Note: At the time of writing, I was using SyncBackPro V5.11.3.0

This is not a comparison of different software for backing up, it’s a review of SyncBack alone.
However, the decision to review SyncBackPro was done after heavy research on the web for different backup software solutions.

If you are looking for an all-in-one backup service, like one that automatically backs up your files to the cloud (and provides the cloud space), SyncBack is probably NOT for you. For that, you should look into Mozy, Carbonite, or one of the other similar offerings. Although less streamlined, you can use Syncback to backup to Amazon’s popular cloud storage, Amazon S3. However, as of right now, you would need a 3rd-party program, like TntDrive or WebDrive, to map the cloud drive as a Windows Drive, and then set SyncBack to backup to the mapped drive.
2BrightSparks informed me that version 6 of the software (currently being beta tested) will natively offer Amazon S3 and Google Storage support.

2BrightSparks provides 3 versions: SyncBack Freeware (FREE), SyncBackSE ($35 – one-time fee), and SyncBackPro ($55 – one-time fee). You can also get SE then upgrade to Pro for the exact difference in price.
Update 6/29: 2BrightSparks has noted they currently have a summer sale – offering SE for $30 and Pro for $50.

The basic features on the Free version might be enough for the most casual users. If you really want better support, SE provides a boatload of useful features (full comparison here), including:

• Running a backup profile as soon as you plug-in a certain drive. Useful if you have a certain drive always for backups. Just plug it in, no clicks needed.
• Backup automatically when files change
• Logs of your Backups
• Start on boot
• Backup to FTP with SSL (Free gives FTP, no SSL. I do not recommend using FTP without SSL if you’re ever on public wireless connections)
• Better Windows 7 and 64-bit Compatibility
• File Versioning (Roll back files to a certain date)
• Copy open/locked (in-use) files
• Technical Support (Actually very useful)

When compared to the SE version, the Free version is completely overshadowed. I’ve never used the Free version, but I can tell you I heavily use many features that are only available in SE/Pro. While SE is leaps and bounds above Free, Pro does not show off as big of a difference, giving: better performance for larger and more numerous files, an additional SFTP option, some different compressions, and a drive failure detector. Again, full comparison here.

If you need to customize every little possible detail of your backup, SBPro has that for you. I have some profiles that backup every three hours to a Synology NAS, some on every file change, some with versioning, all over the network/internet through FTP with TLS. SBP offers uncountable options, and that may be overwhelming for many. I use the Expert view (showing all features), but the Simple view may still be confusing for the less tech savvy. Fortunately, there’s a profile wizard that steps through set up which greatly eases the process. Still this may be a little daunting for some, like those that just use Word and check their email.

Every single feature is documented thoroughly and explained with pictures. The documentation is well indexed and easily searchable. SBP seriously offers some of the best documentation I have ever seen. With so many options available, with some concepts that are probably foreign to you, you would feel lost in the desert without the documentation. The documentation is a MUST for those who really want to fine tune their backup in the expert mode, and it comes through as extremely helpful.

For those backing up over the internet, like you business travelers, you will frequently be disconnected from the internet. Unfortunately, SBP does not have a setting that checks network connectivity before doing FTP backups, so it will fail and annoyingly pop-up a log report for every profile that failed. With 5 profiles, that means 5 browser windows open up telling me about my failed backup. There’s a feature to “silently fail” and that was definitely turned on by the second failure. It would be nice for them to add that feature, however, you can set the profile to try to reconnect to FTP as many times as you want, and can set the seconds between attempts, making it likely that before the last attempt, you’ve managed to connect to the internet.

Fast Backup is a great feature that lets you backup only files that are modified since the last backup. If you have 500 files, each 10 MB, and you are modifying only 1 file, Fast Backup is a feature you can’t live without. SyncBack uses file-level differences, so it will go based on changed files, as opposed to block-level differences that compare changes in file blocks. If you have one big 10 GB file that has a change in just 1 block (probably 4 KB), surely you would prefer block-level over file-level changes. Block-level support would be appreciated, but I presume performance would be substantially hit if SBP had to keep track of block differences.

