Archive
My Digital Camera History
I’ve been using digital cameras for a long time. In the beginning, the quality wasn’t the best. My wife wasn’t totally impressed with the quality, but I liked the convenience and the easy way to keep my pictures backed up. So, for a while, we each had a camera and took our own pictures with our own camera. My daughter probably felt like she was being chased by Paparazzi. (Or she would have if she hadn’t been so young.)
How to Keep Gmail, but Not Actually Use it
I’ve been using Gmail since it was first introduced. I’ve had my own domain since 1996, and in 2000, registered a second domain.
When Google introduced the Google Apps product, I moved my mail for both domains to it. I still have grandfathered free accounts there. So, all of my mail goes through these two domains. I have an account on both of them, but I forward one to the other and only ever really set one of them up in my mail clients. I’ve been pretty happy with the Gmail service until I got my new iPhone 5s.
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My Ultra-Paranoid Backup Strategy
I am super-paranoid about losing data. I have ben using digital cameras since 1999. My oldest Daughter was one at the time.
This is the first digital camera picture I took of Megan.
There does not appear to be EXIF data on the picture, but I know it was an HP PhotoSmart camera.
Over the years, I’ve done a lot of things to protect these important files. I’ve burned then to CD and DVD, I’ve copied them to external drives and thumb drives. I’ve backed them up to Mozy (back when they actually had a reasonably-priced unlimited plan), then Carbonite (until I hit their cap where while they don’t tell you you cannot upload anything else, they slow down the upload to basically enforce a limit).
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Transporter Week 1
Last week, I received my Transporter. You can read the unboxing and my thoughts after 1 day. After a week of use, I thought I’d update my impression of the device.
The biggest thing I’ve seen people talk about is how this is a Dropbox replacement. And it is not bad as a Dropbox replacement. Except, Dropbox is integrated into so many things. 1Password, FileThisFetch, etc. Transporter, not so much … yet. Who knows what the future will bring.
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Transporter Day 1
Summary:
I got a Transporter this week and set it up this morning. I’ve been playing with it all day and I’m trying to really like it, but it just isn’t quite there for me … YET. But, this is pre-release, so I’m hopeful that they can address some of the concerns I am outlining here. In my conclusion, I point out that I believe most of the issues can be addressed with software updates and I outline some of the things I think they need to address.
Transporter Unboxing
A friend of mine and I backed a Kickstarter project for the Transporter.
The Transporter is a device that you can put on your network (or the network at your office or a friend or relative’s house) and basically create your own cloud.
We backed a two-pack of Transporters and they arrived this week.
Today, I’m going to share pictures of the unboxing. Over the next few days, I’ll talk more about how the devices and the software that goes with them work.
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How Apple Lost its Way and Found it Again
We all know Steve Jobs saved Apple. How did he do it? Well, it was a lot of things, actually. But the one I think was the biggest can be seen by looking at the number of different computer models Apple was releasing.
Apple started with one product. The Apple I. Steve Wozniak built this computer and was basically giving the plans away at the home-brew computer club meetings. Steve Jobs saw that people didn’t have the time or patience to build them and proposed that they sell the boards to make it easier. They started Apple Computer and started selling bare boards that could be combined with a keyboard and a TV and turned into a computer.
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Digital Video Content
I know from past experience, that Apple really is not interested in pretty much anything their users have to say. They dictate, and we meekly accept whatever they deign to allow us to do.
But at least for the short term, there is a huge problem (from a consumer standpoint, not so much for Apple) with the way they are making video available.
Video on the iTunes store is HUGE!
I was in Vegas on a business trip. The hotel I stayed at had pay per day Internet, and it was per device and was not WiFi. I brought my Verizon MiFi with me, so opted not to pay the $14 per day for in-room Internet. This was fine for everything except getting a new movie on my iPad for my trip home. My trip home was going to take 10+ hours, and I would have actually preferred 2 movies, but there was a problem with that.
Video on the iTunes store is HUGE!
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Teamviewer gets it right!
Using your phone to control your home computer seems like it would be terribly useful. Recently, the place I worked started allowing the iOS and Android Citrix clients for remote access to work. The Citrix client displays the screen of the application you are interacting with, and you tap where you would normally click the mouse. As you can imagine, this works pretty poorly on a small phone screen. It was usable in a (very desperate) pinch, but it really pretty much sucked.
Like most technically savvy people, I have a number of computers that I have adopted tech support duties for. (Yeah, that sounds better than saying support of these computers was forced on me…)
No matter how much I wear this, no one takes the hint
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Flash
Steve Jobs was at least mostly, if not completely wrong about Flash on mobile devices. There. I said it.
Let me start by saying that I don’t care about Flash. I am completely indifferent about Adobe and anything they do or have done. I feel the same way about flash as I feel about HTML, High Def TV, 3D movies or speed limits on highways. They exist, they serve their purpose, and we have to live with them. Does Flash cause problems? Sure. Would the world be better off if Flash had never existed? It’s a moot point, because it does exist. Does ignoring flash make it go away? This is a resounding “no”!
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