Time Machine First Experience

I had my first experience using the new back-up utility included in OSX Time Machine the other day and thought it would be worth posting my impressions here. For some reason my iTunes library was corrupted in the last couple of days so I got the first opportunity to put Time Machine through its paces. In terms of usage once you launch Time Machine you get a glossy interface that offers you a view of your Finder in the middle of the screen and a time scale running off into space on the right side of the screen. Use of the application is very clean and seamless simply scroll back through different dates on the right hand scale till you find the appropriate date and you'll see the files updating dynamically as you scroll. Once you've found the file you want simply select it and click on the restore button which will restore the file to your desktop or specified file folder. 

My take is that Time Machine hits the target in terms of its stated purpose in providing OSX users with a great tool for easily and simply backing up their files to an external drive. What Time Machine isn't is a full back-up tool that would displace SuperDuper! or CarbonCopyCloner in terms of making a bootable back-up of your entire hard drive.

While it's hard to get excited about a file back-up utility - Time Machine is likely one of the more subtle improvements in this release of the operating system. Since the majority of users never bother to back-up I think that the ability to turn Time Machine on, select your preferences (e.g., which folders to back-up) and simply let the program run. I will say that Time Machine is disk hungry and I'd recommend picking up a large hard drive (best to get a minimum 2x larger drive than the one that is internal to your Mac). 

India Arriving The IT Story - Article & Book

An interesting article came to my attention that points to a new book released in November by Stanford Professor Rafiq Dossani titled "India Arriving: How This Economic Powerhouse Is Redefining Global Business". The article is an editorial from SandHill.com a website dedicated to the Technology industry - emerging trends and their impact on IT.

The article provides a personal perspective on the changes that India is undergoing as it becomes a service driven economy. While the story of the major IT services firms in India (e.g., Infosys, Wipro, TCS, Satyam and others ...) are fairly well known what the article offers is an interesting glimpse into the changes taking place across India. Professor Dossani relays a story about travelling to one of the Tier 2 cities in India and contrasting the situation to the developments in Bangalore. Beyond his comments about the physical infrastructure and many of the well documented challenges of doing business in India relating to the crumbling infrastructure is the ingenuity being demonstrated by entrepreneurs in rising to meet these challenges as they growth their businesses. His description of seeing an IT outsourcing firm utilizing car batteries tied to an inverter to compensate for the challenges of an unreliable power grid remind me of pictures from this Nokia research presentation relating to cell phone refuelling stations in Africa. What struck me most about the article is the perspective of how technology is beginning to enter all areas of Indian life and the increasing importance of the cell phone and broadband connectivity in transforming the Indian economy and way of life. The editorial is well worth a read and I've put the book on hold at my local library - hopefully they'll get their copies soon so that I can read it and post a review here.

"Fiddlers" by Ed McBain - Book Review

I just finished reading another of the novel's from Ed McBain's 87th Precinct series "Fiddlers" and would give it decent marks for a fairly solid work. McBain's work tends to be a little gritty and a little jumpier than I typically like in my mysteries. In this case the familiar cast of detectives from the 87th are back this time tracking a serial killer who at first is going after an oddly disconnected group of victims. My view is relative to other books in the series this novel starts at a fairly slow pace and it isn't till about half way through the 259 pages in the novel that things really start to heat up. Eventually the killer in the novel builds to six murders across various parts of New York but it really drags. I must say I'm seriously tempted to give the other books in the 87th Precinct series a pass after Fiddlers. Generally, I'm not a big fan of noire novels that involve a fair bit of gore or bloody content (although in fairness this isn't an overly gruesome tale) I'd say I much prefer the mystery element of stories and lean more towards books from Lawrence Block, Janet Evanovich, or Michael Connelly. If you enjoy a decent police procedural Fiddlers is unlike to disappoint but for others its likely worth taking a pass.

