iGoogle has a new look, and I like it. I use iGoogle as my home page, as as you can see I have customised it to the way I like it. I also use Google+, and I appreciate the clean design it uses. iGoogle has been brought in line with Google+.

This is how it looked a couple of days ago.

This is how it looks today.

The changes are subtle but make a big difference. The most obvious difference is that side column. It’s not gone, it can be brought back at any time. You can see a little arrow on the top left above Weather. I’ve hidden it because 99.99% of the time I don’t need it.

Clicking on an item in Google reader gives a cleaner look as well.

Well done Google!

• No Related Post

Early last year I bought a Toshiba NB200 notebook. It was just what I wanted. I bumped up the RAM to 2GB and installed Dropbox, and I never looked back. I could take my work with me and have it synchronise with my main laptop at home.

About a month ago it became unreliable as to starting up. Now it won’t start up at all. Not happy.

I’ve checked forums and so on. If I press F2 or F12 while it’s trying to boot up – nothing happens.

If I press 0 (zero) while it’s booting up to restore it to its factory condition – nothing happens.

If I do nothing when it’s trying to boot up, I either get a black screen or the Toshiba splash screen, and there it stays.

The forums also say to use my system restore disk. I have no system restore disk, and I don’t have a portable disk drive to run it on, so to buy these things will cost more money. I thought that’s what the space being taken up on the hard disk by the factory system restore was for.

I know we’re supposed to be replacing our netbooks with iPads or other tablets these days, but I use mine to work. I need a keyboard all the time. I don’t want to have to mess with a virtual keyboard, and I don’t want to have to carry a portable keyboard around and have to connect everything up when I get to the place where I am researching. I just want to open up my netbook and go.

I can’t afford to buy a new netbook every year and then upgrade the memory, and then spend the time loading everything back on it that I need. I would pay more for a netbook with a longer guarantee, but it seems that netbooks are on the way out, in favour of tablets.

OK, I’ve had my rant, thank you for your attention!

By the way, if you are interested in Dropbox, and I can’t recommend it highly enough, you will do me a favour if you sign up using my recommendation. That way I get more space, and when you are as hooked as I am you can recommend it to your friends and get more space above the first free 2GB.

• What wasn’t backed up after all
  My old laptop died a sudden death on Good Friday, 22nd April 2011. My new laptop arrived on Black Friday, 13th May 2011. Are you detecting a pattern here? The death of my old laptop was not t...
• Increasing power demands of laptops
  My new laptop arrived last week and the power adaptor is even bigger than the last one. Here's a photo of the adaptors for the last three laptops I've had over the 6 years: ...
• When disaster strikes do you have a backup?
  This post was originally published in Genealogy in NSW. Early last month I wrote about my backup strategy here and here, little realising that I would soon be put to the test. On Good Friday, le...
• Backupify your social media
  Some time ago I had a look at Backupify, an online service for backing up your social media accounts. Obviously I set up an account and then forgot about it. I've had another look at Backupify and ...
• My Evolving Backup Strategy needs some work
  I wrote about my backup strategy a couple of days ago, describing the tools I am currently using to back everything up on my laptop. Once I'd written it down it initially appeared quite comprehensi...

A few months ago my laptop spent days going through all my photos and tagging the faces, and then I spent a few more days (on and off) giving them names. It was a lot of fun, and I wrote about it here.

When my laptop ran out of space I had to move all my photos onto an external hard drive. I was nervous about losing all of that work so I wasn’t brave enough to open Picasa.

Now I have a new laptop, with plenty of space for all my photos, and so I have moved them back. The question was, did I have to do all that face recognition all over again?

The answer, I’m happy to say, is no.

Picasa keeps all of that information in a separate database. As long as you can access those files from your old computer you can use them to replace the new ones when you install Picasa on it.

Basically you need to back up:

"C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Google\Picasa2"

and

"C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Google\Picasa2Albums"

The first one holds face recognition data and probably much more, and the second holds your albums. I didn’t have these files backed up, but they were still on the hard drive of my old computer, and today, with the help of my new hard drive enclosure that arrived in the mail, I was able to copy them over.

I have also added everything under AppData to my Mozy backups so I don’t have this problem in the future if my hard drive fails.

Do you have your AppData backed up?

