We often share files online with our friends, associates or collaborate online with remote team members online, working on a project. The most common method to share files online is by attaching them in emails. But often, they don’t get delivered in the way we intend or get bounced due to huge sizes. Yes, you can avoid such situations by using free or paid online file sharing services widely available on the internet these days. But most of them are slow, unprofessional, has loads of ads, low file size limits or are simply not secure and trustworthy enough. Enter Driveway - the online file sharing service which should satisfy the needs of most and packs more punch that scores of other files hosts out there.
Driveway online file sharing service is brought to you by IDrive online backup - one of the reputed and reliable online backup solution providers around. Driveway offers completely free file parking and sharing service; unlimited individual files upto 500MB in size can be uploaded, unlimited total storage and no download limits! You can send files for reading or editing; overcome email attachment limits easily. Probably you’ve heard of or have used services like rapidshare…but their file size limit is 100MB, has some nagging issues and isn’t a good solution for many of us. Driveway aims to change all this and has far more features than traditional online file sharing services.
In addition to the above, Driveway has cool plugins and widgets to make the most of your uploaded files. With desktop widget, lets you create multi-user capable editable links for your office documents. You can directly edit and save shared documents at driveway with a click from desktop shortcut or browser using Microsoft Office (online collaboration). The Driveway plugin lets you share any file type directly from your desktop faster. After downloading and installing the application, simply right click and create Parkit links. Lastly, Driveway web widget lets you view and share one or more files of any type - audio, video, pictures or Office. This widget can be embedded in any blog or website (using browser Flash player plugin).
Moreover, you can sign up for a free Driveway account to manage your uploads better. Like all services, you can delete your uploaded file whenever required or hide it from public view. They guarantee your privacy and security of your personal data uploaded. However, like all similar services illegal and illicit content isn’t tolerated. Files not downloaded for 90 days are automatically purged.
Overall, Driveway (driveway.com) looks professional, fresh and clean with great features not offered by most online file sharing services (especially the powerful widgets and plugins). I’d definitely recommend them for your online file sharing and collaboration needs.
GPS or Global Positioning System is a worldwide radio-navigation system that was developed by the US Department of Defense and has been around for sometime now. Initially, this promising technology found it’s main use in defense and military operations where various mission-critical real-time information was involved regarding weather, troop positions, topography, tracking various objects, people and what not.
This beautiful technology utilizing a system of satellites and receiving devices is used to compute positions on the Earth. GPS is used in navigation, and its precision supports cadastral surveying. Thanks to progressing research and development, GPS has now landed in the hands of common man and organizations finding many important real-life uses like surveillance, child/pet/people tracking, geographic mapping, travel guidance, vehicle tracking, fleet management and freight tracking.
Probably one of the most important and common use of GPS today is GPS vehicle tracking. This has made life real easy for truck, freight and long distance transport operators. Earlier, it was almost impossible to track the exact position, speed, status or any delays encountered by vehicles on a trip. In case of breakdowns or cases where contact with the driver was severed, transport operators found themselves in deep trouble speculating what had actually happened and how to reach the freight to the destination in time.
With new age GPS vehicle tracking systems and services from providers like GPS Insight, employing easy-to-use hardware and web-based software, it has become really easy for transport operators to track their vehicle status and view other relevant data anytime. This enables surveillance over the vehicles, plan routes with better efficiency, fuel savings and more. No need to pay for idle hours anymore when they can track vehicle movement with exact location and speed. GPS Insight uses satellites and AT&T/T-Mobile to provide you with highly accurate vehicle locations every 2 minutes throughout the US and Canada.
The running cost is minimal in the long run (only $1.5 to 2 daily). The GPS hardware is small and directly interfaces with the vehicle’s diagnostics port; reporting engine status, failure codes if any, fuel usage, odometer readings, idle-times, stops and a lot of other relevant info. The GPS hardware is shipped the same day with 30 day money back guarantee and is a very helpful solution for companies related to transport, moving, construction, HVAC, sales forces, roofing, plumbing, product delivery, long haul trucking, etc.
