Category: ifttt

By Bakari Chavanu, MakeUseOf – November 22, 2010 at 01:31PM

Nearly every longtime and experienced computer user knows that the best solution to recover deleted files is to have a good regularly scheduled backup system. For Mac users, we have covered a few of the best backup systems, including Tina’s 5 Ways To Clone & Copy Your Hard Drive, Jeffry’s Carbon Copy Cloner – A Free & Powerful Backup Utility, and my tips on using Snow Leopard’s default backup system, Time Machine.

Time Machine has saved me more than a few times and made it very easy to recover deleted files. But for occasions when a backup system fails or when it is not used to back up files on say memory cards or external drives, data recovery applications like Cleverfiles’s Disk Drill will probably be your best solution and is free in its beta version.

Disk Drill is a recovery software for uprooting deleted or damaged files, including videos, lost music, podcasts, photos, and text documents. It works on both internal and external drives, as well as memory cards and thumb drives. I have had to use similar software in the past, and the one thing I like about Disk Drill is its straightforward user interface. I didn’t have to read a lot of instructions to start using it.

Using Disk Drill

When you first launch Disk Drill, you are presented with a guided tour and tutorial of its features. The developers understand how agonizing it is to lose and try to recover important data. But as they point out in their tutorial, “Data recovery is mostly about chances, probability, and common sense…there’s really no guarantee something will be recovered 100%.” If you accidentally delete a file(s), your chances of recovering it are very good if you use Disk Drill soon after, to recover what you lost.

So for example, if you delete files off a camera media card, your chances of recovering them are greater the less you reuse the card after those files are deleted. The more you use the card, the more you overwrite deleted data.

To use Disk Drill, simply click the Recover Data button in the menu bar, select the drive you want to recover, and then click ”Quick Scan” or ”Deep scan” to start the recovery process. To make the scanning go faster, you can specify the type of files you want to recover, e.g., pictures, videos, text documents, audio files.

Disk Drill will give you results of its search, at which time you can preview and select the files you want to restore.

I tried the application on a media card and it recovered several deleted images – most at their full resolution size.

Recovery Vault

One unique feature of Disk Drill is Recovery Vault, which seems to work like a backup protection system for your designated partitions and selected folders. According to the developers, Recovery Vault “keeps a smart history of your file activity and lets you increase recovery changes for all your disks with the Mac file system or FAT”.

Recovery Vault is not enabled by default, and it will only of course protect files on drives after it is applied to them. This feature is very useful because when files are deleted on the Mac system, the details (file name, dates, etc) are also erased. Recovery Vault retains this information when files are deleted or damaged.

Documentation

Users of Disk Drill will have different recovery issues for their hard drives. Cleverfiles‘s developers seem to be addressing well the needs of different users. Their site includes a growing collection of documentation for the type of recovery processes a user might need.

These documents include how to recover deleted files for when trash is already empty, for memory card recovery, lost data from formatted partitions, and from FAT/NTFS/HFS and other file systems.

The site also includes a user forum for additional questions and discussions.

Data recovery is not something we look forward to or use everyday, but it’s important to have a program like Disk Drill for when the inevitable occurs. Let us know what you think of Disk Drill after you download and give it a run. It will remain free under its beta version, so you will want to grab a copy now.

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By (author unknown), Core77 – November 22, 2010 at 11:09AM

How many times have you thrown your heavy grappling hook skyward only to have it miss the windowsill, plummet back towards the ground and kill one of your accomplices?

That’s no longer a problem with Battelle’s Tactical Air Initiated Launch system, which accurately fires a titanium grappling hook and Kevlar line 100 feet high and sixty feet away. That means you could be standing across the street from your neighbor’s tenth-floor apartment, honoring the boundaries set by the restraining order, and still hit his windowsill with this thing. Even better, the TAIL uses compressed air, so there’s none of that noise you’d get with an explosive gunpowder-driven grappling hook gun. Without that telltale BANG noise, chances are slim anyone’s going to call the police!

