Posts Filed Under ‘Cloud Computing’
Free Cloud Backup at Backupify (Till January 31st)
December 22nd, 2009, 5 comments
Cloud data backup service, Backupify, has dropped its paywall until January 31st in an effort to acquire more customers. The service backs up Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Google Docs, WordPress, Delicious, and FriendFeed data, to name a few, though apparently the file format you get when you restore your data may not be the most useful to non-programmers (i.e., XML documents). I haven't tried Backupify myself, but this offer is tempting. ZDNet's Between the Lines blog has the full story: Backupify drops paywall; backs up your data from Twitter, Facebook, and Gmail.
Update Your Google Account Password Recovery Options
December 19th, 2009, 3 comments
Now that you're auditing your online account security, log into your Google account(s) and visit the Account Recovery Options page. Here you can update your secret question and answer, your secondary email address, and even associate your mobile phone number with your account so you can get a password recovery code via text message. (Just a tip: don't set your Google Voice number as the phone number or automatically forward mail from your secondary email accounts to your Gmail account--if you do, in the event that you lose your password, the recovery process won't work.)
Year-End To-do: Audit Your Email Account Security
December 19th, 2009
Two stories of online account break-ins this week: First, Twitter.com got redirected to an Iranian hacker page because attackers were able to get into the email account registered with their site DNS service. Second, savvy blogger Amit Agarwal's Gmail and Google Apps accounts were taken over because the attacker got access to Amit's secondary email address and sent a password change request there to get into the accounts. Do yourself a favor: Before 2010 is upon us, do a quick audit of all your most important accounts. Make sure your passwords are strong and remember: Never use inactive webmail as your secondary email account.
December 16th, 2009
This past year was a watershed moment for the real-time web, cloud computing, and mobile application development, thanks in large part to Google. This morning over at Lifehacker, I rounded up the biggest Google product releases and updates of 2009.
I may co-host a weekly podcast dedicated to Google news, but seeing the amount of mind-bending stuff Google released this year in one place still blew my mind.
While Google's three biggest launches of the year--Wave, Chromium OS, and Droid/Android 2.0--are still very much developer/early-adopter-only, their impact will resonate through the next ten years on the web (even if they don't stick around in their current forms). For more on Google app updates, acquisitions, legal battles, and a complete timeline of what came out when this year, check it out: This Year in Google: The 2009 Edition.
Forbes on Google Apps in the Enterprise
December 11th, 2009, 2 comments
"Google now has 1,000 of its 20,000 employees working on enterprise products, largely Apps. Four hundred are engineers; most of the rest are involved in sales and support, a high proportion at engineer-dominated Google. The enterprise is still dwarfed by Microsoft, which makes $19 billion from the office suite. Still, 2 million businesses have signed on to use Google software in its short life, drawn by cost, speed, collaboration and control."
Google: “Faces are objects that can be recognized”
December 7th, 2009
Now that you can point your cameraphone at an object and get Google search results back about that image, what about photographing a stranger and getting Google results back for his or her name? With facial recognition in Picasa and Picasa Web Albums, that doesn't seem far-fetched. Today Google confirmed that the search engine could recognize faces based on photos, but they decided not to enable that functionality until they "work through issues of user privacy." (These quotes may not be exact; pulled from Danny Sullivan's liveblog of Google’s Web Search “Evolution” Event today.)
December 6th, 2009, 1 comment
See whether or not your ISP's DNS server is faster or slower than other alternatives like OpenDNS or Google Public DNS with Namebench. This free benchmarking tool pits your current DNS servers against alternatives and generates handy charts and recommendations for which of your DNS choices are the fastest. Using either your browser history or Alexa's top 10,000 global domain names, by default Namebench runs 200 tests to see which resolve most quickly using regional DNS servers, public services like Google's and OpenDNS's, and your current DNS services. Here's what some of the benchmark results look like.
