The PutPlace Blog

A burglar broke into Alex Botsios’ apartment and threatened him with a baseball bat. Botsios willingly gave up his wallet and guitars, but balked when it came to his laptop:

Then the robber made the mistake that ultimately landed him in the hospital — he went for the laptop. According to Botsios, he said “Dude, no — please, no! I have all my case notes…that’s four months of work!” Saucedo, obviously underestimating the fury of an overstressed, overworked first-year, was unsympathetic. That’s when Botsios could take no more.

Wrestling Saucdeo to the floor, Botsios separated the bat from the thief and repeatedly punched him in the face. When it was all over, police had to get Saucedo stitched up before charging him with armed robbery and kidnapping, while Botsios only suffered some scrapes and a bruised knuckle. Most importantly, at least to the student, is that his laptop, which he called “his baby,” escaped unharmed.

Of course, if Mr. Botsios had backed up his laptop somewhere remotely (hint, hint), he might not have worried so much about it getting stolen.

This is the second in an occasional series of audio interviews we’re doing with tech gurus and alpha geeks. We’ll be talking to them about how they manage their digital life, where they store all of their virtual stuff and related geekery. Photo by Randy Stewart, blog.stewtopia.com.

You can listen to the interview, or read the transcription below:

• Interview with Vanessa Fox (17:59, 16.9 MB)

Darren: This is Darren Barefoot talking today for PutPlace about backing up your digital life. Today we’re talking to Vanessa Fox. Hello, Vanessa.

Vanessa: Hi. How’s it going?

Darren: It’s going well. How’s it going with you?

Vanessa: Wonderful.

Darren: Excellent. And tell us who you are.

Vanessa: Oh. My goodness. That’s a very good question. Well, I do a number of things online, I guess. I probably am mostly known for what I’ve done in the search industry. I used to work at Google and built Webmaster Central for them. Now, I’m actually launching a new site called Nine by Blue where I’m going to just try to talk about a lot of different things involved in acquiring more visitors through things such as search and social media.

Darren: And so this is the number nine by blue dot com?

Vanessa: Yes, so I’m going to try and make sure to have both it spelled out and the number redirecting to the same place.

Darren: Yes. That makes sense. And why that domain?

Vanessa: You know, it’s very hard to come up with names. I think people who do naming are very skilled. They have a talent that I don’t have. So I spent a lot of time thinking about it and what I really just sort of wanted to convey was the idea that there actually is a lot of data out there about your customers, about your potential customers, and so you can take all those numbers and sort of turn them into something more, something that’s actually an engagement as opposed to just the numbers. ‘Cause there’s just tons of numbers and it’s hard to find what’s actionable. So, you know, really aggregating that stuff in a useful way. Just sort of, numbers into something else. And I just like blue. I like the water.

Darren: Sure. It could have been any color. You went with blue.

Vanessa: Could have been anything. Yeah.

Darren: Maybe you got a spot in this whole — Hopefully, if you’re really successful you can spawn an imitation site which is “Seven By Indigo” or something like that.

Vanessa: Yes, exactly.

Darren: I’m going to go register actually all the other numbers and all the other colors right now just so I can own –

Vanessa: Oh no!

Darren: So somebody’s like “Oh, what was that website? Nine by pink?” Anyway. Actually, that’s a fun way to slice a bunch of domains is by having colors associated with given, kind of, topic set.

Vanessa: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Darren: Not to use a stereotype, but if you had a blog about gay lifestyle it could be “X By Pink” or something.

Vanessa: Uh-huh.

(more…)

The sad story of Jimmy and Tamala Lapointe was featured on the front page of Vancouver’s tabloid, The Province, today. They had their laptop stolen from their car. The laptop had the only copy of irreplaceable baby photos–”the birthing room, his first time breastfeeding, everything”:

Thieves got into the car and nabbed a backpack. Inside was a white Apple MacBook laptop loaded with all Rykr’s photos. “I kept on thinking, ‘I should get that backed up,’ but we knew we were going to make a photo album,” said Jimmy. “It was dumb that we didn’t have a backup.”

Theirs is a cautionary tale. We’re hoping the thief has a heart, and that they get their baby photos back. Don’t let this happen to you–back up today.

So you’ve decided to set up a digital storage plan? Congratulations! But, before you take your victory lap, review these 12 common backup mistakes and do your best to avoid them. Your data and your sanity will thank you.

