Devin Coldewey at TechCrunch reports that the next generation Amazon Kindle e-reader to be released later this year will have a front-lit e-Ink display.

Coldewey was able to play with a  pre-production version of the new e-reader device and had this to say:

The device I saw was crudely camouflaged in a sort of cardboard enclosure, but the screen was clearly visible. With a tap, a slider popped up on the screen, and as it was dragged to the right, the screen lit up evenly with a rather cool light. In the dark, it was plainly noticeable as a glow, and in uneven light — say, shade or a shuttered room — the slight illumination made the screen much more readable. At full blast it was definitely projecting some light (technically speaking it was reflecting it), but it was still a soft glow and not the harsh flashlight of a backlit LCD.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you are in the habit of downloading copyrighted media, including software, music and videos, be warned that beginning on Thursday July 12th your ISP will start spying on your activity. The Raw Story reports, “That’s the date when the nation’s largest ISPs will all voluntarily implement a new anti-piracy plan that will engage network operators in the largest digital spying scheme in history, and see some users’ bandwidth completely cut off until they sign an agreement saying they will not download copyrighted materials.”

Read the rest of this entry »

…some of us treat e-books with hostility

Radio didn’t kill newspapers, TV didn’t kill radio, and so it follows that e-books won’t kill paper books. When new technologies are created it doesn’t always mean an old technology is doomed to extinction. In our electronic world we tend to forget that the paper book is a technology. The paper book is just one of many mediums that exist for human communication. Read the rest of this entry »

That statement is probably true when it comes to everyone. There’s always more that you could do to secure your online bank accounts and other online accounts with sensitive information. At a minimum you should never use the same password for multiple accounts. If you do use the same password for multiple accounts they better be accounts that don’t contain any sensitive information. Using the same password for a bank account and – for example – your email account is a really bad idea. Read the rest of this entry »

I recently bought my first Android phone, the Motorola Triumph. This phone is exclusive to Virgin Mobile. I’ve had a work supplied BlackBerry for many years and it has been difficult to justify the added expense of a personal smartphone. I do find the idea of having mobile internet access ideal but I’ve never been able to justify $50-80 per month to get it. Read the rest of this entry »

I begin this article with an assumption that you already know what server (hardware) virtualization is and know that VM is short for Virtual Machine. I also assume you probably have heard terms like hypervisor and bare metal. You probably have at least a basic understanding that server virtualization solutions from VMware (vSphere), Citrix (XenServer) and Microsoft (Hyper-V) allow you to convert hardware based servers into Virtual Machines all running on one physical server. If my assumption is incorrect the following links can help to get you familiar with the world of server virtualization.

Wikipedia – Hardware virtualization
HowStuffWorks – How Server Virtualization Works

For this article my main point is to stress that VMware vSphere is an excellent choice for home server virtualization. I will give you a brief synopsis of my experience with server virtulization at home and why I believe anybody looking to get into server virtualization should strongly consider running a bare metal hypervisor like VMware vSphere.

If you are running VMware Server on a home server or workstation you might want to consider moving up to VMware vSphere. A few years ago VMware started offering VMware ESXi (now called vSphere) as a free, fully functional virtualization platform. Unlike VMware Server, VMware vSphere does not run on top of another operating system. It runs on bare metal. You get all the performance and benefits of an enterprise solution and you can run it for free on a home server. The only caveat is that you need to confirm that the server hardware you choose is on the hardware compatibility list (HCL). If you want to keep it as cheap as possible you can use the resources of vm-help.com and ultimatewhitebox.com to find out what workstations (regular PCs) are known to work with vSphere/ESXi. For my home server virtualization project I set up vSphere 4.1 on two used (ebay) Dell Optiplex 745 tower workstations. I have local storage via the internal hard drives on each workstation as well as network NAS storage via an NFS volume on a Netgear ReadyNAS NV+. I actually run all of my VMs on the NFS volume and it works really well.

