“A box without hinges, key, or lid, yet golden treasure inside is hid.” J.R.R. Tolkien

So you’ve misplaced your thumbdrive for the billionth time and you don’t have time to wait for a CD to burn but you need to transport some files. You could attach them to an email but some inboxes have a size limit and they’re not the easiest way to handle files. Enter Dropbox, a free site storage option. All you do is head over to Dropbox.com and signup. From there you have many options. Add files through their website, which is easy, or download and install their software. The neat part about the software is that when it becomes part of your system it looks just like the folders you are already used to. You can drag and drop directly into a folder and as soon as you do it’s now available everywhere like home. Plus many smart phones have an app so you can take advantage of your files on the go. You could also use it as a quick backup but I would'nt depend on it that greatly (not yet). Also if you don't own a computer this is a great way of having all your files with you at any one time. One last part that makes this service so useful is the ability to put a file in your folders and it will get a web address that you can send to anyone, making sharing quite an easy feat. To put it simply if you’re tired of a pocketful of junk used to move your files around then give this a try.

“I would rather have a big burden and a strong back, than a weak back and a caddy to carry life's luggage” Elbert Hubbard

Have you ever tried to email a file to a friend like a photo or a video only to find that your email box can’t handle it? I come across this over and over again. My Gmail account allows attachments to be sent but they must be smaller than 20 megabytes. Now that seems large on the face of it but get a zip file full of photos that you need to send to a friend and suddenly you are way past that mark. So what to do? Well for a long time I have used the free serve TransferBigFiles. It is a wonderfully easy way to transfer large files around the web. All you do is browse for the file and then select recipients and hit send. The files can be up to 1 gigabyte in size so you have plenty of space to send over that high resolution video of your friend’s last party. So what are the downsides you ask? Well the files only last for five days. Meaning when you send that work file to someone and they wait on downloading it for a week the file disappears from TransferBigFiles system. To help with this I always do two things. I send a copy to myself in case someone didn’t get the email and I always send another email explaining about the deadline of disappearance. It is easy and it works. What more would you want? Oh yes this site is good to recommend to those family member that, for whatever reason, have the ability to send large attachment sizes and send everything into a shrinking work email. Tell them to send this way and save your space for something really good. Give it a try.

“I was probably the only revolutionary referred to as cute.”Abbie Hoffman

I recently had to make a PDF for one of the class worksheets and I thought I would use Vista’s new PDF creator and see how it worked. Unfortunately it was an exercise of frustration and a real nuisance. So I went back to my old alternative CutePDF. Before I go on I should explain that a PDF is document formatted so it can be opened with the free program Adobe Acrobat Reader. Every government file like the 1040 tax form is in that format. It is easy to use and open for everyone who wants to read a PDF. Unfortunately the creation of a PDF can be a bit of a pain. Even though the standard has been around for years, Microsoft has been reluctant to give that ability. So CutePDF is there to bridge the gap. All you need to do is download it from the above link. Once you have gone through the installation process write your document in Microsoft Word and then instead of hitting save go to the print screen. Click at the top where you see your printer listed and choose CutePDF then hit print. It takes a second or two but a little window pops up and asks where you want to save it and under what name. Once done just hit OK and your PDF is created. The nice thing about a PDF is that when you send out something like a resume the setup does not change unlike a word document where it can be subject to their setup. Give it a try.

“Surely We established him in the land and granted him means of access to every thing.” Quran

P2P and torrents and other file sharing methods have sparked a debate about internet service providers (ISPs). Some providers are considering or are policing their bandwidth looking for wrongdoers. Now a bit of information is needed. In the infancy of World Wide Web ISPs fought desperately for the right not to police their networks. The argument was simple at that point. The web was thought of as a network where thought and action would really not be restricted. The ISPs argued that in the same way the phone was unrestricted so should the web be. I can talk to family or I could make a drug deal over the phone. Policing that is close to impossible when you have so much traffic. I know things have changed in philosophy and technology since then but let’s continue. Lawmakers agreed and let it be with some policies coming out against the decision. As I said philosophies have changed. Companies and organizations like the RIAA have put pressure on ISPs to curb illegal downloading. So some ISPs have begun to if not block certain activity then throttle the amount of service used for these activities. The main problem is that as time goes by many of these activities that were once illegal will become legal with the support of artists and companies looking to provide a new services or ways to get their works to the customers. Also, in the same way a phone system is used, how do you decide what is restricted? The thought is that once some restrictions are put in place others based on political or moral bias will follow. There are cases of this with text messaging and website access currently. This debate is not old news. It is being argued now by lawmakers, companies, and the public. If you are a computer user you should be aware of these conflicts no matter what side of the debate you fall on.

That ends our little foray into the greyer side of the web. I hope this has added a bit more knowledge to the discussion.

"Now begins a torrent of words and a trickling of sense." Theocritus

The previous post spoke about P2P file sharing. I would like to focus on another method today. Torrents are the current favorite way of file sharing or transporting. In the previous post I said I do not endorse this method of finding files however it is gaining a certain amount of legal status. One example of this is the band Nine Inch Nails (NIN). They are freely distributing their own music on these torrent sites. I should say the vast majority of the files still remains illegally shared . The reasons torrent are more popular than P2P are the speed and the size. How it works is the user goes to a torrent search site like Piratebay or Mininova and then does a search. As the user goes through and finds a file it will have two bits of information. A seeder count and a leecher count. We’ll come back to that in a bit. The user finds a file and downloads it. Then they need a client or a program that is made just to handle this sort of file. Now the file that is being downloaded is only a tiny fragment of the file called a seed. This seed then gets sent back through the client software and gets sent to others who have another piece of the seeding puzzle. This system relies on many users who remain online to share their piece of the file. This means what is being downloaded is just small and fast bits of data from many different users. Unfortunately, for this system, some users stop sharing the moment they get a file and then stop it. These people are generally called leechers while sharers are called seeders. The system works very well for moving large files through the net. Many movie companies are looking very closely at this method in hopes of using it as a legal movie downloading service. The future of renting a movie may just be using something like this for a small fee.

“Happiness seems made to be shared.” Pierre Corneille

Whenever there is a news story about file sharing online I get a bunch of questions asking what they are talking about. I would like to, at least for the next few posts, talk about some of what they are referring to.

To begin, as I have said in earlier posts, not all sharing of files is illegal. In fact the vast majority is legal. As an example I create worksheets that are freely shared with my consent all over the net. I do the same with photos and videos as well. However some ways of moving files on the internet have become known as places of mainly illegal files or at least ones that fall into the grey areas. Peer to Peer (P2P) is one way. At this point I should mention this is still used but it is not as popular as it once was. Also I should say I do not endorse these methods but I do feel a computer user should be an informed person. P2P uses a program like Limewire, Kazaa, or others to gain access to a network of users. A person on one end searches for a song (photo, file, etc…) and then gets a list of results. That list is showing all the computers that have these files on them that people are making available. Finally one of the files is selected and it downloads (Saves to your computer). The reason this is increasingly becoming unpopular is the rise of companies that try to track users through these services. Because P2P is user to user it is easier to be traced. Understanding both the good and bad of the net will help you to be a better user. However if you are looking for free music I do not suggest this type of service. I would recommend looking at previous posts that contain info about getting free music but are done in legal ways.