How To Quickly Backup Files To Email

If you’ve ever wanted a simpler solution to backing up your files online - this article is for you.

I currently use Gmail as a quick and dirty online backup solution where what I typically what I do is : Login to Gmail, attach the file, and then I email it to myself.

While quick, this is still a 3 step process… So here’s how to get it down to one move!

‘Backup to Email’ (BTE) is a great piece freeware which simplifies everything. Just right click any file or folder, and select ‘Backup to Email’. That’s it!

One thing I love about BTE is that it’s incredibly intuitive. Here are some examples.

• If you choose to upload a folder, the folder will be automatically zipped and backed up.
• No limit on file / folder size. Files/folders larger than 10MB will automatically be split to slices of 10MB, so your email can cope. When you download the split files, you can easily join them up again with a feature that comes with BTE.
• Easily manage of multiple email accounts to backup to
• If the connection is disconnected at the middle of a file transfer, it initiates an auto-retry every 2 minutes

Looks like my quick and dirty backup solution just got quicker, but cleaner!

Bonus tip #1: Configure a Yahoo email account as your default backup account. While Gmail currently offers more than 4.7Gigs of storage space, Yahoo Mail now offers unlimited space.

Bonus tip #2: Setup email filters to automatically steer all your backups into a folder so it does not clog up your inbox. Here are the instructions on how to do it for Yahoo Mail and Gmail.

How To Copy Files Faster And Easier

If you want to supercharge the simple act of copying and pasting - Teracopy is just the piece of freeware for you.

Here are 5 key features that stand out the most to me:

1. Copy files faster - Asynchronous copy speeds up file transfer between two physical hard drives
2. Pause and resume file transfers - Pause copy process at any time to free up system resources and continue with a single click
3. Error testing - It allows you to run comparison tests on any copy you make, to ensure its integrity
4. Error recovery - In case of copy error, TeraCopy will try several times and in the worse case just skips the file, not terminating the entire transfer. It also shows failed file transfers and lets you fix the problem and recopy only problem files.
5. Windows Explorer Integration - TeraCopy can completely replace Explorer copy, paste and move functions, allowing you to seamlessly work with files as usual.

The one thing I really love about this program is that I don’t have to make a special effort to use it. Too many programs are spoiled by the fact that you have to change your workflow to accommodate it. With Teracopy, everything is business as usual, and it just adds its functionality in the background.

There’s a pro version available with a few extra features - but the free version itself is already spectacular.

How To Automate Turning Off Your Computer

Leaving your computer on overnight is usually the easiest option when you need the computer to perform a task that takes quite a long time to complete (e.g. Downloading large files, ripping DVDs, etc.)

It is however, neither energy efficient nor an environmentally friendly option to take.

WinOff is an excellent piece of freeware which very simply shuts down your computer after a defined time so you don’t need to wait till the morning to attend to your PC.

3 things I like most about WinOff

1. It’s flexible. You don’t HAVE to shut it down. You can also schedule it to - restart, log off, suspend, hibernate or just lock the computer.
2. You get to see the last thing that happened before shutdown. There’s an option for capture a screenshot of the desktop right before the shutdown. With this, you can see if everything turned out OK before the PC shut itself down
3. It’s free. Need I say more?

Google + Firefox = Free Music Downloads

There’s a lot you can do with Google if you can take advantage of it’s advanced search features.

Expanding on this tip which shows you how to find music in open directories, here’s a step-by-step walkthrough on how to use Firefox Smart Keyword searches to speed up the process.

All you need to do is:

1. Create a bookmark in Firefox
2. Use the URLs in this text file as the bookmark location in your Firefox bookmarks (like in the pic above)
3. Assign a keyword to it - eg. music
4. Type the keyword (eg. music) followed by the search term (eg. beatles) directly into the address bar (NOT the search box). For example… type in music beatles , and Google will search open directories for Beatles music files that you can download.
5. 

6. You can modify the code in the text file to change file extensions, which opens a whole window for you. For example, you can even change it to PDF and DOC to look to e-books, or AVI and MPG to look for movies.

   By the way, I’m assuming you already own the media you will be downloading …

   Bonus Tips:

7. The feature above only works for Firefox. If you’re NOT on Firefox yet, try it now
8. If you want to create basic smart keywords to search any web page, here’s how.
9. Here’s a useful advanced features cheat sheet from Google
10. If you don’t find the files on Google, you can try the best bittorrent search engine ever.

