Hi-Rely RAIDFrame: External Disk-To-Disk Backup Via eSATA
“Are we ready for high-capacity RAID solutions for our backup needs? Today we’re looking at an external device from Highly Reliable Systems that connects to your machine through a single eSATA interface and supports up to 15 drives in a 3U enclosure.”
The first column shows the emoticon image, the second column is what you should type in a post (minus the single quote marks, ‘ and ’ ), and the third column is the file name (just for your reference).
For example, ‘;-)’ won’t give me my image, but if I omit those little single quote marks, WordPress will translate that to (assuming the WP blog you are using has smilies enabled).
I know some folks hate smileys, but I think a smiley or two can be fun, when not overused in a post – few of us want our posts to look like an image gallery of the little buggers.
Remember the Monty Python skit in an architect’s office where somebody said something obviously sarcastic and then in HUGE green letters “SARCASM” flashes on the screen several times? The point of this joke is that whether your sacasm is good or bad there’s always somebody who doesn’t get it.
To help fix this is Sarcastic Font! Anytime you say something sarcastic, the text should lean to the left (think oppose of Italics). It’s a grass roots movement, but then again, so was the emoticon
Vijay Bangaru, Product Manager for Google Docs yesterday announced that Google Docs now supports files up to 250 MB in size (larger than the attachment limit on most email applications), which means Google Docs users can now store backups of large graphic files, RAW photos and ZIP archives on the cloud.
The news comes at a time when Google is trying to instill in users a confidence regarding cloud storage. A lot of people are wary of trusting the cloud as their sole storage solution. It’s this kind of thinking that Google will need to overcome if its Chrome OS, which stores everything in the cloud, is to be successful.
Over the next few weeks, we’re rolling out the ability to upload all file types to the cloud through Google Docs, giving you one place where you can upload and access your key files online. Because Google Docs now supports files up to 250 MB in size, which is larger than the attachment limit on most email applications, you’ll be able to backup large graphics files, RAW photos, ZIP archives and much more to the cloud. More importantly, instead of carrying a USB drive, you can now use Google Docs as a more convenient option for accessing your files on different computers.
This feature can also help you work with teams to organize and collaborate on information online. For example, an architect can share large schematic files with her construction firm, while a P.T.A. member can share large graphic files for posters with other members. You can even add these files to the same shared project folder your team has already been using to collaborate on documents and spreadsheets.
In addition to uploading any file into Google Docs, our Google Apps Premier Edition customers will be able to seamlessly upload many files at once and sync them with their desktop in real time using third party applications. You can read more about how the ability to upload any file will help businesses on the Google Enterprise blog.
This feature will be enabled for your account over the next couple of weeks — look for the bubble notification when you sign in to Google Docs. For more information, check out our post on the Google Docs blog.
Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, that’s creativity.
– Charles Mingus
From the time we started WordPress.com in 2005, we’ve focused on making it easy and rewarding to use so that anyone could get started with blogging. Along the way all of you who’ve been using WordPress.com and giving us your feedback have helped us figure out which features to roll out next. Thanks!
I took a look back at all the feature announcements we’ve made here, and it came to 370 posts, 82 in 2009 alone. That’s a lot of features. So in case you missed anything along the way here are some of my picks for cool things you can do with WordPress.com.
Create We’ve set up lots of ways for you to write, post photos and videos, and generally add stuff to your blog, including mobile apps.
Add quotes, images, and videos to your blog while browsing other web sites with the Press This bookmarklet.
Post by email makes it easy to publish blog posts from any email client. (It’s what I use to post to my photoblog.)
Share and Read We’ve built in some cool sharing and reading features so you can easily let people know about your new posts and also see what other people are blogging.
We’re working on much more for you in 2010. In the meantime check out Support for an updated list of features, and tips on making the most of your blog. Thanks for making WordPress.com amazing.
(I promise not to try to bring too many alerts to you, but this one seemed spot-on)
If Oracle buys MySQL as part of Sun, database customers will pay the bill.
In April 2009, Oracle announced that it had agreed to acquire Sun. Since Sun had acquired MySQL the previous year, this would mean that Oracle, the market leader for closed source databases, would get to own MySQL, the most popular open source database.
