Those legacy members will sometimes get you off track.

By now you should know that I pretty much preach the gospel of backup. It's a good thing to preach. People need their souls filled with the goodness of a well backed up computer. It's has been written that a "good back up is next to another good backup". How do I know that it is written? Was it on some wall in a pyramid or temple? No, I just wrote it here so I know it is written.

My flock. Let me lead you to the promised land. No it does not flow with milk and honey (and you won't want to get that in your keyboard). But it beholds the promise of less anguish and despair from not having an ability to get back priceless data that you value. It brings the peace and comfort of knowing that all is right in your computer world. That you are protected safely offsite with the promise of hope and a brighter day if disaster happens to your computer.

Something for you to do.

With all of this written I put the questions to you now.

What media do you use to protect your data?

Do you store it some where securely?

How often do you backup?

I want to get your feedback in the comments section of this blog.

Musical Selection for your ear injection

Backing up your data is important business, so best to be takin care of it.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlAED8jng5k

Oh yeah baby I am back!

Tune in to AM 760 WJR between 5:00 and 7:00 PM for "The Internet Advisor Show". The standard crew will be there for you. Gary, Foster, Ed and I for talk both lively and informational about all things computer, gadget and Internet. 

Other states have a similar sayings about their weather, "Wait 5 minutes and it will change." Michigan's constant changing weather truly keeps us guessing.

Such was the case Saturday for my leg of the 2010 Scott Kelby Worldwide Photowalk. Held in Ann Arbor at the Matthaei Botanical Gardens, the 24th was pretty much a wash-out. Guessing whether or not the rainy weather would hold out for a few hours and watching weather reports; the best strategy was to just call it a day and wait till the next.

By the next morning I was guessing as well. It was raining harder than the day before. But that 5 minute wait proved fortuitous. The clouds opened up to a beautiful sunny day.

If you’ve never been to the Matthaei Botanical Gardens you will be in for a wondrous treat. By July all the flowers and gardens are in full bloom. Nature never disappoints. The flowers, plants, trees and “treats” were simply amazing to see and photograph. An hour into the walk, I was still photographing items 20 yards from the front gate.

You don’t have to wait for an event of this magnitude to do your own photowalk. just grab your camera and head outside.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEh72UKBSts

See the Ann Arbor Photostream HERE

:::

Up until very recently, I was using a Garmin Nuvi 765T as my GPS, and it performed pretty well. It was sometimes slow on showing maps, and occasionally rebooted spontaneously, but for the most part was pretty reliable. I didn't like that the traffic data came via radio and was largely unavailable outside of large cities.  When I upgraded to an iPhone 4 from my iPhone 3, i picked up the Navigon GPS app. I started trying it out at the same time as my Garmin, and it seemed to work just as well. So I put the Garmin in my wife's car – she prefers it to an app.

I drove to a friend's house in Pennsylvania for a game convention over the weekend.  In spite of the fact that I had it set to "Forbid" toll roads, it put me on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, although not as soon as it could have, so I suppose the app was avoiding it – but I thought that's what the "Avoid" setting would be for. I was surprised, because Navigon routed me completely around the Ohio Turnpike, and I knew there were plenty of other roads to my friend's house from glancing at the map earlier. But at 65 MPH I was pretty much stuck – it was go on the Turnpike or go off on some other road (the road I was on ended there).

So even though I'm a cheapskate (I have a problem paying to drive on roads I've already paid for via my tax dollars, and any Interstate fits that bill) I decided better to take the Navigon's preferred route (it was just me in the car, so no one to help navigate).

The next direction was to turn onto some road in 10-some miles. Imagine my surprise when, in around 9.5 miles, an exit appeared, but I wasn't told to take it. I figured there must be another exit shortly thereafter for me to take. Surprise! Exits in the stretch I was on are around 20 miles apart, and that *was* my exit. So I got to drive another 20 miles and still was never prompted to exit!

Navigon – the whole *point* of a GPS is to tell me where to turn, especially when I'm in unfamiliar territory, not to make me guess! Yes, the proper line was shown on the screen, but I didn't have a chance to look at the screen until I missed the exit (it wasn't really clear I was supposed to take the exit on the map until I had passed it). All those units warn you too against staring at the screen, because you need to keep your eye on the road.

