You may or may not have heard of Pownce, Kevin Rose’s web start-up which makes it easy to share links, photos, videos, or files with friends. Before you say “Ugh, not another chat/twitter/messaging app” let me tell you why Pownce fills a previously open gap, and why it will be useful to you.

Lets imagine you want to send a link to a music video to your friend. You would use IM, but he is offline. You don’t want to send it over email, because nobody likes getting tons of random links stuffing their inbox. So what do you do? If you want the whole world to see it, you could post it on his facebook wall. If not, use Pownce.

Pownce is a great way to share links, files and notes with your friends because it eliminates the constraint of being online at the time, and does not clutter up their inbox with small messages. Imagine if every time someone wanted to send you a link, they emailed you. Your inbox would be full of these links, and you wouldn’t be able to give priority to important messages. Pownce allows you to drop a message to any number of friends, or even the public.

When Twitter came out, I saw a huge buzz from everyone about how useful it was, and how important it is to tell the world what you are doing every single moment. I disagreed the whole time, and to this day still do not use Twitter. However when Pownce came out, I saw a gap being filled, and a unique method of sharing stuff with your friends emerge. Pownce even has a cool little Adobe AIR app that you can use on your desktop.

By the way, I have 5 extra Pownce invites that I won’t need. If you want one, just drop a comment below.

Pownce

Myndology recently came out with a new line of environmentally friendly notebooks called the “Bare” series. I have reviewed Myndology notebooks before, and have expressed how pleased I have been.

The new Bare series comes in two sizes. The old Journal (6.5″ x8.5″), and a new size called Memo (3″x4″) which is similar to an old Index size, but has rings on the side instead of the top. For the review, Myndology sent me the journal notebook pictured to the right.

What is Bare?

Let’s talk about what makes Bare different from Myndology’s regular line of notebooks. The concept is that each notebook is made from recycled acid-free paper, printed on with soy ink, and manufactured with clean energy.

Colors and Design

The first thing you notice is that the color-scheme uses very earthy tones compared to the original fluorescent designs. The notebook also has a new cover, which is just as interesting as the last. If you thought the original Myndology covers were too flashy, Bare is for you.

Paper Quality

The paper is slightly yellow tinted, but it is not noticable. It gives the notebook an old feeling, which may be something you are after. The paper also fits nicely into the general earthy color scheme.

Price

Just like buying organic produce costs more than regular produce, and free-range eggs cost more than regular eggs, this environmentally friendly notebook will cost you about 50% more than it’s regular counterpart. Certainly more expensive, but not unreasonable, considering the environmental friendliness of the notebook.

Conclusion

The new Bare notebooks are a great alternative to Myndology’s primary line, but are not for everyone. If you like the style, or want an environmentally friendly notebook and are willing to spend the extra couple bucks, go for it! Personally, I like the flashy fluorescent primary colors, so I think I will stick with them.

Goodies for Gearfire Readers

I asked Myndology to supply a 10% off coupon for Gearfire readers who would like to buy notebooks. The code is “GTDFOR10” without the quotes, and it is valid until the end of sept ember. I highly suggest you take advantage of this, and at least buy a Journal sized notebook. You will not regret it! By the way, this is NOT a paid review.

Note: The following is a sponsored post. The makers of Backup4All have donated $10 towards our hosting fees, in return for an unbiased review of their product on our website. Please note that while the post has been sponsored, our opinions are not, and we will voice our true opinion about the product, whether it be positive, negative, or both.

Backup4All is one choice among hundreds if you are looking for backup software for your computer. Check out this review as I walk though the interface and backups, and if you like it, try a trial copy at the bottom of the page.

First Impressions

When I first opened Backup4All, I noticed that it wasn’t the most attractive backup program I have seen, and it looked as if it had been based on an older version of windows. Also, the default window size was smaller than the actual button bar, so you could only see half the buttons until you manually resize it. After checking the options though, I found a setting to fix this. However it escapes me as to why this wasn’t automatically enabled.

I soon found out that you could create backup profiles in “groups” in the grey sidebar. Meaning you could have 20 separate backup profiles and not have to scroll by clicking back and forth between groups. Cool feature, but one that I probably wouldn’t use. I went through the options and was surprised by the flexibility that Backup4All offers the user. There are many options and settings that you can change to customize your backup to your liking. I then went to backup my files. Here are a couple good things I noticed:

Relatively quick backup - even a full backup only took a couple seconds and was as fast or faster than the standard windows copy.

Choose types of Backup - you can choose to perform a full backup, a differential (all data changes since last full backup) or incremental backup (all data changed since last full, differential, or incremental backup.)

Statistics- you can see at a glance when your last backup was, total backups, and other backup stats. You can also predict stats for the next backup, such as how many files will be transferred, how much extra space is needed, and more.

Backups include a profile file - just in case your computer crashes, Backup4All places a file with each backup that allows you to restore its settings into Backup4All. This is a nice feature that I haven’t seen in too many backup programs.

Along with these were a bunch of features that I didn’t like.

You can only backup to Zip - For some reason, you can only backup your files to a ZIP archive. I tried shuffling through the settings, but couldn’t figure out how to change this. This is pretty annoying, because I frequently navigate through my backups to restore only 1-2 files.

Requires Backup4All to restore - because of the complex structure of multiple zip files per backup (if you backup incrementally, you may have over 20 for a single profile!) you need Backup4All installed to recover your files. Again, this is very inconvenient because I enjoy being able to drag and drop my files back into their original destination. Also, you cannot navigate backups easily because they are split up into so many zip archives.

