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Many of us have already converted to portable hard drives of large USB keys for storage backups, but a lot of people still chooose to burn data backups on DVDs, which offer a better cost/capacity ratio. The risk here is of course scratching one of those DVDs and losing all your data. Luckily, there's a way to create resilient DVDs that even when scratched, can still be recovered.
QuckPar is a free app that creates parity volumes for any number of files. Parity files can be used by data recovery apps to verity and reconstruct corrected files or groups of files. Think of them as redundant puzzle pieces that can fill in holes in an incomplete picture. With QuickPar, you can create parity files of any block size and redundancy, which is useful for filling up the empty space of a DVD backup.
Let's say you want to burn a collection of movie files that total up to 3GB. You can just burn those files on a DVD, but you would leave about 1.5GB of space that is pretty much wasted. Open up QuickPar, and drop in all of those movie files in the "Source Files" section of the window. QuickPar will display the combined size of these files, which gives you an idea of how much space would still be available on your DVD. Next, move the sliders for Block Allocation and Redundancy to the right, maxing out at when the indicated Recovery Data Size matches the leftover capacity of your DVD without going over. Click the Create button once you're done.
Using our favorite ISO and file-burning application, IMGBurn, we can create a disc image using our original movie files and the newly created parity recovery files. The process couldn't be simpler!
Once you've burned these files to a disc, the DVD should be recoverable from light scratches that result in data loss. As long as there are enough parity files that remain intact, you can recover all of your files with a program called IsoBuster. IsoBuster isn't free, but it's trial option has the capability to piece damaged files together with the right parity files. Keep in mind that the more parity files you create (up to 100% redundancy), the better protected your data will be. That's why it's smarter to not cram as much data on a DVD as possible, so you can leave space for these sweet headache-preventing files.
XFruits and Page2RSS are two services that—together—allow you to keep up to date on all your favorite websites, in whatever way is convenient for you. To understand how, let’s take a look at the two programs involved:
XFruits is a free web service that allows you to reorganize content from RSS feeds. Normally, an RSS feed is simply a means to syndicate content—a sequential list of titles, links, images and text, easily viewed with Desktop readers and web apps. XFruits lets you go much further with your feeds.
With XFruits you can, for instance, automatically convert an RSS feed into emails, into posts on your blog, or into a webpage specifically formatted for mobile phones. You can also aggregate multiple feeds into single feed, create an RSS feed from an email account, or save data from feeds into a ready-to-print PDF files.
With XFruits, as long as a page provides an RSS feed, you can view its content in whichever way is most convenient for you.
Now, if only there was some way to get around that pesky “as long as a page provides an RSS feed” qualifier… Oh, that’s right—there is!
Page2RSS is a website which watches any website you want it to, and records any changes made to that page. It then saves these changes as an RSS feed which you can view with a feed reader, or reorganize with XFruits. You’re also given the URL of a page you can check at any time to see a log of recent changes to the site. Page2RSS “crawls” all the sites a couple of times every day, meaning that changes aren’t reported in real-time, but you can still get a pretty good idea of what’s gone on recently on a website.
Confused as to exactly what sorts of changes Page2RSS reports? As an example, take a look at the Page2RSS change log for www.google.com. You’ll see that the page shows all the recent times when the main Google graphic changed, or when little bits of text were added. Note that Page2RSS preserves links too, and that clicking on the Mother’s Day Google graphic will take you to a Google search for “Mother’s Day.” To see an example of how Page2RSS handles a more content-rich page, check out its log for www.cnn.com. It’s not quite as complete as you would get with the actual CNN RSS feed, but it does manage to find all the headlines, pictures, thumbnails and links.
Comments are closed on this article
allie_valenza
May 16, 2011 at 9:59am
Good list! It is worth trying some of the things you've done here. I didn't know much about them and i 'm surprise but it really seems easier than i expected. I like o find out new things about software and learn how different programs work. The last post I read was about common file Extensions and it was helpful as well. It's nice to see how they all link together.
cuKrista
December 28, 2009 at 12:39pm
That’s undisputed that the expert essay order service will compose the best customized essay for persons which don’t have writing skills. That could be the most simple way for such kind of people, I think!
Sparx10
December 22, 2009 at 9:47pm
Cool combos, reminds me of Kirby :P I never knew that Hamachi was for VPN, I just thought people used it for pirated game servers and such. I'm gonna try the gmail one. And I might try the HotKey one too. Although I already have AutoHotkey, and am not really a fan of mouse gestures.
