backup

Twice in the last month I had to become reacquainted with Microsoft Office because a company I was working with required a genuine Office file. Both experiences made me appreciate Google Drive's simple, straightforward apps all over again.

Yes, there are tasks Google Drive's word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation program can't handle well or at all, but for 99.9 percent of the files I work on, Google Drive fits the bill nicely. Here are five ways to use Google Drive to shave minutes off your workday.

Keyboard shortcut opens a list of keyboard shortcuts After a … Read more

BackBlaze, an online backup company that for the last five years bootstrapped itself with its own funding, has taken a $5 million investment from U.K.-based TMT Investments to speed its growth.

The funding will be used for advertising, promotional partnerships, and hiring engineers to bring new features such as an iOS app to market, Chief Executive Gleb Budman said.

The 16-employee company, founded in 2007 ago and headquartered in San Mateo, Calif., has been profitable with plans that cost $5 a month, $50 for a year, or $95 for two years. TMT said in its announcement today that … Read more

Twitter is developing a new tool that will let users export their whole tweet history -- everything from smart observations to those embarrassing tweets that people may not want to remember.

"We're working on a tool to let users export all of their tweets," Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said in a meeting with The New York Times yesterday. "You'll be able to download a file of them."

As of now, users can only search back through the last few thousand posts. And even though third-party sites and apps let users backup their tweets, they … Read more

It's no secret we're big fans of backups. Frequent and thorough, data and system, partial and full; we just can't get enough of them (is that possible?) but our enthusiasm is based on hard-won experience. NCH's FileFort Backup Software is a free backup utility that creates full and incremental backups. It doesn't create a system image, so it's not a substitute for a full backup solution that can completely restore your system to a new disk, if necessary. It protects your critical data from damage or loss on a regularly scheduled basis, quickly and … Read more

The Pogoplug is a small box that plugs into your home router, then makes external storage devices (hard drives, flash drives) available to your PCs, mobile devices, and people on the Web you want to share with.

For a limited time, Buy.com has the Pogoplug Mobile for $29.99 shipped. You can also get the Pogoplug Classic for $29.95 shipped.

Just to clarify, what Buy.com calls the Pogoplug Mobile is now known simply as the Pogoplug. It differs from the Classic in that it offers just one USB port for plugging in external storage -- but also … Read more

Windows 8 is said to be arriving sometime in October, but that hasn't stopped Slimware Utilities from releasing its brand-new W8-specific PC-imaging program today.

RecImg Manager is a free program that's designed to back up and restore your entire Windows 8 Operating System and other installed software, without affecting your personal files. Whether your system has been corrupted by malware or you're dealing with other kinds of system errors, the ability to "refresh" your computer is one that shouldn't be overlooked.

Many backup and recovery utilities for PC work by backing up your entire … Read more

Despite recent advances in streaming media, when it comes to watching movies, you still can't beat Blu-ray.

Indeed, it's precisely because of Blu-ray's unsurpassed picture and sound quality, to say nothing of its copious extras, that many movie lovers still prefer to own their favorite films on those shiny silver platters.

Shiny, expensive silver platters. I kind of feel like now that I've bought and paid for a Blu-ray of "Despicable Me," I should be able to make a backup copy -- just in case the original gets scratched. And what if I want … Read more

Settling into the driver's seat of a modern, 2012 model year automobile means that you'll be facing quite a few LCD screens. You've got the display for the audio system, sometimes a color screen for navigation, the occasional standalone climate-control display, the monochromatic trip computer/vehicle settings LCD in the instrument cluster, and sometimes the instrument cluster itself is just one big LCD. Lots of screens demanding more and more of the driver's visual attention.

Sometimes, it's good to simplify and consolidate these screens down to a more manageable number. Many drivers chose to do … Read more

Space is a premium in your car's cabin, even more so when we're discussing your windshield. You don't want to go cluttering up your view of the road with too many devices. It's easy to get out of hand with a navigator, a Bluetooth speakerphone, an audio source, and a fuel economy meter.

That's why we've rounded up five portable GPS devices that do more than just navigate.… Read more