LostInTechnology » How To

How To Create Custom RSS Feeds for BitTorrent Clients

UzEE — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:00:03 +0000

I’m sure everyone here knows that BitTorrent is one of the most popular digital content delivery networks out there. The Peer to Peer distribution technology amounts for nearly 30% of the total web traffic and is used by a number of leading corporations, movie studios and media outlets including 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros, Paramount, Spike TV, MTV, Netgear and D-Link.

Here at Lost in Technology, we have covered torrent related topics in great detail including tips on how to make torrents, open ports, optimize bandwidth utilization and improve speeds. Today, I’m going to share a neat trick which lets you setup custom RSS feeds for your favorite torrent clients which allows you to control your client from anywhere in the world.

Creating the Feed

The first question that would pop up in anyone’s mind is that why would I need to setup custom RSS feeds for my torrent client? Well think about this scenario. You are on a business trip and want to download the latest release of OpenOffice on your PC hundreds of miles back home. Sure you can setup a Web UI for your torrent client but that’s a difficult task for someone who doesn’t have a static IP or isn’t sure even if his PC would be on or off when he’s trying to access it.

The simple solution would be to setup a custom RSS Feed and set your client to download everything from that feed as soon as you add content to it. Now you can just pop in a torrent file into your custom feed from anywhere in the world where you have internet access (even your cell phone) and your PC back home would download the stuff automagically whenever it comes online.

Sounds simple right? It is. And here’s how you can set it up for your self.

Head over to ReactorFeed and create a new Free account. If you already have an account with ShareReactor then you can skip this step.
Log in to the account you just created and you should already see a feed setup for you. For this tutorial, we’ll go ahead and use this feed in our client.
Copy the feed URL and open up your BitTorrent client, like uTorrent for example.

Now paste the Feed URL into the box and give the feed a custom name if you like.
Select Automatically download all items published in feed and uncheck the Smart Episode filter.
Hit OK and your new feed is all setup.

Now whenever you add a new item to your RSS feed, your client would automatically download it whenever it gets an update. In order to add custom items to your feed, you just have to:

Log in to ReactorFeed and click Add item on the feed you want to add items too.
Paste the URL of the download file and click the Add button.
Your client should automatically detect the feed and start the download in a few moments.

And that’s all there is to it. A simple yet powerful way to setup remote downloading of all the content you like without the hassle of setting up a Web UI interface.

Hope you enjoyed this article, and if you have some interesting tricks of your own to share, please do so in the comments.

Article by Uzair Sajid (UzEE), a technologist and a freelance blogger who also authors The Technopath.

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[Sponsor Post] Save Money on Your Technology Needs

Kyle Judkins — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 15:00:04 +0000

The following post is a sponsor post written by MoneySupermarket. LostInTechnology is committed to bringing you the best content even when it comes it sponsor form.

Nowadays, there is a lot of focus on technology and what it can do for us, and for many of us, technology can really help make our lives easier. Our washing machines speed up cleaning our clothes, the refrigerator keeps our food fresh for longer and you can chat with a friend who’s half way across the world with just the help of your laptop.

Technology has made our lives a lot simpler, but it can also make things that bit more expensive as well at times – we now have Internet bills, TV bills, mobile phone bills and a number of other tech related bills that need paying each and every month.

So how can we make this more affordable?

Renegotiate

Well, first and foremost, the most important thing you can do is to renegotiate your service costs with all of your technology providers. Most technology companies never inform their customers of new deals or cheaper options the company is offering. The recession is hitting companies very hard and customer retention is a big goal. Many companies have their customer service teams being trained in how to negotiate with customers to save them money and keep their business afloat at the same time.

Reduce Your TV Package

Almost everyone can save money on their satellite or cable television bill. Keep track of how much TV you watch and which channels. There is almost always something that you can cut from your package that you won’t miss. This may not save you lots of money if you don’t make a big sacrifice, but every little bit counts.

