savvyITsolutions BLOG

Archive for June, 2010

Apple iPhone 4 Supply Issues Could Hurt Sales
Supply chain management issues that delayed pre-order shipments dates combined with the new smartphone’s technical glitches, could spell opportunity for competitors according to iSuppli.

Read more on InformationWeek

Best golf deals around town & the Carolinas
If you’re looking for a good golf deal, there are plenty to be found this summer. Here’s a sampling of what’s being offered both around Charlotte and within an easy drive of the city.

Read more on The Charlotte Observer

You need to look out for business when business works online. There are generally a different set of rules on the web and, for the most part, the stakes are a lot higher in the www. world of business.

Once you understand that reality, youll see that you need someone in your corner on the web, that going it alone is really a shaky proposition that can cause you more trouble than its worth. You need data security experts that know what theyre doing. You need data protection experts that have a good reputation and the kind of customer loyalty that tell you right away that they know all about what theyre doing .

Theres a checklist. And here are some of the bigger points on it.

Reputation. If the place that youre looking at his a great affiliate program, chances are theyve been able to impress and are doing at least some things right. Take a look at their site and ask around. The word on good reputations travels too.

Online Backup Software. This is absolutely critical. Remember that you would never even think about buying a car without checking under the hood. Well, thats the same for any online backup services that you might want to use. You need to look for several features that make the software great, and one of these is the right Remote File Access.

The software is extremely important and thats just why you need to understand what youre looking at. The better the software the better you chances of being able to get all of your information back after some kind of serious breech.

And the best in Remote File Access is an important part of that. This is the feature that allows you to get the information that youve lost back as long as you try from a computer with Internet access. Of course there are other options that youll want to have like fast efficient backups and an easy system restore feature. Remember that the online backup software is a lot like the engine that drives your data security. Without the right kind, you can lose all of your mission critical data for good.

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Overview and History

Dropbox has been around for a couple of years and they have done excellent things in that small amount of time. Notably their VoteBox system that allows you to vote on which ideas they work on firstGreat approach. There are 3 options: 1 free and 2 premium or pro options. The free account gives 2 Gb whilst the pro versions give you with 50 or 100 Gb. Backup and synchronizing are easy to setup and work constantly in the background so it is a actual “set it and forget it” program. DropBox additionally offer limitless file versioning as an additional feature to the pro editions.

PDA devices are totally supported with apps for iPhone and iTouch and a website for internet enabled devices. Collaboration functionality include public and private file and folder sharing and commenting on files and folders. With many more features in being developed. Photo albums and video streaming are currenty supported. To get you started on the right track: If you follow the ‘getting started guide’ and complete 5 of the 6 steps you are rewarded with an bonus of 250Mb of storage! Great idea! If you would like even more space, then invite friends and you get another 250Mb for each referral up to a limit of 8Gb.

Dropbox was started by Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi in 2007, and got seed funding from Y Combinator. Today, Dropbox is well-funded by Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners, and Amidzad. Since launching publicly in September of 2008, they have gained in excess of 3 million clients and are growing swiftly. They have been featured in the New York Times and on TechCrunch, and have won awards from PC Magazine and CNET. Their passion is delivering a program that rocks and putting it in millions of people’s hands.

Feature Set

Security

DropBox has good security: The web portal is SSL encrypted with a requirement for a username and password to view your data. Files in transit are protected with SSL encryption and once on their servers, your information is encrypted with 256 AES encryption. In addition to this, their service runs on the Amazon AWS service which is backed by the Amazon name and quality stamp.

Backup Features

Continuous and ‘Block Level’ backups are provided to ensure your files are regularly protected. Open files are archived on a continual basis bu utilizing ‘Block level Incremental Backups’ which means that DropBox only backs up the parts of a file that have been edited, rather than the entire file.
Attaching files and folders to the DropBox backup schedule is a snap: Merely right-click on the files you want to protect and choose ‘backup with DropBox’. Alternative versions of files are kept so you can always restore an earlier edition of a file if you overwrote it. There is also a status indicator to show how the archive is progressing.
The bad news is network and removable drives are not supported and commercial databases such as exchange and SQL server are not supported directly.

Restore Features

Restoring your data is extremely simple. You have 2 main options: Restore from the web site: Just log in to your account, navigate to the file you would like to retrieve and choose how you woud like to retrieve it. The other option is even simpler: Simply use the DropBox Manager to restore any desired version of a file.