What can you do with VMware vSphere and server virtualization? You can set up a VM with Windows XP/Vista/7 for remote access via Remote Desktop Services (or other remote access software). You can set up a web server VM for web development. You could even virtualize a PC-based DVR, which I have done with SageTV and a network based ATSC tuner and encoder (HDHomeRun). The options are endless and that’s the beauty of server virtualization. It allows you the flexibility to set up VMs quickly and easily when the need arises. The best example I can think of is in testing scenarios. You can create a “test box” VM installed and configured with whatever OS and software you need (pre-test) and then use the vSphere “snapshot” feature to take a snapshot of the pristine state of the test box. Then you can proceed to do your testing and when you are finished you can then quickly and easily (in seconds) restore your test box VM to it’s pristine state. This is a huge time saver compared to an OS re-install on a physical server or workstation.

So if you are still running VMware Server or similar virtualization product that piggybacks on another OS, give VMware vSphere and bare metal virtualization a try. If you haven’t gotten into server virtualization yet, take a look at the various resources linked in this article. It really is much easier than you might think to run your own virtual server!

It has been about two months since I started using CrashPlan to backup all of my data to the cloud. A few weeks ago I wrote the article – CrashPlan and Why The Cloud Makes Sense - to highlight my initial experiences as well as provide an overview of what CrashPlan has to offer. My initial backup set was 1.8TB and it took about 7 weeks to finish. During that time throughput was all over the map. Most of the time it was 1.5Mbps or less. For several weeks it rarely got above 700-800Kbps. That is until a couple of weeks ago when I changed the Data De-duplication configuration from Automatic to Minimal…

Dedupe Config Change To The Rescue

A couple of weeks ago only 800GB or so had been backed up out of a total of 1.8TB. Throughput was not usually any higher than 700-800Kbps and the estimated time remaining was measured in months. I did some research and came across this forum post by JC-Austin (located on page 2 – January 21, 2011 at 15:43)…or read JC-Austin(TechNazgul)’s blog post CrashPlan Online Backup: Maximizing Upload Speeds. I went ahead and changed the Data De-duplication configuration (in Settings | Backup | Advanced settings) from Automatic to Minimal and the difference was incredible! Immediately the throughput shot up to 20Mbps (I have 25Mbps upstream with Verizon FiOS)! Over the next couple of weeks throughput rarely dropped below 10Mbps and the estimated time remaining went from months to days. This past weekend the initial 1.8TB backup was completed. If you aren’t getting the throughput you think you should be getting with CrashPlan I definitely recommend changing the dedupe setting from Automatic to Minimal (restart the CrashPlan service to play it safe after you make the change) and see if your results improve. It doesn’t hurt to give it a shot. There’s some speculation that the total size of your backup set may impact the dedupe performance. The larger the backup set the slower throughput seems to get. There’s some logic to this as more data would need to be scanned for dedupe to do it’s job. But as I said, it’s speculation at this point.

Phase Two

After the initial 1.8TB was completed this past weekend I then proceeded to add a few more folders to the backup to bring the total to 2.4TB. These folders are located on network shares and I followed these directions to get that working with CrashPlan. As of writing this article all but 76GB of the total 2.4TB has been backed up to CrashPlan Central. It only took about 4-5 days to complete the additional 600GB (minus the 76GB still remaining) and that includes many interruptions in connectivity to CrashPlan Central which I will talk about in a moment.

But What About Restoring Files?

I will admit right now that I have not done exhaustive testing of file restorations with CrashPlan. What I have done is a single file restore test when logged into CrashPlan via web browser as well as via the CrashPlan software. In both cases it’s a piece of cake. When you restore via web browser you get a compressed ZIP file with the files you chose to restore. When you restore via the CrashPlan software you restore the original file(s) (no ZIP) and you can either restore to the original location or to another location you specify. Both restoration methods are fairly intuitive. In both cases you can choose to restore the most recent version of the file(s) or choose a back-dated version. When restoring via the CrashPlan software you can specify to overwrite or rename if files of the same name already exist in the destination.

