Backup your online services with Backupify

Backupify is a new service that offers archiving, search and restore service for the most popular online services including Google Apps, Facebook, Twitter and more. Although it is unlikely that an established online service will lose your data but once in a while unfortunate things like that do happen. If not that, you may lose your data due to hacker intrusion, viruses or simply user errors such as forgotten password or accidental account deletion.

All online services that are backed up through Backupify are stored on the Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) which provide excellent security and good data duplication policies. Currently Backupify supports many popular online services such as Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Flicker, Blogger, Zoho, Picasa and several others. The free account allows you to backup up to 3 services and 1GB of online space while the paid subscription offers 5 to unlimited online services backup.

After using Backupify for a month, I'm happy to report that this backup service works exactly as advertised. My emails from my Gmail account were restored successfully, my old tweets were exported to a PDF file and my Facebook status and data were duly exported to a json (javascript object notation) format. Restoration service works differently for different services. For example my emails are restored back into Gmail but my Flickr pictures are returned back to my Flickr photostream. Apart from that, you can also opt to download your online backup to your local hard drive for further safekeeping.

For a free service, Backupify can prove to be priceless when you consider how valuable your emails or social networking data could be. Backup are done automatically and once you have configured the initial setup, the only time you have to bother about Backupify is when something goes wrong with your online services. Sign up for Backupify for free at their website.
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Spilt & merge PDF files with PDFsam

Have you ever like wanted to merge a few PDF files into one? Or split multiple-page PDF file into separate pages? You can either use the ridiculously expensive (and unecessary) Acrobat® software or you can use the free & open source friendly neighborhood super hero app PDFsam!

Free PDF editing apps are a dime a dozen out there, just try Google. But PDFsam sets itself apart from the competitors by being free, open-source, light and most importantly free of crapware/shareware. PDFsam allows you to rotate, split, reorder and yeah, merge individual PDF files easily within a single application. The result comes out exactly as you wanted without any of those silly watermarks of any kind.

Seriously, if there is such thing as super heroes for PDF files editing, PDFsam would be my hero. Download the latest version from the official website or simply get my personal copy here which already include Java™ Runtime environment required for the app.

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Keep track of your phone & laptop with Prey

Have you ever had the unfortunate experience of getting your precious phone or laptop stolen, ever? Once that happen you can only weep in silence and pray that somehow you will see your missing device again or you can attempt to locate them using Prey!

Prey is an open-source and lightweight anti-theft solution that installs a tiny agent in your PC or phone, which silently waits for a remote signal to wake up and work its magic. This signal is sent either from the Internet or through an SMS message, allowing you to gather information regarding the device's location, hardware and network status. Additionally you can instruct the program to trigger specific actions like taking a snapshot using the device's camera, connect it to the Internet or lock your device remotely.

Prey currently supports Windows, Mac, iOS and Android devices. The free account let's you track up to 3 devices and send 10 reports daily. After using it for a couple of months, I found this program actually works! It successfully tracked down my phone's exact geo-location and also managed to capture a snapshot using my laptop's webcam (not that they're really missing).

So avoid that hopeless and tragic feeling whenever you lost your important gadgets. Install Prey now in case something bad happen. Once your precious computer/phone ever gets stolen you can assist the police to locate the missing device and even help to nab the culprit. If your local police is useless in this kind of scenarios, you can always ask for help from your preferred local gangster/along/Pekida branch members. Just to be safe, put a BIOS password for your computer or pray the thief is not smart enough as to reset your phone.

Register & download Prey for free on their website.
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