Social website tools
I think it's a safe assumption that at some point in time you have used Wikipedia if only out of curiosity. The power of Wikipedia has been the crowd sourcing and community editing functionality, allowing group collaboration to monitor, edit and update the data on an ongoing basis. There is a growing list of sites that offer hosted wikis with increasing levels of functionality and rapid development and deployment tools.
One of the new entries in this arena is Wetpaint, calling their service "hosted social media". What is compelling about Wetpaint is their Wetpaint Injected, a widget-ized version of their service that can be embedded into your blog, MySpace, Facebook, etc. website. Wetpaint has some very easy to use tools for creating a professional-looking media rich social website. Another entry in this space is the former Jotspot, purchased by Google that has re-emerged as Google Sites. The current drawback to Google Sites is the requirement to have a qualified domain name in order to register for the service, and in effect Google is targeting the business community with Sites instead of individual users. *Update note: 5/22 - after this post, Google announced that Sites was accessible to individual users via their Google Apps login.
Wikis are emerging as a web-based, hosted alternative to MS Sharepoint or Lotus Quickr tools for team and group collaboration. Other popular hosted personal wiki services are PBwiki, Scribblewiki and Zoho Wiki just to name a few.
Sites like Socialtext and CentralDesktop are targeted at business users with pricing starting at around $10/user per month.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Prep'ing for Hurricane Season
Satellite Internet, Solar powered devices and more...
As we close in on June 1st and the official start of hurricane season here in south Mississippi, we begin to review again our disaster recovery plans. I was with a customer recently that was installing a satellite communications system from Skycasters, replacing an older model dish from another provider. I soon discovered that Skycasters offered broadband speed wireless with VPN and VoIP compatible service, in fact with speeds from 1.5Mbps to 4Mbps download speeds, and 384kbps to 1.5Mbps upload speeds. Now this is not a high availability solution for a primary site with multi-megabit trunks, but to be able to communicate in times of disaster satellite is second to none. As we experienced in the aftermath of Katrina, cellular networks were down for weeks, land lines for months in some cases, internet connectivity non-existent and roadways impassible. Skycasters is compatible with Vonage, Packet8 and Shoretel Voice over IP services, so you could set up an account with a VoIP carrier to be able to communicate to the outside world in the first few hours or days after a disaster. Also, since it's VPN compatible as well there is the opportunity to establish secure remote access links to a hosted site. Now all of this assumes you've already taken care of your power needs with a reliable generator solution and have enough fuel to get you through.
This is also a good solution for those remote locations where you can only get a dial-up connection from the local rural phone carrier and DSL, T1 or cable is not available. I'm sure you can think of other uses for this as well, but if you were looking for options to maintain data connectivity to the outside world during the upcoming hurricane season, check into Skycasters.
Also, don't forget about handheld communication options. Head over to GlobalCom and check out the solutions available from Iridium, Globalstar, Thuraya, and Inmarsat. There are rental options for the handheld phones and purchase plans with pre-paid minute plans available with discounts or pay-as-you-go plans. A recent addition to Globalcom's lineup is a portable solar charger for their handheld satellite phone solutions. It has a cigarette lighter female adapter end on the output line that could potentially be used to charge other devices - I have a call into them to look into this and will let you know more later.
While I'm on this rant, don't forget about some of the other options out there that you need to consider. Amazon has a nice selection of solar ovens, and Sundance Solar has everything from cellphone/iPOD solar rechargers to solar flashlights, radios and lanterns and reasonably priced DC inverter kits and battery arrays to power some higher wattage basic items. You can also head over to ETA Engineering and check out DC power refrigerators, and even SolarChill evaporative coolers (think window A/C unit). I'm particularly keen on their solar water/pool pump solutions as well.
One last thought, it was easier to find propane after Katrina than gasoline or diesel, and there are propane and natural gas powered generators available as well as conversion kits for existing gasoline generators at USCarb.
I know I've probably left a few things out (like MREs), so send me your lists of all the things you've done to prepare for the upcoming hurricane season and I'll post a compiled planning list link.
