For the home user and small businesses, Carbonite has been a good choice for a few years now. Early in 2011, I stumbled across Digital Lifeboat and signed up for an account as a tester. I’m all set for life and had to test it’s capability for a friend, who had a computer stolen. It was the think that got him back all his files….there is also Mozy, which has been around less time than Carbonite, but longer than Digital Lifeboat.

Each of these services have strengths and weaknesses, so the right one for you is a matter of clearly evaluating what things you use on your computer and how they store and access the data. Here’s some things to consider:

• Do you use a single computer or do you operate more than one?
• Are you running Windows or Mac OS, or both?
• Do you have a server based environment (and it doesn’t have to be using server operating systems, just you share centralized files/folders)
• If you have a multi-computer operation, do you have mulitple, simultaneous users?
• Do you have critical “work product” on just one computer or more?
• Are you now using an external backup drive for your redundant storage?
• Do you use any software that runs and SQL database?
• Will you need to periodically need to access individual files remotely?
• How much data do you have now?
• How much more data do you anticipate generating this year?

The answers to these questions will lead you to the right product for you. Certainly, price is a consideration, but if it’s your primary one, you could purchase the wrong product for your requirements, and then, when disaster strikes, be missing the most critical files of all. Short of that, you may find you end up getting some of your needs met, but you’ll find you then add on and add on to the price to get what you really need to secure your valuable data files, possibly ending up spending much more than you had to, had you thoughtfully considered the details of this process.

I’d be happy to help you figure out what’s best for you on a consulting basis. I make no money off of any of these products, but I have been able to use two of the three mentioned above, in home and business environments. I could run out the costs, but that is counter productive in my estimation, as your requirements need to be established first, then pricing can be reviewed. That’s my expertise: Determining what you really need, not what your friend/networking associate says they use, or is an affiliate for.

And that brings up a global issue: If anyone recommends a particular service or product, you need to ask if they are professionally engaged in the use of that product, and also if they will be paid on the back end. It’s not bad if they are, it’s nice to help someone out, but if they aren’t someone who specifically understands the service, they may well be making a costly recommendation to you, not comprehending your needs, or even capable enough to know there is much more detail to such decisions. Always get a second opinion, before spending your hard earned money, or committing to more overhead.

The modern day laptop batteries are just fine being plugged in pretty much all the time. I had been telling people to let them run down when you could, then when the system told you you were about out of power, to plug them in to help them get the most out of their life spans. Leo says that’s a procedure based on a study done years ago, and turns out it was flawed.

So, if you’ve been regularly running your battery down, so it lasts longer…don’t worry about it. Leaving it plugged in just fine.

Understanding the Digital Landscape

What is it?
How do you find it?
How do you use it effectively?

Computers save us time in everything from information storage and retrieval, calculation, graphic design, and report preparation. E-commerce allows our websites to keep our businesses running 24/7.

A failure at any point, from our office records to our online presence, can quickly snowball into a technological disaster, especially for a small business that doesn’t have an IT (information technology) staff in-house.

Seminar leader Curt Middlebrook, The Computer Whisperer, provides insights into the equipment, computer programs, and office and internet support services out there, and the people who provide them. You’ll learn how to maximize your online efficiency, and how to track the success of your online marketing.
This is a Lunch & Learn program, part of the Pinellas Park/Gateway Chamber of Commerce Success in Business Series. Your registration includes detailed information for evaluating every aspect of your company’s digital landscape, as well as a light lunch.

When : Tuesday, November 16; 11:30 am to 1:30 pm
Where : Park Station, 5851 Park Blvd., Pinellas Park, Room 202

Cost : $19.95 Pinellas Park/Gateway Chamber Members
$24.95 Non-members

Call Chamber Manager Larry Steinlauf at 544-4777 to register.
You must be registered to attend.

History lesson below, for the interested. For those who are ready and need to donate and move on: Click here.

If you’re looking to help an old Sailor out, then “push” the button for Navy. Know this: It all goes into the same pot, but, the need to poke at our fellow military members doesn’t go away easily, so…resist the urge to help any service team other than Navy…..

Now to some background:

Barely 5 years ago, a “MilBlogger,” and Army Captain Chuck Ziegenfuss, ended up on the wrong end of an IED when on patrol in Iraq and subsequently in Walter Reed Medical Center. Having been a fairly active poster, when a Soldier’s Angels representative asked if he needed anything, he asked for a laptop so he could blog from the hospital, since he’d be there a while. They bought one off of eBay.

