“Memeo Instant Backup” comes with the GoFlex drive but you can also get it for $30 on its own at Memeo.com. It backs up all your files and makes it easy to restore them selectively or all at once. It also lets you create a “sharing circle” for sharing photos and videos with friends.  This is a lot faster and simpler than trying to email them. The sharing circle, “Memeo Share” is free at Memeo.com, but the recipients of your photos will also get buttons for trial versions of “Instant Backup” and “Memeo Send.”

Memeo Send is for sending huge files. We mean files that are larger than two gigabytes. There seems to be no limit to the size of the file, unless your computer or network imposes one, and you could theoretically send your whole computer’s contents. (Except system files.) You can get a free trial of the Memeo “Send” service that lets you have three free sends. After that it’s $5 a send or $20 a month. (Individuals might prefer the free “YouSendIt.com,” for less than two gigabytes, but Memeo seems very handy for businesses that need to send more.)

The GoFlex drive is $99 for the 320 gigabyte version. You can get a cable for either eSATA or Firewire connections for an extra fee, or use the drive at USB 2 speed. Speed freaks will want to order a USB 3 adapter, which experts say will soon dominate all other types. Lots more info at Seagate.com.

Breaking News (6/29/10):

Seagate’s “Go Flex” drive, for $250,  now comes in three terabyte capacity. That’s enough to store 120 HD movies, 1,500 video games, thousands of photos, etc.

• Roambi Visualizer is a free iPhone and iPad app that makes charts from the data you give it. The data can come from programs like Excel, Salesforce, Google Docs, etc.  The Visualizer analyzes the data for impromptu presentations.
• Web Ex is well known for its desktop conferencing service. But it’s also an iPad and iPhone app.  It allows group calls with screen sharing. It’s free to join a meeting, but to host one, you need a subscription. There’s a free 14 day trial.
• Air Sharing: This $10 app for iPhone or iPad lets you send the contents of your computer to your iPad or iPhone wirelessly.  View and share PDFs, Word documents, etc., and open email attachments that you otherwise couldn’t. Before buying you may want to try out the free SugarSync or DropBox.

Nero’s “Burning ROM” (a cute word play on the Emperor Nero’s burning of Rome) lets you copy across discs. If you start out burning data to a DVD and run out of room on the disc, you can continue with other discs. The program lets you switch to CDs, and switch again if you run out of those. (Nero says they have the only program that allows a mixture of different media for one disc burning job.)

If the content you are burning to disc doesn’t fill it up, the program will then duplicate the content across every remaining empty track. This means that if the disc gets scratched and unreadable in one place, the laser reader can usually pick up the content from a track further on.  An “auto-run” feature is included, so when you give the disc to someone, it starts right up.

Burning ROM allows you to encrypt the files you burn to disc and add what’s called a “digital signature.” If someone changes the content and burns it to a new disc, the lack of that signature will prove that it did not come from the original author. This can be important in some business situations.

You’ll probably need to read the help files to do half of the stuff in this program, such as editing your music, or choosing the right kind of format for your video. We just left the default settings in place and were OK.

Burning ROM is $50 from nero.com. You can try it out if you download the free trial version of the $80 three-product “Multimedia 10” suite at Nero.com; this set includes Burning ROM.

Smart Start gives you tabs across the top of the screen for categories like music, video and tools. Within those categories, there are buttons for digitizing LPs, mixing musical tracks, converting videos, recovering lost files, photo editing, etc.  Within most categories, there are options for beginners and advanced users. A “Knowledge Center” has tutorials for everything.

From Smart Start’s photo area, you can select a folder and click “play” for an automatic slideshow of the folder contents, complete with jazzy music.  Click “upload” to put your slideshow on YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, or the “My Nero” community. Click Smart Start’s “Tools” tab to find out about your own computer.

The advanced video editing in Nero is almost rocket science. You can have two videos going at once on the same screen, sometimes getting larger or smaller. One video can chase the other around the screen.

You can try Multimedia Suite 10 for 30 days for free by downloading it from Nero.com.

On May 26, Laplink is coming out with “PC Mover Image Assistant,” software that lets you restore the old image to the new computer running Windows 7. The “image” comes in like a virtual box with all your old stuff in it. You can choose what you want to restore to your new computer, such as programs, files and settings without messing up the new machine. You don’t have to use all the old stuff, just what you need.

