Yung Joc's Wife Files for Divorce

Scott Gries, Getty Images

Looks like ‘Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta’ star Yung Joc is traveling down a rocky road of romance. The rapper’s wife has filed for divorce.

According to TMZ, his estranged wife, Alexandria Robinson, is seeking a divorce on grounds of adultery. The former couple hasn’t been together in over two years, which was revealed in court documents. Joc and Alexandria have been married for 13 years and initially dated since meeting in high school.

In addition, Robinson wants child support and alimony for the three children they have. According to court papers, Alexandria makes $1,875 monthly, and she’s using that amount to justify her need for monthly spousal support.

In the past, Joc has been asked if his relationship with Karlie Redd, another ‘Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta’ star is legit or if it was created for television. It’s the real thing he says, and they met while he was getting a massage. “I was at a damn spa,” explained the Atlanta native.

“They come in like — cause I know the girl at the spa — ‘She’s like Joc listen, so we want to keep you accommodated and we want to make sure you enjoy your experience here. We have someone, we’re out of another room, and we know you have a double room… can we introduce you guys maybe?’”

From there, Redd walked in and the ‘Hustlenomics’ creator was immediately interested. As far as his impending divorce to Robinson, Joc has yet to comment.

Watch Yung Joc Address the Tweets

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Q&A: Editing Microsoft Word Files on an Android Tablet

Q. I don’t have a subscription to the Office 365 site, so what’s the easiest way to read and edit Microsoft Word documents on an Android tablet?

A. The Google Play store has several apps for working with Microsoft Word files. When shopping for an app, check the feature list carefully, as some free programs allow you only to view files on your Android device, not edit them.

Apps that offer document editing include the $15 full versions of Documents To Go or OfficeSuite Pro 7, the free Kingsoft Office or the free Olive Office Premium. Features and user reviews vary by app, so study up before downloading to make sure you get everything you want.

Quickoffice, another popular app for working with Word files, was recently withdrawn from the Google Play store, but for a reason. Last year, Google bought the company behind the software, and last month it made Quickoffice free for Android and iOS users. The new Quickoffice app requires a free Google account and stores files online with Google Drive. The new version does not support online syncing and storage to other services like Dropbox, as previous versions did.

Using Folders in the Safari Bookmarks Bar

Q. How do I make a drop-down menu of related bookmarks on my Safari toolbar in Mac OS X 10.8?

A. Safari, Apple’s browser for the Mac, can store folders of favorites (as well as links to single sites) in the “bookmarks bar” below the address/search box. When you have a folder in the bookmarks bar, clicking a folder name reveals a vertical menu with all the bookmarks stored in that folder.

If you have bookmarked sites in Safari that you want to add to the bookmarks bar, start by making a folder. Right-click (or hold down the Mac’s Control key and click) in an empty spot on Safari’s bookmarks bar area and choose New Folder. You can enter a name for the new folder right there.

Next, right-click or Control-click the new folder and choose Edit Contents. This opens the Bookmarks window in Safari, with the Bookmarks Bar icon selected and a list of the program’s bookmarks underneath it in the left pane of the window. From here, you can drag the bookmarks you want to add from the left pane into your new folder in the center of the screen. (If you turn on the Auto-Click checkbox in the Bookmarks window, all the bookmarks stored in that folder will open in separate browser tabs when you click the folder’s name in the Safari window.)

As an alternative method, you can also create a new folder and open up the Bookmarks window all at once — just go to the Bookmarks menu in Safari and choose Add Bookmark Folder. When the Bookmarks window opens, name your untitled folder in the left pane, drag in the desired bookmarks and then drag the new folder onto the Bookmarks Bar icon at the top of the column.

Once you close the Bookmarks window (click the small book icon in the Safari toolbar, or go to the Bookmarks menu and choose Hide All Bookmarks), your new folder should be waiting for you in the bookmarks bar. Click it and select the site you want to visit from the menu.

Bits Blog: 2 E-Mail Services Close and Destroy Data Rather Than Reveal Files

App Smart: Apps to Send Smartphone Files Into the Cloud

With these services you can store files and data online in “the cloud” and then get access to the information from any device with an Internet connection. An added bonus is that you do not have to worry about losing files if your own hardware fails. These services are particularly useful on smartphones and tablets, offering ready access to files while on the go.

Box is one of my favorite cloud storage apps. It’s a free download for iOS and Android, and the service is also available for PCs. The app is great to look at and its controls are clear, so it is easy to begin using it.

To upload a file, you click on a small cloud icon with a plus sign in it. The app offers the option to upload a file, like a photo or video, or to perform actions like creating a folder to organize files.

