Whether you run the application on an Apple TV, a Mac, PC or Linux box you benefit from the same great features. Not only does Boxee allow you to play locally stored media – such as hard-disks & DVDs – as well as network attached media, but it allows you to view content available on the internet.

You might think that’s not a big deal. After all, you can start up a browser window, plug in a keyboard and mouse, and access the same content like any other computer. But you’ve got to admit it would be better if you could do this without all the extra hassle and clutter. You would want to use a remote and easily change programs from the comfort of your couch.

Boxee’s Apps feature does just that, making for a great entertainment experience. Each Boxee App offers a specially created interface for the content provider, which unlike websites, can be used from a distance. Descriptions are presented in large fonts, navigation menus use the axis (up-down, left-right), and beautiful thumbnails or cover art. You don’t have to purchase any extra hardware either – you can pair up your iPod touch or iPhone to work like a touch pad or to display buttons, via the free Boxee Remote.

To access Boxee Apps, select its icon from the home screen. You will be presented with a selection of applications that are available based on geographical location. In the United States, this tab should show around 30 different applications. Outside the US, the selection is limited because of licensing restrictions. Clicking on the logo of a Boxee app will show a dialog box. There, you can chose to start the app, add a shortcut for it in the overlay menu or remove it from the library.

You will want to add shortcuts to you favourite apps in order to access them quickly, without browsing the library. The overlay menu is accessible throughout Boxee, and will appear over the other interface elements. You can use the Esc key or the Back icon on the remote to bring it up.

I have a few Boxee apps that I enjoy using almost every day:

1. BBC: They have informative podcasts on many subjects, which I will often leave running in the background while I do chores.
2. College Humour: Not the smartest pranks or wittiest of humour but certainly entertaining.
3. Wired: They have great gadget reviews and short bits on technology.
4. Current: I’m a big fan of SuperNews, a 20 minute animated cartoon that pokes fun at anything from politics to the technology industry.
5. Boxee Browser: This app will allow you to browse and search the web. It’s the only way I could use Hulu in full-screen mode.
6. Flickr: Setting up a slideshow with your pics on the big screen has never been easier.

You can read about Boxee‘s other features in Justin Pot’s article.

What are your favourite Boxee Apps? Shout out in the comments.

Developed by Dominik Grolimund and Luzius Meisser, the technology behind Wuala is truly amazing. By using a ‘grid’ algorithm, Wuala can take advantage of unused disk space across its network of users in addition to data-centre storage. This keeps Wuala’s costs down, because there is no need to buy space in data-centres and it also makes their service incredibly attractive to newcomers who need online file storage.

Instead of paying a fixed rate for a certain amount of space, users can choose to allocate a part of their free hard drive space to share with the Wuala community. If you share 50GB and leave your computer online, you get 50GB of online file storage in return. There is however no obligation to participate in sharing – you get 1 GB free forever from the Wuala team and up to 6GB for inviting your friends. There are also payed plans for more demanding users.

Wuala encrypts all your files before sending them to the ‘grid’, and also ensures that it is distributed among many machines. Unlike other services, the password to your data never leaves your computer and the redundancy in the algorithm allows for machines to be taken offline while still maintaining data integrity. Wuala runs on Windows, Mac, Linux and even in your browser thanks to the portability of the Java programming framework. Unlike most other Java applications, you can expect to run Wuala without crashes or poor performance.

Another benefit of the Wuala P2P ‘grid‘ is the virtually unlimited bandwidth for both upload and download – basically the same benefits bit-torrent downloads have over traditional CDNs, with up to 100 peers in parallel for each file. I’ve noticed a sizeable increase in speed over Microsoft’s Live Mesh, Dropbox and Mozy. I’ve had sustained upload speed of over 900Kb/s, the highest I’ve personally seen in an online file storage service.

With Wuala you can keep private files only you can access, share folders with friends or publish them to the world, much like Dropbox.  Thanks to the user friendly interface, using the app is a breeze. Adding files is as simple as drag and drop, backup as simple as selecting a folder and the desired sync frequency.

You can also create groups for sharing files with your family, co-workers, projects and keep track of them thanks to the integrated file revisioning.

For those of you who prefer to use the local language Wuala is available in English, German, French, Brazilian, Russian, Swedish, Chinese, and Polish.

Caleido – the company behind Wuala – has been bought by LaCie, the renowned hard drive manufacturer, in March of 2009. In addition to that, more than 100 million files are reported to be stored on the Wuala grid. There’s no need to worry that the service might go down in the foreseeable future so why not go to wuala.com and sign up for a free account.

If you’re not convinced, why not go check out the demo account? Visit Wuala, click on the red START button, and login with the username John and password asdasd. Let us know your impressions in the comments.

So what changed my mind? I wanted to start the new year with a clean cyberspace, so I went through online accounts, emails, folders, Twitter and even my WordPress installation. Then I realised that my spreadsheet was in disarray: old passwords, usernames missing, multiple entries for the same service. The sheer number of passwords made managing that spreadsheet too much work, and after all, I didn’t have missile launch codes to protect. I could live with a little bit of uncertainty – after all, it’s the giant cheesecake fallacy. Even if they could access my passwords, why would they?