• What wasn’t backed up after all
  My old laptop died a sudden death on Good Friday, 22nd April 2011. My new laptop arrived on Black Friday, 13th May 2011. Are you detecting a pattern here? The death of my old laptop was not t...
• When disaster strikes do you have a backup?
  This post was originally published in Genealogy in NSW. Early last month I wrote about my backup strategy here and here, little realising that I would soon be put to the test. On Good Friday, le...
• Backupify your social media
  Some time ago I had a look at Backupify, an online service for backing up your social media accounts. Obviously I set up an account and then forgot about it. I've had another look at Backupify and ...
• My Evolving Backup Strategy needs some work
  I wrote about my backup strategy a couple of days ago, describing the tools I am currently using to back everything up on my laptop. Once I'd written it down it initially appeared quite comprehensi...
• My own mini-scanfests
  When you come back home after a productive research trip to an archive or library do you often end up with a stack of photocopies? Yes, me too. I use my digital camera whenever I can but som...

My old laptop died a sudden death on Good Friday, 22nd April 2011.

My new laptop arrived on Black Friday, 13th May 2011.

Are you detecting a pattern here?

The death of my old laptop was not the catastrophe it could have been, thanks to my many backups. I only lost a morning’s worth of emails since my last backup had run overnight. I had backups of all documents, photos, music and databases in various places, including online.

I had a few issues with the software I had to use until my new one arrived, but these are mostly resolved. The main issues I still have are lessons you can learn from:

• Is your Application Data (in Windows XP) or Appdata (Vista) folder backed up?
• Some programs keep their data in the same folder as the program files, under Programs rather than Documents. You may have to consciously export a backup regularly rather than relying on it to be backed up with other documents. If you didn’t, it will be lost when you computer dies.
• All my browser extensions and bookmarks have gone missing. I need to find out how to back these up too.
• My download limit is being pushed by having to download a lot of software at once, and re-establishing with Mozy, my online backup service. I’m getting better at organising these things for offpeak times.

I have ordered an adapter for my old laptop’s hard drive. Since it was the motherboard that died I am hoping that the hard drive can still give me the data that wasn’t backed up. It will look like a portable hard drive, only I can open it and put the hard drive into it. Stay tuned!

• When disaster strikes do you have a backup?
  This post was originally published in Genealogy in NSW. Early last month I wrote about my backup strategy here and here, little realising that I would soon be put to the test. On Good Friday, le...
• Backupify your social media
  Some time ago I had a look at Backupify, an online service for backing up your social media accounts. Obviously I set up an account and then forgot about it. I've had another look at Backupify and ...
• My Evolving Backup Strategy needs some work
  I wrote about my backup strategy a couple of days ago, describing the tools I am currently using to back everything up on my laptop. Once I'd written it down it initially appeared quite comprehensi...
• I don’t love my new Toshiba netbook any more
  Early last year I bought a Toshiba NB200 notebook. It was just what I wanted. I bumped up the RAM to 2GB and installed Dropbox, and I never looked back. I could take my work with me and have it synchr...
• Picasa Face Recognition can be moved to a new computer
  A few months ago my laptop spent days going through all my photos and tagging the faces, and then I spent a few more days (on and off) giving them names. It was a lot of fun, and I wrote about it here...

My new laptop arrived last week and the power adaptor is even bigger than the last one. Here’s a photo of the adaptors for the last three laptops I’ve had over the 6 years:

• Growing need for powerboards
  I have been trying to find somewhere accessible to plug in my mini-notebook in my office and I've run out of power points. Again. How is this possible? Let's count them. My office at the moment has...
• I don’t love my new Toshiba netbook any more
  Early last year I bought a Toshiba NB200 notebook. It was just what I wanted. I bumped up the RAM to 2GB and installed Dropbox, and I never looked back. I could take my work with me and have it synchr...
• What wasn’t backed up after all
  My old laptop died a sudden death on Good Friday, 22nd April 2011. My new laptop arrived on Black Friday, 13th May 2011. Are you detecting a pattern here? The death of my old laptop was not t...
• When disaster strikes do you have a backup?
  This post was originally published in Genealogy in NSW. Early last month I wrote about my backup strategy here and here, little realising that I would soon be put to the test. On Good Friday, le...
• Backupify your social media
  Some time ago I had a look at Backupify, an online service for backing up your social media accounts. Obviously I set up an account and then forgot about it. I've had another look at Backupify and ...

