MyOtherDrive.com Gets Upgrade For Photos

Ohio firm, ByteRocket, has just released a major upgrade to its Web-based file sharing service, MyOtherDrive.com. The free 5GB hard drive with an Internet Explorer -style interface, now provides storage as well as the ability for users to share full size original photographs, music and videos, along with files and documents in PDF.

MyOtherDrive.com users may also use privacy settings, to specify who can access the files on their site. The portal allows its users to add their customized groups, or make all their content public. In addition, the 'invitation by email' feature, builds a "Friends" list out of the users’ social network. Users may also email out a hyperlink to others that lets them view pictures, even if they are not a member of MyOtherDrive.com.

The site runs as a Java applet, similar to the Microsoft Windows Explorer or ACDSee, which allows the user to create a folder "hierarchy" on one side of the screen, with a list of files on the right. Future enhancements to MyOtherDrive.com include more "social networking" features, such as blogging, photo/video tagging, and friends search.

Find Outdated, Insecure Apps Quickly

I came a cross a free new online service from Secunia, a company that produces business security products and does a fair bit of threat research. Head to secunia.com/software_inspector with either Firefox (1.5 and up), IE (6 and up) or Opera 9 and the online tool will scan your system for common programs like browsers, e-mail apps and media players and tell you which ones are out-of-date and potentially unsafe. It will check your version of Windows, too.

It's a useful service, since many of the scanned-for apps are often targeted by online attacks, and you'll get a link to download updates for any old programs. But of course there's a gotcha, since nothing in the world of computer security is entirely smooth and easy, it seems.

It's no fault of Secunia's, but some apps, like the Macromedia Flash Player and Sun Java, leave old versions of their software around after you upgrade. And those old versions show up as unsafe in the Secunia scan. There were five or six old Java versions on my PC, for instance, that I had to manually remove using Add/Remove programs. I'm still working on clearing the old Flash bits.