Best tools that save your life – Part 1: Backup
Posted by Elisha Terada in Tech on January 31st, 2010
The words ‘backup’ and ‘synchronization’ are synonymous as both functionality must be achieved at the same time in order to protect your files. The two main reasons why people lose data are that they try to back up everything with all-in-one solution and forget to backup files like Favorites and ID & Password. Here I will introduce three integrable software that will help you easily backup your files.
Backup & Synchronization Tools
For frequently used files
If you need to access and update certain files on a daily basis, it is wiser to backup and synchronize your files through Dropbox. Once you install Dropbox and login with your account, it creates a special folder on your computer and any files dropped inside will be automatically copied to the server whenever the computer is connected to internet. If you install Dropbox on another computer and login with same account, it will automatically download files that are already copied to server, and it will keep synchronizing your files between two computers. In this case, you have backup of your files on physical hard drive of two computers and on Dropbox server. The best part is that you don’t need to worry about Dropbox stopping its service because you always have physical backup, and you can also retrieve all your files from Dropbox website even if your computer dies. Dropbox is free up to 5GB with referral (gives you 250MB to you and to your friend each time you refer the service), and you can also pay $9.99/month to get storage upto 50GB.
Screen Shots
Extra Features
- You can choose and share your folder with other friends who have Dropbox installed as a collaboration tool.
- You can put your files in ‘Public’ folder and get URL of the file to easily send your file to your friends without having to attach files to email.
- It keeps copy of old versions of each file up to 7 revisions and you can retrieve them within 30 days.
For ID & Passwords
I know it is a common practice to keep track of ID and password of various accounts you create for web services on unsecure text file, or let your browser remember them only to lose all data when your computer crashes. For those of you, I highly recommend you to use RoboForm to manage your ID and password. It records your ID and password as you login to your accounts on web services, and then automatically fills information next time you open the website. You can also create your profile and the RoboForm will automatically fill forms like registration from to new account and save you time and save you from making errors filling your name, address, credit card number, preferred ID and password, etc. Because RoboForm saves ID & Password for each website on individual files, you can password protect them and even backup those files using services like Dropbox that I just introduced above. RoboForm is free up to 10 ID & Passwords, but I highly recommend you to get Pro version for $29.95 to unlock all features. Use promo code NEVR1 or STRV4 to save you 20%.
Screen Shots
Extra Features
- You can save multiple accounts for same web service such as online email and choose which one to login.
- You can create a ‘SafeNotes’ and record complex information and it will be password protected like ID & Password file.
- There are portable versions which you can install RoboForm on your USB or mobile phone, and they are in beta with online version for more simplicity and ubiquitous access.
For large files
You are most likely going to backup and synchronize large files between your computers and external hard drives. While there are free software that let you synchronize files, I recommend you use GoodSync for simplicity and attractive extra features for advanced users. Because it is made by the same company that makes RoboForm, it natively detects and synchronizes information saved on RoboForm between two computers. You can also easily select which folders and files to synchronize and switch each setting with tabs. You can use GoodSync for trial and buy the full-version for $29.95 or $19.95 if you buy with RoboForm.
Screen Shots
Conclusion
The tools I introduce here are not free and some of you may not use them because of it. However, losing all of your data without backup can easily cost you a lot of money in terms of hours in labor to rebuild all files you’ve created. While there are free or more premium solutions, I do not find them either satisfactory or necessary to pay more. My advice is to first try the tools I recommend and then compare it with other solutions out there once you gain more knowledge.
Is a netbook with Pinetrail a better option for you?
Posted by Elisha Terada in Tech on January 13th, 2010
I’m sure many of you are aware of a new CPU for netbook called Pinetrail (N450) recently released from Intel. This is supposedly better than previous models (N260/N270). Unfortunately, the new CPU does not perform much better than the previous models, and it does not make sense to rush to get a netbook that comes with Pinetrail.
My friend who is looking to buy a netbook recently asked me if ASUS 1005PE that comes with Pinetrail CPU is a great netbook to purchase. I said no, because of the following reasons:
- The webcam resolution is 0.3 MP as oppose to 1.3 MP which you can get from competitors. This doesn’t matter most of the time because the webcam runs slow in netbook in general anyway.
- It comes with 1GB RAM and you need to upgrade it to 2GB RAM to run Windows 7 smoothly. It costs around $50 to get one of them.
- It comes with Windows 7 Starter which most of you will find it unsatisfactory compared to Windows 7 Home Premium. It basically stripped down too much!
- I personally found 10.1 inch screens too small to work with sometimes, and some applications require larger resolution to run.
