My back-up has three main components;1. Instant/realtime backup of workfolders and DBs. 2. Daily backups of my complete workstation/laptop. 3. Passive backups on my archives that is activated automatically when I archive stuff

My back-up has three main components;1. Instant/realtime backup of workfolders and DBs. 2. Daily backups of my complete workstation/laptop. 3. Passive backups on my archives that is activated automatically when I archive stuff

The setup has three basic components;

1. Instant/realtime backup for the stuff I work right now + databases.
2. Daily backups of my complete workstation/laptop.
3. Passive backups of my archives that is activated automatically when I archive stuff.

For the instant backups I use Dropbox Pro with the Symlinks-script installed (more about that at the end of the post). Via the symlink- script Dropbox monitors my workfolders/files and backs them up the very second anything changes. Dropbox offers 50Gb storage for $9.99 a month or 100Gb for $19.99 a month. I signed up for the 50Gb account and it has worked fine for me so far.

For the daily/nightly backups of my laptop I chosed iDrive.com. They offer 150Gb for $4.95 a month and has an extremely good interface when you want to create your backup sets. The size restriction on the account hasn’t been a problem to me, and I guess they will offer unlimited storage in a near future.

For the “passive” archive backups I have choosen to go with Mozy.com. I really wanted to use Backblaze.com since I felt that is was more flexible, faster and has a better user experience in general but I have files that is up to 20 years old that has to be backed up from old cd-roms (remember those days :-) and somehow OSX Leopard won’t read those discs. So I had to go with OSX Tiger on the archive server … and Backblaze isn’t available for Tiger. Anyway, Mozy offers unlimited storage at $4.95 a month so thats perfect for the archives.

Here is how you set up the Symlinks script on a Mac.

The Symlinks script allows me to sync/backup folders outside the default Dropbox folder. That way I can keep my filestructure and the workflow I have had pre-Dropbox.Basically it let’s me right-click any folder or document and create an alias (symlink) to my Dropbox-folder. Via that symlink Dropbox can then monitor my workfolders/files and sync/back up any file the second it changes.

First download the Symlinks files.

1. Place the “Create Symbolic Link.workflow” file in Home Folder/Library/Workflows/Applications/Finder/

2.Place the “Create Symbolic Link.action” file in
Home Folder/Library/Automator

If any of the folders do not exist … create them.

How to create Symlinks using Automator:

1. Right Click file or folder you wish to monitor.
2. Choose More
3. Choose Automator
4. Select Create Symbolic Link

5. Once you select Create Symbolic Link the script will prompt you and ask for the location of the alias/symlink. Choose your Dropbox folder and click continue.
6. The symlink will be created in the Dropbox folder and look like a traditional Mac-alias within the Dropbox folder.

Step-by-step tutorial based on “Dropbox Tutorial – OS X Symlinks.pdf” by Stephen Russet.

For more detailed information please visit the Dropbox wiki

Over the years I have built a library of icons and graphics that I regulary use to make fast and generic illustrations for pitches and presentations. The purpose of the icons is to be clean and generic and used to illustrate ideas, flows and strategies. They are not intended for GUI design or more proper wireframing since they are quite a mix of different styles.

I thought that I might share my library since there must be people spending hours trying to find graphics for their presentations.

Feel free to download them and use them as much as you like. Included in the .zip-file is:

• Icons as Illustrator file (.ai).
• Icons pasted into a clean Keynote document.

Some examples on how I have used them:

I was asked by Bacardi and their Swedish agency Narrow to put a Scandinavian twist to their corporate typography. The result is the OpenType font Bacardi Scandinavian with added scandinavian charachters and some cleaned up kerning tables.

Me and Rickard Linder have just released a mini campaign for the Swedish bank ICA Banken. The goal of the campaign is to inform people about the Swedish tax regulations when you rebuild your house or apartment.

I will also try to get a chance to demo our, soon to go private beta, webapp CodeSlam. CodeSlam basically is Coda but in the cloud, stay tuned for invites and more info.

There is a little trick on how to add the Twitter favourites to the stream; Twitter provides a RSS feed for your favourites, this feed can be quite tricky to find but it looks something like http://twitter.com/favorites/your_username.rss. Just add that feed as a generic feed in Lifestream and it will skip out your tweets and replies.

To make the Favourite strean look a little bit nicer I tweeked the CSS and added my own icons to it. Enjoy!

The book has been further designed and compelled. But the most interesting stuff is that me and Fredrik Broman (@frebro) have been developing an iPhone app for the project. Well to be honest, Fredrik has done the development, much praise to him since this is his first ever attempt on developing for the iPhone.

The idea of the app is to open the book project up and let everyone participate in further extending the worlds largest collection of Tidyman pictograms. The app will feature;

1. The full book and it’s 120+ Tidyman illustrations
2. The possibility to upload found Tidymen to the public gallery
3. Browse and view the public Tidyman gallery

Here is the first mockups for the app.

The basic flow is that the user finds a Tidyman on a package or somewhere else, starts the app and is welcomed by the choices to take a picture to upload or to upload a picture from the camera roll. In addition to the the user can read/browse the book and also browse the public collection.

… and the first design sketches for it …

Here is Fredriks first screencast of the initial development. Please note that the image browser built for the public collection is demoed with some nice japanese artwork instead of Tidyman images: