MeCanto – your music collection on the web

MeCanto let you Listen to your music collection on the web and your mobile phone.

Features:

• Upload and sync music using the PC client.
• Unlimited free online storage for your music.
• Music is neatly organized according to genre, artists, etc.
• Create and edit your own playlists.
• No need to manually sync again.
• Use it on your mobile too.
• Edit playlists online, search for videos on Youtube and scrobble it to your last.fm account.

Recommended by MakeUseOf.

CrashPlan – Automatic Online Backup

CrashPlan – Automatic Online Backup comes in free and pay flavors.

This allows you to backup your computer automatically — to elsewhere on your own computer, to an external drive, to another computer.  The software for this is free for personal use.

If you want to backup to CrashPlan’s service online, there is a regular fee to compress and save using “industrial grade private key encryption to secure your files before they’re backed up. The only person who can decrypt your files is you.”

Note that as of October 2009, the lowest annual fee is $54/year for unlimited storage.  On one hand, it’s not as fast as locally backing up, and costs more in the long run, but on the other hand, it’s not vulnerable to anything stolen/damaged/broken at your end.

Use at your own risk, like any such service.

Which Online Backup Service Is Best?

Bob Rankin has a post on Which Online Backup Service Is Best?.

Bob covers Carbonite, Mozy and iDrive as 3 of the biggest/most heavily advertised services.

SpiderOak: Online Data Backup & Storage

MakeUseOf has a post about SpiderOak a Secure Online Data Backup & Storage service.

“SpiderOak is a secure online data backup, sync, sharing, remote access and storage tool. It is easy to use and lets you upload your files and access them from any Internet-connected device. It works quietly in the background and automatically backups and syncs your data across multiple computers and has a versioning system, which lets you rollback to previous versions of a stored file and access deleted files

It claims to have up to 15 times faster upload rate due to its compression and de-duplication technology. It’s fault tolerant design protects your data against any unforeseen events such as a network timeout, power outage and possible human errors.”

FrostBytez: Get 50 GB of Online Storage For Free

MakeUseOf has a post on FrostBytez where you can get 50 GB of Online Storage For Free.

“FrostBytez is a file hosting service that provides 50 GB of online storage space for free. You can upload files upto 200MB in size and there is no bandwidth limit on the number of times files downloaded. The application is really easy to use, simply select the file on your computer, upload it and then get the download link. You can also password protect certain files if necessary.”

Posterous – The place to post everything

Posterous bills itself as “The place to post everything. Just email us. Dead simple blog by email.”

Recommended by Techbite, this is “a handy site for displaying practically any type of file: PowerPoint presentations, PDFs, Flash games, images, MP3s, documents, and videos in a variety of formats. The beauty of Posterous is that PowerPoint files display as they would if you had a PowerPoint viewer and image collections are automatically available as slide shows.”

Free.

280Slides : Powerpoint Viewer and Builder

MakeUseOf has a post on 280Slides, the Powerpoint Viewer and Builder.

“280Slides is a dead-simple online Powerpoint viewer and builder tool. Using 280Slides you can create Powerpoint presentations online, download presentations to your PC, upload and view existing presentations online, and share them with friends. The cool thing about it, the presentations that you create with 280Slides can be easily downloaded and edited using Microsoft Powerpoint. No download required, the only thing you need is a web browser and an internet connection. The app has pretty much all the features necessary to create simple presentations online.”

So create a presentation (on your computer and upload, or directly at 280Slides) and have it available anyplace you have an Internet connection, no matter whose computer you’re using or what software they do or don’t have (as long as they have a standard web browser).

ADrive.com online storage

ADrive.com free online storage offers 50GB of online storage.

More features are available in pay (call it “rent”) versions, but for free you get:

• Universal Access
• 50GB Storage Capacity (per account)
• File Sharing
• Folder/Directory Upload
• File Download
• Easy Search Tool
• Remote File Transfer
• International Character Support
• File History
• File History Recovery ($25 additional fee)
• Zoho® Editor

Nice deal.  Use at your own risk; confidential info should not be put into online storage until/unless you are sure of the security.

Dropbox to backup, sync and share files

[updated 2009.7.16]

Dropbox is a free site to make backup, sync and sharing made easy.

Install this software on computers where you need to keep files synchronized or shared, and you get up to 2GB free space, and more for pay.

Use at your own risk (be wary of trusting confidential information to sites like this until you check them out thoroughly).  Also, since this requires installing software, it can’t be used on campus computers.

Maximum PC has a post on How to Hack Your DropBox with five mashups to get more use out of this service.

Docuter: Document Uploading & Sharing Tool

MakeUseOf has a post on Docuter.

Docuter is a Document Uploading & Sharing Tool.

Features:

• Tool for uploading documents and sharing them online.
• Upload as many documents as you need (no restrictions).
• Supporte over 200 different document formats.
• Share documents via embedding or by forwarding a link.
• Access your documents from anywhere.

Use at your own risk.  While you can make a document private rather than sharing it, you have to decide if you trust any such site to keep something confidential.

Evernote for taking note of anything

Evernote is software which can be on the web (access from anywhere), on your computer, on your phone.

“Evernote allows you to easily capture information in any environment using whatever device or platform you find most convenient, and makes this information accessible and searchable at any time, from anywhere.”

Windows, Mac, various phones,  U3 flash drive versions.  Free or get more features in the pay version.

Online Storage Feature-by-Feature Comparison Chart

Lifehacker has an Online Storage Feature-by-Feature Comparison Chart

which covers “the ones that offer some form of free plan, anyways. (All of these services offer some form of security and privacy with uploaded files, along with, in most cases, the ability to share and/or collaborate on documents).”