Not only this, full high-end 3D terrain maps with great customization are available 24×7. If you look at their map demos, you’ll get an idea of how advanced current consumer GPS technologies have become these days.
Here are some screenshots from GPS Insight (click to enlarge) :
If you’re a person always on the move and often need to scan documents while you travel, then carrying around a normal scanner device isn’t feasible at all. To satisfy mobile scanning needs, there are many portable scanners available these days which are small in size, require no extra power source, light enough to carry, have fast scanning speeds and affordable too. Portable scanning devices can often be seen with busy executives and sales personnel on the move and do the job as expected; performing quite nearly to their bigger counterparts.
A good portable scanner is the ScanShell 3000DN which also boasts of full duplex scanning support and all of the abovementioned features. It costs about ~$300 which is an affordable enough price for mobile scanners. The 3000DN also has high scan image quality, is equipped with high speed USB 2.0 standard interface and requires no external power supply, weighs only 475g and draws power from the USB 2.0 interface cable, making a great choice for mobile executives and personnel.
Now, let’s dig into the detailed features of the ScanShell 3000DN Duplex scanner:
Can scan both sides of the scanned document simultaneously (duplex).
Can scan directly to PDF format.
Can scan business cards, plastic ID cards, and documents up to legal size.
USB 2.0 high-speed interface (no external power needed).
Has a small footprint and lightweight (<500 gms.).
Offers Auto Launch mode.
Twain and WIA standard compliant device.
Compatible with Windows ME, 2000, XP & Vista(excluding 64-bit editions).
L x W x H: 300mm x 50mm x 45mm.
Scanning Area: A4, Maximum 8.5″ x 14″ (216mm x 356mm) legal page.
Media Thickness: 0.1mm- 1.5mm.
Image sensor: (2) Dual , Linear Color CMOS.
Optical Resolution: 600 dpi x 1200 dpi.
Power Consumption: 0.2W Stand-by, 2.0W during Scanning.
Scan Speed: 6 pages per minute B&W, 3 pages per minutes Color.
Scan Modes: internal 48bit, outputs 24bit color, 8bit gray, 1bit black & white.
Paper Sensor: Electro-mechanical.
Indeed the feature set above for a mobile scanner is commendable and should satisfy the needs of most people and jobs. Also, the ScanShell 3000DN portable scanner comes bundled with DocShell software suite that offers great value at no extra charge for easy scanning, sharing and organizing of photos and documents - an easy to use utility that scan documents and export the scanned image into existing, pre-installed application on the user’s PC (PDF,Microsoft paint, etc.). The scanned document can be saved to one of the following image types: BMP, JPG, TIF, PSD, PCX, PNG or TGA.
With that said, this little thing from ScanShell is definitely a recommended accessory for mobile professionals who are always on the move and need scanning documents often. You can download brochure, DocShell software user manual and order it online at www.scanshell-store.com
The term SEO or Search engine optimization is very popular with webmasters, internet marketers, online marketing personnel and companies these days. Building and maintaining a site is important but attracting visitors and leads is equally important for a webmaster or organization having websites online. SEO seeks to increase a site’s visibility in search engines and enhance its value to visitors through topical page design, consistent HTML tagging, and focusing content on core keywords. This is the process by which a website is shaped in structure, technology and content in order to encourage search engines to rank it highly for selected key phrases. Based on ethical standards, SEO can be white hat (ethical), Black Hat (non-ethical) or even Grey hat (mixture of both).
To address the needs of SEO professionals, webmasters, internet marketers or even business organizations looking to enhance the visibility in top search engines, especially Google, various SEO software solutions are widely available. These SEO packages contain essential tools to make SEO operations easy, efficient and fast. SEO is an ongoing process; so working continuously and maintaining the ranking is very important. SEO Elite is once such popular and widely used SEO package available.
SEO Elite is a complete package for SEO needs, in fact it’s better to call a SEO suite. It has many different types of utilities and project types suite to achieve most common tasks involved in performing SEO for any website. They claim it brings real results fast and not brag on solely the features of the product. Check the SEO Elite Review and you’ll find how useful the product has been to real customers using the same package. If you see their video demo, it’ll be quite clear how quality and comprehensive the product is.
