Ron K.

Dropbox is an useful app for moving files between computers, or keeping a copy of your most important files in the cloud. However, that isn't all Dropbox is great for; it is also great for helping students keep their files as mobile as they are. There are a myriad of reasons why every student should have Dropbox in their arsenal of study tools.

Switch Between Computers With Ease

Portability is one of the reasons students need a laptop at school. With Dropbox, he/sshe can be stuck at ANY computer, still able to access work from anywhere.

This holds true for those in business and could ease some of the schlepp knowing you can access your files from the "cloud" from your system at home.

I love clouding tools. The program on your system is far lighter (much of it is resting on servers 'somewhere in the world'), and the data is again 'off' your system.

Should your system implode, back-ups and all, one can simply access the data from another system and RESTORE or utilize as need dictates.

You have to see this one for yourselves. We-based, truly unique manner of capturing text, images, even video from any web-page.

Using it is so easy. The concept is quickly grasped given a visually creative design.

Do check this out!

www.pimptheface.com/create.

Ever want to be a police sketch artist? Well here's your chance! Rather addictive web-based component-sketch tool that replicates the piece-by-piece dynamic of building a face/person/personality.

You can save your people, post to web sites, and certainly kill a half-an-hour when necessary.

Enjoy.

Imaging hard drives is the process of copying it, bit by bit, to create an exact replica, in a way an "image" or 'snapshot'. The cloning part is the process of taking that "image" of a hard drive and placing copies of it on one or more other hard drives.

Clonezilla is free - a good tool for taking a snapshot of a system and reverting back to it later as a backup or to get things the way you once liked them.

HighlyRecommended!

I tried Webroot AV for about a year and found the product to invasive, required too much baby sitting. The annual anniversary of my Webroot purchase just came around. They have RECURRING BILLING, and want me to re-up. I have the right, of course, to 'opt-out', just click here.

Well it seems that to avoid the recurring billing and leave Webroot, one must provide the registration code they initially used to UNLOCK the product. Is that great or what? What customer service. Great e-commerce.

If you had/have webroot AV, keep that license code handy. Thumbs down,.

POINT YOUR BROWSER HERE: http://lifehacker.com/*******/whats-the-best-way-to-block-a-number-from-calling-my-cellphone.

You have many options actually. This LifeHacker article addresses a number... one of which will hopefully work for you. Whether advertising or harassment, you can deal with this neo-hassle.

Ever On...
Ron

Hi Site jabber. Been awhile, hope everyone is doing great.

Need a smart "note-taking" application on your Android phone? I've got what you've been looking for!

NetMemo on Android allows you to click its app ONCE... and it begins to record audio (clearly/loudly as well - great for conversations/meetings!).

Since you can set NetMemo to STOP recording AUTOMATICALLY (at a predetermined length - 30 to 120 seconds, or endless), then ON ITS OWN send that recording to your PRE-SET E-mail address, which makes the entire dynamic virtually - "one click".

Your can select mp3 or wav file for your recording. I generally receive the NetMemo mailing in 2 - 10 minutes, depending on traffic. You can choose different colored short-cuts which function differently: Red might self-stop & auto send after 20 seconds to record quick ideas. Blue icon might be set to endless recording, with a different e-mail address. Green recording with typical start/stop functionality.

Had to pass this one along. Fantastic app! Amazing tool on your phone. (NetMemo on iOS is in development, perhaps out already? Have to look into that if you have an iPhone)

Whew, long, long time. I simply had to offer this up. Want to know which iOS and Android apps are problematic, have a history of causing issues, even capturing and disseminating your personal information? Here's the "about", right from the site:

Zscaler Application Profiler (ZAP) is web based tool designed to streamline the capture and analysis of HTTP(S) traffic from mobile applications. ZAP is capable of analyzing traffic from both iOS and Android applications and includes the following functionality:

Search: View summarized historical results for past scans.
Scan: Proxy traffic from a mobile device through the ZAP proxy and the mobile
App traffic will be automatically captured and analyzed
IPCU: Upload your iOS device configuration file(. Deviceinfo) to check risk score
Of installed application. It will give you overall risk score of your device.
The information provided is based on out knowledge base.

ZAP classifies traffic into the following buckets and calculates an overall risk score for the application:

Authentication: Username/password sent in clear text or using weak encoding methods.

Device Metadata Leakage: Data that can identify an individual device, such as the Unique Device Identifier (UDID). Personally Identifiable Information Leakage: Data that can identify an individual user, such as an email address, phone number or mailing address.

