Silicon Mountain Coupons

I read the news this fall about the floods in Thailand with about the same level of interest that I suspect you all gave it. Natural disasters always make me sad for the victims, but unless I knew someone in the area it usually slips from my brain pretty quickly afterward. The thing that I failed to realize was that Thailand is a major manufacturing center for a lot of products that come straight here to the US to be sold.

^{Unintentionally hilarious photo courtesy of Backify's Web site}

About a month ago I told you about Backify, a new Web service offering a whopping 512 gigabytes of cloud storage absolutely free.

It sounded too good to be true, especially considering that established services like Dropbox and SugarSync limit their freebie accounts to 2GB and 5GB, respectively. Even Microsoft's Windows Live SkyDrive tops out at a comparatively anemic 25GB.

Pogoplug is getting into the cloud business.

In case the name doesn't ring a bell, the company makes cool gizmos that let you plug ordinary USB hard drives and flash drives into your router, thereby turning them into network- and Web-accessible storage.

You read the headline right: 512 gigabytes of free online storage. In the past I've written about services like SugarSync and Windows Live SkyDrive, which give you 5GB and 25GB, respectively. But this is a whole new ballgame.

If you own a computer, be it a desktop, laptop, or netbook, an external hard drive is a must-have accessory. They're great not only for providing extra storage space, but also for backing up your primary drive, moving large files between PCs, and archiving all your prized photos and videos.

Indeed, if you followed my advice of a couple weeks ago and turned your PC into a DVR, you'll be glad to have extra storage for all your TV shows and movies. A single one-hour show recorded in HD can consume around 6 gigabytes (GB) of space.

So, how much storage space do you really need? A good rule of thumb: as much as you can afford.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…

This is the beginning of one of the best movie franchises of all time--one that certainly has a special place in all of our hearts. Star Wars continues to inspire sci-fi nerd imaginations everywhere. Especially relevant lately--because of the new Star Tours: The Adventure Continues ride out here in Disneyland (Yes, I'm a Disney freak and yes, it's awesome. I've ridden it four times already!)--Star Wars merchandise is hotter than Alderaan during the Death Star blast.

...Too soon?

Well, at any rate, I found these killer Star Wars USB Flash Drives for $28 apiece from Vat19.com and couldn't resist sharing with you all!