MP3tunes.com可儲存多達25GB的音樂檔案，費用全免。一旦上傳了您的歌曲，您便可以從任何聯網登錄您的帳戶 , 選擇或自動組合的目錄 , 串流播放你心愛的內容。

簽署啟動了一個帳戶後，下一步，從MP3tunes 下載一節下載LockerSync 3.0拷貝你的歌曲到 MP3tunes的服務器。該 Locker工具可將您電腦內的音樂與您在線音樂庫同步，該工具可用於Windows ，Mac和Linux 。你又可以用LockerSync掃描您電腦內的音樂，或將其設置為監測和同步特定文件夾。

由於ISP上傳速度緩慢，上傳大量檔案可能需要幾個小時到一天以上。但完成最初的上傳後，此後的同步該會更快。您可以就上傳正在進行之中開始串流播放音樂。 MP3tunes播放器運行在瀏覽器窗口，並提供間易的控制，包括shuffle和重複模式和播放目錄。你甚至可以選擇編輯一首歌曲的數據。MP3tunes並不限制於MP3格式：它可以串流無DRM限制的音頻格式，包括AAC ，奧格，和WMA 。MP3tunes還提供了一個瀏覽器插件，允許你從任何網站的MP3添加音樂到您的 Locker。

[翻譯自PC World 9/2008 文章]

The download zip file contains license agreement and a readme file which is self-explanatory. To burn an iso file just double click the downloaded exe file, input settings and begin burning, no installation is required.

Love small utilities, especially ones that don’t require install!

Download it from TeraByte Unlimited

When I was purging my treasure box full of 5.25″ and 3.5″ floppy discs, CD ROM’s and all sorts of stuff from the past, I found a CD ROM of Sun Miscrosystem’s Star Office 5.1 which I acquired in1999 by paying a small handling charge of about US$4. I remember I had it installed and running and I thought I was going to migrate away from paying our software licenses on Microsoft Word, Excel etc. (which I remember at that time they were not sold in a suite like they do now).

I have not since a big fan of StarOffice for some reasons. I re-visited StarOffice’s web site lately and found out the suite costs $35 to download.

I can’t go on writing without mentioning OpenOffice. If your are familiar with MS Office, you do a lot of works on Word, Excel or Powerpoint, then you should know OpenOffice. For some reasons you might not be using Open Office, but if it was the case I strongly suggest you to pay them a visit.

OpenOffice 3, now installed on my Mac, Linux and Windows PCs, have been the prime and only office suite for me. If you know Word or Excel, you know OpenOffice. OpenOffice is free!

I also tried to find out the difference between the 2 suites. I googled and stumbled onto macobserver.com’s article – Exploring the Differences between StarOffice and OpenOffice. And one paragraph says…

• The first thing we should know, according to Mr. Suarez-Potts, the Community Manager for OpenOffice.org at Sun Microsystems, Inc., is that both products are based on the same code base, slight differences are close to zero, and one can use each product on the Mac interchangeably. The key differences are in the branding, packaging and support.

The choice is your!

Yes, ADrive probably provides the biggest storage space online free of charge. Its 50 GB space could be more than sufficient for anyone’s backup.

• ADrive offers complete and secure solutions to store, backup, share, access, and edit files from virtually anywhere, at any time. ADrive serves as an online, centralized vault for all important file types including: music, videos, photos, documents, and more.

The user’s front page after logging in is Windows Explorer alike with a simple menu system and some ads for a basic account. Uploaded files on ADrive can be selectively shared with an URL. With an Internet connection, files and folders can be uploaded from anywhere.

I find it useful to have a bunch of my recipes on PDF’s stored on ADrive then I can link it to  emails or blogs for others to download conveniently.

The “Signature” and “Premiun” plans provides more features on top of the Basic account with no ads at costs of $7 and $14 per month.

Visit ADrive to experience many more other features yourself. I’m back to working on my recipes now…

Hotspot Shield provides a virtual private network (VPN) to its Internet gateway for users to surf the net with increased security. Its great for secure and anonymous Internet connection at home, office or public places.

Visit Hotspot Shield’s home page here to learn more about the features of this online security tool and to download the free Windows or Mac versions.

Because Hotspot Shield is hiding your IP address from your ISP so it can also be used to watch online TV shows on website like Hulu.com or Fox.com if you are located outside the United States. To use Hotspot Shield for iPhones follow the 4 steps configuration guide on Hotspot Shield’s website here.

Recently I had a chance to review alternatives of using Linux on desktops and notebooks. I visited Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, SLAX and Puppy Linux and decided to give Ubuntu a try. I downloaded a desktop edition of the Hardy Heron LiveCD from Ubuntu’s official web site and burned a CD for working with the installation. I have a P2, P4 3 GHz old desktops and a Celeron 2.6 GHz notebook that I could use for this installation so I decided to try the P2 first.

The LiveCD boots up my good-old-Dell P2 which was laying around for a while. I got everything including the Internet connection set up a a few minutes. It is a very old machine so I did not expect much out of it but using it just for surfing the Internet is not bad at all. So I decide to install Ubuntu onto its 8 GB hard disk drive.

