Some of you, no matter how much I beg, plead and urge, refuse to backup your critical data. I get it – it’s a hassle and really, nothing’s going to happen. Someone else will lose all of their pictures and documents, but not you.

Well, I have a solution for all you procrastinators out there. Http://www.dropbox.com

Sign up for a DropBox account. You get 2GB of storage for free. A folder is placed on your computer for you to keep your data in. The data is then sync’d with their online servers so you can get to that data from anywhere. In addition to being a backup solution, it also gives you mobility and the ability to share data with people without sending huge email files!

DropBox works on Mac or PC. DropBox uses state of the art security. DropBox has redundant servers. Dropbox is cool. Start using it today! (No, they aren’t paying me.)

This is a guest piece by Lara, my wife.
Enjoy!
Bill

I visit my 150+ friends on Facebook on average 1-2 times a week. I’ve had the same email address and password for a few years now, and recently learned that I was hacked probably because I was complacent.

Last week I came home to find six Facebook messages in my email. Two of them, from two long-ago friends, told me my account had been hacked. Another email was sent to my personal account from a from a friend that lives close by, asking me to remove whatever I had posted from her wall because she didn’t want embarrassing/funny videos of her on her mostly spiritual wall.

Mystified by these emails, I logged onto Facebook to see that indeed, my account had been hacked and a link had been posted on almost all of my friends’ walls to a “Funny Video” that apparently had embarrassing content. My long-ago acquaintances knew that I wasn’t sitting around posting videos and told me to change my password.

Within the next 48 hours at least six of my friends’ accounts were also hacked. Messages varied from the one on my account to things like “Check out Miley Cyrus’ sex video” to “I love my Apple iPad, you can get one for free too!” In all cases I contacted the person and told them to change their password.

It’s a good idea to change your password to social media sites every 3-5 weeks to keep your personal information… personal. And if you have a hard time remembering all the passwords, create an Excel spreadsheet to help you track logins, passwords and the last time it was changed. Changing passwords is like cleaning the moldy science experiments out of the refrigerator! Keep things up-to-date and you won’t get sick.

Sometimes you have to read the fine print, or in this case, the normal print. Companies like the Domain Registry of America send out “Domain Name Expiration Notice” letters to people like you and me that own domains.

I get these every year because I only ever renew one year at a time. They contain phrases like, “You must renew your domain name” and “Failure to renew your domain name by the expiration date may result in a loss of your online identity.”

They also say quite clearly that if you choose to renew through them you will be switching your registrar. A registrar is simply a company that registers domain names. If you own a domain name, you have a registrar. Common registrars are network solutions, godaddy.com, regsiter.com, etc.

In my case, if I renewed my domain name through Domain Registry of America, it would cost me about three times as much is it does through GoDaddy.

I feel like these companies prey upon people with little understanding of the domain name process and probably make a nice bundle of cash switching people over and invariably just add the the user’s confusion.

Talk to your IT person before renewing your domain name. You may just save yourself a lot of hassle and money.

Backups make us feel all warm and fuzzy. They’re great. Whether on-site, off-site or just on a jump drive, if we have a backup we feel like we can sleep better at night.
HA
Restoring and recovery are the thing. The actual ability to recover our files and systems is what should make us feel at ease.
For Instance.
I am currently trying to restore a Lenovo tablet to factory defaults. Nothing special, just a factory reset. The “ThinkVantage” crap is killing me. I’ve tried simply running it from the blue button, but it asks for a password to a domain that doesn’t exist, in addition to not recognizing the proper Windows password. Can’t restore.
I’ve tried using the recovery CD’s labled 1 of 6, 2 of 6, etc. After I put in disc 6, it finishes and asks for disc 7. Can’t restore.
I’ve tried giving up on the tablet software and just installing Windows from an OEM CD that I have. Windows can’t find the hard drive because it doesn’t have the proper SATA drivers and the machine doesn’t have a floppy drive, so the drives are almost impossible to load from the F6.
Now I’m trying to burn recovery CD’s from another tablet the client has hoping that these will work. If they don’t I’ll have to call Lenovo. I’m almost positive the machine is out of warranty and they will tell me the recovery disk is $39.99 and they can’t ship it overnight. Almost positive.

Oy.

Whatever your situation, make sure you can backup AND recover your files. Have a backup plan in the event that doesn’t work. Think it through. You’ll thank yourself.

Inspired by LeBron James, my buddy Peter agreed to interview me about the question everyone in America has been waiting for. Will Bill choose the iPhone 4 and AT&T or make the jump to Verizon and get the HTC Incredible? Here is a transcript of the interview.

Peter: Bill, this has been a long process for you. What was it like?
Bill: Well Peter, I won’t lie to you; its been arduous. My family, the media, camera crews day and night – its been a nightmare.

Peter: What is motivating you to look at different options after two solid years with iPhone and AT&T? Is it a question of loyalty?
Bill: In part, yes. AT&T has continually refused to take sufficient responsibility for the number of dropped calls I have to deal with and as a paying customer, it seems like if you are in a contract with them, you give up all your rights.