Prepaid Mobile Phones

The prepaid mobile phone business used to be a refuge for people with bad credit and those who couldn’t afford a monthly fee. Those days are now long gone, and prepaid mobile phones are becoming a cheap option for most consumers. You want to do your research on this, but don’t be surprised if it comes out a lot cheaper to go with a prepaid mobile phone.

Compare Prices

Comparing the prices of the items you’re looking for helps save a lot of money. There are many sites out there that accomplish this comparison, and MoneySupermarket is one of them. MoneySupermarket now has voucher codes available that enable you to get discounts at various other sites around the net. Visit the voucher channel today and see how much you can save on your technology needs for you and your family.

Conclusion

These are only just a few of the ways you can save on your technology needs. How do you save a little money but still keep up with technology?

Image by Tracy O

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How To Manage Your Files Behind a Firewall for Free

Squealing.Rat — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 15:00:12 +0000

More and more, schools, work environments and libraries are blocking access to seemingly frivolous sites like Gmail, Facebook, or any part of the Google online suite (Google Docs, Picasa Webs…). While this move may seem sensible, it can hinder the performance of many. Why?

Because instead of emailing a file to themselves, or putting photos for a slideshow on Facebook, they have to deal with the tiresome flash drive. Flash drive, USB drive, and thumb drive are all names for that little device that you plug into the computer, put your files on, and then carry around with you, praying that you don’t lose it at the next turn. Using a flash drive is a tedious task that often results in forgetting the thing at home, breaking it or drowning it in that overzealous cup of coffee.

But how can you get out of using a flash drive? Most computers have firewalls that block access to most email and personal sites. While the following tips may be helpful, some may not work depending on how strict the computer’s firewall is.

Box.net

Box.net, while geared towards businesses, offers a free account version as well. The basic premise is an online file site that allows you to upload your files to specific folders. These folders can be shared with your colleagues and friends, an excellent feature for a project that requires collaboration. Another feature is the ability to edit a document directly on the site, without downloading anything. While this is an excellent web application with a simple interface and plenty to offer, it may be more than one needs.

Txt.io

If Box.net was more than one needs, than txt.io is less than one needs. However, less may be just right for the average student. You sign up for txt.io by integrating it with your Google account. While it lacks privacy, if you find it necessary to save a text file really easily and quickly, txt.io is just what you need. Just know that while your posts won’t be publicized excessively, they will still be on the internet, indexed and linked to your username.

Drop.io

Drop.io is the king of easy file storage. It lets you create a drop, where you and others can upload files to. The different ways you can do this are nearly infinite, through phones, faxes, emails and more. Very easy file collaboration, and it’s a great tool for multimedia file storage.

On Your Own Server

If you have access to a server and only have the intention of doing something educational and not illegal, you can install Glype proxy. Glype proxy will enable you to surf to nearly any website through a proxy. While most public proxies are blocked by firewalls, using Glype proxy on your own server should not be blocked.

Bonus: Lost in Technology had this great post on file sharing sites.

What do you use to get around work/school firewalls? Let us know in the comments!

The writer of this post compiles the latest tech news and more at Squealing Rat, and writes about tricks and tips of deception, trickery and survival at Lone Iguana. Find him on Twitter.

Photo: viZZZual.com

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How to Delete Undeletable Files and Folders in Windows

Aminul Islam Sajib — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 15:00:31 +0000

I’m pretty sure that most of our readers have found a file that won’t delete and is giving them problems. I’ve faced that problem.

I’m not sure why files or folders sometimes won’t let you delete them. It can just happen. It might be because it is infected with a virus, but this guide isn’t going to cover that scenario. We are going to tell you how to delete those files that get hung up for whatever reason and just won’t go away.

Today, I’m going to show you how to delete that pesky little file.

FileAssassin

FileAssassin is the best tool I’ve found that gets the job of removing an unresponsive file or folder. It unlocks the file/folder that is giving you trouble, unloads modules, terminates the file process and then deletes it.

