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.