If some of your old programs need to run in XP, Windows 7 has a mode that lets you do that. The Image Assistant program, however, will not install XP as a partition on your new hard drive.

Say you’re on top of a mountain getting ready to ski downhill when you get a call from a client who needs a demo. (This sort of thing happens all the time. Maybe you’re spending too much time on the slopes.) Ski back down, go to sugarsync.com at the hotel computer, and get a link to the files or folders you need, then send them on to the client. Neither you nor your client need access to the original computer to edit those files.

Setup is simple. First you install Sugar Sync on your various computers and smart phones and choose the files and folders you want to keep updated. You’ll notice that every time you turn on one computer or smart phone, you’ll see that the files you made on another device have been updated here too. You can protect files from editing changes, or allow editing.

You can stream your computer’s whole music and photo collection to another computer or phone, without downloading, but this might get expensive. The first two gigabytes of online storage are free, and these can get used up in a hurry.  SugarSync is compatible with PCs, Windows Mobile, iPhones, Android phones and Blackberrys.

On May 26, Laplink is coming out with “PC Mover Assistant,” software that lets you restore the XP image to the new computer running Windows 7.

There’s only one scary sentence in the press release we got: “Provided the image to be restored can be read by the Windows File System and the PC accepting that image is pathed to the location of the image, Image Assistant can facilitate the independent restore process.”

That’s a pretty big “if.”

Here’s the press release.

It’s called Phone Data Manager,� and it requires you to sign up for Windows Live, another free service. To find it, type Microsoft Phone Data Manager� into the search box at Google.com.

Another way to go is CyberSynchs, a $3 application for the iPhone or Blackberry. It backs up even more applications, including ring tones, text messages, GPS, calendar notes, etc. More info at cybersynchs.com.

To keep from losing your phone, take a look at zomm.com and phonehalo.com. They offer $50-$80  keychain devices that beeps or plays a tune when you’re 30 feet from your phone.

Her next question was whether she could use a special “photo converter” she had seen advertised. Or should she buy an ordinary scanner, like our low cost Canon? We voted for the Canon, because it takes all photo sizes and comes with the software you need to transfer your photos to your computer, turn them into PDFs, etc. We were amazed that our friend’s “all-in-one” machine from HP had no such software.

Once you scan the photos, it’s the work of a minute to save them all to ClickFree’s “DVD Photo Backup” or Verbatim’s “PhotoSave DVD.” Stick one of these DVDs in your computer drive and the software onboard immediately sends out a search team to find and burn your photos to disc.

A pack of three PhotoSave DVDs holds 6,000 photos, and sells for around $16; a pack of three ClickFree disks costs $10. That’s not expensive but it’s even cheaper to use your own DVD. If you’re a Windows XP user, click “start,” “run” and “help and support.” Then type “burn” to get instructions. In Windows 7 or Vista, a window pops up automatically when you put in a blank disc, asking if you want to add something.

You can rent access to clouds from lots of big companies, Microsoft, Google or Hewlett Packard, for example. But what if their cloud goes down? What if it’s a rainy day? Maybe you should have your own cloud.

What you need is a really big hard drive that has its own address on the Internet. No matter where you are, if you have access to the Internet, you just go to the hard drive’s web address and log in. Your computer at home or office doesn’t have to be on.

We’ve been trying out one of these big drives, the “Stora,” from Netgear. For $200 you get a shiny black box that weighs about two pounds and can store a terabyte (1000 gigabytes) of information. It sounds like a percolating coffee pot when it’s running.

You start by connecting the Stora to your router with an Ethernet cable. To get your files onto the Stora, you log onto your account at mystora.com and drag and drop the folders you want to store from your computer or use their mirroring software to back up everything at once. The Stora gives you a web address where you can play or download your files, videos, photos, and music files, or share them with others no matter where you are.  Any device that connects to the Internet will do. You can move your entire computer system over to the Stora, which will allow you to restore it if disaster strikes– as long as the computer will still turn on.  It took a few calls to tech support to get everything working, but it wasn’t too bad compared to other devices we’re reviewed.