1. who backup
2. who learn to backup after a HD-crash
3. who think their HD is never gonna crash again

This article is for person in category 1 and 2. I really can’t help you if you belong to number 3 ;-)
If you work in a company and don’t have to take care of your data, good for your, but still, what do you do with your data back home?

My basic tips are:

1. Do backup
2. Make sure your backups actually work
3. (Bonus) Don’t keep all data in the same place

Pretty easy, isn’t it?

As a minimum: use Apple’s TimeMachine!

As always in this blog: I do what I preach, al those tips and ideas are what I do and have been doing for years to keep my data safe. The technique was originally developed long before there was Mac OS X 10.5 and TimeMachine and while TM might do the trick for many people you might find some tips here for your own backup workflow. My desktop setup also contained a RAID0 set for speed reasons which meant twice the chance of data loss. As it was a productive system, even when this happened, i wanted to be able to get right back to working within minutes.

So part 1 of my strategy was a identical clone of my hard-disk. Automatically done every morning every morning right before I show up for work. I know there are free tools out there for that, but for over 5 years I have been using SuperDuper and it hasn’t failed me once. I did so many clones, backups and restores that I can fully recommend it to all my friends.
The great thing about a backup in the morning is, if I have an epiphany in the night that I actually wrecked something I was working on that day, I just show up 20 minutes earlier and copy it back before the backup starts. :)
If I install any new software, be it an Adobe update or a Mac OS X update, I always first make an full clone and keep that for 1 or 2 weeks, you never know what problem you might run into while working, even if the update installs fine. (And if you install an update on the day of its release, you can’t be helped either ;-) ).
If you haven’t done this before, I highly recommend after your first successful clone, to make sure, that you can actually boot from it. Turn your mac off and right after turning it back on, hold down the “alt”-key and the bootmanager should show you not only your internal disk, but also the newly created clone. Select it and test if your Mac boots.
You can also just do regular (weekly, monthly) backups and use TimeMachine for continuos backups of your files.
Especially for mobile Macs, but also for the case of burglary or a fire: make sure to have your data not just in one place. If someone breaks in an takes your Mac and your externals discs, a backup isn’t worth anything if it’s gone, too. So for example put a external disk in your sock drawer (good against a fast break-in) or drop it off at your parents place which pretty well protects you against “elementary damages” as insurances like to call it. You don’t even need an external enclosure for your backup HD. Instead I just use an USB to SATA adapter (around 30 bucks) I connect my drives to and then put them back into their packaging. To recover more quickly _if_ something happens I normally have a partition on my backup-disk that contains a clone of my Mac OS X install DVD, the latest updates of Mac OS X and installers of my software. This way, even if I should experience a full crash while on the road I have anything I could possibly need with me. (Also great, if you have a flakey DVD-drive)
Then there is also the internet for backups. Services like Backblaze enable you to store your data somewhere far, far away in a datacenter, even with your own encryption-key. While with most connections the initial backup takes ages, why not use the available bandwidth at night? Of course it’s not necessary to backup your full disk to such a service. A System can be reinstalled, installer DVDs are lying around somewhere and music can be re-ripped or could even be re-bought, but your pictures, home-movies and project data is lost shouldn’t you have a backup somewhere. Just make sure for yourself how much that personal stuff is worth to you.

So, to sum it up:

Clone your HD regularly, clone it before updates, make sure backups work, but backups offsite.

The first thing people seem to worry about: playing movies.
The combination of Perian (for playing almost everything in QuickTime-Player), Flip4Mac (for Playing WMV files) and VLC (for everything else and if Perian and Flip4Mac fail) should take care of all your needs. To get DVDs into my Mac I use Handbreak.

To stay in contact with people on MSN, ICQ, Yahoo, etc I almost exclusively use Adium (probably because most are on ICQ) and of course there is also Skype.

For small image-editing needs there is Pixelmator, though I actually spent most of my time work-related in Adobe products. (Which I do not recommend if you value your sanity.)

Every now and then I encounter a file that is not compressed as a ZIP and then I fall back to TheUnarchiver.

Because Flash is the most annoying thing on the Internet and responsible for most program crashes I use Click2Flash to get rid of most annoying stuff on the web ;-)

Instead of carrying around an USB-stick I mostly put files simply into my Dropbox to have them available and sync them to multiple computers. It’s also great for collaboration with different people as a central repository and you get 2GB for free.

The there is the esoteric Quicksilver. A good description here and a beautiful HUD-like-skin for it is here. What is it? I mainly use it as a launcher (just type the first letters of an applications to launch it). Yes I am to lazy to move the cursor to my dock or open the application folder. Along these lines DefaultFolder greatly enhances the open- and save-dialogs if you work with lots of files everyday.

