Avoid a Meltdown: Back up Your Data!

Here's a true story.

On April 26, 1999, I went to turn on my computer as I had done hundreds of times before. Instead of getting the boot-up screen, all I heard was a short beep. The computer was on, but nothing was appearing on the screen. I turned it off and tried again, but the same thing happened. This wasn't the first time that something wrong had happened on my computer, so I went to work trying to fix the problem. Many hours later, I was completely stumped, but I was sure something really bad had happened.

The next day I heard about a breaking news story from one of my computer geek friends: A computer virus called "Chernobyl" had erupted in a huge number of computers across the world. It remained dormant on a user's system until a special date (April 26, 1999, an anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown in Russia), upon which the virus severely damaged the data of the system's hard disk. After reading the news reports, there was no doubt in my mind that I had been a victim of this vandalism. My data was long gone. All my school work, all my personal files, all my programming projects... it was all wiped clean, and I didn't have a backup.

You probably have thousands of irreplaceable photos and documents that could be lost in an instant. How would you feel if tomorrow they were erased completely from your computer? You can lose your data in countless ways, even if you're on a Mac and don't worry so much about viruses. Do you have an adequate backup? Don't be as stupid as I was. If you do not have a backup system, you need to get one immediately.

Ok, so now your scared (as you should be), and want to get your act together by setting up a backup system. How do you do it? I suggest that you invest $65 to $100 on what is called an "external hard drive." This is a hard drive that remains outside of your computer case, and connects to your computer via a USB cable. Once you set it up following the manufacturer's instructions, you can easily copy your sensitive files to the drive. Most drives will come with a backup utility that may allow you to schedule backups of certain files or directories at a particular time.

Another option is to pay for an online storage service such as Mozy, which allows you to upload your data to their company computers. This is nice because your data is safer when stored in two different locations ( If you're house burns down, your computer AND external drive would most likely be burned.) The downside is that it takes a long time to transfer a lot of data across the internet.

It doesn't really matter how you do it, just do it! And do it often.

It's not important for you to backup your entire system. Things like programs can be easily replaced by reinstalling them from a CD or download. The data that is essential to backup are the things that are irreplaceable: photos, personal documents, and anything else that can't be recovered for a price. Data storage nowadays is very cheap, so if you're in doubt about what to backup, play it safe.

Now, don't think that a data disaster won't happen to you. Make sure that you are ready for a catastrophe by creating a backup plan right now. For less than $100 bucks and just a little bit of setup time, you'll be much safer. Is your data worth $100 bucks?

OpenOffice: Save That Ca$h!

Recently, a good friend of mine told me how disappointed he was when budgeting for a new computer. He could afford paying for the computer itself, but was completely overwhelmed when he realized how much he would have to spend on software. A brand new copy of Microsoft's Office 2007 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc...) would have cost him over $300 for the professional version, a program that is NOT included in Windows by default.

So, are you stuck paying a boatload of money for software? Absolutely not.

OpenOffice (OO) is a FREE alternative to Microsoft's office package, and it works very well. It has all the programs that office does, only under different names. For example, the OpenOffice equivalent to Word is called Writer. The Excel equivalent is called Calc. OpenOffice also contains programs for presentations, databases, and charts/drawings. It is even capable of opening/editing/saving documents in Microsoft's proprietary formats. All of the major features of MS Office are available in OpenOffice, and it's completely free (even for commercial use). If a company of 1,000 employees used OO, that would save them over a quarter of a million dollars. Send some of that cash over here!

Ok, Ok. Maybe you are skeptical. How well does OpenOffice really work compared to MS Office? My answer: I, personally, would rather write a document in OO than I would in MS. There are many ways to customize the tools for an individual, and the interface is clean/professional. The annoying glitches that often plague MS documents are gone. Need a PDF of your document? Just click "Export PDF" and you got one. Best of all, OO is free from any proprietary formats, so no one can ever control you or your work. Did I mention it's free? Click here for a list of reviews on OpenOffice.

What you should know about OO

Users should have no problem learning how to use OO if they already know MS Office, because most of the interface is very similar. Some features are placed in other locations, so be patient as you get familiar with OO.

One thing that is still under development in OO is a grammar checker. While this feature is not yet completed, future versions of OO will undoubtedly have it. The spell checker in OO works perfectly.

OpenOffice will do a good job of allowing you to open/edit/save your MS office files, but there may be issues when dealing with documents containing a lot of formatting. For example, if you are using MS Word to create a brochure (why you would use Word for this, I don't know), it may mess up some of the alignment. This is due to the fact that MS Office files are stored in a proprietary format. It's not OpenOffice's fault.