The tech support is phenomenal. It’s not outsourced to another country, nor is it a team of semi-technically educated people. I hit a couple of road bumps during set-up that needed support, so the included free tech support was very useful. Both tickets (about a year and a half apart) that I opened to interact with support were addressed by the same knowledgeable person. One ticket had 15 replies back-and-forth, the other had 5 replies, and both were responded to promptly and with great patience. The problems were solved in both, and in the older one, an extremely obscure bug was found and quickly fixed.

SyncBack is a backup utility that you can set once and let it do its magic on its own. It doesn’t give you the same sharing features that you would find in Dropbox, but it’s not meant to. If you need a solid, private back-up solution, SyncBack is the answer. Both SE and Pro come with free trials, I suggest installing one of those and seeing if you do in fact need those features above the Free version. Unless you know for a fact that you need Pro, SE would probably be the safe bet, as you can always upgrade to Pro for the difference in price. All downloadable from here (you have to scroll down to find the somewhat hidden Free version).

When reviewing or testing software, I rarely find an application lacking or nearly lacking any flaws. This is one of those rare finds. Portrait Professional’s website is loaded with before/after pictures and long lists of features, and honestly, I was skeptical that a program would be able to make such significant changes with little human interaction.

Seeing is believing. I played around with Portrait Professional on some sample photos and some that I took myself. Every single time, I got a result that was stunning in just minutes. The process itself is simple.
1. Open up a picture.
2. Choose points on the face, as guided by the software, such as, the outer corners of the eyes, the nose tip, and the mouth corners.
3. Adjust the lines connecting the points on the face.

That process, under a minute, after practice with a few photos, produces a great end-result. Now your artistic touch comes into use. You have a bunch of sliders to play with that change lighting, skin smoothness, eye brightening, smile enhancements, and tens of other features. You can even add reflections in someone’s eyes (catch-lights), like the beach or just a dot, though I found it better to just sharpen the eyes.

Do note that messing with the sliders requires an artistic eye. I can see how someone will easily overdo one effect or not use another one when it should be used. It’s very easy to make a photo look over-airbrushed in Portrait Professional and that should be avoided at all costs. The initial touch up done automatically by the application will look great, won’t look overdone, but it probably won’t be your end result. In my tests, I always made some changes, which is easy with sliders and the touch up brush.

If there is an action you frequently do in your photos, such as adding a certain amount of lighting and distorting the width of the skin, you can make a saved slider out of that. Next time you want to touch up a photo, just select the save slider, and it will recreate those actions. On that note, you can also do batch editing in the studio version, which lets you quickly touch up pictures on a mass scale.

Without a doubt, the touch ups I do using Portrait Professional come out better and faster than the ones I have done with Photoshop. I almost wish this application had more flaws, so that this review wouldn’t seem like a blatant advertisement.

Portrait Professional is normally $99.95, but on sale for $69.95.
Portrait Professional Studio is normally $149.95, but on sale for $99.95.
However, I’ve never seen the “normal” price, it seems to always be the sale price.

There’s a FREE trial that doesn’t let you save photos. Get it here.

Note: At the time of writing, I was using Pamela Professional, version 4.6.

The application is loaded with various features that include call recording (audio and video), Local Voicemail, auto chat reply, auto Mood and Status changes, chat logging, podcasting, and more. However, the app comes in various versions: Basic, Standard, Professional, and Business. A purchased license comes with free updates for life.

The Basic version is their freeware version, and thus also very limited. You are limited to 15 minutes of audio-only recording per call. You have the mood changer, local answering machine, and auto chat reply from above.

The status and mood changer is very useful if you’re using Skype with many contacts throughout the day. A scenario where it would come in play is for those using Skype as a support line. When you are on a call, your Skype mood/status changes to busy (configurable) and you can put a message saying something along the lines of “I’m on a call right now, please call me when I’m available.” Auto chat reply can come in too. If they send you a chat message, Pamela will automatically respond with a message that you can customize. Here you can write something like, “Thanks for contacting support. I am currently on a call, but I’ve received your message. I will get back to you shortly.”

