You can get started with 5GB of storage for free—that’s enough to store the high-res photos of your trip to the Mt. Everest, scanned copies of your grandparents’ love letters or a career’s worth of business proposals, and still have space for the novel you’re working on. You can choose to upgrade to 25GB for $2.49/month, 100GB for $4.99/month or even 1TB for $49.99/month. When you upgrade to a paid account, your Gmail account storage will also expand to 25GB.

Check out the rest here.

700MHz ARM11
128MB of SDRAM
OpenGL ES 2.0
1080p30 H.264 high-profile decode
Composite and HDMI video output
USB 2.0
SD/MMC/SDIO memory card slot
General-purpose I/O
Open software (Ubuntu, Iceweasel, KOffice, Python)

Read more: cnet News

Arduino The Documentary (2010) English HD on Vimeo on Vimeo

via Arduino The Documentary (2010) English HD on Vimeo.

Nevertheless, I lost my account once and I could lose it again. This time, however, I will be ready. You see, I’m that guy who always preaches backup, backup, backup, and never actually backs anything up. But that was the old me. The ignorant me. The hypocritical me!

Let me show you how I’ve changed and maybe, just maybe, I can inspire you to follow in my footsteps and become, as I have, a born again backuper.

The first thing I did was choose a backup location on my home computer (I split my time pretty evenly between my home PC, work PC, and laptop). I made a folder on my F drive called My Files. I recommend not using the same physical hard drive as your operating system, if possible. If you don’t have multiple hard drives, then C:\My Files will do just fine. Everything I want to backup will live in this folder and its subfolders.

Before I get into the intricacies of my ultimate data loss prevention plan, allow me to divulge to you my backup tool of choice. It’s called Carbonite and it’s $54.95 per year. I know, I know, it’s not free, but it’s good –and when it comes to my data, I want good. I don’t want to turn this post into a Carbonite commercial, but I will tell you that Carbonite offers unlimited backup space (I’m pushing 90 gigabytes already), runs in the background so you never know it’s there, and has all the security bells and whistles you could want, including good encryption to and from their servers. The backup / restore options are very user friendly too.

Still here? Good. Let’s get back to business. Inside the My Files folder are the subfolders My Audio, My Backup, My Documents, My Dropbox, My eBooks, My Music, My Photos, My Stuff, and My Videos. Your folders can be completely different, depending on what you want to backup. I will go over some of these folders in a little more detail, but first, look at the picture to the right. You will see either a red or green circle on each folder. The circles tell you that those particular folders have been chosen for backup by Carbonite. The colors tell you whether or not they’ve actually been backed up yet; green means yes and red means no. Carbonite constantly monitors these folders for changes and when it sees that a file has been added or modified, it flags it for backup. This is key because, as you will see, these folders are in a constant state of flux.

Most of the subfolders in My Files are just the standard My Documents folders in Windows. I simply moved their default location to My Files. You can learn how to do that here.

Most of the Folders are self-explanatory. My Documents contain my documents, My Videos contain my videos, etc… My iTunes library is in My Music folder, so anything I add to iTunes will be placed there. Like I said, most of these are pretty obvious, but there are a couple of folders that I would like to go over in a little more detail.

You may notice that My Dropbox resides in the My Files folder. Again, I just moved its default location, which can easily be done from the Dropbox preferences menu. I’ve talked about Dropbox before, here and here. It’s a special folder that syncs its contents to all of your other computers that have Dropbox installed on them. Now, here’s the beautiful part; let’s say that I’m on vacation with my laptop when inspiration strikes. Perhaps I write a 5000 word short story or maybe I took some fantastic photos of a once in a lifetime event. Whatever it may be, I may not feel safe with the file(s) sitting on my laptop, so I simply drop them into My Dropbox folder and off they go to all my computers. That is a decent backup in and of itself, but now it goes a step further because, once those files reach my home PC, Carbonite grabs them and backs them up to their servers. Redundancy is the name of the game in the realm of backups.

