Techno

Cool Tech Toys, and stuff for the boyz and the girlz!

Ibackup.com: Do you back up your data?

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When I first started using computers in the mid 90s, I didn’t know what ‘back up’ meant. I really didn’t. My first pc was a notebook 486 which lasted a while, but one day the system died and wouldn’t reboot. Sorry, your data is gone! Woops!

My second pc was a desktop system actually but in those CD writers were the stuff of fantasy, and I hadn’t really learned my lesson on data backup. One day, I turned on the system and … nothing. No boot up sounds. Stone dead. Sorry, your hard disk is gone.

It was at that point I started to get serious about backing up data. I bought a zip drive with 100MB capacity and a half dozen disks. Now that worked well for a while, but then the data began to grow… Suddenly I didn’t have enough space.

So by then I invested in a CD writer as they were quite affordable by then. It worked well. For a while. But then I began to have another problem: I had copies of copies of copies of CDs. I didn’t mark them clearly enough. Then soon, my data needed several disks, then more to back up safely. Yikes. Confusing reigned.

I’m now looking at IBackup – Online Backup and Storage as a way to provide for the present and future growth. Now with a business, and five systems (all used by people who don’t know what backup means!), I’m facing a nightmare situation, so I’m considering using online storage as a way to conveniently update regularly and automatically.

IBackup is offering a number of options that are attractive for internet users: with software that operates like Explorer (in Windows) and options to save data that is typically overlooked in general back up software, such as data in Outlook Express or Outlook, using wizards. There are even downloads for Linux Users, but oddly nothing for a Mac User.

While the pricing is not as cheap as as an extra hard drive nor as big, the storage solution offers a convenience factor in that you do not have to care what happens to the stored date once it’s placed on the service. That’s their job. I’m all in favor of offloading tasks on other people! It’s definitely an economical use of MY time!

My only real criticism of the service is the space size. These days 1GB isn’t that much. A few hundred photos or songs. A presentation can run big, too! If it were my place, I’d multiply the size by a factor of 10 or even 100. Now that would be a good amount at a great price!

This post is sponsored by IBackup.com.

M$ acquires YHOO? Now that would be a boost for my stock!

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10 Reasons Why Microsoft Will Aquire Yahoo In 2007

Microsoft sat back while Google showed everyone how to take a search engine from 2 kinds having fun to a top 20 American company. How did they do it? Well just look at their revenue numbers and you will see a massive percentage comes from the Adwords & Adsense products. Now Microsoft is trying to get into the online advertising game but can they hope to compete without acquiring Yahoo and their volume? I think Microsoft will make a move at Yahoo and its going to happen in 2007.

Well, now that would be an interesting choice for M$! I have kind of admired/hated M$ for quite some time, but I have noted that they do do strategic acquisitions from time to time.

Unfortunately, I sold YHOO just recently. I’d be miffed, though, on missing out on the opportunity to make some serious $dosh.

Strategically, I think the deal would make a lot more sense for M$ rather than YHOO. Why? It is M$ that needs a better search ranking for its products. It would certainly spell the end, in many ways, for YHOO as we know it right now. Many services that we use would be merged with their M$ counterpart, cut out, charged for, or just dumped altogether. It would provide M$ with a new core audience, but I doubt the brand name of Yahoo! would fare well, as its traffic would be subsumed under MSN.

For parallels, look what happened to the Netscape name/brand. Now it is hardly known at all, remaining just a historical footnote in Wikipedia, after its acquisition by AOL.com. Compuserve and Prodigy also went away in similar manners. So… while a M$ acquisition of YHOO would be good for shareholders in the short term, it would not be good for the millions of users of YHOO, like myself.

Ambivalent about this at best.

Thanks, John Chow

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My blog, recently because of its increasing status, ranking, etc., I have been getting spam comments with dozens of links, and junk postings in the comments. It wasn’t a lot, but on the last day, I got something like 25. Wow! So John Chow’s advice was just timely.

Now I just wanted to thank John for his advice on spamming. I installed several of the plugins mentioned, I didn’t add some of the more ‘advanced’ tweaks because I wanted to see what could be done with just one or two steps.

Comment Challenge: works like a charm, though you may need to add John’s tweak.

Comment Timeout: I set the time-out to 120 days with a 60 day cut-off on comments.

Result: No Spam, Akismet has nothing to do right now! I will consider adding additional lines a la John’s suggestions, if spam comes back. But in the meantime, I’m 🙂

Update on 28th, 37 spam now in blog. Somehow the spam got around the captcha code. But multiple link spam seems absent right now. If this continues, I may implement the next step.