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Mar
15
I had a conversation with a customer who had returned from vacation. He told me he had been told with great authority that I was wrong, flash drives don’t fail. I asked him where he’d heard that little gem and he said a computer tech support person he met on the same flight he was on. The techie insisted portable flash drives just never fail. I laughed… hard… and wished him luck with his plan to keep all his important files on his pen drives and not on the hard drive.
I have to admit, I was amazed anyone in the business would believe any piece of computer hardware is impervious to failure. If it’s build by humans, it will fail. And flash drives do fail. I’ve had one die on me as have others. Ah I hear people saying “what’s a flash drive?” Flash drives have a number of names – pen drives, thumb drives, flash drives, USB drives, key chain drives. They are thumb sized hard drives that come in a variety of storage sizes. They have taken the place of the old floppy disks and for many of us cds. I always hated burning cds – was such a nuisance. Flash drives are great, pop them into a free USB port and drag your files to them and bingo you are good to go. Flash drives are great because you can plug them into any other machine and access your files quickly.
Couple of problems though:
Flash drives are so small, they are easy to lose. I’ve lost 5 of the little buggers in the last 2 years. I never take important files out on the flash drive unless I’ve backed the data up at home and encrypted the drive. If I lose the drive, I suffer a mild annoyance but am confident I’ve not lost any private information that can be used by someone else. I also know a duplicate set of the files are safely sitting at home. It’s not worth the risk so either leave the drive at home or encrypt your data.
Flash drives do fail. Back your data up onto cds/external hard drive constantly and file them in a safe place. Do it… back up, back up, back up. Files become corrupted, flash drives die, files are lost. One of the most impressive flash drive deaths I’ve seen was the flash drive someone accidentally drove over. The customer didn’t know the flash drive had fallen off their key chain and they must have kicked it under the car wheels. CRUNCH… they found the drive when they returned home later that day. Nothing was recoverable, well, except for a few interesting pieces of plastic that could be arranged into some kind of miniature pop art.
Flash drives are inexpensive, your personal data is priceless.
Mar
9
That pesky photo organisation problem
Filed Under Organising files, Photos, software | Leave a Comment
I worked with a customer last week who was struggling organise his photos. He was using Adobe Elements, which is an excellent program for photo editing, but lacks a coherent cataloging feature.
Elements does come with an organiser, but it is seriously flawed – it doesn’t use the computer’s existing folder structure. As well, setting up the monitoring is iffy at best. Monitoring will allow you to tell Elements “Ok, I put all my photos in C:\photos so please monitor the folder for additions/removals/edits. It does … sometimes. Elements ignores some subfolders as well as some edited photos – not all, just some. It’s far too erratic to rely on. I could get it to scan about 2/3 of the subfolders, but it stubbornly refused to see the rest, no matter how many times I reset the monitor.
I suggested he save what was left of his sanity and use Elements for editing, but Picassa for organisation. Picassa’s strength is simple – it doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel. It uses the existing file structure in the computer and it does an excellent job monitoring for changes. Adjusting the monitor filter is easy, even for novices. The Elements’ filter was awkward and down right annoying. The major sticking point for me is Elements’ organiser’s failure to use the computer’s folder setup. It wants the user to create “catalogues” and move photos around into them. A lot of extra work and not easily portable to other programs if you decide you no longer wish to use Elements. Picassa lets you move photos around, rename folders, split folders etc with little effort. Even if you delete Picassa, the changes remain.
Picassa was not designed for high end photo editing, so you many not be content using the built in features. It has some good tools, perfect for the average user who doesn’t want to get into anything complicated. If you don’t want to use Picassa’s editing, simply right click on the photo you want to work on and use the “open with” feature and send it to Elements (or your program of choice). Do your edits, save and Picassa immediately pics up the change.
Picassa will allow you to :
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Import from camera/card
Check for duplicates before importing photos
Move photos from folder to folder
Change photos and folder names quickly
Split folders
Basic edits
Email photos directly from the program
Backup photos to CD or external drive
Upload photos to the Internet
For a free program, it’s a powerhouse for organising photos. So forget other programs. Picassa will keep you sorted out and still let you use your favourite photo editor seamlessly, whether working on a PC or a Mac.
Feb
25
A better way to bookmark your favourite pages
Filed Under Addons, Bookmarks, Browsers | Leave a Comment
I’ve never been happy with traditional bookmarking features offered up in either Firefox or Explorer. They’re clumsy, hard to find what I’m looking for and a pain in the ass to sort. I’ve tested lots of bookmark addons and until now, haven’t been very satisfied. Last week I found one that seems to tick all the features I’m looking for:
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Can be backed up
Exportable to straight HTML so I can import it to a different browser if needed (you never know when your favourite application will no longer be supported.)
Easy to use
Visual
Tabs for sorting
Auto
Quick add and remove features
Speed Dial addon is a great way to keep your bookmarks organised but more importantly, makes them useable. How many of us have 100′s of websites we never look at because it’s such a hassle wading through them. Speed Dial offers a quick visual list of your favourites. You can create multiple tabs for each category, expand or contract the number of listings per tab and use thumbnails for visual identification of each page. Here’s an example of what my first page looks like:
(just click on the image to see a larger image)
You can switch around how many pages you want to display:
Add, change, remove, drag and drop positions, whatever. You can add as many dials as you want to each page because the columns and rows are adjustable
Exporting your bookmarks is easy so you don’t have to worry about losing all your hard work. If you are using Internet Explorer, there is an addon available, but I found it pretty buggy. I tried to install it a couple of times and ended up just trashing it. Never got it to work. Chrome and Opera both have a version of Speed Dial if you prefer to use them.
How do you install it? Easy. The addon can be found here. Click on the Add to Firefox button and it will install itself. Adding pages is easy, Click on any empty spot, click edit and type in the address of any website you follow. Click Ok and done. There are other features you can play with so explore away.
The only thing I can recommend, is make sure you back up the dials. Although it has an auto backup feature, this won’t help if your computer goes down and you need to format. Back up to an external source.
Happy Speed Dialing.
Dec
20
I was helping a customer with her FaceBook account the other day checking the security. Up popped the ubiquitous security hints. Now in theory, these hints to help you recover you password are a good idea. In practice they are often frustratingly laughable. Case in point with the FaceBook questions:
What was the name of your first pet? This is okay if you had a pet, and a good memory.
What was the name of your first grade teacher? WTF? I can barely remember most of my university prof’s names. I have been trying for the life of me to remember their names (we moved midway through the year so I had two teachers) and I can’t.
What are the last 5 characters of your driver’s license? Can’t answer the first 2 so I’ll just get up, stroll across the room, find my wallet, pull out my license (and bifocals) and put in the numbers. Yea, right.
What street did you live on when you were 8 years old? I can’t even remember my damned first grade teachers’ names. Hang on a minute while I call up my mom and ask her.
What is the name of the first boy or girl you kissed? WHAT? How old were the people who thought these up? Seriously!
In what city or town was your mother born? Okay we have a winner! This one is achievable.
My point is, setting questions like this fail to take into account not everyone is 16 years old when first grade was not that long ago. It’s great if you have enough fingers and toes to count back to when you were 8, but after a certain point in time, it’s just another hassle. It’s one thing to finally dredge up an answer, it’s another thing to remember this a year down the road.
To me the hallmark of a good company is one that understands the user. These are the companies that offer a series of set questions, then the lovely option to write your own question. So if you are in charge of website security, please keep in mind, not all of us have the nimble recall of a teenager. Don’t offer up one more obstacle to your user when you don’t have to.
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