Control and Analysis

There are processor and bandwidth throttling available from the DropBox client software. Reports and logging are also available from the client software.
Proxy servers are well supported with options for HTTP, SOCKS4 and SOCKS5.

Interface

The interface is light and easy to use. There are very few options available which keeps everything simple and easy to use. There is client software to setup and when setup, the software provides a DropBox folder where all protected files are listed.

Device Support

There is currently support for every device under the sun! The way DropBox is designed; if your devices can use the internet then they can use and be protected by DropBox.

Limitations

The web site can only handle file uploads of up to 300Mb in size however you can circumvent this limitation by using compression tools like WinRAR or WinZip which allow you to chop large files into handier pieces. This limit is not present if you utilize the client software.
File retention (before deletion) is thirty days unless you invest in ‘Pack-Rat’ which is available as an add-on to the Premium versions and costs an extra 39 dollars per annum and gives you limitless file versions and file retention.

File Sharing and Collaboration

Data can be shared publicly – which allows the world to see them – or privately where you allocate access rights to specific files and folders for each user or group.
Photo Albums are also supported and are sharable either publicly or privately.
Comments can be attached to each file that is shared and other people can be permitted to add additional comments to create a discussion about a particular file or folder.

Synchronization

Synchronization is supported between different machines and between machines and the web portal. An excellent feature is the LAN synchronization. This lets devices on the same network (home or work) to very quickly synchronize changes locally without going to the internet first. This greatly reduces your internet bandwidth overhead.

Web 2.0 Integration

At the time of writing, there was no direct integration with online services to allow editing of documents, etc.

Customer Support

There is no phone, online chat or direct email customer support available. There are however, many other ways to get help available: You can contact support via a web form on their website; there is an extensive knowledgebase and FAQ section; the online help is detailed to a sensible level. There are also tutorials, a demo and case studies available. However, by far the most useful resources for do-it-yourself support are the forum and blog. These are full of valuable advice and support from both the DropBox staff and clients using the service.

Ease Of Use

Completely easy to get setup with: Signup, login, download the program on all your machines and start syncing. As of December 2009 there is now a LAN syncronization feature which hugely speeds up local syncing. Both the desktop and web interfaces are clean, elegant and a pleasure to use. All-in-all a very easy service to use.

Cost

Cost – Initial setup: free
Cost – Monthly: Basic: free; Pro50 – $9.99 / mth; Pro100 – $19.99 / mth
Cost – Yearly: Basic: free; Pro50 – $99 / mth; Pro100 – $199 / yr
Cost – Initial allowed storage amount: Basic: 2Gb; Pro50 – 50Gb; Pro100 – 100Gb
Cost – of additional storage: n/a
Cost – of additional devices / PCs / users: n/a
Cost – Referral Program: 250Mb per referral up to a max. of 8Gb
Cost – E-billing facility: Free – n/a; Pro: yes

Conclusion

DropBox is extremely easy to setup and use. It provides almost all the features of a well thought out online storage solution: Backup, Web site, multi-machine syncing, file-versioning, online photo albums and file sharing. The only feature missing is integration with online services to permit you to amend and create files directly in your DropBox. The pricing is fair although there are better offers available if you need more than 100Gb. The security is very safe and the customer support is good, although the lack of telephone, live chat and direct email support is a bit restrictive. The forum and blog are great arenas to get your questions discussed. If you want an all-round online storage solution then DropBox is an excellent choice.

Learn how easy backup data can be restored from an external backup server to a local device (being a desktop, laptop or server.)

I used Gladinet (www.gladinet.com to map online storage to a drive letter and Dorgem (dorgem.sourceforge.net to capture pictures when motion is detected. Dorgem then saves the pictures to my online web storage so if the computer that is taking the pictures is stolen, I still have the evidence offsite. That and I can monitor security from outside the house.This shouldn’t cost any money as long as you have a webcam and a persistant internet connection. It’s great for dorm room and home office security. Update: One problem is the camera is sensitive to light changes and takes about 3000 photos a day in a room when left alone. Good news is Dorgem is open source code. If anyone knows how to program in a sensitivity setting, it would be great to get that update installed.

Ask anyone in the online business world and they’ll tell you that there’s no doubt that the remote backup is one of the most important pieces of technology that keeps web business competitive. And if you press on with those same people, you’ll hear that that all agree that there are some key ingredients that keep the best of these online backups strong.

