1. Secret Sync – this is an add-on that encrypts files on your computer, using a key that nobody at Dropbox has, so even if someone gets into your Dropbox account, they can’t read your files. It’s free, but they plan to roll out a “pro” model with additional features.
2. Spider Oak offers client-side encryption built in, so it’s essentially the same as Dropbox + Secret Sync and is, like Dropbox, free for 2GB.

Secret Sync (or actually, I think it’s SecretSync as one word), being a different company entirely from Dropbox, means that your DB and SS passwords are not shared between companies, so that should be as secure as your passwords.

Spider Oak is one company, but they claim a higher level of privacy than Dropbox:

At SpiderOak we have created a true ‘zero-knowledge environment’ meaning that no one including the SpiderOak employees will ever know what you are storing on your SpiderOak Network. We can maintain this environment because at no time will anybody know your password (or the answer to your password hint) except you.

I still haven’t decided whether to switch. I’m pretty pissed off at Dropbox for the misleading statements they make on their site (saying all files are AES 256 encrypted – essentially unbreakable – but neglecting to say that they have the keys and with certain forms of attack the hackers could have them too!). Still, one of the things about Dropbox is it is very bandwidth efficient and I am bandwidth limited because I’m often connected over satellite. Dropbox tries to upload just the pieces of a file that have changed (based on filesystem sectors?) and to not even upload common files that a lot of people share (very popular songs). Once you switch to full encryption, I would think that changing a single period in a document would result in a completely different encrypted file, like if you were doing a hash, and require a full upload.

Spider Oak says no:

SpiderOak will scan the file and find only the changes, and store new data blocks for those areas of the file. This means that SpiderOak is able to store all historical versions of a document using little additional space.

For example, if you’re working on a research paper, and add new sections, charts, and other information to it as you go along, SpiderOak just stores these additional items. So, SpiderOak will be able to store all of the historical versions of your research paper using about the same amount of space as would be needed to only store the most recent version.

So it would probably be worth it to switch, but we turtles don’t do anything fast!

Not bad. They tout all over that it’s “totally free”, which it is – it’s Ad Supported. I don’t necessarily have a problem with that, but there’s adware and there’s adware. In other words, Opera and Eudora were long ad-supported and all they did was show ads at the top of the application while you were using it. That’s fine with me and more or less like visiting a website with banner ads. You have to pay for stuff somehow. As long as it doesn’t install some ad server on my computer that runs in the background whether I’m actively using their product or not, I don’t mind (though I might like the option of paying a reasonable fee to upgrade to paid, ad-free version).

A bit more looking and I came across a bunch of other VPN clients and settles on Security KISS which is free if you keep usage to reasonable levels and works fine, but of course adding in this proxy and encryption will slow things down a fair bit.

Anyway, if you’ve tried it and have any info on what sort of ads it runs, I’d much appreciate it!

[update]
Okay, I did a bit more poking around and it looks legit.

• PC Magazine lists it among their five favorite free security tools in 2008.
• I looked around the anchor free site and it seems that the way they work is that by going through their platform, it allows advertisers to place ads on wifi hotspot login screens and on websites themselves. Basically, they have signup forums for both wifi providers and site publishers to opt in to running ads associated with their platform and then presumably they have a way for advertisers to put their stock on selected websites. For example, the page for web publishers says:
  

  Join thousands of premium web sites who are earning from AnchorFree’s patented technology that touches our in-transit audience…. Allow us to place contextually relevant advertising directly on your site to earn incremental revenue attributed to our multi-channel platform.

  So essentially, it’s similar to Google ads. Actually, a clever business model if I understand it correctly.

Anyway, it seems all relatively open and legitimate and definitely worth a few ads for the peace of mind it would give me when on an unsecured network. I’ll try it I think, but I would still really appreciate a comment from someone who can verify whether or not it will show popup ads on my computer or silly things like that.

In Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, Dan Ariely (from whom I cribbed the title this post) says that the allure of “free” is probably due to the fact that humans tend to make decisions based on avoiding loss and minimizing downside risk. Since “free” apparently has not potential for loss, it is overwhelmingly attractive, so much so that it blinds us to downsides that may be inherent in choosing the “free” option in a given situation.