The My Backup folder is probably the most important folder in My Files. This folder consists of Cameron, Contacts, Documents, Email, Evernote, Lightroom, and WordPress. Let me go through them one by one.

• The first folder, Cameron, is a folder containing little things that my daughter has done over the years (videos, drawings, poems, etc…).
• The next folder is Contacts, where I backup all of my contacts from my Gmail account. (Tip: My Gmail contacts are also synced with my Blackberry and imported into Thunderbird for redundancy.)
• The next folder is Documents where I store mostly old documents that I can’t bring myself to delete and that I would never need quick access to.
• Then comes Email. Here’s how this works, I made sure IMAP was enabled for my Gmail account (Settings >> Forwarding and POP/IMAP). I then configured Thunderbird, which is Mozilla’s email client, to download all email from my Gmail account. The next step is important; I changed the default location of my email profile in Thunderbird to the F:\My Files\My Backups\Email folder. You can learn how to do this here. The email profile contains all of the downloaded email, as well as all future email. All I do now is leave Thunderbird running in the background to retrieve all of my email; Carbonite does the rest.
• The Evernote folder contains the database for all of my Evernote entries (mentioned here). Evernote, like Dropbox, syncs to all of my computers and to Evernote’s own servers. Moving the database to My Files and having Carbonite back them up just adds one more layer of protection.
• My Lightroom folder contains the database to all the changes made to my Photographs (which reside in F:\My Files\My Photos). I lost this file once and I never want to lose it again. You can tell Adobe Lightroom to backup to any directory that you would like.
• And lastly, there is the WordPress folder which houses the database and other files for this little blog. The latest version of Worpress, however, allows me schedule an automated backup which then emails me a copy, which then gets retrieved by Thunderbird and backed up by Carbonite. Isn’t this fun? So in all reality, I don’t really need this folder. But if I haven’t mentioned it before, I like redundancy.

That pretty much wraps it up, …so far. This is sort of a work in progress. Two things I didn’t mention were my Google Calendar and my Google Docs. I haven’t found a good, automated way to back either of these up yet, so I do it manually from work every so often. You can learn how to do this here. I then take the files and plop them into my Dropbox folder at work. From there, they are whisked away to my home PC and then, …well, you know the rest of the story.

“Backup, backup, backup,” I say.

Antivir – My personal favorite Antivirus program. I’ve had a lot more luck with Antivir than I have with AVG or Avast .

Dropbox – 2 gigs of free cloud-based storage that automatically sync my folders and files between computers. I don’t know how I survived the days of Dropboxlessness.

Evernote – The only note taking, scrap collecting, journal writing, website clipping software suite I will ever need. Evernote also takes full advantage of the cloud while also syncing locally to all my computers.

Filezilla – My favorite FTP program by far. Simple and does what it’s suppose to do.

Firefox – Still the best browser out there. I switched to Chrome for a while and although faster in a lot of situations, it tended to be a little too buggy for me to use on a daily basis. Not to mention its lack of Mozilla’s impressive collection of add-ons.

While we’re on the subject of Firefox add-ons, here’s a mini-must-have bonus list.

Google Gears – Lets you to store data from websites locally allowing you to access it while offline. Very useful at times.
Xmarks – Syncs my bookmarks between all my computers. So nice.
Nice Translator – An extension to a great website of the same name which enables me to translate words and sentences on the fly in a plethora of different languages.
Web Developer – A must have for any web developer or tinkerer.
No Script – Blocks all flash and javascript from running without my express permission. I highly recommend this one.
Dictionary Tooltip – Does just what you think it would. Highlight a word and it gives you its definition.
LogMeIn – This is an add-on which enables me to log into my home or work PC from anywhere. You need to install a small app onto the target PC, but it’s well worth it.

Audacity – A cross-platform, open source sound editor.

iTunes – I know there are a lot of alternatives out there, but honestly, I haven’t found a reason to switch yet. (It’s funny that I feel like I have to justify the use of such a mainstream program)

Launchy – An open source keystroke launcher. Enables me to launch anything in a split second. I would be lost without it. I use Quicksilver for the Mac.

