If you are not backing up the files on your computer, you are tempting fate. Hard drives fail all the time — do you want to lose all of your documents, pictures, movies, music, and work materials? External hard drives are extremely cheap, and Apple’s Time Machine backup feature requires little more than for you to plug one into your Mac.

What is Time Machine?

Time Machine is a data backup feature introduced in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. Time Machine takes all of the files on your computer, and backs them up to an external hard drive. If your computer’s hard drive crashes, or you accidentally delete important files, you can recover the information with Time Machine. If you are interested in the details of this backup procedure, OZaC has written an article on how Time Machine works.

What you need

You need two things to take advantage of Time Machine:

1. A Mac with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.
2. An external hard drive.

Time Machine was introduced in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, and therefore is not present in Cheetah/Puma, Jaguar, Panther, nor Tiger. 10.5 Leopard is also the latest version of Mac OS X as of this writing.

External hard drives are pretty cheap. You can find them at most local electronics or office supply stores, or you can pick one up at Amazon.com. Two of the most common names in external hard drives are Western Digital and Seagate — I use a 500 GB Western Digital MyBook, and have also used a Seagate FreeAgent drive.

How to set up Time Machine

Setting up Time Machine is as easy as plugging in your external hard drive. Really… just plug your external hard drive into your Mac. The Time Machine window will pop up — make sure Time Machine’s status is set to “On”, and select the external hard drive to use as your backup drive. You can do this by pressing the “Choose Backup Disk” button.

How backups work

Once Time Machine has been set up to work with your external hard drive, it will take care of everything on its own. Time Machine will silently create backups throughout the day. If you need to unplug the external drive — perhaps you are traveling with your laptop for the day — Time Machine will resume backups when you reconnect the drive later.

Time Machine makes incremental backups. This means that Time Machine remembers the changes you make to your files, and keeps backups of each version. If you suddenly realize that the edits you made to a document yesterday were wrong, you can use Time Machine to retrieve a version of that document from before those edits were made.

You can blog faster and more effectively when your posts follow a well-defined structure. One such structure that I frequently use when blogging is the essay structure. Don’t let the word essay fool you — I am not suggesting that you make your posts unnecessarily long. Rather, I am suggesting that structuring your writing in the form of an essay can help you get your point across quickly and effectively.

Leading sentence and introductory paragraph

When writing a blog post that references another source on the Web, I begin the title of the post being referenced (hyperlinked), followed by the name of the blog and whatever the author’s point or conclusion may be. Example:

“Effects of solar power on Widget production costs” by tech blog Widget News Daily discusses the potential of solar power to increase profits by reducing the production cost of Widgets.

This structure lets the reader know exactly what your are about to discuss, and has the added benefit of packing a great number of relevant keywords into the very first sentence of your post’s content. I am not an SEO expert, but I have been told on numerous occasions that the first few words in a page’s content are very important.

The hyperlink used in this lead sentence features extremely relevant anchor text — specifically, I used the title text of the blog post being referenced. Building links using relevant anchor text is much more effective than meaningless phrases like “via” or “click here”.

After the lead sentence, follow up with another one or two sentences that outline the points that will be discussed in your post. Example:

Author John Doe asserts that the savings generated by using solar power in place of oil will only continue to grow as the price of fossil fuels becomes more and more expensive.

Body of the post

The body of the post expands upon the points outlined in the introductory paragraph. The body can be (and often is) as short as one paragraph, but ultimately can be as long as you deem is necessary to get the point across.

Conclusion

Follow up the post body with a short paragraph that rephrases the main idea presented in the introductory paragraph, and sums up whatever you said in the body. This let the reader know that your post and ultimately your ideas are well-rounded and complete.

When your writing follows a pre-defined structure, you will often have portions of a blog post put together mentally before your blogging software even has a chance to load up. By starting off with a clear vision of where your post is going, you will be able to produce better content faster. The essay structure is simple for a writer to utilize, and for a reader to understand.

Three of the most basic ways in which a web site gets traffic are:

1. Natural search engine results.
2. Referrals from elsewhere on the Web.
3. Advertisements.

Natural search engine results

A natural search engine result is a visitor who arrives at your site via a search engine results page listing. Search engine results pages, or SERPs, are the matches found by a search engine in response to a person’s query. When someone searches for “data recovery” and finds my article on recovering deleted photos from a digital camera’s memory card, I have received a visitor through natural search engine results.

The exact method used to rank web pages for search terms varies between search engines, and each one keeps their exact formula a closely guarded secret. There are many theories on how to rank well for your keywords — some work, some do not, and others work for a short time until the search engines modify their algorithms.

Referrals from elsewhere on the Web

Referrals are the result of another page on the Web linking to yours. If a blogger writes about one of your articles, their visitors may find your site through that blog post. If you include a link to your site in your message board signature, other forum users who notice your postings may visit your site. In general, a link to your site that appears on another web page acts as a referral for you.

