Windows Home Server lets you backup machines on your network easily. But what about backing up the server data? Today we take a look at ASUS WebStorage for Windows Home Server, which provides you with secure off-site backup for WHS.

To use the ASUS WebStorage service you’ll need to sign up for a free account. It offers 1GB of free storage, then you can purchase an unlimited backup package for $39.99 for a year subscription.

Note: They also offer online storage for individual PCs as well.

Install ASUS WebStorage for WHS

Browse to your shared folders on the server and open the Add-Ins folder and copy over the WHSConnectorSetup2.2.4.088.msi file (link below) then close out of the folder.

Now launch Windows Home Server Console from one of the computers on your network, click Settings, then Add-ins. Under Available Add-ins click the Available tab and you’ll see the Asus WebStorage installer file we just copied over. Click the Install button.

Installation kicks off and when it’s complete, you’ll need to close out of the console and reconnect.

Using ASUS WebStorage WHS Connector?

When you reconnect to WHS Console, scroll over to the ASUS WebStorage icon and click on Settings.

Now log into your ASUS account…

Now select the folders you want to backup to the WebStorage service.

Select the radio button next to Enable to initialize the backup process…

The backup process begins. You can change which folders are backed up simply by disabling the backup process, uncheck the folder(s), then enable the backup again.

ASUS WebStorage Site

After you have files backed up to the ASUS site, log into your account, and your presented with an overview of the amount of storage you’re using. It also shows what type of files are taking certain amounts of space.

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You can browse through your backed up files and folders. It allows you to share and sync backed up data as well.

Navigate to the file you want and you can easily download it by clicking on it, or share it out by clicking the share link below it.

If you choose to share it, you’re provided with a link to the file to send out to other users.

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Conclusion

Users of Windows Home Server have been looking for an inexpensive cloud backup solution for quite some time. There are services such as JungleDisk, KeepVault, Wuala…etc. These services probably do a better job, but can start getting expensive once you start uploading a GBs of data. Another disappointment of ASUS WebStorage is you can only backup your WHS shares (from what we’ve been able to determine), it’s an “all or nothing” type of thing.

You cannot go in and select individual files and folders. The initial upload speeds can be a bit slow as well, although that might have something to do with limited upload speeds on the DSL connection we used to test it.

Retrieving your data from the ASUS site is a breeze though, and all the data files are organized quite well. The WHS Addin is very easy to install and use. If you’re looking for an off-site solution to backup your WHS data, you can test out ASUS WebStorage for free with a 1GB limit.

This is good for testing the service and it might be exactly what you’re looking for. Other users may want a more advanced solution like KeepVault or CloudBerry…which is a front end for Amazon S3 storage.

Download ASUS WebStorage WHS Addin

Other WHS Offsite Backup Solutions

CloudBerry, JungleDisk, KeepVault, Wuala

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The new Windows 7 taskbar’s Aero Peek feature, with the live thumbnails of every window, is awesome… but sometimes you just want to be able to click the taskbar button and have the last open window show up instead. Here’s a quick hack to make it work better.

To better understand the problem, imagine having nine windows of the same type open on your screen, but you are primarily working in just one of the windows at a time. So every time you want to switch back, you have to click the taskbar button, and then choose the one you are using from the list, which can be pretty annoying…

Now if you know your Windows 7 shortcuts, you’d know that you can simply hold down the Ctrl key while clicking on the taskbar button, and the last window will show up. In fact, you can keep holding down the Ctrl key and keep clicking, and Windows will cycle through the open windows. It’s a useful shortcut, but hardly something you want to do every single time.

Instead, we’ll use a quick registry hack to make the normal click switch to the last open window—if you still want to see the thumbnail list, just hover your mouse over the button for half a second to see the full list.

Manual Registry Hack for Last Active Window

Open up regedit.exe through the start menu search or run box, and then head down to the following registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionExplorerAdvanced

Once you’re there, create a new 32-bit DWORD value on the right hand side, give it the name LastActiveClick, and set the value to 1. Once you are done, it should look something like this:

Once you are done, you’ll have to log off and back on, or you can kill Explorer.exe through Task Manager and re-open it.

Download the Registry Hack Instead

Since you probably don’t feel like registry hacking, we’ve provided you an easy downloadable version. You can simply download the file, extract it, and then double-click on the LastActiveClick.reg file. Once you are done, you’ll have to log off and back on, just like with the manual registry hack.

Download LastActiveClick Registry Hack from howtogeek.com

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Have you ever browsed over to another PC on your network using “network neighborhood”, and then connected to one of the file shares? Without a drive letter, how do you disconnect yourself once you’ve done so?

Really confused as to what I’m talking about? Let’s walk through the process. First, imagine that you browse through and connect to a share, entering your username and password to gain access.

