Ramblings Of An Old Geek

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

Folks who know me know how much I love Dunkin Donuts coffee;   I have a large in my hand every day.  So I was out of town the last few days and craving a Dunkin Donuts coffee, so I said what the heck, I put the words “Dunkin Donuts” in the search feature of the iPhone maps application to see what would happen.  It found 3 locations and charted a course to one only 9 miles away averting a major catastrophe.

The other problem I had on  this trip was that I’m a very loyal Penguins fan and my niece did not have Versus in her Dish network plan ( I still love her just the same).  Thanks to iheartradio, I made it through.   It is an application that streams over 750 radio stations live to your iPhone and is a free download at the iTunes store.  I was able to listen to the local station that has the incredible Mike Lange doing the play by play; it was like I was there.

Thanks again iPhone.

A good friend of mine asked me the other day “Why is everyone talking about Twitter?  What is it?”.  I had a hard time answering her and thought I would put a blog post together to give a better explanation.

First, let’s discuss physically what Twitter is.   It is simply a way to post short (140 character) messages on to a web site and allow other folks to read the message.   That is Twitter in it’s simplest form.  Twitter inherited the 140 character limit from text messaging on cell phones.  To be able to speak to someone about twitter you also to understand some Twitter vocabulary definitions:

Tweet – The act of posting a message on Twitter.

Follow – You can subscribe to another person’s Twitter posts (tweets).

If you wish to find out who has the most followers on Twitter, Twitterholic can help you out.  Now the first time you look at this, it may make you sad since the #2 on the list for the most followers is Brittany Spears but don’t be discouraged, there are people and companies doing really cool stuff.   For example Fox and CNN are on Twitter tweeting news headlines, Boxee is tweeting the current status of their Hulu service, and John Dvorak is usually recommending a good wine or hot tech news.

Many messages you see on twitter now are not that profound; you may see messages about what people are eating or doing, but don’t be discouraged, most folks (like me) use this technique to start to understand how to use Twitter.  Twitter  feels unnatural to the average person because we are not used to putting small bits of our thoughts out to a bunch of folks.  We usually are good one-on-one, but one to many is not normal for most of us.

I’m have to admit that I’m still working thru what I want to tweet and not tweet.   I hope one day to get to the point I can be putting nothing but important information there, but I guess I’m still getting accustomed to the service.  You can follow me on Twitter and my tweets also show up on the front page of my blog.

I heard of an interesting use of Twitter a few months ago where some folks from a local church were going on a missions trip to India and they decided that the method they were going to use to communicate back to people who were interested was Twitter.  They would tweet messages about what they were doing or where they were going; it really made you feel like you were there since tweets occur in real time.

If you decide to start using Twitter, please use some common sense since your tweets will be very visable.   Do NOT tweet personal financial information, home address, phone numbers, etc. because once it is out there you can’t take it back.  You never know who will be looking at your tweets so read them a couple of times before sending them and make sure you would be comfortable if anyone would read it whether they be your friend, enemy, mom, or dad.

Later,
matt

I’ve been working on a project at work for several years now and about 4 years ago, I started looking for a good note taking application instead of trying to remember which tablet I took a note from which meeting.   At that time there was this new company, Evernote,  that thought you should take your notes in a chronological fashion because that is how you remember things.  Their product was in it’s infancy and really didn’t have that many features.  So I ended going with Microsoft One Note.   Now don’t get me wrong, One Note has tons of really nice features; especially if you are using the entire Office suite.  It has great Outlook, Word, and Excel integration and still is my work note taking program.

I wanted to have a seperate application for my personal notes, teaching notes, etc. and for that I have chosen Evernote.  Evernote really has grown up; it has tons of very nice features but one of it’s best is the ability to run it on several different operating systems (including the web) and have all of your notes sync between the different systems.  They have clients for iPhones, OSX, and Windows.   This means you can write a note on your computer and be able to pull it up on your iPhone.  How cool is that?

They continue to improve the product and their goal is “to be your virtual mind for the rest of your life”.

I highly recommend this product and believe it will help you to move to the paperless world and by the way, it is free.

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

I’ve been a Gmail user for several years now; I was invited to the beta before it became public.  I really like some of the concepts such as tagging instead of folders, looking at mail as conversations, etc.  About a month ago I quit using it as my primary mail program and went back to my hosting site’s email system.   Why you ask?

Well, the problem with “free” mail services such as Yahoo or Gmail is that there is no one to call if there is an issue.   There have been several recent occurrences of folks getting their Yahoo or Gmail account hacked, the hacker changes the password, and then they are locked out.  There is no way to prove to Yahoo or Google who you are, and since you are not paying for the service, they really don’t care.  So “free” in these cases means “free” of technical support.  Could you imagine loosing several years of email?  I can’t.

If you are in love with these services and you cannot find your way to leave them to go to a paid service, I suggest you consider backing up your online mail to your computer.  You can do this using Zimbra for Yahoo, Outlook Express with Gmail’s IMAP interface, or Hotmail’s IMAP interface These clients will allow you to copy your email to an archive folder on your PC which you may want to do this once a month, once a week, or whatever frequency will make you comfortable.

If you have a choice between POP3 or IMAP, ALWAYS choose IMAP.   It has a better security methodology when sending account information.

Another option would be upgrading your Yahoo or Hotmail account to their “plus” service which would at least allow you to identify your account if it ever gets hacked.

Also with Gmail you do have the option of using Google Gears and allowing for an offline copy.  It’s fairly easy to install and will give you a good backup.

Please do this today, I don’t want to say I told you so.

Later,
matt