How The New $100 Bill Will Foil Counterfeiters
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2013-04/how-new-100-bill-will-foil-counterfeiters?dom=fb&src=SOCFriday, April 26, 2013
Safety on the web
Protect Yourself On Public Wi-Fi With Cloak [Deals]
http://www.cultofmac.com/224969/protect-yourself-on-public-wi-fi-with-cloak-deals/Great for the science lover
60 Spectacular Seahorses and Seadragons [PICS]
http://www.lovethesepics.com/2013/04/60-spectacular-seahorses-and-seadragons-pics/How to move Time Machine Backup
How to Transfer Your Time Machine Backup To a New Hard Drive
http://www.mactrast.com/2013/04/how-to-transfer-a-time-machine-backup-to-a-new-hard-drive/Open Office files on Chrome
Google adds ability to open Microsoft Office files directly in Chrome on Mac
http://9to5mac.com/2013/04/25/google-adds-ability-to-open-microsoft-office-files-directly-in-chrome-on-mac/Words from the past
We Had No Idea What Alexander Graham Bell Sounded Like. Until Now
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/We-Had-No-Idea-What-Alexander-Graham-Bell-Sounded-Like-Until-Now-204137471.html#.UXoTr0hPG4A.twitterMonday, April 22, 2013
Sunday, April 21, 2013
Storing Files - Part 2
Initial Conclusion
The initial conclusion I reach is that most consumers have no need for all of the storage capacity of the hard drives and the larger SSDs they get when they buy a Mac. So most consumers will continue to have their storage on local hard drives or SSDs with more capacity than they need, no transition to online primary storage, and limited transition to online backup. Within five years, I think that consumer level personal computers will all have SSDs, not hard drives. You can already purchase a MacBook Air with 256 GB SSD or a MacBook Pro with a 512 GB SSD. They are still a bit expensive, but based on Moore's Law, we can expect that within two years 512 GB SSDs at reasonable prices will be a standard offering of PC manufacturers.
Note - One benefit of larger drives is that we will need fewer drives if we have really substantial storage needs and that will simplify the storage process.
Businesses, on the other hand, will probably transition to online primary and backup storage. This may well push personal computer manufacturers to offer personal computers with less storage, leading to cheaper units entering the consumer marketplace.
Multiple Device Users
All that is fine and dandy, but there is another trend which cuts across the first two. Many of us are multiple device users - desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones - and we want to have access to our files from all our "computers". Therefore, we need to figure out how and where we are going to store those files.
As discussed in my column entitled "Integrating Mac and iPad," published in the September 2012 Newsletter, I decided to store in Evernote all new files relating to computer usage, politics, current events, Mac groups, and a weekly discussion group in which I participate. Evernote is an app that stores all files in the cloud and locally on whatever devices run the app if you are a Premium user ($45 a year). I run Evernote on my iMac and my iPad.
There are other applications, such as Dropbox, GoodReader, Notability, Simplenote, SoundNote, etc., which can perform storage functions similar to Evernote, but they don't do it as well as Evernote and don't have as powerful a search capability.
It seems we are now entering what I call the age of concurrent storage, i.e., storing files almost simultaneously both locally and online. Whether that service will be provided by businesses whose primary purpose is online storage or by businesses which offer a specialized service with synchronization as a key feature is yet to be determined.
You cannot currently do an iPad-wide search on the iPad so, to the extent that you can concentrate your files in one app, there is less searching to do on the iPad. Files on the iPad are stored with the app used to create them.
My next step is to move most of the relevant files indicated above into Evernote. Once that is done (if ever), I can then consider moving other files into Evernote. Logically that would mean that all data files, even photos, videos and music, could end up in Evernote. I doubt I will go that far, but the implication is that Evernote can become a giant database with powerful search capabilities. One might begin to think of it as a sort of an operating system. Perhaps.
Evernote does not limit the total size of storage you can have. It has folders (which are called notebooks) and tags. A Premium user is limited to 250 notebooks, 10,000 tags and 100,000 files. Premium users can upload 50 GB per month and maximum file size is 100 MB. Thus, Evernote currently cannot hold all your files, but it certainly can hold a substantial quantity of them. Mail, photos and music-type files can be held in the specialized Apple applications - Mail, iPhoto and iTunes - all of which can hold in one way or another all these files online and available to your devices, but not taking up storage capacity in Evernote.