Other Thoughts and Concerns

The past few days have been hit or miss with regard to connectivity to CrashPlan Central. I’m aware that Mozy recently eliminated unlimited backups and that it is possible there has been a surge of customers joining CrashPlan that might be affecting connectivity (purely speculation on my part). Over the past few days there have been numerous multi-hour long periods where there is no connectivity to CrashPlan Central and therefore no backups (or restorations) during that time period. The remaining 76GB should have been done a day or two ago had it not been for these constant interruptions. At this point it’s just a nuisance as long as the trend does not continue beyond a few days. Prior to the past few days starting from the point where I changed the dedupe setting to Minimal my experience with CrashPlan has been extremely positive.

As both a full time Information Technology Engineer and a part time amateur photographer, you can imagine that I do enjoy my fair share of technology related toys. For the purpose of this article I will be focusing specifically on the photography gear that I most cherish. These are the items that I use again and again and I find to be indispensable to my growing passion and hobby. So let’s get right to it, in no particular order (although number 1 is pretty important)…

1. Nikon D7000 DSLR
   The single most expensive item on this list is also the single most important item, my camera body, a Nikon D7000 DSLR. This camera was announced in September 2010 and released in October 2010. In it’s early weeks of release it proved very hard to find although I do believe that inventory has caught up now. The D7000 could be argued to be the king of Nikon’s crop sensor (DX) semi-pro (or pro-sumer if you prefer) camera bodies. Yes, the D300S is still in production, but the D7000 beats it in nearly all technical specifications. The D7000 is a 16.2 megapixel camera with a standard ISO range of 100 through 6400 and extended ISO range up to 25,600. In my experience so far ISO is quite usable at least to 6400. Other notable features are: 39 auto-focus points, two SD card slots, full HD 1080p video, 6 FPS and weather-proofed magnesium-alloy body. At the time of its release, the D7000 boasts the second highest megapixel count (behind the 24 megapixel D3X) in Nikon’s DSLR lineup.
2. Circular Polarizer Filter
   I find that I use my circular polarizer filters often when out in the field. I love the effect they have on colors in nature, particularly greens and blues. I’m a big fan of the gradient effect it creates in the sky, although this is certainly a matter of personal taste. And of course circular polarizers really do help to cut down on glare and haze in certain situations. I have a B+W 77mm circular polarizer that I use with my Nikkor wide angle zoom lens and a Hoya 52mm circular polarizer that I use with my other three Nikkor lenses.
3. Nikkor AF-S DX 35mm f/1.8G Prime Lens
   I think every aspiring photographer could use a good fast prime lens. I bought the Nikkor AF-S DX 35mm Prime lens while still using my old Nikon D40 body and it literally transformed the D40 with regard to low light performance. It really behaved like a different camera with the 35mm prime. Such is the benefit of having such a wide aperture as this prime lens boasts. Sure, it’s not sexy like a zoom lens, but the low light performance and optical clarity of a good prime lens is a nice tool to have in the toolbox. Plus this lens can focus at only 0.9 feet which gives it excellent macro capabilities (even though it’s not a true 1:1 macro lens).
4. Vanguard UP-Rise 28 Messenger Style Camera Bag
   This could be viewed as a mundane item in this list but a good camera bag is really important and should not be overlooked. The Vanguard UP-Rise 28 fits my needs really well. If you are out in the field for hours taking photos while carrying a camera bag you want it to be comfortable and ideally not get in the way. I’m a fan of the messenger style bags because they can be swung around and worn on your back like a backpack bag but when you need access to your gear you can just swing the bag back around without removing the bag from your person. This particular bag also is just big enough for what I like to carry when I’m out in the field. It would be nice to have a little room to grow but I like the bag to be as small as possible. Luckily Vanguard makes two larger sizes of this particular bag if you need more room for all your gear.
5. Nikkor AF-S DX 10-24mm F3.5-4.5G ED Wide Angle Zoom Lens
   This is the most recent lens added to my arsenal and also happens to be the most expensive lens. The Nikkor AF-S DX 10-24mm Wide Angle Zoom has really become my go to lens when out in the field. I’m not sure how I went so long before purchasing this lens! Landscape pictures are now immense and the creative possibilities are endless. Coupled with my B+W 77mm circular polarizer filter I’m able to capture some really spectacular photos. Plus it’s not just good for landscapes, it also is good for situations where you just can’t get far enough away to capture an entire subject. That’s when a wide angle lens is really useful. It allows you to capture your entire subject in the frame while still staying close to grab all the details.