Exposed content: Communication with third parties such as advertising or analytics sites.

I've found several problems with apps using this web-based application tracker, and consider it a very useful tool.
Hope you're all doing well!
Ron

Hello All. Been a while. Hope everyone is good. I really like this application:

Sending confidential information such as passwords, account information and other sensitive data in emails and IM is not necessarily safe. That data is stored with bits and pieces all over the place.

OneShare has a solution: Click the blue button on the main web page (there is NO need to sign-in or provide ANY information), paste something private into the main field, it's ENCRYPTED and you're provided with a URL which can be told, mailed, or communicated however, to whomever you wish. Once your "partner" has the URL, they navigate easily to your message.

You can select how long the data should hang around - 30 mins. Or 3 days, then - it's gone.

How secure? Here's what OneShare says:
"How Secure Is It?
No service is 100% secure. However, we do take security extremely seriously.
We use HTTPS (SSL; Port 443) to encrypt the data from your web browser to our servers. All data is stored encrypted. When someone views the unique URL that you send them; your encrypted message is deleted from our system.

Our data-center maintains the latest security updates and patches on our server.
Google Analytics is used on our site for web analytics. We, unfortunately, do not know who you are although we bet our users are rather great people.

We believe in openness and full transparency. If there's a security issue, we'd like to know. Feel free to drop us an email at *******@oneshar.es."

There you go. There's an Android and iOS version of OneShare app.

I've been using OneShare for several months, in some tantalizing ways, trying to facilitate a leak from the website. Nothing so far whatsoever. Friends, family, and colleagues have loved getting "one-time" bits of info that expires on it's own.

As always, let me know thoughts, comments, and questions. Take good care, hope to be back w/ another soon.
Ron

Another tough one.
How's this: Making the world's knowledge computable

Wolfram|Alpha introduces a fundamentally new way to get knowledge and answersnot by searching the web, but by doing dynamic computations based on a vast collection of built-in data, algorithms, and methods.

Bringing broad, deep, expert-level knowledge to everyone... anytime, anywhere.

Go to the site, and play with it. Ask questions, about ANYTHING. Toughest mathematical computation... to 'Best Pizza". You'll get an answer. Hope it's fun/interesting for you.
I'll try to get back here more often. The site looks GREAT since last visit! Nice work Rod...
Best,
Ron

This is not a new idea by any stretch. I like the way NudgeMail is organized, a bit simpler.

Two easy ways to use NudgeMail: Send any email to *******@nudgemail.com

1. Create a new email (or forward an existing one)
2. Set the "to:" to *******@nudgemail.com
3. Set the "subject:" to the day, date, or time when you want the NudgeMail to come back to you. For example, "Monday" or "Tomorrow" or "Oct 13 or "2 hours" are all acceptable ways to send a NudgeMail
4. Enter anything you want in the body of the email, then hit Send!

OR----- use the email "TO:" to control NudgeMail:

1. Create a new email (or forward an existing one)
2. Set the "to:" to the day/date/*******@nudgemail.com. For example, "*******@nudgemail.com" or "*******@nudgemail.com" or "*******@nudgemail.com" or "*******@nudgemail.com" are all acceptable ways to send a NudgeMail
3. Enter anything you want in the subject and body of the email, then hit Send!

Anything to make things a bit easier, better tools.
Best,
Ron

This is exceptionally handy. There are different online tools that can be used to convert files between formats of certain file types. This means you would bookmark a separate conversion site for video, audio, and document files. Fortunately "FreeFileConverter.com" merges all of those conversion tools and presents them on a single dashboard.

Using the site is very easy: select a file from your computer or enter its URL, then select the desired output format, and click on the "Convert" button. The output format options are provided according to the type of file you select.

When the file is converted the output can be downloaded in the desired format or as a ZIP archive; sizes of both download types are provided with the download link. The output file is stored on the site's servers for 12 hours.

If you're always converting files, bookmark this website.
Happy holidays to everyone. Hope 2011 is a exceptional year for everyone.
Ron

Converting YouTube videos to other video or audio formats is a service not many online tools provide. Usually you have to visit separate sites for video and audio format conversions. "ConvertVideoToAudio" however provides all the conversion formats under one interface.

Web-based, nothing to download, and this couldn't be easier. Will convert to ALL popular AUDIO formats, and will convert your YouTube FLV video to MP4! User interface is so elementary... no explanation is necessary. Just go to site and convert.

