Web Forum: Internet news

Feb 12 2010 by Andrew Jackson, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

IF you’re old enough to remember floppy disks, you’re old enough to be thankful for the tiny size but enormous data capacity of today’s USB memory sticks.

Simple flash-based sticks have become the commonest way for people to transfer data from one computer to another and they’ve even become fashionable for civil servants to leave on the train.

That’s the trouble with sticks though – too easy to lose and too fiddly.

Two geeks in America decided to solve this problem. If your computers are connected to the internet, why not use that as the memory stick instead? Then there’s no need to carry anything around.

The result is Dropbox (www.dropbox.com), and it’s fantastic. You need to download a bit of software for your PC or Mac, but once you’ve installed it on all the computers you use, there’s nothing else to worry about.

You just save files into your computer’s Dropbox folder and they get magically synced to the internet and to all the other computers you use. So you can work from home, you can do home stuff at work and keep track of everything on your phone when you’re out. If you’re using someone else’s computer or travelling, you can log in to your account over the web and see all your files there.

It’s simple, it’s brilliant and it’s free for less than 2GB of storage space. After that, you pay for extra gigabytes.

Keep an eye on your Facebook account, as the company is gradually rolling out another redesign (not all that long after the last one) that tries to simplify the layout and put all the controls within easy reach. Tabs across the top now become links in a sidebar on the left.

Your contacts, messages and newsfeed become little icons in the top left next to the Facebook logo. It’ll take a bit of getting used to, but if it makes Facebook a bit less confusing it will be a welcome change.

BROWSING... YOUTUBE COMEDY

Buckets of fun from 4oD:www.youtube.com/user/4oDComedy

Teenage comedian Charlie McDonnell:www.youtube.com/user/charlieissocoollike

The Funny Videos Archives: www.youtube.com/user/FunnyVideosArchives

Official Mr Bean channel: www.youtube.com/user/MrBean

Only Fools and Horses HQ:www.youtube.com/user/OnlyFoolsAndHorsesHQ

THING OF THE WEEK

Amazing colour footage of London in the 1920s: bit.ly/pn40m