Quick Way To Check Your Bandwidth

This post will be a shorty since we are just pointing you to quick little utility that is good to know about.

Speedtest is a very cool way to test out your bandwidth. Simply go to Speedtest.net and select the location you want to test against

Guyz Here Are My Results

List Of Sites To Download Music Legally

A-Z sites to download music legally

It wasn't that long ago that downloading music from the internet looked like it would finally ruin some of the mainstream recording companies. Napster (the old version) and the music download software Kazaa were gaining in popularity, and notoriety. Every country with interests in copyright wanted them shut down and every week a new article would appear concerning a new legal battle.

That was then, this is now. Napster is now just another music downloading site among the plethora.

So, in an age where music, video and any other media is virtually on demand how do we go about obtaining it legally. For starters, if it's mainstream and popular and you can get if for free - chances are that it's probably not legal. Secondly, if you don't have to agree to the site's registration agreement then it's most likely that the media has been copied.

Having said that, there are many sites which do offer free music and video that don't require payment or registration. However, these usually offer less well-known bands or genre's which are not popular such as indie, folk and world music.

To erase any doubt, I decided to compile a list of sites where you can download music legally. Some are global while others are restricted to certain countries. I hope it's a benefit to you.

A

AOL Music
Artist Direct
Audio Candy
AudioLunchbox

B

Besonic
Bigpond Music - [Australia]
Big Noise Music
Bleep
Buy Music

C

Cats Music
Compact Disc World
Connect
Corner Band
Corner CD

D

DMusic
Dimple's Music
Domino Records

E

eMusic
Epitonic - [Free but not mainstream]
Exitos Musical

F

Face the Music
Full Audio
FYE

G

Gallery Of Sound
Garage Band
Gig America

H

HMV

I

Independent Record
Instavid
Intomusic.co.uk
iTunes Music Store
Iuma

J

[Comment below if you know one]

K

[Comment below if you know one]

L

Latin Noise
LimeWire2006
Liquid Audio

M

Mainstreet Music
Matador Records
MIRA Coalition
MusicMatch
Musicnet - [AOL]
Music Now
Music Rebellion

N

Napster
Netscape Music
New World Record

O

OD2 - [UK]

P

People Sound

Q

Quonset Hut

R

Rasputin Music
Record and Tape Traders
Rhapsody - [Real]

S

Sam Goody
Spinnery
Spiral Frog
Streamwaves

T

Top Hits Music
Tower Records

U

[Comment below if you know one]

V

Virgin
VitaminIC

W

Windows Media
Wippett- [UK]

X

[Comment below if you know one]

Y

Yahoo! Music unlimited

Z

[Comment below if you know one]

Tips For Improving Camera Phone Photos

Digital Photography School is out with it's latest installment. These tips are something I can totally appreciate because a lot of times I don't have a real camera handy when the kids are being cute. 99% of the time, I whip out the cell phone camera and take a picture that is ridiculously bad.

Here are 2 of the 13 to get you started.

· Well lit subjects - The better lit your subject is the clearer your image is likely to be. If possible shoot outside or turn on lights when shooting inside. Be aware that different lights impact the color in your images differently. Experiment with White Balance to rectify this (see below). Some cameras come with a built in flash or light - this can really lift a shot and add clarity to it, even if you’re shooting outside. If your camera doesn’t have a flash or light you should avoid shooting into bright lights as you’ll end up with subjects that are silhouetted.

· Get Close - One of the most common mistakes with camera phone images is that their subject ends up being a tiny, unrecognizable object in the distance. Camera phone images tend to be smallish due to low resolution - so fill up your view finder with your subject to save having to zoom in on the subject in editing it later (which decreases quality even more). Having said this, getting too close on some model camera phones creates distortion of either fisheye effect or lack of focus due to poor macro ability.

Windows media player classic allows you to create the pictures of thumbnails of a movie in a single image.The image given below demonstrates it.Open a movie or video in media player classic.And take the file option and then take the save thumbnails you can manage as many thumbnails you need.The above thumbnails are of movie Rangde Basanti

Download Windows Media Player Classic