Ramblings Of An Old Geek

So the other day I was reading the Evernote blog and saw this really cool program called Nozbe which is a web based application that is a full blown implementation of GTD.   One of the best I’ve ever seen so I signed up for the trial account. Since it is a freemium service, you need to go to a paid account to unlock additional features.  I always look at these web based companies before I give them my money and found that Nozbe is based in Poland.  I know that Poland is not normally a country that is full of hackers, but I worry about giving my financial info to a company that far away.   So I canceled my account and moved on.

Several years ago a friend of mine introduced me to the “The Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy” by Douglas Adams.  I started reading the book on business trips and frequently remember having several people staring at me in airports as I was laughing hysterically.

I read all four books in the trilogy (Douglas used to joke about this); “The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe”, “Life, The Universe And Everything”, and “So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish”.  I couldn’t put them down.

Douglas left the earth early in May of 2001, he was 49.  A couple of years before that, he wrote a marvelous essay on the subject “How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Internet“.   This essay is 10 years old and still makes sense today.  Take some time and read it, but also go out and get yourself a copy of the The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and let me know if you laughed at the same things I did.

Later,
matt

I spent a good part of the day a couple of weeks ago at a local event where various companies such as Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, etc. talk about what they are up to and what they will be releasing in the next few months.   It doesn’t seem that there is any next big thing on the horizon that we can get excited about.   Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of cool little things, but no OMG moments.

What is a big thing?  I remember back to windows 1.0 (I AM the old geek) and how that was an OMG moment.   I even remember the first Mac and how that was an OMG moment.  Windows 95 had that feeling after running 3.1 all of those years.  And how about Cello after all of the time spent in gopher?

We really don’t have any next big technology market turning events on the horizon.   I don’t think it is the economy, but everyone likes to blame anything negative on it’s state.

later,
matt

I’ve been an IT professional for over 25 years and to this day I am still paranoid about backups.   I have seen grown people cry and I’ve seen years of work go away.

It seems that almost everyone thinks that they need backups but they don’t do them.  So lets talk about the choices:

For folks that are not power users, a backup that runs in the background and just does the job is a great choice.   There are two really good options for this; Mozy and Carbonite.  Both of these programs are easy to install and just backup your system without any work by you.   They backup your computer over the internet, encrypted, to their site.  Now it will take some time to have your computer fully backed-up since they work in the background, but once it is complete, it just sends the files that have changed.

The cost is about the same, $4.95 a month for Mozy and $54.95 a year for Carbonite.  Carbonite has a 15 day free trial and Mozy will give you 2GB free to try it out.   Both have unlimited storage.  Both work on PCs and Macs although Mozy was doing Mac backup for about a year before Carbonite.  If you have multiple PCs or Macs to backup, you will need to pay the fee for each computer.

Between the two, I do like Mozy better.   The reason is who is behind the software; EMC, one of the largest disk drive manufactures in the world.   They have been in business for almost 30 years and will not be going away any time soon.  Carbonite is a start up company that has been around for 4 years.  You have to be careful when you deal with the companies in the cloud (Internet based applications); you want to make sure that your time and investment is not wasted.  I generally always look at that when I use cloud based services to see how much risk I will be taking on by using the application.

If you want to manage the backup of your computer on your own, you can look at getting an external hard drive and perform the backup yourself.   Just make sure that you store the drive somewhere other than the physical place the computer resides.   If you are burglarized or if you God forbid your house would burn down you backup and system can be lost.  If you were using a cloud based backup, that would not be the case.

You can also look at just raw storage on the internet from companies such as Jungle Disk.  They will rent you disk space for pennies per gigabyte per month and it just appears as another driver on your system once it is setup.  Jungle Disk is actually Amazon and you are taking advantage of the same technology that they use for their own systems.  And yes the data is encrypted there as well.

For either an external hard drive or for Jungle Disk, you should look at using Microsoft’s SyncToy if you are running Windows.   It is a marvelous application that will do all of the heavy lifting of managing a backup as well as running much faster than a standard copy.

So how often should you backup?   It depends on how often your data changes and how much risk you wish to take.  For me I try to use an automatic backup and also do a manual backup every week.

Start today.

Later,
matt

Recently the name of Dan Bricklin came up in conversation and really caused some major flashbacks for me.

In the late 80′s the propagation of low cost laser printers really started to take off.   These were days before windows and plug and play printer drivers so getting great looking output from any program was quite a challenge.  We got turned on to PageGarden where I worked at the time and finally got control of our reporting and other types of laser printed output.  The author of this cool software was Dan Bricklin.

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak really owe a true debt of thanks to Dan.   He is the man who really invented the idea of using computers for spreadsheets with his program Visicalc.  Because patenting software was unheard of in the 70′s, Visicalc was passed up by Lotus 1-2-3 and eventually everyone was squashed by Microsoft Excel.

Why does Apple really need to thank Dan?  Visicalc introduced Apple computers, namely the Apple II to business.  Once financial wonks saw Visicalc, they would do anything to get an Apple II in their office; even going as far as buying the computer themselves and hiding them from their boss.  I actually ran Visicalc in the early 80′s on an Apple II using 5.25 inch floppies, it was amazing.  If you want to see what Visicalc was all about, Dan is offering a free 27K (that’s right a program that is only 27K in size) version on his web site: http://www.bricklin.com/history/vcexecutable.htm

Take some time and read more about this cool geek at http://www.bricklin.com

Later,
matt

One of my favorite internet radio stations is bluegrassradio.org.  It’s available via iTunes or just by going to the web site and clicking on listen.  But don’t get to liking this wonderful station; Clyde Scott has announced that he is shutting the service down on April 1st.   Why you ask is he shutting down?   Our friends at the Bluegrass Blog may have some answers with a quote from Clyde:

“With some of the decisions being made in our Capitol, I see a better investment in my grand children than this station. They will need all the help they can get in the future.  Bluegrass Radio has been by far the most successful bluegrass music stream in the history of internet radio. For that we are grateful. The friends I have made over the last five years will last a lifetime for me.  The financial support has always been there for us so it is not a financial decision. I’m just tired of the fight.”

I don’t know how closely you have followed the Internet radio troubles the last few months, but congress came really close to making it impossible for these stations to exist last fall.   There was a ruling from the Copyright Royalty Board that would have set mandatory fees that these stations would need to pay for each stream that they fed.   Congress came thru with the “ The Webcaster Settlement Act” which allows each entitysuch as DiMA to negotiate it’s own rates with SoundExchange instead of paying a mandatory exhorberant rate.  

Now we come to last month.  They were still negotiating and it fell apart.  Don’t get me wrong, I think that artists and inventors should get paid for their work, I just think that there has to be some vision so that delivery mechanisms such as Internet radio have a chance to grow.  It provides a whole new group of listeners for their content and a new market for the artists.

So now you may understand why Clyde is calling it quits, he wants to spend time with something where he can affect change, not in the wonderful world of lawyers and accountants.

Later,
matt

First, let me say that I really like digital TV.   It is a necessary next step in our technological evolution to better quality delivery of broadcast signals.  Do you need to do anything about it?  If you are on a satellite dish (DishTV or DirecTV), Verizon FIOS, or you pay a cable bill, you are good to go.  If you still have rabbit ears or have an antenna on the roof, you need to make some decisions.

Do you need a new TV?  Not if you get one of the converters that are available.  And you might as well get the coupon since you paid for it anyway.  Coupons, now let me get on my soapbox.   One of the thinly disguised secrets of the digital TV transition is that the Federal government auctioned off the frequencies from channels 52 thru 59 for a $10 billion reserve price.  That’s right, they made a profit on this deal that we will never see.

Now for the capitalism part of this issue; the folks who bought the right to use those frequencies now have to wait till June 12th.   Was this fair to them?  I don’t think so.   And what makes anyone think that changing the date from February 17th and now waiting till June will get the people who need converter boxes off their duffs and get prepared?   I predict that we will have the same number of folks going “What Happened?” when June rolls around.