SEO Elite has seperate modules for :
Analyzing high-ranking websites.
Monitoring link partners.
Getting authority links.
Getting massive links to your sites.
Monitoring website ranking.
Advanced Google analysis.
Analyzing search engine saturation.
Submitting articles to directories.
Probably you have heard about VPN or Virtual Private Network but might have never used it in practice. A VPN is a secure network across the Internet (Virtual) where the data is sent encrypted (private), makes use of the public internet infrastructure. Privacy is maintained by the use of a tunneling protocol, encryption, and other security features. Though VPN is particularly popular with organizations and corporate sector for their personnel to directly interface with the local network from anywhere in the world securely and seamlessly, it has already found other uses as well.
VPN has been well received by the common public behind restrictive content filters, firewalls, etc. allowing anonymous surfing without any blocking. In the earlier case, the employees accessed their organization’s local network from external network (internet); but here, one can login to the VPN service provider’s network from his PC and transmit/receive data over an encrypted and secure channel to browse or use any service available on the Internet. So, this is sort of a proxy with VPN service providers having servers in place routing your requests to the concerned servers on the internet. And this makes your online activities totally anonymous.
Now this is particularly useful for people who cannot surf freely due to content filtering and firewalls imposed by their ISP, school, college, organization or such. Also, sometimes you might not want to leave online tracks or surfing logs, show your IP address, or let your sensitive info come under the glare of prying eyes. So, a VPN service should be the right choice. It’s easy to use, no special application to install, very less overheads and should work from any PC. I came across BlackLogic.com offering VPN accounts for Anonymous Surfing needs.
A VPN account from BlackLogic offers the following features :
Allows completely anonymous surfing.
Be secure and protected even at WiFi hotspots.
IPSEC / PPTP based VPN service. (great security)
Keep your IP addess hidden. (their server IP is listed)
Be anonymous behind firewalls or at school, office, home, etc.
128 bit strong encryption makes ISP spying attempts fruitless.
Works for VOIP too. All VOIP carriers and providers supported.
Makes you immune to packet sniffing, attacks and pesky popups.
What’s nice is all that starts at only $10 a month for your personal VPN account. I might be signing up soon to try the service. For more info, visit www.blacklogic.com and learn more about their services through the easily navigable website.
Computer data or digital information is one of the most sensitive and important assets of people, businesses and organizations today. Personal information, transactions, business secrets, plans and such other critical data are being increasingly stored on computer systems these days; with a lot of people and businesses going digital to minimize paperwork, increase efficiency, introduce automation and increase overall productivity. As the dependency on computers have increased, so has the number of portable devices like laptops and PDAs. With these, the chances of data theft, system compromise and intrusion activities have increased greatly.
System admins and security analysts claim that most of the data theft, intrusion, hacking, sabotage, etc. arise due to stolen equipment especially laptops of employees. Sensitive, highly guarded data and business secrets can land into evil hands or competitors simply through the login credentials on the stolen equipment. It is estimated that 1 out of 10 laptops are stolen on average; mostly from the mobile executives and employees. No estimate how dangerous threat this can be to personal or organizational data security.
To combat this problem, there are many good, effective and efficient ways. Simple user-login or fingerprint based authentication won’t do, cause the data from the hard-disk of a stolen system can be retrieved by connecting it to another PC! So, there a very practical way out - using hard disk data encryption softwares and enterprise data encryption solutions. The data is completely encrypted (it is almost impossible to retrieve in original format unless you know the passkey) on the hard disk and decrypted on the fly while logged in and programs/files are accessed. Thus, connecting this hard disk to another PC won’t reveal any usable data; protecting it completely from evil hands and prying eyes.
Completed hard disk encryption solutions are becoming mainstream nowadays and becoming increasingly affordable. Managed Encryption Service is good choice for organizations looking to protect data and ensure security of sensitive information across all computers, laptops within the organization and it’s employees. This gives the security analysts and systems a fresh breath; they can now concentrate more on other important jobs than constantly worrying for data security. Also the risk of stealing data from discarded, phased out or failed system and hard disks is almost nil due to encrypted data.
