Unless you have a full-time network admin on staff, getting a reliable and secure connection into your home of office network is a daunting task. This great app easily sets up a VPN server, which logmein then provides the hosting service that lets you access your network from anywhere on the internet. Once connected, it’s practically as if you were plugged directly into your home or office network.

Give it a try… minimal configuration, free for consumers. Affordable for small businesses.

logmein.com/products/hamachi

Simply plug your device via USB into your computer (I’ve tested with my Blackberry 8200 Pearl), and when your memory card mounts, your phone become accessible with the ease of iTunes or iPhoto. A simple drag and drop functionality is all it takes to push and pull anything you want between your phone and computer. I’ve only given some of the features a cursory try, but it’s been wonderful for the simple tasks that I require. Wanna add some tunes to your phone?… open up your music folder, or iTunes library with a click of an icon, and simply drop the songs onto your device icon. DoubleTwist does all the work of putting everything in the right place for you.

Additional functionality of doubleTwist is the automatic encoding of video to be playable on your device. I’ve not tried this out yet, but it sounds promising.

My only gripe is that the file navigation, particularly for iTunes, is a little stodgy. Not quite up to par with the iTunes navigation. Otherwise, I think this is a wonderful, and FREE, utility. They also have some social media features built-in, but I’m not yet familiar with these features. I guess I’m also a little peeved that this is another 10.5 and up only application. It seems that 10.4 to 10.5 has been the worst update for backwards compatibility yet. So many great apps using 10.5 only technology, and I’m still struggling with 10.4 on older hardware. Oh well.