Google Drive Review (Video Included)

Who doesn’t love free file storing and sharing application? Not too long ago we looked into another kind of file storing and sharing service known as Dropbox. It wasn’t one of the best services but it is up there. But later down the road I started to see more and more advertisements for Google Drive (read: what is Google Drive?). Through their applications it looked like nothing more than a bunch of office applications in one program, so I decided to do a little more research into it and found out it was another file storing and sharing service offered by Google.

Click to read more ...

Filing Cabinet for iPhone / iPad: Free File Manager

Do you have a lot of data to store and you are tired of the mess of files it is leaving you your mobile device? This is a fantastic app for the iPad that allows you to store your own databases, which can be fully customized to your specifications. This includes text, signatures, contacts, numbers, dates and images.

Click to read more ...

Sick of Hard Drives failing? This sapphire disk has you covered!

As they are known, hard disk aren't the most reliable things in the world, sometimes failing just weeks after you've bought them, however the technology that is being incorporated in recent years has propelled the storage market, but this new edition will revolutionize the way we see storage.

The project originated in nuclear waste repositories and realised they needed a reliable way of storing the records of where they had buried the waste, and with nuclear half lives being hundreds of thousand of years a tradition Hard Disk Drive was out of the question.

Scientist set out to find a material that would allow data to be stored for a significant amount of time. Sapphire was the material of choice with the data being etched in platinum. The two disks will then come together to form an information sandwich, which are then molecularly fused together. To ensure the disks would be suitable for sustained used the disks were immersed in acid to simulate aging and is said to last 1 million years.

This may sound like an amazing idea but there are two drawbacks. First off, a prototype costs a staggering $30,000 and second, if you need to preserve data for use in tens of thousands of years, what language do you use? How about pictures instead?

Twitter

Tips on How to Free Up Storage on your iOS Devices

Have you ever noticed that your iOS device storage space is filling up fast? Well if you do below will be several tips on how to free up some space.

1. Remove Apps - If you download an app that you used once or twice and believe you may never use them again, then just delete them and that can save you from anywhere 1 MB to all the way up to 1.5 GB.

2. Remove all unwanted music. If you are on a shared computer and many different people in your house have different music on the one computer and you only listen to 1 GB out of 6GB on your computer, then make a playlist for yourself and within your iTunes iOS device setting when you plug it into your computer, select Music at the top bar and uncheck all music and check selected playlists and then select the playlist you just made for yourself.

3. Removed watched movies/videos. If you're a big traveler and have many movies on your iOS device, remove the ones you already watched or unwanted on your iOS device anymore. If you still want to have many movies/videos on your iOS device, you can have them on an external WiFi mobile hard drive that can hold all your movie/video files on it. Here is one that I suggest you look at: http://is.gd/zkk5kO.

4. Empty out your Photos/Camera Roll. If you have a sibling or child that takes pictures that are unwanted, just delete them. Also, don't sync your whole photo libary to your phone; only sync wanted pictures.

If you just do some of those steps listed above, you can easily clear up many MB or even many GB of space on your iOS device.

Twitter

Pogoplug Pro Review

Looking to create your own personal cloud that you can share with others? Then the Pogoplug may be for you, all you need are some external hard drives and an outlet! Let's take a look at what it has to offer.

Setup is stupidly easy, I plugged my fresh out of the box Pogoplug Pro into my router and clicked activate on my.pogoplug.com. From their I went under the settings and changed it to connect wirelessly and I was done in under 5 minutes. I moved the Pogoplug Pro back in my room and hooked up my drives. After a painfully long 8 days it finally finished indexing, and all of my content had readily available previews. These previews allowed me to view all of my content via the Pogoplug app on my android phone with very little lag, even on 3g. This is probably my favorite feature of the device. 

The appearance of the device is very unique, running about the size of a 3.5’ hard drive it rests on a springy stand that flexes like crazy. Although the design is very appealing, I think they could have made the device a bit smaller, considering it does not contain storage. A smaller footprint or a stackable design would have been nice to see. The cable management on the back of the device is perfect and kept all the usb cables neat and tidy. Included with the device are an ethernet cable and power cable, both which are white. I found the cable color a bit off, considering the entire device is black but it wasn’t an issue. A quick thing to note is that the power cord falls out very easily in the Pogoplug Pro, a slight bump of the device could cause it to power off.

The Pogoplug works just as advertised, with one minor exception, unlimited storage. Pogoplug advertises “unlimited cloud storage” all over their website but the statement is very misleading. The Pogoplug only puts the storage you own online, it does not supply any for you to use. Using my own storage I can access all of my files online and I am able to mount them in OSX via the Pogoplug app. Attaching a usb hub to expand on the only 4 ports included worked fine, so those with more than 4 hard drives would not have an issue. Accessing drives with the Mac application was a hit or miss, they didn’t always mount for me. The online interface is very basic as seen below and you can do everything possible with your Pogoplug from it.

Sharing files with others is a very simple process and works very similarly to Dropbox, you designate a folder that you want to share, upload files to it and share the link anywhere! This was by far my favorite feature of the device, sharing large video files was super easy and my friends could send stuff over in emails without a problem. All I had to do was add their email address to the Pogoplug and they could send anything. Another very cool option is the ActiveCopy, you can select folders on your Mac or PC that you want to backup and they will upload to a designated folder. While the concept was cool, the upload speeds were painfully slow for me.

Printing with the Pogoplug was a complicated process for me and I really didn’t find it useful or practical. If you are looking for remote printing I would look elsewhere or buy a wireless printer.

The Pogoplug is for someone who wants store stuff online and still have complete control over where their data is. Instead of spending hundreds of dollars setting up a home server the Pogoplug does it for just under $100 ($99 MSRP). 

Lastly and most important to me is the customer service. Pogoplug.com offers many easy to follow tutorials and demos of how to properly setup and use your device. They also offer a community forum where you can post questions and will usually get an answer in a few hours. While I do not like that they do not have phone support (I like talking to people), the forums seemed do the trick with such a simple device.

Still not sure if the Pogoplug is for you? Let me break it down.

If you have a lot of external hard drives and want to get them online this is the easiest and cheapest and easiest way i’ve seen to do it. If you are looking for a large amount of fast, reliable cloud storage and don’t care where it’s stored, I would suggest an online service such as Dropbox, Box.net or even MobileMe. 

If you have any questions please leave them below and as always you can find me on YouTube. Thanks for reading! 

After thoughts:

-The cables included are of very high quality.

-The device does get warm when lacking proper air circulation.