Oct

2

2 More Simple Home Backup Solutions

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Information Superhighway
Creative Commons License photo credit: nickwheeleroz

With the financial crisis swirling around this week, I took another look at ways I keep my data safe. To best achieve this, offsite backups are a must. Should my computers become damaged or stolen, my data is still secure.

I’ve written before about Mozy, an effective automated system, but recently I’ve discovered a couple of other ways to ensure my data is safe. These solutions are file-copy based, but work well for most applications.

Redux
SyncBack (Freeware) is a yet effective utility. To quote from the helpfile:

SyncBack Freeware is used to back-up, restore, and synchronize files and directories, whether they be on a local drive, a network drive, an FTP server, a ZIP archive, or on removable media.

And it does exactly that. Through my -host, I have an FTP account that I’m using to regularly my extensive digital photo collection.

SyncBack simply logs into my FTP account, looks for changes in the file or directory structure, and then synchronizes the offsite structure with the local one. Zip compression is an option.

As a freeware utility, it works well, though the full (paid) versions offer more utility including data encryption, CD/DVD and many more. View the handy comparision chart for more details.

Hard Drive — really !
My next door neighbour (a bit of a hardware geek) introduced me to the Thermaltake BlacX USB Hard Drive docking station. That’s a mouthful, but it describes the item.

Basically, you plug this little device into any USB 2.0 slot on your PC. Insert a SATA Hard Drive (up to 1 TeraByte) into the dock. A quick initialize and format later, you have a fresh, empty HD on your system.

Setup time: under 2 minutes.
With the cost of drives continuing to drop, this kind of personal complete becomes more and more affordable. My setup cost under $100, CAD.

Your or Mac system will recognize the adapter and drive as a removable storage device. Which means you can now use your favourite software (SyncBack works for this) to save your data. Or, simply copy your files and folders to the new drive.

When you’re done, eject the Hard Drive, and store in a safe place off-site. If you want to get fancy, you could automate your backups to the BlacX drive, and cycle between two (or more) drives, keeping the most recent at work.

The one downside to any solution is the time to . Using SyncBack you can schedule your backups to run evenings or whenever you’re not using the computer. Also, to make your have less impact on your work, you could stagger your : Photos day one, Documents day two, Save games day three..etc.

So, between Mozy, FTP and offsite HD storage, there are many good solutions for the paranoid user to consider.

Sep

30

Telemarketing gains another enemy — the Canadian government

Filed Under Doing, How to, In the life | Leave a Comment


Telemarketing gains another enemy -- the Canadian government (image: )Previously I’d written about iOptOut, a free service, set up by Canadian Law Professor Michael Geist.

Well today citizens of are now able to register on another Do Not Call list, this one run by the government.  Marketers should realize that telemarketing is so 20th century.

But, even with this double-double assault on telemarketers, this new solution isn’t perfect.

The problem is, law allows many exemptions to the Do Not Call regulations, including political parties, survey companies, newspapers and registered charities.

As well, if you have a previous with an organization, yep, they can market to you over the phone.

Now, here’s where iOptOut differs from the federal opt-out .

Under the law, exempted organizations are permitted to make unsolicited telephone calls despite the inclusion of the number in the do-not-call registry. However, organizations must remove numbers from their lists if specifically requested to do so.

iOptOut is a that ’specifically requests’ that your number be removed from telemarketing lists. It fills the holes in the legislation by maintaining a list of organizations (some of which you have dealt with in the past, banks, airlines, etc) and once you set up your profile, contacts them on your behalf and asks for your number to be removed. and effective. And, when coupled with the federal list, maybe even doubly so.