Let’s walk through the steps of how to complete that process I just mentioned. Go download FileAssassin from this url. After the installation is completed, launch FileAssassin.

You will see the FileAssassin window, shown below. First, you need to locate the file or folder you want it to delete. You can either drag-and-drop the desired file/folder on its textbox or browse your computer to locate the file. Once located, you will have several options.

The best option is to select Attempt FileAssassin’s method of file processing. Below this option, you have several check boxes. Here is what each one does.

Unlock Locked File handles: If you feel that the file is locked in any way, use this to unlock.
Unload modules: FileAssassin will dive deeper into the file to check modules and unload them.
Terminate the file’s process: If you think that you should not delete the file; but terminate its process, check this.
Delete the file: That’s what we were talking about. To perform the action of deleting the file forever from your computer, check this.

Your final job is click the Execute button to execute your orders.

Conclusion

FileAssassin is a light weight and easy to use program that gets the job done quickly. I really recommend it, but I am interested in what software you use to kill off undeletable files. Let us know in the comments.

(By) Aminul Islam Sajib is a 16-years-old passionate technology blogger and reporter from Bangladesh. He writes Blogging tips, technology tips, reviews, Internet tips, etc at his blog Life with Technology. He is also a technology reporter at the most renowned online newspaper of Bangladesh. You can follow him on twitter and friend him on Facebook.

Image by Focal Intent

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4 Ways to Throw a Web Site Up Cheaply, Easily and Quickly

Squealing.Rat — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:00:56 +0000

Ever wanted to throw a site up quickly, easily and cheaply? Perhaps for a school project, a business meeting or a knowledge base? There are 4 ways, varying from highly customizable, to unbelievably easy.

All of the following are very easy to set up and do not require use of coding. Let me take you through them.

1. iWeb/Komponzer/Dreamweaver

This option, without a doubt, is the most easily customizable. You can start from scratch, and work your way into a finished web page that looks exactly how you want it to look. No compromises.

I use iWeb, in part because it is aesthetically pleasing and because it came with my computer. I normally start out with a blank page, so I can build up my site exactly the way I want it, creating a “template” page, then duplicating it for the rest of the site. Dreamweaver and Kompozer are other options for PC and Linux. The great thing about these three options is that no coding is required, otherwise known as a what-you-see-is-what-you-get web editor (WYSIWYG).

The costs for this option, are unfortunately, the highest. iWeb comes with your Mac, but you must pay $79 for the upgrade to the latest version. If you use a PC, you can use Dreamweaver, which costs a whopping $400 or Kompozer which is free. In addition, you must have hosting, ranging from $60-$100 a year (I use Dreamhost). You must also purchase a domain name which costs about $8 a year.

Total: $70-$510

2. Tumblr/Posterous/Wordpress.com

I use Tumblr, in part because it looks so good, with so many templates for customization. Tumblr is excellent for a site that you will update a lot, perhaps collaborating with others infrequently. It also hosts audio clips, which is a nice touch.

The costs for this option are minimal. Tumblr, which is free to use, offers free custom domain hosting, something which Posterous does too, but Wordpress.com doesn’t do for free. While they offer a free sub-domain (i.e. lostintechnology.tumblr.com), for the professional edge, (even though a Tumblr logo is displayed on the bottom) a $8 a year domain name is great.

Total: Free-$8

3. Wordpress.org/MovableType

If you think you will be collaborating with others on the site and have hosting, this is a great option. I use Wordpress, which is excellent for collaboration and stability. It does have some compromises: the look of your site is dictated by the free themes available, and the defaults display a thanks to Wordpress and the theme.Wordpress, however, does offer may free plugins, which can increase what your site does.

Wordpress and MoveableType are free to use, but do require hosting ($60- $100 a year). A domain is also needed.

Total: $70-$110

4. Google Sites/Webs

Google Sites is a cheap, easy option for collaboration. Bearing in mind that it is one of the least customizable, this is a good option for a class project. In addition, this option will plug itself on your site.