Peter: That said, why is there even a decision to be made? Why not just take your talents elsewhere?
Bill: The phone is the thing. iPhone is the best device from syncing, to apps to functionality. I really don’t believe there is a better smartphone on the market.

Peter: What was the determining factor in making the decision?
Bill: Ultimately, it came down to rollover minutes.

Peter: Well, before I ask you the big question, I have one more; who butchered your hair?
Bill: I cannot say, as it is a legal matter. Suffice as to say that I won’t be going back. Unless I have a coupon.

Peter: OK, I’ve stalled long enough. What is your decision? What phone are you going to choose for the next two years?
Bill: I’m going to keep giving my money to Apple and AT&T.

Peter: There you have it America. We have a winner. Even though AT&T continues to give its users the shaft, they’ll stay in business because Apple refuses to give up their exclusivity contract.

Yikes.

I have had a busy few weeks with my family out of town on a road trip vacation to the east coast. Luckily my clients have not let me feel alone with a raft of issues from setting up new offices to backup to wireless challenges.

In tech news, the new iPhone 4 has been causing no end of problems for people and has me really looking at all the options again. My contract with AT&T is up at the end of this month, so I may decide to cut ties and go with Verizon finally. This may also cause me to switch my email hosting to Google Apps. Anyone currently using this please let me know how you like it.

My wife’s trusty Dell laptop finally died on her while she was on vacation. She now has a shiny new 15″ Mac Book Pro that she is getting used to. Yep, my wife has a better laptop than I do now. Have to do something about that. . .

My Louisville Chamber Leads Group is looking for members. If you or anyone you know is interested in joining a great group of people dedicated to improving their business, please contact me. Anyone can come as my guest. We meet Thursday mornings at 7:30 AM at the Comfort Inn in Louisville.

One of my favorite clients, Rudisill, Gardner and Zeman are having a Grand Opening / Ribbon cutting on the 9th of September. They are usually at 4pm, but check the Boulder Chamber website to make sure. The address is 4410 Arapahoe Suite 135. Stop by and say hi to John and Karen. If you need a CPA or accountant, I can’t think of anyone I would recommend more.

Good luck and have a great month!

Microsoft has released the latest version of its Office software. Office 2010 seems to have improved upon some of the features from 2007. Take a look here:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/products/cool-things-you-can-do-with-office-2010-VA101842280.aspx

You may need the latest version of Silverlight to view the video.

Like many others, I am still getting used to Office 2007 and probably will not be an early adopter of 2010. Because this is my business, however, I will be seeing it on a client’s computer sooner than later. It looks like they have kept the “ribbon” navigation, which I am not a huge fan of. Improvements include more ways to share and collaborate and improved graphics and movie integration. What do you think? Do we need another new version of office so soon?

Based on this NY Times article, there have been over 600,000 orders for the new iPhone on the first day it was offered.
Go read that again.
That is a lot of phones. They have pushed back the delivery date into mid-July instead of June 24 as previously planned. Apple always claims that whatever they put out will “change everything.” In this case, I think they are sort of right. If you haven’t yet watched the video for the new phone, here it is:
iPhone 4

For me, the new OS upgrades including multitasking, single email inbox and organization of apps are what sell it. Also, the hope that the apps I use for work will run a bit better and faster. From a geek perspective, the face time feature looks incredible. I wish it ran over mobile broadband and that there was an application that would allow you to connect with users other than iPhone users on a WiFi hotspot.

Either way, while I am still mulling over my choices, the new phone may just keep me with AT&T – two year commitment and all.

WARNING: This post has nothing to do with computers. Think of it as a community service.

Last Friday after work in the evening I decided it was time to get the sprinkler system working again.

Let me begin by saying that I am terrible with plumbing. I can frame a house, lay a hardwood floor and do any electrical work you need. I can even program an old VCR. What I cannot do, however, is anything related to water. Seriously – don’t even put me in charge of your fish tank unless you enjoy Sushi.

That said, however, the sprinkler system is usually just a matter of plugging in the system and opening/closing the right valves in the right order. Well, I thought I had everything working, but it still wasn’t working. In fact, the sprinkler box was flooding. So, I popped the top off using a flat-head screwdriver and my fingernails and thew the lid aside. While I was waiting for the water to drain out of the box, I happened to see something out of the corner of my eye. There, in one of the pockets on the underside of the sprinkler box lid sat the following:

Now at this time, she was not in a jar and she was not moving. I wasn’t sure she was alive. The only thing I knew for sure was that it was a very large, very black widow-looking spider. I slowly backed away shaking and slack-jawed. After about 15 seconds of that, I calmed myself and had one thought; have to kill it. I found a bottle of insect killer, sprayed her and validated that she was, in fact, still alive. I then dumped most of the bottle on her, effectively trapping her in one of the pockets of the lid. She was still moving in the liquid, so I found a bucked and placed it flat side down on top of her pocket so that she would eventually drown overnight. I know what your thinking – what a horrible death! My counter to that is to ask her little insect friends what they thought of her just before she drank their blood, or ask her husband – probably still digesting – his thoughts.

The point to all of this is that they like dark, damp places. My hand was inches from her. I have two very curious kids who play in our yard. Be careful where you put your hands.