And before anyone comments on it – you're right, I am not blameless here – not at all. Until I started using GPS units, I used to pour over maps and plan out every turn. The last few trips I took I was just sort of glancing at them, and this trip I hardly looked at all. So shame on me for putting blind trust in the app. I need to back to Pennsylvania soon, and you can bet I intend to go back to planning it myself, with the Navigon as a reminder and live help for re-routing. 

That doesn't let Navigon off the hook. Exits on a freeway – especially a toll road – are something that should work! In addition, why was I even *on* a toll road?  I know the Navigon can get around them, because it took me home without getting me on the Turnpike. Why couldn't it get me there the same way?

I have reported this to Navigon on their site, but it didn't fall neatly into one of their categories, so I hope it gets to the right folks and gets fixed.

I was thinking of trying the TomTom app while it's on sale, but the version as of this writing (1.4.1) seems to have a terrible bug when using contacts that is sending people miles off-course instead of getting them to their destinations. So that's not an option.

So I'm minding my own business at the last MacGroup meeting, testing out Slink on my MacBook, and all of a sudden, the MacBook battery was almost flat. Huh? Well, maybe it was because I was streaming audio from my iMac at home. Nah, couldn't be that, I was only connected for maybe 5 minutes. But something was definitely wrong. In fact, the battery icon in the menu bar was reading Service Battery. 

That night I finished draining the battery, went through the routine to reset the power manager, recharged it, and it was showing only 40% capacity. Now granted, it is a 19 month old battery, but was only showing 21 cycles and should have been doing better than that. The next morning I disconnected the power cord, cranked up iTunes, started running a movie (Hellboy II, for the record), and the battery died after 72 minutes. Let the beast sit for 6 hours, reconnected the power cord so it could recharge, green light finally came back on after several hours, and the battery health was down to 38%. Time for a trip to the Apple Store.

On Wednesday I went to the Twelve Oaks store online to make a genius appointment for Thursday. Am I glad I made my appointment the day before. I had a 1:30 appointment, and when I arrived, the place was wall to wall people, and their service list was showing no open appointments for the rest of the day. I was barely through the door when one of the sales reps logged me in to the system. At 1:25, the Apple Genius was running diagnostics on my MacBook, just to be sure it was only the battery, and at 1:35 I was walking out the door with a new battery in place. The battery was well out of warranty, and I fully expected to pay the list $129 for a replacement, but I am happy to say that they only charged me $99, the repair/replacement price. He could just as easily have sold me one of the $129 batteries sitting on the shelf, and I wouldn't have complained, but he didn't. 

People wonder why I buy directly from Apple instead of looking for bargains from other retailers. This is why. I have never had a bad experience with any Apple employee. And on questionable repairs/problems, it has been my experience that if you go to them with a positive and friendly attitude, they will do everything possible to keep you happy. 

So, thank you Apple. Thank you for good, solid products and a great staff. 

Apple made their case on July 16th (like it or not) during their press conference about the iPhone 4's reception problems that some users are having. They offered their explanation and theories backed by their research data, FREE iPhone 4 cases (order your FREE iPhone 4 Case using Apple's FREE App here from )and a no restocking fee return policy. In my opinion that should be the end of it. Either you want an iPhone 4 or you don't. If you got one and it's not working for you, take it back. What more could you ask for? Yet they (Apple) insist upon continuing to fuel this (in their own words "blown out of proportion story") by posting NEW videos regularly to Apple.com/antenna on how other manufacturer's phones lose signal when you hold them too.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJG7pbSRvJ8

In my opinion this is a MISTAKE. Apple just LET IT GO!

Your motto/stance should not be "look, see the other guys lose signal too. Their phones are just as bad as ours."

The real problem -- It's not about the bars!

