In the past two days I’ve seen references to three different options for online file storage. Obviously this is a growing industry!

The first two were in the latest issue of Tech Support Alert

1.3 Fifty Gigabytes of Free Online Storage
Most sites offering large quantities of free online storage usually impose strict monthly transfer limits. This one, suggested by subscriber “Greetz:One”, doesn’t seem to. More accurately I couldn’t see any. I gave it a quick whirl and as usual the upload speeds were modest. Also, the desktop client is pretty basic but it does allow you view your online files and to transfer files by drag and drop. OK, the service lacks the fancy backup management features you get with services like Mozy, but if you simply want a lot of online storage space then this site is well worth checking out.
http://adrive.com/home

1.4 More Free Online Storage Options
Subscriber Richard Barnes writes, “Gizmo I saw in January issue you mentioned Amazon S3 online Storage. I use a company called Online Storage Solution [1]. They charge $3 a month for unlimited storage and unlimited downloads. The upload/download method is a bit slow and primitive, but it does the job eventually. I see that they’ve got a special offer at the moment: $20 for a year’s storage. If you’ve got a load of stuff to store, it’s a lot cheaper than Amazon’s S3. I’ve uploaded about 12GB of photos and am now embarking upon uploading my 100GB music collection.”
http://onlinestoragesolution.com

The third mention I saw was today over on Online Tech Tips, about MediaFire, which  offers unlimited storage for free. A business model I have my doubts about, but that I have no experience with to give an opinion one one way or the other.

I have to admit, aside from a few things I keep in Google Docs, my Google Notebook, and my Flickr account. I don’t really store much online, but I am thinking about taking advantage of some of these tools for a nice offsite backup for my files. What have your experiences been?

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Victor Cajiao talks to Chuck Tomasi about the recent announcement that he will be co-author of the 2nd Edition of Podcasting for Dummies due out next year.

According to eWeek, many of you IT folks are having second thoughts about your career choices.

“If you ask an IT pro what they think of their chosen career path, a surprising number might pause before giving you a litany of reasons that the technology workplace leaves them feeling unsettled.

They love what they do, but they’re not sure IT is a great place to be doing it anymore. Even worse, they’re not sure that they would encourage their own computer-inclined children to pursue the same line of work.”

Now, personally, I’m not really having second thoughts. On the other hand, I’ve moved out of general IT into a specialized field, Litigation Technology, so maybe I’m not the best person to represent the IT field any longer.

What say you, IT pros? Are you having second thoughts? Would you discourage a geeky kid from pursuing IT as a career?

I’ve recently had to conduct two interviews for a Network Engineer at our company and at both interviews I asked questions about keeping up to date with technology. I was surprised at the answers considering the job role. I asked if they listened to any podcasts or subscribed to any blogs. Both answered in the negative. I was really surprised as I can’t see how a person can effectively keep up to date with all the latest updates, patches, bugs, tools, software and tips that a network or systems engineer needs without subscribing to a podcast or at the very least some technical blogs.

Sometimes the excuse given is that people don’t have the time to listen to a podcast or read several blogs but they have the time to watch a couple of hours tv each night or spend 30 minutes at the coffee machine discussing the game or their drinking exploits!

Hopefully the Friends In Tech site helps with little tidbits of information that don’t take up a lot of time but do provide useful feedback - and this tip is about Microsoft’s new Technet Webcast Express - webcasts on various subjects lasting about 10-15 minutes to gain a quick overview on a product or it’s features. Currently there are 9 webcasts, 7 on Sharepoint and 2 on the Office2007 document format but keep an eye open for new Webcasts. If Sharepoint doesn’t get you excited then spend 10 minutes catching up with some product news from other bloggers in an area that you are interested in - and if you have an interview in the future - don’t forget to mention Friends In Tech as the blog you read to keep up to date!

A long time ago back in July of 2005 on the In The Trenches Podcast, Uniform Server was mentioned as a free to download Windows Web server. From the Uniform Server website - “The Uniform Server is a WAMP package that allows you to run a server on any MS Windows OS based computer. It is small and mobile to download or move around and can also be used or setup as a production/live server. Developers also use The Uniform Server to test their applications made with either PHP, MySQL, Perl, or the Apache HTTPd Server”.

