By popular request (Thanks for asking, Mike!), this week’s Brigada is featuring, among other items, Cool Tools for use in low-bandwidth situations. Maybe you’re a worker in a creative-access field with slow internet. We want to help you maximize your effectiveness in spite of bandwidth restrictions. In case we don’t mention a tool that you love, please tell us about it! Just click “Comment” under the web version of this item. Let’s find the best offline tools for Mike and everyone else plagued by small pipes!
If you have very slow internet, use a 2G cell phone to tether to the internet, or slowest of all, use a satellite phone to do email, then I recommend UUPlus. It basically sets up a mail server on your computer. You still use Outlook, Thunderbird or some other software to write your email. But when you send, it is “sent” to UUPlus on your own computer, where the mail is highly compressed. You use UUPlus to sign in, drop off and pick up mail as quickly as possible. Then you pick up your mail on your computer by checking mail with Outlook etc which gets it at the UUPlus software on your computer. Using UUPlus requires that you have a UUPlus address, which costs $30 to $35 a month. If you are using a satellite phone connection, you will definitely save money with this. The people who run it are good folks, very helpful. Their sites are secure since they are direct dial connections or can be a secured connection.