I made an attempt to write about this while at the office, but a suppression of the backspace key made the original version of this post go off into the ether. Sad.
What even more sad is that this version is not necessarily the 2.0 version of the post. Rather, it's the same post informed by a conversation with my partner who is a public health professional. She's someone who still uses a Palm Handspring Visor (which I graciously bought for her so I could have a device to laugh at). She keeps me in check by telling me that this degree of complexity might scare off some folks.
My hub tends to be the cloud by way of my Blackberry. I need access to my data and that access tends to be in locations other than my desktop computers (work and home). More often then not, when not the Blackberry, that access needs to be achieved from my old iBook G4 (which I need to replace before the end of this year due to bar exam software compatibility).
So, without further delay, let's begin:
- Backup: Mozy is the tool I use for on-line backup of work related product. The free account is enough for the items which I think are irreplaceable such as documents and photos (I'm currently using an external firewire drive to backup pictures and music at home). One drawback of Mozy is the slow restore time (e.g. you're downloading your data from the cloud).
- Storage: Dropbox is a tool which allows me to have a traveling file share wherever I go. The documents in my Dropbox are accessible through either a "folder" on my Windows or Mac AND through a web based interface so that I can access items from the Blackberry in a pinch. Google docs receives a very honorable mention and is installed on my phone for instances when I need to collaborate on a document with other folks.
- Notes/Clippings: Evernote is where I put web-clippings, drafts, and notes. There is a web based client in addition to a pretty good fat clients for Windows and Mac. I've used this as a replacement to Circus Ponies Notebook or Journaler (both Mac specific applications). The mobile client works well. They have a slick looking iPhone version of the application.
- Calendar: Google calendar with the Google Sync application for Blackberry
- Contacts: Funambol syncs to my Outlook at work and Apple Addressbook on home and notebook computers. Syncs with Blackberry as well: the Blackberry uploads calendar information to the funambol server so that I can have remote access to my Contacts and Google Calendar from one web site.
- RSS Reader: Google Reader. There is a mobile version for phones. Don't use the mobile version much unless I'm waiting at the doctor, dentist, or shaman's office. From the web client, sharing a story makes it available to Facebookers and Tumblr accounts (the power of RSS)
- Updates to Social Networks: Twitter. From the desktop, I use the Adobe Air application Twhirl and, when I need to really focus, IMs to Identi.ca so that updates are one way. From the Blackberry, it's TinyTwitter. I had tried Blackbird but didn't really like it.
- Mail: I use Google apps for domains to handle my mail and domain specific jabber account. I don't think I could give up the search facility and integration with calendar. The Gmail client for Blackberry is pretty good and gives me the search functionality I need.
That's the short inventory. It seems a little complicated; but having thought about what it would mean to rebuild some of that content were these systems not in place takes substantially less time than setting this up so that when the phone or notebook breaks or is stolen, I can be back to where that device was, as a hub of information, within a reasonable amount of time.
Additionally, being able to update things once and having them appear across multiple networks is really a time saver and fulfills the goal of new technologies, namely, doing more in less overall steps.
Discuss.
I love Mozy!
You wrote about Mozy before, and I ended up starting to use it for the two computers at my house after an unfortunate iBook death. We weren't backing up like we should and lost most of what was on that computer. Obviously, we couldn't be trusted enough to back up on a regular basis, so we needed something to do it automatically for us. Based on your previous Mozy post, I decided to try it, and I have been really happy. Speed hasn't been a problem for me. (Since it's home use, I'm willing to be patient.)
Otherwise, my life isn't nearly as in the clouds as it should be. I'm really tied to my laptop, which has its benefits (i.e. a lot of info and documents are available when I don't have an Internet connection or I have a really slow Internet connection). - K
confidentiality of the cloud
I used to believe that putting data into the cloud was silly to the point where I would run what I wanted off my own server(s) located in our house.
But, as time went by, I came to realize that it's one of those struggles where we can choose to go back to paper and non-networked devices for the sake of security or we assume the risk of using cloud based data services.
The reality is that users tend to be ignorant of what SSL is and why it's important. Myself, I don't encrypt half the stuff I have because it has very little value to others.
Even my contacts, as they sync, will have very little value to identify thieves. People expose themselves to greater risks by using Facebook with default settings.
But, generally speaking, Stallman makes some interesting posts from my skimming of the article.
k to the e to the n
Ken, do you have any idea
Ken, do you have any idea what percentage of Legal Aid is working remotely as much as you do? As someone who works almost exclusively on a laptop (and has no central office), I also rely heavily on the Cloud --
In terms of social networking, I'm underusing that for work. I deal with Twitter and Facebook separately because I've locked my Twitter updates -- but they're both personal spaces for me and I'm not leveraging them for NTAP. Much. On the other hand, I probably could set up the lstech delicious feed to publish to Twitter, but I frequently feel as if we're publishing to the same 6 people in four different places...
And I have to admit that I don't really manage my contacts - NTAP staff have our contact info in a staff wiki, and I just search everyone's sig files via gmail until I find their contact info. Not very efficient, but 95% of my contact with colleagues happens in email or via IM.
Funabmol, evernote, and dropbox are new to me. I'll have to play around with them sometime this weekend.
On another note, I recently tagged a ranty interview with Richard Stallman in which he pronounced saving all our information on other people's servers stupid. He might have a point, but it's so convenient and I've lost so much data to exploding computer drives over the years...
clarification re: social network updates
I only use the interweb which is facebook so I can only speak to that network being updated of Tumblr, Flickr, blog, Twitter, iLike, Last.fm, delicious.com, and other updates.
k to the e to the n
Comments about Mozy
The difference between how Intronis eSureIT (what we use now) restores as opposed to Mozy Pro:
For Intronis, you use the eSureIT Monitor, you just select the Backup Set or File(s) and you click "restore" and it sends you the files directly to your machine.
For Mozy, for 2996 files at 317 MB:
1. Wait for Mozy to Prepare the Zip File that has all the files you want to restore (through the web site) from 12:20 PM to 1:25 PM ………. ~ 1 hour
2. Notification email to tell you it was prepared ………. 1 - 5 minutes
3. To download the Zip file to a local machine (at approx ~210 KB/sec) from 2:20 to 2:45 ……….~ 25 minutes
4. To unzip the file from 2:49 to 2:51 ………. 2 minutes
Total ………. 1.5 hours to do a restore for this set. This may not seem like much, but it adds up the bigger your backup set is.