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A Review of Online Backup Services

Posted by yourtechguy on Sep 8, 2011 in Articles | 0 comments

You’re sit­ting at your desk work­ing, then the Win­dows update pops up to inform you that there are crit­i­cal updates, you click ok to pro­ceed with the updates. Now your com­puter needs to restart to fin­ish the update. It restarts again.

Your com­puter finally starts, only to go into some sort of recov­ery. After about 10 mins your com­puter boots up and you see your desktop. Now you try to resume what you were work­ing on before all this happened.

You try look­ing for some of your files on the hard-drive, but you are not find­ing them. Panic sets in. You sud­denly real­ize you may have lost every­thing that was stored on your hard-drive.

Well this sce­nario hap­pened to me but every­thing was not a total loss. I do have exter­nal hard-drives and just 2 months before I started an online backup sub­scrip­tion. Talk about relief. That’s to say I was still was not a lit­tle nervous.

I made the deci­sion to restore back to fac­tory new. The true test of your online ser­vice is when you have to restore your files. It is nice to have an easy backup pro­ce­dure, but you need to be able to restore your files even easier.

When the restore process was finally fin­ished, I installed Mozy and started to recov­ery my files. The process took a day or so because I had a lot to restore. When it was fin­ished I had every­thing back. What a life saver.

A few more rea­sons to have an online backup service:

• what if some­body broke in and stole your com­puter and exter­nal hard-drives
• what if your house burned
• what if there was a tornado

The Mozy sys­tem is com­pat­i­ble with Mac­in­tosh and Windows-based oper­at­ing sys­tems. There’s an app for the iPod Touch, iPhone, iPad and Android to be able to access  your data while on the go.

Some really nice fea­tures of Mozy backup is auto­matic you don’t have to remem­ber to backup you can use your com­puter while Mozy is back­ing up. If you have access to the Inter­net you have access to your data.

You can use Mozy for free with up to two gigs of stor­age, yes that’s right two gigs of stor­age.
Mozy is not expen­sive at $5.99 a month as price just right for 60 bucks near you can have peace of mind and know that your
call will be safe and backed up acces­si­ble from any­where on any device practically.

Click here to try Mozy’s free auto­matic back up soft­ware and your 2 gigs of free stor­age space.

Great Web Hosting from Host Gator: Coupon Codes

Posted by yourtechguy on Sep 1, 2011 in Articles | 0 comments

Here are some great coupon codes for Host Gator. I do rec­om­mend them and use them. This site is hosted by them.

To use any of the coupon codes below click this link and enter your coupon code when check­ing out. The prices in your shop­ping cart will not refect the dis­counts until you are ready to check out and enter in the code. Host Gator only allows one coupon code per purchase.

Web Host­ing Packages

• 25% off your Reg­u­lar Host­ing, VPS Host­ing, Reseller Host­ing
  coupon code:      25offhostgatoryltg
• $9.94 off Reg­u­lar Host­ing, VPS Host­ing
  coupon code:      hostgatoryltg
• $24.94 off Reseller Host­ing
  coupon code:      hostgatorreselleryltg

Host Gator Tech­ni­cal Support

Host Gator pro­vides 24/7 tech­ni­cal and cus­tomer ser­vice.  They offer tele­phone ser­vice, live chat, and a ticket sys­tem. I have used the chat ser­vices sev­eral times and have been very pleased to the response I have gotten.

Here is a link to a side by side com­par­i­son com­par­i­son review of three dif­fer­ent host­ing com­pa­nies I did a while back.

What Technology Do You Use to Work from Home?

Posted by yourtechguy on May 2, 2011 in Articles | 0 comments

With so many peo­ple work­ing from home nowa­days, run­ning their own busi­ness or just telecom­mut­ing, I thought it would be inter­est­ing to see what types of tech­nol­ogy other peo­ple are using in their home offices.

Recently I had a chance to ask Lynn Terry of ClickNewz.com, about the tech­nol­ogy
she uses to help her run her suc­cess­ful affil­i­ate and inter­net mar­ket­ing busi­ness from home.

What tech­nol­ogy do you use to work from home?

I started out with noth­ing but a basic PC com­puter. My busi­ness has grown
dra­mat­i­cally over the last 14+ years of course, and these days my home
office is the largest room in my house. I cur­rently have two desks – one for
writ­ing & basic work, and a “media desk” where I do my mul­ti­me­dia work.