My take on the whole signal loss/bars display thing is that the only time someone even bothers to look at the number of bars they have is either when they drop a call or can't make one. The "death grip" as it has been called means that someone holds a phone in a fairly natural way (not as tightly Apple demonstrates in some of their videos) up to their face and they talk. If the call drops they then pull the phone down and look to see why. That's the "real problem" and not the number of bars. Saying that other companies lose bars too is not really telling the whole story (and it's one that no one is arguing). I know that Apple says with numbers to back it up that the iPhone 4 doesn't drop that many calls. However, it does drop more calls (by their own admission) than the previous iPhone 3GS. Even if it's by a small percentage, it does drop more.

Prior to the iPhone 4, when was the last time you looked at or cared about the number of bars on the display of your phone? It comes down to you can either make calls reliably or you can't!

Apple if you want to impress me about how the iPhone 4 holds up against the competition then make videos of someone holding all the various phones the same way while on calls in real world environments (outside, inside, on a train, etc.) and not just in your testing labs where the conditions are optimal.

As far as your customers are concerned it doesn't matter what the other phones do or don't do when you hold them. It matters what YOUR iPhone 4 does and whether or not the call will drop? According to AT&T out of their recent 3.2 million iPhone activations only 27% (yes, a very nice number) were NEW accounts. This means to me that a large number of iPhone 4 owners are upgrading from previous iPhone models and that's what they are comparing the iPhone 4 to. Not your competitors.  iPhone 4 users are using their iPhones the same way that they did with their iPhone 3G/3GS case or no case and expect to have the same if not better call quality. Speaking of AT&T, it appears that 73% of iPhone users are VERY SATISFIED with AT&T. Wow! So apparently we can't blame them for everything.

I would also dare to say that a large number of perceived dropped calls that some people are experiencing is due to proximity sensor issues "FaceDialing" if you will. If you were to fix that issue as fast as you fixed the cosmetic signal display issue, you might have less people complaining. 

As an iPhone 4 user overall, I'm happy. I don't need for you to continue to show me how every other phone loses bars when you hold it. I do care about not dropping calls. Spend that time and energy improving your own products.

Here are 3 hot issues affecting some of your iPhone 4 users:

Proximity Sensor

Camera White Balance

Bluetooth Sound Quality/Disconnects

I'm sure they would appreciate these issues being addressed much more over another video of another phone dropping signal.

On a lighter note…

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7BbEkgujzk

The blog segment that proceeds me each week is called "Thirsty Thursday". Why is Thursday anymore thirsty than any other day of the week is beyond me. I will say with the hot weather, consuming more water on a regular basis is a good thing to do.

Soul on Ice

This week I have been working the "Skate Detroit" skating competition at the Detroit Skate club. Thursday evening's Senior Men featured some great skating. Having the job of being one of the officials provides for great seating for all of the action. By the way, watching the competition is free and it's really cool inside while it's hot outside. Come on out and enjoy some great skating!

VMWare Fusion on the Mac!

Last week I mentioned that I loaded VMWare's VMFusion on my iMac so that I can run my Windows XP machine on my iMac so that I would have everything on one computer. Well so far, limited testing has produced a "Hit" so far in my book.  It's brisk in it's running of the O/S of XP. I loaded Intuit's Pro Series Basic tax software and it runs without problem. What really surprised me was that when I printed the tax form, I just clicked PRINT and it printed. Now when I installed the O/S, I did not select a printer. VMFusion and the Mac OS X were smart enough to send the print to my Mac default printer and I was happy. More testing to come.

Musical Selection for this week

While more comical than musical, I think you will still enjoy this.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Btj9tFcyeZQ

Broadcasting from High atop the Fisher Bldg!

Tune in to AM 760 WJR between 5:00 and 7:00 PM for "The Internet Advisor Show". Foster Braun this week is the only regular in the house. Gary Baker, Ed Rudel and I will be out this week but Vince C. and Foster will be there for talk both lively and informational about all things computer and Internet. I will return next weekend.

One word …. Backup ! If you are not sure if you need to…. Backup … then Backup!

►                                                                                                                                                                                                   

One of my favorite pastimes is reading. And one of my favorite apps to read with is Zinio Reader. The Zinio Reader allows for a very rich user experience when reading the electronic version of your favorite magazine or book.

I did an article months back, “Seeing Green” that gives you a full breath of the Zinio Reader.

