archiving

SAN FRANCISCO--An initiative in the works from the nonprofit Internet Archive to centralize the electronic distribution of commercially viable books could upend the publishing industry and declaw Amazon.com, an industry analyst said.

On Monday, the Internet Archive, which among other things has been working for some time to digitize countless numbers of public domain texts, showed the first public look at its BookServer project, an initiative its dubs, "The future of books."

Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle told CNET News that BookServer is about creating an open system that allows search engines to index books that are … Read more

With version 14 of this venerable archiving tool, WinZip aims specifically at Windows 7 compliance and enhancements, and adds a few other new features, too. WinZip in Windows 7 gets extensive support for libraries, tools, and recent archives in the jumplist, previews in Windows Explorer for certain file types, and basic touch-screen support. Multitouch support is limited to rotating pictures previewed from WinZip archives.

WinZip 14 also includes minor security enhancements. New automatic wiping keeps confidential data secret by "shredding" the temporary file that WinZip creates by default whenever it opens an archive. The shredding uses U.S. … Read more

One of the best-known Windows utilities, archive creator and manager WinZip updates to version 14 with the future in mind--the future of Windows. The new features in WinZip 14 are aimed squarely at Windows 7 users, with extensive support for Windows 7 libraries, recent archives in the jumplist, and tool tweaks to bring them more in line with the new operating system. Certain file types can be previewed from within an archive in Windows Explorer, and basic touch screen support.

With archive previews, you can click on an archive and the files it contains will appear in list form in … Read more

If your in-box is burdened by too many e-mails, then lighten its load with this handy archiving add-on for Outlook.

Genie Archive for Outlook eases the configuration process by automatically launching a set-up wizard after installation is complete. The wizard leads the user through the simple step-by-step process of tweaking the tool to suit the user's needs, then closes and displays the Genie Archive for Outlook toolbar under Outlook's default toolbar. It steals some real estate, but the toolbar isn't cluttered, and its few buttons are essential items. This package performed very nicely during our tests. We … Read more

With less than two weeks remaining until a key deadline in the Google Books settlement, Google's opposition is circling the wagons.

The Open Book Alliance, a consortium that includes nonprofit author groups, library institutions, and Google rivals Amazon, Microsoft, and Yahoo, launched Wednesday to "insist that any mass book digitization and distribution effort be open and competitive." As reported last week by the Wall Street Journal, the group will be led by Peter Brantley of Internet Archive and veteran antitrust lawyer Gary Reback of Carr & Ferrell.

Google's proposed settlement with book rights holders last October … Read more

Web archiving service Iterasi is launching a new product late Wednesday called PositivePress. It lets users passively monitor and archive RSS feeds that are saved forever--even if a site disappears, or makes changes to its content. Users can compile pages they want to share into a single report, then send it off to others for review.

The service is aimed mainly at public relations firms, but it could also end up being a really versatile tool for historians, political sites, and Web archiving enthusiasts. It's also a distinct departure from Iterasi's original product (now called "Iterari Personal"), which would require users to either manually choose pages to save, or have them install a browser extension that could do so on a schedule of their choosing.

PositivePress simply saves pages as soon as an RSS feed is updated, which removes some of the need for taking scheduled snapshots. It can also archive fresh pages from search results on engines including Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Digg. In a meeting last week, Iterasi's CEO Pete Grillo explained to me that the scheduling feature would no longer be included in the free version since the mechanism that saves pages has moved to the cloud. One of the biggest positives about the new product is that you can now leave your computer off, or not have your browser running, and continue to have it archive.

There are four individual plans for Positive Press, ranging from $99 a month for the "pro" level, all the way up to $699 for the "platinum." There are also 5- and 10-user monthly licenses that run at $399 and $699 a month, respectively.

The main difference between all these plans is… Read more

iUndelete is an easy-to-use utility that allows users to recover deleted documents. Although it won't work miracles, users stand a good chance of recovering lost data with this program.

The program's interface is simple and intuitive, allowing us to get started right away. For testing purposes, we created a Word document and deleted it. We hadn't emptied our Recycle Bin in a while either, so we did that, too. Then we clicked the Scan button and the program went to work. It quickly returned a list of the deleted files it had found, organized in a tree … Read more

There's much to admire in this e-mail archiver that reads like your offline in-box, but searches stored files much faster than good-ol' Outlook. MailStore Home supports a long list of mail servers, replicating and backing up messages in a straightforward interface--complete with folder tree and reading pane. There's also a start screen to jump to archiving, burning archives to disk, advanced search, and administrator tools. Small navigational icons along the top of the app kick-start these tasks after you've left the start screen behind.

The program's management is straightforward. When you archive an in-box, a wizard … Read more

I have thousands of e-mail messages in my corporate Outlook in-box, and thousands more in Gmail and in my ancient Hotmail account. MailStore Home is a free program that can archive them all locally, and display those archives in an interface that reads like your Outlook in-box.

Why use it? You can clear away old messages and attachments, but easily search to find them again when that inevitable moment arrives. Until universal offline in-boxes like Yahoo's Zimbra Desktop start addressing consumers on a wider scale, MailStore Home is also a good way to read mail offline in areas of … Read more