This service allows for sharing any file type over the Internet: videos, documents, photos, term papers, whatever you can upload. Do your young kids want to show their grandparents what grade they made on a class project? Just scan it in and let grandma and grandpa take a gander. How about that birthday party they weren’t able to make? No problem, just digitize the video and upload it and they, too, can watch it.

Now you may be wondering why not just email this stuff to whomever? Well, you can do that, but the problem is that you run the risk of bogging down the recipient’s inbox and it’s not entirely safe. Only EnjoyMyMedia members you specifically invite can view content you share using their service; uninvited strangers can not.

I think the ways they can offer users to view the content is unique, too. Netcasting is their way of distributing such content in channels. With a simple installation of a program they offer for free, you then have the ability to browse your computer for the files you want to share with others. When you’re ready to share, just send your recipients and email containing a link to view the content. They’ll become subscribers at that point. The neat thing is that they don’t need to download anything to view the content. They just choose their preferred method of delivery and they can sit back and enjoy what you send them in a way they want to.

I recently found out that they’ve stopped selling their product, but it’s not because they’re going down the tubes. Instead, the news is good for you, me, and families everywhere. They’ve been purchased by Google! Their site has this to say:

GreenBorder Technologies, Inc. has been acquired by Google, Inc. We will continue to support our existing customers through the end of their current subscriptions.

And in case you haven’t heard, there have been rumors (and only rumors) for some time about Google creating its own browser. Perhaps things are moving in that direction with this recent acquisition. But even if it doesn’t, my hope is that they’ll offer GreenBorder (GoogleBorder?) as a free download given their efforts to make things publicly available.

I’ll be keeping an eye on this.

[tags]software,google,web safety,sandbox[/tags]

You have a choice to make a poll, survey, or quiz. Customize the colors to suit your needs. You can embed it in your blog or site, or if you’d prefer, provide a link for your readers to go to Quibblo directly to give you the feedback. You can even make it publicly available for a larger audience.

Obviously, my intent is to find out more about what you like seeing here, but there are literally limitless uses.

If you could take just a few seconds, I’d appreciate you taking the time to select your choices. Thanks!

[tags]quiz,survey,poll,blogging,feedback[/tags]

Where do you store all those logins? In your head, only to be forgotten over time? On your PDA which could get lost or stolen?

With Clipperz you not only have the convenience of storing your logins securely online, but you can house other confidential information like home alarm codes, notes, credit card information, etc. While the convenience of getting to your information from any computer with an Internet connection is a huge benefit, what about the times you know you won’t have access to the Web? No problem, just download your information to your laptop (encrypted, of course) and you’re set.

And when you’re visiting a site requiring login information, you can easily store that information using its bookmarklet. Another nifty feature Clipperz offers is how it tells you how strong your password is. Sure, small words are easier to remember, but they may also be easy to figure out by prying eyes. So the stronger your password is, the stronger the yellow bar beneath that field becomes.

Don’t worry about remembering difficult passwords (of course, make them reasonably memorable), but the point that I’m trying to make here is that Clipperz does the remembering for you. The one important password you’ll want to remember is the one that gets you into your account. After that you shouldn’t have any trouble.

[tags]online security,internet safety,passwords,encryption,software,reviews[/tags]

This is NOT a paid-for review.

I don’t like repeating my actions especially when it’s things like entering the same text over and over. Now all I have to do is right-click on a window in my Firefox browser and select the clip that I want.

Here are some ways I use this:

• Entering my signature in my Gmail account (if it’s different than the standard one I use)
• When submitting my blog to a new directory or community, I have my blog description saved in my Clippings.
• For the times I want to submit my feed, I just paste the URL I’ve saved and I’m done.
• Complicated lines of code in my blog posts are a breeze because I have them stored neatly away.

You can also organize your clippings into folders, thus avoiding a nasty looking list and asking, “Now, where did I put that thing?”

[tags]time,savings,extension,firefox,productivity,productive,add-on[/tags]

This little gizmo is simple, inexpensive, compact, and handy. It easily fits into your wallet or purse. It even comes with a ballpoint pen, too!

It’s credit-card size makes it easy to hide away until you need it. The pen has flaps that expand to give you a better writing grip. Also included are 15 sticky notes; refills are available for purchase.

So the next time you need to jot something down, maybe instead of reaching for your PDA, reach into your wallet or purse for this little doohickey.

[tags]picopad,productivity,notepad,notes[/tags]

Recently, I upgraded the free ewido antispyware product, which was purchased by the makers of the antivirus product AVG. Though I’ve not used that particular product extensively, I do know that it has received high praise from a wide audience.

I decided to make the jump to this latest version and run it’s scan. Only the usual cookie concerns cropped up.

But I made sure to not have it run in the background. The reason is because it’s not a good idea to have more than one antispyware product running at the same time.

Over the next few days I noticed a serious degradation in my web surfing performance. I do a lot of surfing — a lot! I felt like I was running down a sidewalk full of people who were in no hurry. Aaargh!

It wasn’t until I remembered that AVG was the last thing I installed. After uninstalling it — and crossing my fingers — the web speed seemed to come back to normal.

I’m not blasting AVG. It could very well have been how it was set up or how it interacted with my computer’s configuration. But I do want to stress the importance of retracing your steps to solve your computer mysteries.

