Tags:
Software
Backups
are important, as I wrote
about a few months ago. But
there's a new kid on my backup block - CrashPlan.
CrashPlan comes in three different flavors - free (one of my favorite
things), Plus, and Pro. Several things make CrashPlan unique. As
I mentioned the last time I wrote, it's important to have both onsite and
offsite backups. This is true for everyone, both home and business.
I always like having multiple backups because I never really trust
just one (and that's not just me - all of my techie buddies agree.) You
want a good local backup for speed - nothing is faster than hooking up
an external drive and copying back a file you deleted by accident. But
you also need something stored offsite in case of fire, theft, nuclear
explosion, etc. The problem with offsite, though, is that it can
be very slow to restore via Internet, or to have to go somewhere to get
a drive. The other problems are that it's a pain to have to keep
swapping out drives and you also don't want to have to manage 2 backup
packages/schedules - one for local and one for remote. Finally, although
I've loved Carbonite for a few years now, I'm really not that happy with
its performance and restores are a bear.
Enter CrashPlan, which solves all these
issues. First, most home users will be fine with the free version.
Business users will need to use CrashPlan+ at a very reasonable $60/computer
for the software. CrashPlanPro is for enterprise users who need to
back up lots of workstations (my business clients know not to store anything
locally though - everything belongs on the server, right?) CrashPlan
is as easy to install and select the files to back up as anything else.
Actually easier than my old favorite which makes you jump through
some hoops to get going. Then the difference breaks out - you can
choose multiple destinations, including other local computers, external
hard drives, network folders, or remote computers. You can even back
up to your Mom's computer if she'll let you. All the different destinations
are eventually synchronized. If you have a lot of data it's better
to do a local backup first, then bring that backup to the remote location
and seed the remote backup, otherwise it can take days to get the first
pass done. Backups are compressed, so they take up less room than
the original data. So far I've seen backups around 67% of the original
size but that's heavily dependent on the type of data you're backing up.
After the first backup backups are all
incremental at the block level. That means if you change a line in
a massive Word document all that needs to be backed up is that one line,
not the whole thing. Don't worry - CrashPlan knows what to do. The
important thing to note here is that future backups are small and fast
since CrashPlan is just backing up the changes.
CrashPlan takes care of versioning and
deleted files, too. It can do unlimited versioning, meaning you can
go back to whatever date/version you want. If you noticed that something
happened to an Excel spreadsheet today, restore yesterday's version. Oops,
still has the problem, go back to last week or last month - it's all there
and it's all easy and fast to restore, either from your local destination
or a remote one. The free version backs up every 24 hours or manually
while the Plus version has continuous protection. They both can back up
open files using Microsoft VSS.
Wait a second though - what about security?
Who wants to let their important data out in the wild? Actually,
your data is encrypted before it even leaves your computer - don't lose
your password or you'll never get it back. The destination computer
keeps a database of your files and your Mom can't open them without your
password. The free version has 128-bit encryption (good) while the
Plus version uses 448-bit.
So what's not to love? For my
clients, I'm now offering a remote backup location. The huge benefit
is if someone ever needs a big restoration, I'll have easy access to the
data on my server (with the password of course) which I can then bring
back on an external drive. I can also seed the backup here rather
than waiting days for the first backup to go via Internet. Oh, and
CrashPlan is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. You just can't
go wrong.
Tags:
Internet
Everyone
knows to be aware when purchasing anything online, right? There are
way too many ways to get caught up in a scam. The latest for me was
an ad I responded to on Craigslist for an item I was interested in. Wow,
brand new in box, and less than half the price! It's gotta be a scam,
right? Yup. So how did I know, besides the obvious? Well,
first I emailed the person. Eventually I got an email back:
Thank you for your interest in my products!
All the products I sell are brand new, with warranty, bought from companies
in bankruptcy!
Also, I have an agreement with Green Dot and for each product I sell ,I
get a bonus if I use and promote their services.This way,I can offer you
the lowest prices on the market and free shipping.
If you want to pick up the product, have to say that I have a lot of products
for sale, a lot of buyers, a lot of packages to be sent and lack of time!
For these reasons, I am not available for local pick up.
You will find below all the info you need in order to get the brand new
*********************** , just follow the instructions :
http://********.biz/gd/productdetails.php?i=32
Regards,
Stephanie **********
First tip was that the item "she"
wrote back about was a different model than what was advertised. So
I followed up about that and she said she had both. Uh huh.
Then I went to the link she included.