There’s even a Zinio Reader for the iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad; which allows you to take your reading material with you wherever you go. Which also gives an interesting reader experience of being able to read the layout version of the article. Or, selecting a “Text” button that gives you a text only version of the article to read and then click back on the “Page” layout version when you are done. 

Recently Zinio launched it’s new Zinio Reader 4 Beta for you to take it for a spin. Built in Adobe AIR, this beta wants to take advantage of new interactivity that the Adobe AIR technology can bring to it.

New features being touted in the Beta 4 version are:

• Dynamic, interactive articles and ads
• Explore pages in thumbnail grid
• Search and sort in Library view
• Improved zoom customization
• Share, post and send to friends
• Bookmark a page or clip a selection
• Custom transitions
• More interactive, digital-only content and videos
• Synchronized online and offline access

At first glance the clarity of text and images when viewed in the beta 4 version is hands down stellar over previous versions. 

There’s also more flexibility than in previous versions with zooming in closer on an article or image. This is a great improvement over version 3. 

The Toolbar now automatically hides, and only appears when you go to it’s area on the screen. I didn’t really like that at first; but I have my OS Dock set up to do that same thing, so I eventually got used to it here, too.

The movements of pages, zooming, screen redraw are still choppy and a bit slow.

Hopefully, that will be worked out as the beta 4 version develops. 

Whether you are a Zinio Reader veteran or new to it, freely download this beta and give feedback to aide in it's development.

This new version is bound to be a hit.

If you were at last Sunday's MacGroup meeting, you got to see Terry White demonstrating some of his favorite utilities.  And if you weren't at the meeting it will eventually show up on MacGroup TV. A couple of the utilities Terry showed, WhatSize (for finding out what's using up all your disk space) and Transmit (and FTP program) are excellent programs, but they aren't free ($12.99 and $34.00 respectively).

Now, they aren't outrageously priced, but sometimes you just don't have the scratch available. So I thought you might be interested in a couple of free alternatives.

Back on March 24,2010, I wrote about OmniDiskSweeper, which has pretty much the same functionality as WhatSize, but it's free, It used to be a paid app, but for whatever reason the Omni Group decided to make it available as freeware.

For an FTP client, you can try out Filezilla. There are versions for OS X, Unix, Linux, and Windows, so if you have to work with different operating systems, you can use a program on each with the same look, feel and commands. You can queue up multiple transfers and right-click files to open them in their default programs. You can also drag and drop files around. 

It doesn't have all the features of Transmit, but again, for free, the price is right. It does let you see the actual commands passed back and forth, which can be very helpful when trying to figure out why you can't  connect to a server.

Ever need to access a file on your home computer when you are on the road? Or access something on an external drive on your home network? Well, I've found a super simple app that takes all of the potential headaches out of the equation.

Slink is the absolute easiest way to connect. Install the Preference Pane on your desktop computer, load the application on your laptop, launch the app and enter the Slink ID number from the Preference Pane, and that's it for the setup.

I set it up on Saturday, then tested it out at the MacGroup meeting on Sunday, and was really amazed at how fast it connected. The connection was not super fast, but we do tend to see a whole bunch of laptops and iPads connected at the meetings. It was fast enough that I had no trouble streaming music from iTunes on my home system.

It will ask for passwords to access anything (as far as I tested), but that's just the way you want it. You can get to your files, but no one else can without that password. Cost is $25.00 for one computer, or you can buy a Family Pack of 5 licenses for $45.00. You can try before you buy, always a good thing. 

When I'm at home, I need cables to be able to reach from one device to the next and usually the ones that ship with the devices are great. However, when it comes to travel I usually want short cables whenever possible because they take up less space and make it easier for TSA to X-ray your gear. I had found short cables for just about everything else I carry such as Firewire and USB devices, but I hadn't yet found short cables for my iDevices (iPhone, iPod, iPad, etc.). That all changed with a blog reader pointed me to Cable Jive. Cable Jive makes a variety of different cables and solutions, but the one that I was most interested in was their iStubz for iDevices. They cost $8 (half the price that Apple charges for a sync cable) and they work great! Like I said, they make some really useful products and I'm also intrigued by the DockXtender cable and the CableDrop