So that’s it! My Top 5 Most Prized Photography Gear Purchases. What is your most prized photography gear? What are your thoughts on the items listed in this article? What’s on your wish list? Please share your thoughts!

Are you doing enough to protect your data? That you stumbled onto this article may indicate a concern you aren’t doing enough to ensure its security. If you are at least backing up your data to another hard drive, ideally an external drive like a Western Digital Passport, you are doing a better job than most. If you are backing up to an external drive and also taking that drive offsite then you are WAY ahead of most people. But you might be wondering if there is a way you could automate this entire process – a way to backup on a regular basis, in the background, without having to initiate anything and also have the backup location exist offsite. What is the answer?…

The Cloud
The Cloud really is just another way of referring to the inter-connected servers and networks we have more commonly called the internet. Use of the term “cloud” has been recently used in conjunction with a growing set of services being provided online that used to be accomplished by locally installed applications. Some examples are using Google Docs as opposed to a locally installed word processing application such as Microsoft Word, or using Evernote for note taking and organization instead of pen and paper or a locally installed application. At the heart of it, accessing something in “the cloud” usually means you are storing information on a server that is remote from your local computer. In recent years a number of companies have started offering very attractively priced online “cloud” backup solutions. Instead of backing up your data to a hard drive attached to your computer you backup to a server, that could be thousands of miles away, via your broadband connection. Some examples of online backup solutions are Mozy, Carbonite and CrashPlan. Since I personally use CrashPlan, this is the online backup solution I will profile in this article. I say profile because this is more of an informational article about cloud backup and CrashPlan rather than a review of the service. I’m simply writing about my experience. And just to clarify, I am not affiliated and I do not work for CrashPlan and I’m not getting paid to write this article.

Why Backup Your Data To The Cloud?
The strongest case I can make for why I chose to backup my data to an online backup solution is that I can be sure that the files I worked on today, tomorrow or any day will automatically be backed up to an offsite location, usually within minutes or hours at most. Should anything happen to the location where my original files are stored I can rest assured that my data is safe and sound in an entirely different location. Sure, you can accomplish this yourself with the use of an external hard drive and a friend or family member that is willing to hold onto your valuable data at their house (or leave a copy at your place of work) but this is an entirely manually process. You are left to haul the drive back and forth. You can probably imagine that the frequency of your backups to this “offsite” drive is likely to decrease over time due to the inconvenience. The ease and convenience of having your data backed up automatically to an offsite location cannot be overstated.

