Dropbox adding automatic Photo and Video Uploads

Google Drive is the new online storage locker everyone is talking about, but lest anyone forget about Dropbox, there's a new version available that ups the stakes with the ability to automatically upload photos and videos from just about any digital camera, tablet pc, smartphone, or SD card. There's also a new Photos pages on Dropbox's website where you can view all of your uploaded snapshots.

Photos and videos tend to take up more space than Word documents, so to sweeten the deal, Dropbox will give you 500MB of additional free storage space for your first automatic upload and will keep stretching the online container 500MB at a time, up to 3GB extra, pro bono.  That alone is worth it.

You can download Dropbox 1.4.0 here.

Firefox upgrading everybody, you have no choice now

Firefox 12 was released this past month and a new feature is one that automatically upgrades the browser to the newest version when available.  For old users of Firefox 3.6, you had to manually upgrade the browser.  It did not alert you to a newer version being available.  The result is millions of users still using the outdated browser version 3.6.  Mozilla will give Firefox 3.6 the coup de grace next month by automatically upgrading users of that 2010 browser to Firefox 12.  

Mozilla issued its final security update for Firefox 3.6 on Jan. 31, and officially retired the browser from support last Tuesday, April 24.

Mozilla has given Firefox 3.6 users plenty of warning, telling them several times over the last months that they need to upgrade because of the impending retirement. The newest such message told Firefox 3.6 users that it was their last warning before Mozilla switched on automatic upgrading.  If users want to keep Firefox 3.6, they must disable updates before the May auto-upgrade. On Windows, that setting is reached by selecting "Options" from the Tools menu, clicking the "Advanced" tab, and then clearinng the box marked "Firefox" under the heading "Automatically check for updates." On the Mac, the same dialog can be brought up by selecting "Preferences" from the Firefox menu.  But why would you want to do this?  Just upgrade now.

Which free Antivirus can you trust?

Great article from PCWorld that discusses this very issue.  Paid or Free?  I get this often.  Paid Antivirus programs do have some advantages, but for what I see, most computer users get infected from their own bad online behavior.  No antivirus will help you if you insist on watching porn, clicking on unknown links, pop-ups, and downloading free movies and music.  To that end, save yourself the money and get a good free antivirus program.  If you are the sane Internet surfer, those who stay away from the infectious behaviors, then a free antivirus is more than enough for you.

The battle of free online storage gets another contestant

It was a matter of when, not if, when Google was going to jump into the fray of online storage.  The only problem with free online storage is that no single site offers enough free storage to back up everything you need.  If you take all of the services together you could do it.  You can get roughly 25GB if you get an account with all of the services.  Google Drive, Box.com and SugarSync all offer 5 GB.  Dropbox offers 2GB and Skydrive caps out at 7GB.  They all work in a similar way.  A folder is created on your desktop, you drop files into it, it gets uploaded and saved in the "cloud".  PCWorld has a short article comparing and contrasting all of the services.  Check it out here.

Records are making a comeback, really?

In an age where our music collections live on hard drives and iPods, it's difficult to believe that record sales have actually been climbing for the past five years. And when we say "record sales," we're talking actual records. You know, those big black discs with grooves in them that are piled in your parents' basement. Even more surprising is that the majority of sales are taking place in independent record stores. According to Nielsen, the stores were the point of sale for 67 percent of all vinyl albums in 2011 and that's even increased already this year.

As someone who was around when records WERE the only choice you had, I found it great that there is an actual "Record Store Day" in America.  I missed it, but I love it nevertheless.  This past Saturday was "Record Store Day".  Record Store Day (RSD). RSD was started in 2007 to celebrate local and independent record stores across the country. Five years later, the annual holiday continues to grow each year. More and more RSD-exclusive LPs, EPs, and 45s are released, sending collectors to their local record stores in droves.  According to the New York Times, turntables sales are also growing, and in January were up 50 percent over last year. If your interest in collecting vinyl records has been piqued, make sure to get out to your local record store today and pick up some RSD-exclusive wax. But once you get home with a bag full of records, what will you play it on?  Here is a nice guide, thanks to PC Mag.

Flash is dead, finally

Steve Jobs famously called out Adobe Flash's poor performance in an article posted on Apple's Web site in early 2010. That set the blogosphere ablaze, and sparked a surprisingly public back-and-forth between Adobe and Apple. The thing was, Jobs wasn't playing favorites just to reduce Adobe's dominance on the Web (although that was obviously a nice side effect). He was pointing out that Flash just never worked very well on mobile devices. It was a power hog, it was sluggish, and the cause of a ton of malware problems. 

Adobe confirmed that it will cease all development of mobile versions of Flash. That means that Android, BlackBerry OS, and other devices that had touted Flash capability as one of their key selling points will soon no longer matter.  I experienced this personally as a good friend of mine actually considered buying an Android tablet instead of an iPad because the iPad did not deliver flash.  Thankfully, I was able to talk her out of this foolish decision.  You can like an Android tablet all you want, but not because it runs flash.  HTML 5 looks like the future for video and multimedia on the Internet