Very impressive, she's a BBB Accredited Business. You can even
click on the BBB logo to pull up the report. Except there's no real
identifying information in the report and the report is NOT on the BBB
site. Hmmm.... So I went to the BBB site and searched for her
business. No surprise, it wasn't there. Then I started changing
the number in the first web address and found other products that were
for sale by different people. When you click the BBB logo on those
websites you get a similar BBB report. A closer look at the URL for
the BBB report makes it obvious that it's passing the seller's name into
the report - how fun, I can make a Satisfactory Record with my own name
right on the scammers website.
When I clicked on the payment link in
the first website I got to a very sparse form that asked for my information,
hosted on an IP address out of Texas (not even a domain name - just an
IP address.) After filling in fake information there, the page doesn't
go anywhere. I can only assume that once the scammer gets your "Green
Dot" number he/she gets the money out of the account and takes off.
Meanwhile I tried to get more info out
of the seller, but she (he? who knows?) disappeared and doesn't respond
to my e-mails any more.
So... I flagged the offending post on
Craigslist, posted my own warning about it there, sent an e-mail to the
Better Business Bureau with all of the information, and also filed a complaint
with the Internet
Crime Complaint Center. We'll
see what happens.
Let's be careful out there.
Tags:
Internet
With
all my complaining about Twitter lately I did neglect to mention the real
reason I started playing with it, thanks to a marketing buddy of mine.
Namely, SEO, or search engine optimization. Basically, Google
(and other search engines, but let's be real - Google is king right now)
loves new content. Search engines also love lots of links to websites.
And some of the best way to generate new contents and links is to
tweet stuff, like the tweet I'm about to make announcing this new blog
post. So far the jury, consisting of me, is still out on the benefit
of this, but it's worth looking at more. It's also why I sometimes
have tried to jam a lot of key words into my tweets, so that people will
find me by searching, either on Google or on http://search.twitter.com
. Does it really work though...?
Tags:
Internet
I'm
about to give up on Twitter again. I can admit it: my name is Bill
(actually, GoodComputerGuy),
and I just do NOT get it. Sure, I've occasionally stumbled across
an interesting link, and there's one guy who I think is a riot. But I hardly
ever see his updates because they're mixed in with so much noise. And
I'm not even following that many people. I've tried to jump into
conversations, but people seldom reply back to me (because I'm boring,
or because they don't see my replies in with all the other noise?) I've
heard that Twitter is the fastest place to get answers so this morning
I tweeted a techie question - I got nuthin'. I can solve that question
in seconds with a Google search anyway.
So please, what the heck am I missing?
How do people get anything useful out of Twitter? How do they
follow so many people without missing "important" tweets (are
there any?) I can barely handle following 4 or 5 people who I think
might possibly be interesting. Seriously - how do you handle dozens,
hundreds, or thousands (yes, I've tried Tweetdeck, Twhirl, etc)? There's
just waaaaayyyyy too much noise to pick out anything useful unless you're
searching for a very specific topic. And even then, good luck. Is
there anyone actively getting use out of Twitter who actually has a real
job? My burning question: why does Twitter have so much buzz? It's
everywhere and doesn't look like it's going away.
Tags:
Software
I
have always been odd when it comes to e-mail. Specifically, my Inbox
has almost always been empty or nearly so. Since the dawn of e-mail,
I've treated messages in my Inbox as to-do items, and I don't like to have
a lot of outstanding to do's. I can't understand how people can work
with gigantic inboxes, with thousands of messages, including many unread
messages (how do you know if you've missed something important?) From
a technical point of view. if you have 20,000 messages in your Inbox (you
know who you are) it's going to take longer to open it and do anything
with it. It's going to take longer to index the view, search it,
etc. In Lotus Notes, if I have to refresh or fixup your mail file
it's going to take a lot longer to open then next time.
From a productivity point of view, how
can you keep track of what you have read and what you still have to operate
on? For many years I tried to keep my Inbox as empty as possible.
If I got a message that I needed to deal with it stayed in my Inbox
until I responded or turned it into a real to do, or did whatever I needed
to do with it, after which the email either got deleted or filed into the
proper folder. I would usually end up with 10-20 messages just sitting
there, but sometimes I would get it down to empty.
Since last year, though, my Inbox is
almost always empty, thanks to David Allen's Getting
Things Done principles.
