in the cloud

Your Twitter archive

Finally. Finally. Finally. Finally. Finally. Finally.

Searchable too!

I can’t wait to go back though my 6 years of tweets and point out all the times I was right about things while ignoring all the times I was wrong about things.

I try not to “advertise” for specific products, but rather tools I find useful. I’ve talked about backups previously, and can’t stress enough if you don’t have a backup plan make time for one right now, DON’T WAIT!

For less than $5 a month per computer you can use MozyHome, which has unlimited storage for home users. It’s kinda like buying insurance on your digital life - if you would be upset at losing your digital photos from 10 years ago (like I would!) it’s worth the investment.

I use Mozy at home in combination with an on-site external drive. This works great for me because I can immediately pull backups from my hard drive, but if my computer was stolen, or completely failed, I have my critical files in the cloud.

For my family members I just use MozyHome. Their need is to have critical items backed up if their hard drive died, but wouldn’t mind if it took a week to be back up and running with their files on a new machine. If you don’t have a lot of files you need backed up, there’s always the free 2GB service from Mozy - great for students to backup critical school papers. Or, you can use dropbox which let’s you have 2GB of cloud network storage that is easy and simple to use.

Whatever you choose, just get started today before you lose something you’d regret not being able to recover!

High-res

Create a Back Up of your Tumblr

Since the backup tool doesn’t require a password, you may use it to save an offline copy of virtually any public tumblr blog. And it also works with tumblr micro-blogs that are self-hosted on custom domains like xzy.com instead of xyz.tumblr.com.

Ask Gwen: Home backup?

Got a question about home backups this week so I thought I’d share a basic backup plan - to help minimize losing your critical data!

The plan: Backup your files at home, with cloud storage as your disaster recovery!

The tool: Cobian Backup

Cobian allows you to automate (schedule) your backups whenever you want. I suggest nightly backups of incremental data (only what you have changed on your computer). Then, have a monthly FULL backup of everything. That covers you if your computer completely dies, or you accidentally delete/change something and want the old/lost version back!

The place: External Hard Drive, Dropbox, or other cloud storage

OK - you want to cover yourself at home for the easy stuff - accidental deletions/changes whatever. Backup to an external hard drive first for quick recovery.

Then, use cloud storage. Cloud what?! Cloud storage is simply a way for you to save critical info over the internet that can be accessed anytime/anywhere. Think of this as your disaster recovery - if your house floods (and so does your computer) or some other catastrophe happens and you can’t access your physical computer or external hard drive.

I’d recommend Dropbox. It’s free, and it’s 2GB of storage that can be shared! Just signup for a free account, save stuff in your My Dropbox folder - and you’re off and running! This is also a great tool to share stuff from home/work/laptop/desktop. If that’s not enough space you can use their pay service, or look at something like JungleDisk. Both of these options have iPhone apps too.

Final Thoughts: It’s never to late to START BACKING UP YOUR FILES! If you’re not backing up your data START RIGHT NOW! Don’t wait until you lose years of digital pictures, critical contact information, that paper that was due next week and your flash drive isn’t working argh..!