If Oracle acquired MySQL on that basis, it would have as much control over MySQL as money can possibly buy over an open source project. In fact, for most open source projects (such as Linux or Apache) there isn’t any comparable way for a competitor to buy even one tenth as much influence. But MySQL’s success has always depended on the company behind it that develops, sells and promotes it. That company (initially MySQL AB, then Sun) has always owned the important intellectual property rights (IPRs), most notably the trademark, copyright and (so far only for defensive purposes) patents. It has used the IPRs to produce income and has reinvested a large part of those revenues in development, getting not only bigger but also better with time.
If those IPRs fall into the hands of MySQL’s primary competitor, then MySQL immediately ceases to be an alternative to Oracle’s own high-priced products. So far, customers had the choice to use MySQL in new projects instead of Oracle’s products. Some large companies even migrated (switched) from Oracle to MySQL for existing software solutions. And every one could credibly threaten Oracle’s salespeople with using MySQL unless a major discount was granted. If Oracle owns MySQL, it will only laugh when customers try this. Getting rid of this problem is easily worth one billion dollars a year to Oracle, if not more.
Who is driving the petition and what are your motivations?
This petition is driven by Monty Program Ab, which was founded by the creator of MySQL, Michael “Monty” Widenius, and consists of many of the original core MySQL developers.
The short answer is that we want to ensure that MySQL can’t be killed by Oracle and we also want to ensure that MySQL is also in the future actively developed under an Open Source license in a way that meets the needs of all market segments.
A more detailed answer can be found in Monty’s blog that explains his motivations and intentions.
I’ll give you the boilerplate ad copy from the vendor, and then below that what I’ve found with it, and my settings.
ConvertXtoDVD – top-choice video conversion software – convert and burn any videos such as Avi to DVD, WMV to DVD, MKV to DVD, YouTube, ogm, mpeg, quicktime mov !
This award-winning divx to dvd video converter software burn video and audio formats to DVD, video conversion supports avi, divx, wmv, mkv, xvid, vcd, vob, dvd…
All in one video conversion and burning software.
Key Features
Video formats supported: avi, divx, xvid, mov, mkv, flv , mpeg1, mpeg2, mpeg-, nsv, dvr-ms, ts, ifo, vob, asf, wmv, realmedia, rm, rmvb, ogm, existing files from digital camcorders, TV/Sat, capture cards, etc. No external codecs needed like avi codec download More formats…
Create DVD menus with different templates available, possibility to add background video, image or audio, have chapter and audio/subtitle menus
Conversion advisor wizard, control of the conversion speed vs. quality
Fast and quality encoder, typically less than 1 hour for converting 1 movie, and supports Multi-Core processors!
Included burning engine with burn speed control choice of SAO or packet writing methods, supports all DVD formats
Custom and or automatic chapter creation with markers and preview window
Advanced file merging possibilities
Audio formats supported internal and external: AC3, DTS, PCM, OGG, MP3, WMA and more… Select audio output format.
Subtitles files supported internal and external: SRT, .SUB/IDX, .SSA, opensubtitles, dvbsub with color and font selection, and supports tags like italic, bold, turn on/off with DVD player remote control
Video output for video standard (NTSC, PAL), TV Screen (Widescreen 16:9, Fullscreen 4:3) and DVD Resolution (Full D1, Broadcast D1, Half D1, SIF), or choose automatic for all choices listed above. Also convert video from NTSC to PAL or PAL to NTSC
Video post processing settings like video resize-pad/cropping and de-interlacing options
Works with 32 and 64bits edition of Windows XP, Vista, 7
The trial version will integrate a watermark into the DVD. Please try before you buy! ( DVDs created by the registered version do not contain any watermark)
Good software. Now actually uses a good portion of my 8 logical cores in the i7 Intel – significantly faster conversion, with better quality than their earlier version 3 of this software.
One general thing that has sped up my conversions has been to turn off the video preview window – it takes some horsepower to run that, even with a great graphics card. Systems with less than top cards will suffer even more. Of course, that just adds time, but I don’t need to see it while it’s being converted
Within the Settings, in the General tab, setting the working directory to my non-encrypted “scratch” partition / drive, that is a RAId stripe helps – I don’t need integrity for the conversion process, just the result once done <grin>
Under DVD Menus, I have all items checked.