He had injuries to both arms, leaving him with one in a cast, and the other in a halo. Typing, as you may surmise, was pretty tough. He posted indicating he sure could use some help…maybe so he could talk to his computer.

Some people helped him out getting Dragon Naturally Speaking. As a result, Chuck’s Blog came back to life.

As a result of that, the idea that this mashup of existing tech would be able to help others. The conception of the idea came from one of Chuck’s reader’s, Beth (FuzzyBear Lioness in the comments section), who thought if it worked for Chuck, who else might it help?

So, the first use of the Project’s Name happened 8/18/2005.

Now we are but 5 years and a few months later, over $600K collected, about 50 bloggers on the teams, and begging for air time on the big websites (and getting some!), with close to 6000 laptops delivered. They are new. They are good ones, and they are provided at the Major military medical facilities, and, they can be requested, if someone has slipped by the system unnoticed.

I believe it was last year, they added the purchasing and providing of Nintendo Wiis, which has helped with physcial therapy for the injured warriors. GPS units are now also provided to those who are getting out and about, to compensate for the short term memory loss issues as a result of TBI and severe PTSD injuries.

The “gateway” to the many pages of information and the project blog is here.

One particularly descriptive post titled “Laptops Save Lives?!” has the words of the real “end users” of the charity of the donors of this work. It may be from 2007, but the truth is right there. This is a great project, which really “gives back” to those who entered the services and gave much of themselves.

Besides just the close to the problem connection, from a problem solving standpoint, I see this as a job training program for the majority of these wounded troops, as they will be medically retired/discharged. If they have used a computer to get and stay in contact with their families, friends and “Battle Buddies,” they sure will be able to draft up a business letter, surf the net to do research and learn to crunch numbers with Excel for the employer who wants a person who looks forward into life and works to achieve their potential.

I could go on for many pages, having personally met Chuck and Beth, and Patti, the Founder of Soldier’s Angels via these campaigns over the 5 years. The stories are real, the ideas amazing, and the unselfish acts to take an idea from one person to many is a lesson in building relationships.

Once more: Donate here to Team Navy!

The irony? as I was removing a virus off a “real” PC this morning, my client indicated they might buy a Mac, so they wouldn’t viruses. I began with a little business analogy: One day, it will happen. When? When the Macs in the market reach some magical %, the “bad guys” will then take the time to study the Mac OS in detail, to try and exploit it. I also went on to discuss how a business decision, when done right, always looks for the most impact, for the least expenditure of resources. And, as of that moment, it must haven’t arrived (little did I know)…yet. I potulated, that when it did, it would be like a very big tidal wave, particulalry accentuated by the fact that it’s “well known” Macs are invulnerable from attack. Yeah, right.

So any how, for you MacoPhiles…gird your loins, the attainment of 20% of the PC market by Macs announced by Steve Jobs a few days ago, has had an impact on your bulletproofness. Be on your toes, and hope the good guys have anti-virus software ready for you, really, really soon.

Here’s the warning from the articles at ARSTechnica:

A new trojan horse has cropped up that affects Mac OS X (and Windows as well), primarily disguised as a video flitting around social networking sites. When users click an infected link, a Java applet is launched that downloads multiple files, including an installer that runs automatically without users’ knowledge.

While between other appointments this after noon, I saw the article (linked above) and I knew the time has come.

Note, too, you Windows based PC users, you’re a casualty of this new attack, too.

Be on the look out for any video on the social media sites….all of you computer users.

I’ll bring this history, too, because there have been Mac based viruses before. In early 1988, I contracted the “Scores” virus on my Mac II from a download off of GEnie.

That was bad news. The good news is the PC market exploded on cheap Intel based PCs and the bad guys went after them. That has left the Mac world as the untouchables for all these years…until now.

In one case it wasn’t pretty at all, with me spending three evening trying to save their family photos.

The “bad guys” figured out how to insert viruses and Trojans in the “free” files, on that peer-to-peer sharing network. Not all of them, but it certainly was a crap shoot when you tried to pick a torrent to pull down for your entertainment.

Anyhow, the full report from TechCrunch is here.

What does that mean exactly? It means the people who write and manage software are doing a pretty good job of staying ahead of the hacker crowd, but,we the users, are become our own worst enemies. Not that we purposely let spyware, malware and viruses in, but we are more easily fooled into doing just that.

