Drobo - automatic backup/storage

Fully automated storage you don't have to manage.

Chances are, you get passionate about creating or collecting digital content, not about managing the storage where it lives. For you we've created Drobo, the first robotic storage device that takes the pain out of keeping your content safe.

Drobo combines up to four hard drives into a big pool of protected storage. Start with two, grow to four, then upsize smaller drives—get Terabytes of protection.

Add drives to Drobo at any time. Mix 'n match capacities, brands or speeds. No downtime, data migration, or waiting to access new capacity. Drobo works the way you do.

Hard drives get bigger and cheaper all the time. Don't buy storage capacity until you need it. Buy capacity "just-in-time" possibly saving you hundreds of dollars.

Just connect Drobo to your Mac or PC. No software required. No RAID levels. No management or configuration. Drobo does everything for you.

Get rid of multiple external drives. Avoid the complexity of RAID. Attach a Drobo storage robot to your system and let it manage your storage so you don't have to.

http://www.drobo.com/
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Web camera software - free

EasyWebCam is fully featured web cam software with a great looking interface that works 'Out of the box'. With its superb 'Live Video feed' feature and the 'motion detection' feature you will never need to use any other web cam software. You can have 'email alerts' sent to you when motion is detected, upload to any ftp server or just use our FREE web space. It's very easy to use and set-up but if you need more, then just explore the advanced settings for image manipulation etc. You can alter the uploaded HTML page or the web cam 'Gallery' feature and choose how many images to archive for online viewing. It even works with a WAP enabled mobile phone or a PDA for remote viewing. Pop up windows show you 'Whos Watching you' when using the server feature. At the end of the day you can use the 'slide show' feature to preview the day’s activities on your own computer. Now with SmileCam(tm) support and a built in DynDNS client.

http://www.msagentsoftware.com/easyfreewebcam/index.html

SpeedGuide - DSL tools

A variety of tools to help you check/analyze your high speed network connection.
http://www.speedguide.net/sg_tools.php

Google stuff

Guide to using Google search:
http://www.googleguide.com/advanced_operators_reference_print.html



Call 411 for free using Google Voice Search
http://labs.google.com/goog411/index.html

Vista - part 4

I have been doing quite a few Vista setups on new computers and having very few problems.

Still haven't fully figured out network sharing due to the security restrictions.

Dick

Online backups

Here is a short list. I have not done exhaustive searching for online backup sites.
Most offer 5GB of free storage.

http://www.backuptotheweb.com/pricing.htm
Sample storage/cost - 100GB $23 per month paid annually

http://www.crashplan.com/
Sample storage/cost - 50GB $20 onetime fee.

http://mozy.com/
Sample storage/cost – 50GB $4.95 month

4-2007. I setup a MozyPro backup system for a client and it seems to be working well.


http://www.carbonite.com/
Sample storage cost – Unlimited for $50 per year.

I don’t have a clue as to which one is ‘best’ or how the various features compare.

SmartSheet

Better than Using Spreadsheets. Easier than Project Software.

Manage tasks, projects or processes
Online service with no software
Real-time and scheduled collaboration
Update online or via e-mail

http://www.smartsheet.com/home

Picasa web albums

Store/manage your pictures on Google's web site.

Today Picasa Web Albums has the most important update since its launch, in June 2006. Basically, it adds the most requested features and even some obscure features that will make you very happy.First, the free version of Picasa Web gets 1 GB of storage (up from 250 MB), enough to host 4000 high-quality photos. It's interesting that Google says "1 GB (and counting)" so the storage could increase like it does in Gmail.

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/03/major-update-for-picasa-web-albums.html
http://picasaweb.google.com/home

Zamzar - free online file conversions

Have you ever wanted to convert files without the need to download software?

http://www2.zamzar.com/

Mojave Road

Last week I drove the 1200 miles to Needles CA where on 3/17/2007 I met up with some other 4x4 crazies and spent 2 1/2 days driving an old wagon trail across the Mojave desert.