The problem is that you stay connected, and there’s no visible way to disconnect yourself. If you try and shut down the other PC, you’ll receive a message that users are still connected. So let’s disconnect!

Open up a command prompt, and then type in the following:

net use

This will give you a list of the connected drives, including the ones that aren’t actually mapped to a drive letter. To disconnect one of the connections, you can use the following command:

net use /delete \serversharename

For example, in this instance we’d disconnect like so:

net use /delete \192.168.1.205root$

Now when you run the “net use” command again, you’ll see that you’ve been properly disconnected.

If you wanted to actually connect to a share without mapping a drive letter, you can do the following:

net use /user:Username \serversharename Password

You could then just pop \serversharename into a Windows Explorer window and browse the files that way. Note that this technique should work exactly the same in any version of windows.

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If you’re reading this article, you’ve probably noticed the .recently-used.xbel file in the root of your User folder, and you’re wondering why it keeps constantly coming back even though you repeatedly delete it.

So What Is It?

The quick answer is that it’s part of the GTK+ library used by a number of cross-platform applications, perhaps the most well-known of which is the Pidgin instant messenger client.

As the name implies, the file is used to store a list of the most recently used files. In the case of Pidgin, this comes into play when you are transferring files over IM, and that’s when the file will appear again.

Note: this is actually a known and reported bug in Pidgin, but sadly the developers aren’t terribly responsive when it comes to annoyances. Pidgin seems to go for long periods of time without any updates, but we still use it because it’s open-source, cross-platform, and works well.

How Do I Get Rid of It?

Unfortunately, there’s no way to easily get rid of it, apart from using a different application. If you need to transfer files over Pidgin, the file is going to re-appear… but there’s a quick workaround!

The general idea is to set the file properties to Hidden and Read-only. You’d think you could just set it to Hidden and be done with it, but Pidgin will re-create the file every time, so instead we’re leaving the file there and preventing it from being accessed.

You could also totally remove access through the Security tab if you wanted to, but this worked fine for me… as you can see, no more file in the folder.

Of course, you can’t have the show hidden files and folders option turned on, or the file will continue to show up. Want to get really geeky? You can toggle hidden files with a shortcut key.

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If you loved our first sci-fi icon packs collection then get ready for more icon goodness with the selection in our second sci-fi series.

Sneak Preview

As always we have an example desktop full of icon goodness to share with you. Here you can see a Star Trek themed desktop using the “Borg-green” set shown below.

Note: Wallpaper can be found here.

Our new desktop icons up close…

Borg-green

*.png format only

Download

Trek Insignia

*.ico format only

Download

Star Trek Elite Force X

*.ico format only

Download

Starships X

*.ico format only

Download

If I Were A Thief In The 24th Century 1.0

*.ico format only

Download

Star Wars: Attack of the Clones

*.ico format only

Download

BSG: Frakking Toasters

*.ico format only

Download

Doctor Who

*.ico format only

Download

TRON

*.ico format only

Download

Alien vs Predator Icons

*.ico and .png format

Download

2001: A Space Odyssey 1.0

*.ico format only

Download

To the Moon

*.ico format only, also has bonus set of wallpapers included!

This is what the bonus wallpaper looks like…it comes in the following sizes: 1024*768, 1280*854, 1280*1024, 1440*900, 1600*1200, & 1920*1200.

Download

Space Icons

*.ico and .png format

Download

Matrix Documentations

*.ico format only

Download

Matrix Rebooted

*.ico format only

Download

If you loved this collection of sci-fi icons then head on over to see our first sci-fi series here. Also, be certain to visit our new Desktop Fun section for more customization goodness!

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If you are a Star Trek fan then doubtless you have a favorite series and starship(s) that you love. Get ready to enjoy viewing the fleet of ships that we have gathered together for you in our Star Trek Wallpaper collection.

Note: Click on the picture to see the full-size image—these wallpapers vary in size so you may need to crop, stretch, or place them on a colored background in order to best match them to your screen’s resolution.

Note: This particular wallpaper can be trimmed up height-wise to fit your monitor’s size very nicely.

For more fun wallpapers be certain to visit our new Desktop Fun section. Looking for some great icons to go with your new Star Trek wallpaper? Then be certain to check out our Sci-Fi Icon Packs collection here.

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The latest release of Google Chrome has geolocation enabled by default, and if you are worried about privacy or just don’t want websites to prompt you for your location, we’ve got the quick details on how to turn it off.

Readers should note that the new Geolocation feature doesn’t give out your details by default, so don’t panic. It’s also only active, at the time of this writing, in the Dev channel builds of Chrome—so if you are using the regular stable build this feature won’t arrive for a while anyway.

Note: If you’re a Firefox user, be sure to check out our guide to disabling geolocation in Firefox 3.x.

What’s this Geolocation Feature About?