1. Lack of Consistency: It’s important to have a number of places to store your data. Even more important? Being consistent in using them. Get into the habit of using the defaults that your operating system suggests (My Documents or Documents, Music, Video, and so forth) for your data.
2. If You Have to Remember, You’re Going to Forget: The human mind is an undependable backup system. Let your computer, or better yet, your backup software, do the heavy lifting here. An automated schedule frees up your mind for the more important things, like remembering to Twitter about your pancake breakfast.
3. Be Thorough: Microsoft Windows is particularly bad at dumping valuable stuff (like your mail file) under c:\Documents and Settings. Make sure you grab your user directory from this location as well.
4. Making a Copy of a Copy of Copy: Can’t remember the last time you backed up a directory? Don’t start down the slippery slope of copying over everything every time. Invest in reliable backup software to manage incremental backups and keep track of what needs to be backed up and what doesn’t.
5. Trust and Verify: Running backups is great. But like putting money in the bank, it’s always worthwhile to make regular withdrawals to see where your savings are at. Make a point of dipping into the backup once in a while to make sure the content is there and up-to-date.
6. I Don’t Need to Backup, I Use YouTube: Web services like Flickr and YouTube are great for keeping photos and videos stored online. However, what they’re keeping isn’t always exactly what you uploaded. For example, many people don’t realise that YouTube doesn’t retain your original video file. Flickr, on the other hand, does actually store the original size, even if you’re only using their free service. If you’re really attached to the original, be sure to save it somewhere else as well.
7. Don’t Forget Your Bookmarks: If you’re like us, you spend most of your day in your browser and live and die by the dozen bookmarks on your browser toolbar. Don’t forget to export these and back them up periodically.
8. No LOLs for Lost Chats: If you’re an avid IM user who saves their chat transcripts, be sure to include those in your backups. Skype automatically saves transcripts of chat conversations, and MSN Messenger does the same. Just grab these files, add them to your backup queue and you’ll always be ready to wow them at 4Chan with your IM pwnage.
9. Forget the Expiration Date: If you’re saving important business or personal documents (like financial statements, medical records, etc) don’t assume that you only need to keep them for seven years. Data retention laws are changing, and differ from country to country. To be safe, plan on keeping these documents forever. You might even consider creating a special subdirectory in your backup for long term storage items. Better yet, encrypt and password protect it.
10. Don’t Lose Your Encryption Key: If you do use heavy-duty encryption, make sure to store your key somewhere safe. Maybe print out a copy and send it to your lawyer or stick it in a safety deposit box. If you can’t find it and need to backup, it’s a major pain in the behind.
11. Save More than You Need: The costs for large portable hard drives and online storage have come down considerably in the past few years. Because of this, the need to pick and choose which data to save has essentially disappeared. Want a full terabyte storage unit for your videos, music and photos? No problem. You may never need it all, but it’s always better to have too much space than too little.
12. Keep it Secret, Keep it Safe: Finally, if you’re using a portable hard drive, be sure to keep it in a safe place. This probably doesn’t include your backpack or laptop bag. A safety deposit box isn’t always the best idea either, especially if you need emergency access after business hours. And be sure to pick an off-site location. There’s no point in having a prudently backed-up hard drive go up in flames because it’s sitting next to your PC during a house fire. Find a happy medium. We used to keep our backups in our Mom’s basement.

We’d be remiss if we didn’t point out that, hey, we do this online backup thing pretty well. Sign up and get 2 GB of free storage.

Photo by So Misguided.

While PutPlace has a different take on backing up your digital life, there’s no denying that we’re in the online storage space. As such, we’re always keeping an eye on what other players are doing.

In the process of our research, we compiled a big spreadsheet that records, among other things, how much free storage space each service offers. We thought we’d share it with the world, in case you needed to store, like, every episode of The Simpsons online.

A few caveats: we ignored email services like Gmail, and any service that offered less than 250 MB of free storage. We found two services that offer theoretically unlimited storage. However, MediaFire limits file size to 100 MB per upload, and Omemo applies a peer-to-peer storage model that seems pretty complicated for the average Normal Human user.

For the record, here at PutPlace we offer 2 GB for free. Sign up now to join our exclusive beta program.

With no further ado, here’s the big list:

(more…)