A common downside of “free” is that it can be a collossal waste of time. When I lived in Berkeley, it astounded me every year when I would see students, full professors and dotcom professionals (this was pre-bust) line up around the block for a free ice cream cone. One year, I checked the line on my way to lunch and again on the way back, making note of how much progress the last people in line had made. I estimated that claiming the free cone took about two hours overall, possibly more if people walked any distance specifically for that purpose. Not counting the students, most people in that line were making over $30 per hour at their jobs but devoting two hours to “earn” a $3 cone. And even the poorest work-study student makes a lot more than $1.50 per hour. I haven’t tested my hypothesis, but I bet that if I offered those people $3 to walk downtown and stand on a sidewalk for two hours in return for $3, they would universally refuse. And yet, it is the exact same exchange, with the added bonus that they could buy coffee instead of ice cream with their $3 if that was their mood. So in fact, it’s actually a better deal. But who would take it? Probably nobody, though as I say, I haven’t tested it. Ariely has, though, in other circumstances and it seems likely that my instinct is correct. They would rightly think that they could do much better things with two hours and that $3 is a poor pay to give up that freedom. Yet there they are, every year, like lemmings.

Dan Ariely mentions another example of the high cost of free that has always galled me when I see it in use and when I see people fall for it. He mentions how marketers were, at one point, selling HD-DVD players by bundling in seven “free” HD format movies (not BluRay). The HD format was at the time already on the ropes and a bad buy at any price, but “free” brings in buyers. I’ve never understood this definition of free though and it used to get me sidelong looks from my boss when I delivered pizzas for Domino’s between college and grad school back in the mid-1980s. Customers would call and ask whether delivery was “free”. I just couldn’t bring myself to say yes, but answered by saying “It’s included in the price.” That invariably begged a follow-up: “Is it cheaper if I come pick it up?” Answer: “No, delivery is included in the price whether you take advantage of it or not.” But it’s not “free”, that is having no cost. At least I couldn’t see it as such, but my obstinance on that point confused customers and amused my boss. That sort of obstinancy on my part is the kind of thing that, if you ask my wife, makes me at turns difficult and exasperating, but occasionally interesting as well. On my good days.

One last story. At the height of the dotcom boom, I was at a job fair talking to the owner of a startup. She was telling me what a great work environment they had. “We celebrate your birthday with a cake and after six months you get a ‘free’ DVD player.” When asked about quality of life issues, she said “Well, we’re a startup. We work long hours and don’t take much vacation.” So after about 30 seconds I knew this woman was an idiot hoping to hire people who didn’t know how to multiply. Let’s assume they work 50 hours per week 50 weeks per year for a total of 2500 hours. So after 1250 hours, you get a DVD player worth, at the absolute most, $125. Probably half of that. So over 6 months, your bonus is worth about $0.10/hr. If you stay for a whole year, though, it means it’s only worth $0.05/hr. Apparently, some people are impressed with this. It made me think they were idiots, but I did take their “free” coffee mug.

My long-suffering wife laughs at me when I pull my Jethro Bodine routine and start cipherin’, but I always reply that I can’t figure out if something is a good deal until I run the numbers. But running the numbers, of course, only lets me compare one thing to another and, as I mentioned earlier, the contrast principle can be used against you too.

Tom Lambert
Dissertator. Slacker.
Appointments by request

This time I wasn’t doing something quite that flippant. These cards are for my position has “Hiker in Chief” at Yosemite Explorer, so I didn’t care about a unique, custom, professional product. I was fine with the 30 or so free business card templates they offer. At every step, though, you’re tempted to upgrade: more templates, custom fonts, no Vistaprint.com URL on the back ($3.99 extra). Then of course you get offered all sorts of complementary, but not complimentary, products: address labels, letterhead, pens and so on. Then when you’re all done and you’ve kept your exuberance in check and resisted ponying up for that killer premium font, you do have to pony up $5.68 for shipping and handling. That’s not really free, but it’s awfully cheap for 250 business cards.

Watch out for the $10 cash back offer.

I was also hit up for a special offer for $10 cash back. This was the only part of the process that bothered me. It sounds great: spend $5.68, give your email address and get $10.00 back. Net gain: $4.32 plus 250 business cards. Who can beat that? If you take a minute to read all the small boring text on the left instead of just the main offer box where they ask for your email, you realize that by giving your email at this stage, you are in fact authorizing a $14.95 per month charge on your credit card.. I thought all the other come-ons were more or less what I expected, very clear and up front about costs and easy to pass on, but this one struck me as deceptive.