I chose to use the entire hard disk for the installation. The install CD did a new partitioning and then started the install. It took quite a while but finally Ubuntu Linux was installed successfully. While it was running, an update notice prompted me to download updates for the OS. The update process was totally automatic after I provided the user password. I was able to use all of the apps that come with the package including Open Office and media players. I could also download and install new apps from the Synaptic Package Manager.

I find the Ubuntu interface very user-friendly and within a day I have been used to it for doing things I need to. The pull down menu with only 3 tabs (Application, Places and System) makes navigation like a breeze.

I went on doing installation for the P4 and the Toshiba A40 notebook after trying the LiveCD, and successfully have Ubuntu installed, updated and running the apps I needed. Both installations are done on dual boot so that I have the choice of booting up the systems with either Ubuntu or Windows. The dual boot install can be selected at the beginning of the installation.

Ubuntu Linux performs up to and probably exceeds my expectations. Start up is fast and networking with workgroup computers is rather straight forward. Before I decided to go with Ubuntu I have also tried PCLinuxOS, SLAX and Puppy Linux. I had problems with re-booting PCLinuxOS 2007 liveCD. Puppy Linu and SLAX are just too lean. I googled and noted a PCLinuxOS 2009is released in Beta in October 2008, therefore I would give it a try again later.

The free service allows users to upload unlimited files each up to 100MB without signing up. The site features unlimited uploads, downloads and bandwidth with no software required to be installed. Signing up an account allows user to manage the files at MediaFire with folders and photo gallery. Files can also be set to private, shared with a password or shown public. However files hosted in public require an unique URL to be given by the user to share them. Photos hosted at MediaFire can be shared by email, IM or embedded.

The user interface is simple and with an account, user can upload, view file folders and status with a couple of clicks.  MediaFire also offers Pro account which provides additional benefits such as SSL encryption and much larger file size.

MediaFire website

Instead of buying a new equipment, I used an old D-Link DI-514 wireless router to set it up as the new access point (now referred to the Access Point). Setting up was very easy.

1. Connect power to the Access Point.

2. Connect an Ethernet cable from one of the Access Point’s LAN port to a laptop (works more conveniently) or a PC.

3. Gain access to the Access Point by inputting the router administration URL 192.168.0.1

4. Since the Access Point was re-set to its original status, I used “admin” as the username to gain access to the administration page. Once in the administration page…

5 . Disable the DHCP server.

6. Enable WEP Encryption and input a key.

7. Go to LAN setting, and give it a new IP address. The original DI-514 has a default IP address of 192.168.0.1 but I wanted to change it to 192.168.1.2. This IP address has to be outside the Linksys router’s DHCP address range. For example Linksys has default IP’s starting from 192.168.1.100 to 149; so 192.168.1.2 would work.

8. Unplug the Ethernet cable from the laptop to the new Access Point now. Connect the cable from one of the LAN ports at the Linksys router to one of the new access point’s LAN port (note – it must NOT be the WAN port).

Now the new access point is ready for wifi access, with WEP encryption.

Difficulty level – easy

Download link for Abcc Free All Media to MP3 Converter…

Once the program is downloaded, install the program. The installer will also install XP Codec pack. After installation double click the shortcut to run. Select to Use The Free Version. On the main menu, click Add File. Then select the ASF file (or other format files) to be converted. Select convert format – MP3.

On the quality tab, just use the default values, no changes required. On the Output setting tab, browse to a folder you want to save the converted file.

Click Convert, another dialog box would ask you if you want to register, just close it assuming you want to use the free version only, and wait for the conversion. Upon completion, the MP3 file is saved in the folder you specified.

Note the free version can only convert one file at a time.

Download the HFS file from Rejetto.com located in the Download menu. It is a single executable file and it does not require installation. Save the file in a folder for running the program later.

Double click the file to run the program. HFS will ask if you want HFS to be in the shell context menu, click yes to confirm.

Here is an example to set up HFS on one PC connected to a router for other PC’s connected to the same router in order to access the PC running HFS server.

With the HFS program running, specify a folder to serve files by right-clicking the Home icon>Add folder from disk. Then select a folder (e.g. My Documents). The program will ask if you want a Real folder or a Virtual folder, select either one. My Documents will now be shown on the left pane of the program menu. To set a username and password to this folder, right click the folder shown and select Set user/password. Input the desired username and password then click OK.

To access this folder from another computer connected to the same router, open a web browser, say Firefox, and input an URL. In the case it would be 192.168.1.101 because this is the internal IP address the router assigned to the server PC. Type Return then the browser will show the My Document folder and when you click the folder it will prompt you for a username and password. With the correct username and password you will be able to open this folder.

To make uploading files to the server possible, right click the folder (my Document) in HFS server and select Upload. Select a new account and provide the necessary username and password. Now you will be able to upload files to this server too.

To connect the server on the Internet for other computers to access the server remotely, set up a hostname using No-ip.com

…or use a static IP address provided by your ISP.

Difficulty level – easy