Incoming links may also help improve search engine rankings. The specifics of how search engines interpret links is of course not public information, but it is generally understood that obtaining links from other sites, particularly authoritative sites on similar topics to your sites’, is beneficial to both traffic and search engine rankings.

Advertisements

A third basic way in which web sites get traffic is through advertisements. One of the traditional methods of driving visitors to a web site is to purchase advertising space elsewhere on the web. Some common types of advertising found on the Web are banner ads, pop-up ads, pop-under ads, flash advertisements, and text links.

Bonus method: Direct visits

Thought I was done, didn’t you? A direct visit occurs when a person makes a conscious, pre-mediated decision to visit your site. They sit down at the computer (or take out their mobile), fire up their web browser, and enter the address of your web site. I hesitated to include direct visits in this article’s “3 basic ways” that websites get traffic because it is often a result of the other methods discussed in this article… a person will usually first discover a site through search engines, word of mouth, advertising, or from the other sites they visit. If they like it enough, they may return on their own.

Is that it?

As I said, web site promotion is a very large industry. Its entirety could not possibly be condensed down into a few short paragraphs. These are just a few very important basics you must know in order to understand the big picture of how traffic flows on the Web.

1. Open the Finder

Open up a Finder window and look at the section on the left titled “Shared”. Underneath the “Shared” headline, you will see the names of all the available Macs on your network.

Initially, you will see the public folders of each computer, for which you are not required to submit a username and password. You may also click on a Mac’s name and use the “Connect” button to mount volumes that do require authentication, such as a user’s home directory.

2. Connect to a Mac

Click on the Mac to which you wish to connect, then press the “Connect” button. You will be asked for a username and password. This is not the username and password for the Mac which you are physically using — it is the username and password for the Mac to which you are connecting.

3. Choose volume, browse files

Once your username and password are accepted, you will be asked to choose a volume to mount. You may choose to mount your home directory, the hard drive, or another storage volume such as an external hard drive. All of the available volumes will be shown in the window that pops up.

At this point, you may browse the files on the Mac to which you have connected, and are free to upload and download files. Be careful — anything you delete will be gone forever.

You can use the “Network” portion of the Finder to connect to another Mac over your network and share files using OS X 10.4.

1. Browse to “Network”

Pop open a Finder window, and click on “Network” (which is usually at the top of the left-hand sidebar). Give the Finder a few seconds to look around your network — in a few moments, it will add the name of any available Macs to the list right below “Servers”.

Click once on the target Mac, and hit the “Connect” button.

2. Enter your password

OS X will ask you to enter your name and password. This is not the login for the Mac you are physically using. These should be the access credentials for the target computer to which you are connecting.

3. Choose a volume

After your username and password is accepted, you will be asked which “volume” you wish to mount. You may choose to mount a particular user account’s home directory from the target Mac, the entire hard drive, or any other storage devices that are available (such as external hard drives).

Lastly, be careful if you choose to delete any files. You may not be able to recover them.

In computer terminology NAS means Network Attached Storage, and is the name for a computer system that provides data storage services to other computers on a network.

A NAS is a device set up on a network whose purpose is to store files. Other computers on the network — client machines — connect to the NAS over that network and use its resources to store and retrieve their data.

Why NAS?

Imagine you a part of a sales team, and work in an office that sells “widgets”. Over the course of your day, you and the other members of your team work with the following materials:

• Promotional photographs and videos of the widgets.
• Spreadsheets that help track your widget sales.
• Manuals for installation of the widgets.

It doesn’t make sense to keep all of these materials on your own personal workstation. If you kept these materials in a shared folder available to the rest of your team, they would be locked out if you took a week’s vacation and decided to shut off your computer. And if you each kept your own copies of these materials, odds are in favor of someone’s files becoming out-dated sooner or later.

Sounds like you could benefit from networked storage

This is where NAS comes into play. By installing a Network Attached Storage unit, your sales team would have a central repository for all of its important digital materials. Everyone always has access to the files, and keeping everything in a central location means each salesman always has the latest information.

Besides ease of access, there are other benefits to Network Attached Storage. Since all of your critical files are kept in a central location…

• A NAS unit can have a great deal of storage capacity.
• Upgrading storage capacity with a NAS is easier than expanding the capacity of each person’s individual workstation.
• All of your important information can be easily backed up.

Photo by tanais.

“Comcast: “The Patriot Act” Mandates We Need Your SSN” from consumer affairs blog The Consumerist tells the story of Ryan, a person who was refused a new account by a Comcast representative because he would not disclose his social security number. In reality, you are not required to supply your social security number in order to open a new account with a cable/internet provider.

Ryan attempted to open a new account with Comcast by speaking with a customer support representative online through the company’s live chat service. The rep. wasted no time in requesting the potential customer’s social security number — a request that was refused. The representative proceeded to cite the Patriot Act, deny the new account, direct Ryan to Comcast’s legal department, and then sign off before providing contact information for said legal department.

