Month: October 2008

Two years ago I wrote a post about backing up personal media on my old blog.

It’s funny to see what my needs were at the time.

-First of all bandwidth to my house has improved big time. I’m now getting 20Mbps up & down thanks to Verizon FIOS. At the time of my earlier post I was getting 5Mbps down and 2Mbps downstream.

-I still don’t need to backup the content on my DVR. Actually we use our DVR less and less as I’m streaming more stuff online these days to our big screen tv.

-my music collection has grown considerably but I’m listening to my local music less frequently too. Most of the time I listen to music online. So my backup needs have changed here. Eventually I probably won’t have to back up my music since it will be free and in the cloud (btw I can’t wait to try out the new imeem app on my G1).

-i store 100% of our home photos online now. everything is on flickr and tumblr. i trust that it’s being backed up properly. 

-I scan important documents and back them up to our server (with redundant storage) on the home network. I also scan the kids art projects & report cards. This is still the best scanner ever imho.

-I backup our family home videos to the same server. that library is about 100 gigs.

I do worry that if, god forbid, my house burns down or my server has multiple simultaneous hard disk failures, my home videos and will be lost.

So i’m searching for a big honking disk in the cloud for my home videos. I was thinking about Amazon S3 but I haven’t found an easy desktop client that makes it simple for our needs. I tried Mozy but I’m having problems. My friend Larry recommended SugarSync but the desktop software won’t let me backup data from our LAN (it seems to insist that all content reside on the same computer as their desktop app).

Maybe I’ll try FolderShare and keep a big disk at the office that will sync with my server at home.

Any & all suggestions welcome!

Full disclosure: I’m good friends with the founders of Android. Google bought the company several years ago. That team created the open source and full software stack that is leading to a number of Android powered phones & devices.

The first Android powered device is the HTC G1 that T-mobile will ship next week.

My Android friends gave me a G1 last Thursday.

My thoughts after a few days of use:

-The software is quite stable, not only for a v1 release but in general. My G1 hasn’t crashed on me once. I wish I could say the samething about my 3g iphone (which I also love but locks up from time to time)

-Android sw is fast. Really fast. the UI is signficantly faster than the iphone UI

-You can run apps in the background on the G1. Not true with iphone. iphone in some ways thinks of applications like MacOS System 6. Remember Multitasker :)

-The keyboard on the G1 isn’t the best. In some ways the iphone keyboard is better or at least to me. The problem I have with the iphone keyboard isn’t the touchscreen. It’s the periodic delays with the keyboard. No delay with Android. Did I mention its faster

-I haven’t tested the camera on the Android but I like that there is a dedicated button on the side to trigger the camera.

-The G1 has a removable battery. Need a say more

-Connect it to your Mac/PC with a USB cable and it just shows up as a USB drive. Drag and drop mp3 and other stuff like photos to the device and it just works. WIth iphone, everything has to go thru iTunes. that works for some but not for me.

-Android/G1 supports the Amazon MP3 store which is so awesome. Buying music is easy and flexible for the first time on a phone.

-Integration with gmail, gcal and gcontacts works really well. I’m trying out a test to keep a parallel life in google and exchange for now.

-I wish I could sync Outlook with Android

-i like the browser UI on the iphone better than Android.

-the headphone jack on the G1 bums me out. Must use their headphones or find another set that has a miniUSB connector instead of a standard headphone jack connector.

-It’s bigger, longer, thicker and heavier than the iphone. Some dont’ like the look. I acctually  like the size. I love the flip out the screen.

-The Android App store works just like the iphone app store. very fast & simple. There are already a bunch of familiar apps like Shazam. There is a great app that Rich Miner showed me where you take a picture of a bar code on an item. It looks up the item online and returns all sorts of useful info. And there is pacman. And Google isn’t going to block any apps that may compete with their business. Smart.

For a version 1 release, this thing is amazing.

Congrats Andy and Rich. Well done!

I look foward to my road ahead with Android.

I bought a MacBook Air when it first came out and ditched my MacBook Pro.

I thought it was the right thing to do because I’m traveling a ton and wanted something lighter. And my back appreciates the lighter load. Especially when I’m running around NYC or SF.

But there are tons of tradeoffs with this machine. The two big ones in my mind are

1. can’t swap out the battery in the macbook air

2. can’t connect the macbook air to a 30" Cinema Display

I’ve somehow gotten over the battery issue. But the inability to connect to my display at work makes life cumbersome. I have to sync files now between my work machine and my macbook air. It’s not easy and I’m always finding myself without some document or song or photo I need.

Today Apple announced a whole new MacBook line up.

And the new MacBook is small, thin and according to my friend, Chris Devers, it will work with my big monitor. Marco has also has interesting post on the new machines.

So it looks like I made a mistake buying my MacBook Air when I did.

It sometimes hurts to be an early adopter :)