Sep

18

3 Top Tools To Tame Twitter

Filed Under Doing, In the life, Social Media | 2 Comments


 

Twittermania
Creative Commons License photo credit: Thomas Hawk

As Twitter moves into its more mature phase, a number of have emerged, some good, some not so good. I’m an early adopter and a daily user and have experimented with many over time. Please feel to follow me but without further blather, here’s my top 3, must have, :

  • TwitThis.com — Though showing its age, TwitThis is a very tool. In a nutshell, simply browse to a page that you want to share. Click the TwitThis bookmarklet (that you’ve previously installed). If you’re not logged in to , you’ll be prompted to do so.  A window pops up, and you can edit your Tweet and then send it to your stream. I like it because for quick Tweets, I don’t have to jump to another application, load a tab in my browser, etc.
  • Twitter Twerp Scan — If you care about managing your Followers, then you need to run the Twerp Scan from time to time. Basically, Twerp Scan checks your account for people with extremely high following to follower ratios. These are most likely ‘bots or marketing drones — who could be potentially bringing down the value of your ‘ Juice’ (is there such a thing? I’m thinking of Google Juice here, that mythical elixer that adds Page Rank to your website based on the power of incoming links). You can customize your Twerp ratio but if you have a high number of Twerps, the block/removal process is a bit tedious. Id’ love to see a ‘batch un-follow’.
  • TweetLater.com — Ok, you’ve used for a while, are used to updating your followers, and have a good network that notices when you’re not there. Or you’re the specialist for an organization that uses to keep your informed. Regardless, you also have a need to publish Tweets on a regular basis, then TweetLater is for you.  Simply, it’s a hand site that allows you to queue-up Tweets, to be published at a specific time.  One very and not-so-obvious feature: you can also set TweetLater up to autofollow people who follow you. Reducing your maintenance chores, though I’d remember to run TwerpScan from time to time :) Just to nuke the Twerps.

Sep

14

Google Chrome: a quick look and how to block ads with Privoxy

Filed Under Doing, How to, In the life, Review, Web | 4 Comments


Google Chrome Logo
Creative Commons License photo credit: Randy Zhang

Google Chrome is no Firefox (yet).

For the last week and a bit, off and on,  I’ve been using Chrome (’s new entry into the browser wars). On the 3 XP-based systems I’ve used it on, I’ve found it to be very fast, very efficient, and stable. Pretty good performance for a ‘beta’.

I do have concerns about the way Chrome appears to ‘monitor’ my surfing activity (by using Google Gears functionality), but then again, I use Gmail and other Google Apps so I’m sure the Big G knows all about me at this point.

But, without plugin extensibility, Chrome is currently a curiosity. I won’t be using it for my daily work.

One major annoyance is the lack of Adblock. The is a very marketing-heavy place, and I prefer to selectively view my advertising. The Adblock extension for Firefox allows this.

To achieve an advertising-reduced surfing experience with Chrome, I need to use Privoxy, a local managing Proxy server. It’s a quick install and seems to work flawlessly.

A solution to this for now is http://www.privoxy.org/

1.) Install Privoxy
2.) Click on the Wrench icon in Chrome in the upper right corner
3.) Choose options>Under The Hood>Change proxy settings
4.) A box pops up, choose LAN settings (at least this is what it’s called in Vista)
5.) Check off “Proxy settings” and in the address setting add127.0.0.1 and in the port 8118
6.) If you have the option, you can also check off “Bypass proxy for local settings”
7.) Click “Ok”, close chrome and restart it. 

Tada. Enjoy.

Geekzone provided the process (thanks guys!)

Aug

12

A fast and fun way to mockup almost anything

Filed Under Blogging, Doing, Review, Social Media | 3 Comments


A fast and fun way to mockup almost anything (image: )

Mockups…easy!
Part of the regular cycle is the user interface mockup. I’ve worked with many different including Google Sketchup and Adobe Photoshop to build representations for clients.

But nothing has been as quick, easy, and as Balsamiq Mockup, and (and /offline) user interface mockup tool for PC, Mac and .

version is $79, but the version is , with some limitations.

I’ve done a couple of small projects for personal work using the (5 minute nag screen) version.

Mocking up
Here’s how easy it is to use:

  1. Load up the default ‘demo’ page.
  2. Press Ctrl-A to select all default elements
  3. Press Delete to remove all default elements
  4. Start selecting and dragging in elements from the element bar at the top of the page (over 60 of them)
  5. Double-click on an element to edit its properties
  6. Repeat until you’ve got a mockup you’re happy with

A fast and fun way to mockup almost anything (image: )

Yes, it’s that easy.
With the version, you’re prompted every 5 minutes with an advertisement, but you can still save your work or print it out. Ads don’t get in the way of your workflow.

