Monthly Archives: June 2008
Microsoft SkyDrive
Transferring information between computers is easier now than it ever has been. I remember back in the days of my Commodore 64 when it was near impossible to exchange information between different machines unless they were of exactly the same manufacturer and model and had compatible peripherals.Modems were primitive devices that few had access to and as such you ended up saving the information on to an audio cassette, then either posting or exchanging it in person.
Today things are much different; irrespective of your computer configuration you can easily transfer information via a number of removable media types or alternatively instantly to any location in the world over the Internet.There is no doubting that the Internet has revolutionised how we move data and one resultant technology currently experiencing rapid growth is online personal storage.
Physical media such as a flash pen drive is fantastic but is not without its … Read the rest
Firefox 3
Before I start this article I just want to apologise; once again I am going to dedicate an entire article to raving about the Firefox Internet browser.Just when I thought I’d finally got my love for this browser in to the open and out of my system they throw a spanner in to the works by releasing a major new revision; version 3.0.
Firefox 2 was an excellent browser however having been released towards the end of 2006, it was certainly due an update.It’s not so much that the browser looked dated as it was still an incredibly capable application but I just got the impression that perhaps it was losing a little ground to several alternatives that were starting to snap at its heels.With Internet Explorer 8 on the horizon Firefox needed to reassert its position in the industry and hopefully this new release will go someway towards achieving … Read the rest
Smaller alternatives
There seems to be a tendency in the IT industry of applications increasing in both size and resource usage with every new version that’s released.In some instances such increases are unavoidable however often it seems to be a case of lazy programming as old versions are rehashed by having new bits ‘bolted on’ rather that some thought being put in to rewriting the code efficiently from scratch.It’s in instances like this that I start to look for an alternative and fortunately for every oversized application you can practically guarantee that someone has come up with an application designed to function in the same way but with a smaller footprint.
Time and time again I suggest AVG as an alternative to some of the bloated anti-virus checkers out there but thought today I would touch on some other applications which haven’t been given enough coverage.
Quicktime Alternative – Unless you configure … Read the rest
TrueCrypt
Something that I haven’t given a huge amount of thought to in the past is the subject of encryption.This was until the subject was bought up today by a customer of mine who was considering the purchase of a USB Flash Drive but explained it was to replace one that he had mislaid which unfortunately contained a number of confidential files.
USB Flash Drives aren’t really like floppy discs of days gone by; with a floppy disc you were limited to the amount of data you could possibly lose if you misplaced it.A modern day 32GB drive would equate to the equivalent of almost 23,000 floppy discs worth of information precariously stored on a keyring sized device; this represents a huge amount of data which could easily end up in the wrong hands.
The need for encryption doesn’t stop with flash pens; those that hold particularly sensitive information on their … Read the rest