Google Sites and Webs are both free to use, and you do get a free sub-domain, a domain name is an added plus.

Total: Free- $8

Make Use Of has an article on updating a Tumblr page easily

Build a beautiful page with the help of Mashable

What do you use? Let us know in the comments!

The writer of this post compiles the latest tech news and more at Squealing Rat, and writes about tricks and tips of deception, trickery and survival at Lone Iguana. Find him on Twitter.

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How To Autoreconnect Dial-up Connections

Aminul Islam Sajib — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 15:14:31 +0000

Developing countries around the world like Bangladesh, India and others are still dealing with slow Internet connections. While people from developed countries are jumping towards 100 Megabit per second Internet speeds, we still dream of 1 Mb/sec speed. At this moment, I’m surfing the net at a data transfer rate of 10 Kilobytes per second.

One of the problems with dial-up is that you can have frequent disconnections. There are two options for enabling auto-reconnect for your dial-up connection. We will talk about both.

System Method

While your dial-up connection is active, click on the network icon from your systray and click Properties. In the Properties box, go to the Options tab, and check the “Redial if line is dropped” checkbox. Click OK.

After this is done if the connection is disconnected for any reason, the system will automatically try to reestablish by dialing up again without any secondary command by you.

Software Method

The system method is a good one, and so far, it has worked pretty good for me. In my opinion, it is satisfactory. However, in case you use a download manager for all your downloading, you may want something that won’t just resume your connection but will also resume your downloads.

To make this happen, you may choose to use a tiny software named ReConnect. ReConnect has some options to help you personalize the product to suit your needs.

Conclusion

I hope now you enjoy your dial-up connection without the hassle of reconnecting over and over again; which potentially used to destroy your pleasure of surfing the web.

Image by macinate

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How to Make a Favicon

Prasanth Chandra — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 15:00:58 +0000

The term Favicon stands for “Favorites Icon”. When you open a web site in a web browser, you will be able to see a small image on the address bar before the web site address, that particular image is called a Favicon.

For most users, Favicons are useful in identifing a particular site in a group of flooded bookmarks. And in the view of a web site or blog owner, a favicon has the potential to let your website stand out in a bookmark list.

This post is going to show you how to quickly create a favicon for your blog or website.

Creating a Favicon

Creating a favicon is not a huge task. It is nothing but a normal image with an “.ico” extension, but you need to do a little more than just change the extension of any image. There are two ways to create a Favicon for your website.

Using Favicon.cc

The first way is to use a website like favicon cc. Favicon.cc lets you either upload an image or create it from scratch. This free web service provides you with all the required options to get your favicon right. Once you are done with all the customization, click on the button labeled as “Download Favicon”. That’s it.

Editing Your Own Image

The other option is to edit your own image. Start with opening the image (that you want to set as your favicon) in your favorite image editor. Make sure that the image you start with is a square in dimensions. If it isn’t, you can crop that particular image to make it a square. Now, adjust its pixel size to a lower value, something around 16×16 pixels. And if possible, save the image with “.ico” as the extension. If it does not allow you to do so, then save it in “.png” format.

Conclusion

That’s all there is to it. Making your own favicon is an easy process, and it should be done in order to give your website that extra personal touch that will hopefully make your website stand out.

By Prasanth Chandra from PCs Place and Review Unit , Tech Blogs about Gadgets, Software, Web apps, Tips and Tricks , Tutorials on Computer and Internet. Catch him on Twitter @pcsbox

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How To Get Listed on Wikipedia

Guest Post — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 16:00:00 +0000

For anyone that doesn’t know, Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that covers just about every topic you can think of. Unlike previous encyclopedias that were maintained by paid teams of professional researchers, Wikipedia relies solely on a massive worldwide community of volunteers.

Because of this, creditability and readership used to be an area of concern. But in the past few years, it is estimated that traffic has risen by about 170%, and they’ve been cited as a source for many publications.

