A FREE and EASY Offline Browser Utility That I Use To Backup My Web Sites

I currently maintain two public sites and one private site using WordPress.com, Weebly.com and Blogger.com. Each of these services provide a back door option to backup a web site; however, these backup options (with the exception of Weebly) are somewhat proprietary and difficult to follow.

My primary concern with using these FREE services is that you are at the mercy of the provider and could be at risk of waking up one morning to find you are locked out of your site. To help keep my sanity, due to the amount of content I do have posted (on all three sites), I use a FREE utility called HTTrack Website Copier.

HTTrack Website Copier allows you to download a World Wide Web site from the Internet to a local directory, building recursively all directories, getting HTML, images, and other files from the server to your computer. HTTrack arranges the original site’s relative link-structure. Simply open a page of the “mirrored” website in your browser, and you can browse the site from link to link, as if you were viewing it online. HTTrack can also update an existing mirrored site, and resume interrupted downloads. HTTrack is fully configurable, and has an integrated help system.

HTTrack Website Copier may appear to be non-user friendly, when in fact it is actually pretty easy to use. You can get a quick step-by-step rundown on using it [HERE] . What I primarily use HTTrack for is to copy the main content of my sites in the event I need to move elsewhere.

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How To Save and Print A List of Installed Programs On Your Computer

I recently experienced a situation where a person’s computer, that was several years old, required a complete factory restore. When asked, “What programs did they have installed on the computer?”, the person was at a loss. Following this occurrence, I started to wonder if there was an easy way to view, save or print the programs that we have installed on our computers? This would be especially handy as a reference in the event of a computer crash. I know myself, there are many software packages I have installed; and, trying to remember what programs I installed (in the event of a computer failure) would be a real challenge, even for an ole’ geek like me.

I am sure there may be other options or methods to accomplish this task, but what I came across was a small software utility, that is portable, called MyUninstaller (by NirSoft). I know you are wondering, what does an uninstaller utility have to do with what we want to accomplish?

First, let me explain that MyUninstaller is in fact an alternative uninstaller utility to the standard Add/Remove applet of Windows operating system; HOWEVER, built into MyUninstaller is a menu options that gives you the ability to either save the list of all installed applications on your computer into a text file or HTML file (that can be viewed in your web browser).

To save the list to a text file, click on the File Menu and select Save Selected Items. To save and view the list as a HTML file, click on View and select HTML Report – All Items.

After using the options in MyUninstaller to generate a list of the programs on my computer, it has now become part of my overall backup strategy.

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Tech Product of the Week: U32 ShadowTM 1 TB External USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive

How would you like a 1TB (terabyte) external drive that is economically priced; carries a 3 year warranty; is the thinnest on the market; can be easily carried in your pocket; can dissipate heat by design; is USB bus powered (no power adapter required);, and, when connected to a USB 3.0 port is 5 times faster than USB 2.0?

Is so, then you need to check out the U32 ShadownTM 1 TB External USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive. These little drives are made by a company, based in St. Paul Minnesota, called Oyen Digital.

A drive such as this is a perfect backup strategy device to backup your personal files and then store the drive off-site.

Get the specs from the manufacturer - [ HERE ]

Oyen Digital is an innovative developer and manufacturer in the portable storage industry, specializing in professional A/V and RAID storage.

Customer Reviews: See what other people are saying about the U32 ShadownTM 1 TB External USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive– [CLICK HERE]

Readers: To keep the blog interesting, I plan to feature a tech product of the week that will feature a direct link to the manufacturer for specifications and a link to Amazon to see the customer reviews (and how the product is being rated).

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MediaFire App Now Available For Android

MediaFire is an online file storage and sharing service that most computer users at home are not familiar with. With MediaFire you are given 50GB’s of space (for FREE) with a 200 MB file upload size limit. Compared to the other online storage services (which typically offer much less FREE storage space), MediaFire is very generous in their offering. I have maintained an account with MediaFire for nearly 2 years and have never experienced an issue.

The complaint you will hear coming from people about MediaFire is that they will remove your account is your account is inactive. There is some truth to this; however, the rule is that if you must access the MediaFire API (your account) from either the Web, your Mobile platform or your desktop platform at least once per year and if you do that, your account will never be removed.  This is a pretty easy rule to follow; especially, that you are getting 50 GBs of online storage space.  If your account is in jeopardy you will receive sufficient notice via the email account you signed up with.

The one downfall to MediaFire, that I was experiencing, was no Android App available to access and manage my MediaFire files from my tablet. This has all changed within the past couple days (prior to the writing of this article).  MediaFire now has an Android mobile app available in the Google Play Store that can be downloaded to your Android phone or tablet.  You can get the MediaFire App [HERE] .

The MediaFire mobile app lets you access all your documents, photos, and videos from anywhere. Securely store, organize, and share all your data on the web and through your Android device.

Features:

• Keep all your important files at your fingertips.
• View docs, spreadsheets, presentations, video, and listen to audio.
• Take and upload pictures and videos directly in the MediaFire app.
• Upload Android gallery images.
• Create and manage folders of files.
• Share files on the go via email, SMS, through other Android apps, and with copy and paste links.
• Quickly search all your MediaFire files and folders.

MediaFire Android App:  Requires Android OS 2.2 or higher

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A FREE Registry Backup Tool For Windows 8

Just talking about the Windows Registry can make the hair stand up on one’s neck; however, if you work in IT there is a high probability, at some point, you will need to dissect the registry to make a system configuration change or to repair a registry setting that has been targeted by malware.

