transfer

Swap online-photo services with Migratr

There are already a lot of useful plug-ins for downloading or uploading from online sites such as Flickr, Picasa Web, Snapfish, Webshots (disclaimer: owned by CNET Networks), and the rest, but most applications only work with one specific service.

If you want to move all of your images from one site to another (if you're one of those unhappy Flickr users, for example), and you're not looking forward to manually downloading and uploading hundreds of pictures, Migratr might be able to help. A home-brewed tool from independent developer Alexander Lucas, Migratr automatically downloads all of your photos from one site, and uploads them to the other.

It sounds great, so what's the catch? Well, Migratr only currently includes support for Flickr, Picasa Web, 23HQ, SmugMug, and Zooomr (which shouldn't even be counted because it has temporarily disabled bulk uploaders). However, downloading and uploading among the four available online photo services worked wonderfully for me. I must admit, however, that I was transferring tens of files, not thousands.… Read more

.Mac users getting remote goodies this holiday

One of the more interesting takeaways from this morning's keynote at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference was the news that .Mac subscribers running Leopard would be able to enjoy a new remote desktop feature called "Back to my Mac." Users will be able to sort and scavenge through the contents of computers far away from their home network machines using Leopard's new finder and transfer files to and fro freely. The service works with any Mac running Leopard that's been set up with .Mac authorization.

During this morning's demo, Apple's CEO Steve Jobs … Read more

Quickeo builds nice multimedia e-mails, but snags hold it back

It's been a while since we covered a file transfer product like Izimi, Tubes, YouSendIt, or Zapr. But there are still new solutions popping up to solve the problem of sending big files. The latest--that we know of--is Quickeo.

This product's special sauce is that it will bundle up several multimedia files into an attractive e-mail "album". When a recipient clicks on link in the e-mail, it will fire up a Web page that he or she can use to play your files directly.

To create a Quickeo album and send these e-mails, you need to … Read more

Elite data transfer headaches--already?

New owner of an Xbox 360 Elite? Well, if you were planning on transferring your Xbox Live Arcade games along with the rest of the data from your old 360, think again. There seems to be a major problem with how the transfer kit imports the games, involving DRM--yes, even games now suffer from this poorly thought-out technology. After a successful hard drive transfer, all of your purchased Arcade games will magically downgrade to demos. In order to have full access to these games, you must sign into Xbox Live (thanks to Joe at The Pensive Gamer for pointing this … Read more

Steekr: Another virtual drive service

Steekr is a new online storage service with automated backup software for both Windows and Mac. Users get a gigabyte to store whatever they want. Steekr is a sibling product to SteekUp, parent company Agematis' business-centric backup service that gives customers 100GB with a paid subscription. The new service is designed for casual users who want to automate file backups or move large files between locations without optical media.

The software installation is needed only for people who want to automate file backups. If you want to stick to the Web, you can still back up anything you want with … Read more

Back up your mom with Crashplan

I tried a few online backup services last year: Carbonite, Mozy, ProtectMyPhotos, and Titanize. I use Carbonite to back up my home system, but I have found the Achilles heel of online backup: it's really slow. My first backup of music, photo, and video files over my home broadband connection took, literally, months. Plus, online backup puts my files on someone else's servers. They're probably more secure than my home machine, but it still makes me a bit uncomfortable.

A new service, Crashplan, lets you back up your PCs and Macs to other PCs and Macs, either … Read more

BeInSync makes PC-to-PC sync (relatively) easy

Webware gives you the capability to access your personal information from anywhere there's a network connection. But that doesn't necessarily mean you have to rely on anonymous server farms--you can also use your own personal computers as online storage. If you use multiple computers, file synchronization tools like Microsoft's FolderShare (which I have relied on for almost two years) remove the need to worry about which PC you last used to work on a file--you synchronize directories across your machines, and every one of them gets everything you do. It's brilliant.

The first file sync tool … Read more