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Keeping your data safe on the clouds
Is Bing paying News Corp to delist websites from Google?
Reading the website headers
Take notes and store them online

Posted: 24 Nov 2009 02:39 PM PST

Data loss is a nightmare for any of us. Imagine your hard disk crashing overnight for no reason and you, loosing all your hard earned data in a split second (It actually, has happened with me, once).

Scary? Well, keeping backup is the fool proof idea to keep your data safe. Today, I’m going to tell you about the best-of-the-best data backup and sync tools available on the internet which will enable you not only to back up your data, but also to access it from anywhere in the world.

CrashPlan : It is available for Windows/Linux/Mac OS/Open Solaris. Extremely user friendly interface. You can back your data up offline by downloading their software and the software will automatically sync your data to the servers when you get online.
Mozy : Available for Windows/Mac, It has a basic FREE pack with 2 GB of online storage for you backups. The major plus point is, it is an automatic backing up system. Once you install Mozy in your computer, and it will take backups all by itself in real time. You can however, set the frequency of the backups taken.
DropBox : This is my favourite backup tool. I use it personally because it gives me seamless integration to both linux and windows backups. It is available for Windows/Linux/Mac and with a basic free plan of 2GB online storage. The best thing about drop box is, whenever you sign in for dropbox, you will get a referall link. If your friends sign up to dropbox using that link of yours, you get additional storage for your DropBox account.
Jungle Disk : Jungle Disk takes a different approach to backup on several different levels. Rather than offering a flat rate pricing for unlimited storage, Jungle Disk operates on a fee system. You pay $2 a month per account plus a fee per GB of data used. The fee structure per GB is currently: $0.15 for storage, $0.10 for upload, and $0.17 for download.
Carbonite : Available for Windows and Mac, they have a simple pricing plan: $54.95 for a year of unlimited storage from a single computer. Like Mozy, Carbonite also offers block-level incremental backup to speed up the backup process. You can access your files through a web-based interface when you are away from home, and you can use the Carbonite application to restore all or some of your files at any time.

[Editor's Note: This is a post written by our Guest Blogger Rishabh Agarwal. He is an engineer by profession and web designer by choice along with being a Linux enthusiast.

If you too like to write for Devils Workshop, please check this. Details about our revenue sharing programsare here.]

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Is Bing paying News Corp to delist websites from Google?

Posted: 24 Nov 2009 05:25 AM PST

Bing has signed a deal with News Corp which gives them access to their content. It should not be really all that important except that News Corp only a few weeks ago had sent out feelers that they were about to de-list their websites from Google Search. This will probably start another round of the competition between Google and Bing.

bingvsgoogle1

Google vs Bing

Bing has signed up a deal with News Corp and will be paying for exclusive material from their newspapers and journals. This most definitely means News Corp will de-list their website from Google search in return. What does it really imply? It implies that you cannot search for News Corp content using Google.
This might in a way force Google do to the same, that is pay for news content and hence in the long run hurt their profits. Will Google follow Bing? I doubt it will. The loser in this case can be News Corp, who will have it’s website content show up only to people using Bing and no visitors will be directed from Google.
Finally Google does not make any money from Google News so this would not really dent Google at all.

Blogs and Tweets

Some news companies do have legitimate concerns because if their content is free to view it can also end up being copied by bloggers which in a way will finally hurt original creators of the content.
What if their interpretation is different? Most respectable bloggers would never really copy material online. But if something that is news worthy will be commented upon and sometimes a alternative viewpoint presented.
Even if News Corp is not listed on Google, it can still end up being on Google Search engine in the form of references by tweets and blog articles.

Who really owns the News?

The question is really debatable. Can a company lay claim to an event that happens in the public domain. I think that the way forward for news content providers would be to monetize their websites by having visitors and show them advertisements. This is done by many news providers anyways.

To expect people to pay for subscription is something that will probably not work. People are not really going to pay for content which they get for free somewhere else. For example you can gets access to news from a ‘tweet’ on Twitter. It does not even need a Search Engine to get the word around now a days.

What do you think about this latest ongoing tussle between Bing and Google. Will the ultimate loser be Bing or Google? Or will it be News Corp? Let me know through your comments.

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Reading the website headers

Posted: 24 Nov 2009 03:03 AM PST

Websites are the life and soul of the internet. Like living souls are made of cells, internet is made of websites. Ever since, you have been introduced to the internet, you have been writing that [http] and [www] on the url bar and then going on the desired web page. Today, we will have a look on what that stuff really means and exploring some fantastic secrets too!

Whenever you enter a website url, your web browser sends a request to the web server. Behind the scene, the HTTP protocol is doing the trick. It is nothing, but a set of rules or language in which the web server and the web browser communicate. Now, every website has headers. They are not visible in normal browsing, and you need special tools/add ons to view them. But they contain a wealth of information about a website. And often, this is a place where real geek webmaster hide some info or just casual easter egg jokes!

Well, to view website headers, you’ll need Live HTTP Headers add-on for Firefox. Other way is, to downloading an additional utility The curl utility is available on Linux, Mac OS X, and even Windows.

To view the web headers, simply start the Firefox addd on and type the web address. It will automatically catch the headers. Other method, just go to command line and type:

curl -I webaddress.com

Now comes the interesing part! You will be amazed to know, what is hidden behind the website headers of many popular websites. Let me make you see some of them.

If you type in curl –I slashdot.org, you'll see that they embed random quotes from Futurama into the headers:

curl1

The blogging platform WordPress uses the header for a useful purpose—they recommend contacting them about a job if you've been able to locate the headers:

curl2

If you happen to get a job at Wordpress because of this, do let us know

Win $150 Every Month in "Bloggers$ of The Month" Award

Writing for Devils Workshop and other blogs in our network just got better!

Now you can be "Blogger$ of The Month" and win from $150 cash prizes, in addition to direct 100% AdSense revnue from your post.
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Take notes and store them online

Posted: 24 Nov 2009 01:44 AM PST

Often when I work online, I need to store some text or write down notes. Sometimes I have a random idea and need to put down some words so I can look them up later and work on a concept.

What I do is write down notes on a Notepad and save the file on my desktop. As I work from different computers, I end up using Dropbox to make the file available on two different computers. This led me to try and look up for a notepad which can be used online and Simple Text does just that.

Simple Text

All I needed to do was visit Simple Text website.
Sign in with my Google account.
Start typing and creating new notes. This note could be saved and accessed using my Google id.
Simple Text being available online obviously makes it cross-platform. I find it a great help while writing points while writing a post and then storing them online.

Application Support

Simple Text does work with an Write Room for i-Phone application. Being open source, I think there should be more applications available across various platforms that support Simple Text. Some might say a notepad is not that important or even relevant. But I disagree here. Notepad applications are still relevant especially as a blogger I often feel the need to save or write down a few notes which I can refer to later.

If you are looking to save notes online, try using Simple Text and let me know your opinions through your comments.