Is there an easy way to get registered for the yahoo publisher network?

Dave Winer recently said that his site may turn into a mobile site.  FeedEngine took that and ran with it and now all sites hosted by FeedEngine can be viewed on mobile devices.  Here is an example.

After researching the changes to Windows Live Writer, I decided to add make changes to the FeedEngine Blogging Service that runs this blog.  Microsoft added the ability to create categories and set the defaults using the wlwmanifest.

FeedEngine now supports creating categories using the WordPress XML-RPC, as well as support for comments, pings excerpts.

Finding time has always been an issue with thing I have to do compared to things I want to do.  I have started reading the book by Timothy Ferris called "The 4-Hour Workweek".  I first heard about this book from a friend of mine.  Then the next day I read an article about the book in the May 2007 issue of Fortune Small Business.  After these two encounters, I decided to shell out the $20 for a copy.  I am only 75 pages into the book, but it really makes you think about what you are doing with your life.  I will continue to talk about this book as I get further into it.

The most important concept I have taken from the book so far is to figure out what you want in life and go after it.  Life is to short to put off till retirement what you can do now.  I'm hoping with the skills, drive and determination that I have, I can utilize the concepts to achieve my goals and desires.

After reading scripting.com and Dave Winer's article about Amazon S3, I decided to revisit using Amazons S3 as a backup solution.  My server is running windows 2003 and I have been looking for a way to backup important files.  I found this useful tool S3 Backup and thought I would give it a try.  Its a GUI based backup solution that takes your files and stores them using S3.  Amazon S3 stands for Simple Storage Service and is accessed by using webservices.  S3 Backup is a GUI on top of the the webservices and allows you to schedule jobs to run when you want them to. 

After activating my account at Amazon and installing S3 Backup, I have scheduled a job to backup all my important files to S3.  For the last week, it has been running very smoothly.  I then wanted to make sure that my files were secure and wanted a way to view my files.  I installed a FireFox extension called S3Fox.  This tool allows me to view my files, create buckets (folders) and upload/download files.

Another extension that I came across was GSpace.  It allows you to upload files to the 2GB of storage that gmail give you.  This sound promising so I decided to try it out.  Here is how it works.  You install the FireFox extension and then you can upload/download files and created directories just like Amazon S3.  One glich that I found was that I had to open another tab and login to gmail to allow my GSpace extension the ability to login.  When you upload a file it comes across as an email in your inbox.  If you delete this email, the attachment (uploaded file(s)) are also deleted.  Its a nice way if you want to store some files for retrieval on a different computer.

How about a comparison of the two:

1. Cost: 
• Amazon
• Pay only for what you use. There is no minimum fee, and no start-up cost.
• $0.15 per GB-Month of storage used.
• $0.20 per GB of data transferred.
• GMail (GSpace)
• free
2. FireFox Extension's are similar, almost identical
3. Public Access
• Amazon
• you can upload a file and view it after changing the ACL to everyone.  Here is an example: image
• GMail (GSpace)
• no way to view files unless logged into gmail
4. Utilities
• Amazon
• many vendors creating useful tools to store data in S3
• GMail (GSpace)
• only one firefox extension found

Im my opinion, S3, S3Fox and S3 Backup provide a useful combination of tools to store your files offline.  The files are encrypted and not made public.  The costs so far have been minimal.  After a week my costs are:

$0.20 per GB of data transferred       0.152 GB   0.04

$0.15 per GB-Month of storage used 0.009 GB   0.01

TOTAL COST:                                                     0.05

The backup utility compresses the files for transfer and only stored changed files.  This is the reason my costs have only been $0.05 for the week.  If you try to download a backed up file with compression on, the file is unable to be opened.  I will do more research to verify this, but it looks like you will have to use S3 Backup to retrieve the files that you have stored.