Entries Tagged 'Tech' ↓

What? You are not backing up your computer? Well you really should.

This was recently discussed on my tech blog, but I felt like some of my readers that do not follow that blog could benefit from a rewrite. If you are still not backing up the data on your computer, what are you waiting for? It is NOW easier than EVER to do so without any additional hardware.

There are many ways to lose information from a computer:
A child playing the keyboard like a piano, a power surge, lightning, floods, and sometimes equipment just fails. If you regularly make backup copies of your files and keep them in a separate place, you can get some, if not all, of your information back if something happens to the originals on your computer.

There is no reason any of the above has to happen to you. Be prepared. Get Mozy!

Mozy Online Backup is the preferred choice by  Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal, Christopher Null of Yahoo! Tech  and winner of the  PC Magazine’s Editor’s Choice Award. It is the most secure, feature rich and inexpensive backup service in the world.

Consumers may choose Mozy Free or Mozy Unlimited.

Mozy Free offers 2 GB of automatic, secure online backup for free.
Mozy Unlimited offers unlimited, secure, reliable online backup for $4.95 a month.
Both services allow consumers to perform an unlimited number of restores via the web or Windows Explorer.

Oh don’t worry MAC users. Just because I say “Windows Explorer” doesn’t meant there is not a version for you too.
===============
Mozy Online Backup Features:
===============

• Open/locked file support
• 448-bit Blowfish encryption
• 128-bit SSL encryption
• Automatic or scheduled backups
• New and changed file detection
• Block level incremental backups
• Bandwidth throttling
• File versioning
• Public or private key encryption

There is a matrix comparing Mozy’s features to its competitors is available at www.mozy.com check it out.

=========================
Mozy Online Backup Pricing
=========================

• Mozy Free - 2 GB of secure, automatic online backup for free
• Mozy Unlimited – unlimited, secure, automatic online backup for $4.95 a month or $54.45 a year.

Seriously if you are not backing up your data in some fashion by now, you are begging *Murphy to come show you how bad you need it.

* Murphy = Murphy’s law, if anything can go wrong….it will

I think it was over two months ago that I was in the Apple Retail Store and saw some Anti-Glare film sets for the Iphone all generations. I had seen these before on a friends Iphoneand it looked great. There was no glare like a mirror and it resisted fingerprints and face oils usually left on the screen.

I recently installed the Tom Tom navigation application on the Iphone and thought that the Anti-Glare would make it easier to see in the day time.

I picked up a set of two for around $16 and that was the best money I have ever spent. To this day the one that I put on my phone is still as pristine as that day I applied it. My wife who is using the other one feels the same way. It is in and out of her purse all day long and there is not a mark on it. Fingers rub across the screen with ease, no dragging on the glass. I love it!

Now if only I could get compensated by Apple for expressing my feelings for a wonderful product in my blogs.

Check them out here

Power Support Anti-Glare Film Set for iPhone

I just recently saw an ad on television about the new ps3 going on sale for a low price and they touted how “IT DOES EVERYTHING”.

Made me think about the Iphone.

I have been meaning to inform the masses through my blog about all the wonderful things that it can do.

Let me start by saying that I wanted one before they were available, yet I still held out until the first gen bugs were out of the way and gps was available. See I am a big fan of GPS and when they put it in their second gen Iphone, well I just had to have one.

I have not regretted it one bit. Best phone I have ever had!

I used to dream of an all in one compact phone and the Iphone is about 95% the phone I always wanted.

Let me tell you all the things that I wanted a cellphone to be/do and then I will come back to the IT DOES EVERTHING part. Continue reading →

I used to be able to run 3 miles all at once and not even think about it. I participated in 5k’s before too!

That was back in the good ole days.
These days its much harder for me to run.  I get winded very easily. That’s why here lately I have decided to try my best to get back into better shape.

I have been doing so by bike riding, getting on the treadmill, and my favorite has become trail hiking/walking/running.

I get bored easily on treadmills or the track so fitness trails, biking, and hiking seem to be the solution to that.

With the help of my co-worker Justin, we decided that we would try to use Tuesdays and Thursdays to do some sort of cardio exercise. I may be running, walking, hiking the Lost Bluff trail, nature trail, or biking.
Anyone of you that read this blog, know me and live in my area, feel free to hit me up through email or whatever if you would like to join in. The more the merrier.

Whats making all of this exercising even better is some of the apps that I have been using on the iphone.

So far I have used some really great apps like MotionX GPS, Trailguru, and Runkeeper.

MotionX-GPS was great but it loses gps signal if you fall below 3mph. I think this is terrible for a PAID FOR app as I sometimes only walk 2mph and I would like for it to log my walks. For bike riding it may be ideal, but I have yet to use it for that yet.

Trailguru is an awesome free app for the iphone. I like it alot, it has never lost signal even if I were to crawl. It makes really nice posts to the web as well as the ability to embed into your webpage as I have done here before. Right now however at the time of this writing, their website is down and I can not post my logs to their site.

Runkeeper was the very first app I ever put on my phone relating to walking/running and I have just now got back to using it. Mainly because the Trailguru website was down. I am glad I relaunched the use of this fabulous free program.

Today Justin and I did the regular 1 mile nature trail near the tennis courts at Grenada Lake. We ran it mostly and walked it in spots. We did it twice playing with the app runkeeper.

Below are the results using runkeeper. I think so far out of all 3 apps, I like it the best.
First time through.

Second time through.

Ok @leggett and I decided to hike the Lost Bluff Hiking trail together yesterday and this time I wanted to try trailguru again an use it to take pictures along the way to see if it would put the pictures on the map as we progressed the trail.

I learned a few things yesterday doing this.

While using trailguru, if you press the iphone’s lock key to blank out the screen, you turn gps off.
Also if you get a phonecall or reply to a text message, during your trek, it will stop the timer and mapping so you will have to start it again after the phone call or text. You will not lose already mapped data, you will just have to press start again on the app to pick up where it was paused.

I know now that the app has its own lock button that I can use instead of the iphones lock button. This prevents the GPS and app from going to sleep and losing trail data.

I posted the map below to show you that during screen locks and phonecalls it really messed up the mapping of my hike. It did however do as I expected and put the pictures on the map.
You will have to click on the plus sign and zoom in on the trail to see the pics. YOu will notice the broken trail lines where the gps got deactivated.

I want to do this will MotionX gps next and give it another shot. The reason I am liking trailguru (free app) over MotionX Gps (pay app) right now is that it doesnt lose GPS signal like Motion X does.