Viewing a file simply requires clicking on the relevant file name in the list of your files. You can print the file out, add it to a list of favorites, or perform other actions like sharing the file with other users by e-mail. Box is designed for group collaboration as much as for single users; you can invite colleagues to work together on a file through the service’s Web interface.

Box is a powerful app, but it has a few limitations. There is no batch uploading, so be prepared to upload one file at a time. And the free service provides only five gigabytes of storage; no single file can be larger than 250 megabytes. You will have to pay for more storage — the Business level costs $15 a month for each user, for example, but it offers one terabyte of space and file uploads of up to two gigabytes.

DropBox is perhaps the best-known cloud storage app. It looks similar to the Box app, but it has a little more functionality. It is available free for iOS, Android and BlackBerry devices, as well as for PCs and Kindle Fires. DropBox has more sharing options than Box, including the ability to send a link to a particular file over Facebook or Twitter, or as a text message.

DropBox also feels a little more polished than Box, probably because of its unfussy visual design. The app is integrated into a device’s systems. It can automatically grab photos and videos when they are taken, so they are instantly stored safely in the cloud.

I prefer DropBox’s iOS interface because its layout is clearer than the Android version, which tends to involve more clicking to navigate through its menus. In all cases, though, the app is easy to use and the company promises tight security to protect data. Perhaps the app’s biggest limit is its pricing: it is free for just two gigabytes of files, which may be quickly eaten up by smartphone videos. Prices start at $10 a month for 100 gigabytes and greater.

Cubby, made by the people behind the well-known LogMeIn apps, offers even simpler cloud storage and sharing. It’s free for iOS and Android. The app functions similarly to its rivals, but there are fewer menus and buttons to get in the way of using it.

The app can upload photos and video to your Cubby account from your phone. It includes a neat interface for making an individual file public, or to let you share a link to the file by e-mail. On the app’s Web site you can upload and share more diverse file types, which can then be viewed on a mobile device. From the app, you can also choose to save a file to a device to work on it when an Internet connection is not available, which is handy for commuters.

Cubby does not have quite as many features as its rivals, but like the other apps it uses encryption, and an extra Cubby Lock password can be added to data for still more protection. The app is free for up to five gigabytes of storage — 25 gigabytes with customer referrals — and there is no limit on file sizes.

It’s possible that you will find yourself using several of these apps and forgetting which files are where. Then you can turn to CloudMagic. It’s a free iOS and Android app that aggregates many different cloud storage systems into one, including DropBox, Box and others like Google Docs and Microsoft’s SkyDrive. The most powerful feature of CloudMagic is its search function, which helps find the file you’re looking for.

Most of these services require you to sign up for an account; remember to keep your passwords secure to protect all your data as it floats in the cloud.

Quick Call

Fruit Ninja, a popular casual game on iOS and Android, is now available in an edition compatible with Microsoft’s latest smartphone operating system, Windows Phone 8. It’s silly, fun and costs only $1.

Q&A: Sharing Files With Mac and iPad

Reducing E-Mail

From Twitter

Q. Twitter e-mails me every time someone sends me a direct message, but I get those alerts on my phone anyway. How can I turn off the redundant e-mail?

A. You can turn off most of Twitter’s e-mail notices, including those informing you of direct messages, new followers and shared tweets. Log into your Twitter account on the Web, click the gear-shaped icon and choose Settings.

On the Settings page, click “E-mail notifications” and turn off the checkboxes next to the types of e-mail messages you do not want to receive. Click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the page.

Sharing Files

With Mac and iPad

Q. I use Word on my MacBook Pro and I have an iPad with the Pages app. Can I download or transfer my Microsoft Word files onto the iPad so I can work on either device without e-mailing the files back and forth?

A. Using an online cloud storage service is one way to share files between Mac and iPad. Since Apple has a hand in all the components in play here, the company’s own iCloud service might be the easiest option (but it is not the only one). To use iCloud, you need to set it up on your computer and iPad; instructions are on the service’s setup page.

Once you set up an account, you can save the files you have edited in the iPad’s Pages app to iCloud. You can then download the files as Word documents from the MacBook Pro using a Web browser, as explained on an Apple support page. To upload a Word file from the computer when you are logged into iCloud, just drag the file into the browser window or use the Upload Document option on the Settings menu. (Apple’s iWork for iCloud service, due out later this year, will allow editing right in the Web browser.)

If you do not want to use iCloud, the Pages app can export files as Microsoft Word documents and save them to several other online cloud services that have iPad apps, including Dropbox, Evernote and Microsoft SkyDrive. Tap the Tools menu icon in Pages, choose “Share and Print” and then “Open in Another App.” Select Word Document as the export format and save the file by choosing a cloud service app that you have installed. Then you get the file later through the cloud service by using your computer’s browser or a shared folder.