The “bad guys” are becoming very good at replicating things that are legitmate, both in look and in a social context, that make us want to click it.

Next hing you know, you’ve got a “ScareWare” problem, which, if you don’t pay the ransom, it begins to dig about your files and, over time, render your PC useless.

What got me to post this? An article in a security news feed I track saying there are a crop of “Browser Updates” showing up on people’s screen, and, we do what we are told “KEEP YOUR COMPUTER UP TO DATE!”

That makes it increasingly difficult to sort the fake updates from the real ones.

Let’s be careful out there and, according to Symantec researcher Parveen Vashishtha know this:

Malware authors are employing innovative social engineering tricks to fool users — it’s as simple as that…”

Walking closer, the screen background shows a large, powerful animal starring at you with coal black pupils, set in a wintery background.

Arrayed along the bottom of the screen are many icons, laid out as you think you may have seen before, stylish, and visually engaging, but still…you wonder what has attracted your attention.

You gaze intently:

And now you need a closer look, as you dare to be consumed by your curiosity:

OMG!!!!!1111!!1111!!!! HOW CAN IT BE!!! IT’S FREAK OF DIGITAL NATURE!!!!

YOU SCREAM ALOUD TO YOUR SELF “PLEASE LET ME NOT DREAM OF THIS HYBRIDIZED ELECTRONIC MASHUP ANY LONGER!” but you do…and you wish you had one, don’t you?

Oh, yeah, and I have it…..:)

And check your calendar: It’s not April 1st and no, it’s not a PhotoShop hack job to fool you either.

On a pragmatic note: I don’t need the monster TV Studio in a 17″ laptop bag all the time. I can use something like this for about 85% of the work I do on a mobile basis and it will work fine. When I’m doing streaming video, it will certainly become an easy to haul along “monitor,” that I can use to check the viewer’s view of my video output, as well as the sound setting to make it better on the other end of the experience.

Top it off with I will have a real, live, running copy of Snow Leopard 10.6.3 (I’m told 10.6.4 isn’t stable in this environment just yet), so I can reestablish my proficiency in the Mac World, that I used to have, before being forced (under duress) to “The Dark Side!” (MS-DOS was a step back in the late 80s…before Windows was to be!).

Me? More full featured, more “on top of it” and with improved opportunities to prevent thinking I’m still young and strong. Now I’ll let the “wise” take over for a bit. This move was one of those few wise moments I have had lately.

Curious about how this happens? Read more @ Gizmodo!

You can get it here.

Support for the next version of HyperText Markup Language 5 (HTML5).

After the install, you have to reboot. I went into freak out mode when the reboot began the Windows 7 recovery mode, butthat not being bad enough, it told me my moterhboard was not the type it actually is. Two boots did the same thing.

I powered it down, then restarted, using the BIOS pull down menu to point at my RAID0 (2 x 750GB Seagates!) and crossed my fingers. It worked. Up and running in IE9 to post this (I normally use FireFox for about everything, but hey! It’s the BETA!

I will be cloning my RAID Array to the third installed drive tonight (1.5TB)…just in case….

Oh: I pulled down the FireFox 4 beat a few weeks back. I installed it and most of my plugins (and I rely on several) were “broken,” so I limped back to FF 3.6.X for the time being.

More if I have to.

Another: Is it the same as your website?

One more: If not, why not?

Don’t risk leaving your contacts out in the cold…actually, leaving you out of the loop if you need to switch your home internet service provider (ISP). If you’re not using an email that is part of the website for your business, you risk getting lost, or, at the least, not looking as professional as you might, when you show up to network with a Hotmail/GMail/Yahoo mail account.

The advantages of having your email associated with your own domain are many. The disadvantages of not doing this are also many. Which many do you choose, as having a domain based email wipes about about all the disadvantages or not having it that way.

In most all cases, you have at least a few, if not way too many email accounts you can set up as a function of the cost of your hosting service for your domain name and website package. You should check into that. If it’s not easy to figure it out, call the person who set up your website and ask them to configure an email for you.

You don’t have to even have Microsoft Outlook to get access to this type of service. Again, in all likelyhood, you have free email client software on your machine, or you can get something like ThunderBird to use.

So, avoid being disconnected from your suppliers, prospects and clients by merging your communications with your website!