Notepad++ – This is a fantastic, open source text editor with syntax highlighting. I absolutely love it.

Open Office – The open source alternative to M$ Office. Much better too, in my opinion.

Python – An open source, general purpose programming language which allows me to do…, well, anything I want.

Sandboxie – This cool little app can isolate programs from the rest of your computer, essentially rendering them harmless to your system. Great for testing software or surfing the web, i.e., Firefox in sandboxie mode. (Sadly, not for Mac).

Skype – Instant message and VoiP. The best of the best of the best…sir.

Steam – Because we all need to unwind. Steam is by far the easiest way to game.

Truecrypt – Create an encrypted container of any size to securely store content or use it to encrypt your entire hard drive. Either way, your data is safe from prying eyes. I keep a 100 megabyte encrypted container in my Dropbox folder so I can access it from anywhere.

uTorrent – My favorite bit torrent app. And now available on Mac, yay!

VLC – A cross-platform video player that just works — all the time.

7-Zip – A good compression utility. There’s nothing more exciting than a good compression utility, am I right?

Tweetdeck – A power user’s window into the world of Twitter. I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t understand the hype surrounding Twitter until I started using Tweetdeck. With this program, I can get real-time information from anywhere around the world, from real people, anytime of day or night. Did I mention real it’s real time? Literally, Twitter is the chat room of the world and Tweetdeck is the interface.

Cygwin – A Unix emulator for Windows for us command-line warriors. (No need for Mac / linux)

Virtualbox – Very handy, open source virtualization software, ideal for running operating systems within operating systems.

And there you have it.

I adored my Macbook, but at the same time I wanted something a little beefier on the CPU / GPU front than what the current line Macbooks had to offer. The Macbook Pros looked delicious, but the price points made my head hurt. So began the search…

I’ll skip past all the gritty details and laptop comparisons and hours spent reading reviews and articles and becoming familiar (again) with Nvidia’s / ATI’s mobile graphics cards and Intel’s Core i3, 5, and 7 chipsets and the pros and cons of this and that and on, and on, and on.

Instead, I’ll jump right to the end. I bought an Asus U30JC-A1 from XoticPC.com. Regarding hardware specs, this puppy falls somewhere between the 13″ and 15″ Macbook Pros, and it’s half the price.

Some quick highlights: Intel® Core™ i3 Processor 350M/330M : 2.26 GHz – 2.13 GHz, 4GB SDRAM DDR3 1066 MHz SDRAM, 13.3″ HD (1366×768) Color-Shine (Glare-type), NVIDIA® GeForce® G 310M, with 512MB & Intel GMA HD (Support NVIDIA Optimus Technology) VRAM, 320 Gb Hard Drive @ 5400 rpm.

No Bluetooth, but Asus claims up to 9 hours of battery life while using the integrated Intel graphics card (I’ve read reports of 8+ hours from actual users). It’s 4.7 pounds, exactly what my Macbook was. Most ultraportables are around 3 to 4 pounds. I’m 6′ 2″ and 185 pounds — an extra pound is not going to break my back.

Nvidia’s Optimus technology looks really nice. Depending on your point of view, I’m happy / sad to say that I’ve been upgraded / downgraded from a hardcore gamer to a casual gamer over the last half decade, so gaming wasn’t my main concern when looking for a new notebook. With that said, I do like to fire up a little Team Fortress 2, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Battlefield Bad Company 2, yada yada yada, from time to time. I’m also a frequent Adobe Lightroom user and have been known to do some video editing here and there, both of which will get a nice boost with the addition of a discrete graphics card.

With decent graphics capabilities, outstanding battery life, acceptable portability, a powerful, yet energy efficient processor, an elegant and very solid design (brushed aluminum), and half the price of a Macbook Pro, I simply couldn’t resist this laptop. I’ve been purchasing Asus products for years, mainly motherboards (or mostly mainboards, ha!), and I’ve always been very pleased. This will be my first laptop experience with them. It should be delivered on Wednesday, so cross your fingers. Hopefully all my expectations and presumptions will hold true. If not, back to Mac I go?