Apple’s Pages app for the iPad can import and export Word documents, but special fonts and formatting may be lost in the conversion. Apps like Documents To Go or Quickoffice Pro HD may preserve the files better and synchronize with online services.

If you prefer to keep your documents closer to home, you can sync them between the iPad and MacBook Pro using iTunes on the Mac instead. Details are on Apple’s support site.

TIP OF THE WEEK Planning your own wedding can save money — but also can take a huge amount of time and organization. You can use dedicated wedding apps and sites to keep track of things, but programs you already use can pitch in, too.

For example, Microsoft has a free wedding budget planner template for recent versions of its Excel spreadsheet program available to download and tips for using its OneNote program to organize the event. The Evernote note-taking program (available on the Web and for most mobile devices) has a series of blog posts on effective wedding planning with its software. The Google for Weddings pages offer a free collection of Google Docs templates for guest lists, seating charts, budgets and a guide to making a customized Web site for the celebration.

Personal Tech invites questions about computer-based technology to QandA@nytimes.com. This column will answer questions of general interest, but letters cannot be answered individually.

Gadgetwise: Sharing Files With Dropbox

If I want to share a giant file on Dropbox with other people, do they all have to sign up for Dropbox accounts to see the file?

Although the company’s shared folders feature is handy when everyone has a Dropbox account, the online storage service has more than one way to share a file. For those sharing situations where not everyone involved has a Dropbox account, you can send a secure Web link to the non-Dropbox users.

This Web link directs a person to the shared files, where they can be viewed or downloaded. (Other storage sites, like Microsoft SkyDrive, also let you send links in this manner.)

If you have the Dropbox desktop program for Windows, Mac OS X or Linux installed, you can share a link to a file by right-clicking (or pressing the Mac’s Control key while clicking) its icon and choosing Dropbox and then “Share Link” or “Share Dropbox Link” from the contextual menu.

This action copies the link to the computer’s clipboard, where you can then paste it into a message to send to your friend. You can create shared links in a similar way by right-clicking selected files when you are logged into your account on the Dropbox Web site.

Gadgetwise Blog: A New Leef for Sharing Files to Your Phone

The Leef Bridge, a USB thumb drive, proposes to transfer files easily between computers and phones.

Transferring files from your computer to your phone can be a big hassle, especially when they don’t use the same operating system. With so many Android phones out there, it’s an annoyance a lot of people face.

The Leef Bridge, a USB thumb drive, takes a stab at the problem, and it’s a step in the right direction, even if it’s not quite there yet.

The Leef Bridge has two plugs, an standard USB on one side and a Micro USB on the other. The idea is you plug the standard side into a computer, load up the files you want. Then move the Bridge to your phone and plug in the micro USB.

It seems simple enough, but the fault in the Bridge lies not with Leef, but with the Android. Various phones handle the external drive differently and none I tried were easy, although the Samsung Galaxy S4 was easiest.

First, before you can use the Bridge, your phone (or tablet) has to run on Android’s Jelly Bean 4.1 operating system or a newer one, and the device has to accommodate the USB OTG (On-The-Go) standard. On top of that, you may need a file management software; Leef suggests Astro File Manager.

With help from Leef, I was able to use the file manager on an HTC One; the trick is not to open the manager until after you plug in the Bridge. A Samsung Galaxy S4 recognized the drive without additional software, which made the transfer easier. Using a Motorola RAZR, I was unable on my own to figure out how make a transfer, even with the file management software.

So, is this easier than using software like DoubleTwist that connects your computer and phone ? I’d say they are about equal. Both are manageable once you are over the considerable learning curve.

You may be wondering if you can do the same thing with any thumb drive and an adapter cable, like this $1.50 one from Monoprice. You can. But it still doesn’t solve the complexity of the file management system.

The Bridge might become more sensible when more phones recognize drives the way the Galaxy S4 does, or if someone were to make some smart, simple file manager. Maybe one to go specifically with the Leef (are you listening, Leef?).

In the meantime, the company said a 16GB Bridge will be available for $18, a 32 GB Bridge for $29.

Israeli Electric Car Company Files for Liquidation

JERUSALEM — The vision was ambitious. Better Place, an electric vehicle infrastructure company, unveiled plans more than five years ago to pioneer a system of quick-service battery swapping stations across Israel to enable unlimited travel.

The company’s founder predicted that 100,000 electric cars would be on the roads here by 2010.

But on Sunday, Better Place announced that its venture, a flagship enterprise of Israel’s image as a start-up hub, was coming to an end.

Dan Cohen, the company’s third chief executive, said in a statement that financial difficulties had left the company no option but to file for liquidation in a district court and to request the appointment of a provisional receiver “to find the best way to minimize the damage to its employees, customers and creditors.”

