Category Archives: cloud computing

Integrate SkyDrive into Windows

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headerWindows Live SkyDrive is yet another one of those online storage solutions. (And not even the only one from Microsoft.) I haven’t used it as much as I might like mainly because it was yet another cloud storage system that you had to access through a Web browser. In other words, it wasn’t transparent to use.

If you download and install SkyDrive Explorer your SkyDrive is now presented as just another drive on your computer, even though it’s online storage. Once installed, just open “computer” and you’ll see SkyDrive Explorer listed there. 

Sky Drive Explorer 1

Just open that up as you would any other drive and you’ll have access to all of your SkyDrive-based files and folder. (You will be asked to log in first of course.) Additionally, if you’ve made a file public, you can right-click on that file and get the public URL for that file automatically copied to your clipboard for easy pasting into an e-mail or blog post.

Sky Drive Explorer 2

I’ve still got Drop.io, and Dropbox accounts but this one does make Live SkyDrive seem just a little bit easier to use than those others.

Petabytes on a budget

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I have about 2 terabytes of storage attached to my home computer. 1TB = 1,000 GB. 1,000 TB = 1 Petabyte (PB). If I win the lottery I think I’ll take some of it and play around by building a Backblaze Pod which contains 45 hard drives totaling 67 TB of storage per unit. That’s just just a little more than $118,000 for 1 Petabyte of storage. Of course, by the time I win the lottery, laptops will probably come with Petabyte hard drives built in. Backblaze has open-sourced the design and provide complete instructions on building such a device on their blog. They’re also the company I use for my online backups for just $5.00 per month.

backblaze-storage-pod-main-components backblaze-storage-pod-power-wiring-diagram  backblaze-storage-pod-sata-cable-wiring-diagram

Backup your Windows Mobile phone online

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Microsoft My Phone logo Most of us with Windows Mobile phones end up synching our content with an Exchange server. As great as this is, it doesn’t back up everything. Last week Microsoft released My Phone which, once installed on your phone and an account created online, will sync all of your phone’s content (everything Exchange server syncs plus your photos, documents, text messages and more) into an online account. Once synched you can log into your online account, add and edit your content, and changes will be automatically synched back with your phone. Additionally, should you find yourself with a new phone, just reinstall My Phone and get all your content put onto your new phone.

Here’s a few screenshots of my online account:

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Bonus information: The URL that the site tells you to go to on your phone doesn’t always work. To install on your phone, head on over to http://mobile.microsoft.com/myphone/en-us/default.mspx in your phone’s browser.