Getting Things Done – GTD Workflow Diagram

Microsoft StartKey – Windows Desktop on a USB Drive

Microsoft StartKey will put your entire Windows desktop on a USB Flash drive including the software programs, files and settings.

You can then plug this USB stick into any PC and use it as if it were your own personal workstation.

Related: Carry Your Windows Computer on a USB Drive

While this is not a new concept and existing applications like MojoPac do offer similar functionality, Microsoft Startkey will definitely help in popularizing this whole idea of converting a portable storage device into a computer, especially among the non-techie crowd.

The first public beta of StartKey is expected later this year. For more on Windows Startkey, check out ZDNet.

Travel Without the Laptop, Carry Your Computer on a USB Drive

Laptop computers are shedding weight but they still weigh a few pounds and carrying them around on the shoulders is often very inconvenient.

Do you really need that notebook wherever you go? Not always.

For instance, you are traveling for a business conference or an Internet café or a friend’s place that will definitely have spare computers but you need to carry the laptop just because it contains all your software programs, application settings and personal data (like docs, photos, music, videos, etc).

Are you are in a similar situation? If yes, it’s time to give your shoulders some rest – leave that laptop at home and just switch to a USB Flash Drive (or an  iPod or any other removable disk).

We generally use USB drives to transfer documents and presentations across computers but these key chains can also be used for carrying software programs and other files. Here are some resources to help your turn that USB drive into a personal computer.

PortableApps – This is a excellent collection of useful programs like Firefox (for web browsing), OpenOffice (like Microsoft Office), Pidgin (for chat) and GIMP (for photo editing) designed to run from any removable disk without installation. PortableApps also includes VLC Media Player that can virtually play all multimedia file formats.

Do checkout some other wonderful sites like portablefreeware.com and tinyapps.org for downloading apps that can run off your USB drive.

MojoPac – This program turns any USB drive into a self-contained Windows XP computer. (Read: "Clone Your Computer on a USB Drive")

The first step is to to install the MojoPac software on your USB drive and then install (or copy) all the applications, games and other files onto the drive. Now just plug this USB device into any Windows XP computer and Mojopac will launch itself providing you a work environment that looks the same as your PC at home.

You will see all the familiar applications, icons and documents at the same locations where you expect them to be.

MetroPipe – The Portal Privacy machine at metropipe.net is a suite of Internet applications (Firefox browser and Thunderbird for email) that fits on your USB drive and lets you surf the web in a more private and anonymous environment. Metropipe can be useful when you are using the web from an Internet café or some other public terminal.

Webaroo – Like an offline browser, Webaroo lets you read websites and blogs from your portable drive even while you are offline. It works like this – you suggest Webaroo a list of websites and it automatically fetches them to the portable drive whenever you go online (full review).

These local copies of web pages are exact replicas of the original web version. You can now go offline but the web pages will always remain accessible from the USB drive. If the source content is updated, Webaroo will update the local version itself the next time you connect to the web.

Read: Read Your Favorite Websites Offline

A word of caution here – USB Drives are very convenient but at the same time, they are small so the chances of losing them also run high. You should therefore consider using a free program like TrueCrypt to encrypt data that’s on the portable drive.

When you are done working on your friend’s computer, eject out the USB drive and no traces of your computing activity are left on the host computer – your applications preferences, web browsing history and all data files are stored back onto the flash drive.

Related: Protect Your Laptop From Theft In Schools and Libraries

Never Use a Web Hosting Server to Backup Data from the Hard Drive

Say you have some 5 GB of critical data (photos, documents, program installers, etc) on an hard drive that you want to save to an offsite location. You can either copy these files to an external hard drive and put it safely in a bank locker or better still, subscribe to any of the web based data backup services.

EMC Mozy, one of the most popular online backup services, charges $4.95 per month for unlimited storage. Rival Carbonite also lets you can store unlimited data for a flat annual fee of $50. Then there’s Amazon S3 where you pay 15¢ per GB of storage space per month plus an additional 10¢ per GB of data transferred (one time fee).

Now compare these rates with that of a web hosting company like Dreamhostwhere you can rent 500 GB of web server space for $120 per year – apply a $100 discount coupon code and the storage cost works out to be just $20 per year. This seems to be the best option but before you run that rsync utility, read the policy:

"The customer agrees to make use of DreamHost Web Hosting servers primarily for the purpose of hosting a website. Data uploaded must be primarily for this purpose; DreamHost Web Hosting servers are not intended as a data backup or archiving service."

Robyn Peterson, chief technology officer for Ziff Davis Media, was looking to store some 250 GB of his personal data online and opted for a web hosting company that offered server space at rates comparable to that of Dreamhost.

The backup process was long but smooth (Robyn is a geek). And then one fine morning, he discovered that all his files have been deleted from the web server without any notification. The tech-support team responded saying that they "have been cracking down on people using our services for backing up files." The data was never recovered.

Take Notes In Google Notebook Without Installing Extensions

Google has made it extremely easy for you to write notes in Google Notebook when using the Google web search engine.

And you don’t have to leave the Google site to view clippings that are already saved in Google Notebook – just click the “My Notebooks” link located in the Google menu bar and your notes will appear on the same web in a popup window.

Earlier you had to install a separate Google Notebook browser extension for clipping information from web pages but with the recent update, Google Notebook opens up as small pop-up window in the bottom right corner of the web browser.

If you are logged into your Google Account, search results on Google.com can be directly saved to Google Notebook by hitting the “note this” link next to URL of the search result. When you do this, a small notebook window pops-up (see screenshot) allowing you to add more commentary to the text note.

Other that writing new notes, you can also organize your Google Notebook inside this tiny popup window – you can move notes across sections, create new sections and more.