I won’t replicate the article here (here’s Google Translate for an entertaining English translation) but one thing I will share:

Is there a reason not to buy it?

In my opinion, I don’t think it’s a perfect solution, today. But you need to think of the iPad (and the iPhone OS in general) as an organism that is continually developing and improving and therefore is becoming more interesting every day.

WhenI bought my iPad, it didn’t take long for me to get up to speed with it. If you’ve ever used an iPhone or iPod Touch you’ll be instantly familiar with its interface and special functions.

I wanted to add some quick thoughts and feedback after having an iPad in Italy for more than a month. Note that the iPad has been released in Italy only on May 28th.

• I’m still not comfortable using it on public transportation.

As a woman using public transportation every day in a city where safety is not a guarantee (a woman was raped a few hundred yards from my house), I’m hesitant to pull out the iPad on the metro unless I’m pretty much alone. Sometimes when I’m reading out in public I disguise it behind one of those free newspapers. I suspect this will ease after the iPad comes out in Italy (May 28th), and I can get a case that will make it less conspicuous.

• It’s the most interactive gadget I’ve owned, including my computer.

When I say interactive, I mean it morphs into what I need depending on where I am and especially who I’m with. It manages to involve the other person in a way no other gadget I’ve owned has done, which in part is due to the screen size, but also to the variety of features and applications available. I have yet to find a person whom I can’t excite by showing some fun things or how I’m productive using it.

• The speakers

I was expecting to have to use the device exclusively with headphones like I do with my iPod, but the speakers are pretty powerful. I watched a movie at home on it – we don’t have a television. I also listened to music in the office. It’s not a stereo system, but sharing music and giving a quick listen with friends becomes much more enjoyable.

• The screen

Yes, it gets filled with fingerprints easily, but I carry a microfiber cloth with me (to protect the screen in my purse) and in a few swipes, it’s clean once again. Summer is just now getting into full swing, so I’m curious to see how it will be at the beach. I often read with my iPod Touch at the beach by shading it. I don’t expect it to work in full sun, which is a negative, just like I don’t expect to read a paper book in the dark (whereas I can read on the iPad in the dark).

Some side effects

• I stopped pulling out my Moleskine for quick notes.

A lot of times I wrote in my Moleskine for ideas and designs, and then transferred a more organized or final version into a presentation or email. I find that I’m using the iPad more and more an enhanced note-taking device.

• I’m reading fewer books.

Since the introduction of the iPad, things have gotten worse for the ebook market. Prices have gone up, availability has been reduced across the popular ebook sites and many apps available on the iphone are still not available on the iPad which means those books I bought can’t be read on the iPad. Most iPhone apps can be enlarged for use on the iPad but text is one of the things that suffers the most. The only two apps ready for the iPad in this moment are iBooks and the Kindle app. Stanza, a popular app used to read ebooks and is owned by amazon is still only available for the iPhone. Update: Stanza was released for the iPad on June 3.

• I play more games in dead times.

I’ve never considered myself a gamer but with the iPad I am definitely gaming more – I play a quick game of air hockey with a colleague or 10-pin bowling by myself when I just want to let off steam. This point is a direct consequence of the above point. In the past when I might have opened up the latest book I was reading, now I might play a quick game.

• I make more playlists on the go.

One of the things I didn’t like was the On-the-Go function that small screen, and searching for a particular artist or song took forever. Scroll, scroll, scroll. Now the iPod function is almost exactly like the iTunes experience – I can do a quick search in my library to find an artist, keyword or song title, and make an instant playlist. I can edit playlists very easily with just a few taps.

• The iPod Touch screen seems really, really small.

After using the iPad for a few weeks, I sometimes go back to my iPod Touch to read some books with apps that aren’t available for the iPad yet, and it feels very small, something I never noticed before.

Now that you’re ready to start creating that website you’ve been dreaming about, you’ll need to get web hosting: a place where you can store and modify your website’s content and make it accessible online.

The choice of a web hosting provider is a very personal one. I say this because, for every person who has had a good experience with a provider, you will find one or five or ten who have utter loathing for that exact provider.

I would evaluate a potential web hosting provider based on the following considerations:

• Installing or Utilizing Blog or CMS (Content Management System) Software
  
• 3rd-party Software Installation
  
• Technical Support
  
• Disk Space and Data Transfer
• Video Streaming
• Backup and Shared Hosting vs. Dedicated Server
• Transferring Away & Refunds
  

Here’s some more detail about what to consider for each one:

• Installing or Utilizing Blog or CMS (Content Management System) Software

The ease-of-use of incorporating the blogging platform with your provider is what makes the difference when going to purchase web hosting. Even if you don’t intend to open a blog, many blog/CMS software can be used for static websites as well (like WordPress, which I love). Each blog or CMS software has operating system and/or software components required to run, so check with your intended provider before buying hosting and/or the software.

Some providers will give you a “push-button” or “1-click” installation which will automate the installation of blogging platforms. Other providers will provide a hosting solution that gives you access to the more technical side of your hosting environment like executing scripts, setting up databases and modifying your file system permissions. Check to see if the hosting provider lists which blogging software can run on their servers. If you cannot find this information, I strongly suggest writing an email to their tech support with a list of your blog software’s technical requirements to get confirmation before purchasing a hosting agreement (or blogging software). Here’s WordPress’ list of requirements.

• Ease-of-installation of 3rd party software

As mentioned above, if you are not particularly tech-savvy, it’s important that you understand how much the provider can integrate blog or other 3rd-party software into your web hosting. Even if you’re not interested in hosting a blog, you may need a forum, a photo gallery, a wiki or e-commerce software for your site, and many hosting providers can offer these software integrations or at least support their installation.

Many providers will specify how much control you have over your hosting environment and how much you can put your hands on it (if you can run PHP scripts, install a database, modify the .htaccess file, etc.) but the final compatibility, installation and upkeep of the 3rd-party software will be your responsibility. Some providers will even provide a list of which popular 3rd party software is compatible or is available for push-button installation.

• Technical support: Direct Contact available? Guaranteed Response Times?
  

When I first started hosting with a certain hosting provider, they made it very difficult to contact them directly with problems, and I often had to do a down-the-rabbit-hole chase to find the support email address on their web site. Now, they provide an 800 number to talk with a real person.

Other hosting providers will not give you a direct contact, but they may give you a guaranteed response time or an option to escalate and therefore you know how long it might take to get resolution to your problem.

Before it’s really a necessity, you should identify the support methods in case of an emergency: contact email address / website / telephone, and other information needed to contact them like your username or account information. Other important limits to keep in mind are if the provider limits your technical support to a certain number of questions or if they provide a guaranteed response time or service level agreement on resolution of problems.