As we close in on June 1st and the official start of hurricane season here in south Mississippi, we begin to review again our disaster recovery plans. I was with a customer recently that was installing a satellite communications system from Skycasters, replacing an older model dish from another provider. I soon discovered that Skycasters offered broadband speed wireless with VPN and VoIP compatible service, in fact with speeds from 1.5Mbps to 4Mbps download speeds, and 384kbps to 1.5Mbps upload speeds. Now this is not a high availability solution for a primary site with multi-megabit trunks, but to be able to communicate in times of disaster satellite is second to none. As we experienced in the aftermath of Katrina, cellular networks were down for weeks, land lines for months in some cases, internet connectivity non-existent and roadways impassible. Skycasters is compatible with Vonage, Packet8 and Shoretel Voice over IP services, so you could set up an account with a VoIP carrier to be able to communicate to the outside world in the first few hours or days after a disaster. Also, since it's VPN compatible as well there is the opportunity to establish secure remote access links to a hosted site. Now all of this assumes you've already taken care of your power needs with a reliable generator solution and have enough fuel to get you through.
This is also a good solution for those remote locations where you can only get a dial-up connection from the local rural phone carrier and DSL, T1 or cable is not available. I'm sure you can think of other uses for this as well, but if you were looking for options to maintain data connectivity to the outside world during the upcoming hurricane season, check into Skycasters.
Also, don't forget about handheld communication options. Head over to GlobalCom and check out the solutions available from Iridium, Globalstar, Thuraya, and Inmarsat. There are rental options for the handheld phones and purchase plans with pre-paid minute plans available with discounts or pay-as-you-go plans. A recent addition to Globalcom's lineup is a portable solar charger for their handheld satellite phone solutions. It has a cigarette lighter female adapter end on the output line that could potentially be used to charge other devices - I have a call into them to look into this and will let you know more later.
While I'm on this rant, don't forget about some of the other options out there that you need to consider. Amazon has a nice selection of solar ovens, and Sundance Solar has everything from cellphone/iPOD solar rechargers to solar flashlights, radios and lanterns and reasonably priced DC inverter kits and battery arrays to power some higher wattage basic items. You can also head over to ETA Engineering and check out DC power refrigerators, and even SolarChill evaporative coolers (think window A/C unit). I'm particularly keen on their solar water/pool pump solutions as well.
One last thought, it was easier to find propane after Katrina than gasoline or diesel, and there are propane and natural gas powered generators available as well as conversion kits for existing gasoline generators at USCarb.
I know I've probably left a few things out (like MREs), so send me your lists of all the things you've done to prepare for the upcoming hurricane season and I'll post a compiled planning list link.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Sprout's widget wizard
Using Sproutbuilder to publish a Google Form (and more)
Sprout is a web-based flash builder toolkit with which you can build, publish and manage widgets, mini-sites, banners, mashups and other rich media Web content in three easy steps. I was looking for a way to help a customer publish a form online and came across Sprout as I was looking into using Google's new forms option in the Google Docs spreadsheet. I created the sample entry form below using Google Docs and then used Sprout to create the widget.
First, go to Google and log into your Google Docs account - if you don't have one yet, welcome back from your cryogenic coma and get busy (it's free). Then, select New, Spreadsheet. Enter the form fields in the A1, A2, etc. row. If you haven't turned autosave on, Google Docs will prompt you. Once you've entered your field headings, go to the Share tab and on the next screen, select Invite People and click the radio button the "fill out a form". On the next screen you're prompted to invite users, you can skip this step. Copy the URL link in the right panel.
Now, go create a Sprout account (www.sproutbuilder.com), and yes you'll have to check your email account and enter a validation code on the Sprout site that has been emailed to you. Then, select launch Sproutbuilder, select a project type (blank) and name the project. Use the Google Forms widget builder and follow the directions on the Sprout site - it's as simple as pasting the URL link to the Google form into the widgetbuilder.
Once you select publish, Sprout will build an Adobe Flash widget with the Google form embedded that you can then publish on your web page, blog, Myspace or whatever.
Example
I think the mini-sites options are incredible tools as well for building embeddable advertisements (see the Sheryl Crow example). There are options to include a music player and MP3 files, video files, a counter widget and many more features. Give it a try and send me links to some of the creative ways you figure out to use this tool.
Google Form not embedded in a Flash Widget
Sprout is a web-based flash builder toolkit with which you can build, publish and manage widgets, mini-sites, banners, mashups and other rich media Web content in three easy steps. I was looking for a way to help a customer publish a form online and came across Sprout as I was looking into using Google's new forms option in the Google Docs spreadsheet. I created the sample entry form below using Google Docs and then used Sprout to create the widget.