An important source of this traffic growth has stemmed from the fact that Google seems to hold Wikipedia in very high esteem and ranks its pages very well for a number of valuable keywords. If you can get your company listed on just a few Wikipedia pages, it can drive a noticeable amount of traffic to your web site.

However there is more to it than just submitting a link and profile!

Credibility and References

The greatest challenge faced by Wikipedia relates to its public image as a reputable source for information. In order to preserve and cultivate a good reputation, they have to maintain high standards in deciding who gets accepted or rejected. At the very least, you must make sure that your site is NOTEABLE.

Please keep in mind that notability is very different from fame or importance. By Wikipedia’s own standards, a topic is generally considered notable if it has been featured in an authoritative publication that is independent of the topic source. And most of all, this citation must be referenceable.

Not all web sites or publications are considered authoritative, reliable or important to the Wikipedia editors. That’s why it’s a good idea to attempt a PR campaign before submitting your profile. Send a few press releases through the newswires, put together a publicity stunt, or ask a local newspaper to interview you on a slow news day.

This way, you’ll maximize your chances of being accepted.

Avoid A Hard Sales Pitch

Wikipedia articles are written from a neutral point of view, and they’re meant to be free of any sales pitches or strong opinions. If your submitted content is too pushy or opinionated, your page might get flagged for review or even deletion.

Wikipedia is not in favor of sales pitches. The purpose of the online encyclopedia is to inform those that are looking for information. So write up the content with ‘neutralness’ in mind!

When To Create A New Wikipedia Page

There are so many Wikipedia pages to date that it may seem as though almost every topic has been covered.

But rest assured… The world is constantly changing and new trends are always evolving. Find your niche on Wikipedia, and think about out how your products or services fit into their ecosystem. Or better yet, start a trend of your own and let others follow.

If you make yourself noteworthy, Wikipedia will gladly help you enhance your credibility and drive new traffic.

This was a guest post by Storagepipe Solutions. Storagepipe Solutions has been recognized by Wikipedia for their work in the field of data protection. The company provides email archiving and server backup solutions for enterprises of all sizes.

Image by Shishberg

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How To Benchmark Your PC

UzEE — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 15:00:53 +0000

Evaluating the performance of our computers is probably one of the most basic tasks everyone has to perform. Whether its to determine application compatibility or just for sheer bragging rights, everyone is interested to know exactly how fast their computer is. But how do you measure the performance of your computer? And no the answer just isn’t clock speed – the prime factor which most people consider solely while making buying decisions. And its not the number of processing cores, or the amount of RAM or hard drive or your graphics card.

The only correct way to measure the performance of your computer is to benchmark its execution, that is, measure the time it takes to run a program. For this purpose, we have benchmark applications, which are simply called benchmarks. Let’s get started on determining how much better your computer is than your friend’s down the street.

Types of Benchmarks

There are two basic types of benchmarks, synthetic benchmarks and real-world benchmarks. Synthetic benchmarks are specially constructed pieces of software that perform specific tasks to measure the performance of the computer. These tasks though don’t perform any practical computations. They are usually a good estimation of any real world tasks that we may perform on our computers, so they give a nice generalized view of the overall performance of the system. Popular synthetic benchmarks include consumer oriented suites like PCMark Vantage and industry standards like SPEC2006.

Real-world benchmarks are essentially real applications which are slightly modified to perform a predefined set of instructions like decoding a specific audio file or doing a flyby of a specific section of a map in a game. Since they are based on real applications, there effectiveness is limited to that particular application only. For example, one processor may excel at video transcoding while another may be good at multitasking. Looking at only the stats of a transcoding benchmark may result in an incorrect estimation of the overall system performance.

Now that you have a basic understanding of the benchmark, lets get into how you can actually benchmark your computer.