What is CrashPlan?
CrashPlan offers several different backup plans, the cheapest of which is free. Although I should point out right now that the free plan is actually just software you install on your computer that allows you (and a friend or family member that also has the software installed) to backup from one computer to another. This can be in the same location or across the country. With the free plan you aren’t using CrashPlan’s servers (called CrashPlan Central) to store your data. The nice thing about the free plan is that, well, it’s free and it works with an unlimited number of computers. You still get all the benefits of automatic and unattended backups and if you choose a computer that is not in the same location you still get the benefit of offsite storage of your data. What you don’t get with the free plan is continuous real-time backup of your data, multiple backup sets and support from CrashPlan. Above the free plan are 3 additional paid plans. The cheapest plan is called CrashPlan+ 10GB and for $24.99 per year you get 10GB of online storage and the ability to backup 1 computer. Next is CrashPlan+ Unlimited for $49.99 per year and you get unlimited online storage with the ability to backup 1 computer. The last plan is CrashPlan+ Family Unlimited for $119.99 per year for unlimited online storage and the ability to backup up to 10 computers. CrashPlan also offers CrashPlan PRO for businesses but that service is beyond the scope of this article. I think most people will probably choose the CrashPlan+ Unlimited because 10GB is simply too little storage these days. Plus, if you sign up for multiple years the cost can be cut by up to a third (as low as $2.92 a month, even lower with the 10GB plan). I also feel that unless you have a lot of computers to backup you can probably get away with the 1 computer plan because you can still backup data from other computers via network shares (although you need to follow these directions, which are not officially supported, to get that working properly).

When I signed up for CrashPlan I took advantage of their 30-day trial to see how their service works before committing any money. With 3 days left on the trial I decided to go ahead and purchase their longest multi-year option, CrashPlan+ Unlimited for 4 years for $139.99 which is only $2.92 per month. My main justification in buying multiple years is that I’ve spent around $120 every year or so to upgrade to a larger external Western Digital Passport drive to use as my manual offsite backup solution. I currently have the 1TB version and it’s nearly full. In fact, it doesn’t even store all my data, just the most important data. For only slightly more than I’ve typically spent for those external drives I now have 4 years worth of online backup with unlimited storage space. Now I have no reason to upgrade that 1TB external drive any time soon.

How Does CrashPlan Work?

Here are the main points that I believe make CrashPlan an excellent choice for cloud backup. Some of these options are only available with paid plans. More information can be found on CrashPlan’s website.

Automatic
Install the CrashPlan software on your computer, select the data you want to have backed up and then pretty much forget about it. CrashPlan will work in the background to backup your files to CrashPlan Central. If you turn your computer off or if there is any kind of interruption in the connection, CrashPlan will automatically resume next time you turn your computer on or the connection is restored.

Unlimited File Size
This is a really important distinction with CrashPlan. They do not limit the size of the files you can backup and you do not need to do anything special to backup certain types of files. Whatever files that exist in the location you have chosen to backup will be backed up to CrashPlan Central with no fuss.

Efficiency
CrashPlan’s software is designed to make your backup as small as possible. This is done in a couple of different ways. CrashPlan uses a differential backup which means after the first backup completes, CrashPlan will essentially ignore unaltered files that have already been backed up and will only backup files that have changed. In addition, it only actually backs up the changes, not the entire file. Another optimization that CrashPlan uses is Data De-duplication (or dedupe). In the simplest terms what this means is that CrashPlan will not backup data that it knows it already has a copy of. So if you have redundant data within your collection of files CrashPlan will only transfer the redundant data once, not each individual instance. Rest assured all of your individual files will remain intact on CrashPlan Central. The last optimization is compression. All data transferred to CrashPlan Central is compressed before it is sent.

File Versioning and Retention
CrashPlan likes to say “we never throw anything away”. What this means is that they keep everything, even files you delete are still available to restore at a later date! In addition, CrashPlan retains multiple versions of your files. If you have a file you made a change to but instead would like to get a copy of the unchanged file, that can be done with CrashPlan. This includes many changes to the file going back in time. You can restore the file to any previous state. Keep in mind that these settings are configurable within the CrashPlan software. Lifted from their website “By default CrashPlan retains more versions of newer files and fewer versions over time. With CrashPlan+ you can adjust the number of backup versions being retained to meet your retention requirements.”

Security
If you use the free plan you get 128-bit Blowfish encryption. With paid plans you get 448-bit Blowfish encryption. In either case your data is probably more secure in the backup location than it is in its original location!