The results from a reader survey of the best online file sharing services, which cuts pretty close to the contenders in this field. Those winners were, in order: Box.net, Drop.io, MediaFire, and Windows Live SkyDrive.

Finch: Speedup Your Dialup Connection by stripping off unneeded stuff

MakeUseOf.com has a post on Finch, a service which speeds up your dialup (and perhaps simplifies text-to-speech?) by stripping off the graphics, scripts, and other details to boil web pages down to their basic essentials.

“For example, the New York Times homepage is over 110KB, and uses external resources (images, scripts, what have you) that make it amount to about 1.4MB. Finch trims that down to 84KB, which doesn’t look as pretty, but is 94% less for your computer to download.”

Features:

• speedup browsing speed on slow dial-up connections.
• Reduce page sizes by stripping secondary elements from pages (CSS, flash, frames, etc.)
• No sign-up or registration needed.

jooce.com – power (desktops) to the people

jooce.com – power to the people is “your very own, private online desktop – with public file sharing capabilities.  A highly-secure, online space to keep, view, listen to – and instantly share with friends – all your files, photos, music and video.”

Joose is aimed especially at cybercafe users who don’t own a computer, but want to set up a familiar-looking desktop that has the files they need handy.

Use with caution – security of your files depends on the trust you have in the site, however much that might be.

OrbitFiles: Store & Share up to 6GB of Files For Free

MakeUseOf has a post on OrbitFiles which has up to 6GB of free online storage.

“Features:

• Store and share files online.
• Free account provides you with 6GB of free space, premium account with more options also supported.
• Search and Organize you files online.
• Keep your files private or share with everyone.
• Protect your shared files with  password and add messages to shared files.
• Create public file albums
• Enable RSS for any shared file.”

As always, remember to be cautious about trusting your personal information to any online service.

Scribd is like YouTube for text

Scribd.

So, what if you want a document online for everybody, rather than a picture or video?  What if you want to publish a whole online magazine, or just a story/novel/opinion/whatever?  Tutorials, fiction, cultural pieces… anything you write.

“

Scribd and blogging platforms like Blogger, WordPress, and Tumblr are all tools that enable you to publish yourself on the web. Scribd occupies the space between blogging and traditional publishing, enabling anybody to publish formatted, professional-looking content without expensive software or hassle.

Documents published on Scribd aren’t confined by the formatting limits and peculiarities of HTML-based platforms. PDF documents uploaded to Scribd retain their fonts, graphics, and formatting regardless of the reader’s particular computer or browser. Scribd documents compliment your blog by enabling you to embed multi-page formatted documents with a simple bit of code.

Here are a few things to consider when deciding whether to use Scribd or a blog:

• Each document on Scribd is a stand-alone publication.
• There is no pressure to post multiple documents on Scribd. Unlike a blog, you can post one piece of writing and then never post anything again.
• With Scribd, there’s no time pressure. You can publish something you wrote yesterday, or ten years ago!
• Unlike a blog, Scribd allows you to display richly formatted Word or PDF documents”

Gigabyte files to transfer

[revised Jan. 9, 2009]

How do you transfer big files — like a gigabyte or more — over the Internet?

Windows Secrets did some tests to see in June 2008 and found some possible services, outlined in this review.

AOL’s free Xdrive service was one but this is now going/gone out of business, so don’t use it, and TransferBigFiles another.

GSpace for Firefox – store your files in GMail

If you have a Google GMail account, you might be able to use all that space they give you for something other than email.

GSpace is an extension for the Firefox browser that helps you to store files, even large ones, in your GMail space.

“This extension allows you to use your Gmail Space (4.1 GB and growing) for file storage. It acts as an online drive, so you can upload files from your hard drive and access them from every Internet capable system. The interface will make your Gmail account look like a FTP host.
After the installation, you’ll get an option called “Gspace” in your “Tools” menu, which opens the GSpace window.
It’s great for storing/sharing files with your friends. Also very good to backup photos and music files (as you can view/listen to them from Gspace).
If you have any problems with the extension, please look at the FAQ page (http://getgspace.com/faq.html). If your question is not listed or the solution doesn’t apply to your specific question, please email the current developer (Fon Labs).
* DISCLOSURE: Gspace uses statcounter.com service to track the usage of the extension”

Note: this is NOT an official Google GMail function, so use at your own risk.

GSpace add-on for Firefox stores in Gmail

Got a Google GMail account? Okay, then are you using all the space they give you? Not yet?

Then consider this Firefox browser add-on called GSpace which lets you FTP through Firefox and store files in there.

“Gspace is the FON friendly site that provides FREE Online Storage to access your files everywhere. Gspace turns the 2GB of your Gmail account into free online storage. With Gspace you can manage unlimited Gmail accounts to store all type of files within its simple, user friendly interface. Listen your favourite stored music directly from your Gspace, view your collections of pictures and manage your Gdrive files as well. Download Gspace now and transfer files between your computer and Gspace at anytime, from everywhere!”

Recommended by PC Magazine, April 2008.

GMX – free email, not a sports car

GMX offers a free email service, which appears comparable to Google’s GMail.

• Unprecedented Spam Protection
• Maximum Virus Protection
• 5 GB E-Mail Storage Space

In addition, GMX Mail supports POP3, IMAP and SMTP protocols, as well as mobile device integration.  GMX respects our customers’ privacy and does not transfer any data to third party companies.

They also offer online file storage.

For an objective opinion, try the About.com review.