This post was originally published in Genealogy in NSW.

Early last month I wrote about my backup strategy here and here, little realising that I would soon be put to the test.

On Good Friday, less than 3 weeks after writing about my backups, my laptop would not start. At all. It being a public holiday I couldn’t get any technical support on the phone until the Wednesday, as Tuesday was the Anzac Day holiday. I was told it was the motherboard. I could pay $700 to extend my warranty so that someone would come and fix it in my house for “free”, or I could buy a new one. As the laptop is just on 3 years old, I didn’t see the point in throwing good money at it. It’s my third laptop and they just don’t last longer than 3 years.

And, of course, I had my backups.

I am currently using my netbook (or mini laptop/notebook) while waiting for my new laptop to arrive. I shopped around and eventually ordered a custom-built Dell which has a higher resolution screen than the standard off-the-shelf laptops. I usually only use my netbook for research trips and I regularly synchronise all the documents between it and my laptop, so recent versions of all my documents were already on it.

Backups

I use an online backup service called Mozy that backs up everything I use often without me having to remember to do it, including my Outlook mail file and my family tree databases. My mail file has 10 years of emails from family, friends and clients, and I would hate to lose them. Because my mail file is backed up to Mozy every night, I only lost a few hours worth of emails that had arrived on Good Friday after my backup ran the night before.

Mozy also backs up my family history databases, documents and photos every night, as insurance. I can easily download one or all of the files if I need to. I would hate to have to download 20GB of files at once, but it is very comforting to know they’re there, and to be able to download a single file that you deleted or corrupted by mistake.

I store absolutely critical files that I am constantly working on in Dropbox. Dropbox is a free service that allows you to store up to 2GB of data on the internet and automatically synchronise it with your other computers, or those of friends. I keep PowerPoint presentations and handouts for talks in Dropbox, as well as my thesis, so that there is a backup created automatically as soon as I finish editing and close the file.

I also use two separate external hard drives to back up absolutely everything – my family history research, my client files, my photos, music, and everything else.  I use synchronisation software called GoodSync to keep all these files up to date. I also use GoodSyncto keep my netbook synchronised with my laptop.

So all my data is backed up.

What is missing from my netbook, though, is software.

Software

The version of Microsoft Office I use on my netbook does not include Outlook, so I can’t receive or send emails that way. I can receive all new emails by setting Gmail to pick them up for me, but I don’t have access to any of the previous ones. And I have to remember to copy any replies to my own email address, so that they will all be in Outlook when I eventually get it going. Emails are much easier to deal with if they are all in the one place so I can see the history of a conversation.

I have a backup of my accounting database but no software to run it on. I have the software on a CD somewhere but my laptop doesn’t have a CD drive, and even if I were to install it I can’t activate it without my registration key, which is in an old email in Outlook.

You see my problem? I am in limbo until I can run the software.

To make matters worse, I started using my husband’s laptop, which is only a few months old. I copied my email file to it from my backup and set up a new account in Outlook to pick up my emails. I was using Office 2007 and he is using Office 2010, so I had to be sure that I wasn’t going to be able to save my laptop before doing this, as once I was in Office 2010 there was no going back to 2007.

Unfortunately, after a day or two of using his laptop, it starting giving messages about the “imminent failure of the hard drive”. I copied my Outlook mail file back off it, now updated with recent emails, and we backed up everything else just in case. It has now gone off to have a new hard drive installed. It’s still under warranty, which is comforting, but we now have no full size laptop in the house.

So I’ve started playing with trial versions of software. Trial versions give you access to all of the features of the software for a limited time, such as a month or two. A month is long enough for my current crisis! I have downloaded a trial version of Office 2010 to my second netbook, which did not already have any version of Office on it, nearly 700MB. I didn’t want to overwrite the version of Office 2007 that was already on my “first” netbook.

A second netbook, you ask? It’s the original one, that I bought too early, before netbooks had evolved sufficiently to be really useful. It’s got a great high resolution screen and a metal case, but it’s slow because it runs Vista, it gets very hot and the battery only lasts an hour or so. I bought a new onelast early year when the prices had come down and the batteries lasted longer. The old one has been sitting in the cupboard waiting for me to decide what to do with it.

