Selected TechNotes - October 2006

Anonymous browsing

The free open source browser, Firefox has previously featured in my writings and I often mention it as a good alternative browser, which also support tabbed browsing (i.e. you can run many screens within the same browser window rather than opening a different browser window for each page). An interesting addition to the family, based on Firefox is an browser that allows anonymous browsing called “Tor” or “Torpark”. You can find a free download at their website www.torpark.org. In addition to providing anonymous browsing, it is “portable” as well. This means it will run directly from a USB memory stick and does not need to be installed on a PC. If you check my last blog (further down on this page) on the “Virtual PC”, you will see that this can be added to the collection of programs mentioned there. The browser works with a network of servers, each helping to mask the origin of the page requested – your Internet address remains “masked” and you remain anonymous. The browser runs a lot slower than a regular browser like Firefox or Internet Explorer and is only worthwhile using when you really want to remain anonymous. Remember that the regular Firefox also has a portable version than runs off a USB memory stick. You can carry both with you. The regular one will store its cached web pages (the web pages you visit) on the memory stick and not on the PC you are using. In the Firefox preferences, you can set the program to delete your cached pages and the history when you close the program. This is an excellent idea for when you do your Internet banking or don’t want some techie looking at the pages you have been viewing.

Online Office programs

Also previously reported are products like ThinkFree Office, which offer programs like Microsoft Office, but which do not have to be installed on the PC you are using. If the PC is connected to a good internet line, these services will provide you with much of the basic functionality of an office suite of programs. ThinkFree comes with free storage capacity of 1gig, and you can keep documents private for only you to use, share them with limited friends who also have Thinkfree logins, or publish them to the web so that anyone can read them.

Other services that provide similar services are AjaxLaunch (www.ajaxlaunch.com) and GOffice (www.goffice.com). These applications will be especially slow on dialups and slower Internet connections. The online storage may be one of the best features about them – that is, to be able to save copies of your files online so that should your PC or memory stick go missing or become faulty while travelling, you will still have copies when you reach your destination.

Another contender emerging in this space is Google (as always?). They have a suite of tools emerging from their labs including the email (gMail) system that has been around for some time, an instant messenger program (Google Talk), a calendar system (Google Calendar) and a web page creator and Google Page Creator – to create and publish web pages. See: (pack.google.com)

Another backup option

I’ve said it before – if you don’t backup your work, you will lose it some day! Another free option is MediaMax (www.mediamax.com), which provides a set of online folders and 25 gig of free storage space. This is a lot of storage space! You can upload all sorts of files and choose to keep them private to yourself, or to share some (or all) with your friends. The regular internet page will let you upload and download files from most internet-enabled PCs, and there is a (free) downloadable program, which will help you copy larger numbers of files and folders to your new storage vault. Once again, you can upload the files you need and carry with you on a memory stick, just in case – as well as keeping copies of files for that very rainy day when your PC’s hard drive goes faulty. You have been warned again! Backup your files!

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