But wait, there’s more! The TAIL system isn’t just for firing grapping hooks–it can launch any object that fits in the barrel. Your days of tying a note to a brick and hurling it through a window (try getting that up to the tenth floor) are over!

(more…)

By Splitsider, Gizmodo – November 19, 2010 at 09:00PM

Everybody’s been clamoring for Ghostbusters 3, but in this video, they’ve come back and it might not be a good thing. You know, because they’re dicks. More »

By (author unknown), MacNN | The Macintosh News Network – November 19, 2010 at 05:00PM

Security Generation has released a new security guide for Mac users. The guide, which is currently available online for free, includes five different sections: Creating and Managing Accounts, Networking and Services, Security, FileVault and Firewall, Privacy, and Securing Safari. A sixth chapter, Additional Security, is also in the works and will be uploaded in the coming weeks. A Securing Leopard Checklist has also been made available, allowing users to document which changes they decide to implement….

By (author unknown), The Big Picture – November 19, 2010 at 12:03PM

Kanana Camp, Botswana. Pulling over by the side of the road to watch a grazing giraffe, we spotted an amber head lurking behind a small mound. A hungry lioness. Watching, waiting, camera to my eye, she eventually chose her moment and pounced just as the giraffe sensed danger. The lioness gave chase, but failed. Hungry, she lay down, invisible, in the grass not ten feet from us and waited again. (Photo and caption by Alex Tan)

By Adam Dachis, Lifehacker – November 18, 2010 at 02:30PM

It’s almost daily routine that you run into someone parking in two spots, way too far over the line, or in a spot designed for a car half the size. You Park Like an Asshole helps you fight back.

By Gareth Branwyn, MAKE – November 17, 2010 at 06:30PM

Image from “Knives & Multitools” section of Make: Ultimate Workshop and Tool Guide 2011

I don’t know about you, but I have an interest in tools that borders on the unnatural. I collect tools I rarely even use. If I gathered up all of the screwdrivers I own, for instance, it’d probably prove an alarming display. As I’ve commented here before, there’s something aspirational, hopeful, about tools, and acquiring them.Tools at least draw you a few inches closer to the task at hand. They’re you’re interface to making.

In this guide, we look at tools that are both fantasy wish list specials and practical tools that have stood the test of repeated use. Some are sexy and expensive, others more homely and affordable. We think every one of them is a winner as a potential gift for that active maker in your life — or for those who dream of more time for making, one acquired fetish object at a time.

Read the Full Story » | More on MAKE » | Comments » |

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By Kat Hannaford, Gizmodo – November 17, 2010 at 05:20PM

It’s been discovered that you create the very same substance those Ruskis won the Nobel prize for out of household sugar. Borrow a cup from your neighbour, and get baking the world’s hardest substance. No, not your Mom’s scones. Graphene. More »

By Kyle VanHemert, Gizmodo – November 17, 2010 at 01:09PM

Awesome. Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig, excuse me, Indiana Jones and James Bond, team up to kick alien ass in Jon Favreau’s Cowboys & Aliens, coming next year. It might replace Wild Wild West as my favorite revisionist Western! [Yahoo!] More »

By Jason Fitzpatrick, Lifehacker – November 17, 2010 at 11:00AM

Windows: The windows version of popular cross-platform remote desktop tool TeamViewer has updated and includes a host of new features to make remote presentations and trouble shooting easier.

While several of the new features are aimed at commercial users—such as the improved QuickSupport function for customer service calls—there are a bunch of great improvements for individuals. The new QuickJoin feature makes it dead simple for people to join a presentation. Now instead of the host plugging in all the user’s login info, the host can share the session data ahead of schedule and the participants are responsible for joining the session.

One of the handiest improvements, especially for those of us who use TeamViewer to help friends and relatives with their computers, is Auto Rejoin. Now when the other party has to reboot—after a software installation, for example—they’ll automatically rejoin the TeamViewer session after the reboot. On top of the new features the layout of the application now has a cleaner delineation between remote control and presentation modes and password protection of TeamViewer’s options.

Visit the link below to read about the new features or jump right to the download page here.