So now I have all my old emails accessible again. I’ve also downloaded a trial version of the latest Quickbooks, my accounting software. I can now see what clients have paid and create new invoices. This will mean that I will have to upgrade my software when I get my new laptop, as I will not be able to go back to the old version. More money!

I’m still struggling a bit with the smaller screen and keyboards on the netbooks but at least I am able to keep working.

Lessons learned

I can’t begin to imagine what a disaster the sudden death of my laptop would have been if I hadn’t had backups of all my data. In the past I had always replaced the old one before it was too late, enabling a controlled transition from the old one to the new one. Not this time!

Here are some lessons I have learned during this ordeal:

1. If you buy Microsoft Office off the shelf instead of pre-loaded on your computer you can install it on a second, portable device such as a netbook. It’s more expensive but you get two for the price of one. I found this out the day AFTER I ordered my new laptop with Office pre-installed. You may not need Outlook on your netbook, and you will have a problem keeping them in sync if you use it on both computers at once, but it will be there as a backup if you need it.
2. If you download and install a trial version of Office 2010 on a computer that already has Office 2007 that includes Outlook, it will NOT install Outlook 2010 and it won’t warn you. I learned this from experience on an old laptop that was too unstable to give away when I replaced it and has been sitting in the cupboard. That’s when I went to the old netbook.
3. Don’t assume that all software you use keeps its files in a place that will be backed up. Some programs keep the data in the same folder as the program, under Program Files, which is not usually backed up automatically. The current version of The Master Genealogist, which I use for my family tree and those of clients, stores its files under My Documents by default, but older versions did not. I have lost my timesheet data because I didn’t check to see where the data was stored.
4. Make sure you know how to set up your email accounts in a new program in case you can’t go back and look at the old version.
5. Make sure you know your IDs and passwords to all the websites you use. Most web browsers will remember these for you on that computer, so if you need to start using a different computer you at least need to know your ID so you can ask for your password to be sent to you by email if you can’t remember it.

This blog is usually about research, but I think that backups are so very important that I wanted everyone to learn from my experience.

Backup your data, and have a plan for when you need to use the backups. Sooner or later, your hard drive or something else on your computer will fail.

• What wasn’t backed up after all
  My old laptop died a sudden death on Good Friday, 22nd April 2011. My new laptop arrived on Black Friday, 13th May 2011. Are you detecting a pattern here? The death of my old laptop was not t...
• Backupify your social media
  Some time ago I had a look at Backupify, an online service for backing up your social media accounts. Obviously I set up an account and then forgot about it. I've had another look at Backupify and ...
• My Evolving Backup Strategy needs some work
  I wrote about my backup strategy a couple of days ago, describing the tools I am currently using to back everything up on my laptop. Once I'd written it down it initially appeared quite comprehensi...
• I don’t love my new Toshiba netbook any more
  Early last year I bought a Toshiba NB200 notebook. It was just what I wanted. I bumped up the RAM to 2GB and installed Dropbox, and I never looked back. I could take my work with me and have it synchr...
• Picasa Face Recognition can be moved to a new computer
  A few months ago my laptop spent days going through all my photos and tagging the faces, and then I spent a few more days (on and off) giving them names. It was a lot of fun, and I wrote about it here...

Some time ago I had a look at Backupify, an online service for backing up your social media accounts. Obviously I set up an account and then forgot about it.

I’ve had another look at Backupify and it seems that it has been happily backing up some of my accounts after all. I’ve just never been back to see them.

Apparently I have a Premium Account, which gives me 10GB, monthly ZIP archives, and 5 accounts per service. That may be why I forgot about it. 5 accounts isn’t much. I run a Facebook account, 5 Facebook pages, 5or 6 Twitter accounts, numerous blogs, a Flickr account, and much more besides.

For $59.95 per year I can have 25GB, weekly ZIP archives, and unlimited accounts. Backups are run daily (or I can choose weekly) and are supposedly emailed in a ZIP file.

The screen does say that there’s a new version I should move to. Let’s try that!

New version of Backupify

OK, there’s an immediate improvement, in that it tells me how much space I’ve used:

It now supports Facebook Pages, which it didn’t do before. I like it better already.

For Facebook accounts it backs up a long list of things, including:

• Photo albums
• Photo album comments
• Events
• Groups
• Links
• Notes
• Profile
• Feeds
• Posts
• Friends
• Comments
• Likes
• Statuses
• Status comments
• Videos
• Video comments

Now that I can back up Facebook pages I am using up my 5 accounts very quickly! I use most of these services (except Zoho). What to choose?