For 10 Euros, about $15 USD according to their conversion, you get the Standard version, which adds: Contact Personalization, Email Forwarding, and the ability to save Skype voicemails as local files. Oh, and a bump up to a 30-minute audio-only recording limit.

Contact Personalization allows you to give different Skype contacts and numbers different settings for greetings, auto chat replies, call transfer, and other various options. Email forwarding will send a copy of received voicemails and chats to an email address of your choice.

For 20 Euros, about $30 USD, you are licensed the Professional version. The Professional version boasts the most features. The Business edition (30 Euro, $45 USD) sports less features than the Professional but you’re paying a premium for the Priority Support. Seeing how Pamela offers an extensive knowledgebase, user forum, and “normal” support contact, I didn’t see a need to go with Business, and decided on Professional.

For me, the two great addons with Pro, not to mention the removal of a recording time limit, are video recording and chat logging. You also get a podcasting and blogging system and the ability to run external applications after a call or voicemail is recorded. I imagine these features would be great for Skype power users, but not being one, I didn’t need them.

Skype Video Recording is really the main reason I got Pamela. Though, it’s a fairly new feature from what I understand. I use this feature to record interviews and such and host them for others to see. Recordings are encoding with Windows Media Video (wmv). You get to customize the frame rate (upto 25 fps), the resolution (320×240, 358×288, 480×360, 640×480, 720×540, and 800×600- though there may be an advanced ability to do other resolutions of your choice), and the quality (4 levels, low to highest). You also have an option called “Automatic video frame scaling according to Skype” but it doesn’t seem to do anything at all.

Having set it to 800×600, 25fps, and highest, no matter the size of my Skype window or the resolution of the video feed (right click on the video in Skype and hit “Actual Size” to see the resolution you’re receiving) I still get a 800×600 recording. If the video feed you’re getting is smaller than 800×600, and odds are it is, you’ll end up with a blown up (zoomed in) pixelated recording. For example, if the feed is 400×300 recording it this way gives the same effect as taking a 400×300 video file and playing it at 200% in your video player, but you’re taking up much more space on your computer. I’d like to see it actually scale based on resolution in a future update.

The recording itself is surprisingly primitive. Pamela doesn’t actually get the video feed from Skype internally. Instead, it acts like a screen recorder and records your desktop. What differentiates it from a normal desktop screen recorder is that it knows the actual size of the Skype window and the location on the screen. You can even resize and move around the skype screen and Pamela will adapt. HOWEVER, if another window, like your internet browser, is covering the Skype window, Pamela will record the browser and not the video from the Skype window. The sound recording is internal through Skype and won’t, for example, pick up a song playing from your computer, unless of course if the microphone is in earshot of the speakers. The video and the audio are out of sync. This is definitely a problem that needs to be worked on. Additionally, Pamela frequently pops up an error and stops recording video after 4 or 5 minutes.

Video recording is an essential feature for Skype users and this functionality is provided only by Pamela. However, there’s a lot of room for improvement with the recording method used by Pamela. Thankfully, Pamela is actively maintained and updates are provided free for life.

Even with the problems mentioned, Pamela Professional is a powerful application that is definitely worth its price tag. Take a look at their website, here.

This handy piece of software allows you to add THOUSANDS of effects to your webcam video.

I’m always on Facebook and I always see all those pictures with crazy effects taken by Mac users. I used to think that Windows users were left in the dark with the lack of fun tools like Photo Booth (for Mac). Then I stumbled on WebcamMax. I’ve been using it for weeks now and have compared it to other similar products on the market.

WebcamMax blows them all out of the water. It’s head-tracking feature is amazing and surprisingly flawless. The software actually acts as a webcam/video source. So all you need to do is select WebcamMax as your webcam in Skype, MSN, AIM, etc… There’s no lengthy setup or integration process.

