ctrl.altered.mind

Having switched from a desktop to a notebook as my primary computing device (not considering the PS3), being conscious about the added vulnerability of personal data is now imperative. It would be terrible if the laptop was lost or stolen, of course, but there is now the more probable risk of accidentally damaging the portable machine (not that I am sloppy, but it is reassuring to know that I am protected from hard drive damage due to dropping the laptop, or from accidentally yanking it off the coffee table).

Some habits are really worth adopting in order to minimize the pain of going through data loss and/or recovery - even more so in the case of theft (fact: about 97% of stolen computers are never recovered). There are scores of data recovery services available, but they generally seem to take advantage of the customers’ cornered situations and charge a heavy premium for fetching data from a damaged laptop (often more than the cost of a new computer). Of course, there are some pre-emptive solutions available such as PCPhoneHome or LaptopLocate.net, which can help track down machines by monitoring their location. With the iAlertU freeware application, you can even add “car alarm” or security camera protection for an iSight-equipped Apple notebook.

The first and most vital thing to do for any computer user, is to use a backup storage device. The simplest form of this would be to connect an external hard drive. Hard drives with encryption features allow locking down of personal information as all data stored on the drive is inaccessible without a master password. While it is possible to back up data on optical media like DVDs, this is a cumbersome repetitive chore and requires a lot of sorting and organization for the backed up information to be easily accessible.

External drives can play well with automated backup software, thus making what would otherwise be a daily chore an invisible background task for the computer. My external hard drive is network-attached, which eliminates the need to constantly plug it into a laptop, and additionally allows moving all media files to the external drive so they are accessible from all shared computers on the home network. On the flip side, this does have the disadvantage of not being able to access your media outside the home (unless you open up the drive for internet access).

I often find myself minimizing the kind of personal data that is stored on the notebook’s hard drive. I typically use my Gmail account as a network archive as this makes my files retrievable from any computer with an internet connection (more on how to make this process more convenient in a future tutorial). This benefits both security and accessibility, and prevents losing years of data and pictures along with the laptop. There are new web services cropping up now, that recognize this activity and endeavor to help organize data tucked away in your email attachments. Xoopit is one such service that ties in with a Gmail account.

What is your favorite strategy?

Google is moving two of their projects even closer in an effort to encourage the use of public transportation in the US (where available). Google Transit is an online tool to view public transit systems and schedules, and even allows you to create your own transit trip, along with itineraries and maps. It is now being integrated with Google Maps, which is arguably the most innovative online tool for locating points of interest and finding directions.

See this example. Searching for these directions on Google Maps now presents users with an alternative to driving - taking public transit.

The display presents a list of suggested alternatives (with icons representing modes of transportation), along with estimated travel times in each case. You have the option to select routes based on preferred departure or arrival times. The trip even provides fare information when available (with a helpful comparison to the estimated cost of driving). The method of calculating the estimated cost of driving has not yet been elaborated upon in the FAQ - that formula would be quite interesting to note (for people who, unfortunately, have to rely on driving everywhere).

Walking directions to and from the transit stations is currently in the form of an arrow, as Google doesn’t yet offer detailed walking routes (although in the example above, the estimated times seem pretty accurate).

It seems like Google Finance is getting started early on the Halloween celebrations for tech stock investors this year

If you use the handy Google Notifier utility on the Mac, this is a setting you should definitely be configuring. The Notifier, by default, sends your Gmail password over the network in clear text while polling your Inbox for new messages. There is a hidden key setting that can be enabled, to force the Notifier to use the secure HTTPS protocol each time. Here’s how. If you have a bookmark for Gmail (or Google Mail as it’s called in Europe), make sure you update it to https://mail.google.com, if you want to ensure that the secure protocol is used each time.

According to the Mac OS X Hints weblog:

Pull down the Notifier menu (either Calendar or Gmail), hold down Command and Option, and click Preferences on the menu. You’ll see a hidden settings editor. Enter SecureAlways in the Key field (upper and lower case must be entered as shown) and 1 in the Value field, then click Set. Quit Notifier and start it up again. From now on, all connections with both Gmail & Gcal will be https. Thanks to this comment on the O’Reilly blogs for this trick!

I didn’t really catch on to feeding on RSS content in a big way until Google Reader appeared on the scene. I tried NetNewsWire for modest while on OS X, but the sheer multiplicity of machines that I would be on while at school would have a deleterious effect on the temporal nature of the news feeds, making news stale when I’d end up accessing feeds at my desk at the end of the day. With Google Reader, however, this scenario changed, and my feeds were available online in a consistent format across machines and platforms. Google Reader updated its display format some time back, and improved usability in a big way.

That said, there are still some issues that need to be ironed out. Google Reader is a Google Labs product for now, which means its not even in true beta yet - however, we have all come to expect Google to set a much higher standard for its offerings, making these following items my pet peeves about Google Reader.

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I stumbled upon this Google Earth flyby video around Marine Drive in South Mumbai, and it instantly made me feel like going back for a visit.

MarineDrive.org is a website tracking the initiative to re-brand Mumbai’s Marine Drive, and calls upon citizens to contribute towards enhancing Mumbai’s most elegant boulevard. Marine Drive is also known as the Queen’s Necklace because if viewed at night from an elevated point anywhere along the drive, the street lights resemble a string of pearls. It is also the world’s largest viewing gallery and hence has been a host to a number of events that take place along the promenade.

Now, if only Google would soon update its imagery of Mumbai to get rid of those strange brown patches in the satellite grabs.

Google can tell us a lot about the world. All of a sudden, there’s this collective intelligence that anyone can tap into and learn about new and current trends, and perceptions, as well as the needs and desires that people around the planet might have.

Being up to no good on a Saturday afternoon, I try to find out what people are generally waiting for in their lives. Well, I guess we know the answer now. Thanks to Google Suggest.

You know you’re using Google a bit too much when you accidentally discover seemingly feckless (but then, not quite) features. However, the fact that this is a feature probably proves that Google’s search queries see these patterns all the time.

Searching for a celebrity’s feature returns a result with the correct answer, like ‘Elizabeth Hurley - eyes‘ for example. It probably helps to have Google keep track of a world of cosmetic vicissitude.

There are several noteworthy annotating applications available today, including free and platform-independent applications like Google Notebook. However, nothing beats a solution as simple as composing and sending a quick email to myself, something I am certain I shall get back to, instead of maintaining a whole separate application (or bookmarklet, or browser plugin) to check in addition to email. Hey, even Steve Jobs confessed to doing it this way at last year’s WWDC conference, and revealed that Apple’s Mail app (on OS X Leopard) is going to have a Notes feature that works exactly like this.

As a heavy Gmail user, I have a setup in place that is quite similar and functionally equivalent. I have a Notes label that gets applied through a filter, to every email that I send myself. This way, I can rid the inbox of several unread Notes, and at the same time get a quick indicator in the labels section on the left. Jim’s Tips (which is a great collection if you’re relatively new to Gmail, by the way) has a slightly more elegant solution where they talk about using a custom Contact to use exclusively for sending notes to yourself.

Jims Tips | Gmail Tip #3: How to Maintain Notes

Google recently announced a new contest that should, among other things (like quantify the Sketchup geek quotient across campuses nationwide), generate significant and useful content for use with Google Earth.

The contest requires its participants to map and build a 3D model of their respective college campuses, that would show up in Google Earth, of course.

Google Sketchup is a software tool that lets you build 3D models rapidly, and is remarkably simple to use (without compromising on features and the level of desired complexity). Its ease of integration with Google Earth needs no mention (and yes, Sketchup is also available as a Mac universal binary app).

What caught my eye was the sample picture used on the webpage announcing the contest. It looked strongly familiar. Where have I seen that building.. oh yes, its the Duane Physics building! Google has featured the University of Colorado at Boulder campus. Yippee!
A little more digging shone light on the fact that the CU campus is actually one of the more detailed and well-mapped virtual campuses on Google Earth, and most of its models are displayed in amazing detail in the Sketchup 3D Warehouse.

Build Your Campus in 3D Competition