Still, I’m not sure what I would do with the backup. If something happens to Facebook there’s nowhere else I can load the data. What have I got to lose?

I’ve added my Twitter account and it seems to be starting again from scratch, ignoring the backups already made in the previous incarnation of Backupify. OK.

I’ve also added my Facebook profile, three Facebook pages, my Flickr account and my Google address book. That’s seven, including Twitter. There’s now no mention of the number of accounts, so I guess it’s just based on storage space. 10GB sounds like a lot but let’s see what happens with the photos in Facebook and Flickr.

I’d also like to add other Twitter accounts but I can’t seem to do that. Perhaps I need separate Backupify accounts for that.

There is also something about Google Apps on the main page:

To be perfectly honest I don’t know what it means, so I’m not putting anything in there for the moment. When I go to the Upgrade screen to find out about accounts, it is only talking about Google Apps, and sharing for teams. So perhaps this is a business thing and I can ignore it.

It says it’s going to take 2-3 days to back everything up, so I’ll wait to see what happens. I hope it sends me an email, or I may just forget I’ve done it!

• What wasn’t backed up after all
  My old laptop died a sudden death on Good Friday, 22nd April 2011. My new laptop arrived on Black Friday, 13th May 2011. Are you detecting a pattern here? The death of my old laptop was not t...
• When disaster strikes do you have a backup?
  This post was originally published in Genealogy in NSW. Early last month I wrote about my backup strategy here and here, little realising that I would soon be put to the test. On Good Friday, le...
• My Evolving Backup Strategy needs some work
  I wrote about my backup strategy a couple of days ago, describing the tools I am currently using to back everything up on my laptop. Once I'd written it down it initially appeared quite comprehensi...
• I don’t love my new Toshiba netbook any more
  Early last year I bought a Toshiba NB200 notebook. It was just what I wanted. I bumped up the RAM to 2GB and installed Dropbox, and I never looked back. I could take my work with me and have it synchr...
• Picasa Face Recognition can be moved to a new computer
  A few months ago my laptop spent days going through all my photos and tagging the faces, and then I spent a few more days (on and off) giving them names. It was a lot of fun, and I wrote about it here...

I wrote about my backup strategy a couple of days ago, describing the tools I am currently using to back everything up on my laptop.

Once I’d written it down it initially appeared quite comprehensive, and I was quite pleased with myself. I soon realised that there are holes, though, because not every tool is used to back everything up.

Each tool is used for one or more types of data, and only a few types of data are covered by more than one tool. For example:

• Email
  • Mozy (automatically,daily)
  • external hard drives using GoodSync (when I think of it, every few days)
  • Gmail (automatically, not all accounts are picked up)
• High use documents
  • Dropbox (automatically when document closed)
  • Mozy (automatically, daily)
  • netbook (when I think of it or when I get home)
  • external hard drives (when I think of it, every few days)
• Regular use documents -
  • Mozy (automatically,daily)
  • netbook (when I think of it or when I get home)
  • external hard drives (when I think of it, every few days)
• Business documents -
  • Mozy (automatically,daily)
  • netbook (when I think of it or when I get home)
  • external hard drives (when I think of it, every few days)
  • Dropbox (for sharing with clients at the end of the project)
• Photos (other than family history, which are stored with the documents)
  • External hard drives
  • a very few photos are in web albums on Facebook, Picasa and Flickr.
  • my sister has a lot of them but I wouldn’t count on her in a crisis. She is not one of Nature’s Techos.
• Music
  • External hard drives
  • MP3 player
  • the original CDs
• Social media
  • Blogs backed up by WordPress plugin and sent by email
  • Facebook and Twitter not backed up at all!!!

It may be apparent to you, as it is to me, that my photos and music are at risk here. There is 30-40 GB of pictures and 20-30GB of music, so online backups are not the answer. They had to be evicted from my laptop when it ran out of space. As I said, I bought another external hard drive but I’m still not comfortable. If I lost my music I would have to spend hours ripping it back off the CDs, which would be a pain but could be done. I probably wouldn’t do as many if I had to do it all again.

If I lost the photos, though, I’d be devastated. The earlier ones were scanned from prints or negatives and I still have those, but later ones…

My social media needs some work, too.