Get OpenOffice

Give it a try. If you don't like it, it was free anyway. I'm sure you will appreciate this product if you give it a fair try. Just click this button:

1-800-GOOG-411

Double Stamp recently published an article about Google’s rising power and domination of the information retrieval industry. This domination is due to providing excellent and free services to the public. Check this one out…

Scenario: You just left your house to attend a friend’s wedding reception at “La Pueblina.” You’ve never been there, so when you discover half way there that you forgot to write down the address, you’re understandably frustrated. You could pull over to a gas station and try to look it up in the phone book, but that takes to much time. You could call someone near a computer and have him/her look it up for you, but that’s even worse. Suddenly, you remember the article that you just read on Double Stamp about Google’s new (free) 411 service. That’s it!

You pull over and dial 1-800-GOOG-411 from your cell phone.

Google: “What city and state?”
You: “Your city, your state.”
Google: “What Business name or category?”
You: “La Pueblina”
Google: “Top 2 results: 1) La Pueblina Reception Hall. 2) La Pueblina Bowling Alley”
You: “One”

Google continues to provide you with the address, telephone number, and other details. You quickly note down the address of La Pueblina, and arrive perfectly in time to your friend’s wedding reception. Excellent.

Next time you find yourself driving in circles, trying to find a particular business or restaurant, give GOOG-411 a try.

Keep Private Data Safe From Web Snoops

The internet is vast web of connections which link personal computers, corporate networks, government servers and foreign organizations. When you connect to a particular website, the data that you enter and receive passes through a number of computers outside of your control. So, what prevents a user on one of those computers from intercepting your data and reading it? Nothing usually, but private data CAN be protected if you use something called "Secure Socket Layers" (SSL). This article isn't intended to explain the details of SSL. It is intended to make sure that you, a user of the internet, know how to determine if your data is safe. You don't have to know how a watch works to read the time.

First, you should never consider your information secure when using a computer that isn't your own. When you load your email, visit a banking site, or load any information that is considered sensitive, that information gets stored into the memory of the computer that you are using. If you're not the owner of that computer, you can't be sure that no one will obtain your sensitive info. It doesn't matter how secure your connection to the web is, your data is still stored locally. If you do not trust the owners of the computer you are using, don't load or enter any sensitive material. Buying something online with your credit card while using a foreign internet cafe computer is a bad idea, as the owners may be recording every keystroke you make.

Now, on to SSL. The concept is really simple: SSL protects your data from potential snoopers by encrypting it before sending. Your browser encodes your sensitive information using encryption, the coded data is sent, and the computer that you are connecting to decodes it. If someone in the middle intercepts your data, they will just see a bunch of gibberish codes. When you connect to a website using the "https://" instead of "http://" prefix, you are telling the browser to protect your data using SSL. The pictures here show a secure connection being made to gmail, so no one can read my email even if they intercept it! If you have a gmail account, just go to https://www.gmail.com instead of http://www.gmail.com if you want to try it yourself. Many other online mail systems carry this feature as well.

If a proper secure connection has been made, you should see a little picture of a lock in the lower right hand corner of your page. Hovering your mouse over the lock will show you the third party organization that has verified the website in question. Companies like IdenTrust and Verisign are common examples of companies that make this verification.

Bottom line... if you don't see https:// in your address bar, and there is no lock in the bottom right hand corner of your screen, don't enter or try to retrieve any sensitive information! Don't pay your bills online, don't do any bank transactions, and don't read sensitive material. However, if you do see the https://, the lock, and you're using a computer you trust, your data is secure.

Now, go practice. Check your bank's account and the sites you use to pay your bills online to make sure they are doing things right. If there's no https and lock, send a complaint. There is no reason that any website dealing with sensitive information should not be using this technology.

I'll trade you 4 IEs for 1 Firefox

If you run Windows it is very possible that you are viewing this page in Internet Explorer, Microsoft's pre-packaged web browser that comes with Windows (often called IE). To be sure, look in the upper left corner of the page. If you see a blue "e" icon, then you're using IE, and this article is intended to help you understand why you should try a different browser: Firefox. Maybe you're just fine with IE, or maybe it seems like too big of a hassle to change. Read on before you blow this off..

First, IE does a terrible job of interpreting web pages. An organization known as the World Wide Web Consortium creates standards on how browsers should display the files that are loaded when you visit a website. When the browsers are made to be compliant with the specifications of this organization, web designers can be assured that their pages will display correctly, no matter which browser is being used. Microsoft has ignored huge portions of these standards in developing IE, thus limiting many of the tools that would be available to web designers. It's kind of like trying to use a Phillips screwdriver on a proprietary screw that doesn't fit. As a web designer myself, I have pulled out my hair (which is why I am somewhat bald) trying to get my web pages to look the way that I intended them in IE. Web designers waste time figuring out how to "hack" their websites into working with IE. As a user, you get a less functional, less efficient browser using IE. Lame...

Secondly, IE is a lot less secure than Firefox. IE is closely built around the foundations Windows, making it much easier for a hacker or malicious user to use web pages to mess with your computer. Firefox, on the other hand, was built as a separate block, making security exploits much more difficult. I can guarantee you that your "spyware" scanner will find much fewer problems if you switch to Firefox.