[tags]antivirus,antispyware[/tags]

Formerly known as “Wallnote”, the service was reborn to provide greater flexibility and service. It’s main focus is to allow you to store — free of charge — your list of things to do. It also has a place for notes. They sit alongside each other for easy viewing.

I’ve been reviewing many of its competitors over the past few weeks. Each has their own pros and cons. But I think Nutshell is growing on me. It’s responds quicker. I can focus more on my tasks rather than managing my tasks.

For example, it allows me to reorder tasks by dragging them immediately. By comparison, some other services require you to first click on “reorder list”, drag the tasks in the order you want, and then save your changes. It also allows you to quickly highlight something to indicate a higher priority over the others.

One thing that I haven’t realized the benefit of is it’s ability to search on the Web with the search engine or site of your choice. Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Digg, and many more are among your choices. It’s common to see this ability among other sites, but it never struck me as an important offering — just an add-on. Anyhow, it won’t get in your way on Nutshell.

[tags]nutshell,todo list,organizer,online service[/tags]

The first time you launch Backup Platinum you’re taken through the process (in wizard-like fashion) of configuring your backups one step at a time. You can select folders, files, types of files, various kinds of settings, and more.

Let’s say you have a folder containing a lot of files, but you don’t want to backup all of them. No problem, just first select the folder and deselect the files or folders contained in the parent folder that you don’t want to backup.

Once you’ve selected the files you want to backup, then it’s time to tell Backup Platinum where you want to store the files and if you want to compress them each into a Zip file, or compress them all into one Zip file. Your mileage my vary, but my tests took a folder of about 10 MB and shrunk it down by 50 percent. You also have several choices of encrypting these files for maximum security.

Let’s say you’ve done a backup already. The next time you backup (and you will do this more than once right?) you can choose not to backup everything if everything hasn’t changed. Just do a synchronization and only the files that have changed will be copied over.

Restoring files is a piece of cake, too. Just select the files from the list in Backup Platinum, choose “restore” and not only do you have a previously saved version of the file you lost, but your pulse is sure to go back to normal.

Are you the type that forgets to do backups? Well, just remember to tell Backup Platinum when you’d like it to do the dirty work by using its built-in scheduler. As long as you have the storage device connected, it will take care of the backup for you at the time you designate. And what’s cool about this scheduler is that you can tell it to backup a certain set of files at a specific time, and a completely different set of files at another time.

Here’s a rundown of its features:

• Full CD-RW, USB, and DVD support with disk spanning (which means if you’re backing up to CDs, for example, and you fill up one, but you need more, BP will prompt you for another CD until it’s finished)
• Backup and synchronize your files with LAN and FTP
• Integrated Zip compression
• 128-bit encryption using Blowfish (Blow-what? Don’t sweat over it — it’s a catchy name for an encryption algorithm)
• A scheduler
• Uses about 3MB of hard disk space
• And runs on Windows NT/2000/XP

You can download a 30-day free trial. And unlike some trials, this is a full-featured download so you can experience the software as though you bought it.

This is a paid-for review.

[tags]backup,software,blowfish,encryption,data[/tags]

K9 Web Protection is a FREE service. I say service because the way it works is the sites you visit are filtered through their servers as opposed to them being checked through something that’s installed on your computer. You still have to install a driver on your computer, but the lion’s share of work is done remotely. The administrative control panel is actually a Web site you log into to view sites visited, offenses, and add sites to block or accept lists.

One of the things I like about K9 is that I haven’t noticed a significant decrease in performance while I browse. ContentProtect, another Internet filter I reviewed recently and one that I have been using for almost two years, seemed to bog things down a bit. I’m not blaming it completely, but the fact that I uninstalled it and installed K9 instead does raise suspicion.

With K9 you can’t create profiles for each member of your family, but its clean, easy-to-understand interface and ability to keep to certain types of sites from being viewed I think makes up for that. It tracks every site you visit and categorizes it for future reference. You can manually enter sites into its settings to have them blocked or accepted. And if you happen to land on a site that for some reason is blocked but you don’t think it should, you can either temporarily override K9′s decision for 15 minutes by entering the administrator password, or override it permanently. (You can even have the mascot dog bark when a site has been blocked.)

Though I have not tested it yet, K9 claims that it can block anonymous surfing sites — sites that allow you to “cloak” your surfing by entering a Web address into its own form. This is something that I know ContentProtect did not block on its own. Instead, you would have to add the anonymous surfing site as a blocked site.

One interesting thing I experienced just the other day has to do with the way K9 can block images. Using Firefox, I was browsing a forum which was inviting users to vote on logos for their products. The problem was I couldn’t view the logos. All I could see was a large empty space of where the logos were supposed to be. When I viewed it in Internet Explorer, I saw broken image icons, which confirmed that something was supposed to be there, but wasn’t allowed to be displayed. When I viewed the code to get the address for one of the images, I entered the address in another browser window to see if I could access it directly. That’s when K9 said the site was blocked. This particular image hosting service can be used to store images inappropriate for children (and adults) which is why it was caught by K9.

Summary
K9 Web Protection is:

• FREE!
• Easy to use
• Even blocks images from sites that are known for hosting offensive material but still allows a site using that service to be viewed (unless the site, of course, is offensive enough to be blocked)
• Provides one set of Internet filtering configurations for all users (not individual profiles)
• A Web-based service