Techy
Dropbox Cloud Storage
Feb 16th
Dropbox is a cloud storage system where you can backup your files and folders on their servers and access them in real-time on Windows and Linux machines.
It integrates with the operating systems desktop manager and allows you to add/remove files just like a folder on your computer.
It’s free to try out and you’ll have 2GB of storage completely free; if you invite your friends using the referral scheme you get an extra 250MB per person (up to 3GB) so in theory you could have 5GB of online storage for nothing.
The good thing about Dropbox is that it supports Windows, Linux, Mac and even your iPhone and allows you to share files between these devices. It’s pretty good considering it costs you nothing.
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Google Chrome Extensions
Dec 12th
Google chrome have just released a BETA version of the extension gallery. You can check it out here. There are many good extensions already released. I have listed below some of the more interesting ones.
Speed Tracer (By Google) is one of the more advanced extensions available, this will provide you with detailed graph analysis of the speed that web pages are loaded.
Speed Tracer is a tool to help you identify and fix performance problems in your web applications. It visualizes metrics that are taken from low level instrumentation points inside of the browser and analyzes them as your application runs. Speed Tracer is available as a Chrome extension and works on all platforms where extensions are currently supported (Windows and Linux).
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Cloud Storage: Ubuntu One
Dec 7th
I came across a free (and paid) cloud service from Ubuntu; the creators of the popular OS Ubuntu Linux. You can have a free account and have 2GB’s worth of storage costing you nothing. If you happen to run the Ubuntu OS, One integrates with the desktop; providing ‘drag and drop’ functionality for backing up files.
More information below.
Game Server Manager Project
Dec 5th
Game Server Manager (GSM) started life as a very simple system for managing Linux based game servers. The early versions all worked via shell scripts and whilst this worked very well managing the servers requires an understanding of Linux. GSM was created to remove the requirement for any Linux knowledge in setting up and managing game servers.
You can view this project here: Game Server Manager website
Google unveils Chrome operating system
Dec 4th
Chrome OS, due to launch next year, will be based on Linux, and is leaner than Windows and some people believe it could radically change the way we use computers. User data will be stored on Google’s servers and synchronise with Chrome OS devices.
No common desktop applications such as Microsoft Word or Adobe Reader will run on Chrome OS and the only application it will come with is a web browser.
This means the user is limited to web applications such as Gmail and Google Docs. Google said that because Chrome OS doesn’t allow the user to install desktop applications, the user is less at risk from malicious software.
Chrome OS allows Google to collect more information on the computing habits of its users, adding to the information it already has about people’s search, email and video usage.
The software will be designed for portable computers such as netbooks; but currently not for desktop PCs or standard laptops.
Google Launches Public DNS
Dec 4th
Google will use its own DNS servers to resolve queries from computers using Google Public DNS. In its Thursday announcement, Google said that page loading performance would be improved by provisioning and load balancing its servers, and by minimising denial of service attacks.
Google will also experiment with pre-fetching name resolutions to speed page loading, loading translations into its cache before they are asked for, in the expectation that they will be required.
Google Public DNS does not support DNS security extensions(DNSSEC), a protocol that guarantees the integrity of DNS data and prevents cache poisoning — a vulnerability in DNS where attackers can insert misdirection information that hijacks user requests.