Review: Handy Backup is plain, powerful, and easy to use

Handy Backup is utilitarian in the best sense; it's a backup program with a no-nonsense interface and a boatload of features. Despite its plain countenance, one of its iterations is sure to appeal to IT types and smart consumers. I looked at Handy Backup Free, which is... free.

1. There's not a lot to look at, but there's power behind the Handy Backup grille.

Handy Backup Free is easy to use and lets you select files as well as repositories for backing up. Repositories are folders or accounts such as My Documents, an FTP, WebDav, Amazon S3, etc. It's a little odd to see the latter items listed under a backup list, but it's also nice. You can back up to and restore data from local drives, CD/DVD/BD, FTP, and across a network.

You create a backup, restore, or synch task in Handy Backup Home using step-by-step wizards. These are easy to use, and once a task has been defined you can edit all the options directly from a multiple-paned dialog. To skip the wizard, you can simply duplicate a task and edit the pertinent options. Said options include full, incremental, differential backups; compressing the backup to encrypted zip files; scheduling; and running tasks before or after a job.

Handy Backup also comes in $39 Home, $99 Professional, $199 Small Server, and $599 Server editions. Home is the latest 7.x version, while Pro adds disk imaging, backing up to SFTP servers, and ODBC database backup. The Small Server edition backs up numerous business and enterprise-level databases such as Microsoft Exchange data, Oracle, and more. The full Server version has all that plus the ability to back up multiple PCs to a central location.

Handy Backup's step-by-step wizard helps you through jobs.

About the only thing missing that I'd like to see in Handy Backup is support for Rsync, a backup and synchronization protocol used by many servers and NAS boxes. Aside from that, one or the other editions of the program should have all the features you need. I had an easy time with the program; it's lightweight it does the job, and it stays out of the way. What else could you ask for?

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page downloads the software from the vendor's site. The Handy Backup website can make downloading the proper version confusing. You need a serial to use the free version, which you can obtain from the developer. Also, the message to upgrade is for a trial of the home version. Ignore that message to continue using the free version.

Jon L. Jacobi has worked with computers since you flipped switches and punched cards to program them. He studied music at Julliard, and now he power mods his car for kicks.
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Review: OpenPuff steganography tool hides confidential data in plain sight

Endlessly tweaking his workflow for comfort and efficiency, Erez is a freelance writer on a mission to discover the simplest, coolest, and most effective software and websites to make tomorrow happen today.
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Steganography, or hiding messages in plain sight, is a storied practice dating back to ancient Greece. In modern practice, steganography means taking a media file such as an MP3 or a jpeg image and burying data in it. The file still works as usual, and if you don't specifically look for the hidden data, you'll have no idea the encrypted information is even there. One good tool for this is OpenPuff,a powerful open-source steganography application that supports a wide variety of "carrier" formats for hiding data in, including MP3, JPG, and more.

OpenPuff's interface looks simple at first, but it does take some getting used to.

For example, you could hide an important text message in an image file, and then post that file publicly online. Another party could then download the file and—using OpenPuff and a password you both shared in advance—process the file and extract whatever information you've buried in it.

By default, OpenPuff asks you to protect your information with three different passwords, although it does let you dial that down to just a single password. It even supports plausibly deniable encryption, and this is where things get really paranoid: Even if someone somehow realizes your seemingly innocent image or music file contains a hidden message, OpenPuff lets you hide a decoy along with the real message. Simply provide a different password, and the other person will extract the decoy out of the image, thinking they've won–but actually, your real secret will still be hidden in the file.

OpenPuff lets you select the level of encryption and suggests that you use three passwords.

Steganography usually works well for hiding short text messages or other condensed information; obviously, you can't hide an entire video file within another video file using steganography–there's just no room for all of those extra bytes. Still, if you need to hide a large amount of information, OpenPuff lets you chain multiple carrier files together into one large message. To extract the information, the recipient (or yourself) needs to have all of the carrier files, and feed them into OpenPuff in exactly the right sequence, along with the correct password or passwords. Not for the faint of heart.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page will download the software to your system.

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