Love this. Enjoy,
Ron

If link above is not complete,. Point your browser here:
http://www.google.com/s2/u/0/search/social#socialcircle_Considering how indispensable Google and its services have become for us, it is no surprise that Google knows more about our online connections than anyone else. To let you know how it identifies your connections for its social search results, it has a page with tabs called Social Circle and Social Content.

Interesting insight to your most frequent contacts and content.
Ron.

There's always a few people who take a bit longer than they should getting back to you when you send out an email. For those people, FollowUpThen.com is the perfect solution that saves you time and effort. There is no signup required, but the first time you use their service, you will be asked to verify your email address.

After that, each time you send out an email that might need a gentle reminder, all if you have to do is add a FollowUpThen email address in the CC field.

The email address format depends on how long you want to wait before sending that second follow-up email. You can specify the length of time to wait using *******@followupthen.com or *******@followupthen.com, and so forth, or you can specify the exact date using *******@followupthen.com or *******@followupthen.com. Just be sure to use the following format when using an exact calendar date: *******@followupthen.com.

If you put the follow-up under BCC, ONLY THE SENDER will get the message. And finally, if you put the follow-up in the To: field, the reminder will come to you in the time frame you specified.

Fantastic way to keep track of appointments and anything else you need to be reminded of. This one is hot. Love it.
Hope it simplifies your life calendar.
Ron.

POINT YOUR BROWSER HERE: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6984/

Ever had one of those "oh f*#k" moments when the web-form content you've been writing so carefully, crafting the words, and was sounding so right, just disappears? Then, within seconds it dawns on you there IS NO WAY to get it back - and you'll have to start all-over-again... if you haven't become too depressed to continue.

If you've gone cold as some errant mistake (Firefox crashes, or you hit "cancel" rather than "submit" - OUCH!), then you need Lazarus. If not, install it anyway, before disaster strikes!

Lazarus securely saves forms as you type, allowing you to safely recover your lost work after server timeouts, network issues, browser crashes, power failures, and all the other things that can go wrong while you're entering forms, editing content, writing web-mail, etc, etc, etc...

Lazarus works on ordinary web forms, WYSIWYG editors, and even AJAXified comment boxes, and will save you from pretty much any given server, browser, or connection problems that might otherwise cause you to lose your work, or that really pithy blog comment you struggled on for over an hour.

Lazarus now comes with 2048-bit RSA and 256-bit AES hybrid encryption, so your form history is more private and secure than ever! Lazarus also includes search functionality so you can recover text even if you can no longer find the original form you entered it into.

Never lose anything you type into a web form again! Lazarus securely auto-saves all forms as you type, so after a crash, server timeout, or whatever, you can go back to the form, right click, "recover form", and breathe a sigh of relief.

I think this Add-On is a real life-saver!
Ron.

*If the link above does not get you to the upload page, point your browser here:
http://www.pictriev.com/facedb/fs2.php?

This is way cool.
Browse and upload a photo (yourself or whomever) and Pictriev will search images on the Internet for closest match. So who do you resemble out there, Pictriev will tell you.
It will also provide a percentage of gender match. In other words what percent of the "face" you've uploaded is clearly male or female. If the gender is questionable, you'll get a "%" value male/female.

Lastly, based on comparable data from the Internet, Pictriev will tell you how old you look. An actual number suggesting relative age resemblance.

To say the very least, this is fun. I killed a half-hour throwing my photo and family and friends, and found it fascinating! Imagine some of the practical applications for finding similar faces on the Internet.
Enjoy,
Ron

Back when Songbird – a music player based on Mozilla's code – initially launched, I was immediately intrigued by the idea. A completely customizable music player. The audio equivalent of Firefox.

Sadly, the critiques were largely true. Songbird was riddled with bugs and sure didn't mind crashing once in a while.

Since then, Songbird has come a long way. Further than most iTunes fans care to admit. Not only is the little birdie far more stable – about as stable as an application gets – the Songbird addons have greatly matured as well.

The Songbird addons discussed below are serious. They can add a lot of extra value to your Songbird experience. With a bit of luck, it might just be enough to convert you to a new music player.

MashTape:
Before the internet, being interested in something was a rather disappointing experience. Now, with the Google-Wikipedia combo, you can get extra information on pretty much everything.

MashTape takes this quest for knowledge – also dubbed, 'being interested' – to your music player and fills in the impersonal blanks between that bulk of artist names.

Songbird addons:
In a number of tabs, appearing at the bottom of your screen mashTape grabs additional data on the 'now playing' song. In Artist Info, you can read more about the group, with snippets pulled from Last.fm, MusicBrainz, Freebase, or Wikipedia.