I haven’t tried to free t-shirt offer, but apparently you can get one of those too. In general I’m kind of picky about my t-shirts and I like to design my own from scratch so I passed on this one. So anyway, click on the banners below and you’ll get 250 “free” business cards for $5.68 or a “free” t-shirt (true cost undetermined). Best of all (from my point of view anyway), if you use that banner, I’ll actually get a commission!

[UPDATE. Randy R had this to add in the comments regarding the t-shirt offer:

Beware of the T-Shirt and other offers. I ordered 4 T-Shirts because the price was supposedly $4.99 and I got what I wanted on them. What the extremely fine print says is that the price is for the first shirt only and after that the price went up significantly. It was still not too bad of a price for the subsequent shirts, but it was sort of deceptive I thought. I am unable to get off of their list too.

So I think the short of it is, like with the business cards, VistaPrint uses a strong upsell model. If you resist the upsell, you get the goods at a reasonable price. But it’s easy to get sucked into paying more than you planned. I think to get good value out of it, you need to go in there telling yourself “I will not upgrade. I will not upgrade.” If you stick to that, you can get some pretty good deals.

Update: Nice cards accompanied by email barrage

My cards arrived quickly. The quality was better than expected and people who see them are generally really impressed. My wife was impressed enough, that she made up her own business cards using Vistaprint. All in all, I’m more than satisfied.

One little niggle: once you order, the email barrage from VistaPrint begins. You can of course just unsubscribe, but if you don’t you’ll get an email just about every day from them with their latest specials and so forth. To unsubscribe from Vistaprint: just click the link at the bottom of the email. You might get a couple more before their system updates, but at least in my case, once I unsubscribed, all emails ceased.

I wouldn’t exactly call this email barrage spam. It’s more like special sales and offers, like say premium business cards at a discount and things like that. But it was just more mail than I want to get from anyone except the state lottery commission informing me that my latest check is on the way. But they’re basically an honorable company and will honor your unsubscribe. The thing is, I think they make a mistake by sending quite so much mail. If they sent an email every two weeks, I would not be annoyed and would be more likely to actually open the email before deleting it. I would think it would be a better strategy to send the occasional email with a special offer and maybe an occasional newsletter that I would select. Depending on my role in making business cards, for example, I might sign up for the graphic design newsletter, the marketing newsletter or the small business newsletter.

1. I actually do pay for most of this stuff. Not much, but if somebody has a donation button, I pretty much always donate somewhere between $5 and $20. It’s the right thing to do.
2. As they say in the open source world, this is all free as in beer, but only some is free as in speech.

Everybody knows about browsers and email clients, so that stuff comes last. I’m trying to list some stuff that you might not know about, but which will (er.. may) improve your life. Then again it may not. I’ve arranged the list in increasing order of geekiness, so things like MySQL clients are way down the list. Also, I have not bothered to include things like Firefox, Thunderbird, Winamp and such that everyone knows about.

So here’s the list. It’s Windows-centric, though some apps are available for other platforms.

Desktop Timer

• Egg Timer. How can this top my list when it’s such a small app and not actually even free? Is it really my favorite almost-free software? It’s not, but I like it a lot and it runs constantly on my computer because of the particular way I use it: I set it to go off every 40 minutes and when it goes off, I do some pushups, pullups or ab exercises. I keep a set of Powerblock dumbells near my desk (someday I have to write about why these are the best adjustable dumbells), so sometimes I can do curls or flys as well. Sometimes I just get a cup of tea if I’m lazy. These exercises every forty minutes are great for the health of my back and my eyes. My wife just started using it to time her rehab exercises for her frozen shoulder throughout the day. After months of frustration and no progress, her range of motion has finally started increasing again . I used to use a program that I wrote called Drop 20 because it goes off every 20 minutes and says “Drop and Give Me Twenty!” but I didn’t make the timer adjustable and I found every twenty minutes was just too frequent. Disclaimer: Egg Timer is actually not free, but since it only costs $5 and you can try the full version for free, it’s a lot like free and think it justifiably belongs in this list, rather than a list of $$$ tools that I like. Maybe some day I’ll get back to Drop 20 and fix it up, because it’s funnier than Egg Timer. You can download Drop 20 for free, no spyware, no obligations (but my copyright!). Seriously, the one thing I do like better about my app besides the humor is that it runs from the system tray, rather than taking up all that space on the task bar.