The tech­nol­ogy in my home office cur­rently includes:

• Dell PC com­puter with dual monitors
• Mac­book Pro lap­top with exter­nal monitor
• Apple iPad
• Motorola Droid X (smart phone)
• Plantron­ics Wire­less USB Headset
• Blue Yeti Micro­phone (for podcasting)
• Wire­less HP all-in-one Scanner/Copier/Printer
• Canon Vixia HD Video Cam­era with Tripod

Some of my favorite apps and soft­ware pro­grams include:

• iMovie for video edit­ing on the Mac­book Pro
• iThought­sHD app for mindmap­ping on the iPad
• Things for Mac, for tasks & scheduling
• Cam­ta­sia for PC, Screen­flow for Mac (for screencasting)
• Adobe Pho­to­shop for graph­ics & image editing
• Dreamweaver for basic web design
• Word­Press for the major­ity of my site/blog creation
• Dragon Dic­ta­tion
• Skype
• Ever­note – which works across ALL my devices

What would be the most impor­tant thing you use?

Believe it or not, with all that run­ning in my office, I’m usu­ally on my
Droid X. I can prac­ti­cally man­age my entire busi­ness from my smart phone no
mat­ter where I am.

Sur­pris­ingly, my iPad is prob­a­bly my least used gad­get – though I do love
it.

More often than not, I’m work­ing from my Mac­book Pro whether I’m on the back
deck or trav­el­ing the world. But if I can do it from my Droid, I don’t even
bother pulling out the laptop.

What kind of mobile tech do you use?

As I men­tioned, I have the Motorola Droid X. I had the orig­i­nal Droid and
upgraded last year for the larger touch screen, and the abil­ity to use it as
a wire­less hotspot. The X will run up to 5 other devices with 3G ser­vice,
which puts me online prac­ti­cally anywhere.

The apps I use most include: Word­Press, News­Rob (feed reader), Twit­ter,
Face­book, Pay­Pal, Gmail, Ever­note, Google Cal­en­dar, Skype Mobile, and the
Kin­dle app.

That com­bi­na­tion of apps allows me to do just about any­thing you could think
of for my online busi­ness. I’ve been known to blog from my Droid while
wait­ing to board a plane, at the doc­tors office, while sit­ting in a
con­fer­ence, etc. I absolutely love the free­dom and flex­i­bil­ity of being
mobile!

Lynn Terry is the author of ClickNewz.com where she shares her 14+ years expe­ri­ence in online busi­ness and inter­net mar­ket­ing. She cov­ers a vari­ety of top­ics from start­ing your online busi­ness, online jobs, work from home options, affil­i­ate mar­ket­ing tips, and cre­ative online mar­ket­ing strategies.

Web Host Review

Posted by yourtechguy on Apr 18, 2011 in Articles, Reviews | 0 comments

Just put up a review of three top web host­ing com­pa­nies. I com­pared the cost for a basic site and the fea­tures of each. Check it out here. 

Positive Aspects of Technology Jobs

Posted by yourtechguy on Mar 28, 2011 in Articles | 0 comments

Tech­nol­ogy makes it pos­si­ble for many peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties to suc­ceed in employ­ment and func­tion in today’s soci­ety. There are numer­ous tech­nolo­gies that help peo­ple use com­put­ers. Key­boards that have large let­ter­ing and bright keys help the visu­ally impaired. A key­less key­board allows users to type by slid­ing domes around to cre­ate let­ters and num­bers. A head­band and arm­band device lets a com­puter user con­trol the cur­sor with motion and eye blinks to acti­vate but­ton clicks. Per­sons with phys­i­cal lim­i­ta­tions could “point and click” with­out lift­ing a fin­ger from the com­puter key­board. A hand­held device that uses GPS tech­nol­ogy helps a per­son with cog­ni­tive dis­abil­i­ties catch a bus. It sends a prompt to get ready when the bus is approach­ing and another when the bus is at the stop.