According to an article in SC Magazine, Global Secure Systems reports that a Russian firm using the latest Nvidia graphics card has managed to accelerate WiFi ‘Password recovery’ times by up 10,000 percent.

From David Hobson, managing director of GSS:

Brute force decryption of the WPA and WPA2 systems using parallel processing has been on the theoretical possibilities horizon for some time – and presumably employed by relevant government agencies in extreme situations – but the use of the latest NVidia cards to speedup decryption on a standard PC is extremely worrying.

Hobson goes on to say that businesses using WiFi should add another layer of security to their networks, namely by adding VPN encryption into the mix.

Yikes! Honestly though, we were probably heading in that direction anyways. Not to mention, and please correct me if I’m wrong, this is a brute force attack, albeit a very powerful brute force attack, which relies on weak passphrases. A randomly generated strong password should still be able to resist such attacks.

Then again, I’m no security expert, I just play one on my website.

Just installed this. It’s only an early alpha release, but it looks just too promising for me to wait for the beta.

What would you buy? Here is what I’m debating.

a. The new Rebel XSi camera kit. (coming in April) I noticed the standard 18-55 now has image stabilizer. That’s really nice, but it’s still just an entry level lens, right?. = $900ish

b. The Rebel XTi body only with a decent lens, such as Sigma’s 17-70mm f2.8-4.5 which seems to be getting good reviews. = $900ish

c. Or, since I have no more ties to Canon, make a complete switch to another brand such as Nikon. This scares me a bit since I have no experience with them, but you can’t argue with their reputation.

Decisions, decisions, decisions…

If it were up to me, I would go on using XP and OS X forever, but we all know that can’t happen. So what do I do? When the day comes to replace my Dell XPS, what will I buy? Another XPS, but this time with Vista on it? Sure, you can still buy new PCs running Windows XP, but will that be the case a year from now? Would I even want XP a year from now? A year in terms of technology is an eternity. Microsoft already said they are going to stop supporting XP in 2008. I’m really getting backed into a corner here. I can’t run XP forever, and I highly doubt Vista will have matured by then, if ever. I’d say there’s a 50 / 50 chance that I may eventually go all Mac. Those chances are pretty high considering I’ve been with Windows since the beginning of time (remember the whole technology / eternity thing). It’s really sad too. The truth is, there are really only three reasons why I haven’t made the switch yet.

The first reason is because I dropped $3500 on an XPS about a year ago. I am going to squeeze every last ounce of life out of that computer before I pull the plug.

The second reason is familiarity. I can fly around XP like it’s nobody’s business. Unfortunately, Microsoft blew that right out of the water when the redesigned Vista. Was there something wrong with “Add or Remove Programs“? Not to mention I’m starting to get pretty damn efficient with OS X. Did anyone else just hear a hammer?

The third reason, though it may seem childish to some, is that I’m a gamer. I love gaming. First person shooters in particular. XP still reigns supreme in this arena, but for how much longer? With Macs sporting their new Intel chips, game development has shifted significantly. I’m sure this also has to do with the fact that Apple’s market share is increasing. Game developers actually like to sell their products. Weird! My point is, Apple seems to be moving in the right direction in terms of gaming, and that’s bad news for Microsoft.

So what’s left? Productivity? Mac! Development? Mac! It’s Unix for god sakes. Internet? Mac! Entertainment? Mac! Creativity? Mac!

Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me the reasons why I should, nay,… need to stay with Microsoft. Believe me, I’ll listen. I feel like I’m breaking up with a long time girlfriend. I keep making excuses to stick around, but they’re starting to sound old and transparent. I know what you’re thinking, “stop your bitchin’ and just switch already“. *sigh I have some time to think about it anyway.

Maybe Vista is a reincarnated version of Windows ME. And maybe a year from now we’ll all be saved by the release of Windows XP Ultra Deluxe 2009 Edition. Then all my problems would be solved.