Cleaning up a PC before donating it to charity

The main reason I switched to Macintosh was to eliminate the wasted time spent caring for and feeding my Windows PCs at home. I'm in the process of ridding our house of a 3 year old Dell desktop in an effort to organize things and plan to donate the PC to charity. However there are a number of things that I need to do before dropping off the PC to the non-profit that redistributes old computers to charities:

1. Backup and remove any files or data that you want to keep. In this case I believe that I have all the files I need but I burned 3 CDs full of data just to be safe.
2. Time to wipe the hard drive completely - in my case while I have legal software licenses that will effectively disappear with my computer I wanted to take extra precautions by entirely erasing and overwriting the data on my hard drive too ensure that personal data was completed removed from the PC. In this case I went to SourceForge and downloaded a copy of Darik's Boot and Nuke'em (DBAN) there are copies for various operating systems (e.g., Windows, Mac PowerPC) and media formats (e.g., bootable CD, bootable USB and floppy drive).
3. Once you've checked and confirmed that the machine is clean of all data - pack it up and off to charity it goes.

"Motor Mouth" Book Review

I just finished reading "Motor Mouth" by Janet Evanovich a new mystery/adventure series she's authored around Alexandra Barnaby an engineer by training and a spotter for NASCAR driver Hooker. In typical Evanovich style the book follows a tightly woven story line with an engaging cast of characters that build around a puzzling mystery that builds into a full blown mystery. Motor Mouth is the second book in the Barnaby series that offers a great read without having to have read the first book in the series. In Motor Mouth Barnaby witnesses a multi-car crash at the final NASCAR race of the season which leads to a confession from a fellow spotter who asks for her help. Over the next several hundred pages Barnaby and Hooker set-out on an adventure to rescue a team-mates spotter, a Saint Bernard, recover missing microchips and dispose of two dead bodies. Start to finish this is a fun, easy read for those that are looking for a light-hearted mystery that is highly recommended.

Leopard A Few Thoughts After Living With A New OS

After living with Leopard for a while I thought that it would be worth coming back and posting some additional impressions of the latest Mac operating system.


GUEST ACCOUNT - Last night, I made use of one of the features that I'd quickly looked at and dismissed but found extremely useful the ability to enable a Guest account on your Mac. The great thing about this is that you can allow a visitor who is over to use your computer safely and securely for a short period of time. Basically, its a single use account in that anything done during the session will be cleaned up when the Guest account is logged out or the machine is shutdown. I didn't expect to use this feature but found it extremely handy - have a look.
Here is where you go to activate the Guest Account.
Go to the Apple Menu > System Preferences > Accounts
Select the Guest Account in the sidebar to the left.
Check the checkbox next to Allow guests to log into this computer and configure Parental Controls if you're so inclined.

iChat 4.0 - Over the past few weeks, I've had the opportunity to spend more time using the latest version of iChat and must say that I'm impressed with the improvements that Apple has worked into this version.

• In my opinion the iChat Theatre function is one of the biggest improvements in this release. Basically you're able to drag photos from iPhoto, your desktop or another program and drop them onto the chat window enabling you to show them as a slideshow to the person you're chatting with. In addition, you can also play movies from iMovie or .AVI and .MOV files saved to your desktop (I assume support is broader but I've only tested .MOV and .AVI files). This feature is great if you don't want to be bothered uploading a lot of photos to Flickr or videos to YouTube!
  
• I've had chats with another user running Leopard so we were both able to experiment with the Computer Sharing functionality that enables another user to take control of your Mac remotely. I must admit this seems like a great option for those not interested in setting up Chicken of the VNC and much easier to administer.
• The new backgrounds in iChat are fun but sensitive to the positioning of the lighting in your environment otherwise the effects don't come off as cleanly as they otherwise should.

"How Starbucks Saved My Life" Book Review

I just finished reading "How Starbucks Saved My Life" by Michael Gates Gill an interesting book about the events that conspire to turn a man's life around. In short the story follows the life changing experiences that take the author from being a Creative Director at J Walter Thompson to unemployment and despair. The book follows the twists and turns that lead Mr. Gill to become a barista in a New York Starbucks rediscovering self-respect and happiness in his new life.

While I found that the book dragged when it described his childhood and College years as a person of wealth I tended to skip over this areas as they held little to no interest to me. The real story in this book that kept me reading was the changes he underwent and the interactions with his much younger co-workers at Starbucks. Having read a number of different business books about Starbucks this is an interested look inside the organization and the unique culture that the company has created.