As an added bonus, you are able to pick up on your webcam source from multiple programs at the same time. This was certainly a problem for me, as I would chat on both AIM and Skype. Before WebcamMax, I had to wait a while before AIM/Skype “let go” of the camera so I can use it in the other program. Sometimes Windows would bug out altogether and say the webcam was already in use when it actually wasn’t, and I would have to reboot to remedy this problem. An issue I have on one of my laptops caused my computer to crash with a very welcoming Blue Screen of Death every time the webcam is accessed.

Somehow, WebcamMax solved BOTH of those terrible problems. I don’t know how this program worked around my BSOD issue, but it did!

If that’s not enough, you can use multiple video sources (at the same time too!) such as webcam, screen, video, picture, etc. What is screen you ask? You are able to display your screen or specific windows or areas onto the video feed. This is useful when chatting with someone and showing them a step-by-step guide on how to do something.

You can record your video feed to a file with WebcamMax. Combine that with the screen source and you have the most inexpensive and useful screen-capping program on the market.

I highly recommend anyone who chats or records video occasionally to take a look at WebcamMax.

You can even get a free trial that has all the features but displays a “WebcamMax” bar on the screen.

Check it out! www.WebcamMax.com

www.virustotal.com lets you upload your files and get a virus report. The system automatically tests your file against 40 different virus/malware programs that are constantly updated. Depending on the file size, it could take 10 seconds to a couple of minutes. Many times, you’ll see that someone already scanned that file, and you are able to get instant results.

Don’t open a file you don’t fully trust, send it to VirusTotal first. I’ve had some false negatives with my active anti-virus that were caught by VirusTotal.

• Hand gesture and full body control of characters and games.
• You can kick, punch, duck, dive, jump and so forth with your body while playing a fighting game.
• Small movements like grabbing, scrolling and pinching are detected.
• The camera will allow for video conferencing.
• Trivia games through live will show the other player. Buzzing in is done by clapping.
• Very importantly, the sensor will pick up what you are doing, not what your friends sitting in the back are doing.

• It’s not that different than the Kindle 2. Way too similar. It rocks auto-rotation and a big screen that makes it easier to read. But, otherwise, it’s pretty much the same machine.
• The screen looks great. The black seems stronger than the black on the Kindle 2. However, this could just be for the demo units.
• The screen refresh complainers won’t be pleased… The black flashes on page turns still exist.
• The keyboard is improved, though still uncomfortable. The keys are raised and offer a slightly more natural feel.
• The DX is a much larger device than the Kindle 2. It’s not very portable in the sense of throw in your bag and go. Portability-wise, the Kindle 2 isn’t much of a contender either. The size upgrade seems worth it in this case.

Web hosting is now being offered to the public at low costs that were previously available only to a select number of individuals. The servers are located in a high speed, state of the art center in the United States. This site is hosted on the same or identical server that is being sold. If you are impressed with the loading times and reliability of this site, you will be pleased with the hosting that is offered.

Android is the open source operating system for mobile phones and devices. It was developed by Google and is now developed by the Open Handset Alliance (OHA), which is an alliance of 47 firms, including the leading mobile device manufacturers, like, HTC, Samsung, Motorola, and LG. Google, is of course a member, and actually the leader of the alliance.

Most of the Android code is licensed under Apache, making it free software and open source.
Android 1.5 will add a home screen framework for developing widgets and working with live folders.

OHA will be releasing more information about the new Android version in the coming weeks.

Gmail Labs allows you to use experimental features. These add-ons are created by Google employees on their creative time. 20% of every employees’ time is supposed to be spent trying to think of something new and innovative. The Gmail engineers have an outlet for their 20% in the Gmail Labs.

There are many useful features in labs. I use Offline, Youtube Previews, Forgotten Attachment Detector, Mark as Read button, Undo Send, Title Tweaks, and Google Calendar gadget.

As you can see, Ihave faith in Labs, and it’s very easy to turn off if a script is making your Gmail hang.

Use it.