For quality purposes, under the Encoding tab I have encoding set to SP / Short Projects, 110 minutes and under. It is important to check Two-Pass Encoding with this. Thus, the first pass will figure out that my 2.5 hour movie uses X amount of space, and it will do a better job on the second pass of filling up what I have set as a DVD-5 Target size. I also set Conversion Priority to “Lowest” here.
The only other defaults I change are under the Burning tab. I set the result to an .Iso file in the working folder. Feel free to change other things, or adopt other settings – this is merely what I use to turn my files into working DVD images. (I prefer to go to .iso for storage, and often just play that directly, but if needed I can easily burn an actual DVD from the .iso image).
The program does seem to do a good job taking the family cam 1080p stuff down to DVD format, so Great Auntie Gertrude can view it (on her younger neighbor’s player). Hope this helps some of you all with your family movie collections!
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Now playing: Rolling Stones – She’s So Cold via FoxyTunes
As recently noted, I have decided to give Carbonite another shot.
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I am pursuing the strategy of only using it for the more critical files, that I may want to retrieve over the internet. There is no way that you are uploading 3tb of data to them even over a top-level broadband connection (I know now from experience – was just curious to see the speed) let alone getting them back, either, in any sort of timely manner.
So I’ve got just under 16 gigabytes of documents, spreadsheets, source code, etc. up there. A few treasured family pictures, etc. The rest resides on multiple local drives, which are not hooked up when not needed (see top 3 items here). This also allows me to off-site a few spare drives, to a reasonably flood / fire / etc. resistant spot. Again, as anyone who’s ever had a drive fail can avow the data lost is often worth many times the cost of the drive itself.
And my timing was spot-on. (yes, failure bites . . .)
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SMART errors are impending doom. A number of years ago, I got a bad batch of drives and they’ve been slowly dying off, with a horrible clicking noise as the final symptom upon power-up. The manufacturer replaced them under warranty, but they are old 500g drives anyway : not something I care to keep about, if not reliable.
I have simulated a bare metal restore, and then deactivated Carbonite on my desktop, and activated it on my “new” desktop (laptop) and restored data successfully. It does keep a couple of generations of data (two back revisions of that pesky spreadsheet, etc.) but by default it only backs it up once per 24 hour period. You can override this behavior, but only on a per file basis, not globally.
I chose to keep control of my own encryption keys : the .pem keyfile is stored on multiple other drives, and keys as well as on a couple of remote servers. This still presupposes trusting the manufacturer of your crypto, in this case the Carbonite folks. (though in their proverbial shoes, I’d just as soon be able to tell anyone that it’s not physically possible to give them the data, they need to bother that individual customer . . .)
Carbonite has worked well in the couple of weeks I’ve been using it. While they also have a Mac version, I’ve not tested it out.
click to enlarge
All in all, keeping realistic expectations about what you are going to get, I would say this is a good data file backup system for a secondary backup. Just realize it is not designed to do bare metal restores, it is for specific data files that you choose, such as “My Documents” etc. For all of my local home backups, I’m using old sata drives via this esata dock and I also have a couple HD’s off site in town, and a limited amount of data rsync’ed remotely as well.
Once you’ve had data failure that costs a lot in hassle, grief, or dollars, you tend to get better prepared
This external Blu-ray burner offers four ways to connect to a PC or Mac.
Looking for an external (or internal) drive to store all those “special files” on disk? Look no further than OWC’s Mercury Pro 12x Blu-ray burner, using a Pioneer BDR-205 and costing a whopping $349.99 USD. This Blu-ray drive supports burning up to 50 GB of data or high-definition video on BD-R dual-layer media at 12x speed; the drive burns at 2x when using BD-RE. Or, if you prefer sticking to the old-school DVDs, consumers can cram 8.5 GB on a dual-layer disk at 16x; CD-R media burns at 40x.
But what makes this device really cool is its quad interface, offering four ways for consumers to connect the burner to a Mac or PC. Offering pure Plug & Play support, the Mercury Pro provides FireWire 800 (two ports), FireWire 400 (one port), USB 2.0 (one port), and eSATA (one port). The drive also includes cables for each connection.
For $449.99 USB, OWC is also offering this bundle, throwing in Roxio’s Toast 10 Titanium Pro but it’s only compatible with Macintosh hardware, requiring Mac OS X v10.5.x. Of course, Windows users have a plethora of more advaned burning utilities.
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