I bet you don’t really have a backup strategy for your personal workstations. Some of you probably do some sort of backups but peel back the top layer and it’s not really a full backup strategy. I don’t want to scare you but have looked outside recently? Earthquakes, Sinkholes, Hurricanes, Floods, Republicans, Democrats oh my. Seriously, it’s not enough to be worried about your hard drive crashing at an untimely moment or your laptop bag being snatched from you at the airport (Note to self: don’t mess with (Mark Stelzner). Your home could burn down or be swept away in a flash flood.

Fear not my good friends; let me give you few helpful tips on how to create a very simple backup strategy.

1. Backup your critical files to external storage.
2. Image your hard drive and store in a safe place. By safe place I mean a fireproof safe, a safe deposit box, your parent’s house or well you get the picture.  I don’t mean the bottom shelf in the bookcase in your living room.

There you have it. Short, simple and beautiful.  Wait, what?  You need more information?  Oh, sorry.  Here you go:

Mac:

1. Backup: Hands down the easiest file backup program for the Mac is already built-in to Mac OS X and is called Time Machine.  Just get yourself an external Firewire or USB hard drive that is at least as large as the hard drive in you Mac, turn on the power to the drive, plug it into your Mac and follow the instructions here.
2. Image: Buy yourself a second external hard drive that is the same size as the hard drive in your Mac. Purchase either SuperDuper or Carbon Copy and follow their directions to make a full image of your hard drive. Don’t forget the part about storing it in a safe place.

Windows:

1. Backup: Unlike the Mac, Windows doesn’t come with a backup program that is as easy and as powerful to use as Time Machine.  So I recommend you skip the whole backup to local external disk option and go with the cloud baby.  I recommend either Carbonite or Jungle Disk.  These two programs will backup your data over your Internet connection to storage at the vendor data center.  Each company has a different pricing model so read the pricing information carefully to determine which company’s backup pricing best meets your needs.
2. Image: Despite the fact that Windows built-in backup software is barely usable, Windows Vista and Windows 7 built-in image software works just great.  I have had to use it several times now to upgrade my laptop to a larger hard drive and then restore to a replacement hard drive when the new drive failed.  Still on Windows XP?  Why on earth are you still on Windows XP? Oh all right, if you must use XP for some reason, then I recommend Acronis True Image. I don’t mean to sound like a broken record, but you did remember to store it in a safe place right?

So NOW you have a backup strategy.

Recently a number of my Twitter buds decided to change their twitter name. Why you ask? Well, that’s another blog post. Focus people focus. Anyway, after the name change I discovered that TweetDeck continued to show the old name for my group members and for autocomplete.

I tried to un-follow/re-follow the person who changed names, I removed and then re-added them to a group but in every case, TweetDeck continued to show me the old twitter name. The only option that worked for me was to completely uninstall TweetDeck and wipe out all the directories and reinstall. I’m calling this the nuclear option since it will wipe out all the groups and group members for the local installation on your computer.

Fortunately TweetDeck now has the ability to sync your groups (and the group members) to the TweetDeck servers. This feature was designed to allow you to have TweetDeck installed on multiple devices and only have to maintain your groups in one place and then sync everywhere. We can take advantage of this feature to wipe out TweetDeck, re-install and then sync the groups and group members back.

After the re-install and re-sync, the groups on my computer now contain the correct (renamed) twitter accounts.

Here are the steps for the nuclear option. These steps are only for Vista and XP.

1. Make sure you have created a TweetDeck account and have run a sync (Setting buttons, Sync tab)
2. If possible, install TweetDeck on another computer or iPhone, enter your TweetDeck account information when prompted, wait for the sync to complete and verify that all your columns and group members synced correctly
3. Uninstall TweetDeck on the original computer (add/remove programs in XP control panel or Programs and Features in Vista control panel)
4. Delete the directory containing the TweetDeck program if it still exists (typically C:\Program Files\TweetDeck)
5. Delete the directory containing the TweetDeck user files

   Vista: C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\TweetDeckFast.xxxx

   XP: C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\TweetDeckFast.xxxx
   
   where xxxx will be a unique string such as “F9107117265DB7542C1A806C8DB837742CE14C21.1”
   

6. Delete the Adobe Air directory for TweetDeck

   Vista: C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\AIR\ELS\TweetDeckFast.xxxx

   XP: C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Adobe\AIR\ELS\TweetDeckFast.xxxx
   
   where xxxx will be a unique string such as “F9107117265DB7542C1A806C8DB837742CE14C21.1”
   

7. Download and re-install TweetDeck
8. Run TweetDeck, enter your TweetDeck account information and wait for sync to occur (may take a couple of minutes so don’t panic)
9. You should now see the new Twitter usernames in your groups and autocomplete should show you the new names.

I was organizing some of my PeopleSoft documents and came across some screen shots of PeopleSoft from years gone bye. Interesting to see the changes in the application from the Windows 3.1 days to the Web. Enjoy.

Here is the original PeopleSoft 3.0 application from 1994. Windows 3.1 baby!!!

PeopleSoft version 6:

PeopleSoft version 7:

PeopleSoft version 8:

I received an email today from Dell informing me there were new updates available for my Dell laptop. I had to laugh when I read the description of the new version of the Dell Support Center application “1. Add new feature of passive marketing.”

I consider my Dell laptop as my own and as such do not want Dell sending me marketing messages through support software. So, perhaps I’ll pass on passive marketing.

As we wait for anxiously for Windows Vista 2.0…er…I mean Windows 7, there are a couple of Windows 7 features that are now available in Vista and XP

The first feature is called Aero Snap and can be downloaded here. Once Aero Snap is running you can drag a window to the left or right side of the screen (drag until your cursor is stopped at the side of the screen) and release the mouse button. The window will resize to take up 50% of the screen. If you drag the window to the top of the screen and release the mouse button the window will maximize. Dragging the window away from the top or sides will resize the window back to the original size. Once I realized that the mouse cursor had to stop at the side or top of the screen before Aero Snap would change the window size the program worked flawlessly.

The second feature is called Aero Shake and can be downloaded here. This application is pretty straightforward. When you shake the active window with you mouse, all the other windows will minimize. Shaking the active window again with your mouse will restore the previously minimized windows. In my testing on a Dell XPS laptop running Vista Ultimate I had to give the active window a pretty strong shake with my mouse before the other windows would minimize or restore.