backupurl.pngI’m sure at one point or another you’ve wanted to share a link with a friend, but knew that when they went to visit the page that the content would change. Unfortunately you don’t have control over when services like the WayBack Machine make archives of a site, and often times the backups available there are at least a year old.

That’s where a service like BackupURL comes into play. With it you can create an on-demand backup of the current state of a website. You can then share the backup with anyone you want using a shortened URL that it will provide.

I tried the service on several different sites, and for the most part it was pretty fast at creating the backups. Most of the time I had a working URL in my hand within 10-seconds of clicking the “backup” button.

The one thing I don’t like is that, unlike the WayBack Machine, there’s no way to navigate past archives of sites. If you lose the URL you’re simply out of luck. I’d have to imagine that it would be simple for them to add some sort of interface to flip through the archives, but I’m guessing they have a reason for not providing this information to us yet. Hopefully that’s something that will come though.

This is another site that I’d recommend putting in the “may be useful someday” folder in your bookmarks.

BackupURL Homepage
Thanks Mark!

CyberSearch 2.0.2 Released

For those of you using CyberSearch I thought I'd let you know that I just released version 2.0.2 that resolves almost all of the issues users were reporting with Firefox 3.6 Beta 1. The main reason I wanted to let everyone know is that Mozilla hasn't approved CyberSearch 2.0 yet, which means you won't receive an update notification in the browser.

November 4th, 2009
CyberSearch 2.0.2 Released

How to Post Long Tweets

Twitter limits users to 140 characters, but sometimes that just isn't enough. Some Twitter applications have started to take advantage of third-party services that let users post longer messages, and then in the tweet it will provide a link to the text. In many ways this defeats the purpose of Twitter, but sometimes you just can't fit what you want to say in a mere 140 characters.

November 4th, 2009
How to Post Long Tweets

Speed Tricks: Launching Programs Quickly With Windows’ Run Command

You may not know this if you haven't used Windows XP (or earlier) in a while, but all Windows versions have a killer feature that lets you launch applications quickly without having to install memory-eating launcher apps.

November 3rd, 2009
Speed Tricks: Launching Programs Quickly With Windows’ Run Command

7 Ways to Download Free Independent Music

If you consider your music tastes a little more adventurous than FM radio, you probably already know that the internet is a gold mine for good yet rather unknown music. It has allowed independent bands to flourish and often, they're more than happy to put out some free MP3's to get the word out about their songs.

November 2nd, 2009
7 Ways to Download Free Independent Music

How to Clean Up Your Desktop

Is your desktop the digital equivalent of a gigantic stack of unsorted stuff? Perhaps it's time then to cut through the clutter once and for all and get everything cleaned up. In this article, we'll help you make it look organized again step by step and advise you on how to keep it that way.

October 30th, 2009
How to Clean Up Your Desktop

Remote Desktop 7 Download for XP & Vista

One of the new features in Windows 7 is Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) 7, and Microsoft decided to also offer the most of the same functionality to Windows XP and Vista users. Many of you will probably shrug this off as a pointless update, but it has something that is really useful to me. What is it?

October 29th, 2009
Remote Desktop 7 Download for XP & Vista

Remove “Accessory Connected” Screen from Jailbroken iPhone or iPod Touch

Last week I purchased a car interface kit that gives me the ability to hook my iPhone up to the audio system that I have installed in my car. The install went fairly smooth, but I was rather disappointed with the level of control I had over my iPhone using the audio controls on my car.

October 28th, 2009
Remove “Accessory Connected” Screen from Jailbroken iPhone or iPod Touch

Free Packet Loss Test

Have you ever been in the situation where you're left wondering whether your Internet connection is messing with the quality of your VoIP calls or your online video game experience? You can sit there and test your bandwidth all you want, but the fact is that the speed of your Internet connection might not be the culprit.

October 27th, 2009
Free Packet Loss Test

How to Get Free and Legal MP3 Downloads from… Universal Music!?

Universal Music Australia is currently giving away un-DRM'ed music from some of their artists, including Akon and Colbie Caillat. Although the music that's on offer consists mostly of lesser known artists, this represents a major step in Universal Music's way of thinking about artist promotion.

October 26th, 2009
How to Get Free and Legal MP3 Downloads from… Universal Music!?