Backup had a been one of those concern that is well known but yet not well addressed. Since musing about the process of brainstorming for a backup strategy, I have yet to find a solution that I felt was easy and simple for a non-technical small business owner to setup and use.
As mentioned before, since I’m now using Ubuntu, my focus would be tools that should runs on Linux. But keeping in mind that many non-technical users are on Windows and I also uses MacOSX, the perfect backup solution is indeed one that runs on the 3 major platforms – Linux, Mac and Windows.
As with most solution search these day, the first stop is to visit the seach engine and generate a few alternatives as the starting point.
With the increasing popularity of using the “cloud”, the other alternative is to backup to one of those online backup services. A few that I had tried come to mind – Mozy, Carbonite, Wuala and here is a list with comparison.
So far none had led me to sustained use.
Now that Google is providing space to upload any file, perhaps someone will soon come up with a way backup files to Google. The price for additional space is pretty attractive too.
Do you have any other recommendation?
One of the tools that has eluded me all these year is a nicely integrated suite of Contact Management, Scheduler/Calendar/Organizer and a ToDolist.
Having tried many tools – from standalone applications to hosted applications, none of them lasted a month. I’m using some tools of course but I’m not settled down with them (like the way I switched to Open Office and never look back).
My requirements are really simple
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Open Source or Free would be perfect
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Would also consider hosted application and pay a small fee
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Integrated, for example
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a date (like birthday) in the contact list would appear in the calendar and could also be a todo (send birthday card)
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a schedule like “Meet with XYZ” will link to XYZ contact information
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similarly a todo like “Call XYZ” will link to XYZ mobile number
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Able to import and export to some standard formats
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Must support Chinese character input
So help me. If you know THAT tool, leave a comment.
And if you still have time, read on for a chronicle of tools I had tried.
Continue reading ‘Still Looking for that Integrated Contact, Calendar and ToDo Tool’
With the wide spread use of removable storage devices (like usb thumb drive, portable hard drive, iPod etc.) came the idea of portable applications.
The idea behind portable applications is simple – store applications on your removable storage devices and run them anywhere by just plugging-in the storage device.
A number of portable applications suites had popped up as a result. The most widely known is PortableApps, but there are also others like
I was attracted to the idea of portable application during the recently re-installation of my notebook with Vista. Through numerous reinstall of operation system over the years, I took note of the necessary steps to backup and restore data for my favourite applications. However the process is still a major hassle – backup data, reinstall applications and restore data.
Portable application side-stepped that hassle because applications are not installed but just copied to folder on a drive. So during a reinstall, I just copied the folder – application and data – to a new drive. Viola! Everything continues to work as before!
After this reinstall exercise, I’m certainly going to convert most of my applications to a portable version. Luckily most of the open source/free applications I had introduced here are available in portable version.
If you reinstall OS often or is just looking for an easily way to move your favourite programs and data around, give a serious look at portable applications. I’m surprised I took so long to get it.
Adobe Acrobat Reader is bloated and slow? You are not alone to think so.
Instead of a providing a simple PDF reader to view PDF documents, Adobe want you to download a nearly 30Mb package just to read a PDF document. Do I really need the associated applications installed to provide update and photo album?
For my new notebook, I decided not to download Adobe Acrobat Reader. I knew there were many alternatives around so I went looking.
Given my inclination to run a purely opensource desktop, I started out looking for an open source pdf. It is interesting that there is an opensource PDF creator but there isn’t any open source PDF reader, at least not for the Windows platform.* (Wikipedia has a list of PDF softwares)
From reviews online, it seem like Foxit Reader 2.0 for Windows won many accolades so I went for it directly. The free version allows reading of PDF files, just what I needed to replace Adobe reader.
(*UPDATE: found 2 opensource PDF reader but not tested, Sumatra PDF and Apparition. Look like they are in the early stage of development but certainly worth looking out for.)
Continue reading ‘Foxit Reader – PDF Reader on diet’
I had been using OpenOffice for more than a years now for all my office documents.
So far it had been nothing fancy and I had no trouble doing day to day document processing, spreadsheets, drawing, presentation slides etc. Document exchange with Microsoft Office files is also pretty straightforward. There are some glitches in handling duo languages in English and Chinese in the sample document but but not something that cannot be overcome.
My ongoing objective is to extend the use of OpenOffice to other areas and to introduce the Chinese version of this software to my co-workers.
Today, while checking for update, I found OpenOffice.org Solutions on the OpenOffice.org wiki. The wiki itself is a source of excellent information on using OpenOffice.
There is a Chinese wiki as well. From what I can see, much marketing is still needed to get this tool into the hands of the vast Chinese users. Nevertheless a great start!
Have you started using OpenOffice? If not why not?
Small business owners often have to deal with alot of decisions, plans, ideas and problems. A technique to aid in organizing, brain storming, problem solving, and decision making is Mind mapping.
Mind mapping is a concept that uses linked diagrams to represents the relationship between ideas. This technique is a useful way to help generate, visualize, structure and classify ideas. (What to find out? Here are some mind mapping books
.)
FreeMind is an open source application to help you to create mind map diagrams.
Continue reading ‘Map your Mind with FreeMind’
With almost all my waking hours spent online daily, it is tempting to think that every tools needed on the desktop can be found online, in just a few clicks.
Take the example of the dictionary. I don’t even own a physical dictionary now. On Firefox, I just use the Dictionary Search (at the top right corner) or use the shortcut to look up unknown words.
The only time when all these fail is when the Internet connection is down or when I’m offline.
So this is where WordWeb comes in handy.
Continue reading ‘WordWeb – a dictionary to use offline’
One of the stronghold of commercial software – Miscrosoft Office, had been firmly brokened!
Open Office had been installed on my desktop for close to a year now, begnning with the 1.9 beta version.
From my experience, Open Office is more than capable to handle all the day to day requirement of document processing of a small business owner.
Take a look at Writer, Calc and Impress, they can do all of what you have been doing with Word, Excel and Powerpoint.
Writer, Word replacement.
Calc, Excel replacement.
Impress, PowerPoint replacement.
Continue reading ‘No more Office, Open Office’
PDF is a standard format that is used different platforms and languages.
However many businesses are still under the impression that they require expensive software to generate PDF documents.
Each time I send a friend a document in PDF format, they will ask if I have a copy of Adobe Acrobat and they can use it to convert a few documents to PDF.
What they do not know is I actually use an open source program called PDFCreator to create it (print to be exact, read on to see how).
Continue reading ‘Create PDF file for free with PDFCreator’
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