Restoration via the Web
If you backup to CrashPlan Central (meaning you have a paid plan) you will have the ability to sign-in to your account via CrashPlan’s website and then restore files to any computer. This is definitely one of the most convenient, flexible and simplest ways to restore files!

Seeded Backup and Restore
If your broadband internet connection isn’t all that fast you might be thinking that cloud backup is not going to work well for you. Indeed this could be a problem if you have a really large amount of data to backup. The biggest hurdle is getting the initial backup complete. In most cases, even with a slower broadband connection, day to day updates to your files should be no problem to get backed up to the cloud. But how do you deal with that one time, massive bulk file transfer to get all your data backed up when you first start out with CrashPlan? Seeded Backup is the answer. CrashPlan will send you an external hard drive that you can use for your “first” backup. Send the drive back to them and they will transfer your data to your online storage location on CrashPlan Central. Of course there is a cost to this service, but it could be well worth it for those that have slow broadband connections. If you ever need to restore all your data you can pay for a Seeded Restore which, as it might sound, is just the reverse of the Seeded Backup.

My Experience with CrashPlan So Far

I have been using CrashPlan+ for about a month now. As of writing this article 711.2GB has been backed up to CrashPlan Central out of a total of 1.8TB. Based on the current transfer rate CrashPlan is estimating another 39.6 days to complete the intial backup. Obviously I have not opted to use the Seeded Backup. Instead I will just let the backup keep running until it is complete. At that point the only thing that will be transferred are changes and additions to my data which should rarely cause CrashPlan to fall behind by any large margin. I have seen throughput as high as 9Mbps and as low as only a few hundred Kbps. It’s hard for me to estimate the average throughput over the last month based on how variable it has been but I would be surprised if it was above 1.5Mbps.  That’s not horrible, but considering I have 25Mbps upstream with Verizon FiOS that is leaving A LOT of bandwidth on the table. I’ve done numerous speed tests during the past month and I’m definitely getting the full 25Mbps upstream with Verizon. That does not mean CrashPlan is to blame, however. The problem could be anywhere in between my house and their data center which means the problem might not even have anything to do with Verizon or CrashPlan. I have not opened a support ticket with CrashPlan yet to inquire about the speed but if I do I will write about it here. I also plan to write an additional article to report on the progress of my initial backup to CrashPlan as well as any other details I believe you should know about.

Make sure your data is safe tonight!

Follow-up article: Two Months With CrashPlan

Read my more detailed cloud backup overview and CrashPlan profile here.

I have recently chosen to supplement my offsite hard drive backups with cloud (online) backup.  The service I have chosen is CrashPlan (www.crashplan.com).  The main reason for choosing CrashPlan is their great pricing on unlimited online backups as well as no silly file restrictions like Carbonite (www.carbonite.com).  At the same time I decided to upgrade my Verizon FiOS internet from 20/5 to 25/25 to hopefully give me a little more upstream bandwidth for the online backup.  I was able to choose a bundle with Verizon that only costs me a few dollars more per month so it was worth it regardless of whether CrashPlan takes advantage of the extra speed or not.  So far 210GB has been backed up to CrashPlan in about 5 or 6 days of running constantly.  This is out of a total of 1.8TB (which will eventually have another 1TB added on when I start backing up another mapped network drive in the future).  I will be writing a more in depth profile of CrashPlan in the future after I have used it for at least a few weeks but so far it is working really well.  My only complaint so far is that the maximum upstream speed I’ve seen it use is around 9Mbps and that was only for a brief period of time.  Most of the time it is at 6Mbps or lower.  I would say an average over a 24 hour period is probably only around 3Mbps.  That’s definitely leaving a lot of bandwidth on the table which is unfortunate.  However, after the initial large backup is complete it probably won’t matter so I don’t consider this to be a dealbreaker at this point.  But it would be nice to see them address the speed in the future.