If you require a certain level of support, investigate first, and also be prepared to pay extra to ensure you can get it.

• Disk Space and Data Transfer

If you’ve read the Long Tail by Chris Anderson (great book!) you know that disk space is quickly becoming a commodity and most providers will now offer huge amounts of disk space for a low cost. You probably won’t come near to using all of it.

Data transfer is related to the transfer and viewing of the information on your website. When a visitor opens a page on your website, your hosting provider must deliver the text and images on that page to their computer. Multiply that for each visitor, and data transfer may become important to your site if you’re having people download a lot of content (like high resolution images, music files or large PDFs) or if you have enormous amounts of traffic.

Most providers will provide you with such a large amount of data transfer that you can monitor in case you experience a jump in traffic, or upgrade if necessary. Investigate how much is provided with each plan, and in case your website gets linked from Digg or CNN, how you can temporarily meet that demand or upgrade

• Video Streaming

Most videos embedded in blogs can be hosted externally to the blog (on YouTube or Vimeo, for example), but if you are planning on having a lot of video content and would like complete control over the delivery and look & feel of that content, check with your hosting provider if video streaming from their servers is included in the hosting plan you’re considering. This may also figure into calculating the data transfer they provide – the more videos you are streaming, the more data transfer you’ll need.

• Backup

Backup is one of the most important things to your online presence. How often does your host back up your data? Daily, hourly? How far back can you get get copies of your data and files, and with which methods can you access your files? Do you need to submit a request to the provider’s Support, or can you be autonomous and access it directly from your administration panel?

If you’re generating a lot of content and/or you have a very active community generating content and comments, you will need to be more sensitive about how often that content is backed up.

Note that with many blog/CMS software, the backup of the database may not be done by the hosting provider but must be done directly by the user and the hosting provider may provide backups of the content that is not in the database (i.e., image and downloadable files).

• Shared Hosting vs. Dedicated Server

By default, most basic web hosting plans will be considered shared hosting, which means that other websites and domains will be hosted on the same server as your site. You’ll be sharing resources like the server’s disk space, processor, and RAM. For most site or blog needs, shared hosting will be sufficient, but if your site is very popular, you may need a step up from shared hosting like a virtual server or a dedicated server.

Of course, you probably won’t know you need a more robust solution when you first start your website, but it’s a good idea to see if the host has other options available and what you’d need to do to upgrade when the time comes.

• Transferring Away & Refunds

Pay close attention to the refund policy of the providers. Some offer money-back guarantees if you are interested in doing a trial of their services for a few days or weeks so you can get a feel for the service and the administration panel.

Choosing Web Hosting Providers

I don’t want to make this article about endorsement, though I use both Dreamhost and Yahoo for my hosting needs, as I mentioned above – for every person who has a good experience, there will be 10 more with a negative one. I suggest you Google “web hosting providers,”, read some ratings’ sites, ask your friends with successful sites who they use, and evaluate your own site’s needs before buying hosting.

From Lifehacker’s readers: Most Popular Reliable and Affordable Web Hosts

• DreamHost
• Blue Host
• NearlyFreeSpeech.NET
• 1&1
• GoDaddy
• HostGator
• A Small Orange

Image by Donovan Henneberg-Verity

The List.

Also known as The “Stuff I Want to Do Before I Die” List. A Life List. Some may call it a Bucket List, but my List has been around since before the movie.  I never thought it was such a strange thing to have a Life List until I realized most of my acquaintances don’t have one. I started writing my list in 1999.

We are never too young or too old to be constantly thinking about our goals and what we could be pushing ourselves to do. There are times when you should power down, relax, and enjoy the moment. But between those times, you should be moving yourself forward. Feel free to change directions, turn around, or even sit down and rest, but your actions should be focused on movement.

I’ve never understood people that are ok with “seeing what happens tomorrow.” It is true that eventually life will change you and your circumstances whether you want it to or not, but often if you’re ready with your own plans, you can influence or direct the change yourself.

So back to The List.

What’s in the list?

The short answer is: whatever you want.

Want to…be trilingual? Published in a magazine? Jump from an airplane? Shake the President’s hand? Visit every continent on the planet? Visit the moon? Eat local for 6 months? Own your own business? Sing jazz in a club? Graduate from law school? Adopt a child? Be debt-free?

It’s completely up to you.

How to Start:

I used to keep my Life List in a document on my computer, but now I keep it in a Google Doc online, so I can access wherever creativity strikes me.

So get out that clean sheet of paper, crease open that brand new Moleskine, load up that pearly white Google Doc.

Go on, I’ll wait.

Ready?

Some tips for The List:

• Think big, think tall, write it all. Brainstorm. Who’s to judge what is a good goal and a bad goal? Here’s a hint: not even you. Before you hesitate to write something down because “it’s unattainable” “it will never happen” “it’s a stupid idea” – write it down. There are two sides of you: the rational you, which we’ll engage later to accomplish some of these goals, and there’s the dreamer you. Let your dreamer enjoy themselves a little with your List. After all, it’s your life. Write it all down. Don’t judge your ideas right now.
• If you can do it any afternoon, it doesn’t belong here. Unless it’s a small effort that constitutes a lifestyle change, like taking the stairs everywhere for a year, or drinking a glass of water every day for a month, or writing 2 pages longhand every morning for 6 months, etc., it probably doesn’t belong on your list. This is not a grocery list or the day’s to-do list. It’s goals, it’s dreams, it’s accomplishments, it’s pride.
• It needs to be measurable. You should be able to recognize when you’ve actually accomplished the item on your list. “Read more” or “be kinder” or “lose weight” are not specific enough, and are definitely not measurable. Give yourself a specific goal so that you can make it easy to identify the goal when you get there.
• Number them, order them…who cares? Don’t feel the need to order, group or prioritize your List – that’s not what the List is about. That comes later, when you face your fears and start to really attack an item on your list. For now, just let your imagination run wild. I put the date that I added them to my List – I like to look back and see when my bursts of creativity hit me, and also know how long something stays on my List before I accomplish it.
• Make growing your list a priority. Perhaps not as obvious as accomplishing your goals is making sure you have some! The List needs to constantly grow. When you’re first starting, I suggest adding “Add 2 things per month to The List” as a goal, and that will force you to think about it and make it grow.
• Talk to your friends and family about The List. While I am definitely not recommending you make your List public, talk to your friends and family about the fact you have The List. Perhaps share 1-2 goals with them that are not too personal. Engage in talking about your dreams and about having goals with everyone! You’ll see that new inspiration as well as encouragement will come out of it. Dreaming is contagious.
• When you accomplish something, don’t remove it. Date it. The List is not only about your future goals, but it should also be a reminder of what you’ve done and to motivate you to keep accomplishing. Once you achieve a goal, don’t just regale it to your memory – put a date on it, so later you can review some of your accomplishments when you need to.

