Review: Backblaze and Jungle Disk

by Ricky Melgares on October 27, 2009

I have toyed with the idea of storing my data backups in the cloud for a while. Pricing and ease of uploading all of my data into the cloud have kept me from taking online data backups seriously until recently. Nowadays you can store all of your most important documents and data online for only a couple of dollars a month.

in_the_cloudWhy store your data in the cloud?

Storing your data online brings an onslaught of security and privacy concerns along with it, but I’ll save that discussion for a later time. Redundancy, ability to access your files anywhere from the web, and limited disk space are all reasons for storing your data online. Read More

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Playing FLAC files using iTunes in SL

by Ricky Melgares on October 15, 2009

With the new version of OS X, previous methods of getting iTunes to recognize FLAC-encoded audio files no longer work. Fortunately Dmitry Kichenko, the brains behind Fluke, has been working on a new beta version of his software that installs the necessary components and workarounds to get the finder and iTunes to recognize FLAC files under Snow Leopard. Installation is a breeze. You will have to restart iTunes and Quicktime after installing Fluke. The finder should now recognize your FLAC files.

Screen shot 2009-10-16 at 12.29.46 AMAll you have to do now is select the FLAC files you want to import into iTunes and double-click. Fluke will do its magic and import the files into iTunes along with the tags. The FLAC files will show up as quicktime movie files in your iTunes library.

Screen shot 2009-10-16 at 12.35.52 AMWhat file format do you use to encode your music and why?

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Security Services in the Cloud

September 30, 2009

As part of my job with CSI (Cyber Security Initiative) at Dartmouth, one of the things that we’ve been researching is the performance of security services in the cloud. The upkeep and maintenance of servers used for security services such as penetration testing and forensic analysis is costly, especially when these servers are used only [...]

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Top of Google Search

September 30, 2009

I recently discovered that doing a google image search for “college dorm room space” yields two of my Flickr images as the top 2 results. The pictured dorm room is the residence I lived in during my sophomore year of college (The Lodge). Granted, the search was somewhat specialized. For example, a google image search [...]

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Review: Facebook Notifications Desktop App

September 9, 2009

Facebook’s new desktop application for the Mac is pretty slick. Rather than receiving any Facebook notifications via email, the new Facebook app displays new notifications via a Facebook icon in your menu bar. This avoids the polling approach that most people take when it comes to checking their Facebook page or email for any new [...]

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Review: Dell SX2210 HD Monitor

June 15, 2009

I recently purchased a new display for use with my laptop as an external monitor. After doing quite a bit of research online, I opted for Dell’s newly released SX2210 monitor. To get right to the point, Dell’s SX2210 is the best monitor I have owned to date, not to mention much cheaper ($219) and [...]

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Facebook Stalkers

June 2, 2009

For the past three weeks I have been receiving random Facebook friend requests from people I have never met, live half-way around the world (or so says their profile), and have no mutual friends in common with me. In particular, I received a friend request today from a girl who supposedly lives in Indonesia. The [...]

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Nightmares

March 23, 2009

This happens to me all too often.

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Disable OS X’s Icon ‘Bounce Alert’

January 22, 2009

The one (and probably only) thing that has annoyed me when using OS X for the last couple of years is the icon ‘bounce alert’ feature. Everytime some application wants to get your attention for one reason or the other, it will perpetually bounce the application icon up and down. Notice that I said “perpetually.” [...]

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President Barack Obama + Blackberry = ?

January 17, 2009

President-elect Barack Obama is keen on keeping his Blackberry, as he recently stated in an interview with CNN. It is clear that the Blackberry does awesome things when it comes to keeping in touch with friends, family, and co-workers via e-mail, text messaging, and phone calls (having owned a Blackberry for two years, I can [...]

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