Many months ago, but not that many posts ago, I launched a redesign of this site. I found a WordPress theme that I really liked, modified and tweaked its look quite a bit, and the end result was something that I was proud of and thought looked really cool.

Then, sometime in the last several months, my site was hacked. I’m not entirely sure how it was done — I am not an expert coder or a hacker by any means — but the end result was that clicking this site from any search engine results would redirect you to a .ru page and try to install a virus on your computer (though, fortunately, it was a virus that up to date browsers and virus software were able to block).

To make matters worse, this problem affected other websites that I hosted, including my mother’s personal business webpage Orene.net (she’s a wardrobe and image consult located in the San Francisco bay area) and my personal homepage TKearn.com. This really hurt my mother’s business, as her webpage was one of her main forms of advertising, and redirecting to a virus will cause you to plummet in the search engine results even after you fix the problem. Additionally, the hack remained undetected by me for quite a while, both because I was very busy at work and because going directly to the sites, which is what I usually do, still worked and only search engine results that were affected.

Some outside help was able to get rid of the hack and make the sites safe again. What the person who helped me reported was that the hacker exploited a vulnerability in my theme. I needed to delete my old theme, get it off the server, and start fresh with something else.

So I did. The result of that is the site that you see now. It’s still a work in progress, and I have a lot of additional tweaking that I intend to do. If you see something that you like or hate, or anything that isn’t working, please let me know.

Additionally, I would just like to reiterate that the site is safe again. I want to apologize for to anyone who may have experienced issues because of it — I really do feel bad about it, and I wish I had known about it earlier or taken further steps to prevent it (though I do not know what those might have been).

A few notes about this site and the conspicuous lack of new content: In the last several months, I have started a new job, which has taken up a lot of my time and energy. But, with this hacking incident taken care of, and with me settling into the job, the time is right to start getting back to one of the things that I enjoy — writing about tech. I want to get this site on the map again. And I need your help to do it: please comment on stories, let me know your opinions on things, and help me make this site more than just my own personal tech soapbox.

Back in August, I wrote a post that rounded up some of the easiest methods for getting around email attachment size limits. Lots of people run into these limits when trying to send large files over email — especially from corporate, school, or ISP provided email accounts — and it can be hard to know you’ve run up against it until the person you were sending the file to reports the email didn’t go through. Keep reading for an update and expansion on that original post — many of the services I originally wrote about have changed, and some new ones have come along.

What’s Changed:

TransferBigFiles.com. When I wrote the original post 8 months ago, TransferBigFiles was my favorite method for getting around attachment size limits. All you had to do was upload a file and enter the email address of your recipient and they would receive an email with a link to the file. Well, the site still works that way, but instead of having a 1GB per file limit, it’s now 100MB. If you sign up for a free account, it’s 250MB, but that still constrains you to dramatically smaller files than you were able to send before (though 250MB should be more than large enough for most any photo or audio files you wish to send, and most video files should work as well). You will now also need to sign up for an account to use most of the features of the service, such as password protecting the file or including a message to the recipient. Paid accounts start at $5 a month, let you transfer files up to 2GB. Overall, TransferBigFiles is still a useful service, but now you may need to sign up for an account, and you’ll have to look somewhere else if you want to transfer really big files.

FileDropper.com. FileDropper hasn’t changed dramatically, but it has gotten less convenient for those wishing to use it to email files. The service still lets you upload files up to 5GB for free (and with paid accounts up to 250GB). However, when you upload the file, instead of giving you a link to that file (which was easy to copy and paste into an email), it now gives you a link to a page from which you can download the file (after entering a captcha). This adds a step to the process, and could prove confusing to the person you’re sending the file to, especially if they’re not computer-savvy.

What Hasn’t:

Gmail. Gmail still has an attachment limit of 25MB, which at the time was the largest of the email providers out there (and plenty big for most pictures, audio files, or Office documents). However, they have been surpassed by…

What’s New:

Hotmail. The new Hotmail, which launched earlier this month, now reigns supreme as the free email provider with the largest attachment limits. Using Hotmail, you can send up to 200 files, each of which can be up to 50MB (which allows you to theoretically send 10GB worth of files in a single email). Hotmail does this by uploading the file(s) to Windows Skydrive, a service which gives you 25GB of free online storage, and then including links to the files (or a gallery of thumbnails in the case of images) in the email. This method has both pros and cons. The biggest upsides are that you won’t be hampered by your recipient’s attachment size limit, and that your files won’t be taking up space in you or your recipient’s email accounts. However, because Skydrive has a capacity limit you may find that you run into it, which would mean having to clear things off of it before you could use it to send more large files. You can set your attachments to have an expiration date (90 days by default), which will be important to keep Skydrive from getting filled up if you are using Hotmail to send files frequently.

Related Posts:

• Get Around Those Pesky Attachment Size Limits
• iPhone OS 4.0 (iOS 4) — Run Though, Impressions, and Tips
• Gmail Tips and Tricks