Additionally, the News tab gives you an RSS-like experience, with the latest news items from a number of sources, including Google News, Hype Machine, and MTV Music News.

Finally you have the Photos and Videos tabs. These will show pictures and videos from the current artist, from YouTube, Flickr and SmugMug.

LyricMaster:
LyricMaster isn't a Songbird addon you'll use every single day (or actually, you might), but it can prove invaluable at happy or heavily populated moments. Although a lot of music players allow you to add lyrics to a song, Songbird's LyricMaster pulls them in automatically and displays them in the sidebar.

Songbird addons
The sidebar will automatically adjust itself to your theme (as seen above), and can be collapsed when you don't need it. For the diehards, or those regularly offline, LyricMaster also allows you to save the lyrics of a particular, or even all songs, to your hard disk.

Last.fm
Last.fm, in case you've been away, is a music website that can learn your tastes. From there on, you can either play music that's recommended to you, or that's similar to an artist, album, or tag of your choice. It's not as accurate as just using your own music, but it makes for some great new music recommendations. And there's seamless integration with Songbird.

Songbird extensions:
The experience with Songbird's Last.fm add-on is twofold. In terms of scrobbling, the plug-in keeps track of what you're listening to, and stays in constant communication with Last.fm's servers. Even tracks listened while offline will be submitted later on.

As you can see above, Last.fm's radio stations seamlessly play in Songbird. Even the album art keeps up. But probably best of all, you can rate, hate, or tag songs that are playing. And not just the radio stations, but your library music as well.

7digital:
A lot of people use iTunes because of the music store integration. Songbird now features 7digital integration. 7digital is one of the most popular online music stores. Their prices are considerably lower, and on par with the iTunes music store. Perhaps best of all, you don't need a credit card to access it.

Songbird extensions:
The 7digital Songbird add-on allows you to log into the 7digital store from your music player. From there on, you can purchase or download previously purchased songs to your computer. Song downloads are immediately added to your music Library. If you've been using Songbird long enough, the 7digital add-on also features music recommendations, by scrobbling your music Last.fm-style.
Ron

QUESTION!
Chris O. Asked a good question regarding Songbird:
"But how does it sound?"

My Response:
"Hi Chris.
I think Songbird is going to sound as good as your hardware allows. I heard no difference using Songbird, and I have a very strong sound system. Your speakers, and the sound from your phone are the real limitations in terms of what you can "hear". The the addons Mozilla now offers and will certainly tom come, seem to make Songbird far more customizable than say iTunes, even Win amp.

If you're satisfied with what you have now, you certainly won't be disappointed with the expansive manner Songbird can be configured.
Ron"

PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION:

If you want to setup your computer system again you need to have the licenses and serial numbers at hand for all the software programs that you have purchased and registered. This does include the Windows product key but also other serial numbers for applications like Nero, Office, VMWare and pretty much every other application.

Instead of searching for the keys in your emails, manuals and recipes you could use another approach. License Crawler is a sweet little application that scans the Windows Registry for Windows product keys and other serial numbers and licenses.

The License Crawler can discover application product keys and other serial numbers or licenses very quickly and supports all versions of Windows operating system from Windows 95 to Windows Vista.

It is a portable application that can be run from any location and would be a perfect fit for an USB stick. Asking clients to find serial and license keys is often very frustrating. Instead, tech support can simply run License Crawler without having to interact with the client at all.

Epocrates, Inc. develops clinical information and decision support tools that enable healthcare professionals to find answers more quickly and confidently at the point of care.

More than 900,000 healthcare professionals, including one in three U.S. physicians, use Epocrates' innovative mobile and web-based products to help them reduce medical errors, improve patient care and increase productivity.

This site is essentially for medical practitioners. As such, it offers an expansive library of medical information. The FREE, online version provides, Drug monographs, health plan formularies, Drug interaction checker, calculators, and
Content updates, medical news. Not bad at no-cost. The Drug-Interaction library, in and of itself, can be tremendously useful.

If one chooses, there are packages offered (the least expensive) beginning at $99. Annually. These offer an outstanding "Pill-Indentifier" and much more to make it a must for many doctors to use. The company's trusted clinical content is developed by physicians and pharmacists and is continuously updated to keep users informed and up to date.

NOTE: Epocrates offers a very cool & handy MOBILE version for your smart phone (I know Motorola DROID is compatible, I have it - and I would assume the Android series as well, but check!) The Android version is very comprehensive, more information than you'd imagine. By all means do check Epocrates out.

Stay Well...
Ron.