The announcement followed a string of setbacks in the emerging electric car market. Fisker, a carmaker, is in financial distress; A123 Systems, a battery supplier for Fisker, and, more recently, Coda Holdings, another carmaker, filed for bankruptcy. Tesla, the prominent car manufacturer, has had success, though, repaying its government loan last week after a successful sale of new shares.

Israel had been considered a perfect testing ground for Better Place’s green project, given the country’s small size and high gasoline prices. The electric car fit into Israeli dreams of reducing oil dependency; the initiative gained the support of the government and was embraced by Shimon Peres, the president of Israel. President Obama, during his March visit here, praised the Israelis’ innovative spirit, mentioning electric cars as one of several examples.

Yet the project was hobbled by problems and delays, and the company’s idea failed to gain traction, with fewer than 1,000 cars on the road in Israel and another few hundred in Denmark.

Mr. Cohen said on Sunday that the vision and the model had been right, but that the pace of market penetration had not lived up to expectations. Without a large injection of cash, he said, Better Place was unable to continue its operations.

“This is a very sad day for all of us,” Mr. Cohen added. “The company brought with it a vision that swept along many people here and around the world.”

About $850 million in private capital has been invested in the company, which has 350 employees in Israel. The largest shareholder, with about 30 percent of the stock, was the Israel Corporation, a large holding company that focuses on chemicals, energy, shipping and transportation. The corporation’s decision not to invest further in Better Place led to the motion for receivership.

The Better Place model for electric car use emerged from an effort among manufacturers and suppliers to establish a standard infrastructure in the nascent industry.

Under terms that resembled a cellphone plan, subscribers to Better Place bought their cars and paid about $350 a month to lease access to the batteries, swap stations and charge points. But only one car manufacturer, the French automaker Renault, signed on to adapt its Fluence Z.E. sedan to enable battery switching, limiting the customers’ choices and the company’s potential.

The battery has a range of about 100 miles. For those traveling longer distances, Better Place set up a network of switching stations where it promised that swapping a depleted battery for a fully charged one would take about the same time as filling a car with gas, so that range would no longer be an issue.

“It’s not the future of gas stations; it’s the end of them,” the company Web site boasted.

About three dozen switching stations now dot Israel, which is about 260 miles long from north to south, but they often look deserted.

The company was founded in Palo Alto, Calif., by Shai Agassi, an Israeli entrepreneur who had previously been a top executive at SAP, the German software company. It then moved from California to Tel Aviv.

In October, Better Place said that Mr. Agassi had been succeeded as its chief by Evan Thornley, the company’s top executive in Australia. The company said Mr. Agassi would continue as a board member and shareholder. Mr. Thornley left after only three months, over differences regarding the direction of the company, according to Globes, the Israeli business publication. He was succeeded by Mr. Cohen.

In February, Better Place announced that it was winding down its operations in North America and Australia to concentrate on its core markets in Denmark and Israel.

Mr. Cohen said on Sunday that the company would do what it could to continue to serve its customers and operate the recharging network, until the liquidator decided on a course of action.

Bits Blog: Tech Investor Files Defamation Suit Against Rape Accuser

Araya Diaz/Getty Images, for TechCrunch Michael Arrington, the founder of the TechCrunch news site and now an investor in start-ups.

1:37 p.m. | Updated with link to Valleywag, which first reported news of the suit.

Michael Arrington, the founder of the TechCrunch news site and now an investor in start-ups, has filed a lawsuit against a former girlfriend who has for several weeks alleged in various online forums that Mr. Arrington raped and threatened to kill her.

Mr. Arrington’s lawsuit, filed on Tuesday in federal court in Seattle, alleges that the former girlfriend, Jennifer Allen, has made repeated defamatory, false statements about Mr. Arrington “to smear the plaintiff’s name on the Internet, to destroy his reputation, and to deter third persons from associating with him.” The lawsuit alleges that Ms. Allen, who lives in San Francisco, was motivated by her frustration over her “intermittent romantic involvement” with Mr. Arrington.

Mr. Arrington’s suit doesn’t specify the amount of damages he is seeking, though it said the figure is over $75,000. A letter that Mr. Arrington’s attorney sent to Ms. Allen last month, in which he threatened to sue her if she did not retract her statements, said that Mr. Arrington has pledged to donate any damages to charity.

Ms. Allen didn’t respond to a message sent to her through Facebook. Valleywag, Gawker’s tech industry gossip site, first reported news of the lawsuit.

