http://m.lifehacker.com/5875927/what-are-your-favorite-alternatives-to-google-services

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techradar/allnews/~3/5LL2RJDnqOA/story01.htm

Now there’s a number of options that provide sophisticated solutions that do encryption, Win 7 for example comes with BitLocker (if you have the right hardware) and TrueCrypt is an excellent tool, but they’re overkill for what I’m trying to do.  As I mentioned the people I’m sharing this info are not particularly technical, so it needs to be relatively simple.  While TrueCrpyt is good, it’s not the easiest to setup and would need lengthy instructions on how to use.  And there’s not a lot of machines out there that support BitLocker.

After much musing on the subject I figured 7-Zip could fit the bill of what I was trying to do.  7-zip is like WinZip, but better (in my opinion).  7-zip is basically a compression tool that also allows password protection @ 256 AES, and is open source.  It supports a number of compression formats and there’s also a couple of encryption options.  The key though is that it’s easy to use.  So here’s what I’ve done…

1. I installed 7-zip, it’s pretty easy, I’ll not go into details

2. Created and saved an Excel file with the data I want to keep safe (yes I know I can password protect the Excel document)

3. I selected the file in question (when it’s closed) and brought up the context menu (right-clicked)

7-zip Context Menu

4. I then selected “Add to archive…”, and you get the following list of options (or something similar)

7-zip options

5. Now there’s a few options here, I’ve chosen the ones below.  I’ve chosen zip as the Archive format to hopefully make it more portable, however I’ve set compression to “Store”.  It’s possibly to compress and encrypt, I’ve chosen just to compress.  I then selected encryption as AES-256 and put in a password.  Note, the 7-zip help system goes into detail about all this stuff.

My 7-zip Options

6. Press OK and I’m done, now I’ve got an encrypted file that’s easy to share, or save on Dropbox/SugarSync etc, but should be able to be easily opened if you’ve got the right password.

This may or may not suit you but it’s a simple solution that fits the bill for me.

Of course the really simple solution would be to just write it down and keep it somewhere safe…

Wordpress Stats

Now I think that’s quite impressive for someone who blogs on occasion on random stuff, but I think it’s even more so since the blogging virtually ended around April time.  It was then my second kid arrived and until recently there was very little spare time.  Babies take up an unbelievable amount of time!

But now WordPress have sent me an email again with my stats and I want to see if I can do better, both on hit counts and regular posting.  I’m hoping I can at least achieve the same number of hits and do better, so I’m aiming for 50,000 hits by the end of this year.  I’d be pleased if I could achieve that.

So my plan for 2012 is to get blogging again, and post more than last year.  I posted 19 items last year and my posts on the Amazon Kindle and online storage proved most popular, but I’ll aim for more this year.  I’ve got a few ideas lined up, hopefully a detailed one online photo albums will be out soon, followed by another look at online storage options.

And I’m still considering moving to Google for my blogging, only because it’s possible to get ad revenue.  For a blogging platform Google can’t compete, but I think that’s the case in many things they do these days as they no longer know their core business and have their fingers in too many pies.  This ends with Google doing lots of things, some well (email & calendar), some not so well (Wave, Buzz).  I’m not a big G+ either, but I’m not into Facebook either so can’t really comment.  So I’ll stick with WordPress for a while longer and see if I can myself enrolled in WordAds.

First off I’m bought myself a wee digital receiver measuring tool.  Basically this helps you align your aerial and I planned on using it on mine.  However when I went to plug it in it turned out to be a bit of a Heath Robinson affair, see the following picture:

With a bit of playing around I managed to get a slightly better alignment but I wasn’t too impressed really so felt I needed to do a bit more investigation, that’s when I went to the official site of DSO, Digital UK.

Digital UK have lots of useful information to help you through the DSO, although I’ve found navigating the website less than intuitive at times.  Definitely worth a look though.  After some playing about on the website though it turns it has some really useful techie information but it’s not obvious to normal users.  On the home page you have the option to find out your switch over dates by entering your postcode, and this gives some basic information.  However there’s a wee checkbox saying “I am in the aerial installation trade” which provides much more detailed info…

I know have a wealth of info that will me understand better what I need to do, although I have to admit I didn’t really understand much of it to begin with.

It turns out the key info for me was the transmitter (obviously) and the aerial group including polarisation (H or V), but I’ll mention how I figured that out shortly.

The site talked a bit about possibly needing a new aerial to get digital and due to the state of existing one I thought this was my way forward, so I started looking for places to buy a new aerial in the UK.  After a bit of searching/researching I found the site A.T.V (Aerials and Televisions) which turned out to be an excellent source of information.  Feel free to browse it at your leisure but if you want to get straight to the point this is what I recommend…

1. Using the information on the transmitter from Digital UK go to transmitter information on ATV and find the relevant transmitter

2. The resulting page from ATV then gives you loads of useful information about the local transmitter (including aerial group and polarisation), but not only that they recommend types of aerial for you – obviously they want to sell this to you but they’ve got to make money somehow.  But with the aerial group and polarisation info I guess you could buy anywhere, although with all the work these guys put it might seem a bit unfair!

Anyway, sorting all that out now seems pretty easy!

But there’s more, using information on the website about types of aerials I was able to find out what type of aerial I currently have, it seems to be known as a contract aerial i.e. cheap and nasty.  So apart from dodgy wiring, the aerial wasn’t great, so that’ll be why my reception is poor.

So now I know what type of aerial I have and which one I should really be using (a DM Log or Log 40).  However I have a second aerial in my loft, I’d ignored that though as it was smaller of the two – believing better reception comes with size.  (Size isn’t everything, types of metal etc are also important, as well as design)  Using the info on types of aerial I figured out I might have a log aerial which is pretty good for me (go to the site to find out more).  However it does mean that I might not need to buy a new aerial – good for me but not for ATV.  I then decided to stick on that digital reception tool I mentioned at the start, turns out I’ve great reception!  One minor point though, that aerial not wired up to anything.