Bad Scheduler - the scheduler was nothing more than a button that opened up the default Windows Scheduler. It was hard to use, set up, and it didn’t apply well to the backup software. A custom scheduler such as the one found in most other backup programs would be nice.

Download Backup4All [Backup4All Website]

Note: The following is a sponsored post. The makers of Handy Recovery have donated $10 towards our hosting fees, in return for an unbiased review of their product on our website. Please note that while the post has been sponsored, our opinions are not, and we will voice our true opinion about the product, whether it be positive, negative, or both.

Handy Recovery is a utility that allows you to recover deleted files from your hard drive. It was made by the same company as Backup Platinum, which I reviewed a couple months ago. I have seen many file recovery programs on the internet, but I have only personally tried this and two others.

The Setup

In order to test Handy Recovery’s recovering abilities, I planted a test folder in my hard drive. In this folder were: 10 .jpg photos, 3 .mp3 music files, 3 .doc word documents, 1 .html file, 1 .exe application, 1 .zip archive, and a couple other office documents.

We performed three different tests to show the strengths and weaknesses of Handy Recovery in different situations.

1. We deleted the file by high-lighting it and hitting the Del key, which sent them to the recycling bin. We then emptied the recycling bin.
2. We used the Shift+Delete key combo to delete the file, bypassing the Recycling Bin.
3. We loaded the test files onto a USB stick, then deleted them. We then filled the USB stick full with other data, and tried to recover the test files.

The Results

Test #1: Emptying from Recycling Bin

After deleting the file, we went into Handy Recovery, and analyzed the hard drive for deleted files. We were surprised to find that the deleted files were not located in their original directory. Instead, they were located in the Recycling Bin. This does make sense, because when you delete a file you are effectively cut and pasting it to the recycling bin. However it was a bit confusing, and we had to navigate though a mess of oddly named folders such as $$folder_9391 and other cryptic names. While it wasn’t as easy as it could have been, we did recover the files, and none of them were corrupted.

Test #2: Bypassing the Recycling Bin

After using Shift + Delete to delete the test files, we opened Handy Recovery and Analyzed the Hard drive. This time, the Folder with all the deleted files was displayed in its previous location, which made the recovery process much easier and quicker. Again, all files were recovered uncorrupted.

Test #3: Writing over with other data

We loaded the test files onto our USB stick, deleted them, and then filled the USB stick with other files until it was absolutely full. We then opened Handy Recovery, and it was able to successfully recover over 90% of the files! We only got 1 corrupted image, with all the others turning out fine. Pretty good, considering they were pulled out of almost thin air.

After using Handy Recovery a couple times, and exploring its features, I found some notably positive features, as well as some things that I didn’t like so much.

Pros:

Ability to recover files from deleted partitions - if you choose to merge partitions, you can still recover previous data.

Disk Images - you can save an image of your hard drive, so that you can recover deleted files at a later time.

Useful folder icons - show what files or folders have been deleted, versus existing files and folders when browsing in Handy Recovery.

Filter and find options - allow you to search through your entire hard drive for a deleted file, or filter to only show certain file types, only deleted, etc. Useful for people with large hard drives.

All test files were recovered uncorrupted - great reliability is very important, especially when it comes to recovering valuable information such as contact info or documents which you have invested much time in.

Cons:

The interface is plain, and intimidating even to us. I cannot see a new-computer user being able to operate it without at least a couple minutes of familiarization.

If you want to recover files deleted from the Recycling bin, be prepared to go through a bunch of confusing folders before you get to your files. The only way to tell what is in folder “5345-5334545-345″ is to click on it. While this doesn’t always happen, it happened about half of the time during our tests.

If you deleted any file without bypassing the recycling bin, it will appear in the recycling bin instead of its original location, which makes it tedious to recover files, especially if you have a lot of stuff in your recycling bin.

Final Say

Handy Recovery will recover your files uncorrupted, and it will do it well. However it may not be easy or visually pleasing on the way. If you are looking for a customizable recovery program with many cool features, Handy Recovery probably isn’t for you. However in our tests, Handy Recovery performed exceptionally well in terms of recovery reliability.

Download Trial of Handy Recovery [SoftLogica]

Purchase Full Version of Handy Recovery [SoftLogica]

I was surfing the web as I usually do, and came across the name "ReminderFox" and a few positive comments. I installed, and quickly forgot about the extension. About a week ago I was looking for a online to-do list application, Geoff suggested many, but I already have to many organizational websites. I looked in my browser status bar and there was the answer; ReminderFox.

ReminderFox is very clean and simple to use, leaving a list of tasks in the task bar and prompting you a set time before the event. You can use it to remind you to do something or as a to-do list.

It's very useful if you already use FireFox to organize yourself, through websites such as Google Calender or GradeFix.

Screenshots:

I know that sponsored reviews are a sensitive issue in the blogosphere, so at Gearfire, we are being careful to only review products that we actually endorse. I’m going to start out by saying that this is a sponsored review. That said, I want you to understand that I am not required to speak positively about it, and that the opinions that I express about this product are genuine.

I talked earlier about the importance of regularly backing up your important documents and data. A couple weeks ago, I bought myself an external hard drive in order to keep a copy of all my important information. To backup your files effectively though, you need a good piece of backup software.

Backup Platinum is a nice program that was developed to help you back up, synchronize, and restore files to CD, DVD, FTP, or LAN. I have tried a couple different commercial backup programs, but Backup Platinum is probably my favourite so far.

The reason I like this piece of software so much is that it is very simple and easy to use, but it also packs a wide range of features. After just 5 minutes spent creating a backup item, I was satisfied with its ability to backup, and restore. After another 10 minutes though, I found I could tweak many settings to customize it to my liking, such as specifying the thread priority of the backup process.
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