Fewer than 500 words...
Closing out 2010
2010 is about to become a memory. This is a great time to take stock of your IT situation. Rather than simply a reminder to backup (Please, of course, do that!), this is a suggestion to consider a worst case scenario in your IT world.
I recently watched a fascinating talk in which a hacker discussed what took place after his pride and joy computer was stolen out of his apartment. He was able to track it over the course of the next two years as it crossed the country and eventually wound up in the hands of someone in Las Vegas. All that time his data traveled along with the computer. He is a very sophisticated user and his methods are beyond what most people would be able or willing to do, but the warning should be clear; if your computer or iPad or iPhone was stolen what would your level of pain be?
Let's take a few moments and pretend it's actually happened to your computer or phone. Was your machine backed up? Was your only backup attached to the computer? If so, it likely went with the machine. How accessible is the data on the machine?
Archive those memories!
One of my childhood memories is of the family sitting in the dark around the slide projector watching family history click by, one frame at a time accompanied by the soundtrack of the hum of the fan that kept the bulb from burning out. So what happened to those slides? They live in the basement of my father's house, of course, where nobody sees them, ever.
Recently my mother decided to scan some of these slides and sent out the results. No offense to her well-intentioned efforts, but the results were terrible. Fortunately, I had an option. I begged her to send the slides to ScanCafe to be scanned by professionals. Eventually she did and the results were spectacular!
The procedure is simple and convenient. Collect whatever media you want scanned; prints, newspaper clippings, slides, negatives, whatever you have, go to the website, open an account, and list the quantity of what you're sending. ScanCafe will give you an estimate (generally $0.20 to $0.35 per image, often discounted), create a UPS shipping label for you to print and give instructions on how to box your images. Then you drop the package off at UPS and wait a month for the scanning to be done.