USB sticks and SD cards quickly lose their value, but if a script distributes the data across several such devices, flash memory is still useful as a fast and shockproof backup medium despite limited capacity.

A Perl script calls various plugins that sniff around on FTP and HTTP servers run by the major Linux distributions to discover when Fedora, Debian, and other distros update their packages.

If you want to put together a web application in your favorite language and publish it for free, you will find Heroku a convenient helper. The service even allows you to bring your own web server.

ActiveState announces the release of Komodo IDE 7.1, an award-winning multiplatform integrated development environment (IDE) for Python, PHP, Ruby, JavaScript, Perl, and web development.

Clonezilla makes backing up and restoring your system an easy affair that only involves a few key strokes. A homegrown solution reduces the time and effort to the act of slotting in a CD, on which you previously burned a Perl script.

The proprietary Dropbox service has become a popular way to exchange large files. The Dropbox web API also supports scripts, like the one in this article that picks up files from behind a firewall.

OpenOffice offers a selection of preconfigured formats for users who need to print their own self-adhesive labels. Perl feeds the address data to the document.

Phenona's 15-year-old founder to join ActiveState's team part-time.