First, go to Google and log into your Google Docs account - if you don't have one yet, welcome back from your cryogenic coma and get busy (it's free). Then, select New, Spreadsheet. Enter the form fields in the A1, A2, etc. row. If you haven't turned autosave on, Google Docs will prompt you. Once you've entered your field headings, go to the Share tab and on the next screen, select Invite People and click the radio button the "fill out a form". On the next screen you're prompted to invite users, you can skip this step. Copy the URL link in the right panel.
Now, go create a Sprout account (www.sproutbuilder.com), and yes you'll have to check your email account and enter a validation code on the Sprout site that has been emailed to you. Then, select launch Sproutbuilder, select a project type (blank) and name the project. Use the Google Forms widget builder and follow the directions on the Sprout site - it's as simple as pasting the URL link to the Google form into the widgetbuilder.
Once you select publish, Sprout will build an Adobe Flash widget with the Google form embedded that you can then publish on your web page, blog, Myspace or whatever.
Example
I think the mini-sites options are incredible tools as well for building embeddable advertisements (see the Sheryl Crow example). There are options to include a music player and MP3 files, video files, a counter widget and many more features. Give it a try and send me links to some of the creative ways you figure out to use this tool.
Google Form not embedded in a Flash Widget
Friday, May 16, 2008
SelfImage hard drive imaging software
SelfImage Hard Disk Imaging Utility
If you've been using Acronis at work to rip disk images and were looking for an alternative for home use, try SelfImage, a free open source hard disk imaging utility. SelfImage is capable of making an image file of a hard disk or hard disk partition, and can restore an image back to any drive or partition that doesn't have open files. Useful for making backups and unlike dd for Windows (or cygwin), SelfImage is capable of creating an image of a partition that is currently in use.
SelfImage can even create images of partitions that Windows doesn't recognize (partitions that Windows doesn't have mounted on a drive letter). This is perfect for the dual-boot system, you can create an image backup of a Linux partition directly from Windows.
Features include:
* Create 1:1 image files of any mounted (or unmounted on Windows 2000/XP) hard disk partition.
* Can create an image of an entire hard disk, including the master boot record, partition table, and all partitions (Windows 2000/XP)
* Restore previously created images to any partition, even mounted ones, as long as it doesn't have open files.
* On-the-fly compression accelerated with parallel CPU support to take advantage of today's hyperthreaded, multi-core and SMP systems.
* Skip reading a disk's "free space", treating it as if it were zero. This decreases the size of a compressed image and makes it process MUCH faster. NEW Version 1.2.0 can now do this for Linux ext2/ext3 partitions as well.
* NEW Available as an experimental BartPE plugin for use in boot/rescue CDs. SelfImage is also included on the excellent Ultimate Boot CD for Windows (UBCD4Win).
* Network Block Device support to make images of disks on remote machines, and restore back to them.
* Multi-threaded design for maximum throughput and low CPU overhead.
* It's free software - free as in cost, and free as in open source - released under the GNU General Public License.
SelfImage is a new project. As such, there are lots of plans for the future. Keep an eye on this project as there are many new features on the drawing board.
If you've been using Acronis at work to rip disk images and were looking for an alternative for home use, try SelfImage, a free open source hard disk imaging utility. SelfImage is capable of making an image file of a hard disk or hard disk partition, and can restore an image back to any drive or partition that doesn't have open files. Useful for making backups and unlike dd for Windows (or cygwin), SelfImage is capable of creating an image of a partition that is currently in use.
SelfImage can even create images of partitions that Windows doesn't recognize (partitions that Windows doesn't have mounted on a drive letter). This is perfect for the dual-boot system, you can create an image backup of a Linux partition directly from Windows.
Features include:
* Create 1:1 image files of any mounted (or unmounted on Windows 2000/XP) hard disk partition.
* Can create an image of an entire hard disk, including the master boot record, partition table, and all partitions (Windows 2000/XP)
* Restore previously created images to any partition, even mounted ones, as long as it doesn't have open files.
* On-the-fly compression accelerated with parallel CPU support to take advantage of today's hyperthreaded, multi-core and SMP systems.
* Skip reading a disk's "free space", treating it as if it were zero. This decreases the size of a compressed image and makes it process MUCH faster. NEW Version 1.2.0 can now do this for Linux ext2/ext3 partitions as well.
* NEW Available as an experimental BartPE plugin for use in boot/rescue CDs. SelfImage is also included on the excellent Ultimate Boot CD for Windows (UBCD4Win).
