archiver

Flash use dips at top Web sites since November

Web-page speed guru Steve Souders, putting to use the latest in a string of useful tools he's created, has found that the top 17,000 Web sites have eased off use of Adobe Systems' Flash Player in the last half year.

Specifically, Souders has started showing data collected by his HTTP Archive project, which logs a wide range of statistics about a collection of 17,000 top Web sites. He began logging data last year but only announced the HTTP Archive at the end of March.

The site lets people compare statistics about how Web sites are built from … Read more

Reading the contents of a ZIP file in OS X

OS X conveniently provides the option to compress files or folders directly in the Finder, creating archives of documents in a single ZIP file that can be moved to backup locations, e-mailed to people, or otherwise managed. This can be done by selecting some files and choosing Compress (or Archive in prior OS X versions) from the File menu or contextual menu.

Uncompressing the files is as simple as double-clicking them, which will expand the contents right next to the original archive. While this is useful, when handling these ZIP archives you might wish to see the files inside them … Read more

Future-proof your data archive

It's easier than ever to make sure copies of your most important records, documents, photos, videos, and other personal data will be readable/viewable/playable long after the hardware and software used to create the files have bitten the dust.

The four keys to safe data archiving are to choose file formats that won't become obsolete, use storage media that won't deteriorate or become inaccessible, make multiple copies stored apart, and check your archived data regularly to ensure it's still readable.

Don't get stuck with outdated data formats Most of the files you want to … Read more

Exclusive: Stuffit 2011 for Mac

These days, most file compression activities are baked into your operating system, but there are still plenty of reasons to get a specialized compression utility. With StuffIt 2011 for Mac--exclusive to CNET Downloads today--you can create customized "Destinations" that let you drag and drop files or folders for automated compression and sending. Want to compress to ZIP format and upload via FTP, for example? With a quick setup, you can create your custom destination beforehand with your preferred compression algorithm, and you'll never have to worry about flipping through menus for this destination again. To top … Read more

NASA brings historic photos to Flickr Commons

NASA is now providing images detailing its early years on Flickr's Commons archive, the space agency announced on Monday.

NASA's new Commons page displays nearly 200 photos taken throughout the venerable organization's early history. They're arranged in three photo sets, including "Building NASA," "Launch/Takeoff," and "NASA Center Namesakes."

The photos available on Flickr aren't available exclusively on that site. In fact, since 2007, NASA has been working with the Internet Archive to display its historic photos. But according to NASA, it decided to bring some of those images … Read more

Rapid resizing

We resize images all the time--to e-mail to friends, post on blogs, share on Facebook, and much more. Although we often resize images in a photo-editing program as soon as we take them off the camera, it's not uncommon for us to need a resizing tool that can be used the rest of the time. After all, who wants to launch a big photo-editing program for tasks that can be completed with a lightweight utility? That's where Fast Image Resizer comes in. This basic program lets users resize images as quickly and easily as anything we've seen.… Read more

The complete Gadgettes archive

Here it is, the mega list of every single Gadgettes episode.Dive in and rediscover some old gems that are buried within this list of 188 episodes. Note that episode 1-67 were recorded before the blog existed and therefore, only the audio file is linked to. For the remainder, you will find a link to the accompanying blog post. I went one step further and took the time to embed the Ustream player for episodes 101-130 into the individual blog posts, so now you can catch the video versions of those episode a bit easier. I hope you enjoy!

Gadgettes 1: The Beta Gadgettes 2: The Premiere Edition Gadgettes 3: The Camera Episode Gadgettes 4: The Vacation Edition Gadgettes 5: Just Buy it Already! Gadgettes 6: The Rage Edition … Read more

Comics, PDFs, and more: Stanza for iPad is a universal (and free) killer e-reader

The iPad is rapidly becoming a Swiss army knife for e-reading apps of all types. Just in case you find Apple's iBooks disappointing (and most of us do), there are the Kindle, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble apps. While each has its advantages, they're generally not compatible with each other. They also make sharing and file-format recognition beyond their e-books pretty difficult.

Well, here's the good news: Stanza just hit the iPad last night.

Stanza has been a longtime favorite of iPhone and iPod Touch users--it accesses a variety of e-book stores directly, can read several formats, and has an amazing amount of font, spacing and color customization. It was a bit of a surprise to see this latest update, simply because Amazon acquired Stanza last year to create the backbone for their Kindle app.

The universal iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad app update that has just arrived, version 3.0, looks superficially just like Stanza did before, albeit on a larger iPad screen. Unlike the Kindle and Barnes & Noble apps, Stanza can still browse Feedbooks, Project Gutenberg, and several other book collections directly within the app. The app doesn't connect with Amazon, nor does it offer any indications of an Amazon link.

The additions to this version, however, are eye-opening: Stanza now supports PDFs and comic book files in CBR format (yes, full-color ones). That comic book reader we were excited about that costs about 7 dollars? Irrelevant.

And here's the final kicker: Stanza also happens to be free. … Read more

A world without records

I received an e-mail recently from my good friend and book co-author Chris Stakutis, who is also vice president of emerging technology at CA.

Chris can have very different ways of looking at things, a quality that makes him well-suited for his job. The e-mail I'm reprinting below (with a few edits for brevity) is a case in point.

From time to time, one of the organizations that specializes in counting things speculates that in the next five years, humans will generate many yottabytes of data. Here's an example from IDC. (Yes, you can yotta yotta data.) These … Read more