Read the rest »
December 6th, 2009, 5 comments
Now that both Google Public DNS and OpenDNS offer an alternative, public DNS services anyone can opt to use instead of their service provider's DNS servers, the question is: how do you know if your DNS service isn't working properly and if you should switch? Reader Nicholas has the answer. He says:
The easiest way to determine if your chosen DNS servers are down, you can use nslookup or dig command line tools. Open a command line prompt (Select “Start > Run” and type “cmd” on a Windows machine, “Applications > Utilities > Terminal” on the Mac) and type:
dig google.com
or
nslookup google.com
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December 6th, 2009
Yesterday on This Week in Google while I was complaining that Google's acquisition of EtherPad should have been handled much more gracefully--by, you know, notifying EtherPad users before they shut down the service--EtherPad was doing an about-face. The collaborative text editor service will now stay online and open for new pads "at least" until the creators open-source the code, to ensure "no or minimal service disruption in the future." This is exactly what they should have done in the first place.
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Google Public DNS Service at Lucky IP 8.8.8.8
December 4th, 2009, 6 comments
Today Google launches their new public DNS service, which aims to speed up the time it takes for your browser to find web sites. To use it, set your DNS server address to 8.8.8.8--a lucky IP address, at least in Chinese culture (thx @blam). DNS aficionados already know that OpenDNS has offered a free, distributed DNS service for years. In response to Google Public DNS, OpenDNS founder David Ulevitch says OpenDNS is still a better choice because it offers more options and ways to control your web surfing experience.
Testing Chromium OS
December 4th, 2009, 3 comments
Finally got to try out the developer version of Google Chrome OS (Chromium OS) on my Asus Eee PC today. Booting from a USB drive is a much faster experience than running it in a virtual machine, but you've got to have the right hardware to do that. Over at Lifehacker yesterday, I ran down the two main ways to try out Chromium OS and what you need to have and know before you start. Here's The Human's Guide to Running Google Chrome OS.
Configure Google Apps For Your Domain
October 28th, 2009, 2 comments
There's always lots of interest in posts about Google Apps, a lesser-known way to put Google services behind your domain name. This morning at Lifehacker I ran down some of the most important Google Apps settings, and how to do things like map multiple domains to one account, create users and groups, and configure your catch-all domain email address. Here's more on how to Trick Out Google Apps for Your Domain.
Secure Your Laptop in Public Places
October 6th, 2009, 1 comment
Over at Harvard Business Online this week, I ran down a few best practices for keeping your notebook computer--and its contents--safe when you're out and about. Here's how to secure your laptop in public places. What did I miss?
October 1st, 2009, 16 comments
If you're one of the lucky folks who got into Google Wave this week, your excitement probably turned to "Now what?" when you logged in and realized you had no one to wave with. If anyone on your Google account's Contacts lists also has Wave you're set--but for some folks that's no one, or just one person. I've gotten a few waves from people saying "I have no one to talk to, and you're the only one on my list."
If that happens to you, it's time to break out the first search command every Wave newbie needs to know: with:public, which returns a huge moving sea of public waves anyone can read and update. There you can dive in, meet other wavers, see what's possible with Wave, and ask how to do stuff. Wave documentation is building up fast and furious inside Wave, and since everyone's new to it, everyone is asking questions and lending each other a hand.
Once you're tired of your inbox crawling with public waves? Save a search for waves just to you by using the in:inbox to:you@googlewave.com to pare down your list.
September 30th, 2009, 10 comments
Google's inviting 100,000 people to the Google Wave beta today, which means Twitter is already awash in people asking about and begging for entry (hello, trending topic). For what it's worth, my sources tell me invites won't go out until later in the day U.S. time--remember the Wave team is in Australia. Update: There's no source link, but the Twitter trend explainer in Brizzly says re: Google Wave:
Google has announced that it will be sending out more than 100,000 invites to Google Wave. Each of those 100,000 invites will come with 8 invites to invite other people. The release time for these invitations (originally 16:00 GMT) has been moved back to "late in the day US time on Sept 30".
In the meantime, you can sate your Wave curiosity without an invite. Check out my in-depth high-res screenshot tour of Wave over at Lifehacker this morning. Like I said in the post, Wave is only as useful as the people who are in it, so if you get an invitation and the privilege of giving out invitations, do use them very wisely. For background, see also my previous Wave posts: The Google Wave Highlight reel, and Google Wave Q&A.
Google Wave First Look [Lifehacker]
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