When the Mac operating system OS X 10.4 (aka “Tiger”) was first announced, there were two things that I instantly fell in love with: Automator and Dashboard. While Automator is great when you really want to geek out, Dashboard is a great companion for new and veteran users of the Mac.

Dashboard is a semi-transparent “layer” of the operating system that contains small, self-contained applications called “widgets.” These widgets allow you to do everything from convert currency to check the local weather. With thousands of widgets available — and even the ability to create your own — Dashboard can be a very useful (and powerful) tool for a new Mac owner.

How to View Dashboard

One of the best features of Dashboard is how it sits quietly in the background until you ask for it — and there are multiple ways to ask. The easiest way is the keyboard shortcut, which depends on your keyboard configuration. For my iMac the shortcut is F12 (there’s a small picture of a speedometer). For the new unibody MacBook it’s Fn+F12 (the function key bypasses the default volume controls). Of course, these default keyboard shortcuts can be customized in System Preferences.

You can also access Dashboard by creating a “hot corner” that will activate Dashboard when you hover your mouse over the corner of your choice. You can set up a hot corner by going to Preferences and navigating to the Desktop and Screen Saver pane.

And finally, you can access Dashboard by clicking on the icon in your dock. If you’ve removed it then you can easily find Dashboard in your Applications folder where you can drag it back into the dock for easy access.

How to Use Dashboard

Once you’ve activated Dashboard, the real fun begins. If you’re looking at Dashboard for the first time, you’ll most likely notice a handful of the 20 widgets that are included with Dashboard (if I counted correctly). Luckily, with each update to the operating system Apple adds a few new widgets (most recently Movies and Web Clip) so the true Mac fans don’t get bored.

But the widgets you see on the screen are only a few of these built-in widgets. In order to see the rest, click on the small “plus” button in the lower left-hand corner.

A small toolbar will pop out containing all the widgets installed on your computer and available for use.

To add a widget to Dashboard simply single-click or drag the widget onto the screen. This will add an instance of the widget to Dashboard. I say “instance” because each widget is self contained — meaning you can run multiple copies of your favorite widgets at the same time. This is especially useful when placing multiple sticky notes or for tracking multiple time zones.

Done with a widget? While the Dashboard toolbar is open you’ll see each widget has a small ‘X’ in the upper left-hand corner. Simply click and the widget will vanish. You can also use Dashboard’s “Manage Widgets” feature, but I find it easier to simply click and disable the ones you don’t want.

Now when you first add the World Clock widget you may not be too impressed that it only shows the local time in Cupertino, California. The World Clock, along with most widgets, are customizable. When you hover over a widget you’ll see a small ‘i‘ appear (see above screenshot). Clicking on that icon will bring up additional information about the widget, as well as any options that you can tweak.

Dashboard Widget Resources

If you like the functionality of Dashboard you’re in luck… there are hundreds if not thousands of Dashboard widgets available. New ones are being developed every day too — in fact many popular applications include a Dashboard widget version of their program in the installation package and many websites have created specialized widgets for their RSS feeds and other information.

One of the largest sources of widgets is Apple’s own download page. There you will find more widgets than you’ll know what to do with. In addition to browsing the various categories (games, sports, news) you can see the Top 50 list or the most recently added widgets.

Dashboardwidgets.com also has a strong collection of widgets in addition to forums and development guides (if you’re inclined to begin creating your own widgets). The site allows you to sort by date, downloads, or rating which is very helpful in finding the most popular widgets.

How to Install or Remove Widgets

Once you’ve downloaded your favorite widgets, the next step is to install them. And in true Apple fashion, installation is the easiest part. After downloading your widget, simply double-click on the icon and you’ll see a prompt asking you if you’d like to install the widget. Click install and Dashboard will open and place your widget in temporary “test drive” mode where you can use the widget before actually keeping it on your Dashboard. If you click delete while in “test drive” mode then the widget is moved to the trash never to be heard from again.

As mentioned above, if you don’t want to use a widget anymore, simply click the small ‘X’ in the upper corner and it will be out of sight. But if you want to remove the widget from even coming up as an option in your Dashboard toolbar, then navigate to to /Library/Widgets for Apple original widgets or ~/Library/Widgets for your own user folder. Then simply drag the widget into the trash.

Just Getting Started

If you enjoyed this introduction to Dashboard then check back soon for a future post on more advanced features and tricks — like moving widgets to your desktop and syncing your widgets with Mobile Me.