The new version, 3.4 was released earlier today and is well worth checking out. One advantage of this WAMP (Windows, Apache Mysql, PHP) application is that it is completely portable, no installation required so it can be used on a USB thumbdrive on multiple computers with no problem.

Update - Version number changed as it was 3.4 not 3.3 that was released.

Or if like me you were using the beta version of the software in order to find out what it does and how useable it is, Microsoft have now released a virtual image of Vista (30 day trial) so you can play around in a virtual environment without breaking anything.

As a user of Outlook 2007, and a frequent user of it’s ability to preview attachments without waiting for them to open, I was all too glad yesterday when I spotted this post from Omar Shahine in Google Reader. In it he points out that Ryan Gregg just released a previewer for PDF’s that works with Outlook 2007. That sounded awesome, and I was quick to go grab a copy and test it out.

It works great. One word of caution though, while the documentation on Ryan’s site claims you need Acrobat Reader 7.x +, when I tried to install it I was prompted to download Reader. Once I upgraded to 8, which I had been meaning to do, there was no problem with the install. YMMV.

You may have heard by now. Compusa is closing nearly half its stores. Granted they are not known for deals as they are one of the worst advertised price made up of odd rebates there is. However, you might stumble onto some deals if a store near you is closing. Want to save yourself the trouble of running to your nearby store to see if it is closing? Maybe if they had managed the customer experience better by dealing with the rebates on the back end rather than placing the burden on the customer to deal with inconsistent and sometimes never fulfilled rebates they would not be in this situation.  Check the link below to their posted list of store closings and keep an eye on it will change as the year progresses.

Links Mentioned:

Compusa Store Closing List

So this past week saw a number of announcements, both from CES and MacWorld. Obviously, we’ve all seen post after post on the iPhone, and probably more than a few about Windows Home Server, and dozens of other products that will be coming down the road in 2007. Given all you’ve read, what products are you most looking forward to? Which don’t interest you as much, which ones are you seriously going to think about buying, and which are simply too expensive?

Myself, the iPhone sounded very cool, but the price and the locked-down nature of the phone will probably cause me to pass on it. I know that won’t be true of some of the others FiT members. Not being able to connect to an Exchange server, at least for now, will keep it from showing up in our workplace as well. I was a bit more excited about the Windows Home Server announcement. Seems like a very interesting idea, having a simple server OS that can be used in the home to do some things that take more knowledge than the typical home user has now, like running backups, or accessing your files remotely, etc.

As far as Bill Gates, and the Vista rollout, I do think that as an IT professional I’m going to have to at least be aware of what’s going on with it, and what it brings to the table in the workplace. My own plans for 2007 include picking up a new desktop machine, so I’m waiting until I can get one with Vista pre-installed, not because I can’t wait for Vista, but because I do need to be familiar with it before it hits the office. (I’d like the Ultimate version but that’s not going to happen!)

How has this week affected your tech plans for 2007?

EEye Digital Security have announced that a worm is attacking Symantec hosts and called it the yellow worm due to the obvious colouring of the software. Symantec have had a patch available since May 25th this year but the patch has not been widely installed. This is probably due to the fact that there is no easy auto update for the software from Symantec - Liveupdate does not download patches (only virus definitions), there is no obvious mailing list to sign up for patch release information and they have not made a patch available for (slightly) older versions of the software meaning that a company has to upgrade to the latest version (10.1 from 10.0 - not a free upgrade unless on support) to obtain a patch and even then the patch has to be applied afterwards.

Symantec, you really need to make your upgrade process less painful, have a well publicised mailing list (and web page) of patch releases and have an update mechanism built into the product.

Just after Thanksgiving on the way back home, James and his Family became lost in the Oregon Mountains and then stuck in snow. After 9 days of being in the wilderness, James struck out to hike and look for help.

Unfortunately, he didn’t make it. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family.

James Kim was an editor for Cnet, and previously a reviewer on TechTV.