Mr. Arrington, who now lives in Washington State, is a well-known figure throughout the technology industry. He founded TechCrunch, a news site that he turned into an influential chronicler of the start-up scene. He sold the site to AOL in 2010 for $30 million. He left the next year amid a controversy over potential conflicts of interest stemming from his plan to start a venture capital fund.

Mr. Arrington’s lawsuit notes that his problems with Ms. Allen began March 29, with a post on her Facebook page in which she said she had known him for more than eight years and that it “hurts when you love someone borderline and they can’t feel anything at all for you, and threaten to murder you if you told anyone about the physical abuse — all for keeping his reputation.”

The lawsuit also alleges that Ms. Allen later accused him more explicitly of raping her through posts in the comments section of the Gawker Web site and on her Twitter account. It also alleges that Ms. Allen in various posts on the matter said that the assaults occurred on different dates in March 2012, which she seemed to acknowledge when she referred to the disparity as an “unintentional date mixup.”

Gadgetwise Blog: Q&A: Keeping Files in Sync on Microsoft SkyDrive

I use Microsoft SkyDrive software on a Mac and I notice the folder doesn’t always update itself immediately when I copy files to it. Sometimes I’ve even gotten to work and realized that the files I need didn’t sync up online and are still on my home computer. Is there a way to manually force SkyDrive to update and sync so I can make sure my files are there?

Microsoft’s SkyDrive is a storage service for storing files online and keeping them up to date on multiple computers and devices. In addition to the SkyDrive.com Web site, Microsoft has free desktop software for Mac OS X and Windows that can be used for managing files directly on the computer instead of having to upload them through a Web browser to store them on the SkyDrive servers.

The desktop apps are supposed to monitor the activity in your SkyDrive folder as you copy and update the files inside — and then sync them with the online server and any other computers or mobile devices you have linked to your SkyDrive account. While the app usually syncs up the contents of your SkyDrive folder within a minute or two of your most recent change, Internet disruptions or other glitches may prevent the software from grabbing the latest files. (You should also check to make sure your Mac has the latest version of the SkyDrive app.)

If you have the SkyDrive toolbar icon installed on the Mac, click it to see a menu showing when the app last updated the folder. If it does not look like the folder has been updated since you last made changes to files in the SkyDrive folder, select the Quit SkyDrive option from the toolbar menu and then restart the SkyDrive app from the icon in your Applications folder or in the Mac’s Dock. Restarting the SkyDrive app should force the software to scan the folder for changes as soon as it starts up again.

Although it is a slower option, uploading your critical files directly to the SkyDrive.com site is another way to make sure you have copies online that you can get to from other computers and devices. Microsoft’s site has other troubleshooting tips for syncing files on SkyDrive.

Bradley Manning Admits Providing Files to WikiLeaks

Appearing before a military judge for more than an hour, Private Manning read a statement recounting how he joined the military, became an intelligence analyst in Iraq, decided that certain files should become known to the American public to prompt a wider debate about foreign policy, downloaded them from a secure computer network and then ultimately uploaded them to WikiLeaks.

“No one associated with WLO” — an abbreviation he used to refer to the WikiLeaks organization — “pressured me into sending any more information,” Private Manning said. “I take full responsibility.”

Before reading the statement, Private Manning pleaded guilty to 10 criminal counts in connection with the huge amount of material he leaked, which included videos of airstrikes in Iraq and Afghanistan in which civilians were killed, logs of military incident reports, assessment files of detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and a quarter-million cables from American diplomats stationed around the world.

The guilty pleas exposed him to up to 20 years in prison. But the case against Private Manning, a slightly built 25-year-old who has become a folk hero among antiwar and whistle-blower advocacy groups, is not over. The military has charged him with a far more serious set of offenses, including aiding the enemy, and multiple counts of violating federal statutes, including the Espionage Act. Prosecutors now have the option of pressing forward with proving the remaining elements of those charges.

That would involve focusing only on questions like whether the information he provided counted as the sort covered by the Espionage Act — that is, whether it was not just confidential but also could be used to injure the United States or aid a foreign nation.

Private Manning described himself as thinking carefully about the kind of information he was releasing, and taking care to make sure that none of it could cause harm if disclosed.

The only material that initially gave him pause, he said, were the diplomatic cables, which he portrayed as documenting “back-room deals and seemingly criminal activity.”

But he decided to go forward after discovering that the most sensitive cables were not in the database. He was also motivated, he said, by a book about “open diplomacy” after World War I and “how the world would be a better place if states would not make secret deals with each other.”

“I believed the public release of these cables would not damage the United States,” he said. “However, I did believe the release of the cables might be embarrassing.”

Private Manning said the first set of documents he decided to release consisted of hundreds of thousands of military incident reports from Afghanistan and Iraq. He had downloaded them onto a disk because the network connection at his base in Iraq kept failing, and he and his colleagues needed regular access to them.

Those reports added up to a history of the “day-to-day reality” in both war zones that he believed showed the flaws in the counterinsurgency policy the United States was then pursuing. The military, he said, was “obsessed with capturing or killing” people on a list, while ignoring the impact of its operations on ordinary people.

Private Manning said he put the files on a digital storage card for his camera and took it home with him on a leave in early 2010. He then decided to give the files to a newspaper.

“I believed if the public — in particular the American public — had access to the information” in the reports, “this could spark a debate about foreign policy in relation to Iraq and Afghanistan,” he said.

Private Manning said he first called The Washington Post and spoke to an unidentified reporter for about five minutes. He decided that the reporter did not seem particularly interested because she said The Post would have to review the material before making any commitment.

He said he then tried to reach out to The New York Times by calling a phone number for the newspaper’s public editor — an ombudsman who is not part of the newsroom — and leaving a voice mail message that was not returned.

Scott Shane contributed reporting from Washington.

Illuminati Files: Kanye Caught Rockin’ Luciferian Pants At Versace Event, Documentary Makes Case For Camel And Company All Being Devil Lovers [Video]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Are your favorite MC’s pathetic puppets of the Prince of Darkness???

Kanye West got tongues wagging this week when he showed up to several events wearing pants covered in illuminati symbology.

You’ve got to watch the video where the guy makes the case for him being down with you know who.

That guy is definitely on one. If you’re into this kinda thing hit the flip and listen to him go on with even more examples of how Jay-Z and friends are some devil lovers…

Gadgetwise Blog: Q&A: Sharing Files in the Sky

If you upload a folder for a bunch of people on SkyDrive, do the people you are sharing with have to sign up for a Microsoft account to see the files?

When you upload a folder to your SkyDrive account and click the Share button, you can decide whether users must sign in with a Microsoft account to see and edit the files. You can leave the box next to “Require everyone who accesses this to sign in” unchecked.

Clicking the Share button for a selected file provides other ways to share besides sending an e-mail with a Web link to a group of people. You can post a link to the file to your Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn account instead.

If you just want to generate a URL to the file to share yourself, choose the “Get a Link” option and select a level of sharing. SkyDrive creates a direct link to the shared file; the convenient Shorten button underneath the new link can reduce its length and make it less unwieldy. Microsoft has more on sharing and permissions for SkyDrive files on its site.

State of the Art: Drobo Offers RAID Array Systems to Back Up Top-Heavy Files - Review

Did you answer “yes?” Congratulations, you statistical freak. Skip to the next article.

If you’re like the huge majority, however, your backup is out of date or nonexistent.

And that situation is getting more dire every day. The world wants us to snap more pictures, download more movies, play more music, shoot more video. Well, great. But if something’s worth snapping, downloading, playing or shooting, then it’s also worth backing up.

So you buy an external hard drive. And another. And another. After a while, your desk looks like mine, festooned with a hideous archipelago of mismatched drives, each with a cable and a power cord.

And by the way, those drives are not, themselves, backed up. Most contain the original files I’ve offloaded from the computer for long-term storage. If one of those drives dies, I’m out of luck.

Boy, does Drobo have a suggestion for people like me.

See, corporations don’t go buying external drives from Best Buy. They use RAID arrays (Redundant Array of Independent Disks). That’s a passel of drives congregated inside a single metal box; clever software makes them look to a computer like one big drive. Or three smaller ones, or 50 little ones — however the highly paid system administrator decides to chop them up.

As a bonus, thanks to a fancy encoding scheme, the files on a RAID system can be recovered even if one of the participating hard drives goes to the great junk drawer in the sky. (That’s why it’s R for “redundant.”)

For several years now, a company that calls itself Drobo (short for “data robotics”) has been pursuing a single dream: make RAID arrays for noncorporate people. High-end types, small businesses and creative professionals with little technical expertise and no technical staff.

And next week, it will offer two new models: the Drobo 5D ($850 list) and the Drobo Mini ($650).

A Drobo is just a sleek, glossy, black empty shell. You have to buy internal hard drives to insert like cartridges. Online, for example, you can snag a couple of 2-terabyte drives for $110 each. That ought to hold a few baby pictures.

Once the drives arrive, you start to understand the nosebleed Drobo price tag — because there’s no setup or configuration. You don’t even have to attach the drives to rails or caddies or fiddle with screws, as you do with professional RAID systems; you just shove them in like frozen waffles going into a vertical toaster. The Drobo automatically assimilates them into your increasingly large virtual drive.

Also unlike most RAID systems, the drives you buy can be different brands, speeds and capacities; Drobo is an equal-opportunity enclosure.

The Drobo 5D has slots for five drives — standard 3.5-inch, SATA internal drives, which these days come in capacities up to 4 terabytes each. The new Mini, the first Drobo that could be called portable (7 x 7 x 2 inches, suitable for peripatetic video editors and photographers), has four slots. They accept 2.5-inch laptop drives, which, these days, offer a maximum of 1 terabyte each (about $80).

Here’s the big payoff: As your life fills with files, you can fill your empty slots with more drives. Once you’ve filled them all, you can eject one of your smaller drives and replace it with a more capacious one. None of that requires copying files, reformatting a drive or managing anything. The Drobo system automatically recognizes new drives and makes them, too, part of the suddenly larger virtual hard drive. This breezy, suit-yourself flexibility is unheard-of in traditional RAID systems.

Here’s the other payoff: Drives die. When that happens, you don’t lose any data. In its RAID-y way, the Drobo auto-reconstructs everything that was on the corpse drive. You keep using all your files as if nothing had happened, even as the Drobo starts redistributing your files so that they’re protected against another drive failure, which can take hours or days.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: October 22, 2012

The State of the Art column on Thursday, about a data storage system for corporate users that is known as RAID arrays (redundant array of independent disks), misstated what Drobo, the company that is introducing the system for non-corporate users, based its name on. It is data robotics, not disk robot.

Battery Maker A123 Systems Files for Bankruptcy

The company’s bankruptcy filing was unexpected, since it struck a deal in August to sell a majority stake to a Chinese auto parts manufacturer. That agreement, with the Wanxiang Group, provided an apparent lifeline to the company. But A123, which has received federal grant money, said the Wanxiang deal was never completed, and on Monday, it failed to make a debt payment due on $75 million it had borrowed from Wanxiang.

In announcing its bankruptcy filing, A123 said it had agreed to sell its automotive assets and factories to Johnson Controls, another American battery producer that has benefited from federal assistance, in a deal it valued at $125 million.

A123, based in Waltham, Mass., was once considered one of the most promising grant recipients under the administration’s $2 billion stimulus program for electric car development. The Department of Energy awarded the company a $249 million grant to establish battery manufacturing operations in Michigan, although A123 had received only about $132 million of the grant before its bankruptcy.

The company’s failure may well become a political football in the presidential campaign, in which energy policy has been a leading topic. The Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, has repeatedly criticized President Obama for his heavy spending on green-energy programs, including a $528 million loan to Solyndra, a solar module maker that went bankrupt last year.

“A123’s bankruptcy is yet another failure for the president’s disastrous strategy of gambling away billions of taxpayer dollars on a strategy of government-led growth that simply does not work,” said Andrea Saul, Mr. Romney’s press secretary, in a statement on Tuesday.

The Energy Department defended the federal grant to A123 as one of many bipartisan efforts to support American manufacturing of lithium-ion batteries for electric cars. A department official, Dan Leistikow, said in a blog post that the administration had awarded $2 billion in grants to 29 companies involved in the electrification of vehicles, creating thousands of jobs.

A123 has used about $132 million of its grant to date, plus another $6 million given in 2007 by the Bush administration, said Mr. Leistikow, the agency’s director of public affairs. Michigan has also given A123 a $9 million grant, plus various tax breaks.

Mr. Leistikow said the federal money would not be wasted because A123’s two Michigan factories would now be operated by Johnson Controls.

“In an emerging industry, it’s very common to see some firms consolidate with others as the industry grows and matures,” he said.

The department previously gave Johnson Controls, based in Wisconsin, its own $299 million federal grant for an electric-car battery project.

The Solyndra bankruptcy, which became the subject of Congressional hearings, stoked concerns about oversight of government-backed energy programs.

Another battery manufacturer that received federal help, Ener1, went bankrupt in January. It had approval for $118.5 million in grants from the Energy Department but had received only about half of that when it entered bankruptcy.

A123 was a centerpiece of the government’s electric-vehicle program, opening two factories in Michigan and securing contracts to supply batteries to automakers including General Motors and the start-up firm Fisker Automotive.

But its financial stability has been in question for more than a year. The company suffered a major setback when it had to recall defective batteries in Fisker cars. And despite orders from carmakers, A123 could not generate sufficient revenue or profit from the slowly growing market for electric vehicles.

In August, A123 surprised industry experts by agreeing to sell up to 80 percent of the company to the American arm of the Wanxiang Group, China’s largest auto parts manufacturer.

Political opponents of the Wanxiang deal asserted that the Chinese company would get access to technology and products made possible by the support of American taxpayers.

One of the critics, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, said the sale of A123’s factories to Johnson Controls was “something positive” because it kept the company’s assets out of Chinese hands.

But Mr. Grassley and Senator John Thune, Republican from South Dakota, criticized the Energy Department, saying it ignored warning signs that A123 was faltering.

“The bankruptcy raises the prospect that the taxpayers will get little or no return on their investment in A123 and will lose millions of dollars,” Mr. Grassley said.

The Energy Department countered that A123’s employees and customers would be absorbed by a larger, stronger competitor in Johnson Controls.

“A123’s manufacturing facilities and technology will continue to be a vital part of America’s advanced battery industry,” said Mr. Leistikow.

Wanxiang, which has its United States headquarters outside Chicago, pledged in August to invest up to $465 million in A123, but the deal fell apart for undisclosed reasons.

“We determined not to move forward with the previously announced Wanxiang agreement as a result of unanticipated and significant challenges to its completion,” said David Vieau, A123’s chief executive, in a statement.

Instead, the company found a new suitor in Johnson Controls, which analysts say is now in position to be the dominant American battery manufacturer.

A123 said filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection would ease the sale of its automotive assets to Johnson Controls. The deal includes Michigan plants in the Detroit suburbs in Livonia and Romulus, as well as A123’s equity interest in battery facilities in China.

Johnson Controls said it would provide $72.5 million in financing for A123’s reorganization in bankruptcy.

“We believe that A123’s automotive capabilities are a good complement to our existing portfolio and will further advance Johnson Controls’ position as a market leader in this industry,” said Alex Molinaroli, head of the power systems unit of Johnson Controls.

Brian Johnson, an analyst with Barclays Capital, said in a research note that the deal would help Johnson Controls become “the U.S.-based player” in the market for lithium-ion batteries.

A123 has also received “significant interest” for its remaining assets, primarily its electric-grid technology and products for commercial and government entities, said Mr. Vieau, the company’s chief executive

Whether Wanxiang will bid on those assets during bankruptcy is not known. The head of the Chinese firm’s United States operations, Pin Ni, said in an e-mail on Tuesday, “Our interest and commitment has not changed” regarding A123.

Matthew L. Wald reported from Washington.

Gadgetwise Blog: Q&A: Converting Word Files Into an E-book

How can I convert Word documents into an e-book to download and use on my iPad?

You can do it several ways, including buying a word-processing app for the iPad that opens Microsoft Word files. Apple’s Pages or DataViz’s Documents to Go are two of the many options in the App Store. If you want to view the documents and not edit them, uploading them to a free Google Drive or Microsoft SkyDrive account online is another way to go — and both sites have free apps for tapping into your online files if you don’t want to use the iPad’s Web browser.

If you prefer to keep things securely between your iPad and computer, combining the files into one and converting the Word document to a format that works with the iBooks app (or other e-book app) is another method. Most apps can display files in the ePub or PDF formats, and it is not too difficult to convert a Word document to either. Microsoft has instructions for Windows users with Word 2007 and later. Mac OS X users can open each document, press Command-P to summon the Print box and choose “Save as PDF” from the PDF menu.

Saving the documents as ePub files lets them function more like e-books, with the ability to adjust text size and font. An e-book utility program to convert Word documents to ePub files can do the job; Calibre is one such program and has instructions on its site.

Once you convert the files, you need to sync them to iBooks or your e-reader app. Apple’s site has steps for syncing content, as well as specific information for using PDF files with iBooks

Battery Maker A123 Systems Files for Bankruptcy

Room for Debate asks how best to support women’s rights and reform efforts in areas where extremists still hold sway.

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Gadgetwise Blog: Q&A: Converting Paper to Digital Files

What’s the best way to convert a box of old newspaper and magazine clippings to digital files, doing it myself and without spending a lot of money?

If the ultimate goal is to convert piles of paper into legible PDF files for electronic archiving and future reference, you can get the job done with a relatively inexpensive all-in-one printer that can also scan documents. These multifunction printers usually cost around $100 to $150. But if you want a machine with more functions or features designed just for document scanning, or optical character recognition software that converts the printed image into text that can be edited, you usually pay more.

These all-in-one printers include software for scanning, and the software can have a setting for scanning documents as well as photos. Several Hewlett-Packard multifunction printers, for example, have a document-scanning option that saves the digitized results as PDF files, which take up considerably less cabinet space than a stack of clippings. Desktop programs like Evernote, which also has versions for several mobile platforms, organize digitized documents and can also be helpful for keeping track of the converted clippings.

If you prefer a more flexible option than buying a multifunction printer or portable scanner — and have a tablet or smartphone — most app stores have some sort of scanning app that uses the device’s camera to capture an image of a document. Quality may vary, but you can find scanning apps for less than $10, including Scanner Pro for iOS devices, DocScanner for iOS and Android and Document Scanner for Android.