- Current model of Pinetrail (N450) is actually not so much better than the traditional CPU for netbook, unfortunately. Read more about this at the following site:
Considering the cost to upgrade RAM and OS, and the fact that you get a larger resolution, I recommend Acer Aspire AS1410-2039 over ASUS 1005PE. Unless you really need a 14 hours battery life on ASUS 1005PE, 6 hours of battery on Acer Aspire AS1410-2039 should be satisfactory.
Buy your Christmas gifts online around Dec. 10th
Posted by Elisha Terada in Business on January 9th, 2010
My girlfriend works at a retail store in Bellevue Square and tells me not to do a last minute shopping because retailers jack up the price of products just before Christmas. While I cannot statistically prove this phenomenon, I would not be surprised if it’s the tradition.
I recently installed a add-on program for Firefox browser called The Camelizer which shows historical price of the product sold online such as on Amazon.com. I use it mainly to check out if the price shown on the product page is relatively expensive or cheaper than before. If the price seems to be higher than previous prices, I’d wait until the price drops down again. While looking at historical prices of many products sold online, I noticed a price pattern around X’mas times.
First, please look at the price chart of the Samsung TL220. This product features double LCD screen one in front of camera for the consumers who take self-portraits with background often.
It is hard to see but you can see that the Amazon price and New (3rd party) price drops down around Dec 12-13 period, and it goes back up, then drops again for couple days after X’mas.
Now let’s look at ASUS UL30A-X5. This is a Amazon exclusive custom model and the laptop is very attractive in terms of its mobility and power.
You can see that the price drops significantly from Dec 5-19 period and the price goes back again, then drops down after 27th.
My theory for the pattern is that Dec 10th-13th is the ‘last minute’ purchase point online to get the product delivered before X’mas. Sellers reduce price to give extra incentives for consumers to buy their product online. So why does the price jack up after that period? Consumers can still purchase products on Amazon and get it delivered to their house before X’mas if they choose more expensive shipping option. If such consumers are willing to pay premium for the shipping price, they should be able to pay for the higher product price as well. So the sellers take advantage of those real last minute sales online. It is interesting to see how the rule changes when you sell products online.
I also noticed that it is not predictable what happens to the product price after X’mas. I have seen ones that goes up in price, but I also see ones that goes down in the price. Although the price pattern illustrated here do not apply to every product, it is good to be alert for the price change around the X’mas season.
Comparison of new Acer laptops
Posted by Elisha Terada in Intern on October 22nd, 2009
Today I’m comparing new laptops released with Windows 7 pre-installed from Acer today, Oct 22nd. The comparison I’m making here is not on the performance alone, but on the balance of cost effectiveness on both portability and performance. Therefore, all the laptops I picked from Acer runs more than 6 hours at reasonable price, but not necessary a fast computer. Although Acer is also releasing new 15.4″ lines, I did not find them reasonably portable (most runs less than 3 hours).
I believe screen size is most crucial factor, so I picked most attractive model(s) for each screen size. So if you already know exactly which size you want, there you have the best recommendation listed below:
| Model | AS1410-2039 | AS1810T-8679 | AS3810TZ-4925 | AS4810TZ-4508 |
| Size |
11.6″ |
13.3″ |
14″ |
|
| OS |
Windows 7 Home Premium |
|||
| Battery |
6 hrs |
8 hrs |
||
| Weight | 3.1lb | 3.1lb | 3.5lb | 4.4lb |
| CPU | 1.3GHz
Celeron |
1.3GHz
Core 2 Duo |
1.3GHz
Pentium |
1.3GHz
Pentium |
| RAM | 2GB (DDR2) | 4GB | 3GB | 4GB (DDR3) |
| HDD | 250GB | 320GB | 320GB | 320GB |
| Optical Drive | No | No | No | Yes |
| Price |
$399.00 |
$599.99 |
$599.99 |
$599.99 |
Portability + Price or Performance
I picked two 11.6″ screen laptops here because the first one offers attractive price while the second offers the great performance which even beats the bigger models. If you can afford extra $200, I would definately pick AS1810T-8679 for enhanced performance + battery life that’s worth paying $200 for.
Large screen size
Note that optical drive only comes for 14″ screen laptop which might be crucial to you. But I find it much cheaper to just buy external DVD drive for the laptop if that’s the only concern you have. With a weight of 4.4lb and a so-so performance, the only benefit I see in this model is the size of screen which is larger than other options.
Portability + Reasonable screen size
If you find 11.6″ too small (which you should check in local electronics store like Best Buy), but still loves portability, your choice is simply 13.3″ which is priced reasonable.