For the last few days I’ve been messing around with a great program for the Mac called Journler. It’s like a journal on steroids. It has all the basic features you would expect from journaling software, but then takes it to a whole other level. You can do things like add audio, video, and photos to your entries with the click of a button, or record them directly using your built-in hardware. You can even publish your entries to your blog (I haven’t actually tried this yet, cross your fingers). The interface is sleek and intuitive, just what you’d expect from a Mac app.

Don’t look at this as a full review of Journler though, since I’m still plummeting head first through the learning curve, but I was impressed enough with what I saw to give it a mention to anyone who has never heard of it.

Journler

I’m still a big time Mac noob. I’ve had this MacBook for about a year now and I just recently discovered what that weird little diagonal line is that all the Mac tutorials refer to. But I do listen. The OS X gurus may not think I’m listening, but I am — and every now and then I pick up on their good habits. I’ve recently been introduced to another little app called Quicksilver. I’m really not the guy to be giving a full review of this app either, or any Mac app for that matter, but from what I’ve seen of it so far, it’s pretty damn incredible. Here’s what I can tell from the little time I’ve spent with it — it’s an extremely powerful search application with a slew of built in macros (is that the right word?) which allow you to do all sorts of things to the items that you’ve just searched for. It uses a lot of keyboard shortcuts (which I love) to accomplish tasks at a lightning fast pace.

I’m really not doing this program any justice, so I’m gonna shut up now. The guys over at the Blacktree Inc. will most likely be sending me a cease and desist letter any day now anyways because of this literary mutilation of their product. Go ahead and check it out for yourself. I think you’ll really like it. If you don’t, blame the gurus.

Quicksilver

Click on the image to make it larger.

The phone is absolutely gorgeous. It runs OS X and has a 3.5″ widescreen / touchscreen (only one actual button). It plays music, movies, and TV shows, and integrates seamlessly with iLife. I’m excited and I’m not even a phone guy.

Oh, and it has wi-fi and bluetooth capabilities. Wow…

***edit***

Apple partnered with Cingular (now AT&T)

$499 for a 4Gb
$599 for an 8Gb

From what I gather, the iPhone (or maybe iTalk?) has been a hot topic for years now, but many questions still remain. What will it look like? What features will it include? How much will it cost? It seems that no one outside of Apple really knows for sure, but many have had fun imagining.

Here are some pictures of Apple concept phones designed by various geeks around the Net. Some of these images date back to 2002, if not longer.

There’s even a mock iPhone commercial that was released a few weeks ago. It’s pretty damn sleek too. Check it out.

I would buy that in a heartbeat.

If there were such an operating system that could make me switch, however, it would most likely be OS X Tiger. I’ve been using OS X on a daily basis now for about five months and have loved every minute of it. This is a new frontier for me. I have no substantial experience with any of the other Apple operating systems, so I can’t form a valid opinion of them. Just OS X Tiger.

Here are some of my thoughts on OS X in comparison to Windows and Linux:

First of all, OS X is really just a pretty version of Unix, so we know right away that it’s far more secure than Windows. Having a background in Linux/Unix really helped me with the transition to OS X. In fact, the first time I booted up my Mac I was surprised at how much it looked like Kubuntu, menus and all.

Boot up and shutdown times are ridiculously quick. Noticeably faster than Windows and quite a bit faster than Ubuntu. Coming out of sleep mode is almost instantaneous too.

Installing programs couldn’t be easier. Drag the new program to the Applications folder and voila, it’s installed. Uninstalling couldn’t be easier either. Drag the program to the trash bin and voila, it’s uninstalled. No orphaned DLL files or abandoned registry entries to clutter up your system.

No viruses. The typical argument here is that it’s because the writers of such malicious programs don’t create viruses for Macs, because no one uses Macs. That’s partially true. It is possible to write a virus (or other malware) for OS X — and as the operating system becomes more popular you can bet we’ll see more of them. The simple fact is, however, it’s much harder to write this kind of software for a Unix based OS. One reason for this is because 99% of Windows users are going about their daily business logged onto their computers as administrator, also called a root. Ask any Linux user if he or she surfs the net as root and they’ll most likely laugh at you. OS X, for all intents and purposes, is Linux.