Want to see some examples of some Lists?

I think peeking into someone’s Life List is a little like giving someone a sponge bath before you even shake their hand – you get a very intimate look into what some of their goals, desires and fantasies are in an instant. Luckily, a few have shared their life lists with you, so you can get that intimate look, and some inspiration for your own Life List.

• John Goddard’s Life List

Calling himself the “World’s Greatest Goal Achiever,” he definitely has some interesting things on his List he created when he was only 15…and he’s crossed a lot of them off!

• Mighty Girl’s Life List

Living in public? Why not share your entire List, blog about what you accomplish…and even get sponsored to fulfill your Life List? That’s that Mighty Girl’s job.

• Nicole is Better’s Life List

Nicole wants you to know how she’s progressing with her Life List and hopes you’ll give a small donation to help her on her adventures. She’s got some really fun items on her List.

Need some inspiration for populating your Llistist?

• The New York Times’ explores Life Lists
• MSNBC talks about Life Lists
• Life Lists of Cool People I know (no, I don’t know them)
• Smithsonian’s 28 Places to See Before You Die—the Taj Mahal, Grand Canyon and More
• Travel & Leisure Travel Life List
• A very comprehensive guide to creating a Life List
• 1000 Places to See Before you Die – the book
• 50 Things to do before you die – Matador Network
• Forbes 10 Things to Do before you Die

Do you have a Life List? Tell me how you fill it up and check it off!

Image by koalazymonkey / CC BY 2.0

Here’s some of the articles I’ve written in January – I hope you enjoy them. Let me know!

• The Stats of Life – What is it about statistics that makes a geek jump for joy? I talk about some great sites to start collecting, organizing and analyzing your life’s statistics

• The New Age of Patronage – Centuries ago, patronage referred to the act of kings or important figures like the Pope sponsoring artists or musicians for the creation of their art. Now, we all can be patrons, with small money but without inauguration. A great site that puts patrons close to the arts is Kickstarter.com.

• Google Wave - Google Wave has introduced a ripple in the way we collaborate. Six months ago, when it was previewed, it seemed like a very intimidating service with the promise “to communicate and collaborate in real time.” I talk about the differences between Wave, email and wikis, and some suggestions to get you started using Wave.
  

• The Internet in Times of Tragedy – The Internet has changed us profoundly, from how we seek information to how we react in times of tragedy. Especially in the wake of the Haiti earthquake, we have more options and ways to react. Here are some of them.

• Apple, our modern-day oracle? – When Apple makes a move, it sends shock waves in every direction. Why do we feel the need to speculate on what Apple’s doing? How Apple’s moves affect our hope and imagination about the future.

• Ebook Format War: There Will Be Blood - There is a war going on. A war for a format. And until there is a universal format for ebooks, the consumer will be the first to lose. But many companies will lose, too. An update on the war for a universal ebook format.

• Solving the Babel Problem – Translation services are trying to make the citizens of the world just a little bit closer – If we can’t have a universal language, Google Translate wants to make communicating as seamless as possible.

• Tackling Indecision: Automate Destiny – Sometimes the most difficult thing about making a decision is not the result, but the process of making it. These decision and recommendation websites like Hunch.com, Yahoo! Answers, Let Simon Decide and Vark.com want to take the place of your best friend in the decision-making process.

Image by thetrial / CC BY-ND 2.0

I can’t link directly to the conversation, but I’d like to pull out some important questions you should consider before buying a Kindle, Sony or any other dedicated ereader device.

• Where am I, the buyer, located?

If you’re in the United States or Canada, you have many options other than the Kindle for an ebook reader, and more ebook stores from which to buy them. But if you’re outside of these two countries, or even outside the UK or Australia, your options are much more limited.

Many ebook stores have geographical restrictions on which books you can buy and require a US/Canadian/UK credit card to purchase books, so first check if there any restrictions tied to the available payment methods. [Read When I Have Time article: Where to Find and Buy Ebooks]

• Is the iPod Touch is the best ebook reading device?

It’s no secret that I love using the iPod Touch to read ebooks – I find it the most flexible regarding formats I can read, and I love the fact that I can do more with it like watch movies, listen to podcasts and use the thousands of applications the Apple store offers. I personally have no problems with the size of the screen or the fact it is back-lit instead of “eye friendly” E Ink.

The good thing about the iPod Touch is that it has the potential to evolve – new applications can come out tomorrow that will help you adapt to the changing ebook world, its formats, and new bookstores! [Read When I Have Time article: iPhone applications to read ebooks]

• So which ebook reading device should I buy?

Prices of these devices are easily in the $2-300+ range, and since most formats are specific to the device, it’s a big decision if you’re interested in keeping a digital library. I recommend to anyone thinking about buying a Kindle or any other dedicated ebook reader to find a friend with one and beg them to let you borrow the device for about 3 days (a week is better) and plan some reading time so you really get a feel for it.

Take a really good look at the device’s ebook store before buying – see if the books you are really interested in are available. If you read my article, you’ll see that books you buy on the Kindle will NOT be able to transfer to another reader device later (like the Sony, for example) so it’s a commitment. Play first! [Read When I Have Time article: Advantages and Disadvantages of ebooks]

• My device gives me access to all the classics like Tolstoy and Jane Austen, isn’t that cool?

I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but almost every ebook reader will give you access to the classics for free – the Project Gutenberg has them in a ton of formats as well as most device manufacturers will encode them for free, since they start out in plain text. I notice that most people don’t read them in the end.

• Isn’t there software that will convert from one format to another to get stuff onto e-readers (I have heard good things about a program called Stanza??)

You can convert any non-DRM file into other formats but if the ebook file is protected (with DRM, Digital Rights Management) as most Kindle/Sony/etc files are, you would need to “crack” them which is illegal and therefore not a good option for everyone, especially if you’re not tech savvy. Of course, some people crack ebook files anyway, but there’s no guarantee that a method for cracking ebooks that works today will work tomorrow.

Also, like you saw, Stanza is a software to read ebooks, not an ebook format. I think there is a lot of confusion between the two. There is no standard ebook format, therefore choosing a device means also choosing which formats you will be able to read.

• Can’t you  put stuff onto Kindles that you don’t buy from Amazon?

For the Kindle, other than the Kindle format which is encrypted with their DRM, you can only put non-DRM Mobipocket files, unencrypted PDF and a few other formats like Microsoft Word which can be encoded into the Amazon Kindle format. Amazon does not support EPUB nor any other special ebook format that might offered by other ebook stores that sell mainstream books.