Later.
matt

Have you had a chance to use Hulu yet?  Hulu is a site jointly owned by NBC and News Corp (Fox) that has their latest TV shows available for viewing.  There are also movies and other content.

Boxee released version of their software for Apple TV in January of this year which allows viewing of streaming internet content such as Hulu.  I’ve been using this for a month now on my Apple TV and it is fantastic.  The resolution is great and to be able to watch any NBC or Fox show on my schedule, not theirs, is a dream.  I know what your are thinking, “Matt, don’t you have a DVR?”.  I do, but Hulu lets you see the shows you didn’t think about recording.

So two weeks ago, Boxee succumbed to the pressure applied to it by NBC and News Corp and dropped Hulu from it’s offerings.  It seems that the brilliant folks there believed that Boxee was being used to steal their content which doesn’t make sense since I still can watch Hulu on my PC.  Some folks on the net have surmised that there was pressure from Comcast and other cable providers because if I have access to Hulu, do I really need all of their premium packages?

Sure, you still probably need a cable company to get your internet, but their money is made on good old fashioned TV content, not the access to the internet.

So again, the entertainment industry pulls a bone-headed move.

I know that I’m wading into a controversial subject here, but I’ve been silent on this topic for a long time and I figure it’s time for me to start talking.  I’m sure you have heard it mentioned in the news and read it in the paper that there are millions of stalkers on the internet preying on kids.  The internet is the just like the real world.   There are criminals, sex offenders, murderers, and every other type of criminal in the world and they have always been there.  On the other hand there are also wonderful experiences, people to meet, and things to learn as well.  So do we lock our kids in their bedrooms and not allow them outside?  Of course not.  We train them from wee little on up about avoiding strangers, going where mom and dad tell them to go, and generally protect them.  We don’t keep them from libraries or books.

So should we close our kids off from this amazing resource?  No way, never.  Do we take precautions and give them guidelines for behavior?  Absolutely.

Now the one thing I want you to understand is that if you are a lazy parent, then everything I’m about to say is a waste.  You need to be an active parent to allow your child to participate in one of the most amazing collections of information that has ever been created.

Let me give you some guidelines:

1. Filter the content your child sees.  I have a posting on this site about OpenDNS.  Please set it up and you will get a good first line of defense going.

2. Anti-Virus.  Kids are curious and will click on email attachments and ads they shouldn’t.  They will download viruses and malware to your computer so you need to protect it.  You can one of the free systems such as AVG or look at one of the better paid versions such as NOD32.

3. Don’t use the checkbook computer. Get the kids their own system that will allow you to tighen up the security and if it does get infected, your personal financial records will not be at stake.  Look at using some lockdown software such as Deep Freeze or Microsoft’s free product, Steady State.

4. Now the most important recommedation of all.  Where is the computer they are using?  Please put the computer for the children’s use in your family room, kitchen, living room; some public space in your house where an adult is present or often passing thru.  NEVER, EVER put a computer in a child’s room on the internet.  Not only are you opening yourself up for trouble, you are also hurting your child.  There was a study done by some CMU researchers several years ago that found that not having the computer in a public space can lead to depression and becoming a social introvert.  No kidding!

5. MySpace and Facebook.  You need to teach your children that anything you put on the internet is there forever.  They may put something on their MySpace page when they are a teenager that may affect a college admission or a job opportunity in the future.  If they cannot understand this, then ban the sites.  The only downside of banning these sites is that they are the telephones of this generation.  When I was a teenager, you would spend hours talking on the telephone to your friends, this generation uses MySpace and Facebook for this.  Make some educated choices.

I cannot stress the location of the computer enough.  Being a geek, my son had access to the internet at an early age, but we put the computer in a position where we could see the display from the kitchen, family room, etc.  This not only keeps them out of trouble, it also allows for interaction; your child may find something cool that he wants to show mom and dad.  Participatory parenting.

Your thoughts?

Later,
matt