Step 1: Decide What to Evaluate

First things first, you need to decide what you actually want to evaluate. Do you just want to measure the performance of a specific hardware component, like the CPU or graphics card or do you want to evaluate the overall performance? The choice of the benchmark depends on what your want to evaluate.

In our example, we’ll be evaluating the performance of the entire system.

Step 2: Get the Benchmark

Once you have decided what you want to evaluate (the whole system in our case), you need to find a suitable benchmark. Depending on your decision from the previous step, you may have a lot of options to choose from. If you just want to measure how your system performs in a specific game, then all you need to do is simply run the benchmark that is included in the game. Most games have it.

In the case of our example, we need to evaluate the overall system performance, we can go with industry standard (very expensive) benchmarks suites like SPEC2006, or something more consumer oriented like PCMark Vantage or even the default Windows Experience Index included with Windows Vista onwards.

Of course the accuracy of the results would vary with different classes of benchmarks. A low cost utility like Windows Experience Index may cost nothing, but may produce very vague performance results. Slightly more expensive options like PCMark Vantage Advanced Edition produce far better results for the $20 price tag. Other options you can consider are PC World’s Worldbench which is a real-world benchmark and costs $250 or SYSMark which goes for around $400.

Step 3: Running the Benchmark

You might be wondering why did I break this into a new section? I mean running a benchmark is as simple as double clicking on the icon right? Wrong. In order to perform a successful system benchmark, you need to create the right environment. By that, I mean you should ensure that you have all the latest updates to your operating system installed, all the drivers are up to date and that no background processes (including anti-virus) are running in the background. You should also make sure that your computer is running in high-performance mode with all visual effects turned up high.

Once all that is done, you can start the benchmark. Benchmarking may take quite some time to complete so consider grabbing a cup of coffee or even watching a movie (on a separate machine of course).

Step 4: Crunching the Numbers

The last and probably the most important step (because this is what you had been waiting for) is getting the results of the benchmark. Again this process would vary greatly depending on the benchmark you used. Windows Experience Index would have given you a simple rating like 4.5 for example. It determines the overall score from the lowest subscore of its 5 performance tests. In contrast, PCMark Vantage would result in a huge result sheet with performance scores of all different suites.

SPEC results are usually normalized to a standard reference machine, like the VAX from the 80s. In-game benchmarks may present a totally different story by showing an average FPS rating or a timeline graph plotting the framerate over time.

In any case, the results simply can’t speak for their selves. In order to get an idea of just how fast (or slow) your machine is, you should run the exact same benchmarks under the exact same conditions on another computer. If that’s not possible, then at least bing for (yeah I didn’t say google) someone else’s scores on the internet. But take these results with a grain of salt because, no matter how ideal the situations are, benchmarks never truly are able to represent real life performance experience.

I hope this guide was helpful. As always, we are open to comments, thoughts and suggestions so please share them via the comments section below.

Article By Uzair Sajid (UzEE), a technologist and a freelance blogger who also authors The Technopath.

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How To Backup All of Your Holiday Photos for Free Online

Squealing.Rat — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 15:00:42 +0000

Photos are so beloved that to lose them would crush a person. Many people keep them just on their computer, but doing that can be especially dangerous. Hard drives fail all the time, and losing all your pictures would be heartbreaking.

In a worst case scenario, you always want to have backups elsewhere. While backing them up on an external hard drive is a fine backup, here are some tools that will backup your photos online for offsite backup. Offsite backup gives you that extra layer of protection, so you can keep your memories around forever.

Picasa and Picasa Web Albums

(Free: Mac, Windows, Linux)

Picasa is not a backup service, but a way to simply and easily backup and manage your photos. Run by Google, Picasa allows you to backup your photos, for free, online, to Picasa Web Albums.

With Google’s Picasa, you can upload 1 gb of your photos, for free, online, to Picasa Web Albums. Picasa Web Albums is an excellent service that has great sharing capabilities and allows for collaborative albums. One of my favorite things about this service is that it integrates wonderfully with Google Contacts for facial recognition. If 1gb is not enough, you can purchase more storage.