This has a lot of good info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Kindle Read closely in that many sites compatible with Kindle formats listed will say “unecrypted” or “free” books which means they are public domain books or small pubs/self-published books and not bestsellers.

• Can’t I make a big effort to buy books that don’t have the DRM slapped onto it? I think this can done particularly with the smaller publishers that I buy from?

It depends on what types of books you like to read, but I haven’t seen any “bestsellers” or mainstream books sold without DRM, ever. Small publishers, as you noted, may offer some books without DRM, but if anyone wants mainstream books (think NYT bestsellers, etc.) they will always have DRM.

The best rule to understand is: public domain books can be encoded into ANY format since they start as plain text, so there will be a lot of sites that offer only these books in Kindle/Sony/etc formats but that doesn’t mean they are really a viable solution for buying books you’re interested in.

Most formats : eReader, Sony, Kindle, etc, will give you a way to encrypt into their format, but the source material cannot be encrypted. So you can encrypt a document you create yourself, an email, a self-published ebook into other formats, but you won’t be able to take a Kindle formatted book and encrypt it into a Sony format.

Do you have any more questions before buying an ebook reader?

Photo by houseofsims / CC BY 2.0

Photoshop (from Adobe)

Even now the cost of Photoshop is enough to make your jaw drop (from $200 to $1400), and therefore it is quite an investment to use for those that are casually interested in improving their photos or images.

This year, when I switched to a Mac (thanks to the Vista-XP-Windows7 Bermuda Triangle fiasco) the thing I was most reluctant to leave behind was my working copy of Photoshop.

GIMP (The GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a free, open source program that is very powerful and in many ways better than Photoshop because it’s free and has a great community behind it. Because it lets you be a powerful graphics editor, too. I started playing with GIMP (or the GIMP as some say) more than a year ago, when I didn’t have Photoshop on my work computer and wanted to see how it worked.

Everyone says GIMP has a steep learning curve. They are right. Especially if you’ve never used Photoshop.

But I will show you how you can do 7 easy tricks you would do in Photoshop for absolutely free using GIMP. Of course, these are not really “tricks” in the sense that they are neither original nor groundbreaking, but after learning them and where these functions are located in GIMP, I guarantee you’ll be comfortable with GIMP and on your way to using a powerful and free open source software within a few minutes.

Here are the tricks we’ll cover:

1. Resize an image
2. Add a guide
3. Rotate the image to correct/straighten a horizon
4. Crop an image
5. Change a color image into black and white
6. Fix blemishes or remove unwanted things using Clone
7. Add a text layer watermark

Note: Menu and toolbar names will be in bold and an indication of a nested menu item will be preceded by “>” (i.e., File > Open)

First let’s take a look at our original image we’re going to work on in GIMP.

It’s not a terrible image, right? It’s got some potential. So let’s get to work.

1. Resize an image

The first I usually do when working on an image for my blog or for sharing online is to resize the photo. You won’t need an image that is 3000 pixels across if you’re posting on Flickr or something similar – usually 1000 pixels in width is a safe bet to do a quick resize. Note, this is not a crop – I am not removing anything from the image, for now.

After opening the image, navigate to Image > Scale Image to get the resize dialog box.

And here’s the dialog box. Note that the “chain link” is linked by default, meaning that GIMP will retain the proportions of the image (i.e., an image that is originally 200×100 will reduce to 100×50, etc.) If you need to resize to a specific size (i.e., 100×37) you’ll want to click on the chain to remove the proportion constraint. Also pixels is the default denomination – you can also choose inches or percent to reduce the image by 50%, etc.

Insert the new Height or Width, press your enter/return key and the other measurement will update automatically if the proportions are linked. Once you have entered the measurements you desire, click “Scale” to resize the image.

2. Add a Guide

Guides can be useful to mark the halfway point of an image, when aligning text or different layers or to help correct a horizon. In this example, we’re going to add a guide so we can do the last task.

Go to Image > Guides – then you can choose to add a guide in several ways: by percent (50% horizontally, 10% vertically, etc.), arbitrarily (by pixel) or from the selection – for this example we’ll use a simple guide by percent.

I’ll put the horizontal a little lower than the middle of the image, at 60% horizontal.

Here you can see the guide on the horizontal.

3. Rotate an image (in this case, to fix a horizontal)

Sometimes a picture needs to be rotated because the photographer wants to give it a different look, or feeling, or sometimes you’d just like to straighten up the picture a bit. To rotate the image 90 degrees clockwise/counter-clockwise/or 180 degrees, you can easily do that with Image > Transform and then by choosing the method you’re interested in.

But what if you need to rotate the image just a little? Just a few degrees, or 10, or 45? It wasn’t completely intuitive for me to find how to rotate an image just a little bit. In GIMP you can rotate a layer just a little bit, which is why I suggest doing any rotating to the original image before adding text layers or other modifications.

To rotate the image, access it at Layer > Transform > Arbitrary Rotation:

The dialog box give you the opportunity to enter the degrees the image needs to be rotated, use a slider to rotate it arbitrarily, or you can do it directly on the image by clicking and rotating. This particular photo only needed about 2 degrees of a nudge to straighten it up.

4. Crop an image

Now the image has been straightened, but there are some “gray areas” since now the image doesn’t fill up all the rectangular space. So we need to crop it!

To crop, I usually select the area I want to keep, and then crop. First, select the Rectangle Select Tool in the Toolbox in the upper left. I like to use an additional setting to help me keep the crop in proportion with the original image – in this case it’s a vertical photo so I’m going to select “Fixed Aspect Ratio” on the lower right of the Toolbox and insert 36:54 (width:height) for my image (or 2:3). [Note: this ratio will not work for images from every camera - check your own image ratio]

Then I select the image that no gray/empty area is included in the selection. After selecting, you modify the selection by hovering the mouse at any of the four sides of the image and GIMP will let you extend/decrease the size.

Then, select Image > Crop to Selection.

Now I have an image that is straight and correctly cropped.

5. Change a color image into a black and white image

Sometimes a black and white photo can add some austerity, increase the drama of a photo, or sometimes it’s just something you want instead of the color original. There’s no need to take photos in black and white originally because you can always use software after to turn them black and white.

In GIMP there are actually two different ways to change a color image into a black and white one – by changing the mode to grayscale, or by desaturating it.

To change the mode, go to Image > Mode > Grayscale.

To change the desaturation, go to Colors > Desaturate. I usually compare the different shades with “Lightness” “Luminosity” or “Average” to see which effect I like better.

6. Remove unwanted blemishes from a photo with the Clone Tool

Let’s not turn the photo black and white just yet. Perhaps you didn’t notice that little duck in my original photo (see it there in the middle right?) or that sun glint on the water surface on the bottom left, but we’re going to remove the little guy and that glare to show you the potential of the Clone tool. Let’s take a closer look:

First select the Clone icon (the little stamp) in the Toolbox, and then the Brush size (lower in the Toolbox) you’ll need to use – if it’s a small detail, you’ll need a finer/smaller brush, if it’s a larger area, increase the size of the brush.