Who’s right?

This customer support representative was incorrect to insist that the Patriot Act requires “media communications companies” supplying Internet connectivity to collect customers’ social security numbers. Commenters on the Consumerist article were quick to refute the Comcast representative’s claims. Commenter johnnya2 quoted a bit of information from the Social Security Administration regarding who is allowed to request your SSN (see also).

Comcast maintains a Twitter account in order to participate in online discussions and respond to inquiries regarding their business. Frank Eliason — the Comcast employee behind the Twitter account — responded to a number of people who asked him about the situation (here, here, and here, to cite a few). According to @comcastcares, the live chat representative’s information was inaccurate and a social security number is indeed not required in order to open an account. He suggests that the rep. may have previously worked in financial services, were the Patriot Act does require customers to disclose such information.

The bottom line

As of this writing, you are not required to give out your social security number in order to sign up for Cable or Internet service. If a customer service representative insists otherwise, ask to speak with a manager. Your SSN is a very important number… never give it out unless you absolutely must. Furthermore, you should never trust someone who treats your privacy with such disregard, as did the representative at the heart of this Consumerist story.

More tips for protecting your privacy

Another positive outcome from this story is that the events which transpired give us great examples of red flags to look for when presented with a privacy-threatening situation. The following observations made it absolutely clear that Ryan was presented with a dangerous situation, and the person on the other end of the live chat could not be trusted with his personal information:

• The representative was insistent upon factually incorrect information.
• The representative was poorly trained with regard to the information with which they were supposedly dealing.
• The representative was dismissive of a potential customer’s perfectly valid privacy concerns.
• The representative exhibited poor written communication skills.
• The representative presented their assumptions regarding Comcast’s security infrastructure as fact (or, at best, was paraphrasing and unwittingly glossed over the details).

Seeing these behaviors, I would not trust this person with my personal information.

Wikis are powered by special wiki software that implements the unique editing capabilities of a wiki. Some of the basic features of a wiki are:

• Anyone can edit an existing page.
• Anyone can add a new page.
• Pages are composed through the web browser without any additional client software, and the editing is done in a manner that is friendly to those who are not familiar with HTML.

Just as the web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents, the pages of a wiki are frequently interlinked. Wiki software is usually able to recognize the name of another page, and automatically create a link.

Extra Features

Each individual wiki software package usually expands upon these basic features with its own additions and modifications. Other features commonly found in wiki software include a WYSIWYG editorial interface, security features to prevent vandalism, and a system to track the version history of the wiki’s content.

Modifications?

Not every wiki software package is an exact clone of WikiBase (the software behind the first wiki). Many programmers have attempted to improve upon the original design. A good example of such modifications are the names of pages on Wikipedia, which is probably the most widely known wiki. The original WikiWikiWeb software required that the names of all pages be in camel-case (e.g. the page for the Portland Pattern Repository is at PortlandPatternRepository). The names of pages on Wikipedia are more human-readable (e.g. Ward Cunningham’s biography).

List of wiki software

Here are links to a few well-known wiki implementations:

• DokuWiki: PHP wiki software that does not require database server software.
• MediaWiki: written in PHP, this is the software that powers Wikipedia.
• MoinMoin: a Python wiki engine.
• Wiki Base: Perl wiki software from the first wiki, WikiWikiWeb.

For a more complete list of wiki software, take a look at Wiki software on Wikipedia.

Printer-friendly web pages, which present content that is structured specifically for being printed on paper, are a breeze to implement with Cascading Style Sheets. By utilizing CSS to style your content for printer output, you can avoid having to create duplicate versions of all the content on your site.

A main tenet of web standards is the separation of content and presentation. Web developers use markup to meaningfully structure content on a web page, and then turn to Cascading Style Sheets in order to stylize that content for the output device (which in most cases is the visitor’s computer monitor). Printers are also output devices though, and a web developer can specify a special stylesheet to be applied to a page’s content when the visitor chooses to hit “Print”.

Step 1: Put together your print stylesheet

First things first — put together a stylesheet that stylizes your content so that it can be read easily when printed on paper. A lot sites do this by excluding backgrounds and unnecessary images, stripping extraneous navigational features such as sidebars, and rendering the text in a plain font in dark type on a light background. Don’t take this to mean that these are the necessary features of a printer-friendly web page though — you are the developer, so deciding what works best is of course up to you and your designers.

Step 2: Link the printer-friendly stylesheet

The following code goes in the <head> section of your web page:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="print" href="/mySheet.css" />

The media="print" attribute tells the browser that this stylesheet should be used when the visitor prints the web page. The href="/mySheet.css" should of course be replaced with the URL to your printer-friendly stylesheet.

Photo by blakespot.