Developers have chosen a , look for the presentation because:

Balsamiq Mockups intentionally uses hand-drawn UI elements, so that people don’t get attached to “that pretty color gradient” or think that your mockup has actual code behind it and is “practically done”.

A fast and fun way to mockup almost anything (image: )

This lets your focus on the functionality of the item and is generally more open to honest critique (which is what you want at the mockup stage).

Some other features of the version:

  • Export to Human-readable text
  • Import from text
  • Integrated into Confluence, with other apps in the pipe
  • Pre-drawn controls and icons
  • Very easy to use
  • :)

So, if User Interface , User Experience , or website is your thing, you need to check out Balsamiq Mockup.
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Jul

22

Bag Open. Cat Out. Internet in danger! OpenDNS to the rescue?

Filed Under Blogging, Doing, How to, In the life, News, Web | Leave a Comment


PDP-11/45 lock
Creative Commons License photo credit: Jef Poskanzer

One little secret that your ISP ( Provider) has likely been involved with is the -wide patching of the Multi-vendor DNS Issue.

Simply, this issue could allow malicious evil-doers to redirect your surfing to that they control, intercepting important and private information (such as passwords, banking info, etc).

Frequent Black Hat Speaker Dan Kaminsky today announced a massive, multi-vendor issue with DNS that could allow attackers to compromise any name server - clients, too. Kaminsky also announced that he had been working for months with a large number of major vendors to create and coordinate today’s release of a patch to deal with the vulnerability.

of this industry-wide vulnerability and the collaboration (to fix the flaw) was originally scheduled to be announced at the Black Hat Security Conference in August, but due to the vulnerability being published elsewhere, the presenter thought it best to release the information so that people can take the appropriate actions.

What can you do?
Basically, this is a complex issue, but it boils down to a test and a very fix.

The test:
To find out if you are vulnerable to this issue, you can use the DNS checker link on Kaminsky’s webpage here (in the upper right corner).

The fix:
If you are vulnurable, then you can either A) wait until your ISP fixes their DNS servers, or B) set your own computer’s DNS strings to point to OpenDNS servers.

I highly recommend option B.

The OpenDNS website has friendly, easy to implement instructions on converting your DNS settings and also offer a whole host of additional features your current ISP may not have:

Features

I’ve written about OpenDNS before, so feel to check out these previous articles and then help save the .

And if you do test your ISP using Dan’s page, please post your results in the comment section! I’ll start things off by adding mine.

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Jul

18

Merging domains — important things to consider when you feel the urge to merge

Filed Under Blogging, Doing, How to, Web | 4 Comments


pet doctor | bicycle mad scientist
Creative Commons License photo credit: Kevin Steele

A friend recently asked me for a bit of advice regarding merging two corporate domains. Two organizations, with similar or complimentary lines of are now one. What to do about the left-over . A quandary.

Below I’ve outlined 6 areas to consider, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

I guess the only reasonable quick-answer is to first understand the goal for the merged . Once you understand that, you can begin to ask questions about the goals for the new website.

Let me create a fictional example to help illustrate the situation, then dive into the six points, and then I’ll outline a couple of things to think about for each of these points.

Obviously there are many more things to consider, but this is a blog post and not a downloadable eBook :)

Please leave your thoughts on what I’ve missed! I want to learn from you…now on to the example:

Ben’s Bikes (a local mountain bike retailer) has merged with Sammy’s ski and sports shop. Ben’s Bikes is a market leader in this region, with over 40% of the annual sales volume in new mountain bikes. They also have exclusive dealership agreements with a number of the premier mountain bike manufacturers in Europe. They have a very loyal and select clientele and are considered the ‘go-to’ shop for all regional mountain biking aficionados.

Sammy’s cycle shop is a general bicycle retailer. They don’t really specialize, but they do have a wide selection of mid-priced bikes in all categories (road, mountain, touring, cruising, kids, etc). They also have multiple locations in the local geographic region.

The businesses have merged and are operating as Ben & Sammy’s cycle therapy. They have a small internal team tasked to manage the website integration.