Then, select an area using Alt+ click or Option + Click that will be your base/reference area for the cloning. You may have to move this several times to get the effect you want. Bye bye little duckie!

And now we have a cleaner picture:

7. Add a text layer watermark

You may not like watermarks on photos, but I think it’s a simple precaution that many bloggers and photographers do today. You can create a watermark that’s more stylish or beautiful, but to start with, you can just add a text layer to the image and reduce its opacity so that it appears translucent.

Click on the Text Tool (A icon) in the Toolbox, then click and drag on the image where you’d like to put the text box. In the text dialog box, insert the text you want to use as your watermark – for example, your name, your domain, or your blog name.

Then, click on the layer in the Layer Toolbox and reduce the opacity from 100% to an opacity that is comfortable for your watermark. Voila!

And now my picture is ready to be saved and put online! What else would you like to know how to do with GIMP?

Here are some other GIMP tutorial sites, and information on free alternatives to Photoshop:

• 11 Outstanding (Free) Alternatives to Photoshop
• GIMP.org Tutorials
• Gimpology Tutorials
• Open Source photography pool on Flickr
• Open source software for photographers using Linux

image by yohann.aberkane

Sounds confusing, right? It’s really not.

What you need to know about WordPress is that it’s an easy, powerful, and very flexible platform for blogs AND static websites.

What you may not know is that the WordPress community is very large, which means you’ve got a ton of information, documentation, and helpful people (like me) ready to get you started with WordPress.

Note: I am referring to an installed/self-hosted version of WordPress (available at WordPress.org), not the free, hosted sites on WordPress.com

Ready to get your hands dirty with WordPress? This is what you’ll need:

1. Web hosting selected (with needed minimum requirements) and purchased
2. A domain name selected and registered
3. A backup / export of your current blog’s content (optional)
4. A theme / design for your new blog (and pertinent files)
   
5. FTP client software and/or web FTP access to your hosting server
6. WordPress installation files and instructions
7. Bonus: Importing content from existing blog (optional)
   
8. Bonus chapter: not so quick, but very dirty: Modifying old URLs and Images for the new blog

That’s it! You’re ready to go.

Let’s break down each piece:

1. Web Hosting Selected (with needed minimum requirements) & Purchased

WordPress has some minimum requirements to run, and most hosting providers will give you this information in the FAQ area or possibly specify if they are WordPress-compliant. If you don’t see this information, don’t hesitate to email the provider before committing and purchasing your web hosting. Some providers may even offer WordPress as a “pushbutton” or “1 click” installation which means they are not only compliant, they’ll walk you through the installation! Read server requirements for Hosting WordPress so you know what requirements your web hosting provider has to have to run WordPress. {Read the WHT article about How to Choose Web Hosting for your Site}

Really quick & dirty: buy web hosting from one of WordPress’ web hosting partners

2. A Domain Name Selected and Purchased

For the purposes of this example, I’m assuming you’re moving from a free blogging platform with an existing (free) URL like myblogname.oldblogsoftware.com, and you’re interested in moving to a hosted WordPress installation on your own domain. If you don’t have a domain yet, read the {WHT article: How to Buy a Domain and What to Do With It}. In this case, as mentioned above, you want to buy web hosting for your domain.

Really quick & dirty: most domains can be purchased directly from your web hosting provider and you can do it during the setup of your web hosting account or directly after.

3. A Backup of your Current Blog’s Content (Posts and Pictures!)

WordPress can accept just about any blog’s content on the planet. Your job is to find out how to export the content of your particular blog and save it to a safe place on your computer.

Here are some shortcuts for the most popular blogging platforms – if you are given a choice, you’ll want to export in XML format:

• Export content from Blogger: Dashboard>Settings>Blog Tools >Export Blog or read How to Export on Blogger’s Help Forum
  
• Export from TypePad: Export/Import on Six Apart’s knowledge base – (they actually go into quite a bit of detail about moving from TypePad to WordPress)
• Export from Movable Type: Exporting content from Movable Type
• Export from LiveJournal: Log into LiveJournal’s Export page
  
• Export from Posterous: it has the functionality available via their API, but someone still has to write an exporter (Nov 09)
  

You’ll also need to download pictures and other content you’ve uploaded in your current blog. If you’re using Flickr for your images, and you embed the HTML code directly into your posts, you won’t need to do anything.

Really quick and dirty: Pay a friend to do this for you. Or dinner works, too. But not pizza – don’t be cheap, man!

4. A Theme / Design for your New Blog (and pertinent files)

I could write several posts about choosing a theme, but for now I will keep it simple: visit blogs (if you’re reading RSS feeds, click through!) and start noting which sites make you sit up and take notice and what you don’t like. Then start to understand what kind of design you’re looking for with your new blog (2 columns, dark, rotating header image, red, etc.) and then go here to narrow down your choices: WordPress Themes

I suggest downloading at least 2-3 blog themes that you like, so after you get your content imported and the themes uploaded, you can switch from one to the other if you find your favorite theme doesn’t suit your content. You may also consider paying someone to make you a custom design, but for now let’s just concentrate on a clean free design for the first iteration of your WordPress blog!

Really quick and dirty: Use one of the 30+ free themes that are automatically included in your WordPress basic installation, accessible via the Administration panel : Appearance > Themes.

5. FTP Client Software and/or Web FTP Access to your Hosting Server

You’ll also need a FTP (File Transfer Protocol) client software so that you can transfer files from your hard drive to your web hosting server, including most of the WordPress installation files (if you don’t have assisted installation through your web hosting provider) and your blog’s content like themes and photos. I suggest FileZilla FTP Client – it’s open source!

Really quick and dirty: Your web hosting may provide a web interface to upload files via web FTP, so you won’t have to install anything additionally, but you may find an FTP software to be easier and faster.

6. WordPress Installation Files and Instructions

You can always find the latest version of WordPress at: http://wordpress.org/download/ – you’ll need to save this to your computer. Then you’ll want to get started with Installing WordPress. You’ll especially want to have the detailed instructions page as well as the Famous 5-minute installation pages open.

Really quick and dirty: Use one of the WordPress hosting partners with 1-click installation for WordPress. Otherwise, you’ll definitely want a friend who’s installed WordPress before to help you with this – bribe them nicely!

7. Import Content from Existing Blog (optional)

Now you’ve got a working version of WordPress with some default content. Now to import your content. After you’re logged on as administrator, Click on Tools to expand the submenu on the WordPress administration panel. Next, scroll down if necessary and click Import to show the various import options. Next, click your previous blog’s type and follow the directions. Read more about Importing content from other blogging software into WordPress.

