Dropbox - keep a live backup of all your work
Everyone needs to backup their data; students, however seem to be the worst at it. We either don't do it, or we obsessively do it. A little compulsion would be a good thing, but making multiple copies and keeping them in a variety places is a bit counter productive. "Did I add a backup of my latest to this thumbdrive? What about this drive?"
The long and short of data backup is that you really only need one backup, so long as it is reliable, and is off-site. Don't keep your only back up plugged into your computer, or in your purse, or anywhere that it might burn in a house fire, or be left at the library (Nancy, I'm thinking of you).
Ideally, your backup would be transparent, accessible, remote, secure, and have privacy settings for possibly sharing your stuff. Beyond that, if it offered diffing, that would be perfect.
I've been using Dropbox to keep live copies of my coursework. I can only speak to the Windows and Android UX, but it is very slick. On Windows, DB installs quickly and insinuates itself into the standard Windows Explorer. If selected at install, it will add a shortcut named "Dropbox" to desktop and also a shortcut named "My Drobox" to your "My Documents" directory.
Double-clicking either shortcut opens a folder on your local drive that stores whatever you put in it. Anything added here is automatically synced to your account at Dropbox. You can access these files on your tablet (Android or iOS), or smartphone (Android, iPhone - I am sure Symbian and Windows Phone 7 are not far off), or on the web on any device. You can also set up an account with Habilis to send files directly to your DB space as e-mail attachments. Pretty handy.
There is a third-party portable version of DB so you can run it from your thumbdrive, but I cannot vouch for it. I haven't used it and with Habilis, I don't need it.
To share a file, login to the web interface and select what to share, and with whom to share it. The shortcut for this is right-clicking on the file in Windows Explorer, and selecting the Dropbox menu item, then the "Browse on Dropbox website" fly-out. Try this out and you'll find another goody in there as well.
So, we are down to diffing, or versioning. DB does support undelete, as well as versioning, and even maintains a 30-day undo history for the free accounts, and unlimited undo for paid accounts. You can also roll back to previous versions if you need to. Additionally, if you are on any flavor of *nix, including OS X, you can install DropDiff and be able to download the previous version of your file(s). Right-click on a file in Windows Explorer to do this, or get it from the web interface.
The free version gives you 2GB to get started, and for each referral you sign up, you get a 250MB more, up to 8GB. I don't feel too much like a shill for asking this, but if you are going to sign up, please use one of the links above to +250 my account. Thanks. When I've reached 8GB, I'll update the links to boost someone else's accounts.
If you have things to which you want constant availability, DB can't be beaten. It does encrypt everything (SSL for transport), but it does so transparently. You won't see that your stuff is encrypted for transit, or for storage, and you may want to encrypt on your own anyhow. To do so, you might try TrueCrypt or some other tool for sensitive info. If you don't have TrueCrypt on your other computer/device, you won't be able to open your encrypted files. However, you can install it on a thumbdrive (I use my phone's microSD card) and run it from there.
TC is currently available only for PC platforms (Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux), but I hope Android and other mobile OSes will get it soon. Chip in a few bucks to encourage development.
I'll cover more on TC in another post, hopefully soon.