Geolocation is a way for your browser to tell a website about your physical location, so you can get results tailored to where you actually are—for example, if you visited Google Maps it can ask you for your location to give you an accurate picture of where you are.

To use this feature in Google Maps, you would click on the small white icon to activate the feature.

As soon as you have clicked on the small white icon, a thin green toolbar will appear at the top of the webpage, asking to Allow or Deny.

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How to Turn Chrome’s Geolocation Off

If you want to turn geolocation off you will need to open the “Chrome Options Window”, navigate to the third tab, and click on the “Content settings… ” button.

When the “Content Settings Window” opens go to the “Location Tab” and select “Do not allow any site to track my physical location”. Once that is done close out the “Content Settings & Chrome Options Windows”.

When you go back to Google Maps and try using the small white icon again this is the message that you will see at the top of the page. Now that is much better!

If you are unhappy with geolocation being enabled by default in the latest Dev Channel release then this will help get the problem sorted out nicely.

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Looking for a way to display song lyrics in Windows Media Player? Today we look at a very simple method to accomplish this with Lyrics Plugin for Windows Media Player.

Download and run the Lyrics Plugin install. (See download link below) When the installation is finished you’ll be prompted to run Windows Media Player. Click Yes.

Begin playing your song or playlist then switch to Now Playing mode.

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You should now see the full song lyrics of the currently playing track.

To toggle the lyrics on and off, select Tools from the Menu in Library view, choose Plug-ins, and click Lyrics Plugin.

If you don’t see the Menu bar, you can enable it by going to Organize, Layout, and Show Menu Bar.

When Lyrics Plugin is turned off, Windows Media Player will switch back to it’s default visualization.

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Whether you just want to know the lyrics or you’d like to hone your karaoke chops, Lyrics Plugin makes a nice addition to Windows Media Player 12.

Download Lyrics Plugin for Windows Media Player 12.

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Another Friday and it’s time to waste the rest of your Friday playing a? fun flash game online. Today we take a look at a relaxing physic based puzzle game called Wake Up the Box.

Wake Up the Box

This goal of this game is to wake up the box character by attaching parts of existing wood objects in each stage. You can start a new game or continue your progress from where you left off.

At the beginning you get a tutorial showing what you need to do to wake the box. You get wood parts and can attach them to other wood pieces but not metal or brick.

After successfully waking up Mr. Box, you can go to the next level or restart a level at any time if your having problems figuring out the puzzle.

Each level gets more difficult and the puzzles are more challenging.

Wake Up the Box is a relaxing and challenging game that will allow you to have fun, not working on TPS reports until the whistle blows.

Play Wake Up the Box at FreeWebArcade

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It’s a right-centric world, with everything from pencils to computer mice expecting you to be right-handed.? Here’s how you can train your mouse and cursors in Windows 7 and Vista to respect your left-handedness.

Using your Left Hand the Right Way

It’s easy to switch your mouse to left-handed mode.? Enter “mouse” in your Start menu search, and select the first entry.

Check the “Switch primary and secondary buttons” box to make your mouse more left-hand friendly.? Now your primary select button is your right button, and the secondary button (commonly referred to as right-click) is the left button.

But, it can still be awkward to select items on screen with your left hand using the default cursors.? MSDN has a free set of cursors designed for left-handed users, that can fix this problem for you.? These cursors are exactly like the default Aero cursors in Windows 7 and Vista, except they are reversed to make them better for left-handed use.

The cursors are available in 3 sizes: normal, large, and extra large.? The normal ones are the same size as the default ones in Windows 7; feel free to choose the other sizes if you prefer them.? Click each link to download all 6 cursors for your size (link below).

Click “I Agree” after selecting the cursors to accept the license agreement and download them.

Once you have all 6 cursors downloaded, select the Pointers tab in the Mouse Properties dialog.? Click the cursor to change, and then click Browse to select the new cursor.

Browse to the folder you downloaded your new cursors to, select the correct cursor, and click Open.

Do this for each of the 6 cursors to be changed.? Strangely, the Busy cursor (the spinning blue orb) is a static cursor, so you may not wish to change it.? All the other ones look and act like their standard counterparts.

Here’s the cursors to be changed, and their equivalents in the default cursors:

After changing all the cursors, click Save As… to save this mouse scheme so you can easily select it in the future.? Finally click Ok to close the Mouse Properties dialog and accept the changes.

Now your pointers will be easier to use left-handed!

Conclusion

Whether you’re right-handed or left-handed, you can enjoy the Aero cursors in Windows 7 or Vista in the way that works best for you.? Unfortunately, many mice are still designed for right-handed people, but this trick will help you make the best out of your mouse.

We included all of the 6 cursors for you in a zip file you can download Here. This will make it easier for you to get them all together without having to download them individually.

Link

Download Left-Handed Mouse Pointers from MSDN

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