Geek Tip – only for the adventurous: If you have a large blog, you may get an error uploading your content as the uploader times out. MAKE A COPY/BACKUP of the original import file you downloaded from your previous blog interface. Then take the file and divide it into two or three pieces (you’ll want to make sure you cut off before the <ENTRY> or <POST> XML tag)

Really quick and dirty: It can’t get much quicker or dirtier than this. Be content.

That’s the end of the quick and dirty guide to Getting Started with WordPress. Below is a bonus chapter that has to do with cleaning up after yourself and your move.

8. (Bonus) Modifying Old Internal URLs and Images for the new blog

Chances are, if you’re a decent blogger, you’ve linked to yourself at some point, or often, within your posts. While WordPress will change the structure of your posts’ permalinks (URL) from oldblog.oldblogsoftware.com/mypostname to www.newdomainname.com/mypostname when you import your content, it will not change any internal references to your content. Oh dear, what’s a blogger to do? If you’ve got a friend who is comfortable rooting around in your database (MAKE A BACKUP FIRST BEFORE ANYONE PLAYS!), they can do a find and replace in your wp_posts table and do a partial replace (find: oldblog.oldblogsoftware.com substitute with: www.newdomainname.com).

If you don’t have any friends like that, or you prefer not to take chances, I can only say you’ll just have to go in by hand to each post, update the URL and save the post again. I suggest starting with your 10 most recent posts (more likely to be seen with random “Older posts” browsing) and your top 10-20 most popular posts and update the URLs.

Geek Tip: You’ll want to understand permalinks well when you import your blog – if your old blog post URLs were structured oldblog.oldblogstructure.com/day/month/year/postname, and your new blog’s URL structure is www.newdomainname.com/postname, you’ll have to pay attention when updating your URLs.

Anything I’m missing from the Quick and Dirty Guide? Let me know.

Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/photonoob/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

These are the pillars of how I organize my day:

• GTD Inbox
• Task Lists
• Info Dump/Tickler

If you haven’t heard of the “Getting Things Done” method by David Allen, or GTD by those that know and love it, it’s definitely worth checking out. It bills itself as a “The Art of Stress-free Productivity.” The book goes into a lot of detail about the method and how to apply it to your life. A lot of detail.

I don’t follow the GTD method to the letter, but I do employ several of the fundamentals of the method. The GTD Inbox is one of them.

GTD Inbox

It’s inevitable that you’ll have multiple email addresses, or use filters to redirect or route important emails so that they get the attention they deserve. I actually use one address for all my online signups / accounts and newsletters so that I can separate notifications and newsletter/promotional mails more effectively from personal correspondence, and I use some other addresses for other specific reasons.

I prefer to have a “Zero Inbox” when dealing with email. That doesn’t mean that I won’t have unanswered emails, but I use a filtering method to check all my incoming mail and decide what’s best to do with it and move it immediately out of my Inbox (or various incoming mailboxes).

The GTD method tells you to immediately answer anything that will take less than 2 minutes to respond to, and to not put it off. Emails that don’t need an answer get archived immediately, and any emails that require a response or further action on my part before I can respond get filed into my “ACTION” tag/folder.

Thus my Inbox looks like this:

• 1-ACTION - emails that require a response on my part or require me to do something so that I can remove the email and archive it. I added the “1″ so that the folder will always be at the top).
• 2-HOLD – the GTD method can also call it WAITING – emails that I need an answer to, or information from that person that is keeping me from completing another task (i.e., task: pay invoice. I sent an email asking for the invoice (ACTION) but I’m still waiting for a reply (HOLD)). It’s important that you don’t put every email you’ve replied to here, but only ones that are necessary or blocking you from completing another task, AND you’ve already done your part in providing info/responding.
• Archive: Thanks to advanced email search, you really don’t need to tag, star or put your emails into multiple folders, in my opinion – a full-text search is sure to find the information you’re looking for in a few seconds. All my answered emails get archived. Emails I don’t need to reply to get archived. Emails that have been too long in my ACTION folder get archived.

Task Lists

One of my favorite things growing up was making to-do lists on these 1/2 size yellow pads. I think my family bought them at Costco so it seemed that there was always one around but I’m sure we had to refill them multiple times.

Making lists for me is crucial because it’s a key component for visual brainstorming – you can break down a task into approachable bytes and bits that can be accomplished quickly, delegated or investigated as necessary. I can write everything down before I have to filter, judge or prioritize ideas and items.

There are so many choices to manage lists it can get confusing. There are any number of list management tools online and offline. I prefer to do my task-list management online now, because I find it’s easier to re-organize, move and add/change additional information and metadata like due dates, relative URLs (when’s the last time you wrote down a long URL in a notebook?) and typing it out is usually quicker than writing it.

I use Remember the Milk online and offline (“offline” with my Apple iPod Touch and the RTM application – requires a Pro account). It has many features and can interact with Twitter as well as your Google calendar and receiving tasks via email.

I have my lists broken down into sub-lists/groups per website, organization, event, etc., plus “MIT” – Most Important Tasks and “Up Next” – upcoming tasks lists as a way to focus my most important activities of the day and near future. GTD is a big proponent of having a Most Important Task to get done that day, so it should be accomplished within that day or in a time frame that you decide. It’s a good way to get re-focused after a break or if you feel a bit overwhelmed with all you need to do. If you complete your MITs for the day, at least you’ll have accomplished something!

My “Up Next” are things that I think will become MITs soon, just in case I finish my MIT list and have some time to do some more tasks or want to get a headstart on something.

Info Dump – Tickler

One of the things I like most about GTD is the emphasis on the brain/info dump – get it out of your head, so you’re not thinking about it, and therefore you can get back to attacking your projects and tasks.

I consider my info dump “Tickler” the most important part of my organization system. While it’s technologically basic, and requires no special software or skill to enact, it is a practice that needs to become ritual.

The crux of the info dump-tickler is to get ideas out of your head to a holding or evaluation place, and then return back to the most important tasks of the day. I can’t stress how much this practice of consistently writing down ideas in a safe place when they come to you can free up some of those critical brain cycles.

I keep something close at hand at all times so that I can get things out of my head as soon as possible – into my online list management (RTM), into my iTouch Notes or into my Moleskine. I always add these offline ideas to my online lists later or at the end of the day.

If an idea comes to me that is related to a specific project, it goes into that task list. But often I find the most disruptive ideas I get are orphan, spontaneous new ideas that are just plainly that: ideas or glimpses into the future. Buy this domain, start that project, email this person, invent this, improve that this way…These are the types of ideas that can really occupy your brain for fear of losing it.