To keep my data save and have a boot-able backup I have been using SuperDuper for a couple of years now. It just work’s! The best backup strategy is worthless if you never tested your backups, but with SuperDuper I often migrated my data to newer and bigger hard-disks and it never let me down.

Though I am not big into customization (I’ve been using the same desktop picture for years!) and have set the colored bubbles in the top-left of each window to “grey”, but I do change my icons with Candybar.

While not completely adhering to GTD (Getting Things Done), I use Things to keep my ideas and ToDos in check.

For webdev you’ll find my 99% of the time in Coda for coding and managing and CSS-Edit for visual css-editing (as the name implies). If for whatever reason I just need an FTP client it’s Transmit. For getting screenshots of websites I mostly use LittleSnapper (because it keeps the picture linked to an URL and takes screenshot of the whole page, not matter how long).

To keep track of time spent on different projects I rely on TimeLog as it not only records the time, but also ads it to iCal so I can see when I did what and not just have a sum at the end of a month.

To get my Mac to open different applications when I connect different cameras, I use Cameras. Makes life way easier if you have more than one digital camera (like an iPhone or iPod).

DeliciousLibrary, while initially started as a book cataloging app, now catalogs almost everything. With the terrific interface and the ability to scan barcodes it’s almost fun to input all your books. The really nifty thing is also cataloging your gizmos together with serial number, should you ever need it. (For example in Case of an insurance claim!)

If you really need this new ‘nix distro and want to get it via bittorent, at least do it in style with a native client: Transmission

The last app for this list is Tweetie, a beautiful Twitter client.

So, this list should get all recent converts a good starting point for getting productive with your Macs. Feedback is appreciated via phil@off-and-on.com Have fun!

Multitouch really made it into the mainstream. The question is: does the audience really recognize what this is about, or is that just something that works for us and the Apple nerds at the ad agency?

Compare this to the iPhone ads at Apple.com What do you see?

Bell completely focusses on the “functions” you can do with a Pre. There is tapping, and zooming and sliding and pinching and so on. But guess what: people don’t care about that without context. It’s like flipping a switch. Without a result you are just going to do this because you are bored. Under normal circumstances you flip a switch you accomplish something. For example turning on a light. And then you have a task to accomplish a goal.

In comparison in the iPhone ads they show you how to accomplish goals. These might not be your daily goals, but it’s important how they a shown. It’s not about the single tasks, but about the end result a user likely wants to accomplish.

So the next time you think about a specific feature or function, think about how it will fit with the user’s goals.

Dan Pink’s main points:

1. Those 20th century rewards, those motivators we think are the natural part of business, do work, but only in a surprisingly narrow band of circumstances.
2. Those of-then rewards often destroy creativity.
3. The secret to high performance isn’t rewards and punishments but the unseen intrinsic drive. The drive to do things for their own sake. The drive to do things cause they matter.

We thought it would be fun to put together an entry for this year’s I.D. Magazine Annual Review. As frequent travelers, we were particularly inspired by the project brief: design a graphic, object, or environment that would improve the experience of air travel.

We thought our approach was a good mix of practicality and inspiration, a premium loyalty service enabled by helpful bits of technology that would ease the pain and smooth the turbulence of business travel. Did we expect to win? Absolutely. Even though the judges didn�t share our enthusiasm, we�re happy with what we came up with, and we wanted to share it with you.

A nice welcome to a new device.

Zune HD Video Hands On from Gizmodo on Vimeo.

Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.

THE BASIC LAWS OF HUMAN STUPIDITY
by Carlo M. Cipolla
illustrations by James Donnelly

WiiSpray Teaser from Martin Lihs on Vimeo.

a short footage from the final presentation of WiiSpray 2nd edition

World Builder from Bruce Branit on Vimeo.

A strange man builds a world using holographic tools for the woman he loves.

This award winning short was created by filmmaker Bruce Branit, widely known as the co-creator of ’405′. World Builder was shot in a single day followed by about 2 years of post production. Branit is the owner of Branit VFX based in Kansas City.

AR New Year Greeting Card from Saqoosha on Vimeo.

I developed new year greeting site for my company.
It is using FLARToolKit ported last year.
If you have webcam, You can try at http://09.aid-dcc.com .

Audience – rAndom International from Chris O’Shea on Vimeo.

an installation by rAndom International with Chris O’Shea

http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-02-11-n78.html.

It’s an amazing concept, but the question is: is this really something for the day-to-day use?