Windows Tools, Help & Guides

I recently reviewed Poladroid, a program, which turns your photos into Polaroids. A representative of Rollip.com approached me and asked me to try their service. In this review, I’ll show you what Rollip can do.

Rollip Features

Rollip is a free service that lets you upload your pictures and apply effects to them before turning them into classic Polaroid-style pictures.

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Google offer a very healthy 7372 MB of storage to it’s GMail users.  Previously i’ve covered how to use Windows SkyDrive to your advantage.  This time it’s Googles turn.

This guide will show you how to add your GMail account to Windows Explorer, thus enabling a drag & drop system for you to use you GMail account as additional storage on your computer.  Even if you don’t use GMail as an email provider nobody can turn down an extra 8GB of storage, can you?

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You may have noticed there’s been a huge emphasis lately, on Windows Guides, about security and protection. As I’m going through the site and working on improving old posts (more about this soon), I’m trying to make sure you’re all protected for malware, identity theft, and malicious website. Something  I am a fan of is community support for protection online. The Web of Trust is one of the biggest community-based website rating sites.

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This is an excerpt from the Windows Guides PC Security Handbook. To learn more or find out other security-related tips, download the PC Security Handbook now.

Data backup is essential. If you’d like to explore local backup options, download my Windows pocket guides. I strongly recommend using online (off-site) backups. Backing up your data online prevents data loss if your computer is damaged or stolen—or if your data is wiped by malware.

Online Data Backup

By far my favorite solution for online backup is Mozy. Mozy offers free online storage (up to 2GB with paid options too.) I’ve had Mozy installed on my laptop for over two years and it has saved me on more than a handful of occasions.

Setup is simple and after downloading Mozy, you can specify what you want to back up and when. Mozy will automate your backups and let you decide when it backs up (specific times), what causes it to back up (low CPU usage), and how often (one, two, three etc. times a day.)

I just let Mozy run and it alerts me after a successful backup:

You can specify what types of files to backup or specify folders— it’s up to you:

Mozy even integrates into My Computer so you can browse and restore your backed up files (even ones you’ve deleted from your computer):

MozyHome Features

• Open/locked file support: Mozy will back up your documents whether they’re open or closed.
• 128-bit SSL encryption: The same technology used by banks secures your data during the backup process.
• 448-bit Blowfish encryption: Secures your files while in storage, providing peace of mind that your private data is safe from hackers.
• Automatic: Schedule the times to back up and MozyHome does the rest.
• New and changed file detection: MozyHome finds and saves the smallest changes.
• Backs up Outlook files: Disaster-proof email protection.
• Block-level incremental backup: After the initial backup, MozyHome only backs up files that have been added or changed, making subsequent backups lightning fast.

Download Mozy for Free

Download MozyHome Free

As a web developer, it is important for me to test my websites in different browsers. As much as I don’t like to support older browsers, many people use them, and I need to ensure that compatibility is at its highest. If you are a web developer, or if you recently upgraded to IE8, you may notice that you cannot have multiple versions of IE on your computer at the same time. A solution to this problem is to use IE Collection. This program installs all of the main builds of IE 8 on your PC.

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If you run a website or have a remote Linux server, Tunnelier is a great solution for your connection needs. Tunnelier functions as an SMTP client and gives you a fully functional terminal to work with. I use Tunnelier for all my websites and it does everything I need. I try programs like FileZilla, WinSCP, and FireFTP, but this is by far the best solution.

Download Tunnelier