So I still have some work to do. I’ll have another look at Backupify and perhaps I’ll make greater use of Flickr.

Any suggestions?

• What wasn’t backed up after all
  My old laptop died a sudden death on Good Friday, 22nd April 2011. My new laptop arrived on Black Friday, 13th May 2011. Are you detecting a pattern here? The death of my old laptop was not t...
• When disaster strikes do you have a backup?
  This post was originally published in Genealogy in NSW. Early last month I wrote about my backup strategy here and here, little realising that I would soon be put to the test. On Good Friday, le...
• Backupify your social media
  Some time ago I had a look at Backupify, an online service for backing up your social media accounts. Obviously I set up an account and then forgot about it. I've had another look at Backupify and ...
• I don’t love my new Toshiba netbook any more
  Early last year I bought a Toshiba NB200 notebook. It was just what I wanted. I bumped up the RAM to 2GB and installed Dropbox, and I never looked back. I could take my work with me and have it synchr...
• Picasa Face Recognition can be moved to a new computer
  A few months ago my laptop spent days going through all my photos and tagging the faces, and then I spent a few more days (on and off) giving them names. It was a lot of fun, and I wrote about it here...

Joan at Luxgen has written a review of her backup strategy and reading it has prompted me to do the same. I try to remember to review my backup strategy on a regular basis because things change:

• The data I want backed up changes
• The methods I use may not be suitable for increasing amounts of data
• I hear about new methods that might be better than what I use
• Is the automatic backup working?

External hard drive – I have two – a 1TB drive that I back up everything when I think of it. It’s in my office and my laptop moves between my office and the living room, so I have to consciously remember it. I also now have a 1TB portable drive, which I had to buy when I had to remove all my photos (except family history ones) from my 3 year old laptop for space reasons. Never rely on just one hard drive! I back everything up to it at the same time as the other one.

GoodSync is software that backs up or synchronises files. I use it to back up to the two external hard drives. I also use it to synchronise files between my laptop and my netbook, so my netbook acts as a backup, as well as allowing me to work seamlessly on documents when I’m out and about and have the changes appear when I synchronise them back to the laptop.

Dropbox I use Dropbox for things I am working on constantly. I tried using it for TMG (The Master Genealogist – family tree software) but it needed too much discipline, so I now use GoodSync for this. It’s better for Word documents, so I keep the courses and thesis I’m writing there, and can synchronise between my laptop and netbook. Files are also available to me online from anywhere, so I keep a backup of any presentations there too. I also use it to share files with clients and other volunteers at the Society. You can have a 2GB account for free, and pay for more space. If you introduce others to the service you are credited with an extra 250MB of free space, so if you sign up using the link I gave you you’ll be doing me a great favour!

Mozy – I’ve used Mozy for years and I wouldn’t be without it. It saved me once when my Outlook mailbox vanished one day, and I only lost about 12 hours worth of emails, instead of many years worth. I have to review the files I have selected to back up every once in a while, as new folders seem to be automatically included.

Backupify – This software backs up your Facebook and Twitter accounts. I played with it once but didn’t continue with it, for some reason that I can’t remember. I don’t back up the Facebook accounts and pages or Twitter accounts. I’m still not entirely sure of the need for it.

WordPress – I use the a WordPress plugin to schedule daily backups of my self-hosted blogs, and I have the backups of 5 different blogs emailed to me every day. It fills up my mailbox pretty quickly but it’s worth it. I delete old ones from my mailbox when I think of it. The blogs hosted by WordPress.org is not backed up, or at least not by me.

Gmail – I also have most of my emails picked up by Gmail, which is another backup of sorts. The ever-increasing amount of allocated space is ample for my needs!

Amazon – I recently read Dick Eastman’s discussion of the free 5GB made available by Amazon to back up files. When I went to Amazon my space was already available to me, as I have an Amazon account. You can increase the available space quite cheaply at $1 per GB per year, so 20GB is $20 per year, which is quite cheap really. As I thought about what I could put there that is less than 5GB I came across a problem, though. Actually, two problems:

1. There doesn’t appear to be any synchronising software, so I have to remember to move new and changed files, and I have to remember which ones they are. That’s fine if you create new documents regularly and get into a routine. I don’t.
2. The more online backups I do, the closer I get to my download limit for the month. I’m sure there is more scheduling I can do to get around this.

