Awesome, Free Software for your Biz & Home! Pt.2
That’s right! Our most popular blog is back with some more awesome free software for home & biz, lets get to the good stuff.
Wunderlist – www.Wunderlist.com
Wunderlist is an online sync-able application that syncs your task lists to almost all devices you own. If you have M$ Exchange and are a heavy task user, you know that tasks don’t sync to your iPhone & Android, and if you have a Blackberry, you have more problems then just tasks not syncing. If you have Google, you know that Google’s idea of tasks and managing them is a joke, especially when considering that they don’t sync and need third party apps to sync to mobile devices to see them nice and neatly on your device screen. As an ex-Exchange user, a current Google Apps for Business user, and a person heavily reliant on tasks, there has NEVER been a good task syncing tool UNTIL NOW! Wunderlist is web based, supports iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows, Mac & Linux & they support a downloadable desktop app as well. If you don’t want to use the web app, you can use the desktop app, your choice! You can assign notes to each task, set due dates and make your tasks public to anyone who has your secret web link. It would be nice if exchange synced tasks natively, and it would be nice if the Google Apps task setup was not such of a piece of crap, but with all-way syncing and multiple platform support this is definitely the way to go. Getting a third party task app for your phone is a waste of time, it doesn’t sync to anything! Wunderlist is simple, does what it says, and syncs to everything. Highly recommended free app.
Wuala – www.Wuala.com
Wuala is another one of those free online backup companies like Dropbox but with a twist. It’s got everything that dropbox has and more! Not only can you sync files and folders over the internet to remote computers, but you can also setup backup plans for files. For applications with databases that cannot be continuously backed up like Quickbooks & PCLaw, you can setup interval backups from every 20 minutes to every day week or year. The point is that you have the ability to setup regular backups with regular backup times, say, every day at 2am (Standard Backup Schedual). Continuous backup is great for docs and files alike, but HORRIBLE for database software. You end up with multiple copies, corruption and major issues, we have seen this first hand with dropbox. The solution is a piece of software that lets you do traditional time controlled backups. This software does both and has the ability to distinguish continuous backup sets & time interval backup sets. Did I mention your files backed up within time intervals support multiple revisions on restoration? You have the ability to go back in time with Marty McFly and restore an old copy of a current document just like big boy backup software does for servers, BRILLIANT! You can also share data on a folder level with other Wuala users or anyone with a specialized generated link. To me, this IS the dropbox killer. While dropbox blazed the trail to all these sync-able web apps providing free online storage, it did not keep up with the needs of the users, it did not evolve! There is one more little nugget of info I did not tell you that Wuala does. You get 1GB of storage, not so much eh. Well, you can trade space with Wuala servers, you want 100GB of online storage, give up 100GB of your local hard disk space and you got a deal to have 100GB of online storage for anything you like. Pretty bad ass if you ask me. They have some rules to this. Your machine MUST be up & running at least 17% of the day. You must use 10% of the space you ask for before you ask for more; this is a growing process. In other words, you can’t just ask for 100GB and use 5GB. All in all, it’s the king of free sync-able software. I would like to see file and folder level security for business use in the future.
Pandora – www.Pandora.com
Pandora is a very popular music service which is FREE! You type in an artist and they give you streaming music from that artist’s genre. You may eventually hear your artist in the mix. You can create different stations for different types of music. The best thing is that there is an iPhone app so if you have bluetooth in your car or an AUX jack you can listen on the go through 3G. They used to have a 40 hour limit per month for free accounts, but this has been lifted just recently to this blog being written. Pandora is the future of music. In the future, there will be no media, just streaming & services. I can’t see how media will come into play with usb flash technology & 3G, 4G internet speeds sweeping the nation. We are becoming a wired nation more than ever. Internet is all around us and speeds are increasing dramatically. Remove that crappy old cd player and get yourself a cheap netbook. Hook it up to your stereo system with an audio Y cable and listen to streaming music for free all day long. And dont worry about the song changing to something you might not like. With Pandora, technology is in place to make sure 90% of the music you listen to is compatible with your preferred music choices. Technology is awesome.
DropSend – www.DropSend.com
DropSend is a great tool for IT admins because with it, we don’t have to hear clients complain about email bounce backs due to large attachment sizes. DropSend lets you send attachments up to 2GB. Lets hit the basics. Generally, an average acceptable attachment size is anywhere from 7MB to 15MB. Gmail users have the luxury of sending 25MB attachments but due to this smaller limit on exchange and other hosted solutions this just limits Gmail users to send to each other. Now that you know the basics, enter DropSend. You put your reply email address, the send email address and then finally you upload your file. Your recipient gets your email with a DropSend link attached to download the file, it’s very simple. They give you 5 free uploads per month which should be good enough since most emails with attachments do not spill over 10MB. DropSend is easy, secure, and very straight forward. Use DropSend anytime you need to send someone a large attachment.