* Network Block Device support to make images of disks on remote machines, and restore back to them.
* Multi-threaded design for maximum throughput and low CPU overhead.
* It's free software - free as in cost, and free as in open source - released under the GNU General Public License.
SelfImage is a new project. As such, there are lots of plans for the future. Keep an eye on this project as there are many new features on the drawing board.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
FuelFrog gas mileage tracking
Track your gas mileage with FuelFrog
If you are tired of digging through the fast food cups and bags in your passenger seat floor to find a scrap of paper you've been using to keep up with your gas mileage, here's another option from FuelFrog. Ok, so yeah this is another one of my Twitter mashup services. FuelFrog's premise is very simple, at the time you fill up with fuel you enter your miles traveled since your last fill-up, cost per gallon and number of gallons and FuelFrog does the rest. You'll see trending of your fuel costs and average miles per gallon. A future release will include the ability to trend your make/model vehicle against similar vehicles nationwide or even possibly globally.
If this was an online only application it would be somewhat useful, but probably not used unless you were just anal about tracking your gas mileage. What makes this service usable is, yes, it's integration with Twitter. At the very moment that you fill up your vehicle with fuel you can SMS your information to FuelFrog using the Twitter direct text function. Enter your fuel data (miles, price, gallons) and send to FuelFrog via Twitter. Example: @fuelfrog 342 3.239 10.293. You can then log into your FuelFrog account and see your MPG trending; a downward trend would be an incentive to go get those fuel and air filters changed and schedule that tune-up you've been putting off.
So, for those of us that like to track these but can't keep up with our mileage log books, here's a great, instant gratification solution. As always, give me feedback on how useful this service has been for you.
If you are tired of digging through the fast food cups and bags in your passenger seat floor to find a scrap of paper you've been using to keep up with your gas mileage, here's another option from FuelFrog. Ok, so yeah this is another one of my Twitter mashup services. FuelFrog's premise is very simple, at the time you fill up with fuel you enter your miles traveled since your last fill-up, cost per gallon and number of gallons and FuelFrog does the rest. You'll see trending of your fuel costs and average miles per gallon. A future release will include the ability to trend your make/model vehicle against similar vehicles nationwide or even possibly globally.
If this was an online only application it would be somewhat useful, but probably not used unless you were just anal about tracking your gas mileage. What makes this service usable is, yes, it's integration with Twitter. At the very moment that you fill up your vehicle with fuel you can SMS your information to FuelFrog using the Twitter direct text function. Enter your fuel data (miles, price, gallons) and send to FuelFrog via Twitter. Example: @fuelfrog 342 3.239 10.293. You can then log into your FuelFrog account and see your MPG trending; a downward trend would be an incentive to go get those fuel and air filters changed and schedule that tune-up you've been putting off.
So, for those of us that like to track these but can't keep up with our mileage log books, here's a great, instant gratification solution. As always, give me feedback on how useful this service has been for you.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Open Source Virtualization with Virtualbox
Virtualbox's new version 1.6 is released
If you've been searching for an inexpensive virtualization solution for your laptop or desktop, here's a free, open source solution. Recently purchased by SUN, Virtualbox is an open source virtualization solution for the x86 hardware platform. Though it purports enterprise capability, my experience so far has been in using it as a desktop alternative to VMware Workstation which has a list price of $189.00. I have tested on Ubuntu 7.10 and Windows XP host OS with CentOS (RHEL4), Fedora Core 6, Windows XP SP2, Windows 2000 and Ubuntu 7.10 desktop as guests, all with great performance. My favorite features are the "seamless" mode with the ability to scroll my cursor to the guest OS screen and shared folders, allowing me to share host folders as a network share to the guest OS.
Virtualbox has binaries for Windows, Linux, Mac and OpenSolaris host operating systems and runs a rich list of tested Guest Operating Systems including Windows 98 thru Vista, most Linux versions and even OS/2 and ReactOS support. Touting a modular development methodology and full SDK for developing additions, Virtualbox offers not only the base functionality found in other very expensive solutions, but also has features not present in some more popular virtualization platforms such as the following list from the Virtualbox site:
* Virtual machine descriptions in XML. The configuration settings of virtual machines are stored entirely in XML and are independent of the local machines. Virtual machine definitions can therefore easily be ported to other computers.