I put these “orphan” ideas into what I call my “Tickler” list – a list of things I haven’t started yet (or perhaps will never start) but they are worth noting and returning to later when I have a little extra time or I am searching for inspiration. The existence of my Tickler list also allows me to stretch my imagination a bit, knowing that whatever I come up with won’t be lost but will be addressed later.

Working the Components Together

The key to the task lists, info dump and processing your emails is of course systematically checking your lists and email systems so that you can regularly modify, accomplish and change your priorities.

GTD suggests a weekly review of all of your projects and priorities to see what’s going to be a future priority, further define tasks that seem vague and/or stuck, and of course, delve into the Tickler to find some new inspiration and projects.

Resources

• Remember the Milk
• Gmail’s Task List feature
• Moleskine notebooks
• Todoist.com online list management

So there you have it! My Holy Trinity of Organization. How do you stay organized?

image by Uwe Hermann

Dear Ask the Geek,

I’m beginning to get a decent amount of hits on my blog (5000 pages/3000 unique per month…not millions, I know, but they’re increasing steadily), along with lots of requests to advertise. I need to determine the best way to monetize both the blog, and/or all my sites. I use text-link-ads at the moment, but I need some advice on where to go from here.

Sincerely,

I Work Hard for the Money

Dear I Work Hard for the Money,

Monetization is a formula that’s very specific for every site, and one that needs to be constantly evaluated based on your website’s goals and content, and perhaps your business needs at large. I think talking about the three following things will help answer your question:

• Website conversions
• Paid links & Transparency
• Advertising rates and payment types

Website Conversions

Understanding your website’s main objective (and in particular, if there is a monetary correlation) is called a conversion:

Conversion is the process of successfully achieving the primary objective of a specific page or website.[1]

Focusing on defining what the conversion for your website is will make things much clearer for you regarding advertising – what kind of advertisers you’d like to host, pursue, and what type of visitors you’ll want on your site to fulfill your website’s goals. Also, it will help you further define your audience (existing or ideal) and therefore understand what type of advertising will not be intrusive or a nuisance but rather a service to them!  i.e., you have a site about Venice, but you get an offer to host an ad for part replacements – does it make sense? Does your audience want that?

Of course, conversions don’t have to be strictly monetary – perhaps you’re hoping to turn visits into writing opportunities, photos sold, or email inquiries received. Perhaps after defining your website’s conversion, you’ll find that you should actually think about BUYING advertising instead of hosting ads on your site for others, or make it available in a subscription format, etc.

Here are some questions that you should answer to help define what your website conversions might be:

• How do you measure the success of your site currently?
• Beyond the number of visitors and traffic in general, how are you planning to track the effectiveness of your site? What factors will be considered when examining who comes to your site and how they’re getting there? Are some sources/referrers higher-valued than others? Why?
• Are there particular key pages on your website you want your audience to see/visit or are there particular paths the user should complete that could be considered conversions? (i.e., request information/quote, buy product, stumble, etc)
• Is there a correlation between more traffic and an increase in “sales/conversions” in other ways? (more tours, more photos sold, more products bought, etc.) How are you measuring this?
• Should you be focusing on better-serving your existing audience instead of looking for more traffic? How are you measuring the experience of visitors to your website?
• How much money are you expecting to make? Do you have an actual target / fiscal need that must be met and is driving your website’s purpose?

Write the answers to these questions down along with your other brainstorming, or perhaps create a light business plan, and then you can use this to base all your other decisions regarding partnerships, revenue goals and advertising.

Tip: If you end up instead buying advertising, understanding your website conversion is essential to measure if your investment is giving a good return on investment (ROI).

Paid Links & Transparency

Google doesn’t like paid text links, or more specifically: Google doesn’t like links that are not labeled as advertising (“selling links”) because it compromises the integrity of how they calculate PageRank and therefore the influence a certain site has. I’m not sure exactly how you have configured your advertising/paid links (or what you’re getting in terms of revenue) but you might want to read this article about paid links by Google. With that being said, many have decided not to care what Google thinks and use them anyway.

I can give you some advice regarding monetizing, but I think monetizing your website is like finding the perfect pair of jeans: every site is going to have the perfect fit and mix of advertising that’s different from everyone else.

I think the best type of advertising to sell is that which respects the trust relationship you have between you and your audience. In my case, I believe graphic advertising, in designated advertising areas of one’s site and clearly labelled are best. They may affect the aesthetics of your site but the transparency is very clear to your audience.

Since your sites are quite focused, and you have the opportunity to find local/niche businesses that might want to be featured, you can probably take a pro-active approach and contact them with your rates, whether it be graphic advertising or text links. You may try to attract a quality advertiser with discounted rates if it adds then to your site’s own reputation to have them advertising there or helps you get other advertising contracts based on the reputation of your current advertiser.

Types of Ads and Payment

If you’re determined to have ads on your site, whether you’re selling them directly to the business or opting into an ad network (like Google) you’ll need to understand how your payments are calculated.

Ads, in terms of payment, can be broken down into two general categories – CPM (cost per thousand page impressions) and CPC (cost-per-click). Google AdSense, for example, pays per click. Usually CPM are offered in conjunction with several ad networks (like BlogHer, Federated Media, etc.) who sell a level of exposure to advertisers across their network of blogs, but CPM can also be inferred if you’re offering an ad space for a specific period of time, like a month.

The CPM formula can be calculated by dividing the cost by the number of thousands of page views. For example, if your blog gets 10,000 page views a month, and you’re selling an ad space for $30/month, the CPM is therefore: 30.00/(10,000/1,000) = $3.00/CPM. Alternatively, you may negotiate a CPM that is good for X number of impressions and the advertisement is removed by you after meeting this quota.

Google includes a CPM rate in their calculation, but it’s actually a post-facto calculation that is made based on the ads clicked and however much they negotiated per-click with that ad owner. They call it Effective CPM, which is why you can see different CPMs for the different advertising spaces you have on your page. It depends on how many clicks they have received.

A third type of advertisement type is called an affiliate link / ad / offer, which means that you don’t receive anything from the ad owner unless the user purchases something on the ad owner’s website, and you’ll receive a percentage of this sale. These affiliate links can be internal to your site’s content (much like text links) or an offer/link to an affiliate store in your sidebar.

Sara Rosso (aka WHT’s In-House Geek)

Resources

• Advertising 101 for Bloggers and Developing a Strategic Business Plan from Design*Sponge (excellent!!)
• Perform Better With AdSense: The Ultimate Round-Up from Smashing Magazine
• 10 Things to Consider when Choosing an Ad Network from Food Blog Alliance
• What is Affiliate Marketing? from ProBlogger
• The Google Page Rank Pendulum Swings…. Again from ProBlogger
• How to Monetize Your Site with Video from Mashable
• Effective CPM from Google

Hopefully I don’t need to spend a lot of time convincing you that backup is essential to anyone that has digital data. And who doesn’t these days? Some of the benefits for backing up are avoiding data loss and gaining data independence from your physical computer and therefore, being more prepared for an eventual failure or crash.