Before you buy
In my observation, price of expensive laptops goes down faster than cheaper laptops. I wrote the draft of this post yesterday and I just noticed the 14″ laptop is $50 cheaper today. This doesn’t usually happen in the laptops that are already cheap to begin with, so it is wise to wait couple weeks or months before you buy new expensive models.
Get laptops with Windows 7
Posted by Elisha Terada in Tech on October 21st, 2009
With a release of Windows 7 on Oct 22nd, companies are preparing it’s shipment of new lines of laptop. Among them, Acer is ahead of the game, and now you can pre-order your laptop that’s most likely going to be available tomorrow.
You can see the list of laptops preloaded with Windows 7 here at Amazon.
Now that I’ve been using my 10 inch netbook for about an year, I found it unsatisfactory both in terms of the performance and the narrow resolution which affects operations on some applications. If you still want to get a portable laptop, I suggest you to get 11.6 inch which solves the narrow resolution and little bit of performance issue. My personal ideal laptop size is 13.3 inch but it happens to be the most expensive option. So you should go for 15.4 inch if the price is an issue. You can also go for 14 inch size but the benefit of this new screen size is unclear. Note that all these sizes are widescreen, and you should remember that laptop with 14 inch or bigger comes with optical drive which adds some extra weight.
If you have hard time selecting which laptops you want, I would suggest you pick the size of screen first. Once you do that, the only difference that often matters is battery life and the speed of the CPU.
What I learned through Startup Weekend Redmond@BizSpark
Posted by Elisha Terada in Business, Entrepreneur, Tech on September 1st, 2009
For this weekend, I was at Startup Weekend Redmond@BizSpark where entrepreneurs who are skilled at programing, business planning, legal advising, etc get together to build a business with working product just over the weekend. My team created an iPhone application “Learn That Name” which helps you remember the face/name of the contact on your LinkedIn account to avoid embarrassment. Although my background is a business development, I end up working primary as a lead web developer. I was just amazed at what came out just over the weekend, and my team won the first place by the vote from the other 14 teams.
I’d like to summarize what I think were the success factors which brought us a honorable mention at the Startup Weekend.
It’s all about a team work
With 16 members, we were the second largest group ever formed in the Startup Weekend. About half of the team were programming while the other half were putting together a business strategy. The key here was to coordinate 16 members who just met for the first time. Here are the steps we took to coordinate the whole team.
1. We first put Eric Koester, who came up with the idea, as a leader of the group since he was a visionary guy (tho he wish he had a programming skill!). We also appointed overall leaders and communication leaders in each of our programming and biz development department.
2. Before the first night was over, I collected everyone’s contact information on excel spread sheet and sent out everyone an email & poll to keep track of their availability by using Doodle.
3. The next morning, we had a meeting to put everyone on the same page. Again, what’s very important was to make sure all 16 members are headed to one goal.
4. To keep ourselves organized, we setup a Google Group (to share files and to have one email address for mailing list) and Dropbox (to share files between people who do similar tasks).
5. We frequently talked each other to make sure who is doing what by when. Everything just flow smoothly from that point.
Get objectives straight
There were many ways we could have developed our application: build web-based application for everyone to have access, build app for facebook audiences as opposed to LinkedIn, develop it on Microsoft stack to be eligible for receiving prize money, to add more fun features. We did none of those because we had a clear objective in mind: to launch a working product for LinkedIn audience in iPhone platform at the end of the competition. It does not satisfy the greater number, but it excites the few for sure, and that’s what we needed exactly.
Do not rely on partner services
Unless the process is automated, I do not recommend you to rely on getting ‘free’ subscription to any sort of services offered through Startup Weekend partners. We had issue getting a free 3 months trial hosting services from one of the partner and we never got it serviced. I decided to just pay $20 to get my teams website up and running.
Spacebook goes opposite of Netbook
Posted by Elisha Terada in Business, Tech on August 28th, 2009
Have you ever heard of a Spacebook? Alaska based company gScreen is planning to launch a 15.4” dual-screen laptop in the market through Amazon.com within 2009.
Planned specs according to their website are:
- 2 LED backlit display screens
- Windows VISTA/ WIN XP PRO (optional)
- Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 2.26-GHz
- 4 GB of RAM (2GB DDR2 SO-DIMM x 2)
- 320GB 7200-rpm HD
- NVIDIA® GeForce® 9800M GT with 512MB dedicated memory (or)
- NVIDIA® Quadro FX 1700M Graphics with 512MB dedicated memory
- 9-cell battery
- IEEE 1394 1 Graphics Card Output (15-pin, D-Sub) X 1, HDMI X 1 Mic-in X 1, Line-in x 1, Headphone X 1 PCI Express Card X 1 AC Power Adaptor Output: 19V DC, 90W Input: 100~240V AC, 50/60Hz universal Battery Pack Li-ion 9 cells
The spacebook is not designed for a desktop replacement, but it is designed for a powerful ‘portable’ laptop. For designers and programmers, (I guess) there are occasions where they need to work outside their office and appreciate dual screen monitor. I’m neither a designer nor programmer, but I feel the need of dual screen at times when I have to open several office documents to work. But I can easily compensate for it by attaching a monitor via VGA cable.
With the price tag around $3000, the target audience for the product is very limited at this point.
Google Books to provide books in open book format EPUB
Posted by Elisha Terada in Business, Tech on August 27th, 2009
Back in August 14th, I wrote a post about Sony’s movement to support the open e-book format, EPUB, on its book reading device. Google Books has announced that it will now provide its digital domain book library in the EPUB format. Read more about how EPUB is created on their blog.
Although Google Books only provide old books with expired copyright, consumers will be able to read them on any devices that will support EPUB format in future. Not only that, the size of characters can also be optimized for different reading devices since it’s not just a photocopy of books.
This announcement will not immediately kill the sales of Amazon Kindle as Google Books only offers books in public domain. However, Sony could certainly take an advantage of offering free books in EPUB format on top of it’s new digital book sales.
Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 slide show demo unveils
Posted by Elisha Terada in Business, Tech on August 26th, 2009
I wrote a little bit about PowerPoint 2010 in Should I upgrade to Microsoft Office 2010? back in July. Microsoft unveiled the teaser of the slide show that’s created entire on the PowerPoint 2010. See the video below for the working demo.
Feature Sets (According to The PowerPoint Team Blog)
· Fully hardware-accelerated rendering engine
· New transition effects and an updated user interface
· Revamped animation effects and a brand new UI (timelines!)
· Animation Painter (copy your animations between objects)
· Choreograph animations with multimedia
The Good/Bad:
PowerPoint 2010 is visually appealing without a doubt. It is possible to create more interactive and fun slide shows if you are an entertainer. However, visuals can easily kill your presentation if you cannot draw audience’s attention with your message. I can also foresee the situation where presenters use too many animation and the points they are trying to make are scattered. My biggest fear would be to see presenters using same cool animation template which gets us bored. In my opinion, generic effects are plain but not boring, whereas special effects are special but boring.
3 reasons why Bing Cashback is so hot
Posted by Elisha Terada in Business on August 21st, 2009
There are many ways to save money: mail-in-rebate, limited time offer, natural discount, free-shipping, tax-free, promotional code, and cashback.
My favorites are tax-free (through third-party Amazon seller) and promotional codes because I can get a good amount of discount instantly without being tricked by the seller. I hate to see discount in a form of mail-in-rebate or cashback because it usually takes good amount of effort and time to get cash back to me. Free-shipping is just another way to say price of the product includes the shipping cost. Of course, tax-free item has it’s own disadvantage as you have to deal with third-party stores and promotional codes are not always useful.
Bing Cashback is a cashback program hosted by Microsoft through it’s new search engine Bing. How it works is very simple and you can track all of your cashback account in a single Windows Live account. Let me explain how Bing Cashback is a new way to save your money.
Simple
It is very simple to use Bing Cashback. Just open http://www.bing.com/ and search the name of the company that sell the product you want.
Now, click the “Bing cashback” button that you see on the right upper corner of the ALL RESULTS shown above. You will see the pop-up box telling you that you can save X% of money by purchasing T-mobile’s product through Bing. You can join the program and it will take you to T-mobile website. Although the Bing cashback pop up will disappear, it will keep track of your purchase at T-mobile and send you a confirmation email.
Cheap
As you can see on the picture above, you can save 35% on any cell phone you purchase through Bing cashback. This is a huge discount considering that there is no other way to save this much on T-mobile product. It is usually hard to save money on stores like T-mobile because they only offer mail-in-rebate that takes as long as 3 months to process.
Fast
If you have a paypal account, you can join ‘quick cashback program’ to receive a cashback the moment you purchase the product without having to wait 60-day period. This is a great deal because you can buy a product as if it’s already discounted.
Conclusion
Although not all deals that can be found through Bing are best, you can definitely benefit from their program if you can find a exclusive corporate offered discount just like the one at T-mobile.
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