Mitto is a web based service to help you manage your passwords by enabling you to use high-strength passwords for your online accounts without having to remember the actual string. Once inputted to its database, you can log into any of your websites with one click. Think of it like AutoComplete for your passwords, but with strong encryption, good security policy, and organisation tools. Don’t worry, the adding process is straightforward and it won’t take you more than 30 seconds for each service. They even provide a bookmarklet that let’s you add services directly from the login page – with one click.

Now that you don’t have to remember complex passwords, you can use something like the GRC password generator and update all your passwords with stronger ones. Another feature is the tagging capability – especially for those with a very large number of logins. Two email accounts from the same provider? Simply tag one with “work” and never get them mixed up again. But most importantly, there’s nothing to install on your computer to manage your passwords – you can visit and use Mitto from any browser on any platform you’d like.

For starters, Mitto uses 128-bit SSL certificates to encrypt the connection between you and their server. They also claim to employ physical security by protecting servers in the datacenter, which has been audited (SAS 70 Type II). Servers are stored in locked and and inventoried racks,  and access to the facility can only be made through secure gates. At the application level, passwords are encrypted with 1024-bit RSA or 256-bit AES, which is good by today’s standards. They are certified by TRUSTe and McAfee as secure for known XSS (Cross-site Scripting), XSRF (Cross-site Request Forgery), SQL Injection, Session Fixation & Hijacking. More details about the security measures is available on the Mitto website.

The sign-up form gets good points for asking a security phrase, which all genuine messages from Mitto will contain as a security precaution. Unfortunately, the questions for resetting the password are the standard set, and information like your first car or job can be easily found. If an attacker correctly guesses the answers, the only thing stopping him is access to your email account, so make sure that is protected.

Mitto is very flexible, easy to use, and most important, it’s completely free. You can sign up by visiting Mitto.com. To end this article on a rather classy note, here’s a quote I remembered: “On the day when we can fully trust each other, there will be peace on Earth.” Do you guys know who said it?

The first thing you want to do is go about creating an account over at Google Analytics. Why would I want to do that, you ask? Well, in my own experience, the service provides a tremendous amount of data, has a great user interface, is easy to install on any website, and, more importantly, is completely free of charge. It’s undoubtedly the easiest, cheapest and fast way of getting your visitors’ information, including their IP address or hostname.

If you already use any of the Google services, you can easily sign in with your existing credentials. The process of setting up your website with Google couldn’t be easier. You will be prompted to create a profile. A profile is basically a metaphor for a folder, where you can keep track of various aspects of your websites’ traffic. Each different domain will have its own separate profile. Select ‘Add Profile for a new domain‘ and enter your domain’s address and timezone.

The next page will generate a bit of code that you’ll have to insert in the header or footer of your website’s template. You have to do this because you  want to keep track of visitors across your website, not just the homepage. This way, no matter where the user navigates to (eg. mysite.com/secondpage), you will know about the total time spent, the pageview/unique visitor ratio and exit funnels.

How you add the code to your website varies dramatically – and requires the knowledge to manually access and edit your theme files. You probably set your own website up, so you must know how to do this. If you don’t know how, don’t panic, and instead search Google for ‘[service type] + edit theme OR Google Analytics‘. For example, ‘WordPress edit theme Google Analytics‘. There are plenty of guides out there that will show you how to add this bit of code.

In the latest version of the self-hosted WordPress, I only need to click on ‘Appearance‘ in the sidebar, ‘Editor‘ and choose from the right side list ‘footer.php‘. As a golden rule, insert the code before the last ‘</body></html>’ tags. They’ve also got a lot of support material over at the help page, which you might want to check out if in doubt.

Twenty-four hours later and you’ve got the first taste of website statistics. Be prepared to spend the rest of the evening looking at various graphs of source locations, connection speed, ISP, browser capabilities, operating systems, browsers, time on site and more. After that, the only problem that could arise is that you’ll wish you could install a tracking code in your girlfriend, in order to be plot the ‘visitor loyalty’ chart.

If you want to view individual IP addresses of your website’s visitors you need to click on Visitors>Network Properties>Hostnames, from the right sidebar, as illustrated in the screenshot above. There you will see a list of IP addresses and how many times each has visited the website. This can prove useful if your site is being attacked (defaced, DDOS-ed, etc.), as you can determine who your attacker is, or at least his proxy.

More views and information is accessible through the sidebar on the right: Visitors, Traffic Sources, Content and Goals. They’re pretty much self explanatory. The Visitors tab will contain information about – you’ve guessed it, the people who accessed your site. Traffic sources will identify who sent you traffic, be it a search engine, a referral or just organic. The Content tab will dutifully tell you how each page is doing when it comes to attracting eyeballs. Finally, Goals is used by e-commerce folks and companies to measure conversions, a fancy word for a sell.

You should definitely spare a minute to check out the quite extensive page of articles about blogging tools.

The answer, if you’ve read this far, is yes. Yes we can – remove that old hard drive from the laptop or PC. Yes we can – put it in a brand new and extremely cheap dock or simply use a female ATA or SATA connector that plugs in to your regular computer USB port.