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Until very recently, Tor was always something I heard about online but never used. I never considered myself enough of a “hardcore” geek to really pursue it, but it turned out to be much simpler to use that I thought. So for those of you that were like me consider this a crash course in Tor for the Mac.

What is Tor?

Tor protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit, and it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location.

As its icon implies, Tor acts like an onion in the way that your online traffic is protected. If someone wanted to track your online activities while running Tor they would see only the layers and layers of relays run by volunteers worldwide. Due to the large number of relays, the original source of the traffic (you) is virtually invisible.

Although people are quick to associate Tor with illegal online activity, many other people and organizations use Tor for legitimate, and often life-saving, activities. For example, journalists in certain countries where honest reporting is punishable by prison or death can use Tor to publish their stories anonymously. According to torproject.org:

A branch of the U.S. Navy uses Tor for open source intelligence gathering, and one of its teams used Tor while deployed in the Middle East recently. Law enforcement uses Tor for visiting or surveilling web sites without leaving government IP addresses in their web logs, and for security during sting operations.

Hopefully you can begin to see the advantages of having a service like Tor and the hundreds of people who volunteer their computers for relays to help protect the privacy of the rest of us. Visit the overview page of torproject.org for a great set of illustrations created by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on how Tor works.

A Brief Warning

Having educated myself over the past few weeks on how Tor works, I should take a moment to tell you that Tor is not magic. Once you drag Tor into your Applications folder you are not suddenly protected from the world. You will need to establish some new habits and tweak your software (Firefox) in order for Tor to work correctly. Please read these warnings before you start using Tor to ensure that you have everything configured correctly. The last thing I want to see is for one of our TAB readers write a blog post critical of their government and find themselves in jail because they thought their Internet traffic was anonymous.

That being said, setting Tor up correctly is not that difficult. Is my mom going to be able to use Tor? Probably not. But my wife, who uses our Macs only for iPhoto, email and Facebook, would be able to set up and use Tor without a problem. This means if you’re savvy enough to have found this post, you have enough skills to run Tor. So, let’s talk about how to get started.

Getting Started

Visit the download page and install the latest stable version of the Tor bundle. The bundle includes Tor, Vidalia (GUI for Tor), Torbutton (Firefox extension), and Privoxy (filtering web proxy) — all pre-configured to work together.

This neat little package is why Tor is simple to use. If you had to download and install each of these pieces individually, this post would be 10x as long.

The next step is to configure your applications to work with Tor. As I mentioned above, it’s not enough to install the Tor package — you’ll have to spend an extra 5 minutes getting your applications ready. For most of you, the main application you’ll be using with Tor is your browser. Installing the Tor bundle will also install a Firefox plugin that will allow you to easily turn on/off Tor with the click of your mouse. That’s all there is to it.

You can also run other applications with Tor such as your IM client — anything that supports HTTP proxies. Simply change your proxy settings to point to localhost port 8118 and Privoxy (in your bundle) will do the rest.

Once you’ve configured your applications, visit check.torproject.org to see if Tor is installed and working properly. If for some reason it’s not working, start by making sure that Vidalia is running and that you have clicked the “Tor Disabled” button in the lower-right corner of Firefox to enable Torbutton. If Tor is still not working, then your most likely culprit is a firewall. See this FAQ for firewall configuration information and this FAQ for general tips for getting Tor to work.

If you’ve received a clean bill of health from check.torproject.org then you’re free to browse anonymously. See? That wasn’t too painful was it? However, since the network depends on volunteers to make the service stronger and more secure I recommend reading the Relay Configuration Guide and making the necessary changes to allow others to use a portion of your bandwidth to stay anonymous.

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I’m not going to lie to you — this is going to get geeky. Not run-my-mac-from-the-command-line geeky, but more pocket-protector-and-green-visor geeky. I am an accountant after all. That being said, someone asked me the other day what the big deal was with Apple’s war chest.

For those who don’t know, Apple is currently sitting in Cupertino with a cool $12 billion in the bank. And if you throw short-term investments in the pot, Apple has quick access to $25 billion. That’s a TON of money — especially for a company with $32 billion in revenues. As a comparison, HP has about $15 billion in cash and $118 billion in revenues.

I began pulling Apple’s financial statements to see what I could find out about Apple’s “war chest,” as it’s being called, and found out some interesting things. But first, a quick lesson in financial ratios.

