13 July, 2011

Amazon - 5 GB of free Cloud Space to Registered Users

    Browsing on Amazon this morning I noticed they now offer 5 GB of free cloud storage space to their registered users.  Kind of neat.  Although its scarcely larger than my smallest USB flash drive, it's...free.  It's probably not a bad option for storing important files, in an encrypted container (see my 'TrueCrypt' posts elsewhere on this blog), just as a backup.


12 July, 2011

LogMeIn - Free VPN for Non-Commercial Use

https://secure.logmein.com/ offers a free VPN solution where one can set up one’s own virtual networks.  This means one can link devices, on the Internet, as if they are on the same LAN.

LogMeIn allows one to invite others, to the VPN, and have those connections expire after a certain amount of time, or remain permanent (until kicked off or the VPN is taken down).

For gaming, this means games like ‘Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2’ should be able to see LAN servers, on the same VPN, as if they were on the same network.  This should allow players to bypass GameSpy and connect via the old fashioned LAN server option, in -game, just like was possible in older games (where one could type-in the IP address of the game server).

It is worth checking this out.

[Thanks to Marc C. for pointing this out!]

06 July, 2011

MozBackup - A Free tool to backup and restore your Firefox and Thunderbird settings

    I recently decided to use Thunderbird, on multiple PC's, in IMAP mode (versus POP).  To facilitate the ease of duplicating my Thunderbird and Firefox set up's, on multiple PC's, I backed up the settings, using MozBackup (http://mozbackup.jasnapaka.com/), and then restored the settings to the other PC's.

    Note you can simply use this tool to back up your settings, in case of an emergency.  I back mine up to an external drive, for the day when (not "if") my hard drive crashes.

    Make sure you are running the same versions of Thunderbird and Firefox on each PC to ensure compatibility among your instances.

UPDATE (2011/08/05): I have successfully used MozBackup across Thunderbird and Firefox versions, and it works great. At least as of Thunderbird 5 and Firefox 5, MozBackup works fine going back to at least version 3 of each of the two applications.