Now, forget about the problems with IE, what's so great about Firefox itself? Firefox is very efficient; It uses less memory and displays pages very quickly. It has many user options which will allow you to navigate the way that YOU want to navigate. For example, don't you hate it when you click on a link and it opens a whole new window? You can set Firefox to disallow that, or have it open in another "tab" instead of a whole new window. There are all kinds of simple yet powerful options that you can set up in Firefox.



Firefox also has a great architecture for add-ons. Add-ons are little modules that you can install into your browser to make it do new things. For example, you can install an add-on called WeatherFox which will show you your local weather forcast in the corner of your broswer. Want to listen to music right inside your browser? Try FoxyTunes. Maybe you want a tool that will allow you to load photos and web content quickly to your family blog... Firefox has extentions for that too. Here's a page with tons of firefox add-ons that you can explore.

Firefox has a whole slew of security features that you can learn about if you search the web. It's built to last, very slick, and well designed. There is no doubt in my mind that it is the best web browser available today, and I know you'll love it if you try it out. On top of that, it is entirely FREE and always will be. Get it now for free here.

Google: Service or Timebomb?

Whether you realize it or not, a revolution is happening right now. 50 years from now, entire sections of history books will be dedicated to the information revolution which began with the birth of the web. Google has played a key role in triggering this revolution by striving to provide searches for not only web pages, but anything else containing information. Here is Google's official mission statement:

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

I am a big fan of Google. Gmail is by far my favorite email system, and I am signed up for just about every other google service they provide. As far as search and web applications go, it's hard to find anyone who does a better job than Google, which is why so many people use their services. They have earned their massive user base by providing innovative products for free, and have forced other companies like Yahoo! and Microsoft to reconsider how they do business. They have done so, for the most part, in a respectful and non-manipulative fashion.

With so much information being fed to Google's computer systems, (as well as Microsoft's and Yahoo's) how will these companies manage their increasing power? 15 years from now, every major book, movie, song, magazine, newspaper, and public record will be indexed by a few major search companies. Even the article you are reading right now is hosted on a Google computer. Placing this much informational power behind the trigger of one company is alarming to say the least, and could lead to an atomic political timebomb. With great power comes great responsiblitiy, but will the CEOs and future decision makers have the integrity to resist taking advantage of their overwhelming power? What if a CEO dies, and the company is usurped by the evil board member who has been waiting for his breakthrough into unrighteous dominion? Uh oh...

In the meantime, I'll continue to use my gmail account and check my schedule on my google calendar. I'll keep using blogger to write Double Stamp, and even manage some of my important financial information with their online spreadsheets. I just hope that we can figure out a way to prevent these companies from snagging us like a crocodile snags an unexpecting wildabeast drinking from a desert pool.

Introduction to Web Feeds

Have you seen the terms “RSS“, “XML“, “Atom” and “Web Feeds” on your favorite internet sites, but have no clue what they mean? Maybe you wonder what these little icons mean?

This is a brief, non-technical tutorial on what these terms mean and how they can save you a ton of time.

In a nutshell, “web feeds” provide users of the internet a way to check newly posted content to a website without having to visit each of the sites individually. “XML” is the format in which web feeds are written, but the details are for the programmers. “RSS” and “Atom” are simply different specifications as to how the feed is written. Sound too geeky? Don’t worry about the details, read on…

Let’s say, for example, that you tend to visit three websites daily: doublestamp, usatoday.com, and reuters.com. Each of these sites are constantly updating their content, so to find out about new articles, you need to check each of them individually, right? Wrong!

If the websites you visit provide a web feed, you can simply subscribe to the feed by copying the URL of the feed into a “feed reader.” That’s what those little icons are for; they are the link to the site’s feed. A feed reader takes the feeds from all of the different websites that you have subscribed to, and displays them conveniently together. The new items that you have not read yet are usually highlighted in bold, or are marked somehow as new so that you don’t need to browse through old content. To see what I mean, look at the following picture of a popular online feed reader by Google. Notice the feeds to the left, and the content to the right.

So, after subscribing to a feed, one can quickly browse through new content on dozens of websites in a fraction of the time that it would take to visit them individually. If you are interested in a certain topic, you can click the feed item and it will take you to the website to read the full article. You’ll never miss an article that your interested in, and you’ll save tons of time.

It is important to make sure that your feed reader will read both “Atom” and “RSS” formats. Some websites provide RSS, others Atom, and some provide both. To help you out, here is a list of some FREE feed readers that you can start using immediately.

• Google Reader - An online reader that is easy to use. Works with most browsers and operating systems. This one is my favorite.


• Sage - A great extension to the Firefox browser for reading feeds.


• FeedReader - A good feed reader for windows.


• NewsGator - NewsGator is available in both an online version and an installable program. The installable version isn’t free.


• There are many other readers that you can find by searching the web, and most new browsers have feed reading capabilities themselves.

Give it a try. It’s a simple concept, but it will enable you to browse a lot of content in no time at all. You can start by subscribing to the Double Stamp feed right here:

Double Stamp feed

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