Cash flow ratios can be used to measure two things: sufficiency and efficiency. Sufficiency describes how cash meets a company’s needs and efficiency measures how well a company generates cash year-over-year and compared to other companies. One of the most popular sufficiency ratios is the operating cash flow ratio, a measure of how well current debt is covered by cash flow. If the operating cash flow ratio is substantially less than one or decreasing over a longer period of time then cash flow problems are likely. As you can see, Apple’s operating cash flow has only been getting stronger — indicating that the cash it’s bringing in every year is enough to cover all of it’s short-term liabilities such as payroll, inventory purchases, etc. But what’s interesting is what Apple has done with its cash through the years.

Apple’s History of Debt

A look at Apple’s key financial information shows that it took on $300 million of debt in 1994. Although I didn’t see any direct cause of the new debt, the low level of cash in the bank is a strong indicator that Apple took on the debt just to stay alive. You see, 1994 was a big year for Apple with the first commercial PowerPC product, the first PowerMacs, announcement of the Newton MessagePad 100 and 110, and the expansion of manufacturing operations with an addition of a 200,000 sq. ft. logic board manufacturing facility. All this growth takes cash, and Apple was burning through it quickly.

In 1996 Apple acquired an additional $650 million of debt bringing the total to almost $1 billion. This next infusion of cash was to buy a little company called NeXT, Inc. for $430 million, with a little extra to pay the bills. But as you can see in the graph below, starting in 1997 Apple began to make some money. But not in the way accountants and analysts prefer — net income and profits — but in cold, hard, cash.

Click to enlarge

It’s no surprise that the former “advisor” Steve Jobs became the “de facto head” of Apple at the same time the cash began rolling in. Immediately after becoming the de facto head of Apple in mid-1997, Jobs announced a Microsoft alliance which included a cross-platform license, $150 million invested in Apple stocks, and an undisclosed amount of cash for Apple (rumored to be $800 million). This proved to be just the boost in capital that Apple needed to get out of its rut and on its way to profitability and what I believe to be the reason Apple was able to avoid even more debt. It quickly ended or bought back its licenses from Mac clone manufacturers and in May 1998 announced the iMac and PowerBook G3. The iMac is often considered the key product that brought Apple out of obscurity and into mainstream.

So with Apple’s coffers growing quickly, Apple did what you and I should do when presented with excess cash — pay off debt. In 1999, with a cash balance of over $3 billion, Apple paid off $650 million in debt that wasn’t due until 2001. Why? At 6 percent interest, Apple saved approximately $4 million a year in interest alone. But Apple held on to the remaining $300 million until it matured in 2004. An internal memo circulated around the internet sheds some light on how excited Jobs was to finally pay off Apple’s remaining debt.

Team,
Today is a historic day of sorts for our company. When I arrived back at Apple in mid-1997, the company was burdened with $1 billion of debt. Through everyone’s hard work we turned Apple around, paid off the majority of our debt and began to amass a war chest of cash in the bank which has grown to about $4.8 billion! But there was still $300 million of remaining debt, which we decided to hold to maturity. Today we used $300 million of our cash to pay off this remaining debt. Apple is now a debt-free company – for the first time in over a decade! It sure feels good.
Steve

What To Do With All That Cash

Ever since 2004 Apple’s war chest of cash, and cash equivalents, has increased between 20 percent and 60 percent each year. The natural question of course is what Apple should do with all that cash. With no debt to pay back there are a few things it could do:

• Redistribute the wealth to shareholders in the form of dividends
• Increase production capacity
• Acquire other companies and/or technologies

Dividends are out of the question — at least for the foreseeable future. Apple hasn’t paid dividends since 1995 and has always maintained the position that it will retain any earnings for use in the operations of its business.

Recent financial statements reveal that Apple has invested around $600 million in the last year alone in property, plant, and equipment. At least part of that is most likely due to new production facilities to build the new MacBooks and any other future “unibody” products. One thought is that if Apple could increase production capacity then prices could benefit. Personally, however, I think Apple enjoys its ridiculously high margins too much. I’m much more likely to bet Apple maintains current production capacity.

That leaves the most likely option — acquire other companies and/or technologies. New rumors are born every day concerning which company Apple will acquire but the fact is that with the current economy there are some great bargains right now, especially in the tech sector. Of course, I’d be happy if Apple could just hire someone to develop a cut and paste option that they would be happy with.

