<insert cheesy comment=”You must be cuckoo for not using Cucku!”> But seriously I have searched for quite awhile looking for a good peer-to-peer backup system and I’ve found it. Cucku, a social backup system, is a great solution to saving your files offsite. Why do you need to save your files offsite you ask…

For one you should always have a backup of your important files. Whether is be to a jumpdrive, portable hard drive, extra internal hard drive, or offsite. Personally, I have a backup run weekly of my documents and pictures and save that to an extra internal hard drive and I try to burn my pics to dvd after they build up and put them in a safe deposit box at my bank. The only problem with burning dvd’s is it’s not automatic, and lets face it if its not automatic your going to slip up. The reason to have an offsite backup is in case of natural disasters, fire, tornado, earthquake, anything that could ruin your computer.

Cucku offers offsite backup through peers in skype. Chances are you have someone you trust with extra room on their hard drive, and if they don’t buy them some extra space it only a one time fee instead of monthly with some online storage services. Your files are encrypted so you don’t have to worry about your friend seeing those pics you took of your wife in the shower while she wasn’t looking.

The only draw back to this program is the first download is slow and will take awhile. But after that it only syncs the changes that have been made. You can set it to backup daily or weekly and the program runs in the background and doesn’t seem to hinder your bandwidth at all. You can also setup multiple offsite backups with different contacts in skype. The software is very user friendly and either party can pause or stop the transfer.

Check out Cucku – Social backup here

Filed under: Software | 1 Comment

If you are not using Firefox download it now, you will thank us later. Now on to the good stuff, FireNES is an add-on to your Firefox browser that gives you over 2000 of your favorite old school Nintendo games. You can browse the games in your sidebar and you even have the option to select favorites, although it doesn’t seem to be working at this time. Once you find your game just double click and it will open in a little java applet, you don’t even have to blow on the cartridge.

Download FireNES

Filed under: Games, Web | Post a comment

Limit reservable bandwidth
Determines the percentage of connection bandwidth that the system can reserve. This value limits the combined bandwidth reservations of all programs running on the system. By default, the Packet Scheduler limits the system to 20% of the bandwidth of a connection, but you can use the setting to override the default.

Here is how to reclaim your bandwidth:

Click Start -> Run -> and type gpedit.msc
Got to Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Network -> QOS Packet Scheduler -> Limit Reservable Bandwidth
Double click Limit Reservable Bandwidth, tick Enable and change the Bandwidth limit (%) to 0

Filed under: Microsoft, Tips and Tricks | 2 Comments

Types of Girls

Hard Disk Girls:
She remembers everything, FOREVER.

RAM Girls:
She forgets about you, the moment you turn her off.

Windows Girls:
Everyone knows that she can’t do a thing right, but no one can live without her.

Screensaver Girls:
She is good for nothing but at least she is fun!

Internet Girls:
Difficult to access.

Server Girls:
Always busy when you need her.

Multimedia Girls:
She makes horrible things look beautiful.

CD-ROM Girls:
She is always faster and faster.

Email Girls:
Every ten things she says, eight are nonsense.

Virus Girls:
Also known as “WIFE”; when you are not expecting her, she comes, installs herself and uses all your resources. If you try to uninstall her you will lose something, if you don’t try to uninstall her you will lose everything.

Filed under: Humor | Post a comment

I’ve just spent 3 days at the 25th annual ACCM Show in Orlando, FL and wanted to share with you a few very helpful tools to help you better manage your SEO and Site Optimization campaigns. Oh, and these tools are completely free to use with the exception that you might have to register for a user account or two.

• Google Webmaster Tools
  If you are not using the various free tools that Google provides then shame on you. You’re ultimate goal is to rank well in the search engines and you have the biggest search engine of them all providing you with free tools to help you do just that. With Webmaster Tools you will be able to monitor and adjust how Google search bots deal with your site. It will tell you what errors it has encountered, when it last crawled your site, the top keywords that land visitors on your site and where you rank for those queries in Google’s Search Engine Results Page (SERP).
• Yahoo Site Explorer
  This is Yahoo’s version of Google’s Webmaster Tools and although they offer some of the same features Yahoo does offer a few extra features to allow you to basically carve out the way they view your site. You can manipulate your URL’s to exclude some of the extra query information that is tacked on to the end of your site’s pages.
• Rex Swain
  The main tool I am referring to from Rex is the HTTP Viewer tool. This nifty Perl script allows you to read through the page headers of a website and basically see what the spiders and bots are seeing when they visit your website. Another outstanding use for this tool is the ability to view what HTTP responses you are handing back to browsers, bots and spiders. Why would you do this? If you are transferring your site from one domain to another or migrating pages a great way to make sure you have the correct redirect setup is to use this tool and verify it is working how you had planned.
• Google Analytics
  If you are not already using an analytics tool you need to change that as soon as possible. Analytics tools allow you to see how your visitors are using your website. Stop assuming how they use and start making well informed and educated decisions based on actual visitors data. This is the quickest method to find out what areas or your site are working and what areas or not. Once you have analytics setup be sure to setup the e-commerce and site search portions if they apply to your website. The site search allows you to know exactly what your visitors are wanting to find on your site, so repeat the the search yourself and make sure you agree with the results you are presenting. Another analytic to monitor is the bounce rate. Find your highest and lowest bounced pages and try to mimic what you are doing right on the low bounce to the high bounced page. There are much more tips but these should get you headed in the right direction.
• Compete.com
  This website lets you take a very close look at your competitors to see what keywords they are optimizing for and how you are comparing to them for those keywords as well as other factors. It’s the closest thing I’ve found to knocking on the door and asking to login to their analytics account.

Did I miss a great tool (which is very possible since this is such a short list) feel free to share you favorite tools with me in our comments section.

Filed under: Web, analytics, optimization, seo, site tools | Post a comment