Backups should be way easier than they are.
First of all, I'm not a fan of backing up to CD. I might be more of a fan if I had a decently fast CD burner. But I don't. Even if I did, I have more content to back up than would comfortably fit on a CD. Or a DVD, even. But, even if that wasn't an issue, I'm not keen on the concept of keeping the backup onsite. Not after seeing the recent natural distasters. And, uh, I sort of live in one of those nifty earthquake zones, so this isn't a totally idle concern. (We'll ignore, for now, the thought that an earthquake bad enough to destroy my backups would like, well, destroy me, too.)
So, internet based backups seem to be a good solution. Services like .Mac don't come with quite enough storage space. Not, at least, when I'm trying to back up non-replaceable songs downloaded from Apple's iTunes store (a gripe for another day). I tried Xdrive, which offers online storage space and backup utility. The backup utility never seemed to work quite right, and it (and the website) seemed to make my computer fairly unstable (crashed it a number of times). So, scratch that off the list.
Along comes Strongspace. The price is decent, and, more importantly, it has a really, really slick web interface. This puppy (built on Ruby on Rails with a healty dose of AJAX, for those who care) makes it easy to navigate the files, and with nary a crash in site (I'm still not really sure how Xdrive's web interface managed to bring down my box...and I don't care to investigate further). Strongspace isn't a backup service, rather, they just provide secure access to storage space.
Anyway, I got a Strongspace account, and proceed to set up rsync on my machine (thanks to these helpful instructions). I then whipped up a quick script, set up a scheduled task, and everything was set.
Well, it would have been set if, you know, stuff actually worked right. Most of the directories I tried to back up worked fine. But a couple totally and completely choaked. After dealing with some really cryptic rsync error messages, I tried a bunch of things (renaming files with ampersands in the file names, etc). Still no luck. Google hasn't been terribly useful here either. So, now my nifty little system backs up most of my files.
(By the way, if anyone is an rsync guru and wants to help, drop me a line.)
A month or two ago I looked around for an app that would make this easy. I found a couple, but could never get things working with those either. I get the impression that this would Just Work on a Mac. Rsync would probably be much happier there, and the Apple-supplied Backup utility might even do the trick (not sure if it can backup to a third-party disk or not).
But, it shouldn't be this hard. Backing up to remote storage should be easy enough so my parents can do it. Data security seems really, really important, and it should be easy enough to do it without an IT department. At the very least, a time-challenged geek like myself should be able to set this up fairly quickly. (Seriously, I don't want to spend my time on this sort of junk; I have better things to do.)
The other day my wife--an avid iTunes user--mentioned that Stanford is putting lectures, interviews, and music up on iTunes. Very cool. This seems like a win for Stanford (spreading the brand, connecting to alumni and supporters, etc) and for the general public (free, high-quality content). (See Jamais Cascio for a mild critique about the service, mostly because it requires iTunes.)
Then, a few days later, Oren Sreebny reminded me that lots of great University of Washington content (in Computer Science, in this case) is available. Other quality stuff of this ilk can be found on the Research Channel.
It'll be even better when these folks start a) distributing this type of content as a podcast (ie, as RSS enclosures), and b) formatting it for the new video iPod. Of course, I'd actually need to go get a video iPod. But, if I had one, I could totally see myself listening to a good lecture on my bus ride to work. (Yes, I know that sounds kinda dorky.)
(Wow, it has been a long time since I've managed to post something here. No excuses. Well, I have excuses, but no one really wants to hear 'em anyway. Onward.)
Even though I haven't had time to post recently, I have been pretty much keeping up on my reading. Lots of good stuff has flown through my aggregator, but the two that stick out today are:
Both worth a read if you're at all responsible for a major website.
Young's article gives six tips to help avoid the bloated, direction-less homepages that so often show up. All are good tips. My favorite:
Think of every pixel as dynamic content. Very little on your homepage — besides the navigation and logo, of course — should be considered permanent. Some items will occupy space longer than others, but as the years roll by, everything should shift and change according to brand directives, seasons, events, mergers, and changes in product offerings.
I'd really highlight the "shift and change" part. Not radical redesigns, but rather tweaks and twists. On our page, we have a pretty large chunk of pixels that we change every 2-4 weeks. And, unlike most of the rest of the site, we're trying to be very graphical and often somewhat whimsical with this section. Of course, not everyone who visits the homepage clicks on this section, but it does help make the page feel dynamic and alive, not musty. Well worth the effort, I think.
Moll's article argues for website realignments, not redesigns:
The desire to redesign is aesthetic-driven, while the desire to realign is purpose-driven. One approach seeks merely to refresh, the other aims to fully reposition and may or may not include a full refresh. (Note that by “reposition,” I mean strategy and not physical location or dimensions.)
In the last two major updates we've done, I'd say one was a "redesign" and the other was a "realignment." I'm going to go out on a limb and say the realignment was much more useful. But, even if you were stuck with a redesign, you can use that as a starting point for realignment. We're constantly tweaking things, shifting the site (hopefully) closer to what the users need.