So now I’m at the stage of having the right aerial for the job, but it’s not wired up.  The lead from existing aerial is in a bad way, when I went to move it to the better aerial the connector fell off, and it’s too short anyway.  So the project for the weekend is to wire up the connector (using info on ATV again), move the aerial closer and check with my digital reception tool.

Assuming I get all this sorted I should be able to get rid of Virgin Media TV (OK so now iPlayer etc on Freeview) and save myself a bit of dosh!

I’ll kick off by going through the last comparison I done of Dropbox v SafeSync and add in SugarSync scores, and then talk a bit more about SugarSync:

So a revised score is as follows…

• Installation/config – Pretty much the same, install the app and select the files/folders you want to sync/backup – Draw
• Sharing – SafeSync started sharing my files without my knowledge, -4 points, SugarSync allows direct sharing of single files, but the other person needs an account to access a shared directory, Dropbox does it best.  SafeSync – 4; Dropbox – 2; SugarSync – 1
• Web Portal Playback – Dropbox stopped their web portal playback so nothing for me. SafeSync service was OK, but I definitely prefer the SugarSync do it.  SugarSync – 4; Dropbox – 0; SafeSync – 2
• Web portal file viewer – Dropbox win this one, there’s quite a few file viewers available in Dropbox for PDFs, Word etc, although they seem to use Scribd for this service.  SugarSync don’t have any, not even an html viewer Can’t remember what SafeSync does.  Dropbox – 2; SugarSync – 0; SafeSync – ?
• Photo Albums – While both Dropbox and SugarSync support photo albums the SugarSync solution is better.  You can look at all your photo folders from the root of your photo directory, a lot easier then to create a gallery of all your photos. SugarSync – 2; Dropbox – 1; SafeSync – ?
• Visual backup notification – Dropbox and SugarSync draw, you can see immediately what has been backed up, SafeSync is disappointing – Dropbox & SugarSync – 4; SafeSync – 0;
• Web Portal Usage – Quite subjective but Dropbox is still probably better, then SugarSync, then SafeSync – Dropbox – 2; SugarSync – 1; SafeSync – 0
• Storage/Price – SafeSync is no longer unlimited (the main selling point) so I’ll compare the 100G options: SafeSync – £100, SugarSync ~ £92, Dropbox ~£123 for £22.  SugarSync – 2; SafeSync – 1; Dropbox – 0
• Referral Program – You get 10G if you successful refer on SugarSync but only 500M with Dropbox.  SugarSync – 3; Dropbox – 1; SafeSync – 0
• Community – Dropbox has a thriving community that supports each other, and which Dropbox are involved in, SafeSync is poor in this respect.  SugarSync actually have online support which seemed OK when I used them today – SugarSync – 2; Dropbox – 1; SafeSync – 0
• Other – The SafeSync online folder also appears as a mapped drive, might be useful, although the SugarSync “Magic Briefcase” makes it through my corporate firewall.  It should be noted that the Dropbox folder can appear on your other devices, it does work through my company firewall though.  SugarSync – 2; SafeSync – 1; Dropbox – 0

Score – SugarSync – 24 points; Dropbox 13 points, SafeSync 8 points

And here’s a snapshot of the portal you see…

So SugarSync does it for me, although even though there’s a big difference in scores Dropsync provides a great service (apart from stopping MP3 playback).  While writing this article over the past few days SugarSync offered me a half price deal on their 30G option, I couldn’t resist even though I was going to hold a few months until my Dropbox account came up for review.  Scoring apart what it came down to for me was:

• SugarSync plays my MP3s – Dropbox used to, doesn’t any more
• I can use the “Magic Briefcase” feature to have files sync’d on my work & home laptops – Dropbox doesn’t work through my corporate firewall

Filed under: stuff i like Tagged: backup, cloud sync, dropbox, online backup, safesync, sugarsync ]]> http://halesy.wordpress.com/2011/05/31/better-than-dropbox-sugarsync-delivers-more/feed/ 5 halesy SugarSync Portal http://halesy.wordpress.com/2011/05/25/bt-and-everything-everywhere-will-start-lte-trial-in-rural-uk-this-september-engadget/ http://halesy.wordpress.com/2011/05/25/bt-and-everything-everywhere-will-start-lte-trial-in-rural-uk-this-september-engadget/#comments Wed, 25 May 2011 12:43:07 +0000 halesy http://halesy.wordpress.com/?p=747 ]]> BT and Everything Everywhere will start LTE trial in rural UK this September — Engadget.

This is something I look at in my day job and may be of interest to others (in the UK).  LTE is one of the options for doing rural broadband, would be interested to see how it pans out…

This could be pretty useful and having just tried it, it works as expected. Handy for centralising my content, instead of using Google sites.

Amazon Media Room: RSS Content.

You get 5Gs of free storage courtesy of Amazon which you can use as a Cloud Drive or a Cloud Player.  So if you want you can upload your MP3s to Amazon and play them back using their Cloud Player.  I think it’s restricted to US only but try it and see, I get different results from different IPs.

The Cloud Drive seems to be a bit restricted at the moment.  I’ve just tried to upload a bunch of files in directories, it doesn’t seem to support directories yet.  There’s also a 2G file limit.

5G not enough for you?  Well you can buy more but it also seems that if you buy MP3s from Amazon then you get more for free.

If Amazon do this well it’ll hit services such as Dropbox (which I like), and both services run on Amazon S3.

I’m trying both these services out at the moment but due to slow upload speeds it could take a while…  But I’m looking forward to seeing which type of file viewers they have.