I actually know a guy who has a couple of these drives and uses them to back up his computer. Each week he alternates the drive to spread the wear – and because bare drives are quite fragile – he keeps them in those plastic containers used to store food, along with some crumpled sticky notes. They’re actually a great idea because they are airtight, have good thermal and EM(electromagnetic) resistance, while the crumpled sticky notes will absorb a good part of the downward force in the event of an unfortunate drop. Most people would likely just throw away good stuff, but think about it – you’re losing real value as well as stocking the landfills.

First of all, get the hardware in question out of the closet and dust it off with a damp cloth. If it’s a PC, the process is pretty much straightforward. Most PC’s use standard cross-shaped screws to keep the case tight – you don’t need any special tools. Be extra careful about static electricity. I’m not sure of the science behind this – but avoid clothes made out of plastic polymers (such as polyester) as they tend to charge with electrostatic energy. Before handling any internal contents it’s a good idea to touch a bare metal surface.

Once you’re in, unscrew the hard drive from the holder, first on the right and then on the left, while using your other hand to support the weight from underneath. Once it’s free, disconnect the internal connector. Look at it closely in order to see which kind of dock or cable you need to buy.

On laptops, it can be even easier, but usually it’s kind of hard to get to the hard drive (pun intended). The rule of thumb is to search Google for “Laptop Manufacturer” + “Model Number” + “Guide” OR “Manual” OR “Service Manual”. Especially with older models, you might need to painstakingly remove layers of panels and  other components in order to safely remove the hard drive.

Even if you do find the manufacturer’s manual, you should check the MUO guide. Another issue with older drives are the connectors – not all adapters will support those pesky miniaturized ATA or even SATA ports.

Once the patient is safely stored in one of those food containers, it’s time to pull out your credit card and do this search on your favorite tech store: “Connector Type” + “Dock” OR “Adapter” or “Cable” + “USB”. If you live the the US, you’ve got it easy, as Think Geek and Amazon have pretty much got you covered. Less lucky peeps like me would probably opt to order off eBay or annoy the staff at the local computer store.

Once your cable or dock arrives, it’s a simple process of matching the male and female connectors and boom, your old hardware is back to life again. Format it in either NTFS, ext3 or HFS+, depending on your platform of choice and you’re ready to use Time Machine, Back in Time or any other backup solution you might prefer.

Do you recycle your hard drives?   If so, how do you do it?

Photo credits : abdallahh, jeremyfoo, jepoirrier, 少佐

We’ve reviewed quite a lot of different tools that allow you to be more productive, organized and collaborative, such as Shareflow,Tokbox and Notely, but the search has not ended.  Today we’re going to take a look at Ubidesk, a fresh take on online team collaboration.

Launched just a couple of months ago, Ubidesk has already attracted the attention of the media and presents a solid feature list as well as a good user interface. Leveraging the SaaS (Software as a Service) concept, Ubidesk allows for team collaboration, be it in the same building or another continent, to instantly share and edit documents, upload files, manage both shared and private calendars, and manage tasks easily and efficient.

Ubidesk is definitely one of the most comprehensive solutions available at the moment. The online rich text editor has all the features you need to create complex documents, with formatting, images, tables, spell-checking and most essential – a solid revision tool that enables you to quickly spot changes made by other team members. If you’d rather not have your co-workers mess with your presentation, there is also a feature that locks new edits.

Since tasks and documents are almost always related to each other, you can assign documents to tasks and vice versa. Multiple documents can now be easily bundled for a task – no need to search a massive folder – and you’ve also got useful information such as the due date. Unlike other services, your tasks have different statuses: after a task is assigned, the status becomes “Started” when the assignee clicks the “Start” button. Nifty way to keep the project manager into the loop, isn’t it?

If you need more information about the development of a project or the status of your team collaboration, see who’s not doing their share or assign payment – the Timeline and the task log give a bird’s eye view of the changes. Are you working on the next generation MacBook hardware? Keep only the assigned project members in the loop by creating a hidden project. You’d like anyone to participate – make it public. Want others to see what’s going on, but not interfere, simply choose Protected.

With Ubidesk, you can manage  both your “Space” and personal calendar in one place. Keep your personal appointments private while sharing the work calendar with your colleagues – and see them all in one view, eliminating the possibility of overlapping appointments. Best of all, you can import and export at any time in the standard iCal format. Another aspect worth mentioning is the Sidebar. The Sidebar is a click away when you need to consult another document while writing or jot down notes in the Notepad.

There’s also no need to download files to your computer in order to view them – Ubidesk supports image and document formats such as JPEG, GIF, PDF, Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint and OpenOffice. “Direct Edit” eliminates the need to re-upload documents after editing them in Microsoft Office. We’ve also got a dedicated discussion space ““ with separate threads for each topic. Security conscious users will surely note the use of 256bit key encrypted HTTPS protocol to transfer data between your computer and Ubidesk. It’s good security, the same your bank uses. They also pledge not screen or filter any data.

Overall, Ubidesk  is a good way to go around online team collaboration ““ a solid web app with lots of potential and great attention to details. Sign up for free and share your impressions in the comments.