Do you carry around a USB thumb drive for easy file transportation? If so, you should check out this list of 5 USB applications. The list is short and the applications simple, but you can certainly get more out of your thumb with any of these applications. The post from MakeUseOf.com is well worth checking out. I highly recommend SyncToy from the list, I routinely use it for simple backups and love it.

Filed under: Friday Finds | No Comments

Attention everyone that is thinking about starting an independent career project. You know who you are. You’re someone with a good idea to make a little extra money or someone with an idea so great that it could one day help you break free from — “The Man”. The only thing holding you back is knowing whether you idea is “good enough.”

Filed under: Friday Finds | 2 Comments

Concluding my week long Twitter posts I’m listing a few good links to more Twitter resources:

Filed under: Friday Finds | 2 Comments

On Wednesday 5/21/2008 I detailed the steps I went through to solve my nephew’s unmountable boot volume problem. Fortunately for my nephew the problem wasn’t nearly as catastrophic as he originally thought, and I was able to get his machine back up and running. Unfortunately not all Windows boot failures are the same, and not all of them are easily remedied. If you’re experiencing a boot failure different then my nephew’s, you should check out FixYa (a technical support, instruction, and repair service). They have a fairly extensive list of common boot failure errors with recommended solutions.

Filed under: Friday Finds | No Comments

Since my recent hard drive issues, I’ve been thinking about different approaches to the basic “computer backup.” During my daydreams I wondered about a specific backup facility for the Thunderbird email client. Yes, a basic system level file backup can save all of my Thunderbird email data, but is there a way to backup email from within Thunderbird itself?

Filed under: Friday Finds | 3 Comments

I’ve been having some problems with my computer’s hard drive recently. The drive is actually a RAID level 0 two drive configuration. And while RAID 0 technically isn’t RAID, because it offers no data redundancy, I set up my desktop computer at this RAID level to make two 250 GB SATA 3 drives into one large and very speedy 500GB drive. I would have gone for a RAID level that offered some data redundancy, but my budget at the time did not allow for a third drive. Now I’m suffering a little pain from that decision.

Filed under: Friday Finds | No Comments

This week I’ve been writing about Microsoft’s dominance of the realm of word processing, spreadsheets, and presentation graphics — the office suite. In my opinion OpenOffice remains the best alternative to the Microsoft application trio because OpenOffice is free, has most of the same features as Office, and can read and write all the proprietary Microsoft Office formats. If, however, you’re not sold on OpenOffice, there are a few other alternatives; however, most are not free and don’t come as nicely packaged as OpenOffice.

Filed under: Friday Finds | 4 Comments

Still working more than 40 hours a week? Are you doing it because it’s mandatory overtime or because you think those extra hours are some sort of badge of honor? You can’t do much about mandatory overtime but you’re only kidding yourself if you think extra hours makes you better than the next employee.

Filed under: Friday Finds | 1 Comment

If you’re looking for a daily video-cast that offers short episodes with useful tech-tips and information, then check out Tekzilla Daily from Revision 3.

Filed under: Friday Finds | 2 Comments

Regardless whether you like or use Microsoft Internet Explorer, if you have any opinion on IE’s implementation of web standards, then you’ll absolutely love this post from Joel Spolsky.

Filed under: Friday Finds | 2 Comments