I'm not going to dive into all that here, and all the benefits you
can get, but in a nutshell, I now have four additional folders in my e-mail:
-@Action
-@Read-Review
-@Someday-Maybe
-@Waiting For
They're named that way so they sort
up at the top of my e-mail. It's pretty obvious what happens to my
incoming e-mail now. If I deal with it right away, no problem - it
gets filed in the correct client folder or wherever it belongs. If
I'm not going to deal with it immediately, it goes into one of the above
4 folders, usually into -@Action. All four are perused occasionally,
with -@Action getting the bulk of the attention. Sometimes when I
respond to someone I'll Send and File it into -@Waiting For so I remember
that I'm expecting a response to something important.
One of my favorite aspects of this method
(and really, I can't stress enough that I'm just scratching the surface
of Getting Things Done) is that I don't have to constantly see old
things in my Inbox that I am eventually going to need to deal with. Especially
when I'm away from my office and checking my e-mail via mobile phone, I
just don't need to see the old stuff. That alone has cut down on
a lot of work stress and has increased my productivity.
So next time you open your Inbox, ask
yourself, is what you're seeing there really what you want to see there?
Tags:
Hardware software
Over
this past week I adjusted 3 or 4 fairly new wide-screen monitors to their
proper resolution. I don't know how people don't see this, but all
of the screen resolutions were set incorrectly, so everything was fat and
short (much like how many people end up watching their fancy new wide-screen
TVs because they don't know how to set them up properly.) It's very
important to get the aspect ratio right. Further, LCD screens have
a native resolution where they're most happy. With these huge newer
screens, that resolution is often 1680x1050. If you can't seem to
set the correct resolution you may need to upgrade your graphics card driver.
But trust me, you'll be much happier when you have it set properly.
Tags:
Hardware
The
first workshop on building your own computer went so well a few weeks ago
that I figured we should do it again.
Are you in the market for a new computer
but don't want to spend the big bucks that a really nice Dell or HP will
cost you (or want better quality for less money)? Do you need a less
expensive second computer for the kids? Normally my support work
is limited mostly to name brand computers, which is what I usually recommend
to my clients. But after building a new computer for myself recently I've
had more requests to help friends put together computers for a fraction
of the cost of a new name brand computer. So I'm putting together
another free hands-on workshop on how to build your own computer. This
is a beginner level workshop that will walk you through all the steps,
from picking out components to walking away with your new computer (or
you can cheat and just order the parts I suggest.)
The obvious questions: How is this going to work and what is the cost?
The cost is up to you depending on what components you pick out - the first
workshop computers all cost between around $300-$450. I'll work with
you via e-mail a couple weeks before the build day to figure out what components
suit you best. You will order the parts directly from the supplier.
Then we'll all meet and spend a few hours putting everything together,
installing an OS, installing some free software, and making sure everything
works. You'll go home with your new computer, simple as that.
If you're interested, please email me directly. Space is limited,
and once everyone is signed up we'll schedule build day and get everything
ordered. This is going to be hands-on, so limited to the local Metrowest/Greater
Boston area (you're going to have to get yourself to Framingham to put
it together.)
Tags:
Internet
OK,
seriously - in the last few days my Twitter
followers have doubled (and here comes yet another one. What the
heck did I do to suddenly attract all these new followers? And how
do I do it again??
Actually, on closer examination, most
of these new followers seem to be pretty spammy. Is this the way
to try to sell on Twitter now? Follow as many people as you can,
hoping they'll follow you back? I made that mistake, following someone
who repeatedly sent out a link to buy a $97 book on how to get more followers
on Twitter. Uh, no thanks - time to Unfollow.
So yeah, I'm using Twitter again. And
feeding it to Facebook again too. And I still don't know that this
is such a good idea. But I figured it's worth a shot again. What
else would I do, work? BTW, follow me at http://twitter.com/GoodComputerGuy
.
Tags:
Internet Software
I
think everyone has now heard of the Conficker virus that is out there.
How could you miss it, it's made a lot of main-stream media. Call
me crazy, but I suspect this is the next Y2K scare. The media needs
to be able to scare people into listening/reading/watching them, so they've
made a big deal of things. I suspect that come tomorrow... nothing
is going to happen. If I'm wrong though, this post may be the first
thing to go... :)
Tags:
Internet
Everyone
on Facebook
knows about the recent home page redesign, and not too many people are
very happy about it. Facebook is now rolling out some tweaks to appease
some of the most vocal complaints. My favorite new change is the
ability to hide updates from individual third party applications (those
annoying quizzes, etc) that clutter up the News Feed. To do so, just
click on the little drop-down arrow to the right of the update, then hide
it (not your friend, well, unless you WANT to hide your friend, too.) Ahhhh
- much better now...
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