• What to Backup
• Different types of Backup
• Backup vs. Archiving
• Scheduling and My Backup Setup
  
• Backup Software, Online Backup Services and Google Docs
• Resources

What to Backup

In short, anything you have on your computer you can’t bear to lose.

I backup what I consider to be the most important documents to me: my photos, my writing, organizational and university documents, and archives of important orders or noteworthy digital receipts. Anything I can’t replicate easily, or whose historical value means something to me. I also backup my ebooks, music and films I’ve purchased as some sites don’t provide you with a bookshelf or a way to re-download the media after purchase.

I often download files, programs and installation files to a specific folder (like C:/downloads) so that I can find the exact program later and re-install if necessary. Backup your installation files if you’ve downloaded them from the Internet, especially if they aren’t easy-to-remember program/website names.

If you’re using an email client that downloads mail directly to your computer, you’ll definitely want to have a backup of those email, too.

Different types of Backup

Backup is generally divided into two methodologies: file-based and image-based backup.

Image-based backup or disk imaging is like taking a snapshot of your computer’s current state and configuration. It will make an exact copy of your operating system, programs and drivers in that moment, useful for restoring at a later date. The entire backup is saved as a single file that is not navigable / explorable because it’s a complete package – you won’t be able to just restore a particular file or driver. If you’ve ever seen an installation CD for your favorite software, the data on the CD is usually in an .iso format which means it’s a disk image.

Image-based backup can be helpful to capture a particular state of your hard drive, installations, or system settings and is more popular for servers that are in a production environment, or a commercial setting. Most end users will not need to make an image backup. If you have a disk that is partitioned (i.e., on C:\ you have all your programs and operating system, and on D:\ you have just your data) you may decide to image the entire data drive instead of selecting particular folders.

File-based backup is based on selecting files, folders or even file types for backup. This is the most common usage of backup and allows you to have clear control on what exactly is being backed up. To allow for some flexibility, I select high-level folders (like C:\mydocs) where I save all my personal data. Centrally saving your data and downloads so you can easily locate them later is a good practice to get into – try to override any default settings in programs to save in their particular folders.

Doing a backup by file type (like all images: .jpg, .gif, etc.) can be useful to someone who just wants to back up photos or a particular type of document they have on their hard drive. Backup by file type can be limiting, though, especially if you’re not sure what kind of data you’re going to be producing in the future or if you don’t regularly check your backup settings to see if something needs to be changed to be more inclusive.

Backup vs. Archiving

Archiving is different from backup. Backup means that a file is copied to a secondary location where it will reside until it’s needed to replace or restore the version on the primary device. With archiving, the primary copy of the data is on a secondary device (like an external hard drive), and the original copy is deleted from the primary device (i.e., your laptop hard drive). Archiving a file means future versions of this file will not be synchronized to the secondary device and/or if the file is deleted from the primary device, the archived version on the secondary device is not affected.

Be careful that you don’t mix up the terms backup and archiving when looking at backup software and online services. Most software and solutions available today are based on synchronizing or backing up your computer’s actual state and files and are not archive solutions. If a file is deleted from the primary device, then a version of the file is available from the last time you backed it up on the secondary device. But if a file is deleted/changed/lost, and then a synchronization is executed before recovery is attempted from the secondary device, that file will be deleted/changed/updated on the backup repository and therefore non-recoverable.

Scheduling and My Current Backup Setup

With scheduling, you can really harness the true power of doing a backup – being able to schedule your backup automatically. Depending on your data generation/modification habits, I would suggest scheduling a backup once or a few times a week to keep your backups fresh and relevant.

My Backup Setup

For fun, I’m going to share the backup and archiving solution that I use at home. Perhaps you might feel I’m a little cautious with a lot of my failover, but it definitely goes back to the benefit of backup – feeling independent from my computer. My laptop is 4 years old, but I don’t worry anymore about the day that it might break down. My laptop drive is so small that most of my new content can’t fit on it anymore.

• A. Primary device – laptop 60GB
• B. Backup drive 1 – 250GB
• C. Backup drive 2 – 750GB
• D. Online backup services – MozyHome

On A, I keep some personal documents and photos, which I then back up to B. On B, I now also have some photos and original content which only exist on B (and not on A). These documents and photos from A & B are backed up onto D, my online backup service. Then the entire contents of B (backed-up files from A, and primary content on B) is backed up to C. On C there is some primary/original content that is not backed up, and for now I’m ok with that.

Backup Software and Online Backup Services

There are many options for online and offline backup, many of which are listed in the articles at the end of this post. If you already have an external hard drive you back up to, you still might need software to help the scheduling or synchronization process. I use Synkron which is an open source software that synchronizes folders which works pretty well. If you don’t have an external hard drive, what are you waiting for? They are getting cheaper every day – pick up a Western Digital or Seagate drive.

If you’re running Windows, you may not have to buy anything. Microsoft XP comes with its own backup software = Windows XP Backup – installed automatically on XP Pro and available to XP Home users, too. I’ve never used it so I can’t vouch for its effectiveness, but it appears you can select what to backup and even schedule it. Read more about how to set up Windows XP Backup.

As far as online backup options, there are so many. I have been using Mozy (Pro) for my online backup more than a year, and while it’s a little slow, I’ve been generally happy. If you feel like giving me a little love, you can sign up for Mozy using my referral link – but that’s up to you. Here’s also a clean link to Mozy with no referral.

Another popular solution for online backup is Dropbox. We use it often at work to share files and folders among members of a virtual working group. Similar to Mozy, you get 2GB free and they have other, more robust options for pay.

Worth mentioning, and one you might not have thought of is Google Docs, an online document service that will actually import files into their online versions. If you’ve got text, presentation or Word files that you’d like to be accessible online, this is a great way to have a copy of them online, but it’s not a good solution for continuous backup. Note that Google Docs does NOT have a guarantee for users so it’s possible that some day your documents could be lost or they could turn off the service.

What concerns or issues do you have when it comes to backup? What’s your setup like?

Resources

• 10 Data Backup, Storage and Sharing Solutions from Smashing Magazine
• CNET’s list of backup software
• List of backup software on Wikipedia
• List of online backup services on Wikipedia
• Best online backup services by PCMag
• Synching your files with SugarSync by NYTimes

(img by zebble)
Note: There are affiliate links in this post which are clearly labeled.