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The concept is simple: you’re shown a series of pictures and asked if each one matches the one before it. If you get it right, your score goes up. If you get it wrong, your iPhone or iPod touch vibrates to let you know. If you can answer fast enough you can earn bonus points for speed. And when you’re done, you will have hopefully flexed your brain enough to improve your processing speed and reaction time. My first time through I scored a pathetic 840, but after getting a handle of the concept I was able to chalk up a 5,190 on my second try.

The game is designed as a quick daily brain exercise — so don’t expect to spend more than 2 minutes a day with it. It’s definitely a one-trick pony, but if you believe these types of exercises help your brain to stay in shape (and most doctors do) then it’s the perfect game for standing in line at the grocery store or at the coffee shop.

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If you’re like me, sending holiday cards is one of those “necessary evils” of the holidays. A new service, Ecardlets.com, hopes to make the process a little easier — at least for your friends with iPhones.

Ecardlets.com is a San Francisco, CA startup founded by ex-Microsoft and ex-Googlers, and has just launched its initial public beta of the first-ever ecard platform designed specifically for the iPhone. The unique three-dimensional greeting cards take advantage of the iPhone touch screen by allowing recipients to open and flip the cards with just a flick of the finger.

I tried out the service today by sending myself a few cards. The service couldn’t be any easier to use. Simply design your card and hit “send.” The service sends a text message to your AT&T iPhone recipient which includes a link to your card. Then simply swipe your finger to open the card and read the enclosed message.

There are plenty of stock cards ready to send (there’s even a “Congratulations on your new iPhone” card), but the service will become a lot more interesting as more people begin uploading their own card designs. The site offers a Photoshop (PSD) template that you can download to make your own ecardlet that others can then send. Right now you have to email your designs to ecardlets.com but the site is working on a system to enable user-generated ecardlets.

So spice up your greeting cards this holiday season and send your iPhone-toting friends something different.

Ecardlets.com is, at least for now, completely free to use…so send to your hearts content.

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During the past few months I’ve grown a little bored with my music. Even my favorite tracks have become routine. So to inject some life into my iTunes library I’ve been getting my hands on a monthly playlist of Indie Rock tracks (from completely legal and reputable sources, of course). But as I’ve been listening to these lists of 100-200 songs I have run into a new problem — how to rate them.

Of course my favorite songs, the ones I would listen to over and over again, get a 4 or 5-star rating. But the rest of the tracks invariably end up getting a 3-star rating. I tend not to use the 1 or 2-star rating because in my mind if a song is rated that low then it’s not worth keeping.

And then there are other problems with the star rating system. For example, what about holiday songs? Sure, that Relient K Christmas album might get a 4-star rating, but I don’t really want it picked up in my “highest rated” smart playlist unless it’s actually Christmas. And if I begin to exclude every “exception” then my smart playlist ends up with 35 rules.

The rating system is such a powerful tool since it’s one of the few ways to actually “tag” your music on the go and I didn’t want to abandon it altogether. So, in an attempt to learn how to use iTunes star rating system to the fullest, I have asked friends, colleagues, and the internet for ideas on how to harness the star to create perfect playlists.

1-star as Punishment

This idea helps identify which tracks you definitely don’t like. In fact, these are the tracks you hate so much you don’t even want them any more. Which is handy when you’re in the car or at work listening to your iPod where you don’t have the ability to delete the song you’re listening to. Instead, simply give the song a 1-star rating. Then create a smart playlist which collects all the 1-star songs and delete. But be sure to follow the advice on how to permanently delete songs from playlists otherwise the songs will remain in your library.

Stars as Intensity

If you’re not a huge fan of the “genre” tag or want a broader way to categorize your music, you can use the star rating system to assign each song to an intensity or beat level. All slow-dance songs from middle school, for example, would get a 1-star rating. Likewise, the latest club music might get 5 stars. This method also helps in identifying which songs are best to work out to — just create a smart playlist where the rating is equal or greater than 4 stars and you’ll have the perfect workout mix!

Wait and See

This method requires the use of a smart playlist to identify the songs with 2 stars that haven’t been listened to for X-number of days. The thinking is that songs with 2 stars are candidates for deletion, but if you come back to listen to it then perhaps it’s worth keeping.

2-Star = Unique

As I mentioned before, sometimes you have songs (or podcasts or videos) that you really only need once a year. Christmas music is my favorite example. Instead of editing your smart playlists to exclude the “holiday” genre AND the “christmas video” genre, etc. you can simply assign those “unique” tracks 2 stars. That way you can simply add one argument to each smart playlist that excludes all tracks with a rating equal or less than 2 stars.

Does rating your music library take time? Of course. But in my opinion the star rating system can be a powerful ally in getting your music library under control.

In what ways do you use the iTunes rating system?

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Existing customers can simply visit www.netflix.com/silverlightoptin to opt in to the new player. After a one-button click and a quick download of Silverlight, you’re all set to go. However, there are a few things to be aware of before you make the jump.

1. The player is still in beta, so there may be bugs.
2. Not all movies are available to watch in Silverlight. There’s no mention as to how many movies are ready to view, but after opting in I didn’t notice a radical reduction in the number of titles available. I’m assuming they covered the most popular titles and are leaving “High School Musical 3 1/2″ until later.
3. The new player only works on Intel-based Macs.
4. Once you opt in, you must use Silverlight on all your machines to access the “watch instantly” feature. There will no longer be a difference between watching it on your Mac and watching it on your PC.

Having spent a few hours with the new player last night and this morning I am very impressed. Playback has been flawless, video quality is about the same, and the Silverlight interface is impressive and smooth. I haven’t encountered any bugs yet when fast forwarding or switching to full screen mode. I just hope that this jump to a single platform will mean Netflix can now concentrate on improving the selection of “watch instantly” titles.

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Netflix announced on Wednesday the addition of 1,000 movies to its “Watch Instantly” collection, which on its own is a welcomed announcement. But at the end of blogger Brent’s announcement was this little gem:

And, for all of you Mac users (of which I am one) we’ve been busy working getting a solution that will allow you to watch instantly on your Mac. So hang in there – we’ll have something for you by the end of the year.

The only reason I currently have Parallels installed on my Mac is so I can run Internet Explorer in order to access Netflix’s streaming TV and movie library. It’s a good feeling to know that by Christmas I will be able to sever the connection to my home PC completely.

But perhaps even better news is the pressure this announcement places on Apple to improve the Apple TV experience. By increasing its library of streaming titles for a ridiculously cheap monthly price, Netflix is doing what we all demand but Apple refuses to do – offer an affordable subscription model for media. Let the competition begin…

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Let’s face it. iWeb allows just about anyone to create a website in minutes with little to absolutely no knowledge of web design. Add some text, drag and drop a few pictures… and BAM! you’ve got yourself a slick looking website. The only problem? It looks just like the thousands of other websites created by everyone else using iWeb. So to stand out from the crowd, consider investing a few dollars into a more unique theme. Here are a few good places to start looking.

Jumsoft iWeb Themes

Maybe best known for its apps Money and Relationship, Jumsoft also offers a number of iWeb themes. There are about 10 themes such as Teddy, Paradise, Business, and Striped paper that sell for $9.99 each, or you can buy all 10 for $69.99. Each theme looks crisp and professional and comes with numerous page layouts including Welcome, About Me, Photos, My Albums, Movie, Podcast Blog, and Blank. Jumsoft also offers six iWeb themes that are cross-compatible with RapidWeaver. You can buy those themes for $12.99 each or all six for $39. The cross-compatible themes are actually my favorite; they are a little more “complex” than the included iWeb themes and therefore appear a bit more professional. If you’re looking to create a site for your school or class, then Jumsoft also offers a package of five iWeb Education Themes for $10 – one for primary through university. Designing for your local sports team or yoga studio? Jumsoft also offers 10 sport themes for $10 each or $50 for all 10.

Jumsoft iWeb Rainbow Theme

11Mystics

Although not as well known, 11Mystics provides 11 different iWeb themes for $10.95 to $19.95 each. A few of the templates look a bit outdated in the current Web 2.0 environment, but a few of them I would seriously consider using myself. I particularly liked the clean look of the “Zones” template which would be perfect for a photo blog, and “Italian Tile” which uses a lot of layered images and textures that competes in quality with some of iWeb’s built-in templates.

11Mystics Zones iWeb Theme

iPresentee

iPresentee offers five themes for iWeb 1.0, five themes for iWeb 2.0, and five business-styled themes for iWeb 2.0 for $10 each or $25 for five ($30 for the business theme package). The templates offered are definitely unique, but aren’t particularly well designed unless you’re into excessive clipart.

iPresentee iWeb Theme

Lamiavia

With 20 themes at around € 5 each ($7.30) or € 40 for all of them ($58.44), Lamiavia arguably has the second largest collection of iWeb themes on the Web. Each theme is unique, but most come with only 6 pages which means the Blog and Podcast pages are not included. Compared to some of the other sites, Lamiavia’s themes are fairly basic. There is generally one background color with a variety of photos and text blocks to provide different layouts. You won’t see the more complicated layering effects here that you do at sites like 11Mystics or Jumsoft.