Foreign Character Typing

• AllChars. This tool is fantastic. Literally. If you type in more than one language or regularly use characters that are not on the keyboard (en and em dashes, copyright symbols, things like that), this thing ROCKS! It can be customized with your own characters and snippets and also handles a variety of special characters — that em dash was typed in .03 seconds using CTRL+m+- … and so was that ellipse with a simple CTRL+3+. One thing that’s cool is that AllChars does not interfere with other control sequences because it is sequential. In other words, you type CTRL, release it, type “m” and release it, type “-” and release it. That actually makes it much faster than having to hold down the CTRL key (and if you type one-handed while eating, it’s easier too.

French Dictionary a.k.a. Dictionnaire française

• XMLittré. As the name implies, this is the famous Littré multi-volume French dictionary available for download to run on your desktop. A few years ago, it would cost you perhaps the equivalent of 1000 euros to own this. Now it’s free and, if you’re like me with a penchant for the old and literary, this is superior to more recent dictionaries in many respects. Note: this is not a French-English dictionary, it’s a French dictionary and it runs on the open source StarDict engine, which you must install.

Task Reminder

• TaskPrompt. I’ve tried some paid task managers and of course there’s always Outlook if you have Microsoft Office. I like this one. It has everything I want.

Email Backup

I like to keep my inbox clean and I get some big attachements, so my account fills up from time to time and I have to delete messages. But sometimes I wish I hadn’t. But how do you back up you accounts?

• IMAPSize – a tool to backup the mail in your IMAP folders. Does one thing. Does it well. Free. It actually does some other stuff, but that’s what I use it for.
• Mozbackup – to backup of Thunderbird mail (and all Mozilla stuff). Too bad I’m not using Thunderbird anymore because it was crashing literally every five minutes. Someday perhaps they’ll fix it up and it will work again for me.

Desktop Search

The dominant conceptual model for a computer is still the desktop and file cabinet metaphor. That metaphor was fine when you had all your files on a 720kb floppy (which is the computer the Apple engineers invented for). The problem is, that model is broken and I have grown tired of looking through eighteen levels hierarchical directories. In steps search.

• Copernic Desktop Search. It still indexes the broadest variety of file types and I still have a certain number of legazy WordPerfect files, though the new version annoyingly always wants to open my browser and take me to the web. If I wanted all that web integration, I would use Google Desktop search. I don’t really want the browser interface/internet integration. I want a desktop tool and Copernic allows all sorts of filters (file type, file name, and so forth). I’ve lost my love affair with Copernic.
• Windows Vista Integrated Search via the Start Bar. For 90% of what I need, I use this, but for more obscure searches and anything based on file content rather than file name, I still use Copernic. It’s one of the few things that Vista brought me, aside from the ability to run Adobe CS3 as I’ve already mentioned (see my post on WebmasterWorld—Vista: get ready for pain). Yes, I know, it’s not free unless you already have Vista. And if you don’t already have Vista, do not crossgrade (I don’t use the word upgrade unless I truly feel it’s essential).

Graphics and Image Management.

• Irfanview. Irfanview is a simple image viewer and allows for some simple manipulation (resize, convert to other formats, rotate, lossless rotation, rename, gamma adjustment and a few others). It’s not Photoshop, but more often than not it’s what I use. I particularly appreciate the ability to do lossless JPEG rotations in batch based on EXIF information. In other words, my camera attempts to add a note to the EXIF information in the JPEG file that tags it with the orientation of the camera when the picture was taken. I can just Select All in Irfanview thumbnail view and rotate all my images correctly in one go. I can also batch resize, add a little sharpening, and batch rename all my images. Unless I have an image that needs a lot of manipulation, I just don’t bother to fire up Photoshop.
• Exifer. This really fits the “Do one thing and do it well” definition. It didn’t used to be totally “free” in that it was a “postcardware” (i.e. you have to send the author a postcard). Now it’s unmaintained and no postcard required and, though five years old and the author says it’s not up to modern standards for speed and whatnot, it works just fine for me on Vista. Exifer allows you to edit EXIF info in your image files. One of the cool things it lets you do is sort images by the timestamp in the EXIF info, and then rename them with a sequential counter. So when my wife and I take pictures on different cameras, if the clocks in the cameras are synched up, it will sort them nicely even if you’ve changed the file creation timestamp. That sounds obscure, but it can be real handy.
• Iconico Color Picker. A really great color picker. Similar to the Whatcolor tool above—a little more sophisticated for picking colors, but without the color names for most colors.