And at the top of the list is necessarily the software. There are a few necessary prerequisites that no business can do without here, and these are the important features that enable business to get back any lost mission critical quickly and easily.

And of course the software needs to be user friendly and that means that there should be some kind of automatic file backup feature. The reason for this is simple. One of the key ideas behind the remote backup in the first place is covering for the fact that people forget to back up their information themselves.

Options

And that’s why the best of these places will offer you several different automatic file backup scenarios. You might want to choose after windows exit or when you system first starts up, but regardless of the one that suits you, it will be a comfort to know that you won’t need to worry about forgetting to exercise that critical function again.

Remote Access.

You’ll want get the best in remote access as well. When you consider what this function does, you’ll quickly see that making sure you get the best in this is critical. This the function that allows you to access your information from any computer that has Internet access. Now this can be considered a real advantage when you’re looking to reestablish a computer networking connection.

Overall you’ll also need to get the best in reliability on your side and that generally means that you should be looking for the best in customer service. A place that can deliver the best in security on the highest levels so that you don’t need to worry about your mission critical data.

There a few key ingredients that you’ll need in a remote backup and by shopping carefully you’ll find the one that suits your needs. Make no mistake. The remote backup is a big part of a solid business plan.

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Storing recreational vehicles is not an easy job, but people who have these big vehicles know that they to do it often. There are many reasons why people would want to store their RV. One of the reasons might be that they do not want to keep their recreational vehicles hanging around in the open because they are likely to get weathered by the excesses of the climate or even get stolen. Then there are problems with their big bulk too. People who own RVs and do not have their own parking space usually need to spend a lot of money on just the parking alone. Instead, they think it is better to give it a proper storage area where the RVs will not just get a shelter, but they will also be well cared for. One more reason why people look for RV storage is if they are traveling to a busy city and do not find a suitable place to keep their RV there when they are roaming around the city. This is usually what happens with people who come to Las Vegas in their RVs.

RV storage in Las Vegas has become immensely popular because many people come here with their families in their supersized recreational vehicles and then find out upon reaching here that there are not as many places to store their big vehicles as they expected them to be. That is the reason they then start looking around for places to park their vehicles and the RV storage units in Las Vegas seem to be a good idea.

Where are the Best RV Storage Facilities in Las Vegas

They are right when they say that you can find anything everywhere in Las Vegas. The same applies to the RV storage units. You can find these in the outskirts of the town, where people store their RVs and then use the public transport or hire a smaller vehicle to move inside the busily trafficked Las Vegas. Or, you can also find them right in the heart of town where you can park your RV very close to you and spend your happy days in the city. Knowing that you have a place to park when you arrive in Las Vegas takes a big load off of your shoulders.

Some of the most popular RV storage facilities in Las Vegas are Storage West on Pecos Rd., Value Self Storage on the Las Vegas Boulevard, the Oasis Las Vegas RV Resort on Windmill Lane, Charleston West on the Charleston Boulevard and several others. In fact, you can just run a search on the Internet to look for storage facilities in Las Vegas and you are sure to find hundreds of options to choose from.

Location-wise, all of these RV storage facilities are quite strategically placed. They are present in the main streets as well as a little away from the main hustle and bustle of the city from where they can be picked up when returning.

Booking an RV Storage Facility with Las Vegas

Las Vegas is always full with people who come here to have a good time. Most of these people come here in their own recreational vehicles. Now, since these vehicles occupy a lot of space, the warehouse owners are in a fix when the peak seasons come and there is a high tide of recreational vehicles pouring into the town. When that happens, you will find it very difficult to get a storage facility for your precious vehicle.

The solution is to book early. Most of the companies that handle RV storage in Las Vegas also have their bookings and take online reservations. So, before heading out to Las Vegas, you can make a reservation for your recreational vehicle so that you are at peace when you are on your vacation.

Features with RV Storage Facilities in Las Vegas

Las Vegas is one of the hippest cities in the US and hence it is quite expected that the facilities available with the RV storage units will also be quite sophisticated. There are some complex accessibility and security features present in the city.

Most of these are climate controlled so that the recreational vehicles can be kept at the right temperatures. However, there are those without climate control too, so you need to look hard. These facilities are also equipped with several features that help in easy loading and uploading of the RVs. This includes dollies and freight elevators.

The security features are also quite commendable. There are electronic coding security systems in almost most of the facilities which are undefeatable by any people who come here without authorized access. Surveillance cameras are usually on 24 hours in such facilities.

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