To those who have no idea of what I am talking about; the best and simplest definition I could find to describe the Windows Registry, for those at home, was at WikipediA.

The Windows Registry is a hierarchical database that stores configuration settings and options on Microsoft Windows operating systems.

Most folks at home are unaware of the registry and the method to edit the registry; which should only be performed by the skilled hands of a computer tech. To put the registry into perspective; ”mess up the registry and you mess up the operation of your computer”.

This is why backing up the registry should be part of your backup strategy. A program, that is FREE, I recently started to use for registry backups is called Registry Backup (go figure) by Tweaking.com .

Screenshot

When I upgraded to Windows 8 I wanted to make sure I had a compatible registry backup program and Registry Backup was the surefire solution.  Note:  Registry Backup is compatible with Windows XP, 2003, Vista, 2008, 7 & 8 (32 & 64 Bit).

I recently started using this program for several primary reasons:

Registry Backup uses the Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service to backup your system registry, which allows for perfect backups of the registry files and profiles on your computer.

Registry Backup is a full scale backup and restore program that has the ability to restore a backup from safe mode.

Registry Backup has a built-in scheduling option that can perform unattended backups.

I particularly keep registry backups around in the event of a malware infection, which in today’s world of computer, the registry becomes a prime target.  Also, during those rare occasions where I do make registry edits, I feel more comfortable making the edits knowing my bacon is covered with Registry Backup.

 Registry Backup – Features List:

• The program is 100% free.
• One click backup and restore.
• Can restore from Windows Safe Mode.
• Portable version can be ran from a thumb drive and keep backups of multiple systems.
• Automatic cleanup of older backups.
• Set and control scheduling options.
• Can backup & restore all user profiles on the system, not just the ones that are currently loaded.
• Control which registry files are backed up or restored.
• Detailed logs are saved with each backup.
• Multiple easy restore options.
• Online videos showing how to use the program and how to use the different restore options.

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Perform Much Smaller Mouse Movements or Touch Swipes To Close A Windows 8 App

Recently I posted an article, The Easy Way To Close A Windows 8 App, that explains how to close an app in Windows 8 by positioning the mouse pointer at the top of the app screen (where the pointer turns into a hand); then, dragging and dropping the app to the bottom of the screen.

On a desktop computer where the screen can be quite large and the travel distance (or threshold) to drag and drop the app (to close it) can be an exercise in itself. It was at this point I wondered if there was not a way to close the app quicker using less travel distance. Sure enough, using the analogy of “if you can think it, someone else has done it”, I came across a small portable utility called Close Threshold for Metro Apps.

By using Close Threshold for Metro Apps, if you set the sliders to the left, save the settings, you will find that you will not have to drag an app to the bottom of the screen. The travel distance to close an app is reduced dramatically resulting in a more efficient and faster method to close the app.

There is also an additional feature where you can completely disable the “drag and drop” method of closing an app all together.

With Close Threshold for Metro Apps you will able:

• to speed up Metro apps closing with mouse
• to speed up Metro apps closing with touch gestures
• to disable Metro apps closing with mouse
• to disable Metro apps closing with touch

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FREE Image Backup Software for Windows 8

This week my posts have been focused exclusively on Windows 8; due in part I just installed Windows 8 and I am like a kid in a candy shop.

As I continue to learn more about Windows 8 and customize my computer the more I realized that I needed to create a backup of my system. Yes, I could take the risk and hope all goes well and simply reinstall Windows if all fails, but that (especially in my case) would be a very time consuming process. This is where a good disk imaging program comes into play. In this case, by circumstance, Paragon’s FREE Disk Imaging Software for Windows 8 fell onto my plate.

When you see FREE for disk imaging software, I become skeptical; however, when I see FREE in conjunction with Paragon I know I am getting a good product. What this software does is walk you through the process of creating an exact image of your entire system. Like any imaging program and depending on the file content and disk size of your system, creating an image is not a fast process; BUT, it is definitely worth the wait. Also, you should use an external drive to make the backup to. Paragon will walk you through the entire process of selecting the volume you desire to backup, to rebooting your system to begin the backup, to rebooting your system back into your Windows environment.  To restore your system you must create a Paragon boot CD so that when your PC goes belly up you can insert the CD in the CD Drive and boot your computer into Paragon’s powerful Linux/DOS environment. From that environment you simply select the image you backed up to restore your computer back to the same level it was when you created the backup image.

Paragon’s Image Backup for Windows 8 is a disk-imaging tool for Windows 8 and Server 2012. It employs Microsoft VSS and Paragon’s patent-pending technologies for consistent point-in-time copies of the whole disk system or separate volumes. For recovery purposes it includes a powerful Linux/DOS environment. But its power is its support of the innovative ReFS.

Key Product Benefits

• Support of the latest Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012
• Support of the brand-new ReFS (Resilient File System)for backup, restore, and browsing under Windows and Linux
• Live Windows backup. Create an image-based copy of the whole disk system, or separate volumes and place it locally, to CD/DVD/BD, or on the net. The use of the disk-imaging mechanism and Microsoft VSS (Volume Shadow Copy Service) tackles the problem of backing up running applications and system locked files
• Flexible recovery. Restore the whole backup image, or only particular files under Windows or from the Linux/DOS recovery environment
• Additional maintenance functions. The Linux/DOS recovery environment includes basic functions for initializing, partitioning and formatting hard disks

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