Now that we understand the landscape, we go back to the quandary of the website. Let’s get to some important questions:

broken bike
Creative Commons License photo credit: casey atchley


These are the visitors to your site; your potential or past customers. Questions you should be asking your team include:

  • Who are you servicing and what are their goals for using your website? This is basic and should be asked before any website is designed (or redesigned).
  • What’s the purpose? Is your website there to appointments, to take orders, or to provide a catalogue of information? Your new site will depend on how well you answer that questions, and how well your understands that purpose.
Nou web de Brompton
Creative Commons License photo credit: marcbel


This is what your is looking for. Audiences conduct research and order .

  • Inventory — both sites likely have similar , so which do you keep and which do you ditch? You can’t make decisions until you’ve evaluated all the assets.
  • What about unique to one …is it still relevant in the new landscape?
  • Keep only that supports the ’s ability to fulfill the goals of the site. Everything else is distraction.
Blog Juice Calculator
Creative Commons License photo credit: inju

Juice
Both sites have some engine pagerank value. This is the value of
the page to a particular set of keywords or term. It determines how high the page appears in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) when a particular phrase or keywords are searched upon.

  • Determine if pagerank is really important to your needs, or not, and consider appropriate Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques in your merge process.
  • 301 Redirects — if you’re creating a new , you’ll need to set these up to ensure that the engines know that the previous businesses haven’t vanished, just merged. Setting them up can be a bit technical but is very important to ensure that visitors who’ve bookmarked the old pages are appropriately redirected to the new site.
Shop
Creative Commons License photo credit: perreira

Ancillary touchpoints
Over the of the two previous , you’ll find that there may be some touchpoints including RSS feeds, tag feeds or even
regular email newsletters. You’re going to have to consider migrating
all these to the new site.

  • Now’s a good time to evaluate the integration of your entire process. Where does fit? How about feeds of particular streams…or newsletters? This is where your marketing team will have some valuable input too…really!
  • If you’ve had a website, you’ve likely been measuring traffic to that site. Well, since you’re merging sites, now is the perfect time to re-evaluate your website measurement strategy. Will you continue using the or consider purchasing a contract with a provider? What kind of reporting do you need? What kind of decisions are you going to be making based on what kind of data?
New Orleans Annual Bicycle Beauty Pageant
Creative Commons License photo credit: robholland

Changing external linking
Both have been around for a while, and have a fair number of inbound links from other sites and articles.

  • These help build pagerank ( Juice). Yes, they’ll automagically flow through when they hit the 301 redirects, but it’s also good to contact the sites directly and ask them to update their links. This is a great time to (re)establish with your website network…work the side of the medium :)
Bright Orange
Creative Commons License photo credit: alq666

Promotion on your old sites
Regardless of all the work you do, your old will still be bookmarked or linked in old email etc. If, perchance, that someone does click on an old link, help them find your new location.

  • Keep your old sites live for a year or two. names are pretty cheap these days. After you’ve merged them into the new site, kill the old on the old sites (to reduce the size of the sites you’ll need to maintain) and leave helpful messages on the appropriate landing pages. Use your analytics and server logs to determine heavily visited pages.

I’m not the expert…what do you think!
As I mentioned, this is not a , just a blog post. So, there are many more things to consder in the merge process. I’ve listed a few above, but what do you think? What have I missed that I shouldn’t have? Leave your thoughts below.

Jul

17

Wordpress 2.6 is out — and you’re using it now.

Filed Under Blogging, Doing, News, Social Media, Web | Leave a Comment


Wordpress Plugin for iPhone/iPod touch
Creative Commons License photo credit: purplelime

It was a fairly painless update (thanks to the Wordpress Automatic Upgrade plugin), but there were a few quirks I’ve had to address:

  • Avatars. WP 2.6 has much better support for Avatars (images used to identify authors of comments). But, my theme doesn’t natively support them so I’ve had to maintain use of the Easy Gravatars plugin.
  • Turbo mode. This is an admin. function, but basically it lets you
    speed up some admin functions with Gears integration. Gears behind my firewall is messy, but I will be trying this from more open connections in the future.

If you’re interested in seeing more of the 2.6 features in action, check out this .

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