* Guest Additions for Windows and Linux. VirtualBox has special software that can be installed inside Windows and Linux virtual machines to improve performance and make integration much more seamless. Among the features provided by these Guest Additions are mouse pointer integration and arbitrary screen solutions (e.g. by resizing the guest window).
* Shared folders. Like many other virtualization solutions, for easy data exchange between hosts and guests, VirtualBox allows for declaring certain host directories as "shared folders", which can then be accessed from within virtual machines.
A number of extra features are available with the full VirtualBox release only (see the "Editions" page for details):
* Virtual USB Controllers. VirtualBox implements a virtual USB controller and allows you to connect arbitrary USB devices to your virtual machines without having to install device specific drivers on the host.
* Remote Desktop Protocol. Unlike any other virtualization software, VirtualBox fully supports the standard Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). A virtual machine can act as an RDP server, allowing you to "run" the virtual machine remotely on some thin client that merely displays the RDP data.
* USB over RDP. With this unique feature, a virtual machine that acts as an RDP server can still access arbitrary USB devices that are connected on the RDP client. This way, a powerful server machine can virtualize a lot of thin clients that merely need to display RDP data and have USB devices plugged in.
Whereas Virtualbox, also known on the SUN website as xVM Virtualbox, competes in the space with VMware Server, VMware's free version of their platform that requires an underlying operating system much like Virtualbox, SUN has also launched a hypervisor-based product in xVM Server as well as xVM Ops Center for managing virtual machine images.
VMware has a pronounced advantage over SUN in this space with VMotion technology that allows running virtual machines to be moved between physical hardware with no down time, as well as support for a wider range of guest operating systems. I'm told that xVM will have vMotion-like capabilities soon, but I've seen no announcements.
Watch for SUN to make a big play in the consolidated desktop virtualization space, with their Virtual Desktop connection broker software. Vendors in this space see the desktop as the next great virtualization frontier and SUN is in the hunt. On top of that SUN has a partnership in place with Microsoft to grant interoperability and high performance for Windows virtual machines.
SUN's competitors in the virtualization race on x86 are VMware, Microsoft, Virtual Iron, Novell, Red Hat, Citrix and Parallels.
If you've been searching for an inexpensive virtualization solution for your laptop or desktop, here's a free, open source solution. Recently purchased by SUN, Virtualbox is an open source virtualization solution for the x86 hardware platform. Though it purports enterprise capability, my experience so far has been in using it as a desktop alternative to VMware Workstation which has a list price of $189.00. I have tested on Ubuntu 7.10 and Windows XP host OS with CentOS (RHEL4), Fedora Core 6, Windows XP SP2, Windows 2000 and Ubuntu 7.10 desktop as guests, all with great performance. My favorite features are the "seamless" mode with the ability to scroll my cursor to the guest OS screen and shared folders, allowing me to share host folders as a network share to the guest OS.
Virtualbox has binaries for Windows, Linux, Mac and OpenSolaris host operating systems and runs a rich list of tested Guest Operating Systems including Windows 98 thru Vista, most Linux versions and even OS/2 and ReactOS support. Touting a modular development methodology and full SDK for developing additions, Virtualbox offers not only the base functionality found in other very expensive solutions, but also has features not present in some more popular virtualization platforms such as the following list from the Virtualbox site:
* Virtual machine descriptions in XML. The configuration settings of virtual machines are stored entirely in XML and are independent of the local machines. Virtual machine definitions can therefore easily be ported to other computers.
* Guest Additions for Windows and Linux. VirtualBox has special software that can be installed inside Windows and Linux virtual machines to improve performance and make integration much more seamless. Among the features provided by these Guest Additions are mouse pointer integration and arbitrary screen solutions (e.g. by resizing the guest window).
* Shared folders. Like many other virtualization solutions, for easy data exchange between hosts and guests, VirtualBox allows for declaring certain host directories as "shared folders", which can then be accessed from within virtual machines.
A number of extra features are available with the full VirtualBox release only (see the "Editions" page for details):
* Virtual USB Controllers. VirtualBox implements a virtual USB controller and allows you to connect arbitrary USB devices to your virtual machines without having to install device specific drivers on the host.
* Remote Desktop Protocol. Unlike any other virtualization software, VirtualBox fully supports the standard Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). A virtual machine can act as an RDP server, allowing you to "run" the virtual machine remotely on some thin client that merely displays the RDP data.