Mapping and Hike Planning

• Google Earth. Nothing more fun when planning a hike. Has Yosemite Trails on it.

Search Tools

That’s for another article as there are a zillion search tools, but just to throw one out:

• Quintura Search maps your search as a sort of linguistic web. I’m sure there’s a practical usage for it, but I enjoy it’s entertainment value.

Zip Utility

• IZARC. I’ve tried so many of these over the years. Got sick of paying for them, but was disappointed with the free versions until I found this one. It is much faster than the other free utility I used to use, is much more stable with Vista, and can handle almost every format.

FTP Client

• Filezilla is excellent and, in fact, also has a free FTP server as well, but I’ve never had a need. As good or better than any free or paid tool I’ve used.

Registry Cleaners and System Cleanup Tools

These might scare you a bit, but I’ve never had a problem. I have over the years had various paid ones and don’t see any real advantage — none of them really get everything and these are a lot less bloated.

• Eusing Free Registry Cleaner. Does one thing and does it pretty well.
• CCleaner – a registry cleanup and file system cleanup tool. So it does two things. It doesn’t matter which of these you run first, the other will find some remaining junk. Run them both. Watch the options on CCleaner and make sure you set it as you want.
• Startup Inspector. Lets you get control of everything that loads into your computer at startup. Slowing down? You probably have all kinds of junk running in the background that you don’t even know about.

File Rename

• AF5 batch file renamer. Why would need a file renamer when you can just right click and rename? If you asked that, you don’t need one. If, however, you sometimes need to batch rename, perhaps even based on regular expresssions, then this can save you a lot of time. You can definitely download it, install, and then use it to rename 100 files a lot faster than you’ll ever do it using the Windows interface.

Simple Programming Editors

• HAPEdit. I use this when programming in PHP. Good syntax highlight, code suggestion, brace and parenthesis matching. Everything I need. I’ve tried a lot open source PHP IDEs and they’ve never really had much value to add, but did add a lot of bloat and instability. If you really want something better, you need to pony up $300 for the Zend Environment, which has kickbutt debugging. But this is a list of free tools and $300 ain’t free. Some people tell me they don’t need code suggestion because they know PHP well. My response is: I don’t need spell check, because I know Englsih rreally wlle… oops. It will save you a lot of bugs from typos.
• Notepad++ has a lot of the same features as HAPEdit, but does not have code suggestion. is a bit different. It’s a bit lighter, a more appropriate Notepad replacement, but not quite as feature-rich for PHP programming.

MySQL Desktop Client

• SQLYog. Wait, doesn’t MySQL come with a perfectly adequate command-line interface? Yes, it does, but so does SQLYog, but SQLYog aslo comes with a GUI table browser, and lots more. Awesome productivity tool. The free version doesn’t do HTTP Tunneling to let you connect to a remote server that has only the SSL port open, but for developing in your sandbox, the free version is awesome. By the way, you can also use PHPMyAdmin… if you really have to… but you will suffer. Not to knock it, but being browser-based, it is just not anywhere near as fast and versatile as SQLYog (though it will work on a remote server).

Testbed Server Sandbox

If you’re going to build websites, you really need to have a testbed server so that you can test your PHP scripts. It lets you test WordPress, Drupal or what have you locally before showing your mistakes to the world or bringing your site down with a typo.

• WAMPServer — there are many packages to install a free server using Apache and MySQL and PHP. I used to install them all separately and you still can of course. I also used to use ApacheFriends until I went to Vista and it had problems. Now I use this one. They all get you to the same point but lately this one works best for me. The ApacheFriends package will also install PERL if you need that, and I don’t think WAMPServer does.