The decision I made about Amazon was to include more files in Mozy. I will have to do this progressively to avoid hitting my limit and putting up with appallingly slow speed for the rest of the month. I’ve added an extra 5GB worth of files and it’s almost finished uploading them! I will reconsider Amazon towards the end of the month, when I can see how my upload limit is faring.

So that’s my back up strategy, in its current phase of evolution. What’s yours?

• I don’t love my new Toshiba netbook any more
  Early last year I bought a Toshiba NB200 notebook. It was just what I wanted. I bumped up the RAM to 2GB and installed Dropbox, and I never looked back. I could take my work with me and have it synchr...
• What wasn’t backed up after all
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I have finally solved my inability to calculate international time zones.

We are increasingly becoming more global. Social media allows us to communicate and collaborate with people from all over the world, in real time. This means that we can chat with people and take part in live video-conferences and video-streams from around the world when they actually happen.

An essential requirement is knowing what time something is going to happen. It is no good deciding to watch a video telecast at 6:00 PM US Pacific Time when I have no idea what time that is in Sydney.

I’ve needed to be aware of time zones most of my life. When my Dad moved back to Fiji and I was old enough to call him I needed to know that Fiji is two hours ahead of Sydney, or one hour when we have Daylight Savings Time. If I called too late in the morning he would have left the house, and too late at night he would be in bed. Unfortunately the knowledge wasn’t reciprocated, and he has quite often woken me on Sunday mornings because he’s been up for hours!

Later my good friend moved to the US, and I needed to know when she was likely to be home. She used to tell me that all I had to remember was that Florida was 14 hours behind Sydney. Subtract 24 hours and then add 10. Unless one or other of us had changed to or from Daylight Savings Time this worked, but unless you do it often, as she did because her family is here, it becomes a bit of a nightmare and the easy option is to just not make the call.

More recently I took part in the first ProGen Study Group. A choice of times for group chats was much restricted by most of them being either in the middle of the night or the middle of the day for me, so I began by running the blog-only group. The personal interaction was important, though, and one by one my members left to join other groups, and in the end so did I. I joined a group that met on Wednesday nights, which was the middle of Thursday here in Sydney. No sooner would I have finally worked out that I was was supposed to be there at 1pm than one of us would change to or from Daylight Savings, and I would have to rethink the time. I don’t know why time zone calculations are so much more difficult than the simple addition or subtraction would suggest, but they are.

I use iGoogle as my homepage, which allows me to install gadgets to give me the functionality I need. One of my gadgets was something called ‘World Clocks’, which gave me two analogue clocks showing the time zones of my choice. This worked when I just needed to know Florida time, but now that I need other zones the two zones are not enough, and they are a hassle to change every time I need another time zone. My friend has since moved back to Australia, and I had stopped using the gadget.

My new phone, an HTC Legend, gives me a choice of time zones to display as many as I want and is ideal. I do not need a calculator so much as a display of the current time. Problem solved! But no, my phone is not always at my side, especially at home.

Surely, I thought, a similar gadget must be available on iGoogle?

I tried two and selected one – PolyClock.

It gives a list of cities from around the world that you can choose from. Unfortunately Salt Lake City wasn’t on the list so I had to find a map of US time zones to find a city in the same time zone, and I found Phoenix, which is close enough. I also like that it shows the cities where it is still yesterday in red – this is important in Australia as we are ahead of everyone except New Zealand and Pacific Islands such as Fiji.

Now it’s easy. I hope to attend many more chats and watch more conference streams than I have in the past.

Another, similar problem I have is that a lot of people in the US give the name of the time zone, for example 1pm Mountain Standard Time. When I am trying to find out the current time I am usually presented with a list of cities, and I don’t know which cities are in which time zone.

I don’t think there is a quick solution for this other than to learn the US time zones and some basic US geography. There are only four mainland time zones and once you know that they are, from left to right, Pacific, Mountain, Central and Eastern, you are on your way. I know there are the Rocky Mountains over towards the Pacific coast so I can usually not confuse Mountain and Central.

So on the list I’ve chosen for PolyClock I just have to remember that Los Angeles is on Pacific Time, New York is on Eastern Time, and Phoenix is on Mountain Time, which is easy enough.

See you in cyberspace!

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