* USB over RDP. With this unique feature, a virtual machine that acts as an RDP server can still access arbitrary USB devices that are connected on the RDP client. This way, a powerful server machine can virtualize a lot of thin clients that merely need to display RDP data and have USB devices plugged in.
Whereas Virtualbox, also known on the SUN website as xVM Virtualbox, competes in the space with VMware Server, VMware's free version of their platform that requires an underlying operating system much like Virtualbox, SUN has also launched a hypervisor-based product in xVM Server as well as xVM Ops Center for managing virtual machine images.
VMware has a pronounced advantage over SUN in this space with VMotion technology that allows running virtual machines to be moved between physical hardware with no down time, as well as support for a wider range of guest operating systems. I'm told that xVM will have vMotion-like capabilities soon, but I've seen no announcements.
Watch for SUN to make a big play in the consolidated desktop virtualization space, with their Virtual Desktop connection broker software. Vendors in this space see the desktop as the next great virtualization frontier and SUN is in the hunt. On top of that SUN has a partnership in place with Microsoft to grant interoperability and high performance for Windows virtual machines.
SUN's competitors in the virtualization race on x86 are VMware, Microsoft, Virtual Iron, Novell, Red Hat, Citrix and Parallels.
Monday, May 12, 2008
File Hamster version control
File Hamster version tracking software (Windows)
File Hamster provides real-time version tracking for files and folders as well as backup and archiving. File Hamster is a memory-resident program that monitors the folders and files that you ask it to and keeps a copy whenever you change a file, so that you can roll back to the old version(s) if you ever need to. It also gives you the ability to create "sticky" notes whenever you make a change to a file or folder.
Once you install File Hamster you must choose which individual files and/or folders to monitor. For folders, you can tell it which file types you want monitored or excluded, and it can also watch sub-folders. Once you set up File Hamster it will then monitor files in real time. Any attempt to change or overwrite a monitored file will prompt File Hamster to instantly make a copy of the file before allowing the change. This will result in continuous real-time backups copies of your files being created that are done in the background.
When File Hamster detects a change it will flash a small window near the system tray which you can use to quickly leave a comment or note that can be referred to later if you need to remember why you made the change. All historic file versions can then be accessed from the File Hamster menu. The name of the file being monitored has to remain unchanged for File Hamster to keep taking snapshots of it. If you want to use different version names for your file then configure File Hamster to monitor the folder that you keep the file in and it will then monitor each successive file that it finds in that folder.
If you become concerned about file backups taking up too much disk space, there are a number of options: (1)set the maximum number of revisions File Hamster will keep of any single file; (2)set a time period beyond-which a revision will be discarded; (3)require a user-defined delay period between revisions; or (4)have File Hamster do compressed backups using the zip plugin, enabling file backups to be made to zip archive files.
Compatibility: Windows 2000, XP, Vista; requires .NET Framework 2.0
File Hamster provides real-time version tracking for files and folders as well as backup and archiving. File Hamster is a memory-resident program that monitors the folders and files that you ask it to and keeps a copy whenever you change a file, so that you can roll back to the old version(s) if you ever need to. It also gives you the ability to create "sticky" notes whenever you make a change to a file or folder.
Once you install File Hamster you must choose which individual files and/or folders to monitor. For folders, you can tell it which file types you want monitored or excluded, and it can also watch sub-folders. Once you set up File Hamster it will then monitor files in real time. Any attempt to change or overwrite a monitored file will prompt File Hamster to instantly make a copy of the file before allowing the change. This will result in continuous real-time backups copies of your files being created that are done in the background.
When File Hamster detects a change it will flash a small window near the system tray which you can use to quickly leave a comment or note that can be referred to later if you need to remember why you made the change. All historic file versions can then be accessed from the File Hamster menu. The name of the file being monitored has to remain unchanged for File Hamster to keep taking snapshots of it. If you want to use different version names for your file then configure File Hamster to monitor the folder that you keep the file in and it will then monitor each successive file that it finds in that folder.
If you become concerned about file backups taking up too much disk space, there are a number of options: (1)set the maximum number of revisions File Hamster will keep of any single file; (2)set a time period beyond-which a revision will be discarded; (3)require a user-defined delay period between revisions; or (4)have File Hamster do compressed backups using the zip plugin, enabling file backups to be made to zip archive files.
Compatibility: Windows 2000, XP, Vista; requires .NET Framework 2.0
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