Edit: tried CookiePie. screwed stuff up.
levenberg@veriz...
May 23, 2009 at 1:09pm
Nice work, but what about Portable Firefox and Tor? You gave both of them very warm reviews, and I use them together to securely get pass content restrictions. Where I'm from, they don't even let me check my email, so I use these two apps together to get what I need off my email. They've never let me down.
KaylaKaze
May 21, 2009 at 10:55pm
Hard and symbolic links are functions of NTFS, not Vista or Win 7. They work perfectly fine in XP. You can use the free program Winbolic Link to make them (since XP doesn't have mklink).
Sp3ctre18
May 21, 2009 at 2:24pm
Very nice list, I didn't know about many of these and I might try some of them.
However, I'm confused about the mashup with Hamachi. You did not mention at all the main service / application of the creators of Hamachi: LOGMEIN, as their domain implies. Logmein is a free service to do just that; access your PC remotely, and even better: from ANY computer. You simply install the logmein progam on the clients, and you use the logmein website to access it. Very simple, very easy to use. The paid servies adds a few things for ease of use such as file transfer and even getting sound.
So why use Hamachi and UltraVNC? unless you wanted more control over the secure connection, but again, I think you should have mentioned it and tell us your arguemtn, why go through the hassle of setting up Hamachi and UltraVNC instead of simply using logmein.
Composer of Film / Cinematic music
g2
May 21, 2009 at 7:54am
Awesome set of free utilities, a couple others that I find very useful and should make the cutoff
Crossloop – remote pc control
Argali - phone number lookup
gamzu07
May 21, 2009 at 6:34am
You can already sync firefox profiles without using Mklink. Just create a new profile and browse to the dropbox directory.
lunchbox73
May 21, 2009 at 6:27am
I gave up on Hamachi quite a while ago. I always get a relayed (slow) connection no matter what I try. Different computers, different locations, ISPs, didn't matter. I never did figure that one out.
I currently use RealVNC + port forwarding on my router + encryption for my VNC stuff. Not as secure as a VPN I know but the connection is rock solid and speedy.
metric_inch
May 21, 2009 at 7:06am
Did you try setting Hamachi to use a specific port for tunneling?
Pref > Status > Detailed Config button. Then set ports under the Connecting thru NAT, then make sure the firewall is forwarding those ports to the box running hamachi.
I had one site that needed to have ports entered, and forwared from the router. Home, Office, and Job site 1 all see each other just fine, but Job site 2 needed to have specific ports set. The idea of sending VNC traffic in plain text is way to scary.
Denis63
May 21, 2009 at 6:13am
One thing about uTorrent i want to share is that it will look in a specifird folder for any torrent files and it will automatically add them into utorrent with the default settings, then delete the torrent file. Also, it can download stuff to a "Pending" folder then when they're done it'll copy them to a "Completed" folder. What a fantastic program. -Denis
Defiant
May 21, 2009 at 7:33am
They already mentioned both those Denis, but I agree they are quite useful features
bytor7
May 21, 2009 at 5:25am
I have been using Hamachi and UltraVNC
to remote into and troubleshoot my relatives computers from the
comfort of my home for years. Hamachi and FreeProxy is another
great combination to securely browse the web wherever you go.
Creating a Hamachi network with
FreeProxy on a home computer turns it into a secure proxy server.
Log into the Hamachi network from a laptop when you are not at home and
change the proxy settings of your web browser. Enter the Hamachi IP
address of the computer running Freeproxy and use port 8080. Now
your web traffic will be running through the secure Hamachi network.
It's great when using open wifi at a hotel or coffee shop. It may
slow you down a bit, but it's better than having some latte sipper
snooping in on your IMs.
spentnickles
May 21, 2009 at 3:55am
Nice little mix here... I must say, things like this are the reason that I'm a MAXPC magazine and online reader... Keep up the good work...
kiroshimasylvia
July 02, 2010 at 10:14pm
I think that you need to check and see, my understanding is that flood insurance is available. One of the problems that the public may encounter is an agent that has not been to flood insurance education to sell it. That might have alot to do with it.. I think he said the other day that 33% of the claims for flood, were not in the flood plain. But, most people will not buy due to paying another premium….=========================<a href="http://useabletechnology.com" rel="dofollow">Useable Technology</a>