Tech­nol­ogy has been used to pro­mote greater eco­nomic equity, more free­dom of choice, changes in the pat­tern of work, but in some cases it has caused the elim­i­na­tion of entire clas­si­fi­ca­tions of employ­ment. Type­set­ting first began around the 1400’s, but in the late 1980’s the trend was mov­ing toward desk­top pub­lish­ing. As com­puter and soft­ware tech­nol­ogy grew, the move to com­plete desk­top pub­lish­ing achieved in the 1990’s. Thou­sands of peo­ple were dis­placed by this type of tech­nol­ogy. Tele­phone oper­a­tors were once the job to have; now that job has been replaced by voice recog­ni­tion tech­nol­ogy. Sec­re­tar­ial dic­ta­tion has also been replaced by voice recog­ni­tion soft­ware. Drafts­men have made the switch to com­puter aided design sys­tems, speed­ing up the process dra­mat­i­cally. Another area that is slowly being phased out is in the retail indus­try. Stores are now exper­i­ment­ing with self-checkout sys­tems. This has reduced the num­ber of work­ers by about 3 to 1. Now, one cashier can over­see 4 self-check out sys­tems instead of hav­ing 4 sep­a­rate cashiers for four sep­a­rate lines. Auto­matic Teller Machines pro­vide a con­tin­ual, con­ve­nient bank­ing ser­vice. No busi­ness could sup­ply such a ben­e­fit at such a low cost. Pay at the pump gas sta­tions allow you to pay with­out hav­ing to go inside the store. Online shop­ping is becom­ing more and more com­mon­place. With such busy sched­ules, peo­ple are look­ing for more and more ways to save time. Over the next five years online shop­ping is expected to reach 132 mil­lion house­holds. The over­all impact to the retail mar­ket will be fewer cashiers, stock­ers, and clerks man­ning retail stores.

Where is Tech­nol­ogy Lead­ing Us?

With the pop­u­lar­ity of the Inter­net, the exis­tence of pub­lic libraries is being threat­ened. It is becom­ing harder for libraries to com­pete with the inter­net. Libraries have installed com­put­ers and begun to offer a wide range of audio-visual media. They have found them­selves increas­ingly unable to match the ser­vice pro­vided by home com­put­ers and the Internet.

Schools and col­leges now offer online classes with­out the need for a class­room. Com­plete degrees may be acquired. This tech­nol­ogy has opened up a whole new world for peo­ple try­ing to get an edu­ca­tion. It allows peo­ple to login to class and study any­where they may have an inter­net con­nec­tion. This is espe­cially advan­ta­geous to the disabled.

Elec­tronic Paper Dis­plays are one of the next big rev­o­lu­tion­ary prod­ucts. Elec­tronic Paper is flex­i­ble, thin, will have the feel of real paper and will be able to have the text changed on the dis­play. This prod­uct will be able to replace a lot of printed media. The appli­ca­tions are end­less. This tech­nol­ogy will be able to do things that printed media could not accom­plish. News­pa­pers would not have to be deliv­ered phys­i­cally any­more. One could reload or have the day’s news beamed to the reader.

All jobs, no mat­ter how spe­cial­ized, will expe­ri­ence ups and downs of the mar­ket place. The key to sur­viv­ing will be the best at what you do. Peo­ple who are experts in their fields have a bet­ter time sur­viv­ing the lows than the aver­age person.

What Can we do?

Future job appli­cants will need to be in highly skilled jobs to avoid being made redun­dant, such as being a writer, designer, musi­cian, inven­tor or an actor. Trades will also still be needed. Car­pen­ters, physi­cians, nurses are among the many trade or skill level jobs that will still be required. Some of the jobs that will do well in the future will be in the tech­nol­ogy field. There will be a strong demand for sys­tems ana­lysts, web spe­cial­ist, data base engi­neers and net­work secu­rity spe­cial­ist. Over­time, I believe that tech­ni­cal jobs and trade jobs will even itself out.

There will be a need for jobs that we can not even imag­ine now. The jobs mar­ket will con­tinue to be dri­ven by the bot­tom line, thus push­ing tech­nol­ogy to the lim­its. No mat­ter what you think of tech­nol­ogy, it is here to stay. Jobs, edu­ca­tion, med­i­cine and every other are of our lives will con­tinue to be affected by tech­nol­ogy. The advances yet to come can not be imag­ined. Are we, as a peo­ple, in dan­ger of becom­ing so wrapped up in tech­nol­ogy that we for­get who we are? Only time can answer that ques­tion. I myself am look­ing for­ward to all of the advances in the world.