It’s very intuitive to use, but first, you have to clear your mind of all Windows. Only then will yo be able to accept the OS X interface. For example, the whole corners thing is genius. When I move my mouse to the top left corner (or whichever corner you choose), all my open applications are tiled in front of me. It’s like alt-tab times 100. It’s little things like that that make OS X shine.

OS X is a very powerful development platform which comes preloaded with languages such as Python, Perl, PHP, and Ruby, while still remaining incredibly user friendly to the computer novice.

Spotlight! By far the best search utility in any operating system. So good that Microsoft is putting a Spotlight clone in Vista.

Plenty of software applications. From what I used to hear about Macs, the main problem was that no one made software for them. Like I said, I don’t know anything about the older versions of Apple’s OS, so this may be true. I can tell you that with OS X, there is definitely no shortage of software. Because OS X is Unix based, you can essentially run any Linux program you want on it. For example, I don’t use Microsoft Office anymore, even on Windows. I use OpenOffice which is a free, cross-platform office suite. I don’t use Dreamweaver anymore. I use NVU, which is a free, cross-platform HTML editor. Software that is cross-platform is especially nice because no matter what OS you are using, your workspace remains familiar.

OS X is geared more towards the user. In the world of Web 2.0, content is king. In the world of content creation, OS X is king. It’s hard for anyone to argue the fact that the Mac reigns supreme in the area of photo manipulation and audio / video production. With bundled apps like Garage Band, Photo Booth, iTunes, and iMovie, the average user can easily produce rich content, ripe for a new dynamic web.

These are just some of the examples of why I love OS X, and it’s only been 5 months. So if you are a Windows user and you haven’t looked at an Apple in a while, I recommend that you take another look, you may be surprised.

Or you can wait a bit. Apple and Microsoft both have new operating systems due out shortly, OS X Leopard and Windows Vista respectively. 2007 could turn out to be an interesting year.

Granted, I won’t be able do much text formatting. I also won’t be able to add photos or videos to my posts. At least not easily. I do think it will be a great little widget for posting quick thoughts though.

Let’s try it out…

But what I’m about to reveal to you just can’t wait! I found what could be the greatest program ever written! It’s called MacSaber. Simply put, it takes any MacBook and transforms it into a Jedi weapon of death.

In case you didn’t know, MacBooks, and I believe older Powerbooks and iBooks, have motion sensors built into them. The reason for this is quite brilliant. If you, or anyone else, accidentally hits the laptop or knocks it off the desk, the motion sensor detects this and immediately locks down the hard drives to protect your data (more about this in my review).

Enter Ian ”isnoop” Anthony. This guy wrote a brilliant hack that takes complete advantage of the MackBooks motion sensor technology. Just install this little program and start swinging your $1400 MacBook around the room to hear the melodious sounds of a Jedi’s lightsaber. It’s music to your ears.

And to think, a week ago I was carrying my MacBook around the room like it was a new born baby. No more I say. My MacBook has since been converted into a finely tuned instrument of death. One in which I flail around the room as if I was battling Emperor Palpatine himself. Not unlike this actually.

I think it’s fair to say that this little gem justifies the purchase of my new MacBook.

A Windows Vista Capable PC includes at least:

• A modern processor (at least 800MHz1).
• 512 MB of system memory.
• A graphics processor that is DirectX 9 capable.

A Windows Vista Premium Ready PC includes at least:

• 1 GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor1.
• 1 GB of system memory.
• A graphics processor that runs Windows Aero2.
• 128 MB of graphics memory.
• 40 GB of hard drive capacity with 15 GB free space.
• DVD-ROM Drive3.
• Audio output capability.
• Internet access capability.

You can also download Microsoft’s Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor (beta). This utility will help determine whether or not to to toss your old XP system out the window.

Might as well check out the five versions of Vista that MS will be releasing while you’re there.