Lamiavia iWeb Theme

iWeb Weavers

Assuming iWeb Weavers makes good on their promise of more themes “coming soon”, iWeb Weavers will be a place to watch for a decent collection of iWeb themes. Only two themes are available now ($15.99 each) but their site contains previews of three more themes that are “coming soon.” All of their themes are very Apple-esque. My favorite, Aqua Profile, is crisp, clean, and beautiful without a lot of layers or animated icons.

iWebWeavers iWeb Theme

To be honest, I expected to find a lot more developers out there creating themes for iWeb. But after reading a few articles on the complexity of dealing with iWeb’s theme architecture and Apple’s use of widgets and complex layouts, I’m no longer surprised to see so little. But hopefully these themes will get you started – and perhaps even inspire you to create your own iWeb theme.

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The hard truth is hard drives fail. Manufacturers quote a lifespan of approximately 5 to 10 years. But most of us know that estimate is about as accurate as Apple’s estimated battery life. So although I have an entire row of hard drives, if one of them were to fail I would be “fraked.” (No, I can’t believe I said that either)

So in order to truly sleep soundly at night I moved my most sensitive and important data online. I looked into a number of different solutions including Mozy, Box.net, and even a manual upload using my Dreamhost account – but none of those solutions met all my needs. I wanted something simple to use and a solution that could grow depending on my changing backup needs.

Jungle Disk Desktop 2 seems like the best solution for the job right now. Although the price might turn some people away (read: it’s cheap but not free) the pricing structure allows you to pay for only what you use since the application uses Amazon’s S3 internet storage service. After the one-time purchase of $20, this translates into $0.15 per GB-Month of storage used, $0.10 per GB of data uploaded, and $0.17 per GB of data downloaded. For my current needs I’m paying about $1.95 per month for storage and pennies each month to upload new data.

The best feature of Jungle Disk Desktop is the fact that your Jungle Disk mounts just like your iDisk – allowing you to access your files directly from the Finder. Drag and drop, copy and delete. You can use your Jungle Disk just like any other hard drive.

Jungle Disk Desktop 2, which was just released this week provides some welcome upgrades to the previous version. Perhaps the biggest change is the user interface. The new backup preview dialog so you can see exactly what will be backed up and the selection dialog makes it faster and easier to set up automatic backup.

The new version, which is a free upgrade to previous users, also includes a number of other upgrades and new features including:

• Better “bucket” management – Jungle Disk uses Amazon’s “bucket” structure to store files. Amazon S3 itself doesn’t have a built-in notion of directories or folders at all. Because of this, it is up to each application that uses S3 to decide how to use buckets to store files and folders. The new bucket features allow you, among other things, to encrypt your data without having to re-upload your data.
• Support for connecting to multiple buckets at the same time
• Support for multiple backup jobs with independent scheduling
• New command line options to integrate with external task schedulers and batch jobs
• Expanded bandwidth limiting feature

I’ve used Jungle Disk primarily to backup my iPhoto library – the most precious 13GB of data I own. However, due to the changing nature of the iPhoto library, I opted to purchase the optional Jungle Disk Plus service which allows you to make block-level file updates – uploading only the changed portions of your large files. It also gives you web-based access to the files (even via iPhone) and the ability to resume uploads of large files where they left off. The Plus service will run you an extra $1 per month, but I think the savings in both bandwidth cost and time are worth it. Every week at a given time, Jungle Disk scans my iPhoto library file for changes and uploads them. That’s it. It’s that easy.

Of course, if you’re uploading a large amount of data it’s going to take time. As I write this post I’m backing up an additional 6GB using my cable internet connection at 360 kbits/sec. According to Jungle Disk it’s going to take approximately 1 day and 13 hours to finish uploading. But if you’re performing incremental backups quietly in the background or in the middle of the night, this shouldn’t be an issue.

After using Jungle Disk for a few weeks, I have to say I’m impressed. It’s proven to be the easiest, most convenient, and most affordable solution for me. It quietly backs up my data in the background and I feel safe knowing that my data is floating around inside Amazon’s data cloud. Combined with my external hard drive backups, I can now sleep soundly at night knowing my family photos are backed up.

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• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks