Quick tip: Create a "symlink" ("directory junction") in Windows
Coming from the Linux world, I use symlinks a lot to "spoof" the location of something for a program. So tonight I thought, "ya know, I really want my Minecraft worlds backed up on my SpiderOak Hive." On OS X and other UNIX-like operating systems, this is easy with a simple symlink from the shell.
But I use Windows for my primary gaming machine (and that's all, really). If I create a Minecraft world on Windows, I'd like to be able to access it form the local drive on one of my two Mac OS X computers that I have. So I decided, on a whim, to see if I could create a symlink in Windows.
As it turns out, you can. Only in Windows, it's referred to as a "directory junction", not a symlink, though the concept is essentially the same.
How do you do that? Open up cmd.exe. I tried this in PowerShell on Windows 7 at first, but it didn't have the mklink command available - maybe a $PATH issue of some kind, I dunno.
Once you've got basically a DOS prompt up, try this:
mklink /J "C:\path\to\wherever\you\want\your\symlink" "C:\path\to\actual\files"
Now, I'm no Microsoft developer and my administrative experience with Windows is extremely noob, so if anyone knows better please let us know in the comments, but I'd be willing to bet you a coke that this only works on NTFS file systems. Microsoft's other file systems have been, I'm told anyway, less than spectacular. And that's putting it politely.
Still, it's nice to know that you can actually create a wannabe symlink in Windows.
(This was tested on a Windows 7x64 machine. Probably works similarly in Vista; XP and Windows 8, I got no idea - you're on your own kids.)