Categories
Backups Online Life Reviews Software

Backupify.com – First Look

One of my readers pointed this out to me last week. (Thanks Steve!)

Backupify, which uses Amazon “cloud” as the backup medium, so everything is done online, and quickly!

What makes this service unique, as compared to services like iBackup, is that Backupify only backs up your online life.

As of this blog entry, Backupify supports the following services:

  • Flickr
  • Twitter
  • Delicious
  • Zoho
  • Google Docs
  • Photobucket
  • WordPress

and is in Beta for:

  • Basecamp
  • Gmail
  • Facebook
  • FriendFeed
  • Blogger
  • Hotmail

with the following “soon to come“:

  • Youtube
  • Xmarks
  • RssFeed
  • Tumblr

Now until February 15th, Backupify is offering a “Free Account Giveaway”.

Setup

Sign up is quick, and does not require much more then a Name, eMail address and a Password, and your in, but you will need to Verify your email address.

From there, you are presented with a “Dashboard” of services to configure.

Setting up a Flickr was a simple as using the wizard to connect, basically UserName and Password (going through your Yahoo account). Done.

With WordPress, I had to download a zipped (.zip) plug-in, and up-zipped it.

There is no “Read Me” file, or simple what to do next.

I opened the enclosed “wp-backupify.php” file, and in reading, it appears at first glance that this type of backup is if you host your own WordPress environment.

It would have been nice if Backupify had said something along these lines. (Will investigate later… maybe…)

Gmail is another enter UserName and Password, with a “Please read this before setting up your Gmail account”, that when followed, only states that “Gmail Backup Temporarily Disabled” which was posted December 23, 2009. (Merry Christmas!)

When I checked my email later, I did get notification that: “Gmail backup has been throttled back to once every 3 days until we finish implementing new changes to support the high volume of Gmail backups

Facebook is the standard “Connect to your Facebook account”, asks for permissions, and then allows you to choose what you want to backup: Photos, Friends, Statuses, Links, Notes and Events. You also have the ability to add another Facebook account.

Since I do not have any other accounts offered, I went down to “Backup Settings”, which is very primitive.

You only get a frequency: Weekly vs. Daily, and a Notification email settings: Every time, Daily, Weekly or Do Not, then you click “Save”. My settings are the Default: Daily & Daily.

From the main Dashboard, you can select the “Archive” tab and which service to look at.

I found that my Flickr images have already been backed up!

When I check Facebook, it only appears that my images have been backed up, even though, I had selected the Default settings of everything (see above), upon further review, there are other files, namely XML files.

The Dashboard “History” tab says everything was successful.

Restore

On the surface, it looks like that information is available, but trying to Restore your online life is going to take some time.

Images are readily available from Flickr and Facebook backups, but your content from Facebook is saved as a XML file (.xml), but as of this writing, I am not sure how one would integrate this back into a Facebook account.

Conclusion

The Backupify does do what it says. It backs up your files. Period.

The question that I have, and you should also, how does one do a Restore?

The Testimonials only talk about Backing up, but that is only half of the issue.

Having been a Enterprise Backup Administrator for several years, I would like to see some more controls, and some more documentation.

To be fair, I have not spent allot of time trying to find this info at the Backupify site, but at the same time, the info is not right in front of you, and trust me, when you are facing potential data lose, you do NOT want to be running around trying to figure out what to do.

Another thing that is not easily apparent, is the cost of the Service.

I did find one link that suggested I could find Costs, but it made me sign up, and I still can not easily find an answer.

In searching the FAQ, the word “Cost” only appears once, and if you carefully read the FAQ, it does hint at some of my concerns with a Restoration.

To me, there is also a feeling of scare tactics, but this might be the way that I personally handle my data.

My Facebook data is disposable. I have a backup of my images in my local environment, and if there is something important, I deal with it locally.

In regards to the backup from Images services (Flickr, etc.), at least in my work-flow, I have everything Local, then I post, so I already have a backup so to speak.

I maybe missing something here, but at this point, I am not sure how long I will keep my Free Backupify account.

Please let me know your thoughts.

– Andrew
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Categories
Gadgets Networking Reviews Web

Pogoplug – Easy File Sharing

I first read about this in the current (12/7) issue of Networkworld.com

Pogoplug: A wolf in sheep’s clothing

It is a very interesting idea for a home User, but as the article points out, one would NOT want to have something like this in a Corporate environment!

Need to do some more reading, and budget some money…

Let me know what you think.

– Andrew
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Categories
Reviews Software

First Impressions of WHS (Windows Home Server)

I had been hearing about Windows Home Server (WHS) from various sources for some time, and finally decided to take a look.

In reviewing the Main WHS website, I ordered the DVD media and paid the Shipping & Handling (nothing is free), and got the kit in about a week.

Not having any spare hardware to run a “Full” WHS on, I setup a VMWare VM, and was able to take it for a “Test Drive” for a couple of days.

In general, I was rather impressed with how easy it was to setup. Boot from the disk, and a few questions, sit back and wait.

You will need at least 70GBs of disk space, and once done, that disk will be split into (2) partition: OS and Data.

For any family that is really going to use this, they should seriously consider getting at least 1TB of HD,especially considering the cost of such drives, and if you really want to protect your data, consider getting a second HD to backup the primary.

The main concept of WHS is the ability to connect (wired & wireless) a household of computers to a centralized server for File and Music sharing, then initiate backups of those machines and publish a Family website, which should be a real interest to technically savvy Home SysAdmin.

Acer and HP seem to have embraced this market space, and if you happen to have some extra hardware laying around, you might consider creating your own “Frankenstein” server. The requirements are surprising low.

From what I have been told, if you already happen to have a Active Directory Domain setup at home, in about 45 days, WHS will start to warn you that it has detected your AD, and will start to shut itself down.

So for the price, an OEM (Acer or HP) machine or a “Frankenstein”, and you already do not have a AD,the WHS is worth considering.

– Andrew
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Categories
Add-Ons Reviews Software

LR2/Mogrify – Adobe LightRoom (Plug-in)

LR2/Mogrify by Timothy Armes is easy to use Adobe Lightroom plug-in is for those that want and need some pre-publishing work.

“LR2/Mogrify is a post-process plugin for Lightroom 2 and later that can embellish your images as they are exported from Lightroom. It’s flexible interface allows you to add outer and inner borders, watermarks and text annotations to your images.”

Personally, I use this export utility plug-in for adding Event/Location and Copyright info before posting to various services (Facebook, Flickr, Stock Agencies, etc.).

Basically, this is a Graphical User Interface (GUI) for ImageMagick®, which is a well documented application for processing images:

“ImageMagick® is a software suite to create, edit, and compose bitmap images. It can read, convert and write images in a variety of formats (over 100) including DPX, EXR, GIF, JPEG, JPEG-2000, PDF, PhotoCD, PNG, Postscript, SVG, and TIFF. Use ImageMagick to translate, flip, mirror, rotate, scale, shear and transform images, adjust image colors, apply various special effects, or draw text, lines, polygons, ellipses and Bézier curves.”

– Andrew
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