With recently updated pricing, you can purchase 20 GB ($5.00 USD per year), 80 GB ($20.00 USD per year), 200 GB ($50.00 USD per year), 400 GB ($100.00 USD per year), and 1 TB ($256.00 USD per year) and, if you need even more, 2 TB ($512.00 USD per year), 4 TB ($1,024.00 USD per year), 8 TB ($2,048.00 USD per year), and 16 TB ($4,096.00 USD per year). Because of this recently updated pricing, I have purchased storage (80 gb) and am happy with the purchase. (Psst! Decide to make the switch to Picasa Web Albums? Read this article first.)

iPhoto

(Included in purchase of computer, Mac only)

I include iPhoto, software to manage and organize your photos on your Mac, for one simple reason. It does a fabulous job providing easy to upload spots for your photos. In fact, in two clicks, you can upload to your Flickr, Facebook, MobileMe or send photos in an email. But Picasa has a trick iPhoto doesn’t: upload to Blogspot, a tool that may be helpful for bloggers. Be careful not to delete albums from the Flickr list, doing so will delete it from Flickr as well. If you are nervous about this, you can always use the Flickr Uploadr.

Flickr

(Free (100 mb monthly), Web)

Previously mentioned, and one of my current choices, Flickr is one of the leading photo storage sites. It boasts an impressive community of highly dedicated users who jump at the slightest change of their beloved service, guest passes to let friends and family take a look at a specific album (something that Picasa Web Albums similarly does as well), and a slightly different type of storage limit.

While Picasa Web Albums puts a cap at 1 gb for free for life, Flickr allows you to upload 100 mb each month, making a growing total. The catch- you can only see the past 200 photos you have uploaded. (Bonus: read the Lost in Technology article about Picasa here. You might also be interested in this article from Lost in Technology on easily uploading your Picasa Web Albums to Flickr.)

Zenphoto

(Free, hosting account necessary, Web)

This one is a recently discovered favorite of mine. I have a Dreamhost account* with unlimited storage, and when I was exploring the One-Click install options, I discovered Zenphoto, an install that creates your own, private photo storage site. While I had to forgo the one-click install in favor of an easy clean install, I was able to set up uploading photos through FTP. In a couple of clicks, I had my entire photo library going up to my domain. If you have a hosting account with unlimited storage, and don’t think that your host will get upset with you, go for it. Just be warned, some will not like this.

Mozy

(Free (2 gb), Mac, Windows, Linux)

Mozy backs up your entire computer, and any hard drives connected to it. It is amazing for backing up large amounts of data, although be forewarned, it takes a long time for the initial backup. For free, you get 2 gb, but soon you will find yourself wanting unlimited storage, a moderate $54.99 a year.

Dropbox

(Free (2 gb), Mac, Windows, Linux)

Dropbox is a nice touch for those with small photo collections, many computers and an urge for being on the safe side. Dropbox, not exclusively for your photos, syncs your files to other computers and to the cloud, for backups. In addition, Dropbox allows you to share a folder, potentially of your photos, with others. A handy feature. Dropbox is free for 2 gb and if you find you need more, you can get 50 gb for $9.99 per month, or 100 gb for $19.99 per month.

What I Use

Every single one of these services. My photos are backed up in several places, letting me rest easy. For others that want in addition to backup onsite, I suggest looking into a Drobo, which I have not used, but heard great things about. I have also recently made the switch from Flickr to Picasa Web Albums, mainly because of the price ($5 cheaper in my case), syncing of facial recognition, and the sanctity of having everything in one place.

*Disclaimer: Clicking Dreamhost and signing up for an account will give me credit

Other Information

Make Use Of has this article on free alternatives to Flickr.

PC World has an article on backing up your photos here.

Lost in Technology has this article about Dropbox.

Photo: navets

Post by Squealing Rat. Find him on Twitter and check out his latest blog, Looming Tech.

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