Conclusion
I think consumers will continue to store all their files locally rather than online for perhaps the next 5 or 10 years, but the growing recognition of the need to access files from multiple devices should mean that there will be a gradual growth, perhaps plodding, of concurrent storage, i.e., synchronized local and online storage.
Mark Bazrod, MLMUG Newsletter Editor and President
Posted with BlogsyStoring Files - Part 1
Do you know the best place to store your computer files? More precisely, will the files be stored locally, on a hard drive or a solid state drive (SSD), or online. How about two years from now? Five years?
There are two conflicting trends in the arena of computer storage. The first relates to the capacity of hard drives which has increased almost exponentially over the past several years. We now have internal storage capacity on our Macs that was unimaginable a mere five years ago. Similarly, the capacity of solid state drives is rapidly increasing while the cost continues to decrease.
On the other hand, online storage is more available and somewhat more affordable. In addition, the Internet has become more reliable and download and upload speeds have increased so that the cloud can be used not only as a backup mechanism, but more often as a primary or secondary storage mechanism (e.g., Evernote).
A third trend which undercuts the importance of the first two is the displacement of personal computers by tablets. Many tablet users have comparatively simple computing needs, primarily email and web surfing; they don't need much local storage and certainly not cloud storage.
Let's examine the first two trends in a bit more detail.
Hard Drive Storage
The minimum capacity of the hard drive or SSD that comes with an iMac is 1 TB for a hard drive and 768 GB for an SSD; with the 2 models of the MacBook Air, a 64 or 128 GB SSD; and with the 3 models of the MacBook Pro, 128, 256, or 512 GB of SSDs. 2 and 3 TB drives are now available at relatively reasonable prices and some 4 TB drives are now available. 256, 512 and 768 SSDs are available, although expensive.
Unless you're deep into video processing or storing thousands of images or hundreds of movies, it's unlikely that you will come close to needing 1 TB of storage.
For example, at 2 MB per photo, 1 TB will store 500,000 photos; at 4 MB per MP3, more than 250,000 songs; at 2 GB per movie, 500 movies; and at 1,200 characters per page, more than 800 million pages of text.
Online Backup and Storage
Online backup has become an accepted procedure for many businesses, particularly larger ones. Online storage is considered reliable and the Internet is, with rare exceptions, always accessible. Transmissions can be encrypted, as can stored files. Many businesses have found that online storage is no more costly than maintaining data centers. In addition, companies which specialize in providing online storage often have more technological expertise than a business in which data processing and storage are not the primary focus. Protecting storage against intrusion requires highly specialized skills which are not economical for most businesses to provide for themselves.
As online backup becomes more accepted, online storage is also beginning to be accepted by business. After all, if a business data center is not located on the premises, which is often the case, especially if the business has multiple locations, then the argument against off-site storage doesn't have much traction.
For individual consumers, however, it doesn't make economic sense to backup online, let alone to go online for primary storage. This becomes obvious when you compare the cost of a hard drive with the cost of online storage for a five-year period. Of course, many online storage providers provide as much as 5 GB of free storage. If you want to divide your storage among several online storage providers, it's not going to cost you much money, but I doubt that many users will go to that effort.
Saturday, April 20, 2013
Can't live without
29 Web Apps We Can't Live Without
http://www.maclife.com/article/gallery/29_web_apps_we_cant_live_without
Apple expands
Apple expands Mac accessory line to over 4,700 US Radio Shacks
http://9to5mac.com/2013/04/20/apple-expands-mac-accessory-line-to-over-4700-us-radio-shacks/Thursday, April 18, 2013
Are subscriptions going to be the new service plan?
Something to think about....
Evernote for Mac Updated with “Quick Note”
http://www.macstories.net/news/evernote-for-mac-updated-with-quick-note/
Saturday, April 13, 2013
Flipboard's new tools
Welcome to the Next Generation of Flipboard
What’s the only thing better than Flipboard? Flipboard 2.0! It’s a major new edition, with treats for everyone from the casual reader to the power user. There’s more content than ever to enjoy, including a new partnership with Etsy. When you search, we instantly create a magazine out of your results. It’s faster, more visual, and easier to navigate.
And, for the first time, you can collect and save articles, photos, audio and video by organizing them into beautiful magazines. These can be private, or if you want to connect with like-minded enthusiasts, you can make them public and share them on Flipboard and beyond. Now everyone can be a reader and an editor.
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