It was great. Warm but not hot weather, interesting terrain and vegetation. I think the Joshua trees were the most interesting.

Good to go; good to be back.

Dick

Linksys

I have been seeing quite a few router problems - mostly Linksys because that is the most common unit.

Recently purchased a new Linksys 8 port router from CompUSA.
After 2 weeks, it started losing the Internet connection. Restarting the router would restore the Internet connection. Finally gave up on it and returned it to CompUSA. Correction - tried to return it to CompUSA. Sorry - we have a 21 day return policy and this is day 22. Oh - and we require the original box and contents.

Ok - I will just call Linksys for a RMA.
Long talk trying to understand Linksys support based in ??
Result - no RMA because Linksys requires that they walk you thru trouble shooting steps before they will allow return of a product. Let's see - I'm not at the customer site; the problem is intermittent and I have already done all the steps.

Final result - I had already replaced the router so I just threw the Linksys router away and vowed to never purchase a Linksys product again.

Google email upgrade

Google email has added a new feature that lets you set up gmail to automatically read and store email from another of your email accounts. (Up to 5 different email accounts). I set it to read my main mail account and leave the emails on the account. I also set gmail to archive the imported emails and not place them into my gmail inbox.

I then set Outlook to leave my regular emails on the server for one day.

What this should do is to automatically store a backup copy of my emails to my gmail account plus gmail will apply it's most excellent spam filter to the incoming email.

All of this is for free of course.

Dick

PS: Not sure if this feature has been applied to all gmail accounts but it will be in the future.

Physics lecture

Any particle physic geeks out there? Great video presentation here:

http://rodrigo.typepad.com/english/2007/03/brian_cox_at_li.html

Sellilng on eBay - a primer

While it’s true that you can make money selling things on eBay it’s equally true that you can’t really predict what will sell or how much you’re liable to make on any given item. As has always been true with sales, there are intangible, unpredictable variables which can affect the outcome but here are a few things we’ve learned that we feel are important.

http://www.lockergnome.com/nexus/eldergeek/2007/02/06/ecommerce-for-the-masses-part-ii-selling-on-ebay/

Firefox and Thunderbird backup utility

MozBackup is a simple utility for creating backups of Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, Mozilla Suite and Netscape profiles.

It allows you to backup and restore bookmarks, mail, contacts, history, extensions, cache etc. It's an easy way to do Firefox backup, Thunderbird backups

http://mozbackup.jasnapaka.com/

Now you know

An interesting slide show. The future is arriving faster than we can comprehend.

Scroll to the middle of the below page and select one of blue highlighted viewing options.

Requires a high speed Internet connection.

http://scottmcleod.typepad.com/dangerouslyirrelevant/2007/01/gone_fischin.html

Nutrition Data

One of a number of similar sites but I liked this one.

http://www.nutritiondata.com/

Word 2007

Still getting used to the 'ribbon' commands across the top but I like them.

I also notice the Word 2007 is significatly more robust than the Word 2000 that I have used for years.

Vista/Office 2007 - part 6

After one week I am converted to Vista and Office 2007.

The program I use to transfer my Outlook contacts to my Palm based hand held does not work but I seldom use the program. A few other small glitches but all of my major programs are working.

The clean install to a new hard disk sounded great but it turned into a time-consuming job. I would recommend an upgrade of XP for most people have to upgrade to Vista.

While Vista and Office 2007 are nice I see no compelling reason to upgrade from XP.

Dick

Vista/Office 2007 - part 5

Getting used to having Vista as my main operating system. Installed Second Copy to do backups instead of using MS Live OneCare. Found out that there is no packet-writing capability for Vista which means you cannot use CD-RW or DVD-RW re-writeable disks. Roxi0's Easy Media Creater 9 is supposed to to do this but I am not interested in paying $90 for a bunch of programs I will never use just to be able to use re-writable disks.