’d have to go through all of those files again and make your updates. Instead of all that hassle, we’re going to make a single file with all our custom settings, and just tell .bashrc to load from that file.  The diagram below demonstrates:

By placing the source command at the end of the .bashrc file, it will pull our commands in from the custom-shell.sh file and overwrite the default prompt and default aliases with the ones we’ve specified. This way, we can make a single file (/etc/custom-shell.sh or whatever else you’d like to name it) and just tell each user’s .bashrc file to load it. So if you’ve still got your .bashrc file loaded in your text editor, move all the way down to the bottom and add

source /etc/custom-shell.sh

Note – you can take this a step further and add the source line to the .bashrc file in /etc/skel. That way, all new users created on the system will already have our source line included!

Save the .bashrc file and then create a new, blank text file named custom-shell.sh.  This is where we’ll be putting all of the new settings in the following sections.

The Prompt

Every system has a default prompt. Usually, it’s a bland, default prompt with only a little bit of useful information.  It probably looks something like:

josh@roberts:~$

To test out exactly how prompt customisation is done, enter the following into the shell:

export PS1="Custom > "

This will turn your prompt into a simple arrow. No useful info of any kind, but it shows the basic idea of how you change the contents of your prompt.

Over the years, people have taken prompt customisation to the extreme, putting all kinds of info into it. I won’t go into a huge amount of detail on how to handle colors and multi-line prompts and adding live info, but I will give a nice looking, useful prompt that you could use as a base for your own. In the custom-shell.sh file we created earlier, paste in:

export PS1="\n\[\033[1;36m\]\u\[\033[1;37m\] \[\033[0;36m\]`date`\n\[\033[0m\][\[\033[1;33m\]\w\[\033[0m\]] "

Most of what you see there are color codes telling bash to switch back and forth between various colors for the text in the prompt. The end result of all this gibberish is a rather nice looking and easy to understand prompt.

Save the custom-shell.sh file after pasting in the code above. If you save it in /etc, you’ll probably need root privileges. You can save it anywhere you want, but make sure you point your .bashrc to the right place. To test out your new prompt, you can either close and re-open your shell, or just type

source .bashrc

into your current shell.

Your .bashrc file should read our new prompt info from the custom-shell.sh file and make your prompt nice and fancy with colors and all.

For an EXTREMELY detailed guide on prompt magic, see the Official Linux Prompt HOWTO.

Aliases

I might as well tell you up front – I love aliases. The first thing I do when I install a new system is set up my preferred aliases. As the name implies, an alias is just another name for a command. For example, my most used alias is one I call “gimme” which bash translates to “sudo apt-get install”. You can use aliases for a variety of reasons, such as shortening a long command or making the Linux shell act more like a Windows/Mac/Solaris/BSD/Whatever shell. I suggest pasting the following aliases into your custom-shell.sh file. Those who use distros other than Debian/Ubuntu style can translate the apt-get aliases into the appropriate yum command, or whatever package utility you prefer, and of course the same is true for aptitude and portage users.

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#
#Apt-related aliases
#
alias gimme="sudo apt-get install"            #Install new software
alias acs="apt-cache search"                    #Search available packages
alias purge="apt-get --purge remove"        #Removes package and its config files
alias update="sudo apt-get update"
alias debclean="sudo apt-get clean && sudo apt-get autoremove"  #Removes some unneeded files
#
#Misc useful aliases
#
alias ls="ls --color=auto"                           #Plain ls with color
alias ll="ls -l --color=auto"                         #Detailed list with color
alias config="dpkg-reconfigure"                #Re-run the configuration step for a package
alias cmi="./configure && make && sudo make install"    #Common steps to install package from source
alias numfiles="echo $(ls -1 | wc -l)"          #Count the number of files in current directory
alias dfree="df -h"                                       #See how much hard drive space is free in easy-to-read format
alias favdir="cd /directory/you/use/a/lot"   #Quickly switch to a directory you often need (music, documents, etc)

Add whatever else you think might be useful, or change the ones I’ve suggested to suit your needs. Instead of gimme and acs, you could use get and got. Some people transitioning from Windows like to make aliases to mimic Windows commands: copy to replace cp, move to replace mv, ipconfig to replace ifconfig, etc.

Your custom-shell.sh should now look something like this:

Once the custom-shell.sh file is saved, and .bashrc is set to point to it, re-open your command prompt and you should have a nice looking, useful prompt with several handy aliases to make things a little easier.

I would love to hear about you favorite aliases! Leave a comment and share some useful command shortcuts you’ve found, or maybe a nice prompt. The command line can be a very powerful tool, and I’d love to know ways you’ve found to make it even better.