Which is the least expensive yet reliable 'Unlimited' cloud storage service for 'personnel' use

My requirements are: 

1) 'Unlimited' cloud storage for keeping personnel data.

2) Sync client on multiple plateforms  Windows/Ubuntu/Android/Blackberry.

3) Safety of data: If service is down 30% of the time, that's fine but should never loose data.

4) Privacy: is not a big concern, good to have.

5) Easy on pocket : must have feature

highlight text, Comment annotateon web pages and collaborating with friends and colleagues using annotary

I had been looking  for a tool to

1. highlight portion of text on web pages
2. comment on web pages
3. draw circle shapes on pages to highlight important sections of pages
4. add a sticky note on some highlightes section of pages, on top of which i can collabrate with my friends.

I tried following tools 

Web Klipper - 

 + Simple and best , I can highlight section of text, color is prominent florescent yellow

 + I can share the highlitest text with others

 

 - when i share somehting with frineds, its opens them in webklipper url.

Scribble

-Its slow

-It requires a toolbar.

Diggo

+ Its quite old and famous tool

+ allows all except collaboration

- usability is not all that good

-UI looks quite old

Annotary

+ this was best among all

+ Its fullfilled all my requirements except collaboration, collaboration is a paid feature

+Usability is good, UI is good.

+ even though collaboration is not there , you can see what your friend have highlighted on current page.

https://annotary.com/

Xubnutu Rocks

Converted 3rd machine to Xubuntu from Windows 7, my brother's machine it works like charm. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xubuntu

Xubuntu really rocks. Its very light weight operating system, boots and shutdown with lightening speed, its so user friendly even your granny can use it.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/if-my-mother-in-law-can-use-ubuntu-linux-anyone-can/10802

Has everything that you would need on a home PC, you can download movies using torrent :) , play audio,video , you can browse, has a app-store kinda of thing called ubuntu software center, which has huge collection of really cool softwares.
you constantly keep getting updates as you get on Windows and Mac.



To experience it you do not really need to install it ,

1) just download the iso file from  http://xubuntu.org/getxubuntu/

2) burn it on a CD ( you dont need DVD its that small)
3) Restart your machine and boot from CD.

That's all, experience it, if you like it install it.
Need any help comment here.

 highly recommended for PCs and laptop 3-4 year old or more, cause its meant for machines with older configurations, so that they still remain usable and valuable :)

Folder Size

Folder Size, is an add on for Windows Explorer. When we go to Windows Explorer's detail view, the "Size" column show size of files but not the size of folders, and that 's what i was looking for.

I thought of of writing a shell extension myself, but before that I searched if something similar existed and I found this one back in 2006. and since then I have been in using it. 

In between I had uninstall it for because it's background service which keeps calculating the size of fodler was consuming my CPU a lot. but the newer version but the latest version 2.5  rocks. it has overcome all those performance issue.  Kudos to author.

FreeFileSync :File/Folder comparison synchronization tool

FreeFileSync is an open source and free tool hosted on source forge. 

It's very useful for those who have multiple machines, 

I have got two laptops, two windows desktops and one Mac machine in office.

and all machines have one folder in common "Software" 

I always want to have these folders in synch, If I download a new software on my machine

and save it to software folder, i want it to be available on machin2  to machine 5.

Beyond Compare ( A file/folder comarision tool)

I have been used Beyond Compare in my previous company for 3 years. 

it's a great tool file comparision and folder comparsion.  

Why I love it? 

File Comparision: 

-   Two side file comparision is simple and smarter than other tool ( EXamDiff etc)  

    it try to find the context of source code and compare 


- If there is only few characters changed in one particular line, it doesn't mark 
   entire line by one color, it marked only those changed characters, 

   which makes it more readable.

-  Aligning option rocks , If the tool could not it smartly ,

     You can align a chunk of code to other side manually.
     say this is your content

   --------------------------------
           Before Manual Align 

   --------------------------------

         Chunk 1  | Chunk 1
         Chunk3   | Chunk 2

         chunk 2   |                  

   --------------------------------

    Right Click on Chunk 2 on right hand side and say "Align"
    now right click on Chunk 2 on left hand side and say align >
    now the result will look like this.
    

   --------------------------------
           After Manual Align 

   --------------------------------

         Chunk 1  | Chunk 1
         Chunk3   |

         chunk 2   | Chunk 2                  

   --------------------------------

Folder Comparision: 

 I just love it's folder comparision. 

 I wish it was avaiable for Mac also,  ireally have hard time in finding the folder diff on Mac
 any of you know any simple and good folder diff tool on Mac? 

- Easy to use -
            a) in explore right click on any folder and say select for comparision
                 say your folder name was "xyz"

           b) now right click on any other folder and say Compare with "XYZ".

- Filters and sesssion : I often compare my source code on one machine with source code
            on other machine, which belong s to same source code repository.
            I want to compare only source code file and not the binay files or intermeidates fiels
            generated by developement tool 
            like Visual Studio generates PDB, IDL, etc ... so can just right click on one of them  

            say exclude, it will ask me , all files of this type or just this one, I say all files of this type...
           and ingnores all the files of that type( PDB,IDL,....) 
            and now I can save the session and use the same session again , so that I don't need to
            excude those files again. 

-  Auto refresh : If you keep FolderDiff Open on some interval it keep checking if there were any
                             changes.

- Cool color coding : color coding is a plus point from usability side

-  Filters :    you wan to see
                - all files

                - only differences
                - only orphens 

                - orphens only on left side

                - orphens only on right side. 

Overall I love this utility and planing to buy it's next version Beyond Compare 3 very soon. 

Wakoopa.com

I was recommended to to check out the Wakoopa by my frined Xual.

wakoopa is a cool website where you can find out 

- What are the software other people in world are using? 

- Which of them are most used( category wise as well) 

- You can add people to your freind list. See waht they are using. 

-  You cna download their tracker,which will let Wakoopa know what are the software's you are
    using.

- If you want few of your software not be tracker by wakoopa tracker you can do that as well.
    for Example : I do not want Wakoopa to track Firefox and chrome.

 

Mozilla Bespin review

Mozilla Labs has recetly introduced thier new innovation "Bespin" , a web-based text editor speally meant for web developers, as it shows color coding for web based languages.

"Bespin" is based on new technology HTML 5, which so far being implmented only in very few browsers MOzilla firefox 3 and WebKit Nighty.  yes it doesn't work in Chrome for now.

This release is still in Alpha.

I still like the look and fill off this web-based text editor. 

Worth trying once.

For more information visit  https://bespin.mozilla.com/

Source[via Lifehacker]

Begining note

I had been thinking to start a separate blog on 1) software review 2) Social issues and 3) Driving techniques. let me take first step with software reviews..