Crashplan

Whoa, there, let's backup a bit.

Okay, bad pun.

Seriously, though, backup is something everyone should take very seriously and almost no one does. Ironically, the people who should back up the most diligently, i.e., the non-geeks, are the ones who almost never do so.

Backups are painful to do, take time, space, cosmic energy and are no fun. Until your hard drive crashes and you lose all those photos of grandma on the rollercoaster.

Enter Crashplan.

Crashplan

Important pricing information:
Free, as in no money required. Or, as low as $5 p.m., but read the fine print.

You need:
An internet connection, preferably one that's always on while your computer is on. And a suitable lead time for the first backup - if you have lots of data, it could be running (auto) for several days. A local disk is faster but is not an offsite backup.

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Filed under  //   backup   clouds   essential   mac   practical   software   windows  

Google Quick Search Box

For keyboard lovers on the Mac, QSB is hard to beat. Give your mouse a sabbatical.

(There are also Windows and Linux versions but allegedly not a patch on the Mac version. See History below for reasons why.)

Use it to launch apps, as a clipboard manager, look up addresses, search through Wikipedia, play songs from your iTunes library, do quick calculations, and lots more, all with a clutch of a few keystrokes, tabs and Enters. 

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Important pricing information:
Free, as in no money required. Ever.

Start:
Hit http://code.google.com/p/qsb-mac/downloads/list and download the latest version, load the dmg, copy the app from it into your Applications folder and eject and trash the dmg. Start the Google Quick Search Box application. 

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Filed under  //   essential   mac   software  

Dropbox

Enough with the philosophy, for the time being, anyway. Today I’m going to blog about my favorite file-sharing trick. It’s called Dropbox and no, it’s not a little-known Eastern martial art.

It’s a pretty well-known, and deserves to be known even better,  software and service that allows you to:

- painlessly share files with others
- painlessly share files with yourself
- painlessly back up your critical files
- painlessly share files between Windows and Mac computers

Important pricing information:

Free, as in no money required. For that enormous sum of FREE, you get a 2GB account, which if you’re not knowledgeable about these things is the rough equivalent of storing over 2000 of your average-sized Word documents or Excel spreadsheets. Pretty decent.

You need:
An internet connection, preferably one that’s always on while your computer is on.
Start:
Nip over to www.dropbox.com, sign up for an account, download the software, install it and you’re on your way.

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Filed under  //   backup   essential   file-sharing   mac   software   windows  

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Technology addict, former operations chief, serial entrepreneur, consultant, writer, blogger

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